October 5, 2020 • 68 mins
Have scientists discovered a new building material for future Martian colonies? Why might a vaccine for COVID-19 lead to the deaths of thousands of deep-sea sharks? Is it true that crows can think about thinking (and are they really in an unending, existential war with owls)? All this and more in today's Strange News segment.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. It's the top of the week,
which means it's time for some more strange news. We
(00:46):
have a cavalcade of weird stuff, and I think all
air we we tried to have at least one semi
optimistic story that off air we decided to save for
the end and full confession fellow conspiracy realists, Matt old Doc,
I'm cheating just a little bit with my story today
(01:10):
because it's an opportunity to talk about one of my
favorite kinds of animals in the world. Octopuses you're thinking
no but close, and also bachers you're thinking no but close, Yeah,
arguably closer. Definitely Ferrets. Oh gosh, well, now I'm now
(01:30):
I feel like we should just do an animal show,
because those are all great suggestions, But today I wanted
to talk a little bit about Corvitt's about crows. Uh,
these amazing creatures have often been lauded more and more
of late for their intelligence, which for a long time
(01:50):
did not make sense to ornithologists scientologists, I mean scientists,
well maybe scientologists too, and and you know, neuroscientists around
the world, because crows have a very very small brain,
but they do things that ordinarily we only think of
other animals being capable of doing, namely mammals. So crows
(02:12):
can teach their young and the other members of their
murder across generations to remember the faces of those who
have wronged them and the faces of those who have
helped them. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy stuff. And just to
be clear, they aren't teaching murder, they teach the other
(02:33):
crows around them. They do. They do also teach murder
as well. Yeah, yes, way to So what's happening here
is that scientists may have finally figured out why crows,
which have such a small small brain comparatively, are so
incredibly intelligent, why they can do things that humans and
(02:57):
elephants and some octopuses. Again, that is the correct plural. Well,
octopis acceptable to but whatever, not a hill to die on. Uh?
They found out why these birds can think at such
a high level. We found out recently through some research
unveiled earlier this month in September, that crows are capable
(03:21):
of medical cognition. This is like a holy grail of philosophy.
Meta cognition is just the fancy word for being able
to think about thinking. So when you know, when you
are having your renee to car moment and you say
I think, therefore I am, and you're thinking about your thinking.
It turns out these birds can do that too. Why
(03:46):
how this shouldn't be able to at least that was
our thought. Now we can explain it because it seems that,
based on two papers that were studying that were recently released,
it seems that crows have a very high density of
neurons in their very small brains. So it's um, It's like, imagine, how, uh,
(04:11):
something like popcorn or celery has maybe relatively low caloric content,
and the same amount of peanut butter would have more
caloric content. Their brains are peanut butter. That sounds like
an insult, but I know, I know, what you mean
by that? Yeah, it's like the new app and if
this isn't a sponsorship, but they help you lose weight
(04:34):
by pushing the less calorically dense things like you can
eat like your weight and lettuce and it's like two calories.
But if you eat just that's you know, tablespoon of
peanut butter mayo, it's like, you know the equivalent of
eating a whole bag of cabbage or something like that.
Very interesting, ben So what does this mean for like
the way they behave or at least what scientists understand
(04:55):
about the intention? Are you bind the way they behave? Yeah? Yeah,
great questions. So cruise brain has about one point five
billion neurons. This puts them as as members of the
TV show community would say, streets ahead in comparison to
other aviens. They did a test where like, how do
(05:20):
you prove how do you prove something so deep as
the concept of crows thinking about thinking? Right? Do you
just smoke a lot of weeds so you convince yourself
that's not a crazy question? Do you write? Maybe they do,
but then they do some science. So they wanted to
test whether crows can both be aware of and analyze
(05:44):
the contents of their literal bird brains. A neurobiologist named
Andreas Nighter from the University of Cubanjin in Germany trained
two crows to peck at a red or a blue
target on a panel, depending on whether they saw a
faint light. And this neurobiologist kept varying the rules of
(06:06):
the game, so the crows would be told which color,
what meant what after the flash, Like they would see
a flash, and sometimes they would have to peck the
red target to say that to acknowledge they had seen it,
but then other times they have to peck the blue target.
That's important because it means the crows have to take
(06:27):
a second or two to figure out what they had
seen earlier and then exhibit that behavior to the neurobiologists.
And while they were doing this, they're tracking these crows
uh neurological activity. And they found that sensory neurons were
active when a crow saw the flash, and these neurons
indicated the crow's brain basically saying yeah, I saw that uh.
(06:49):
And if they did not see this flash, those sensory
neurons were silent and the crow it's a peck, No,
I didn't see anything. And this means that the birds
are aware of what they subjectively perceive and they're correctly
reporting what their neurons will tell them. That sounds a
bit in the weeds. I get it. There's a little
(07:10):
bit of jargon, but the main takeaway is this they
have behavioral flexibility. That's probably one of the best definitions
of intelligence that our species has. We have mostly terrible
definitions of intelligence. And this means crows are able to
do something that only two other animals can do, human
beings and McCall monkeys. I know that last one's kind
(07:31):
of a plot twist, but so now it's the three
of us. Uh. I'm mainly using this story, by the way,
uh it is amazing science. By mainly using this to
tell you about the other interesting thing I learned you
guys about crow intelligence. Crows are in an unending war
(07:52):
with certain types of owls. Okay, what like like does
go back generations to some you know period where an
owl wrong to crow and they've just generationally you carried
on this beef of like a hat field in McCoy
type situation or is it something biological? This is incredible.
(08:14):
It seems to be both genetically imprinted. You can take
a crow raised in captivity and it'll have never encountered
an owl and it'll just freak out smash on site.
And owls are the same way, especially the great horned owl.
Owls are like Okay, so I was thinking of the
good and a good analogy here, So picture crows and
(08:37):
owls in their in their unending existential war. Crews are
kind of like the humans, and owls are kind of
like the vampires or the monsters that go bump in
the night. Owls are unparalleled nocturnal predators in the world
of crows. Uh, and owls are a lot like great
horrid Owls especially are a lot like serial killers when
(08:59):
it comes to rows. If they find um a roost
of crows, then they will kill them, even if they
don't need to eat anything. There's one great report from
Capeing Islands that shows a great horned owl had basically
done a breaking an entering operation on a roost of
(09:20):
nine crows, and their bodies were untouched except for their
heads which were partially removed, and their brains were eaten. Yeah,
was sick amazing. Um. It reminds me of the time
when I lived in Athens, that a bunch of frat
boys stole a great horned owl from the outdoor zoo. Wait,
(09:40):
it's nothing like that at all, but it's unclear. But
but did you hear about owls? Um? There was a
story I heard an NPR a couple of years ago
about a woman who was walking late at night and
something kind of swooped down and like then she felt
blood running down her face and apparently it was an
owl that can they can fly soundlessly in the night,
(10:03):
and they must have mistook or the owl must have
mistook this woman's hair for like a vole or some small,
you know, delicious rodents. I don't know that we have
an epidemic of owls attacking humans or corvid's attacking humans,
because that would be my hell on Earth, by the way,
just write that out there. Yeah. Owls also are capable
(10:23):
of successfully predating on cats, Like they can snatch up
grown cats. Uh. I don't think. I think they're one
of the things. Owls can't swallow a whole. But but
when we think of this, we we know that because
of their intelligence, then crews are in some cases functioning
like vampire hunters. They're saying, let's like they have to
(10:46):
attack and mass, right, they have to attack in numbers
and do what's called mobbying the owl. And so they'll
assemble like a crew of Corvid's and say, you know,
we have to attack it dawn when the monster is
vulnerable because it owns the night. And given their intergenerational learning,
given their great intelligence, given their communicative ability. The coolest
(11:06):
thing about this, at least to me, is this means
that's somewhere out there right now, there's like a crow
version of van Helsing and it's hunting, uh, you know,
like it's hunting a great horned owl dracula that is
just out to kill crows. Yeah, man, okay, I would
I would read that comic. Uh. One of the most
(11:30):
interesting things here when you're talking about the Corvid response
to the owl threat, is that mobbing behavior. I guess
they're on that same Cape and Islands article you were
mentioning there been. It's speaking about how this person who's
writing at the author has seen a barn owl that
got flushed out, uh, just from where it would normally
(11:53):
be staying in daylight hours and like a vampire caught
out in the daylight. Not not like that, because he
would just dissolve into ash. But some Corvid's saw it
and they did the mobbing thing and they ended up
they like, they essentially attacked it until it had to
or it had to escape, and it jumped over a
(12:15):
cliff I guess, and went down into the water into
the ocean, rather than being able to fly or anything.
Just really kind of sad for the owl would like
rather than be taken alive by the gang of Corvid's
that were after it. Well, I don't know, I guess.
I mean, it's just an attempt to escape, I suppose,
but they drove it into the sea. Yeah, that is
(12:36):
cold blooded. You guys remember that movie The Secret of
nim that really dark cartoon movie from the late eighties.
I guess. There was Jeremy the Crow, who was kind
of a goofy, fun character. But then there was the
Great Owl, which if I've ever seen a depiction of
an owl in vampire kind of like tones, that's it.
That is one of the creepiest. It wasn't even a villain.
It actually ended up giving some good info. But I
(12:58):
believe Jeremy refused to go and for because of the
fear bias against the owls. I may be making that up.
That would be cool if they did think about that
biology in the character development. So it's one thing it's
amazing here is the more we learn about intelligence, the
more we learn that it is nowhere near unique to humans.
(13:20):
And even like, think about how familiar these animals are.
Everybody listening to today's show has probably seen her crow
right there, ubiquitous in many parts of the world, but
their intelligence itself is still so alien, not as alien
as that of an octopus. But I feel like the
more we learn about these things, the more we're going
(13:42):
to learn about their cognitive abilities. They hunt serial killers.
I mean to them, these owls are serial killers if
you think about it. So that's this is just h
kind of a hobby horse. I you probably remember back
in the Buckhead days, there were a couple of crows
(14:04):
in the nearby Buckhead mall and I try to go
talk to them in the parking lot. Uh, they didn't care.
By the way, it's I want to murder of crows
that I can befriend, and I know people have done it.
I just I don't know. Man, City crows are stuck up.
You communed with the crow both at the old Buckheat office,
like you're saying. And also I think one trip to
(14:25):
l A, I I saw you out on the porch,
uh talking to a corvette or at least you know,
in engaging with it in some way. I've all, you've
always been fascinated by these creatures. But you're so smart
just to put this out there for a little bit
of context for everybody. Um, the one that we called Ben,
the one that goes by Ben, he back in that
day run that time when we were in that office,
(14:47):
Ben had a specific outfit that he would wear. And
I noticed this Ben, you didn't wasn't lost on me.
There was a specific outfit that was very crow like.
Then I would sometimes see you where when I would
happened to glance you venturing out to speak with the corvids.
I saw what you were doing. He got me because
(15:07):
like we could, the four of us now, Doc, you, Matt,
you know, and myself, we could go out and if
we if we treated or a population of crows very well,
and we came back and we were wearing the same clothes,
we didn't make a bunch of changes to our facial
hair or our our haircuts, then the crows would remember
(15:29):
and then they would start giving us weird crow stuff.
Like we talked about this earlier today. We actually they'll
they'll give you what they think of as human stuff.
But if you wrong them, their children will remember. Do
you think they tell their buddies about you? And then hey,
this guy's okay. And then the next thing, you know,
(15:49):
like the corvids, like nesting in telephone poles as you're
taking your walk down the street, you know, like waiting
on you to do their bidding. I want to see
you like night kings styal raise your arms up and
then like more of it's just come flocking towards you,
and like a cloud of black you know, crows surrounding Ben.
I want to I mean, it's terrifying. I'm not gonna lie,
(16:11):
but I would. I would never make you sit through that. Man.
I'm actually your friends, So I appreciate that. But this, uh,
I would get popcorn if that happened. Yeah, still love popcorn.
Come for you would come, They would come for your
They would come, they come for your corn. I would
offer it as a sacrifice to croking. You can. The
(16:31):
last thing about pro intelligence and cooperation in the wild
is um Yeah, it goes even further than we think.
We don't know the full extent. If you are a
hunter and crows are as you guys have familiar with you.
You've been in these woods before and you've left some
kind of offering to them while you're hunting. They will
help you find animals to hunt, like. They will fly
(16:52):
up and they're not trained to do this. They'll teach themselves.
They'll point out the deer or the elk or what
have you to the hunter. And they do it because
they know that when the hunter kills that animal, it'll
leave something for them. It's very very strange. Um. Anyway,
let us know your corvid adventures. Uh, please do not
(17:13):
wrong them, and please remember they are wild animals. They're
just very very intelligent. We don't know how smart they
are yet, but this God, I can't wait. I hope
somebody has a pet crow. Well you said the word familiar,
you know, and it made me think of like, you know,
you see crows often as uh which or warlock familiar
is it's the term they use and I think that's
(17:35):
really appropriate. Did anybody a Harry Potter universe have a crow?
As I know Harry had a freaking owl. Weird but
it was a cute owls fluffy and it didn't look
like a demon or anything. But surely they were crow
familiars in the Potter verse. Yeah, I feel like you
can't write a fantasy of that sort and not have
a crew or maybe a raven or something. Yeah, ravens
(17:56):
are a little spookier. Well, I don't know, it's up
for debate. They're bigger, but yep, that's right. And you
see him in California a lot like because and they
look like almost like little hawks or something that they're
just pitch black and very very ominous creatures. You guys
know where I stand on this. I love this for you, Ben.
I'm really glad that you've got some corvid related uh
science news to brighten your day. And and thanks for sharing.
(18:18):
Oh yeah, of course, man, this is this is great, Ben.
I just uh, I want to take it back to
that study just quickly. Um. I'm just having a little
bit of trouble understanding it fully, and it has nothing
to do with the way you explained it. I think
it's just the way the articles refer to a lot
of the things, because I know there's several things happening.
The stimulus occurs to where the crows either see a
(18:41):
faint light or not. Then the crow has to decide
which of the two buttons it has to hit. When
I don't understand is when the rules get changed by
you know, the observers, the scientists, because it seems like
the the big thing here is that the rules get
changed after the stimulus comes in. Then the crow has
(19:03):
to decide which one to hit depending on that new rule.
Is that correct? Yeah? That seems to be about the
size of it. The important thing there is that they're
exhibiting the ability to adapt their behavior. So they're not
learning a route process. They're not learning something all like
(19:23):
always hit blue, always get treat. What they're learning is, uh,
sometimes I have to switch the rules up to get
the results I want because the communication of these weird
human scientists is changing. Is it because there dicks? I
guess so. But they run the treats game, so I'll
play ball. And then the big the big thing there
(19:43):
is that they're thinking about They're like jumping thoughts essentially,
rather than just a to B. It's more about what's
going on behind the scenes. And I mean they don't
know maybe they don't know that there's a science experiment
being run on them, but they understand that it's more
than just like object, you know, impermanence that children have,
you know where It's like they can actually think bigger.
(20:06):
They can think about the framework of the scenario. They
find themselves in um and and essence, see the experiment
for what it is, as opposed to just behaving like
a less intelligent creature that would do like you said,
then red red light equals treat and then no light,
no whatever. You know what I mean, I don't know, Like,
I think that's a really good explanation. You're you're on
the money there, because the I think we should move
(20:28):
on on this before we end up accidentally making an
entire crow podcast. But the big takeaway is that before
this month that would have been considered physically impossible, crows
do not have the equipment that we have laid out.
In the same way, crows do not have a um
(20:51):
the cerebral cortex. They they have something called a pallium
and that's kind of doing the heavy lifting the cerebral
cortex would do. So. Yet again, the big thing that
makes this important for other studies of non human intelligence,
and perhaps that of alien life in the future is
that we're learning our brains set up, our brains load out,
(21:13):
or whatever is just is probably just one of many
many options. We don't know what else is out there,
but we do know the world is still the world.
It's luckily still has UH, still has wild animals, and
the problem is due to COVID in at least one case,
we might have far fewer UH in the ocean very soon.
(21:36):
M M. That's right, And we'll get to that story
after a quick sponsor break and we're back. Okay, So
we lead with with bend Corvid story. I keep wanting
to say COVID that that's not what that is at all,
but it's obviously top of mind for a lot of people.
(21:58):
And we have a COVID related story that also involves
animals and the idea of scarcity UM, specifically in the
shark community. And you guys, I didn't know this at all,
but it turns out that there's a substance in sharks
livers UH called squaling. Squaling I'm gonna go with squaling
(22:22):
um that is used to essentially make vaccines and different
medications somehow more effective. UM. I'm not a scientist, I
couldn't tell you exactly how that works, but it apparently does,
and it's something that is used in medications the world over.
(22:43):
But let's think about an event like what we're dealing
with as far as COVID is concerned, where if we
get a vaccine, it's gonna be something millions and millions
of people want. Are at the very least, we're going
to need to make enough doses so every one can
have one if they want it, right, Like I know,
we've aside from many you know, COVID truthers or folks
(23:08):
that don't believe it's real, or folks that are anti
vaccination or what have you, I think it'll probably be
hopefully a drop in the bucket, you know, compared to
how many people will be running out their door to
get that vaccine as soon as they possibly can. And
according to a post from a shark advocacy group um
(23:30):
called Shark Allies, they believe that around two hundred and
fifty thousand sharks will need to be slaughtered for that sweet,
sweet squally squealing in their livers. And that is only
if each person on the planet wants one dose or
needs one dose. There are some potential situations where folks
(23:54):
might need to So in that case, I would double
the number to half a million sharks um for the
slaughter in order to make these vaccines. Um. And you know,
this Shark advocacy group actually published a petition on change
dot org where they talk about how using sharks for
this COVID nineteen vaccination is shortsighted. It's gonna cause a
(24:18):
big problem balancing out, you know, the ecosystems of the
oceans the world over, and it could have unpredictable outcomes. Um.
It's something I hadn't really considered. You know. We think
I think of like a vaccine being something entirely generated
in a lab without needing any raw materials. There's just
science is magic. He just put together some you know,
(24:40):
droppers and make the thing with a little piece of
the virus, and that's all. That's all you gotta do.
But obviously, as we know, based on the fact that
you can't just make a vaccine for the thing instantly,
there's a lot of research and development and trial and
error and all of this stuff that goes into and
apparently sharks are part of the equation. Yeah. Yeah, I
was reading about falling because I I I've never heard
of this to be completely transparent. Yeah, it looks like
(25:05):
our human livers produce it too, but we're not quite
at the point as a species yet where we say
slaughter x amount of people to give why amount of
people of vaccine. It looks like it works by enhancing
the immune response, So it kind of ups the octane
or the efficacy of a vaccine because because you're going
(25:27):
to get more, your body is going to respond to
it more and you're going to create more. What is
the anti um antibodies? Antibodies? Is that the idea? I
think so. Um. Again, I haven't delved deep into the science,
but everything that I've read, and this is a very
new story. The petition, by the way, has I think
(25:47):
something in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand signatures, but it
just got posted today, um, and that today being Monday, September.
So this is relatively new and developing story at least
in terms of the the outcry. And this is obviously
something people in shark circles would be more intimately familiar
(26:08):
with in their whole issue is that we've never had
the quote they refer to it as supply chain tested
in this way at this scale, and it's something that
you know, on regular on a regular day, maybe there's
you know, some impact to the shark communities. But sharks
are also you know, so many species of them are
on the decline, and there's obviously a finite number of
(26:31):
them in the wild. Um, and this is something that
could potentially have, according to this group, have critical effects
on sustaining them as a species. You know, it's one
of these things too where if you're talking to the
politician or maybe even the scientists, Um, what's a few
sharks if it means saving mankind? You know, at the
(26:52):
end of the day, if we eliminate all sharks in
in an effort to save humanity, is that a worthwhile balance?
Shark people might say no, or at the very least
safe figure out a better way. But I don't know,
It's it's a it's an interesting conversation for sure, Yeah,
because there's um from what I understand, sharks are not
(27:12):
the only source of this. They're just the cheapest and
easiest source we can get squaling from olive oil or
olives rather and it just it costs more and it
also takes I think like seventy hours to make it
as opposed to ten. But you know, your point, Noll
(27:32):
is the same as something we've seen come up in
arguments about conservation, where someone says, look, are we going
to prevent the progress of mankind into this uh sensitive
Martian environment because of tree frogs? Are we gonna say
that we're putting tree frogs over the livelihood of human beings.
We'll have other people who say, look, there are almost
(27:55):
eight billion human beings on the planet. They're like a
few hundred thousands of you know, insert species here. It
is a difficult argument, but it's also it's also strange
because there is an alternative. It's just someone would have
to pay more. So I think it's misleading to say
(28:17):
it's humans or sharks, you know, other than the time. Absolutely,
and it's interesting too. I mean, already three apparently three
million sharks are killed each year for the substance, and
they're even hunted for it. Um predators that are you know,
deep sea dwellers um have more of this compound or
this liver oil, I guess. And it's because it helps
(28:40):
them float, and as we know about sharks, they have
to keep moving. That's obviously important. Interesting how this this.
You know, certain species adapt to have more of a
particular chemical in their bodies, you know, to help make
sure they are able to do the things that they
are best suited for. I'm literally describing evolution and adaptation,
but as it always blows my mind when you see
it in practice, uh in in the real world, in
(29:01):
the wild like this for sure. I'm just looking about
where squaling is being used all over the place, and
it looks like, at least according to ducda Go, that
there is squaling in all kinds of skin and hair
products all over the place. One of the more popular
ones I'm looking at, and this is not an ad,
(29:22):
is a plant drived one that is coming up everywhere.
I won't name it, but it's like it's the olive
oil or other plant based squaling. And it seems like
if we can make that much where there's that much
of a supply of it for all of these products,
maybe some of these companies could step up and say, well, hey,
(29:45):
if we need um, if we need extra squaling, we've
got a version of it here that Yeah, that's a
great idea. We'll see if what happens. Yeah, I'm not
gonna hold my breath and it keep swimming because if
I stop swimming, I will die. I'm not gonna hold
your shark for that one, right. Yeah, it's like three
thousand sharks to make one ton of this substance. I mean. Also,
(30:08):
the shark population, the maritime population of most animals is
as we alluded to earlier, collapsing, you know what I mean.
It's not as if it's going to be easy for
these sharks to come back after a coal of something
like this, of of this magnitude. And you know, there
are people will say, well, screw sharks, I don't like them,
(30:35):
But that's what does shark ever do for me? Right?
But that's not a valid argument. And sharks already get
such a terrible time in the human press because shark
attacks are pretty infrequent. Sharks are not usually out to
eat you. When they bite people, as a matter of fact,
it's it can be fatal. It's very dangerous. They are.
(30:56):
They are just like evolved killing to basically. But but
what they're doing when they bite people, they're doing a
taste test. It's rare for them to fight someone and
keep biting. They think we taste gross, and they're probably right.
It's that Damn Steven Spielberg. You know, if it wasn't
for him, sharks would be up there with puppies and kittens.
(31:18):
Maybe not, but I think the problem is when they do,
even if it's a taste test, take a little bite. Uh,
it's terrifying. Let's see you lose an arm or a
hand at the very least. I always always laugh when
I've been like, have you guys been closed to a
shark in the wild. No, we've definitely seen one of
(31:39):
aquariums and stuff right there. They're terrified that I was
in a boat and I was still you know, I
still have the Jaws music playing in the background in
my head. I could easily see someone thinking the ocean
would be better without them. Although I do think it's shortsighted.
I understand the immediacy when you're in the moment, but
(32:00):
it makes me, it makes you wonder, um, how ridiculous
it is when you see those uh survival videos where
there's how to insert here and they're like, oh, you're
getting an attacked by a shark. Just remember to pop
it on the nose. That's all you need to do.
Just give it a bop. Yeah, Well, we'll be you know,
we think about this too in terms of hunting seasons,
(32:20):
right like, Uh, you know, it's important to maintain the
balance of predators and and pray and you know, black bears,
for example, are certain species that aren't allowed to be
hunted or what have you. There's usually a reason because
it's about conservation, not only about the species themselves, but
about maintaining that balance, you know, in the wild. And
I'm sure if sharks didn't need to be around, they
(32:43):
would have died out by now. I mean again, I'm
not a scientist, but that seems to be what happens
with creatures that don't make an impact in the ecosystem
or or have some reason for existing. The oldest living
animal right now is a shark. It's a greenland shark.
The poor guy looks the worse for wear, but he
is uh. He was estimated to be around uh three.
(33:08):
The two oldest were estimated to be around three hundred
thirty five and three d ninety two years old. Uh.
We are very small in the scheme of things. But
if you look at the picture of the green greenland shark,
it's just I I don't know the biological sex of
this creature, but it's like the it's front teeth are missing,
it's got all these scars. Uh, it's not five twelve
(33:31):
years old, as was falsely reported. Well, but speaking of
like the oldest animals are, you know, sharks in general,
I've been around since the Carboniferous period, which was around
three hundred and fifty nine million years ago, and it's
actually known as the Golden Age of sharks because there
was an extinction event that killed off a massive amount
(33:51):
of underwater species and different lineages of fish. There's a
great article in National History Museums uh the UK and
National History Museum website about us about the Golden Age
of sharks. And this allowed sharks to flourish and kind
of dominate and um evolve more quickly. I guess there.
It sort of gave rise to a lot of different
varieties of sharks because they were able to flourish. So
(34:13):
it's a long time for a thing to be around. Yeah,
I'm looking at here. There is a five seven year
old clam apparently called ming. Yeah, it's an invertebrate. I
just wanted to get up again in started that. I'm
glad you mentioned that, Matt, because we always get letters
where we talk about the oldest living thing, no matter
how a caveat it. Let's call this the oldest living
(34:35):
large vertebrate marine creature. People are going to point out
the functionally immortal hydra right or to atopsis as well,
and then I'm sure we'll get a letter about the
quaking aspen and so on, and the tar degrades and
the tar degrades grades. There are a lot of uh,
(34:57):
there's so many caveats with this. But thanks for in
this up, Noll, because I had never I was not
aware of the critical role that deep sea sharks we
should say it's specifically deep sea sharks, right. I wasn't
were the critical role they played in the world of vaccines,
and I guess in the world of cosmetics too. I
feel like a bad person everybody out there who's thinking, Hey,
(35:21):
you guys want us to get the vaccines for this thing.
I we know how many how many rumors and theories
are rolling around out there about a potential vaccine. Um
we've been doing reading on it, where we've been thinking
on it. UM just a signal that we're paying attention
and we're trying to get the best information we can
possibly get before we bring anything to you. Um, but yeah,
(35:45):
we're we're aware. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's says
a lot, you know, especially especially when you hear stories
about the idea of forcing one through or rushing it,
you know that that whole thing. It really freaks me out.
The idea of maybe somehow jettison ng other you know,
f D A type safe. I don't know that they
would be able to do that, but what does that
mean to you? Guys? When you hear the idea of
(36:07):
like certain reports say I will have one by the
end of the year, and then another scientists saying like whoa, whoa, whoa, No,
and that's gonna be That's that's very optimistic scist. Agree, agreed.
But at the end of the day, isn't it the
government or the administration that if it's like a political
boon to try to force something through, wouldn't that be
(36:27):
a thing that could potentially make happen? I wonder. The
scary thing for me is when you've got medical professionals
on some kind of platform saying things that don't appear
to match up with the science that we're researching. That
Let's say I'm researching um, but there are there are
a medical professional and they have a lot of experience
in the field, and it's that thing where your brain says, well,
(36:51):
I should trust them. They're a doctor and they deal
with vaccines all the time. But it's not squaring with
what I'm reading from the CDC or the w h O.
So then do we trust those organizations? And it just
becomes well, I guess I'm just trying to signals it.
There's a lot of complexity out there and we're trying
to wade through a lot of that. As many of
(37:13):
you have been signaling to us in your writings to us, UM,
I want to point out for anyone who's looking for
something UM pretty good to watch. It's a great idea.
There's a fictional show called Utopia that came out on
Amazon recently that deals with it. Without spoiling too much.
The deals with the conspiracy to spread something via desperately
(37:37):
needed vaccine. And I don't know if the producers planned
it to publish when it did, but it was. It
was good timing, which almost makes up for some of
my problems with the writing. I'm sorry this is a
fiction show over I misheard you. I thought it was
a documentary. Second, Okay, got it, got it. But that's
a conspiracy theory that's been around forever that somehow a
(37:59):
vaccination where the vaccinations are a way to do something
terrible to humanity as a whole, right, right, And there
have been cases where there's pretty compelling evidence that, at
least in ice lead cases, there was some truth to
some of this. You know, um often it must be
said via incompetence or um pursuing profit over people's lives.
(38:23):
But I do want to say, while we're on the
subject of vaccines, Uh, President Vladimir Putin has said that
he's going to take the spot NICK five covid vat
coronavirus vaccine. He just hasn't said win. So a lot
of people would be listening if they support that government
or that regime, they're listening to us and they're like,
you guys are being dunderheads. The vaccine is already here,
(38:47):
they just won't let us have it. Do you think
he'll do it like that one guy we talked about
who died in a float tank who like vaccinated himself
on a Facebook live stream. Forget the guy's name, but
there was like foul play potentially and he had like
drugs in the system, but he he was all into
like these hacks and doing like untested you know, medications.
I can't remember what it was for. It was maybe
(39:08):
for herpes. He gave himself like what purported to be
a cure for herpes, and he did it live on
a Facebook stream, and then he turned up dead. I
wonder if Putin will put his money where his mouth
is and and get shot up with this magical Russian
vaccine so we can all see it. I would watch,
I would watch. I would watch it, but I highly
doubt that. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's tough. It's
(39:31):
tough to guess because that's one of the most well
protected people alive today. So I would say, if it's
not just propaganda, and if if Putin does in fact
take the vaccine, it will be after several other people
have taken it and survived, you know what I mean.
He's clearly fond of Facebook. So we'll see, We'll see
(39:52):
what happens. I I think I just want to reach
out across the video screen and the microphone to everybody listening,
just to say, you know, this is a really scary time.
No matter what you believe. And I just got back
from a trip where the overall consensus in the small
(40:14):
town that I was in appeared to be, at least
according to the signs that were on a lot of
the small businesses, that coronavirus was a scam with it,
that it was fake, it was a ruse, and we're
all being played and this is a lose a larger
number of people living in this small town that I
had to visit. And I just wonder how many people
(40:35):
out there listening have that viewpoint? And and if you do, why,
Like what what are you reading that I'm not reading?
Or like the what what? Um? What feels credible to you?
That maybe I'm just missing or in my bubble about
I just want to I would love to hear from
somebody out there who feels that way, that has a
(40:56):
good explanation for why they believe it. Yeah, well said man.
I've been receiving some correspondence from folks. Always grateful to
hear from you, uh in in this regard, But yeah,
i'd I'd also love to hear, um what what you
feel has informed your choices in this regard? We did,
(41:18):
we did have some episodes that probably still tangentially apply
to the current question. Now. Uh, but you know we're
not We're not here to attack people, but we are
here to learn from you, which is the most important
thing we can do in times like these. But okay,
so there we go. End of sharks. Maybe under the
species crows and owls are in a genocidal war with
(41:43):
one another. I don't know about you all, but this
feels like a great time for dose of something a
little more optimistic. What are you talking It just sounds
like a time to escape the whole planet. All right,
Well six and one end, I would say, So we'll
tell you what we're talking about. A little bit of
a red tinge light at the end of the tunnel
(42:04):
after a word from our sponsor. Not a crow light,
it's a it's a different reference. And we're back. Yes,
that's right. Things may seem like they're going really bad
(42:24):
down here on Earth. Um, we've talked about it before.
This is the only planet we've got thus far. But
we are looking at other potential destinations and other places
we can make feel like home at least, and in
that pursuit, in the next few decades, several countries and
international organizations are looking to travel to the Moon again. Surprise, surprise,
(42:50):
first Moon. Yeah. Uh. There's also some fun controversy about
and I used that word so sarcastic, we uh, controversy
about China and there their desire to build an international
space station of their own outside of the International Space Station. Yea,
(43:13):
the Ghostbusters and the real Ghostbusters or the National Championships
in the World Championships, it's very much like that, uh,
to see who will control space all of it apparently,
or just near Earth orbit um. But again in the
Moon of course that we mentioned. And then the you know,
the third one is Mars. That's one of the big destinations.
(43:36):
Once we are going to shoot some people off towards
Mars at least and hopefully it's going to be successful
and they'll land, and once they're there, they're gonna need
to have enough stuff to build things so that they
can actually survive there. And you can't take We've talked
(43:56):
about it with Marshall Brain on an episode. You can't
just loads so much cargo up into a ship that
is going to get you to Mars because of you know,
problems with propulsion and all these other things. There's a
there's a multitude of reasons here that you need to
be able to build things once you get to a destination,
and you need to be able to use it, use
materials that you either find there or combine materials that
(44:19):
you find at your destination with something you've brought right, Yes,
So this all comes back to an article in Wired
that was put out fairly recently here on the September,
and it is speaking about well, it's ah the concept
(44:41):
of using kitan, which is something we're gonna explain it
in a second. Using kitan to build habitats, to create tools,
and hopefully some really sick armor for all the people
who will be traveling to Mars. Yeah on the phom
er um. Yeah, well we'll get into that. We'll get
(45:05):
into a second. So kitan what is kitan? Before we
just do any other learning here? Biology wise, uh describes
kayton as a naturally occurring by bio polymer um and
it is found in many, many, many creatures on Earth.
(45:26):
If you think about a beatle, you've probably seen a
beatle before or touched one, maybe as a kid, or
let one crawl on you, or maybe yesterday as an adult.
My favorite is Paul. Oh, Paul, yeah, oh, very much. Okay,
I don't know how much kitan Paul's got going on,
but you know, let us know if you have other information.
(45:47):
But a beat the beat Paul McCartney, it was, yeah,
you know, I get it, I get it, I get it.
But a beatle, no whether how large or small, has
an outer shell that is very very strong here to
the very soft insides of that beetle, and that outside
is made I'm sorry. Oh yeah, that's a whole other thing.
(46:11):
We're gonna have to get to you you with this um.
But that beetles very has that outer shell, right, It's
like a carapace that it has around it. That stuff
is kitan and a couple other things combined together to
create that hardened that hardened shell. The concept here is
to use that mix it with that stuff that's in
like a beetle shell and a bunch of other animal shells,
(46:32):
with the dirt and other stuff you're gonna find on Mars,
just the soil. That's not soil, it's just the stony.
I don't know all the all the chemicals and substances
that make up the surface of Mars. Put those things
together and you essentially have a brick of some sort
that you can use or a m a three D
printing substance that you can make a whole little village
(46:55):
out of. Basically to protect yourself. I mean, that would
be incredible if you could do it. But Matt, wait
a minute, this isn't another sad animal story. Is It
doesn't mean they're gonna have to grind up like all
the Beatles on planet Earth to to make space bricks,
does it? No? But kind of in a way in
a smaller scale. By the way, this is all a
proposal that was published in Plos one. It's titled Martian
(47:20):
bioleth bio Inspired Regular Composite for Closed Loop Extraterrestrial Manufacturing
WHO And in that per reviewed article from Plos one,
they describe essentially away to have the food source on
one of these missions that's going out to let's say Mars,
be primarily plants that are created there or grown on
(47:45):
you know when once they land and as well as
as they're traveling, and proteins that are based on insects. Right,
So the insects that would be eaten essentially, or at
least would would proteins extracted from them, would have leftover
carapaces which aren't really good for human consumption anyway. They
(48:06):
don't do much for you. The kitan that's inside those carapaces,
there's some there's some small medical benefits that we can
talk about, but really, if you wanted to, you could
essentially separate the protein rich stuff from the insects and
the kitan, and you take that kitan then after eating
all those delicious insects and then which aren't bad construction. Yeah,
(48:33):
I'm not yucking yums. That's that's great. He's kind of
season them properly. It's kind of season them properly. You
can fry anything. And the United Nations has wanted people
to avoid mass starvation by eating insects on Earth like
a decade. So it's it's true. It's not a crazy idea.
And Martians will probably have to do it. Yeah, yeah,
they will, and it's a smart thing to do because again,
(48:55):
what you're doing is giving yourself a thing that can create.
They can create uh, any structures, any thing to the
within this article. They actually did some experiments where they
were able to create tools out of this kitan substance
(49:16):
um and they used they didn't they didn't have any
access to Martian You know, regular e thor rocks and
things like that, but they were able to use mineral
equivalence of what that would be. They combined the kitan
with that and they could make like, um, essentially a hatchet, uh,
a wrench. They're all these things that they conceptualized being
(49:36):
able to make, and then they actually made a wrench
that they could turn and fix things. Matt, aren't you
burying the lead here a little bit? But don't they
also wouldn't they be able to use their urine uh
and and extract some material in their urine kind of
make the bonding agent? Does that deal? Yeah? So so
(49:57):
there are several parts, but some of the main ones
are Martian stuff, kitan and urea from from people's pet
great stuff. And you'd live in the whatever structure you
built out of that. I built this house from my
own rusty Martian P and I will not be I
(50:18):
will not be disrespected by you. Kid. This is a
parent talcular Martian. Kid. You gotta be a P constructor
like your father and your Space father before him. Uh.
It makes me think of like the Dousers from Fraggle
Rock or something. Or also it makes me think of
(50:39):
like is the moon gonna just look like Minecraft, Like
is everything gonna be like, you know, geometrically shaped or
like made of these bricks. But no, no, no, yeah,
please go on about the how you can shape this stuff.
That's that's fascinating to me. Well. Yeah, in the three
D printing stage of this, in the testing that was
publishing this article, they made these kind of cone shaped structures,
(51:02):
or at least models of these cone shaped structures that
they're proposing could be the dwelling places in larger buildings
on Mars. It looks like maybe something an ant constructed
or an insect constructed, um, just just because it looks
to be built out of the soil itself or the
(51:23):
ground itself, and it just becomes a shape that is hardened. Right,
And just looking through this article and seeing all the
proposals here, it makes me feel like we humans are
going to arrive on Mars and other places if we
do these things and create essentially xenomorph hives. If you
(51:43):
guys remember the Aliens series, like essentially taking what exists
on that planet and then they this is a completely
fictional thing, but they would use their acidic saliva to
bond essentially or to break down substances that existed and
then formed the hive. That's that's the height of the
(52:08):
height of technology that we're discovering now, and in the
applied material science field, a lot of it is us
learning to mimic things that other animals have been doing
or natural processes that occurred. Like if you're too good
for space, Urine, I'm gonna say you don't belong on Mars.
Other people want to take the trip, like what's interesting
(52:30):
to me here to matt is one thing I wish
the study you talked about a little bit more. I
wish they had talked about, um, the the Martian elephant
in the room, which is that this is a one
way trip for a lot of people, no matter how
they describe it. The most feasible way for this kind
(52:50):
of exploration to work is for the ships themselves to
be dismantled upon landing and become you know, kind of
the bedrock there. So you could keep three D printing machines,
you would keep uh, the life support systems you needed,
but then you would ultimately yeah, I mean maybe I'm
wrong here, but you would ultimately end up disassembling a
(53:12):
lot of that stuff. Does it take to get to Mars.
I think it's it's like maybe margin of error to
two years round trip, because it's a nine month travel
time depending on your speed obviously, and then you know
you're not stopping to pee because you've got to save
that from Mars. Actually, they're probably cycling urine doing that
(53:34):
trip to make puotable water like in water World. Yeah,
I feel like we we're focusing too much on the
urine part here. Yeah, but again, like we would be
doing the same thing on on the Moon. I guess
historically we've always had images of moon bases that are
so technologically advanced, that are just full of metal and
(53:57):
beeping sounds and new lights and things like shuttles that
go up and down all these crazy things. What if
in reality, when we begin creating moon bases and Mars
bases and all these other bases, they really do resemble
ant hills or aunt colonies of some yeah, with humans
(54:18):
just being in them. How But but it's because if
that is happening and that actually comes to fruition, simultaneously,
we will be the creatures that are doing that. We're
also the creatures that are edging closer and closer towards
the singularity where we were becoming technological beings. And you know,
(54:40):
if we become technological beings or almost fully technological beings,
we probably won't need air and all, you know, sustenance
and insects for eating anymore. We would need biofuel of
some sort probably, But that and then also having these
strange structures and I don't know, it's it doesn't seem
to square, I guess, so yeah, like a retro retrofuturistic
(55:06):
neo primitivism. Almost right, someone who has not plugged into
whatever invisible uh species wide net we have would just
see a bunch of really spaced outlooking folks wandering from
human sized termite mound, the human sized termite mound. But
there's something else interesting here met um. And I love
(55:27):
that you bring up the singularity, because my question would be,
all right, so on the like, just what is it
right of September is so weird today? Before we recorded,
discovery just got reported in Nature Astronomy about the discovery
of what appeared to be multiple underground liquid water lakes
(55:49):
in Mars. Uh So that that's a total game changer
for us. Uh So we may have also a subterranean
species of some sort, because in evitably, you know, these
things will begin to speciate. You can only live so
far away from Earth before you start to change, and
Earthlings will be changing as well as we approach, as
(56:09):
he said, a singularity. So I am wondering how long
a population on Mars, whatever it becomes, could feasibly say
that it's governed by a population on Earth. I think it's. Uh,
it's it's a much shorter runway than we believe. You know,
if if you like send, if the U N or
(56:33):
that will probably it's we're moving away from states and
toward corporations. Right, So if the corporation is saying, you know,
SpaceX is like, okay, this is the SpaceX colony. Uh,
and then this Martian colony is able to become self sufficient,
then they won't need SpaceX and they won't care about SpaceX.
(56:54):
So I would not be surprised, and this is speculative,
this is conspiratorial. I would not be surprised if the
people who are planning these trips are baking in reliance
on the Martian side, like the same way that the
mercantile or mecantilism based economies would bake in reliance on
the colonial side, Like, make no mistake, you don't want
(57:16):
these people, whatever they become, to be independent, because why
would they bother with you. It's a good point, Ben, Dude, dude,
this is this is a weird thing to me. I
don't know if it's stuff they don't want you to know,
but it's definitely just odd to think about our future.
(57:38):
And if they don't want you to know, what it
could be that, Ben, that SpaceX will make you reliant
on them or no, not not to call you off.
Space actually doing great work, I'm sure, but whoever, whoever,
whatever corporation get you to ours may really need you
to be on the hook. That's how I see it
in all the sci fi though. That's how it is
in the alien movies. That's how it is. And oh gosh,
(57:58):
there was a movie with Robert Patt sit in it
recently where there is a space colony. Um lighthouse. Now
not another weird, weird, real weird one by a French filmmaker,
a woman whose name I'm totally forgetting. If Casey Peger
was here, he would know. Um it's called high life.
That's what you were very close. But in this one,
like he's sort of the loan survivor on this thing,
(58:20):
and he keeps sending home messages to the home plan
under the corporation or whatever, and I don't like, you
couldn't rely on them too much. Would they send shuttles
with the stuff for you or you would have to grow?
That would be the plan. But yeah, because it too
So I mean, why Mars versus the Moon? And maybe
this has been discussed a bunch, I'm sure, but it's
quicker to get to the moon, right, why not go
(58:42):
for Moon basis instead of Mars basis? If it takes
two years to get to Mars, well, a lot of
those lunar places, correctly, if we're wronger, a lot of
those lunar propositions are meant to be like beachheads. And
from there we expanned to Europa, to Mars and so on,
uh and eventually to uh because because we had to
mention it, eventually to Uranus just for a fly by,
(59:06):
just check up the moon. Check up. The moon is
just a launching pad to Uranus. And it's already it's
already crowded, you know. And also Mars may have what Okay,
so one salient real argument for Mars over the Moon
(59:26):
is that Mars may possess resources that are conducive to
ultimately self sustaining human life or again, Martian life, whatever
it becomes. May right, Yeah, well at least way more
than the lunar surface, at least for our studies of it.
But but but again, I mean, is it is it
a cost benefit analysis? Like I mean, you know, even
(59:50):
if the moon, you know, you had to make more
runs to the Moon. It's what, how does it take
to get to the Moon. It's only like three days?
I think. Yeah, Well, part of the argument there is
to you, uh, that's three days if if we have
the optimal uh orbital conditions, right, Like that's why you'll
see people saying you could make Mars. You can make
(01:00:11):
the Mars trip in in a very short number of months,
like as little as four or five if you go
at the right time, which occurs every maybe two years.
And then you're at the then there were still earth lings,
so we're at the mercy of earth weather, right, and
there's a lot less atmosphere to worry about. We're launching
from the Moon, so once you get there, it's easier
(01:00:34):
to build stuff. Maybe if you have the stuff. I
don't know. Also, this is just me guessing, but what
if they're what if they're brainstorming which which rock to
land on next, and then someone in marketing comes out
and they go, well, you know the thing about Mars
is it's red. It really pops. You know, it looks
(01:00:55):
better on a logo because there because like we can.
And then they're like, all right, somebody run up cost
benefit over painting the moon versus going to Mars with
a much better color scheme. So maybe it's something like that.
We're not in those rooms. Uh, and god, it would
probably be terrifying place to be um Man, I guess optimistic. Yeah,
(01:01:17):
space bricks out of insect kitan more and more than that.
That's oversimplifying, but you can make it into all kinds
of shapes. And why can't we use this on the
on earth to make building materials for like you know,
developments and stuff like that. That's why I want to
talk to you about this. This is why it's so
actually exciting, even though it doesn't sound so appetizing with
with all the insects and you know, the slightly strange
(01:01:41):
kitan curious curious is and Kitan left pauldrons and Kitan
grieves that we'd be. You know, I don't know any
of those words are It's fine. The A R is
pretty good on some of those. It's a light armor.
Um oh, I see, it's it's pretty good. You can
get You can get like Tilvanni cephalopod helm if you too,
I mean you could really you could three D print
(01:02:01):
any of these things out of all that stuff. Um.
The the Kitan throwing stars were particularly interesting. There was
an addition that I didn't expect, like defense on mars Um.
But I forget where I was going already. Guys. Oh.
The whole concept here is that if this could be achieved,
(01:02:22):
it would be at least as close as you can
get to a closed loop zero waste solution for building
materials on you know, on another planet, and that that
would be incredible to use their right, But you could
also take that and translate it to Earth, like why
not if we if we were as gross as it sounds,
(01:02:45):
if you had a group of people or a large
corporation that was manufacturing let's say, um, some type of
plant and fruit and vegetable they were all edible, right,
and then aside beside that and as part of that them,
they're also growing flies and a couple other types of
insects that grow alongside the fruit while or and you know,
(01:03:08):
other food that's been created, and that those two things
are being created that feed the humans. Right, and then
the waste products from liquids as well as from the
the extra parts of the insects, it's all being used
to then fuel all the building materials and all the
things that builds the stuff that you need to keep
the thing going, and then it just continues cycling through.
(01:03:30):
They've got great diagrams of exactly how that would function
on that plos One article that I mentioned earlier, you
can actually see how they're proposing it would function. And
I think there's a massive opportunity if this technology becomes viable,
which unfortunately means both scalable and affordable. If this technology
(01:03:51):
becomes viable, there's a massive opportunity for relief housing for
disaster survivors. Or think about the millions of people who
are trapped in refugee camps, sometimes intergenerationally, which essentially function
as open air prisons. Those people could have privacy that
they haven't had for decades, right, Uh, they could also
(01:04:13):
have a little bit more safety than they would have
ordinarily from both the elements and from bad actors on
the human side. Like I agree. I think sometimes we
as a species we get our priorities mixed up, you
know what I mean, Like have you We're we're collectively saying,
instead of fixing the planet we already have, let's go
(01:04:36):
out to eat on another planet. It's like, it's like that,
why don't you say home and cook. You've got food,
you know what I mean, clean your kitchen while you're
at it is a very imperfect comparison to make, but
you make such an excellent point here, matt Uh. My
last question for you is would you live in one
of these? I mean, if I had to fear, I'd
(01:04:59):
figar how to make it work. As long as I
can get the kitan to display Morrow Wind, then I'll
be fine. But surely there's things you could add to
make it aesthetically pleasing. It doesn't all have to be
like gun metal gray, right, I mean, there's probably some
variations you could get to have some patterns and you know,
make something a little more appealing to the eye. I
(01:05:22):
would I would just say, watch Raised by Wolves. It's
available right now on HBO Max. That is true. You
can also you can also learn more about populations in
the modern day who dwell in caves and now for
a long time. I think that could inform some of uh,
your interior decorating inspirations for your life on Mars or
(01:05:45):
your life here on Earth. So we've gone a little
long on this one, but we absolutely hope you enjoy it.
You can tell that we are fascinated by all three
of these ideas crows versus owls, sharks versus humans in
a way, and Mars versus the move versus Earth, and
(01:06:06):
insects and insects of course, yes, so let us know
what you think of these. Uh, listen when you think
of these ideas, right to us, with your with your
personal calculations behind befriending crows or Corvid's right to us,
with your understanding of sharks versus humans, and vaccines in general,
(01:06:27):
your reasons for or against the proposed COVID vaccines or
vaccines just overall, we cannot wait to hear from you,
and we try to make it easy to find us.
That's right. You can find us in all the usual
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You can join our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy,
(01:06:48):
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(01:07:09):
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(01:08:11):
you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. It's the top of the week,
which means it's time for some more strange news. We
(00:46):
have a cavalcade of weird stuff, and I think all
air we we tried to have at least one semi
optimistic story that off air we decided to save for
the end and full confession fellow conspiracy realists, Matt old Doc,
I'm cheating just a little bit with my story today
(01:10):
because it's an opportunity to talk about one of my
favorite kinds of animals in the world. Octopuses you're thinking
no but close, and also bachers you're thinking no but close, Yeah,
arguably closer. Definitely Ferrets. Oh gosh, well, now I'm now
(01:30):
I feel like we should just do an animal show,
because those are all great suggestions, But today I wanted
to talk a little bit about Corvitt's about crows. Uh,
these amazing creatures have often been lauded more and more
of late for their intelligence, which for a long time
(01:50):
did not make sense to ornithologists scientologists, I mean scientists,
well maybe scientologists too, and and you know, neuroscientists around
the world, because crows have a very very small brain,
but they do things that ordinarily we only think of
other animals being capable of doing, namely mammals. So crows
(02:12):
can teach their young and the other members of their
murder across generations to remember the faces of those who
have wronged them and the faces of those who have
helped them. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy stuff. And just to
be clear, they aren't teaching murder, they teach the other
(02:33):
crows around them. They do. They do also teach murder
as well. Yeah, yes, way to So what's happening here
is that scientists may have finally figured out why crows,
which have such a small small brain comparatively, are so
incredibly intelligent, why they can do things that humans and
(02:57):
elephants and some octopuses. Again, that is the correct plural. Well,
octopis acceptable to but whatever, not a hill to die on. Uh?
They found out why these birds can think at such
a high level. We found out recently through some research
unveiled earlier this month in September, that crows are capable
(03:21):
of medical cognition. This is like a holy grail of philosophy.
Meta cognition is just the fancy word for being able
to think about thinking. So when you know, when you
are having your renee to car moment and you say
I think, therefore I am, and you're thinking about your thinking.
It turns out these birds can do that too. Why
(03:46):
how this shouldn't be able to at least that was
our thought. Now we can explain it because it seems that,
based on two papers that were studying that were recently released,
it seems that crows have a very high density of
neurons in their very small brains. So it's um, It's like, imagine, how, uh,
(04:11):
something like popcorn or celery has maybe relatively low caloric content,
and the same amount of peanut butter would have more
caloric content. Their brains are peanut butter. That sounds like
an insult, but I know, I know, what you mean
by that? Yeah, it's like the new app and if
this isn't a sponsorship, but they help you lose weight
(04:34):
by pushing the less calorically dense things like you can
eat like your weight and lettuce and it's like two calories.
But if you eat just that's you know, tablespoon of
peanut butter mayo, it's like, you know the equivalent of
eating a whole bag of cabbage or something like that.
Very interesting, ben So what does this mean for like
the way they behave or at least what scientists understand
(04:55):
about the intention? Are you bind the way they behave? Yeah? Yeah,
great questions. So cruise brain has about one point five
billion neurons. This puts them as as members of the
TV show community would say, streets ahead in comparison to
other aviens. They did a test where like, how do
(05:20):
you prove how do you prove something so deep as
the concept of crows thinking about thinking? Right? Do you
just smoke a lot of weeds so you convince yourself
that's not a crazy question? Do you write? Maybe they do,
but then they do some science. So they wanted to
test whether crows can both be aware of and analyze
(05:44):
the contents of their literal bird brains. A neurobiologist named
Andreas Nighter from the University of Cubanjin in Germany trained
two crows to peck at a red or a blue
target on a panel, depending on whether they saw a
faint light. And this neurobiologist kept varying the rules of
(06:06):
the game, so the crows would be told which color,
what meant what after the flash, Like they would see
a flash, and sometimes they would have to peck the
red target to say that to acknowledge they had seen it,
but then other times they have to peck the blue target.
That's important because it means the crows have to take
(06:27):
a second or two to figure out what they had
seen earlier and then exhibit that behavior to the neurobiologists.
And while they were doing this, they're tracking these crows
uh neurological activity. And they found that sensory neurons were
active when a crow saw the flash, and these neurons
indicated the crow's brain basically saying yeah, I saw that uh.
(06:49):
And if they did not see this flash, those sensory
neurons were silent and the crow it's a peck, No,
I didn't see anything. And this means that the birds
are aware of what they subjectively perceive and they're correctly
reporting what their neurons will tell them. That sounds a
bit in the weeds. I get it. There's a little
(07:10):
bit of jargon, but the main takeaway is this they
have behavioral flexibility. That's probably one of the best definitions
of intelligence that our species has. We have mostly terrible
definitions of intelligence. And this means crows are able to
do something that only two other animals can do, human
beings and McCall monkeys. I know that last one's kind
(07:31):
of a plot twist, but so now it's the three
of us. Uh. I'm mainly using this story, by the way,
uh it is amazing science. By mainly using this to
tell you about the other interesting thing I learned you
guys about crow intelligence. Crows are in an unending war
(07:52):
with certain types of owls. Okay, what like like does
go back generations to some you know period where an
owl wrong to crow and they've just generationally you carried
on this beef of like a hat field in McCoy
type situation or is it something biological? This is incredible.
(08:14):
It seems to be both genetically imprinted. You can take
a crow raised in captivity and it'll have never encountered
an owl and it'll just freak out smash on site.
And owls are the same way, especially the great horned owl.
Owls are like Okay, so I was thinking of the
good and a good analogy here, So picture crows and
(08:37):
owls in their in their unending existential war. Crews are
kind of like the humans, and owls are kind of
like the vampires or the monsters that go bump in
the night. Owls are unparalleled nocturnal predators in the world
of crows. Uh, and owls are a lot like great
horrid Owls especially are a lot like serial killers when
(08:59):
it comes to rows. If they find um a roost
of crows, then they will kill them, even if they
don't need to eat anything. There's one great report from
Capeing Islands that shows a great horned owl had basically
done a breaking an entering operation on a roost of
(09:20):
nine crows, and their bodies were untouched except for their
heads which were partially removed, and their brains were eaten. Yeah,
was sick amazing. Um. It reminds me of the time
when I lived in Athens, that a bunch of frat
boys stole a great horned owl from the outdoor zoo. Wait,
(09:40):
it's nothing like that at all, but it's unclear. But
but did you hear about owls? Um? There was a
story I heard an NPR a couple of years ago
about a woman who was walking late at night and
something kind of swooped down and like then she felt
blood running down her face and apparently it was an
owl that can they can fly soundlessly in the night,
(10:03):
and they must have mistook or the owl must have
mistook this woman's hair for like a vole or some small,
you know, delicious rodents. I don't know that we have
an epidemic of owls attacking humans or corvid's attacking humans,
because that would be my hell on Earth, by the way,
just write that out there. Yeah. Owls also are capable
(10:23):
of successfully predating on cats, Like they can snatch up
grown cats. Uh. I don't think. I think they're one
of the things. Owls can't swallow a whole. But but
when we think of this, we we know that because
of their intelligence, then crews are in some cases functioning
like vampire hunters. They're saying, let's like they have to
(10:46):
attack and mass, right, they have to attack in numbers
and do what's called mobbying the owl. And so they'll
assemble like a crew of Corvid's and say, you know,
we have to attack it dawn when the monster is
vulnerable because it owns the night. And given their intergenerational learning,
given their great intelligence, given their communicative ability. The coolest
(11:06):
thing about this, at least to me, is this means
that's somewhere out there right now, there's like a crow
version of van Helsing and it's hunting, uh, you know,
like it's hunting a great horned owl dracula that is
just out to kill crows. Yeah, man, okay, I would
I would read that comic. Uh. One of the most
(11:30):
interesting things here when you're talking about the Corvid response
to the owl threat, is that mobbing behavior. I guess
they're on that same Cape and Islands article you were
mentioning there been. It's speaking about how this person who's
writing at the author has seen a barn owl that
got flushed out, uh, just from where it would normally
(11:53):
be staying in daylight hours and like a vampire caught
out in the daylight. Not not like that, because he
would just dissolve into ash. But some Corvid's saw it
and they did the mobbing thing and they ended up
they like, they essentially attacked it until it had to
or it had to escape, and it jumped over a
(12:15):
cliff I guess, and went down into the water into
the ocean, rather than being able to fly or anything.
Just really kind of sad for the owl would like
rather than be taken alive by the gang of Corvid's
that were after it. Well, I don't know, I guess.
I mean, it's just an attempt to escape, I suppose,
but they drove it into the sea. Yeah, that is
(12:36):
cold blooded. You guys remember that movie The Secret of
nim that really dark cartoon movie from the late eighties.
I guess. There was Jeremy the Crow, who was kind
of a goofy, fun character. But then there was the
Great Owl, which if I've ever seen a depiction of
an owl in vampire kind of like tones, that's it.
That is one of the creepiest. It wasn't even a villain.
It actually ended up giving some good info. But I
(12:58):
believe Jeremy refused to go and for because of the
fear bias against the owls. I may be making that up.
That would be cool if they did think about that
biology in the character development. So it's one thing it's
amazing here is the more we learn about intelligence, the
more we learn that it is nowhere near unique to humans.
(13:20):
And even like, think about how familiar these animals are.
Everybody listening to today's show has probably seen her crow
right there, ubiquitous in many parts of the world, but
their intelligence itself is still so alien, not as alien
as that of an octopus. But I feel like the
more we learn about these things, the more we're going
(13:42):
to learn about their cognitive abilities. They hunt serial killers.
I mean to them, these owls are serial killers if
you think about it. So that's this is just h
kind of a hobby horse. I you probably remember back
in the Buckhead days, there were a couple of crows
(14:04):
in the nearby Buckhead mall and I try to go
talk to them in the parking lot. Uh, they didn't care.
By the way, it's I want to murder of crows
that I can befriend, and I know people have done it.
I just I don't know. Man, City crows are stuck up.
You communed with the crow both at the old Buckheat office,
like you're saying. And also I think one trip to
(14:25):
l A, I I saw you out on the porch,
uh talking to a corvette or at least you know,
in engaging with it in some way. I've all, you've
always been fascinated by these creatures. But you're so smart
just to put this out there for a little bit
of context for everybody. Um, the one that we called Ben,
the one that goes by Ben, he back in that
day run that time when we were in that office,
(14:47):
Ben had a specific outfit that he would wear. And
I noticed this Ben, you didn't wasn't lost on me.
There was a specific outfit that was very crow like.
Then I would sometimes see you where when I would
happened to glance you venturing out to speak with the corvids.
I saw what you were doing. He got me because
(15:07):
like we could, the four of us now, Doc, you, Matt,
you know, and myself, we could go out and if
we if we treated or a population of crows very well,
and we came back and we were wearing the same clothes,
we didn't make a bunch of changes to our facial
hair or our our haircuts, then the crows would remember
(15:29):
and then they would start giving us weird crow stuff.
Like we talked about this earlier today. We actually they'll
they'll give you what they think of as human stuff.
But if you wrong them, their children will remember. Do
you think they tell their buddies about you? And then hey,
this guy's okay. And then the next thing, you know,
(15:49):
like the corvids, like nesting in telephone poles as you're
taking your walk down the street, you know, like waiting
on you to do their bidding. I want to see
you like night kings styal raise your arms up and
then like more of it's just come flocking towards you,
and like a cloud of black you know, crows surrounding Ben.
I want to I mean, it's terrifying. I'm not gonna lie,
(16:11):
but I would. I would never make you sit through that. Man.
I'm actually your friends, So I appreciate that. But this, uh,
I would get popcorn if that happened. Yeah, still love popcorn.
Come for you would come, They would come for your
They would come, they come for your corn. I would
offer it as a sacrifice to croking. You can. The
(16:31):
last thing about pro intelligence and cooperation in the wild
is um Yeah, it goes even further than we think.
We don't know the full extent. If you are a
hunter and crows are as you guys have familiar with you.
You've been in these woods before and you've left some
kind of offering to them while you're hunting. They will
help you find animals to hunt, like. They will fly
(16:52):
up and they're not trained to do this. They'll teach themselves.
They'll point out the deer or the elk or what
have you to the hunter. And they do it because
they know that when the hunter kills that animal, it'll
leave something for them. It's very very strange. Um. Anyway,
let us know your corvid adventures. Uh, please do not
(17:13):
wrong them, and please remember they are wild animals. They're
just very very intelligent. We don't know how smart they
are yet, but this God, I can't wait. I hope
somebody has a pet crow. Well you said the word familiar,
you know, and it made me think of like, you know,
you see crows often as uh which or warlock familiar
is it's the term they use and I think that's
(17:35):
really appropriate. Did anybody a Harry Potter universe have a crow?
As I know Harry had a freaking owl. Weird but
it was a cute owls fluffy and it didn't look
like a demon or anything. But surely they were crow
familiars in the Potter verse. Yeah, I feel like you
can't write a fantasy of that sort and not have
a crew or maybe a raven or something. Yeah, ravens
(17:56):
are a little spookier. Well, I don't know, it's up
for debate. They're bigger, but yep, that's right. And you
see him in California a lot like because and they
look like almost like little hawks or something that they're
just pitch black and very very ominous creatures. You guys
know where I stand on this. I love this for you, Ben.
I'm really glad that you've got some corvid related uh
science news to brighten your day. And and thanks for sharing.
(18:18):
Oh yeah, of course, man, this is this is great, Ben.
I just uh, I want to take it back to
that study just quickly. Um. I'm just having a little
bit of trouble understanding it fully, and it has nothing
to do with the way you explained it. I think
it's just the way the articles refer to a lot
of the things, because I know there's several things happening.
The stimulus occurs to where the crows either see a
(18:41):
faint light or not. Then the crow has to decide
which of the two buttons it has to hit. When
I don't understand is when the rules get changed by
you know, the observers, the scientists, because it seems like
the the big thing here is that the rules get
changed after the stimulus comes in. Then the crow has
(19:03):
to decide which one to hit depending on that new rule.
Is that correct? Yeah? That seems to be about the
size of it. The important thing there is that they're
exhibiting the ability to adapt their behavior. So they're not
learning a route process. They're not learning something all like
(19:23):
always hit blue, always get treat. What they're learning is, uh,
sometimes I have to switch the rules up to get
the results I want because the communication of these weird
human scientists is changing. Is it because there dicks? I
guess so. But they run the treats game, so I'll
play ball. And then the big the big thing there
(19:43):
is that they're thinking about They're like jumping thoughts essentially,
rather than just a to B. It's more about what's
going on behind the scenes. And I mean they don't
know maybe they don't know that there's a science experiment
being run on them, but they understand that it's more
than just like object, you know, impermanence that children have,
you know where It's like they can actually think bigger.
(20:06):
They can think about the framework of the scenario. They
find themselves in um and and essence, see the experiment
for what it is, as opposed to just behaving like
a less intelligent creature that would do like you said,
then red red light equals treat and then no light,
no whatever. You know what I mean, I don't know, Like,
I think that's a really good explanation. You're you're on
the money there, because the I think we should move
(20:28):
on on this before we end up accidentally making an
entire crow podcast. But the big takeaway is that before
this month that would have been considered physically impossible, crows
do not have the equipment that we have laid out.
In the same way, crows do not have a um
(20:51):
the cerebral cortex. They they have something called a pallium
and that's kind of doing the heavy lifting the cerebral
cortex would do. So. Yet again, the big thing that
makes this important for other studies of non human intelligence,
and perhaps that of alien life in the future is
that we're learning our brains set up, our brains load out,
(21:13):
or whatever is just is probably just one of many
many options. We don't know what else is out there,
but we do know the world is still the world.
It's luckily still has UH, still has wild animals, and
the problem is due to COVID in at least one case,
we might have far fewer UH in the ocean very soon.
(21:36):
M M. That's right, And we'll get to that story
after a quick sponsor break and we're back. Okay, So
we lead with with bend Corvid story. I keep wanting
to say COVID that that's not what that is at all,
but it's obviously top of mind for a lot of people.
(21:58):
And we have a COVID related story that also involves
animals and the idea of scarcity UM, specifically in the
shark community. And you guys, I didn't know this at all,
but it turns out that there's a substance in sharks
livers UH called squaling. Squaling I'm gonna go with squaling
(22:22):
um that is used to essentially make vaccines and different
medications somehow more effective. UM. I'm not a scientist, I
couldn't tell you exactly how that works, but it apparently does,
and it's something that is used in medications the world over.
(22:43):
But let's think about an event like what we're dealing
with as far as COVID is concerned, where if we
get a vaccine, it's gonna be something millions and millions
of people want. Are at the very least, we're going
to need to make enough doses so every one can
have one if they want it, right, Like I know,
we've aside from many you know, COVID truthers or folks
(23:08):
that don't believe it's real, or folks that are anti
vaccination or what have you, I think it'll probably be
hopefully a drop in the bucket, you know, compared to
how many people will be running out their door to
get that vaccine as soon as they possibly can. And
according to a post from a shark advocacy group um
(23:30):
called Shark Allies, they believe that around two hundred and
fifty thousand sharks will need to be slaughtered for that sweet,
sweet squally squealing in their livers. And that is only
if each person on the planet wants one dose or
needs one dose. There are some potential situations where folks
(23:54):
might need to So in that case, I would double
the number to half a million sharks um for the
slaughter in order to make these vaccines. Um. And you know,
this Shark advocacy group actually published a petition on change
dot org where they talk about how using sharks for
this COVID nineteen vaccination is shortsighted. It's gonna cause a
(24:18):
big problem balancing out, you know, the ecosystems of the
oceans the world over, and it could have unpredictable outcomes. Um.
It's something I hadn't really considered. You know. We think
I think of like a vaccine being something entirely generated
in a lab without needing any raw materials. There's just
science is magic. He just put together some you know,
(24:40):
droppers and make the thing with a little piece of
the virus, and that's all. That's all you gotta do.
But obviously, as we know, based on the fact that
you can't just make a vaccine for the thing instantly,
there's a lot of research and development and trial and
error and all of this stuff that goes into and
apparently sharks are part of the equation. Yeah. Yeah, I
was reading about falling because I I I've never heard
of this to be completely transparent. Yeah, it looks like
(25:05):
our human livers produce it too, but we're not quite
at the point as a species yet where we say
slaughter x amount of people to give why amount of
people of vaccine. It looks like it works by enhancing
the immune response, So it kind of ups the octane
or the efficacy of a vaccine because because you're going
(25:27):
to get more, your body is going to respond to
it more and you're going to create more. What is
the anti um antibodies? Antibodies? Is that the idea? I
think so. Um. Again, I haven't delved deep into the science,
but everything that I've read, and this is a very
new story. The petition, by the way, has I think
(25:47):
something in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand signatures, but it
just got posted today, um, and that today being Monday, September.
So this is relatively new and developing story at least
in terms of the the outcry. And this is obviously
something people in shark circles would be more intimately familiar
(26:08):
with in their whole issue is that we've never had
the quote they refer to it as supply chain tested
in this way at this scale, and it's something that
you know, on regular on a regular day, maybe there's
you know, some impact to the shark communities. But sharks
are also you know, so many species of them are
on the decline, and there's obviously a finite number of
(26:31):
them in the wild. Um, and this is something that
could potentially have, according to this group, have critical effects
on sustaining them as a species. You know, it's one
of these things too where if you're talking to the
politician or maybe even the scientists, Um, what's a few
sharks if it means saving mankind? You know, at the
(26:52):
end of the day, if we eliminate all sharks in
in an effort to save humanity, is that a worthwhile balance?
Shark people might say no, or at the very least
safe figure out a better way. But I don't know,
It's it's a it's an interesting conversation for sure, Yeah,
because there's um from what I understand, sharks are not
(27:12):
the only source of this. They're just the cheapest and
easiest source we can get squaling from olive oil or
olives rather and it just it costs more and it
also takes I think like seventy hours to make it
as opposed to ten. But you know, your point, Noll
(27:32):
is the same as something we've seen come up in
arguments about conservation, where someone says, look, are we going
to prevent the progress of mankind into this uh sensitive
Martian environment because of tree frogs? Are we gonna say
that we're putting tree frogs over the livelihood of human beings.
We'll have other people who say, look, there are almost
(27:55):
eight billion human beings on the planet. They're like a
few hundred thousands of you know, insert species here. It
is a difficult argument, but it's also it's also strange
because there is an alternative. It's just someone would have
to pay more. So I think it's misleading to say
(28:17):
it's humans or sharks, you know, other than the time. Absolutely,
and it's interesting too. I mean, already three apparently three
million sharks are killed each year for the substance, and
they're even hunted for it. Um predators that are you know,
deep sea dwellers um have more of this compound or
this liver oil, I guess. And it's because it helps
(28:40):
them float, and as we know about sharks, they have
to keep moving. That's obviously important. Interesting how this this.
You know, certain species adapt to have more of a
particular chemical in their bodies, you know, to help make
sure they are able to do the things that they
are best suited for. I'm literally describing evolution and adaptation,
but as it always blows my mind when you see
it in practice, uh in in the real world, in
(29:01):
the wild like this for sure. I'm just looking about
where squaling is being used all over the place, and
it looks like, at least according to ducda Go, that
there is squaling in all kinds of skin and hair
products all over the place. One of the more popular
ones I'm looking at, and this is not an ad,
(29:22):
is a plant drived one that is coming up everywhere.
I won't name it, but it's like it's the olive
oil or other plant based squaling. And it seems like
if we can make that much where there's that much
of a supply of it for all of these products,
maybe some of these companies could step up and say, well, hey,
(29:45):
if we need um, if we need extra squaling, we've
got a version of it here that Yeah, that's a
great idea. We'll see if what happens. Yeah, I'm not
gonna hold my breath and it keep swimming because if
I stop swimming, I will die. I'm not gonna hold
your shark for that one, right. Yeah, it's like three
thousand sharks to make one ton of this substance. I mean. Also,
(30:08):
the shark population, the maritime population of most animals is
as we alluded to earlier, collapsing, you know what I mean.
It's not as if it's going to be easy for
these sharks to come back after a coal of something
like this, of of this magnitude. And you know, there
are people will say, well, screw sharks, I don't like them,
(30:35):
But that's what does shark ever do for me? Right?
But that's not a valid argument. And sharks already get
such a terrible time in the human press because shark
attacks are pretty infrequent. Sharks are not usually out to
eat you. When they bite people, as a matter of fact,
it's it can be fatal. It's very dangerous. They are.
(30:56):
They are just like evolved killing to basically. But but
what they're doing when they bite people, they're doing a
taste test. It's rare for them to fight someone and
keep biting. They think we taste gross, and they're probably right.
It's that Damn Steven Spielberg. You know, if it wasn't
for him, sharks would be up there with puppies and kittens.
(31:18):
Maybe not, but I think the problem is when they do,
even if it's a taste test, take a little bite. Uh,
it's terrifying. Let's see you lose an arm or a
hand at the very least. I always always laugh when
I've been like, have you guys been closed to a
shark in the wild. No, we've definitely seen one of
(31:39):
aquariums and stuff right there. They're terrified that I was
in a boat and I was still you know, I
still have the Jaws music playing in the background in
my head. I could easily see someone thinking the ocean
would be better without them. Although I do think it's shortsighted.
I understand the immediacy when you're in the moment, but
(32:00):
it makes me, it makes you wonder, um, how ridiculous
it is when you see those uh survival videos where
there's how to insert here and they're like, oh, you're
getting an attacked by a shark. Just remember to pop
it on the nose. That's all you need to do.
Just give it a bop. Yeah, Well, we'll be you know,
we think about this too in terms of hunting seasons,
(32:20):
right like, Uh, you know, it's important to maintain the
balance of predators and and pray and you know, black bears,
for example, are certain species that aren't allowed to be
hunted or what have you. There's usually a reason because
it's about conservation, not only about the species themselves, but
about maintaining that balance, you know, in the wild. And
I'm sure if sharks didn't need to be around, they
(32:43):
would have died out by now. I mean again, I'm
not a scientist, but that seems to be what happens
with creatures that don't make an impact in the ecosystem
or or have some reason for existing. The oldest living
animal right now is a shark. It's a greenland shark.
The poor guy looks the worse for wear, but he
is uh. He was estimated to be around uh three.
(33:08):
The two oldest were estimated to be around three hundred
thirty five and three d ninety two years old. Uh.
We are very small in the scheme of things. But
if you look at the picture of the green greenland shark,
it's just I I don't know the biological sex of
this creature, but it's like the it's front teeth are missing,
it's got all these scars. Uh, it's not five twelve
(33:31):
years old, as was falsely reported. Well, but speaking of
like the oldest animals are, you know, sharks in general,
I've been around since the Carboniferous period, which was around
three hundred and fifty nine million years ago, and it's
actually known as the Golden Age of sharks because there
was an extinction event that killed off a massive amount
(33:51):
of underwater species and different lineages of fish. There's a
great article in National History Museums uh the UK and
National History Museum website about us about the Golden Age
of sharks. And this allowed sharks to flourish and kind
of dominate and um evolve more quickly. I guess there.
It sort of gave rise to a lot of different
varieties of sharks because they were able to flourish. So
(34:13):
it's a long time for a thing to be around. Yeah,
I'm looking at here. There is a five seven year
old clam apparently called ming. Yeah, it's an invertebrate. I
just wanted to get up again in started that. I'm
glad you mentioned that, Matt, because we always get letters
where we talk about the oldest living thing, no matter
how a caveat it. Let's call this the oldest living
(34:35):
large vertebrate marine creature. People are going to point out
the functionally immortal hydra right or to atopsis as well,
and then I'm sure we'll get a letter about the
quaking aspen and so on, and the tar degrades and
the tar degrades grades. There are a lot of uh,
(34:57):
there's so many caveats with this. But thanks for in
this up, Noll, because I had never I was not
aware of the critical role that deep sea sharks we
should say it's specifically deep sea sharks, right. I wasn't
were the critical role they played in the world of vaccines,
and I guess in the world of cosmetics too. I
feel like a bad person everybody out there who's thinking, Hey,
(35:21):
you guys want us to get the vaccines for this thing.
I we know how many how many rumors and theories
are rolling around out there about a potential vaccine. Um
we've been doing reading on it, where we've been thinking
on it. UM just a signal that we're paying attention
and we're trying to get the best information we can
possibly get before we bring anything to you. Um, but yeah,
(35:45):
we're we're aware. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's says
a lot, you know, especially especially when you hear stories
about the idea of forcing one through or rushing it,
you know that that whole thing. It really freaks me out.
The idea of maybe somehow jettison ng other you know,
f D A type safe. I don't know that they
would be able to do that, but what does that
mean to you? Guys? When you hear the idea of
(36:07):
like certain reports say I will have one by the
end of the year, and then another scientists saying like whoa, whoa, whoa, No,
and that's gonna be That's that's very optimistic scist. Agree, agreed.
But at the end of the day, isn't it the
government or the administration that if it's like a political
boon to try to force something through, wouldn't that be
(36:27):
a thing that could potentially make happen? I wonder. The
scary thing for me is when you've got medical professionals
on some kind of platform saying things that don't appear
to match up with the science that we're researching. That
Let's say I'm researching um, but there are there are
a medical professional and they have a lot of experience
in the field, and it's that thing where your brain says, well,
(36:51):
I should trust them. They're a doctor and they deal
with vaccines all the time. But it's not squaring with
what I'm reading from the CDC or the w h O.
So then do we trust those organizations? And it just
becomes well, I guess I'm just trying to signals it.
There's a lot of complexity out there and we're trying
to wade through a lot of that. As many of
(37:13):
you have been signaling to us in your writings to us, UM,
I want to point out for anyone who's looking for
something UM pretty good to watch. It's a great idea.
There's a fictional show called Utopia that came out on
Amazon recently that deals with it. Without spoiling too much.
The deals with the conspiracy to spread something via desperately
(37:37):
needed vaccine. And I don't know if the producers planned
it to publish when it did, but it was. It
was good timing, which almost makes up for some of
my problems with the writing. I'm sorry this is a
fiction show over I misheard you. I thought it was
a documentary. Second, Okay, got it, got it. But that's
a conspiracy theory that's been around forever that somehow a
(37:59):
vaccination where the vaccinations are a way to do something
terrible to humanity as a whole, right, right, And there
have been cases where there's pretty compelling evidence that, at
least in ice lead cases, there was some truth to
some of this. You know, um often it must be
said via incompetence or um pursuing profit over people's lives.
(38:23):
But I do want to say, while we're on the
subject of vaccines, Uh, President Vladimir Putin has said that
he's going to take the spot NICK five covid vat
coronavirus vaccine. He just hasn't said win. So a lot
of people would be listening if they support that government
or that regime, they're listening to us and they're like,
you guys are being dunderheads. The vaccine is already here,
(38:47):
they just won't let us have it. Do you think
he'll do it like that one guy we talked about
who died in a float tank who like vaccinated himself
on a Facebook live stream. Forget the guy's name, but
there was like foul play potentially and he had like
drugs in the system, but he he was all into
like these hacks and doing like untested you know, medications.
I can't remember what it was for. It was maybe
(39:08):
for herpes. He gave himself like what purported to be
a cure for herpes, and he did it live on
a Facebook stream, and then he turned up dead. I
wonder if Putin will put his money where his mouth
is and and get shot up with this magical Russian
vaccine so we can all see it. I would watch,
I would watch. I would watch it, but I highly
doubt that. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's tough. It's
(39:31):
tough to guess because that's one of the most well
protected people alive today. So I would say, if it's
not just propaganda, and if if Putin does in fact
take the vaccine, it will be after several other people
have taken it and survived, you know what I mean.
He's clearly fond of Facebook. So we'll see, We'll see
(39:52):
what happens. I I think I just want to reach
out across the video screen and the microphone to everybody listening,
just to say, you know, this is a really scary time.
No matter what you believe. And I just got back
from a trip where the overall consensus in the small
(40:14):
town that I was in appeared to be, at least
according to the signs that were on a lot of
the small businesses, that coronavirus was a scam with it,
that it was fake, it was a ruse, and we're
all being played and this is a lose a larger
number of people living in this small town that I
had to visit. And I just wonder how many people
(40:35):
out there listening have that viewpoint? And and if you do, why,
Like what what are you reading that I'm not reading?
Or like the what what? Um? What feels credible to you?
That maybe I'm just missing or in my bubble about
I just want to I would love to hear from
somebody out there who feels that way, that has a
(40:56):
good explanation for why they believe it. Yeah, well said man.
I've been receiving some correspondence from folks. Always grateful to
hear from you, uh in in this regard, But yeah,
i'd I'd also love to hear, um what what you
feel has informed your choices in this regard? We did,
(41:18):
we did have some episodes that probably still tangentially apply
to the current question. Now. Uh, but you know we're
not We're not here to attack people, but we are
here to learn from you, which is the most important
thing we can do in times like these. But okay,
so there we go. End of sharks. Maybe under the
species crows and owls are in a genocidal war with
(41:43):
one another. I don't know about you all, but this
feels like a great time for dose of something a
little more optimistic. What are you talking It just sounds
like a time to escape the whole planet. All right,
Well six and one end, I would say, So we'll
tell you what we're talking about. A little bit of
a red tinge light at the end of the tunnel
(42:04):
after a word from our sponsor. Not a crow light,
it's a it's a different reference. And we're back. Yes,
that's right. Things may seem like they're going really bad
(42:24):
down here on Earth. Um, we've talked about it before.
This is the only planet we've got thus far. But
we are looking at other potential destinations and other places
we can make feel like home at least, and in
that pursuit, in the next few decades, several countries and
international organizations are looking to travel to the Moon again. Surprise, surprise,
(42:50):
first Moon. Yeah. Uh. There's also some fun controversy about
and I used that word so sarcastic, we uh, controversy
about China and there their desire to build an international
space station of their own outside of the International Space Station. Yea,
(43:13):
the Ghostbusters and the real Ghostbusters or the National Championships
in the World Championships, it's very much like that, uh,
to see who will control space all of it apparently,
or just near Earth orbit um. But again in the
Moon of course that we mentioned. And then the you know,
the third one is Mars. That's one of the big destinations.
(43:36):
Once we are going to shoot some people off towards
Mars at least and hopefully it's going to be successful
and they'll land, and once they're there, they're gonna need
to have enough stuff to build things so that they
can actually survive there. And you can't take We've talked
(43:56):
about it with Marshall Brain on an episode. You can't
just loads so much cargo up into a ship that
is going to get you to Mars because of you know,
problems with propulsion and all these other things. There's a
there's a multitude of reasons here that you need to
be able to build things once you get to a destination,
and you need to be able to use it, use
materials that you either find there or combine materials that
(44:19):
you find at your destination with something you've brought right, Yes,
So this all comes back to an article in Wired
that was put out fairly recently here on the September,
and it is speaking about well, it's ah the concept
(44:41):
of using kitan, which is something we're gonna explain it
in a second. Using kitan to build habitats, to create tools,
and hopefully some really sick armor for all the people
who will be traveling to Mars. Yeah on the phom
er um. Yeah, well we'll get into that. We'll get
(45:05):
into a second. So kitan what is kitan? Before we
just do any other learning here? Biology wise, uh describes
kayton as a naturally occurring by bio polymer um and
it is found in many, many, many creatures on Earth.
(45:26):
If you think about a beatle, you've probably seen a
beatle before or touched one, maybe as a kid, or
let one crawl on you, or maybe yesterday as an adult.
My favorite is Paul. Oh, Paul, yeah, oh, very much. Okay,
I don't know how much kitan Paul's got going on,
but you know, let us know if you have other information.
(45:47):
But a beat the beat Paul McCartney, it was, yeah,
you know, I get it, I get it, I get it.
But a beatle, no whether how large or small, has
an outer shell that is very very strong here to
the very soft insides of that beetle, and that outside
is made I'm sorry. Oh yeah, that's a whole other thing.
(46:11):
We're gonna have to get to you you with this um.
But that beetles very has that outer shell, right, It's
like a carapace that it has around it. That stuff
is kitan and a couple other things combined together to
create that hardened that hardened shell. The concept here is
to use that mix it with that stuff that's in
like a beetle shell and a bunch of other animal shells,
(46:32):
with the dirt and other stuff you're gonna find on Mars,
just the soil. That's not soil, it's just the stony.
I don't know all the all the chemicals and substances
that make up the surface of Mars. Put those things
together and you essentially have a brick of some sort
that you can use or a m a three D
printing substance that you can make a whole little village
(46:55):
out of. Basically to protect yourself. I mean, that would
be incredible if you could do it. But Matt, wait
a minute, this isn't another sad animal story. Is It
doesn't mean they're gonna have to grind up like all
the Beatles on planet Earth to to make space bricks,
does it? No? But kind of in a way in
a smaller scale. By the way, this is all a
proposal that was published in Plos one. It's titled Martian
(47:20):
bioleth bio Inspired Regular Composite for Closed Loop Extraterrestrial Manufacturing
WHO And in that per reviewed article from Plos one,
they describe essentially away to have the food source on
one of these missions that's going out to let's say Mars,
be primarily plants that are created there or grown on
(47:45):
you know when once they land and as well as
as they're traveling, and proteins that are based on insects. Right,
So the insects that would be eaten essentially, or at
least would would proteins extracted from them, would have leftover
carapaces which aren't really good for human consumption anyway. They
(48:06):
don't do much for you. The kitan that's inside those carapaces,
there's some there's some small medical benefits that we can
talk about, but really, if you wanted to, you could
essentially separate the protein rich stuff from the insects and
the kitan, and you take that kitan then after eating
all those delicious insects and then which aren't bad construction. Yeah,
(48:33):
I'm not yucking yums. That's that's great. He's kind of
season them properly. It's kind of season them properly. You
can fry anything. And the United Nations has wanted people
to avoid mass starvation by eating insects on Earth like
a decade. So it's it's true. It's not a crazy idea.
And Martians will probably have to do it. Yeah, yeah,
they will, and it's a smart thing to do because again,
(48:55):
what you're doing is giving yourself a thing that can create.
They can create uh, any structures, any thing to the
within this article. They actually did some experiments where they
were able to create tools out of this kitan substance
(49:16):
um and they used they didn't they didn't have any
access to Martian You know, regular e thor rocks and
things like that, but they were able to use mineral
equivalence of what that would be. They combined the kitan
with that and they could make like, um, essentially a hatchet, uh,
a wrench. They're all these things that they conceptualized being
(49:36):
able to make, and then they actually made a wrench
that they could turn and fix things. Matt, aren't you
burying the lead here a little bit? But don't they
also wouldn't they be able to use their urine uh
and and extract some material in their urine kind of
make the bonding agent? Does that deal? Yeah? So so
(49:57):
there are several parts, but some of the main ones
are Martian stuff, kitan and urea from from people's pet
great stuff. And you'd live in the whatever structure you
built out of that. I built this house from my
own rusty Martian P and I will not be I
(50:18):
will not be disrespected by you. Kid. This is a
parent talcular Martian. Kid. You gotta be a P constructor
like your father and your Space father before him. Uh.
It makes me think of like the Dousers from Fraggle
Rock or something. Or also it makes me think of
(50:39):
like is the moon gonna just look like Minecraft, Like
is everything gonna be like, you know, geometrically shaped or
like made of these bricks. But no, no, no, yeah,
please go on about the how you can shape this stuff.
That's that's fascinating to me. Well. Yeah, in the three
D printing stage of this, in the testing that was
publishing this article, they made these kind of cone shaped structures,
(51:02):
or at least models of these cone shaped structures that
they're proposing could be the dwelling places in larger buildings
on Mars. It looks like maybe something an ant constructed
or an insect constructed, um, just just because it looks
to be built out of the soil itself or the
(51:23):
ground itself, and it just becomes a shape that is hardened. Right,
And just looking through this article and seeing all the
proposals here, it makes me feel like we humans are
going to arrive on Mars and other places if we
do these things and create essentially xenomorph hives. If you
(51:43):
guys remember the Aliens series, like essentially taking what exists
on that planet and then they this is a completely
fictional thing, but they would use their acidic saliva to
bond essentially or to break down substances that existed and
then formed the hive. That's that's the height of the
(52:08):
height of technology that we're discovering now, and in the
applied material science field, a lot of it is us
learning to mimic things that other animals have been doing
or natural processes that occurred. Like if you're too good
for space, Urine, I'm gonna say you don't belong on Mars.
Other people want to take the trip, like what's interesting
(52:30):
to me here to matt is one thing I wish
the study you talked about a little bit more. I
wish they had talked about, um, the the Martian elephant
in the room, which is that this is a one
way trip for a lot of people, no matter how
they describe it. The most feasible way for this kind
(52:50):
of exploration to work is for the ships themselves to
be dismantled upon landing and become you know, kind of
the bedrock there. So you could keep three D printing machines,
you would keep uh, the life support systems you needed,
but then you would ultimately yeah, I mean maybe I'm
wrong here, but you would ultimately end up disassembling a
(53:12):
lot of that stuff. Does it take to get to Mars.
I think it's it's like maybe margin of error to
two years round trip, because it's a nine month travel
time depending on your speed obviously, and then you know
you're not stopping to pee because you've got to save
that from Mars. Actually, they're probably cycling urine doing that
(53:34):
trip to make puotable water like in water World. Yeah,
I feel like we we're focusing too much on the
urine part here. Yeah, but again, like we would be
doing the same thing on on the Moon. I guess
historically we've always had images of moon bases that are
so technologically advanced, that are just full of metal and
(53:57):
beeping sounds and new lights and things like shuttles that
go up and down all these crazy things. What if
in reality, when we begin creating moon bases and Mars
bases and all these other bases, they really do resemble
ant hills or aunt colonies of some yeah, with humans
(54:18):
just being in them. How But but it's because if
that is happening and that actually comes to fruition, simultaneously,
we will be the creatures that are doing that. We're
also the creatures that are edging closer and closer towards
the singularity where we were becoming technological beings. And you know,
(54:40):
if we become technological beings or almost fully technological beings,
we probably won't need air and all, you know, sustenance
and insects for eating anymore. We would need biofuel of
some sort probably, But that and then also having these
strange structures and I don't know, it's it doesn't seem
to square, I guess, so yeah, like a retro retrofuturistic
(55:06):
neo primitivism. Almost right, someone who has not plugged into
whatever invisible uh species wide net we have would just
see a bunch of really spaced outlooking folks wandering from
human sized termite mound, the human sized termite mound. But
there's something else interesting here met um. And I love
(55:27):
that you bring up the singularity, because my question would be,
all right, so on the like, just what is it
right of September is so weird today? Before we recorded,
discovery just got reported in Nature Astronomy about the discovery
of what appeared to be multiple underground liquid water lakes
(55:49):
in Mars. Uh So that that's a total game changer
for us. Uh So we may have also a subterranean
species of some sort, because in evitably, you know, these
things will begin to speciate. You can only live so
far away from Earth before you start to change, and
Earthlings will be changing as well as we approach, as
(56:09):
he said, a singularity. So I am wondering how long
a population on Mars, whatever it becomes, could feasibly say
that it's governed by a population on Earth. I think it's. Uh,
it's it's a much shorter runway than we believe. You know,
if if you like send, if the U N or
(56:33):
that will probably it's we're moving away from states and
toward corporations. Right, So if the corporation is saying, you know,
SpaceX is like, okay, this is the SpaceX colony. Uh,
and then this Martian colony is able to become self sufficient,
then they won't need SpaceX and they won't care about SpaceX.
(56:54):
So I would not be surprised, and this is speculative,
this is conspiratorial. I would not be surprised if the
people who are planning these trips are baking in reliance
on the Martian side, like the same way that the
mercantile or mecantilism based economies would bake in reliance on
the colonial side, Like, make no mistake, you don't want
(57:16):
these people, whatever they become, to be independent, because why
would they bother with you. It's a good point, Ben, Dude, dude,
this is this is a weird thing to me. I
don't know if it's stuff they don't want you to know,
but it's definitely just odd to think about our future.
(57:38):
And if they don't want you to know, what it
could be that, Ben, that SpaceX will make you reliant
on them or no, not not to call you off.
Space actually doing great work, I'm sure, but whoever, whoever,
whatever corporation get you to ours may really need you
to be on the hook. That's how I see it
in all the sci fi though. That's how it is
in the alien movies. That's how it is. And oh gosh,
(57:58):
there was a movie with Robert Patt sit in it
recently where there is a space colony. Um lighthouse. Now
not another weird, weird, real weird one by a French filmmaker,
a woman whose name I'm totally forgetting. If Casey Peger
was here, he would know. Um it's called high life.
That's what you were very close. But in this one,
like he's sort of the loan survivor on this thing,
(58:20):
and he keeps sending home messages to the home plan
under the corporation or whatever, and I don't like, you
couldn't rely on them too much. Would they send shuttles
with the stuff for you or you would have to grow?
That would be the plan. But yeah, because it too
So I mean, why Mars versus the Moon? And maybe
this has been discussed a bunch, I'm sure, but it's
quicker to get to the moon, right, why not go
(58:42):
for Moon basis instead of Mars basis? If it takes
two years to get to Mars, well, a lot of
those lunar places, correctly, if we're wronger, a lot of
those lunar propositions are meant to be like beachheads. And
from there we expanned to Europa, to Mars and so on,
uh and eventually to uh because because we had to
mention it, eventually to Uranus just for a fly by,
(59:06):
just check up the moon. Check up. The moon is
just a launching pad to Uranus. And it's already it's
already crowded, you know. And also Mars may have what Okay,
so one salient real argument for Mars over the Moon
(59:26):
is that Mars may possess resources that are conducive to
ultimately self sustaining human life or again, Martian life, whatever
it becomes. May right, Yeah, well at least way more
than the lunar surface, at least for our studies of it.
But but but again, I mean, is it is it
a cost benefit analysis? Like I mean, you know, even
(59:50):
if the moon, you know, you had to make more
runs to the Moon. It's what, how does it take
to get to the Moon. It's only like three days?
I think. Yeah, Well, part of the argument there is
to you, uh, that's three days if if we have
the optimal uh orbital conditions, right, Like that's why you'll
see people saying you could make Mars. You can make
(01:00:11):
the Mars trip in in a very short number of months,
like as little as four or five if you go
at the right time, which occurs every maybe two years.
And then you're at the then there were still earth lings,
so we're at the mercy of earth weather, right, and
there's a lot less atmosphere to worry about. We're launching
from the Moon, so once you get there, it's easier
(01:00:34):
to build stuff. Maybe if you have the stuff. I
don't know. Also, this is just me guessing, but what
if they're what if they're brainstorming which which rock to
land on next, and then someone in marketing comes out
and they go, well, you know the thing about Mars
is it's red. It really pops. You know, it looks
(01:00:55):
better on a logo because there because like we can.
And then they're like, all right, somebody run up cost
benefit over painting the moon versus going to Mars with
a much better color scheme. So maybe it's something like that.
We're not in those rooms. Uh, and god, it would
probably be terrifying place to be um Man, I guess optimistic. Yeah,
(01:01:17):
space bricks out of insect kitan more and more than that.
That's oversimplifying, but you can make it into all kinds
of shapes. And why can't we use this on the
on earth to make building materials for like you know,
developments and stuff like that. That's why I want to
talk to you about this. This is why it's so
actually exciting, even though it doesn't sound so appetizing with
with all the insects and you know, the slightly strange
(01:01:41):
kitan curious curious is and Kitan left pauldrons and Kitan
grieves that we'd be. You know, I don't know any
of those words are It's fine. The A R is
pretty good on some of those. It's a light armor.
Um oh, I see, it's it's pretty good. You can
get You can get like Tilvanni cephalopod helm if you too,
I mean you could really you could three D print
(01:02:01):
any of these things out of all that stuff. Um.
The the Kitan throwing stars were particularly interesting. There was
an addition that I didn't expect, like defense on mars Um.
But I forget where I was going already. Guys. Oh.
The whole concept here is that if this could be achieved,
(01:02:22):
it would be at least as close as you can
get to a closed loop zero waste solution for building
materials on you know, on another planet, and that that
would be incredible to use their right, But you could
also take that and translate it to Earth, like why
not if we if we were as gross as it sounds,
(01:02:45):
if you had a group of people or a large
corporation that was manufacturing let's say, um, some type of
plant and fruit and vegetable they were all edible, right,
and then aside beside that and as part of that them,
they're also growing flies and a couple other types of
insects that grow alongside the fruit while or and you know,
(01:03:08):
other food that's been created, and that those two things
are being created that feed the humans. Right, and then
the waste products from liquids as well as from the
the extra parts of the insects, it's all being used
to then fuel all the building materials and all the
things that builds the stuff that you need to keep
the thing going, and then it just continues cycling through.
(01:03:30):
They've got great diagrams of exactly how that would function
on that plos One article that I mentioned earlier, you
can actually see how they're proposing it would function. And
I think there's a massive opportunity if this technology becomes viable,
which unfortunately means both scalable and affordable. If this technology
(01:03:51):
becomes viable, there's a massive opportunity for relief housing for
disaster survivors. Or think about the millions of people who
are trapped in refugee camps, sometimes intergenerationally, which essentially function
as open air prisons. Those people could have privacy that
they haven't had for decades, right, Uh, they could also
(01:04:13):
have a little bit more safety than they would have
ordinarily from both the elements and from bad actors on
the human side. Like I agree. I think sometimes we
as a species we get our priorities mixed up, you
know what I mean, Like have you We're we're collectively saying,
instead of fixing the planet we already have, let's go
(01:04:36):
out to eat on another planet. It's like, it's like that,
why don't you say home and cook. You've got food,
you know what I mean, clean your kitchen while you're
at it is a very imperfect comparison to make, but
you make such an excellent point here, matt Uh. My
last question for you is would you live in one
of these? I mean, if I had to fear, I'd
(01:04:59):
figar how to make it work. As long as I
can get the kitan to display Morrow Wind, then I'll
be fine. But surely there's things you could add to
make it aesthetically pleasing. It doesn't all have to be
like gun metal gray, right, I mean, there's probably some
variations you could get to have some patterns and you know,
make something a little more appealing to the eye. I
(01:05:22):
would I would just say, watch Raised by Wolves. It's
available right now on HBO Max. That is true. You
can also you can also learn more about populations in
the modern day who dwell in caves and now for
a long time. I think that could inform some of uh,
your interior decorating inspirations for your life on Mars or
(01:05:45):
your life here on Earth. So we've gone a little
long on this one, but we absolutely hope you enjoy it.
You can tell that we are fascinated by all three
of these ideas crows versus owls, sharks versus humans in
a way, and Mars versus the move versus Earth, and
(01:06:06):
insects and insects of course, yes, so let us know
what you think of these. Uh, listen when you think
of these ideas, right to us, with your with your
personal calculations behind befriending crows or Corvid's right to us,
with your understanding of sharks versus humans, and vaccines in general,
(01:06:27):
your reasons for or against the proposed COVID vaccines or
vaccines just overall, we cannot wait to hear from you,
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That's right. You can find us in all the usual
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