How to Pronounce Acetaminophen

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This e.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Twists This Week in Science, episode number ten thirty one,
recorded on Wednesday, September twenty fourth, twenty twenty five. How
to pronounce aceda minifin. Hey everyone, I'm doctor Keegee and
tonight we will fill your head with evidence, reason and
science fun. But first, thanks to our amazing Patreon sponsors

(00:29):
for their generous support of Twists. You can become a
part of the Patreon community at patreon dot com. Slash
This Week in.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Sciencescoolamor disclaimer disclaimer They are playing politics with women's health again.
This time it's Thailand All aka akada a Ceda Thailand
All he simitol if you happen to be in the
European continent. An announcement was made that was I'll just

(01:00):
say it not good, suggesting without evidence that Tayland All
was causally linked to autism. This is what it is
like to be led by the scientifically illiterate.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
But why are they doing this?

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Who will benefit from the FDA slapping frightening labels on
a harmless medicine, aside from the egos of a few
who want to champion a cause without the skills to
do so. Such arrogance matched with power and a lack
of knowledge is truly a dangerous combination likely to cause
real human suffering. Speaking of causing real human suffering, it

(01:40):
is time to administer another dose of This Week in
Science coming up next.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
I've got that kind of mine. I can't get enough.
I want to learn everything. I want to fill it
all up with new discoveries. It happen every day, every week.
There's only one place to go to find a knowledge.

Speaker 5 (02:03):
I think.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
I want to know what's happened.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
This's happened, that's happened. Science, that's happened, that's happened, that's happened.
Screen Science.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Science to you, Gigi and the Good Science to YouTube,
Justin and everyone out there, Welcome to another episode of
This Week in Science. We are back to talk about
science that has been published in peer reviewed journals or
that has you know, some kind of evidence behind it

(02:43):
and that you know they or they are saying, hey,
this is cool, We're gonna publish it in a peer
review journal journal. We'd love scientific feedbook anyway. We love
to talk about the scientific discourse. Thanks for joining us.
We have a good show.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
Right off the top of the show, because I don't
have a segment on it. I don't have a whole
prepared segment for this, but nomen event does not cause
autism and there are no studies that show a causal link.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
That is nonsense.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Just in case anybody anybody has not heard that from
another source.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
It's nonsense, and maybe we should put together, we.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Should put some information out there if we can. But
causal link is the big issue because there was a
study published out of Harvard with other researchers involved at
ucl LA and a couple of other institutions back in August,
and the study was a review of literature where they

(03:51):
looked and they did a literature search, looked for autism ASD, autism, spectrum,
just orders and acetamenofn and they tried tail and all
and all sorts of different terms. And this whole study
looked at ADHD, autism and other neurodivergent disorders. Disorder is

(04:17):
another question. But the result of this study was that
they they found in their review of literature that there
were positive results suggesting a link and associative link between

(04:38):
ACETAM and autism, ADHD and the others were in there
as well. This is the key word though, because in
the scientific literature, associative link does not mean causation, It
means correlation. And the study itself was primarily led by
a Harvard researcher who was paid one hundred and fis

(05:00):
fifty thousand dollars to testify in a legal case on
the link between acetaminifen and neurodivergent disorders autism spectrum ADHD.
And so this actually this kind of paper. They say
that they could not assess it qualitatively because of certain issues,

(05:23):
so they had to not qualita quantitatively, so they had
to do a qualitative assessment, and the qualitative assessment led
to this outcome. Nevermind that there have been other meta
reviews that there have been other studies that have not
found this kind of line.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
So there's one out of Sweden that wasn't a meta
review of other disparate studies that were slapped together to
get one output where they looked at two point five
million people with their wonderful universal system which shows everything
that they you know, need to see uh and and

(06:05):
found no link with either ADHD or autism.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
And that is more of a quantitative And the question
is was that study in this review was there, like,
how was it? How was it assessed in the review, like,
was it at two point five million people in its
sample set? Was it just put on an even par
with another study that had twenties?

Speaker 1 (06:28):
You know, how did they?

Speaker 2 (06:29):
How did they how did they analyze that? So these
are the questions. And historically, however, there is a precedent
for individuals who are paid to testify, who are in
the scientific or medical field, who then need to publish
supporting papers for their views, and so these papers get

(06:51):
published and it is a it is a credibility and
prestige pipeline.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
So I was unaware of that. Yeah, that link And.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
It's important because the the large largest lawsuits against attempted
class action lawsuits against tailand all got shut down in
twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Four this last year for a lack of expert evidence
on this.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
So now that's one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
I'm a conspiracyity person, so I don't have a whiteboard
behind me.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
But our FK.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Junior is a guy that came from that class action
law lawyer Field who's constantly suing on behalf of or
suing pharmaceutical companies making claims of autism, usually with vaccines.
This is like in that that venue, and now there's
going to be an FDA. So when I was alluding to,

(07:48):
like who benefits from this, actually this is kind of
the only group that would possibly benefit from all of
the suffering that's going to come from mislabeling this is dangerous,
which will be those who are trying to get a
class action lawsuit with very little evidence, without the scientific
evidence if they have an FDA label.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Now that gets slapped on.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
There we have the President saying it, I don't know
how much expert use that'll be, but if you have
that head of helping Human Services making these claims, if
you have the FDA issuing advisories, then you have what
used to be the scientific brand of expertise on the
government level weighing in, even though of course it's been

(08:33):
completely and totally gutted of all the scientific rigor. So
this is the danger and this is likely who benefits
from it. And the fact that this study that they're
sighting is one that was created by a paid expert
for that same group, probably that same lawsuit that I'm
referring to that got thrown out by the judge for

(08:58):
a lack of scientific experts piece on their side making these.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Claims that might be it, that might be the reason.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
That we're seeing this happen that simply which is just ridiculous.
The other aspect of it is probably a post lawsuit,
successful or not, you're likely to see a hedge fund
takeover where some other group of investors will tear the
company to pieces. So fun with the human health part

(09:30):
of it is coming last in this scenario. It seems, yeah, keek,
are you still with me? Well, we may have Lestki
king for the moment. It's just me, oh no, watch up, minions.
We're gonna go ahead and jump into why cats might
kill you.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Of course, that's the very.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
First place I'm going when I have the reins, beware
of cats. They harbor deadly pathogens. I'm not talking about
toxic plasma Gandhi. I'm talking about cat food. There's an
analysis it was just published in Communications Biology that found salmonilla,

(10:12):
Chronobacter and E. Coi, some of which were antibiotic resistant
in raw or partially raw or partially cooked. I guess
meat sold in frozen refrigerator freeze dried for cat food.
So these are products that don't necessarily don't won't come

(10:32):
with a warning label that some of the meat is
not fully cooked. There is FDA regulation on this, but
of course, as usual, testing is pretty limited by the
FDA and actually going in and testing that things are
being followed. So in the study of the researchers purchased
a mix of raw and conventionally cooked cat foods. They

(10:55):
compared to communities as microorganisms each sample, applying the same
methods practiced by the FDA when they are doing their
cultured bacterial samples. They found five strains of salmonilla and
raw food samples. And so the thing is these are

(11:15):
it says that this were There were indeed some human
cases that were genetically very similar to our isolates, meaning
there's a very good chance that this is also something
that can cross over into the family that owns the cat,
especially young children may be vulnerable. So when you get

(11:38):
rid of your cats, because remember all cats of all of.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Their cat food.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Love your cats.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Stop feeding your cats.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
In the house, feed your cats so they don'tn't.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Let your cats outside.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Don't let your cats outside.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Don't feed them this partially cooked cat food, this wet
cat food, or whatever it is they're getting fed here,
there's no winning you have to get rid of the cats.
And but the thing is, the cats never loved you.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
They do they don't know you, they don't love you.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
They're waiting. They're waiting.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
They're waiting for you to to falter so they can
devour you.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
No, there's a very there's there's there are there are rules,
rules and responsibilities involved in the relationship. But at the
same time, our cats love, our cats feel. They're smart animals.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
I'm not saying they're not smart. I'm just saying they're
not on.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Your predators, though they're are descended from predators, so they're
not the same. I mean the way that dogs are
also predators. They're also social pack animals, which cats are
social as well, but in a different way. So it's yeah,
it's it's interesting anyway, Yeah, trust you verifying people. Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
On did they have a slight even the slightest not
even a full on size advantage, But once they get
that ratio close enough, they start going, they'll they'll eat you.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
No, I don't think so. Their relationships were important for
cats as well, and if you, you know, make sure
they don't have good relationships with other cats, then you're
their other cat. So then that's it and that you.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Have you ever have you ever heard of a cat
protecting an owner?

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well look right there, yes, actually and grieving and grieving
and yes.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Okay, maybe I've just never had or at.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Least protecting their territory.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Well hang on now, yeah, hang on, it's a little
bit different.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
We're not going to tell the stories that my dad
would tell anyway, my dad's stories, but we have good
family stories, especially uh so farm cats, right like my
family we yeah, we had we have family property going
back in central California for multiple generations, and so that

(14:14):
my great great grandfather had a cat that was one
of the the toms around the property. And so these
are toms like they don't need they're out doing their thing, right,
they're not house cats. But this particular cat loved my
great great grandfather and after he died, the cat came

(14:37):
to my great great grandfather's chair and sat on and
lay in that chair and didn't leave it. And he
almost starved himself to death. The cat like almost starved
himself to death because my great great grandfather wasn't there anymore.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Oh that's so sweet.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Hats are connected to people. They will eat you. But
they're like, there's there's real there's dogs. Let you too,
But it takes a couple of days longer and longer. Yeah,
hopefully my computer won't crash again. Thanks for keeping up

(15:12):
the science stories. Anyway, we were talking about a seedamnifin.
But I also did want to say right off the
top that we have to correct other statements that were
made this week in the UN by our president. Uh.
The President gave a very long speech and in the

(15:34):
speech said that climate change is a con and that
it had been perpetuated and created by a bunch of
stupid people in that building. And so I just want
to put it out there that climate change is not
a con by stupid people in the UN. There is

(15:58):
overwhelming scientific evidens that connects carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases that are emitted by human activities and natural activities.
But more recently it's the human stuff that is the
the big driver to an increasingly warming atmosphere. And we

(16:18):
can totally do things about this. And we have been
solar and wind energy, which he also claimed were ineffective
and they were just taking up space, and the windmills
are rusting and falling on people and they're just whatever.
There are entire countries that are going off of coal

(16:42):
because they have enough offshore wind to provide for their needs.
I mean entire It's like Ireland, right, But at the
same time, at the same time, the cost of solar,
the cost of wind, the energy, the batteries that are
the technology that is there, the energy and release it
as it's necessary. All this technology has advanced so much

(17:06):
in the last twenty years, and as long as we've
been talking about it, I've been talking about we are
at a point where solar and wind are actually overtaking coal.
China is shutting down coal power plants and doing solar
and wind in nuclear. But we're turning it around. And

(17:26):
so the.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Other part of that too is just so there's a
lot of.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Who has been quick dragging, like hardly the champions of
global warming.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Not the champions, yeah, but a few ends where like
the IPCC stuff happens, and you know, anyway, I just
want to say, I mean, maybe this is his way
of trying to get everybody to do better and not
I don't know. I just want to say and set

(18:02):
the record straight that climate changes in a con and
solar and wind are actually doing really great. That's really good.
So let's keep it going people. Okay, are you ready
to do a show. We have so many great stories
we haven't even gotten to yet. It's Ignobel season. I
can't wait to talk about that. We're going to talk

(18:24):
about territorial fish. Blair is not here, so I brought
all the animal stories. This week. We're going to talk
about large herbivores. We're going to talk about brains and
maybe spider brains because you know bedtime nightmare fuel.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Noble, Then what did
you bring?

Speaker 6 (18:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (18:51):
The stories was the cat food outbreak of paths. Oh,
I don't know if you could hear it.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
It was exactly computer was dead dead.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
So they they looked at cat foods. I guess that
we're you know, partially cooked, partially or some raw, and
basically found all sorts of antibiotic resistance salmonilla's and equalized
and stuff that couldn't in fact, not just the cat,
but the household.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Cook your food for your cats.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, just get rid of the cats. You know you
have you have other things you can spend your money on.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
A little time on this planet might spend it with
a cat.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
I know you have other stories. Anyway, Yes, let's get
to this everyone. If you are interested in sharing this
Week in Science with your friends, please do that, okay,
because we spread at the rate of sharing, and come on, everybody,
pretend that you're a virus. No, okay, no, don't do

(19:58):
that anyway. Twist dot org is our website. You can
go there and find show notes and all sorts of
neat things for the show. And you can find us
Wednesday evenings eight pm Pacific time ish on YouTube, Facebook,
and Twitch. We are also on some of those social
media platforms. But really look for This Week in Science

(20:21):
and make sure you share, subscribe like get us in
the algorithms. Okay, everyone, time for the science split. Okay,
back to it. Ignobls Okay. For those of you who
may be coming to the show newly every fall, this
is the season I look forward to. Full of jovial mirth, whimsy. Anyway.

(20:46):
The IGNO Bells are an amazing awards ceremony that has
been going on for gosh multiple decades, since the early
nineties nineteen ninety one. I think it is about celebrating
improbable research, research that makes you laugh and go what

(21:09):
but then think about what was actually being studied? Why
not just the haha, funny aspect of it, but maybe
get more curious about what we're when where.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, every time I hear the setup to an ignoble,
I'm like, oh, why would they even need.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
To study that? Well, who came up with this idea?

Speaker 3 (21:31):
How did they get the research running to do this?
Why was they why were they even bothering? And then
sometimes by the end of I'm like, oh, that's brilliant,
that's really honey.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
And sometimes a.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Lot of them are brilliant, most of them very interesting. Okay,
this isn't science, but the Literature Prize for the ignobels
the late doctor William B. Bean for persistently recording and
analyzing the rate of growth of one of his fingernails
one of his fingernails over a period of thirty five years.

(22:12):
He has publications ranging from nineteen fifty three in the
Journal of Investigative Dermatology, A Note on Fingernail Growth, all
the way through nineteen eighty nail growth thirty five years
of observation. We also had nail growth twenty five years observation.

(22:37):
Then there was nail growth thirty years of observation, some
notes of an aging nail watcher, and a discourse on
nail growth and unusual fingernails.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
So I have so many questions.

Speaker 7 (22:59):
The first I'll read the articles obviously, is I love
Where is that fingernail getting cut frequently and then restarting
the measurement?

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Or was it like being.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Allowed to grow out of control in a way that
makes it hard to use your hand?

Speaker 2 (23:17):
One fingernail thirty five years? Read the articles?

Speaker 1 (23:21):
All right?

Speaker 2 (23:22):
The nutrition? No?

Speaker 3 (23:23):
No?

Speaker 2 (23:23):
First? Uh? Who's first psychology prize? This is Poland, Austria
and Canada for investigating what happens when you tell narcissists
or anyone else that they are intelligent? Well let's try, right,
So the the article title is telling people they are

(23:46):
intelligent correlates with the feeling of narcissistic uniqueness, uniqueness the
influence of IQ feedback on temporary state narcissism. So basically,
you take an IQ test and it's like you're special,
you're smart, you go oh, and you get temporarily narcissistic
about it.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
And that's what they feel like all the time. Is
that the idea or when they're getting good in it?

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Feedback?

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Well, it's kind of like, yeah, okay, anybody, Hey, you're smart,
you're intelligent versus I like this.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
It's just almost like, don't be proud of being smart.
It makes you a narcissist.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Like, because it's parting, I'm going to brag.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
That's kind of the results.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
You're bragg I think.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Everybody should brag a little bit about being showing off
they're smart. I think that's totally fair.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
I think they are about that too much, right, hide
it under the facade of our faces.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
People go around launting their humility in front of other people.
Look how humble I can be, like all that one
upman ship. It really is very egotistical.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
I need more numbers of digits of pie. Come on, everyone.
Nutrition Prize Nigeria, Togo, in Italy, France researchers got this
award for studying the extent to which a certain kind
of lizard chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza. The

(25:17):
title was Opportunistic foraging strategy of a ray of rainbow
lizards at a seaside resort in Togo.

Speaker 6 (25:24):
So be sides like, yeah, they're opportunistics, like whatever is there?

Speaker 1 (25:36):
But like are they like.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
No, No, it's a seaside making a.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Fake phone call ordering too many, too many, and then
the cricket pizzas they never throwing the dumpster again, I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
That's not opportunistic, that is like, yeah, that would be decisions. Yes, yeah,
So in this abstract they say, these these lizards normally
have arthropods being the main prey source, but because there's
this cool coastal resort in southern Togo, population of these

(26:14):
lizards were observed while feeding regularly upon non natural human
made food pizza, and they liked four cheeses pizza more
than other kinds of pizza. So, given the choice of

(26:35):
different pizza slices or bites thrown on the ground or
dropped or opportunistically foraged, four cheese is one out over
combination or pepperoni or veggie or whatever. Yeah, four cheeses.
So why they don't know, they say, maybe there's some
chemical cues involved anyway. Pediatrics Prize American researcher studied what

(27:01):
a nursing baby experiences when the baby's mother eats garlic
yep title Maternal diet alters the sensory qualities of human
milk and the nursing's behavior. So babies know, I don't know.

(27:23):
Maybe some some babies like garlic, others don't. Anyway, Biology
researchers from Japan did experiments to learn whether cows painted
with zebra like striping can avoid being bitten by flies.
And this is a study that Blair brought up and
we reported on and had a great conversation to cows
painted with zebra like striping can avoid biting fly attack?

(27:47):
It was greazy.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
There you go go all from now on, all cows.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
All the cows painted like zebras, get rid of there's blotches. No,
they're gonna be zebra cows all right. Chemistry Prize USA
and Israel researchers collaborated to test whether eating teflon, a
former plastic more formally called polytetraflora ethylene, is a good

(28:15):
way to increase food volume and hence satiety, without increasing
calorie content.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Sure wait, dietary forever chemicals?

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Yeah, like not fiber, not like less teflon.

Speaker 6 (28:31):
Just.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Teflon as a dietary Oh.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
I have a feeling that is not the best.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
You know, the thing is my work, all right?

Speaker 2 (28:49):
I am looking for the title this study where it Oh,
there's a patent, Wow, Google pay.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
The downstream side effects of doing such a thing for
that one outcome.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
May not be worth it. This is true of many things.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
You have downstream effects, which I'm going to talk about
like later on as soon as I can remember how
to pronounce the word.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
So normally distension of the stomach is involved in satiety.
They're also like other triggers that are hormonal or signaling,
that signal to the brain that you're not hungry anymore
and you can stop eating. So this particular paper was
looking at whether or not polytetrafluora ethylene could reduce the

(29:45):
feelings of hunger as you ate, and so they say
it provides a useful tool for appetite control and treatment
of overeating and can contribute to reducing obesity.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Obesity or weight. So this is this is this is
what I'm going to be talking about. Semi blue tide,
which is the gob It's all of these formerly diabetes
treating drugs that are being used for weight loss. They

(30:21):
have some reports that it's forty five percent I've seen
of their weight loss is lean mass, which is muscle, muscle, bone, organ, organ,
all of that field.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
So it's like starvation except yeah, so it's not great.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
And I and I don't know. I'm sorry. I'll talk
about those later. Those are coming up.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
That's a great, great teaser for later. Let's see Peace
Prize Netherlands, UK and Germany. They showed that drinking alcohol
sometimes improves a person's ability to speak in a foreign language,
titled Dutch Courage. Effects of acute alcohol consumption on self
readings and observer readings of foreign language skills.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
Oh the you're not speaking of You're speaking the native
language of the drunks. You have to learn those couple
of things where like choosing on the other one, you know,
you learn that couple of things that you have in common,
and you just say those things over and over again
while you drink.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
I think that's all it is.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Engineering Design Prize from Indian Research analyzing from an engineering
design perspective, how foul smelling shoes affect the good experience
of using a shoe rack. Smelly shoes an opportunity for
shoe rack redesign. I think, oh so opportunity.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
Seriously, I don't care how well that shoe wreck was designed,
how nicely it fits into the space. A little accoutreman
on felt on the top that makes it just look cozy.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
If there's a stinky shoe in there, the whole thing's
gotta go.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
It's done. It's ruined the experience. It's totally true.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Totally done. Let's see. Aviation Prize researchers internationally studied whether
ingesting alcohol can impair bats ability to fly and echo locate.
And it does, it does, And the reason you can't
fly or echo locate the reason I.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
Haven't slightly slightly surprised. And I guess it depends on
the type of bat. But I would assume that fruit
bats get intoxicated rather regularly.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
But they studied Egyptian fruit batska, yeah, you think they'd
have a higher tolerance.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
But encowering fermented fruit here and there with that alcohol
content high enough to get a bat drunk, and then
they still got to make it back to the cave.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
I think, yeah, there might be a little.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
I guess there's no real generational tolerance to alcohol.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
No, well there's some, but not really okay. Physics Prize
last one, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria. Researchers discovered the physic
or they looked into the physics of pasta sauce phase
behavior of cachyo pepe sauce cacchioi pepe sauce. Anyway, the

(33:47):
phase transition that can lead to clumping. It will make
your pasta sauce unpleasant. Anyway. The physics of pasta is
intantly important, especially in Italy. But also if you check
out the study, you probably learn how to make a
really good catchio pepe, which is one of the simpler

(34:11):
h pastas.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
I think, I don't know. I think all cans open
about the same, don't you cans?

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Oh my gosh, yeah, okay, whatever, All right, moving on,
those were the ignoblls. I hope you all had a
bit of a ooh ah ha ha ha. And then
hm hmmm mm hmm m yeah. Do you want to
talk about something that's not cat food?

Speaker 1 (34:41):
We can or not. I'm gonna I'll go ahead and
follow up on the.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
Two different Nova Nordisk studies that were out in the
last last week. One is looking at a higher dose
I think ten times the regular dosage of their injectable,
but it's an oral pill, so it's higher higher dosage
because it's not going to be as effective. It's not

(35:08):
going to at all, you know, get where it needs
to go. And they they tested it against a placebo
and found that yes, they can achieve the weight loss
uh over a placebo right through the pill, which just

(35:29):
means this is this is something that they're obviously looking
at to make it more accessible to more of a
user end user who's maybe afraid of doing the injections,
timid about it.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
For whatever reason.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Well, it's not needles. Needles are hard that it's not
easy for people.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
But I also wonder if it if it ten times,
if it requires ten times the dosage of the actual
druggable amount, is that is it going to be ten
times more expensive? Like that, you know, the concentration is
so much higher of the same molecule. It's kind of
a curious thing, so that one might be more expensive.
And then they are also put out a study where

(36:18):
they have used triple the injectible dose and a new
injectible and again tested it against a placebo to see
if it was effective, and yes, it also occurs weight
loss greater than a placebo.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Okay, so the.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Pill I think is very interesting as greater than a placebo.
Like there's something to like that science and the psychology
of taking a pill, right of the placebo effect, right,
And so the test against a placebo is really interesting
because it's like the psychological and actually in both of them, right,
it's the you're doing a thing, and so your brain

(37:02):
is already primed to accept you're doing a thing, so
there will be weight loss whether or not there's active ingredient.
And so to test against a placebo is actually, you know,
it's just it's a control, right, That's what it is.
They're saying. They have.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
I feel like they should always do a full analysis
of the existing drug.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
When they're doing a modification. Like the triple dosage they had.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
They had the it's at seven point two milligrams the
what goby dose is a dosage. It's a brand name,
but it's a dosage of two point four milligrams semic
glue tide it and it it did a little bit better,
it doesn't it's not really that huge of an increase.
They showed a weight loss mean body weight loss by

(37:54):
thirteen point two percent at seven point two versus ten
point four at the old two point four. So they
tripled the dosage and got you know.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
In the pill.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
No, sorry, this is the injection in the injection.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
Okay, yeah, the in the pill one. They didn't run
the comparable. But here's the thing. Both of these studies
were designed, funded, the analysis, the statistics, all of this
was written by Nova Nordisks, but it is being presented

(38:31):
almost everywhere as being by the research into the academic
institutions that performed the study. I have a problem with
it because even though if you read the actual study
and you go down and you see the disclosures, you'll
see that Nova Nordisk's hand was everywhere in this and
that they had their researchers involved, but they have other

(38:55):
but they have academic groups.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
I'm not saying fronting. I don't want it to sound.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Like that, but I think it needs to be very
clear that these are nover Nordick studies, that these are
nover noordiced results, that this is their in house designed experiment.
Because in every single one of them they talk about
weight loss, none of them mention where that weight loss
is coming from. And that's extremely that's like the extremely

(39:22):
important distinction. If that you know, thirteen percent weight loss
versus ten percent weight loss is coming largely from the
lean mass side.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
That is a worse product. Well, I think.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
That is the issue though. That's like what's been sold
to us forever, right, is weight loss. If you want
to fit society's standards, you lose weight, right. It doesn't
nobody talks about where that weight comes from. They don't
talk about it. It's just assumed that that weight comes
from fat cells. It's not discussed that the weight loss

(40:00):
could be from other parts of your body. I mean,
the only time that it's lean is malnutrition. It's lack
of activity and atrophy. It's you know, you're you're in
a hospital bed in a coma and your body is
going away. Right. We don't talk about the difference because

(40:22):
that's usually not the case, not something of interest, but
I think in this particular, like this is really important,
and especially as we're talking about trying to maintain health
into old age. As people age, you need to maintain bone,
organ and muscle density, right, all of it, like you,
you need to maintain it to age healthily. So they're

(40:48):
hiding it, right.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
It's a it's I I want to go so far
as to say that they're they're hiding it, but they
obviously have no benefit in showing it, right, So they've
limited they've limited, right, now I know, but I.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Mean it fair.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
You can look you could look at it from also
you can look at, uh the enzymes from pancreas and
kkidney that have been shown in some of the safety
trials as being issues. Whether this is an issue increased
issue at the higher dosage that was not included in
the study. Uh in any of these studies. You could

(41:30):
be looking at the retinal effects because it had some
effects on eyes because of the vast scular changes. None
of that was included in these studies. And and to
show that it was safely tolerated in a in house trial.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
That eliminated a lot.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Of the things that are risky and have been shown
to be risk factors or potential problems with.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
These uh by not by not sharing those Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
Anyway, there's a potential. There's a lot of potential for
the next round by independent researchers who somehow, if there's
such a thing, if there's anybody who can be untouched
by nov artists, is spending on research at the moment,
and it's going to.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Be a very that's the thing. How the money do
the work? Yeah, clinical trials, not just.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
The funding to do the trials, but the knowledge that
by if you pro published like this is the fear
of the political arena in science is if if somebody
does publish an honest result that shows problems, will they
be funded.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
In the future.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
That's a great statement.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
There's a constant onslaught right now of these some of
the blue tide's studies trying to show that it does everything.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
There's another one that was.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Like, hey, it's safe for people who are currently on
anti psychotic and it doesn't cause any additional sentence.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
It's a good things to have studied.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
But the reason that there's going to be a study
about everything with almost any kind of claim that you
can imagine right now is because there's a giant bag
of money being spent on that research, and a lot of.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
The wigov semaglue, tide and the related compounds have gotten
promoted and they have been looked at in a limited sense,
and suddenly we have a large proportion of the population
using them in a way because these were like diabetic drugs.
Now they are weightless drugs, and so they are off label.

(43:40):
But now it's the label, and so this is the
money maker for everyone. And unfortunately there are side effects
and there are downsides, and these things have not been
studied for long term use in larger population, not with

(44:00):
respect to diabetes or to metabolic disorders. But you know, yeah, anyway,
there's work to be done. And I think that is
the problem is that they jumped into the off label
use really aggressively because everyone was doing it.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Magical weight less drug.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
But also we don't hear as much about everybody should
need it probably needs to do and maybe doctors are
recommending this when they give them to the patients. I
haven't been given this, so I don't know. But you
need a lot of exercise and diet to counter that
up to forty five percent lean mass weight loss because
that's that's your muscles, that's your bones.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, like it's great you're losing weight, but if you're
just sitting and you're not do if it's like okay,
you've been doing the stuff and you're not losing weight, great,
But if you're not doing the stuff, now you're going
to lose the weight that matters. That really is like
it'll hurt you. So anyway, yeah, yeah, new things that
make money, so you got to have results that don't

(45:07):
uh really cool.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Against that have a lot of disclaimers in your head
for any of these studies, because it's all in house,
regardless of where you're seeing it published or who conducted
the research. Everything on these drugs right now is is industry,
study industry.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
There's no escape.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Drugs help people like there are treatments, vaccines, there are
m R and A drugs, There are all sorts of
drugs that help people. But at the same time there's
money involved. So always, I mean.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Honestly, but what do we say now human health?

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Consult your doctor. Consult your doctor because for now. But yeah,
but addition, I mean, just know the things that are
regulated or have been regulated historically are the pharmaceutical You
need to go into the archive if you're going to
your seven eleven or whatever and just buying what's off

(46:13):
the shelf. Really, everybody needs to be really critical. Please
come on, let'st be critical. And you know, don't buy
doctor Justin's pop pills.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Not a real Justine you know what, look.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Not a real doctor poop pills.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Doctor Justin's not a real doctor of poop pills for
what ails you. The thing is the health claims on
there are no different than what you'll see on fish oil.
You know that fish oil is a billion dollar a
year industry, right now, what.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Did you just say, fish fish fish oil.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yes, it's a billion dollar year industry. It's usually talking
about has heart health or you know.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Megan six is at threes.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
There has been zero studies that has shown that it
has any effect on heart.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Health causally, there's lots of qualitative studies that.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Probably if you supplement the studies at this point with
the billion dollars to throw on, but uh, there are
zero studies. But the problem is when people see stuff
like it encourages heart health or whatever the claims that
you will see on there, they if you interpret them
as having any effect on heart disease outcome.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
But they don't.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
They're they're making a general claim about this has a
precursor that has been associated with something that is linked
to right, But this is there's no causal correlation between
taking fish oil supplements as it for instance, this is
just an example.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
I don't know. Generations of Scandinavians can't be wrong justin.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
They have the worst hearts on the planet. They do,
they are, they are the ones dropping from heart arrhythmas
in their twenties.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
If anything, it would prove the opposite.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
So with all of this though, I mean, you have
to wonder when a doctor prescribes you something, ask them
if they're prescribing it to you because as sales rep
recommended it, and are they getting a kickback. If I'm
sure are having a nutritionist or a website that you
trust for health stuff sell you supplements and sell you

(48:42):
nutritional things, maybe you should think about why they are
driving you to their website. It's called profit and money.
It's not about your health. You should be critical about
the reasons that certain things are in certain places. And

(49:03):
when doctors and health officials, people who are trying to
help you are really trying to help you. It's not
going to it's not going to come with more than
the cost of the visit or you know that, like
it's not going to be the American Medical Association and
by our supplements. No, if they're selling you I we

(49:24):
metin they are not a real doctor, or.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
They're not a horse. Unless you're a horse, You're not
a horse. But if you're a horse.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Then you might need it. This is also a problem
because because misreading and misinformation. So this is what I'm
referring to here about the officialal. This is part of
a study that was done by University of Texas Southwestern
Medical Center, Duke University Medical Center.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Way, you did that on purpose, I see.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
There's no accidents here. It's professional.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
In the United States, we are the world leader and
supplement taking. We approximately fifty six percent, if not higher,
of US adults take at least one form of supplement.
I have a cabinet full that I forget to take daily,
but I still have them. But there's certain phrases that

(50:24):
they have discovered are being massively overestimated in what they mean.
So they played around with a few. They used fish
oil as one of the examples. Because of the fact
that fish oil has actually not been in any study
linked causally or even having a good link to the

(50:46):
outcomes of things like stroke and other heart issues, brain function.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Or any of this.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
However, a lot of people think that they do, and
so they had some of the labels that they played
with was things like supports heart health or supports cognitive function.
Supports heart function, supports cognitive function.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
You could just eat food, but these are.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
These are these are things that aren't labeled on food.
So if you go buy a fish it won't your
fish that you buy at the grocery store won't say
supports heart health, right.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
But it does. It supports brain health, it supports life,
supports life. Yeah, I mean if you eat fish, maybe
it's good. Maybe helps you not starve to death and die,
and it gives you nutrients for sure.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
But basically, they they gave people, uh, these supplements and
also they had a made up supplement that was itself
sort of a placebo, and they had these versions that
had labels, and they had versions that had no claims
on them at all that made no it's just here's
what this is.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Go ahead and take it. Uh, And they found that
it's a good you know.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
Sixty two percent who had it with the label saying
it was like supports heart health believed the sixty two
and a half percent believed that it could was likely
to reduce a heart attack risk, whereas only fifty three
percent thought so in the one that had no claim,
which also shows that fish oil has a pretty good

(52:29):
reputation because even people without seeing that claim think it's
going to help heart health. I just think it's going
to reduce the risk of heart attack. But when it
says it on the label, it bumped it so and
they kind of found this throughout everywhere. The one that had,
the one that was kind of interesting is their fake supplement.

(52:52):
They didn't have a a no label control for it,
but they were. But it was even more dramatic rise.
There was a like twenty percent more likely belief that
it was going to have a medical outcome, a clinical

(53:12):
outcome outside of a vague nutritional outcome, which is what
the statements all are. So they're kind of pointing out, like, hey,
if if we know that these words are not clinically
binding supports brain health as wou any.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Food like you're pointing out.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
And people are interpreting it as reducing their chances of
getting dementia, then we have a lack of meeting of
the minds.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Right. We are now at a point where even though
you're using.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
Maybe the correct agreed upon terminology, the understanding that that
terminology you're using doesn't translate to a layman means that
you're now misrepresenting your product.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
And it's a tough thing.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
We educate everyone, or force a few people to change
their language, right, And that's a tough frank for somebody
who loves language. It's tough for me to say, you've
got to change the language for the for the masses occasionally,
but we need to do that occasionally. That's something that
is sometimes important. So I think it's I think this

(54:30):
is their ultimate thing. Was like, yeah, maybe at some
point this should have a regulatory review over the language
being used, but it's such a wild West.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Unregulated world.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
Within supplements, they have that FDA thing where they're supposed
to make sure that it is safe. Anything that they
make is safe for the public to take, but there's
limited testing and it's really up to the industry itself
to self police on all.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Of these things. And then when it comes to the.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Claims hard because profits.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
So when it comes yeah, when it comes to the claims,
they're not allowed to make direct medical claims, but they
can make these supports. This supports that helps this. They
can make them more vague claims. But because their organ specific,
of course, people are taking it to be clinically significant, which, yeah, anyway.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
What to do.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
I've been trying to find a graphic that I saw
from another science communicator that represents the pharma industry, economy
and money in the make America Healthy Again, which is
supplements and happiness and you know that, and uh, it

(55:50):
was really interesting that. I mean, this is what they
showed and I'd love to actually find the source of
this data. So if anyone has it, please send it
to me. But what they suggested, and the graphic was
very clear, was that the M A h A movement
has like six times the money in it that that

(56:12):
pharma does. And there are trillions of dollars in pharma.
So yeah, so it's a interesting industry, interesting place. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Which also, by the way, a lot of times that
the NFL, I don't know if you've heard of them.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
It's the National Football Laguage America is the football, the
original football, not the not the later one that we're
soccer became.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Of football that's played in Europe.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
The original football, first one called football, which is American football.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
The NFL National Football League. They they're players.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Union hopping again.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
The players Union.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
Has an independent lab that any player can send and
supplements to to have tested.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
And the reason they do this is because they've.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Discovernment are not trustworthy.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
They're not and a lot of them containing pharmaceuticals, a
lot of what they claim to be all natural. Would
it would have you know, sometimes the presence involved with them.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Uh so sometimes.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
Steroids that would be illegal for the players to be taking.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
So if they've gotten to the point.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
They can't test for those certain compounds. So they need
to make sure that the things they're taking as supplements
and other you know, additives like that, they are not
going to be detrimental to their to their ability to perform.
So that's you know, we've talked about cats, so let's
move on to territorial fish. I'm really sad Blair's not

(57:56):
here because there were some great stories this week that
I was sure I was actually whole holding on putting
them into our rundown because I was sure she was
going to bring them. But she's not here, so I
get to talk about them. Hey, Florida Atlantic University researchers
have just published a study that listened to groupers.

Speaker 6 (58:17):
What.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Yes, groupers in the Florida aquatic ecosystem are commercially important
and it's good to know what the fish are doing
and why. They just publish their study in ic ES
Journal of Marine Science. And this study it was really

(58:39):
great because it takes it was nothing to impact the fish.
It wasn't an experiment. It wasn't something changing something in
the ecosystem. It was just passive. They put microphones in
the water and have been recording since two thousand and seven.
This is a spawning site off of Puerto Rico's west coast.

(59:02):
They've been monitoring since two thousand and seven. And the
excitement about this is that they finally were able to
put together a system which they call FADAR Fish Acoustic
Detection Algorithm Research, and it's a custom built acoustic system

(59:23):
that allows them to distinguish between different calls. There are
two specific calls that they are interested in, aggression or
territoriality and mating, and so these two calls are different.
It's an easy thing for this system to be able
to differentiate between the types of calls in the aquatic environment.

(59:47):
They had over two thousand hours of recordings from FADAR
and we're able to process twelve years of acoustic data
in a number of weeks. I mean, technology can really
assist us in our ability to move science forward, especially
in the kind of stuff where you'd have to get

(01:00:08):
like undergraduates and interns and other people like uh yeah,
So it's a significant advancement. They're using machine learning this
is where learning models, where these large correlative algorithms are

(01:00:29):
really able to do some important work because they're able
to change the way that we monitor and understand and
manage the ecosystems that we live in, hopefully for the better.
And the outcome of this particular study is that they
found that historically these groupers were lovers and there were
all sorts of mating calls, and now they are fighters

(01:00:53):
and the territorial calls outnumber the mating calls. So over
the last twelve years in this Florida waters ecosystem off
of Puerto Rico, in this mating ground, in a place
where these fish go to mate, they're not doing as

(01:01:14):
much mating as they used to. They're fighting over territory.
And so if they're fighting over territory, that means that
resources are limited and that there is competition that is
limiting their ability to procreate, and so that's going to
limit population growth, which is important for the commercial aspect

(01:01:36):
of human stuff. So the bottom line here is that
this company has been able not company, I don't know,
I said company. These researchers at this Florida institution have
been able to use what you would call artificial intelligence,
but it is a large data model to be able

(01:01:59):
to create a system that can monitor and understand the
warning signs for the populations that could lead to them
being at risk. So hopefully they'll be able to adapt
their conservation strategies before it's too late. Anyway, Fedar and
the researchers are saying, thanks to Fadar, we processed twelve

(01:02:21):
years of acoustic data and weeks and covering patterns that
would have taken years to find its game changer from
monitoring and managing fish like the grouper the red hind.
So it's very very interesting. Hopefully they can just use
this kind of monitoring technico. They didn't have to poke
anything right, it was just listening and they were able

(01:02:43):
to understand something. They haven't done anything with it yet,
but hopefully this research will lead to changes to help
sustain the fishery because obviously there are problems afoot. Moving
on to problem. I'm waiting for Justin to come back
for this particular study, but this one is one that

(01:03:07):
I think Justin would be interested in, and Blair, I'm
really sad that she's not here either. Researchers published in
Nature Communications a study called harms of introduced large herbivores
outweigh benefits to native biodiversity. And this is the first
time that researchers have really taken a look at a

(01:03:28):
large swath of studies to determine exactly what the dominant
outcome is when you take large mammalian herbivores. So like
the bigger ones, right, not you know, not little tiny
ones and not you know, adding little plants or other
little competitors. These are the big ones. The the fauna.

(01:03:56):
When you introduce horses, when you introduce goats, when you
introduce sheep, how do they impact an ecosystem? These researchers
they knew of course islands are going to be impacted. Also,
they had a hypothesis looking at whether trophic level or
like you know, how high up in the level of

(01:04:18):
who eats, who you are, and how you are impacted
by the introduction of a new herb before. The problem
is they've determined that there's either a real significant bias
to studies and finding negative outcomes, or all the people

(01:04:40):
growing over the last several years more than a decade
about the need to talk about the positive outcomes, that
there just haven't been enough people publishing about those positive
outcomes that we haven't looked at that data, and so
they don't know necessarily whether or not their data is imbalanced,
but they suggest that much be what's going on. But

(01:05:02):
their advice is like, hey, before you go putting a big, big,
large mammalian herbivore in some place, you should really think
about it. Because the majority of the outcomes that they

(01:05:24):
saw were that these herbivores had negative impacts, and even
the positive impacts that were seen deteriorated over time, and
so the deterioration of those positive impacts over time could
potentially be attributed to other aspects of the introduction and
the disruption of the ecosystem, so that it's not something

(01:05:44):
that's actually helping the ecosystem.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
And that's why we don't need cats, right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
No, but justin in this particular situation they talk about
alien megafauna or the there are multiple situations where this
group is looking at the introduction or reintroduction of large
mammalian herbivores into ecosystems, and there are a lot of
people talking about as climate is changing, as different species

(01:06:14):
are endangered, as ecosystems are endangered, how do we go
about our conservation efforts, and people have tried to put rabbits, goats, cows,
the other species different places. In this particular study did
not find an overwhelming positive impact to putting the big

(01:06:36):
grass eaters in ecosystems. And so where I wanted to
take this they I think they kept their focus very
close to things that are still alive and maybe about
to go to extinct or maybe just just recently when extinct,
not like the mammoths. And so this is where I

(01:06:59):
wanted to bring it in that the conservation impact of
what they have seen, and they they say, as far
as we know, there's been no quantitative, system systematically collected
and taxonomically controlled study and support of any of these
claims of benefit as to the introduction of species.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
I find they did it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
So they tried to do it, and they're like, here
it is, and it's the positive stuff doesn't even stay
positive that long. So my question is just keep Should
we just keep the mammoth inside of fence?

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Sure, but I think we should still bring it back.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
And to be fair, we've found now mammoth, I mean
mammoths are in southern California.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
They've been found down into Mexico, so not five.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
These are fossils, thank you clarification.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
Yes, The point though is just because the last stand
of the mammoth was in cold climates also doesn't mean
that they.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
Can't be.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
Much more diverse in terms of what type of habitat
that they might be able to thrive in.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
And therefore it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Is related to the mammoths and the habit they habitat
they might thrive in, not what they might do to
the habitat they are put in. And so the question is,
which you have raised in previous episodes, is that because
they are like seed eaters, herbivores, the grass poopers, than
they distribute seeds and do stuff and there's no big

(01:08:40):
ungulates like would be a mammoth in North America. In
you have suggested that maybe we need this in the ecosystems,
But the question is do we Because this study suggests
that they're the troph rewilding, the idea of rewilding is

(01:09:03):
not going to end up in a good way.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
I have the same skepticism towards this study as I
have towards the ones that were claiming benefits, which is
that on paper whatever, don't I don't think you have
enough of a grip on because things like the reintroduction

(01:09:30):
of the wolf had a ton of downstream effects that
nobody was predicting when they were doing it. They were
just trying to preserve a species. They were trying to
preserve a species, but they did not predict what the
beavers would do.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Oh, they had no idea what the beavers would do.
That was a new thing, and.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
It was such a seemingly unrelated because it wasn't a
prase species, it wasn't a direct interactive species.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
It's so interesting to me that, like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Question right, the off center effects.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
Yeah, and they're bigger than I think people expect. But
we also have to throw out there as like, well,
while we don't have mammoths and bison, we have cows everywhere,
so there is.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
A problem actually right, But we.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
Also are going to at the same time be missing
the giant predator megafauna interactions when you bring these back,
And so you're, yeah, you'd be bringing back one piece
of the puzzle while missing another one.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
You know, you don't have the.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
Short faced bear or the of the saber toothed cat
being reintroduced at the same time, So you're also missing
part of the rest of the ecosystem that they existed in. Yeah,
that said, I think, you know, even just for the
sake of no of trying, I'm all for the mammoth

(01:11:08):
return to to a mammoth park somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
You know, fence area.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
Yes, And and I wouldn't be opposed to a rewilding experiment,
but we we will learn then what the real story
of the mammoths alone without the predator impact would be.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
And I think that's I think that's a really really
great point.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
So then we can bring back the dire wolf and
the saber cat.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
And really agree and the giant, the giant sloth. Can't
can't leave the giant sloth out of the picture once
you get this ball rolling.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
And I think that's I think your point is. I
think your point is like right on the nose where
it's anytime you start just reintroducing or rewilding, if you
just introduce one animal, and especially if it's like a
top it's a top herbivore, right and just above them
should be predators. And if there are no top predators

(01:12:10):
in the ecosystem, how is that going to impact the
entire trophic cascade? And if it's not the right herbivore
for the system. It kind of fits what eh, but
it's not native or past native or it just should fit.

(01:12:30):
The question is what if it can take advantage of resources?
Is it taking resources away from other species that our native?
Is it going to disrupt in a really really bad way?

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
So there is, and the answer is going to be
the answer will always be yes, because it will be
because here it's it's it's going to change the ecosystem
so that they're looking at will all of the things
have the resources that they had before the answers No,
exact same thing happens when you take an animal out

(01:13:05):
of that ecosystem when something goes extinct through over hunting
or disease or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
Which we've done over and over again, over and over again,
and not even just humans, but climate change through the.

Speaker 3 (01:13:17):
Negative effect of something going extinct is going to be
the same as the negative like you know, it's the
same sort of resource redistribution, ecosystem habitat, reconfiguration of the
food chain and everything else will happen if you reintroduce
the question though that you have to ask, and then

(01:13:39):
at the end of the day, is well if we
have more things there that are redistributing, finding their new niche,
recalibrating with this new life form or missing one.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
There's always winners and losers.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
I think, you know, I think, and I think that
is that's no. But that's the big question in the
long term goal. Right, what we have done is reduce
diversity in ecosystems. And if the goal is to maintain diversity,
you have to make sure that whatever change you make
is going to increase or maintain diversity and not decrease it.

(01:14:17):
And I think that would be ideas slightly, But I'm
just talking from the genetic perspective of trying to maintain
as much diversity within an ecosystem as possible, because that
leads to the healthiest ecosystems that don't that are more

(01:14:41):
resilient in times of stretch stress, which our planet where
we are putting it into a time of stress. We
need to take out like the human Oh we did this,
but we're like treating the whole planet like our zoo. Right,
it's our farm, it's our zoo. We have to quote
unquote humans have to manage now, right, So we can

(01:15:04):
either eat everything and destroy everything and make everything the
Black Forest with no diversity, or we can try and
maintain diversity as long as possible in the hope that
that helps everything.

Speaker 3 (01:15:20):
Right, And you're going to make my point here, helping
me make my point better than I had articulated it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
But we're working together on this.

Speaker 3 (01:15:31):
We need the ability to add diversity because what we
have now currently can only reduce it further.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
And I think that's the thing that we need to consider.
Are there certain places that have been negatively impact impacted?
Their diversity is negatively impacted because of human activity? Can
we help that? Like, that's a great question, And that's
why I was getting at the whole question of like,

(01:16:03):
are you going to introduce a change that will take
away from that, because that's not what we want to do,
because if you take away from the diversity and the
genetic diversity, then what you end up doing is reducing
the ability of certain biomes and ecosystems to support human life. Selfishly,
I'm just talking from like the selfish human perspective, not

(01:16:27):
just from life on Earth perspective, which we can do
as well, because I totally go for that one. But yeah,
if we're going to try and support life on the planet.
Let's maintain diversity as long as possible. If we killed
all the things, put some stuff back.

Speaker 1 (01:16:46):
Perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:16:47):
That's all we talk about when we're talking about reintroducing
the mammoth.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
The rewilding question is so fascinating, it's fraught it. Yeah,
I love it. Okay, moving on from this rewilding and
I'm glad you're back and not poppin'. Did I have
anything else for the first part? Oh no, I don't
have anything right now. I think it's almost time to

(01:17:11):
just go to you for a second. But I just
want to say thank you everybody for being here right now.
We are having a great time and moving through all
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(01:17:32):
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and that are really important actually to look at from
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(01:17:55):
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Thank you for your support. Can't do it without you,

(01:18:16):
all right, coming on back right now. I think Justin
has taken mushrooms, or at least he's got mushrooms or
something like that. This is this Week in Science.

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
Uh well, no, that's not that's not quite the scenario.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
No I have.

Speaker 3 (01:18:38):
I do have a magic mushroom story, which is fascinating.
At least it's, you know, one of those one of
those things that I didn't know existed.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
So wait, you didn't know magic mushrooms existed?

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
I did you know that there's two with an identical
molecule that derived the magic mushroom molecule?

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
Are they all planted in Golden Gate Park?

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
I don't know study.

Speaker 3 (01:19:11):
Where is this from? I don't I don't see where
this is from. This is a head of the research
group Pharmaceutical Microbiology Microbiology at Friedrich Schiller University Jenna and
the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
What a big name for an institution.

Speaker 3 (01:19:36):
So Psilocybin is a substance found in the magic mushroom
psychedelic mushrooms that is been attributed with being able to
profoundly alter consciousness and has some really interesting effects that
have been shown in some preliminary studies for silencing the

(01:20:04):
is it is it migdala is that they're really old
part of the brain that does all the alert alert alert, Kiki,
did we lose Kirstenim?

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
I think we lost kick again. So this is really
important because this is a part of.

Speaker 3 (01:20:21):
The brain that is ancient animal part of your brain
that's used to screaming out when it sees a lion,
registers a threat, registers danger, and it says.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
Alert, Alert, Alert.

Speaker 3 (01:20:40):
And while we have evolved past needing to only react
to this part of our brain, we have these executive
higher functions that are now available to us to assess.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
Danger with a little bit more critical thinking.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
While that that alert system is hasard direct line to
our physiology at times and preparing for fight or flight,
our executive function has a really hard time communicating backwards
to this ancient amygdala, part of the brain that's doing
all this alerting, that's doing all this this fear analysis,

(01:21:21):
and so what ends up happening is we see a danger.
And a classic example that they I've seen of this is, oh,
there's a zebra goes to a watering hole and gets
chased by a lion and then runs off. Alert, Alert,
takes off, and then like an hour later, that zebra
is drinking water at a different watering hole and not

(01:21:42):
freaking out that it just got chased by line.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
It's amigoals shuts off. We're no longer in danger.

Speaker 3 (01:21:53):
When you have conditions like PTSD or certain types of stress,
what's happening a lot of those cases is magdela is alert, alert, alert,
telling you that there is danger, and even though you're
no longer in that dangerous position, your executive function brain
can't reach back and tell it to be quiet. I

(01:22:16):
can't tell it it's fine. I have everything into control.
There's a lion, but I'm in an armored vehicle.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
I need not fear and is it now?

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
I got it right, Keygee, Because you're the brain expert.
Magdala is the old part of the brain that's it's
doing like the alert danger danger.

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
Okay, so I'm on.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
The motion you mostly like fear and yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:37):
So one of the things that silicabin has been able
to magic mushrooms ingestion has been found to do is
to silence that alert system, to allow perhaps even the
executive function in part of your brain to communicate back
to it and be like it's cool, we're good, no need.

Speaker 1 (01:22:56):
To set off the larks.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
So it's been preliminary in a bunch of studies, they
found that it's done a pretty decent job at reducing
symptoms of PTSD.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
Yeah, We've talked about it for a while and it's
it seems like psilocybin could be one of the possible
avenues to treatment.

Speaker 1 (01:23:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:23:18):
So in that there's a great interest in psilocybin as
as a molecule that can have these great pharmacy potential
pharmaceutical effects that would you greatly help some some some
psychological disorders.

Speaker 1 (01:23:32):
Okay, So but this study is what they were looking
at is uh Psilocybe.

Speaker 3 (01:23:39):
Which is a species known to create the psilocybin. But
they also found that something called a fibercap mushroom employs
it in a completely different bigo chemical arsenal instead of
enzymes that also arrives at the same molecule.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
And this is not like this is not like a
closely related this is.

Speaker 3 (01:24:01):
Not a apparently it doesn't grow on feces. This is
a very different mushroom that grows in a very different environment.
And yet somehow, for some reason, has come up with
the same molecule and they don't know why. It's also
kind of the interesting thing. They don't know why theocybin

(01:24:22):
is in either mushroom. They don't know how it functions
to benefit. Part of the theory is that it could
be a deterrent. So an animal might it changes color.
It has a color reaction where it will kind of
turn it the mushroom bluish, and that might be a

(01:24:44):
clue as to, you know, for a potential predator not
to eat it. Also, if the potential predator has a
psychoactive effect, they might decide that they don't want the mushroom. Again,
they don't really know those are all gases.

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
Did they talk about the gold flakes.

Speaker 1 (01:25:05):
No, I don't think they mentioned that this.

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):
Color gold flakes. Okay, good.

Speaker 1 (01:25:13):
The quote here.

Speaker 3 (01:25:18):
From Hofmeister, who must be one of the researchers involved
with this. Nature does nothing without reason. I don't know
if I can, but nature does usually a thing for
a reason that we don't appreciate right away, or for
a reason that it doesn't need anymore. Is just stuck
with you know, like whales still have toes, but it's

(01:25:40):
not that they're there for no reason. They used to
have a very good reason. They just don't need them now.
But they say there must be an advantage to both
fibercat mushrooms in the forest and suicide species on manure
or wood malts producing this molecule.

Speaker 1 (01:25:54):
We just don't know what.

Speaker 3 (01:25:55):
It is yet, but it does offer another source, another
tool and another and actually another enzymatic.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
Toolkit that reached this molecule.

Speaker 2 (01:26:07):
So it also that's actually the most interesting aspect is
that it's not the same pathway, but it got to
the same plate place. And so from so from a
chemistry point of view, from a how do you synthesize
kind of question, like this is where it's really interesting, right,
like like yeah, how do we get there in the lab?

(01:26:30):
How can we do these things? And maybe how can
we create a psilocybe without the hallucinogenic effects that can
have the therapeutic effects. I don't know if that's possible,
but can you And like this is this is how
you start getting at the different place.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
Yeah, or or it's the mushrooms world of just trying
to tell the animals to.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
Chill out, get over it, freaking out yelling.

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):
That, yeah, stop your yelling, just you know, then only
the yelling. If you've got, you know, somebody taking you
with you, taking you with them. I guess we are
not Alice in Wonderland, but hopefully the science can take

(01:27:24):
you places that are close to Wonderland. Every once in
a while, I've got stories to finish up the show
related to brains, just to you know, about plastics in
your brain. Everybody's talking about how much plastic is in

(01:27:44):
everything these days. Will some researchers at Trinity College, Dublin
just publish their study in Journal of Hazardous Materials Plastics
about how how polystyrene nanoplastics impact mitochondria and their function.

(01:28:07):
So we have been shown over and over and over
again mitochondria are essential for proper functioning of our neurons.
And that is the mitochondria become disordered or dysfunctional, that
that leads to mental decline, neural decline, that our cognitive

(01:28:27):
functions become less that it leads to some aspects of aging,
which gosh, if we can fight that, that's great. But
all of us are full of plastic right now, including
all sorts of parts of you everywhere exactly. And so
this study was the idea came from an undergraduate and

(01:28:51):
they ended up looking at polystyrene nanoplastics and how they
impact various aspects of the electionctron transport chain in the
mitochondrial system, the complexes within cells, so the neurons, these complexes,
there's numbers, there's mitochondrial complexes one, two, three, four, yes,

(01:29:16):
and so the electron transport is basically it's like photosynthesis.
There's changes of hydrogen ions for electrons and they move
through these complexes developing changes with ATP and like you know,
there's this whole process. It's really really amazing and honestly,

(01:29:40):
the fact that like it drives the powering of our
cells that allows us to do this, it's amazing. So anyway,
they did use higher amounts of these polystyrene nanoplastics that
are currently in human exposures. So this is one of

(01:30:01):
those studies where it's like, oh, okay, this is like more
so they're overexposing. But in their overexposure, they did find
that the nanoplastics impaired electron transfer between complex one and
three and complex two and three, and so it was
also positive possibly inhibited at lower concentrations as well. And

(01:30:26):
they looked at these effects in synaptic mitochondria. So synapses
are important for the communication that happens between different brain
cells and the expression of neurotransmitters and all sorts of
really important brain functions, and so all of this mitochondrial

(01:30:50):
impact could have implications for neurological disease and aging. Could
We're not saying this is a smoking gun, but this
study does show that within their system, not in humans,
not in mice, in cells, in dishes, when they applied

(01:31:12):
these nanoplastics to the mitochondrial systems, that the neurons didn't
do what they should as well as they should. So anyway,
everybody happy plastick ing, why don't you polytetrafluorine up?

Speaker 3 (01:31:29):
Can I throw something out there? This is a stray
didn't bring out of the UK found they looked at
one hundred and fifty five hot and cold beverage samples
and tested them for synthetic plastic particles. Yeah, and they
found them in one hundred percent of samples. And they

(01:31:50):
also they found them in higher amounts than were expected.
So this is also the suggesting that a lot of
the estimations of how many microplastics people are being exposed
to might be greatly underestimated currently.

Speaker 8 (01:32:07):
Yay, Yeah, there's more in you, more than you think,
more than you think.

Speaker 3 (01:32:20):
And I know, I know, I'm I'm going to be
in like big trouble because I am addicted to the
convenience of.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
The microwavs of whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:32:33):
No, I don't microwave bags of anything. I got rid
of microwaves because they were trying to read my brain waves.

Speaker 2 (01:32:39):
Oh my gosh, you not just I just don't.

Speaker 3 (01:32:42):
I don't like microwave cheese and I eat cheese on everything,
and so it's just like microwave never was my friend.

Speaker 1 (01:32:48):
It like doesn't melt cheese properly. So sorry, I couldn't
use it.

Speaker 3 (01:32:52):
But uh no, my my, my, like insta coffee maker
thing has little plastic pods for all of the coffee,
and I'm going to willingly take plastic microplastics with every
cup of coffee just out of this shear convenience of
having my coffee right away.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
I really think this is the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
Water.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
It's a plastic pod.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
Everything wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
It is everything and I also wrong with the disposal.
It's everything wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:33:29):
There's nothing right about this process, and I refuse to
give it up because I can have coffee in two minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:33:36):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:33:37):
So moving on from the nanoparticles and our brains and
learning and memory and hey, that's bad, Let's move to astracites.
We have talked about the glio cells in the brain
for a really long time as more than just packing
material in the brain, and that they're involved in the
immune system, and they're also involved in the brain's synaptic transmission.

(01:33:57):
That these astrocites probably act on a very local scale,
not in the long distance scale that neurons do, but
like in a much much more local functional way. And
so a study that just came out published by researchers
from France and Switzerland in the journal Cell. These researchers

(01:34:23):
have for the first time really causally been able to image,
which is one of the things that I think is
the really cool thing about this study. It's not just
going hey, we have molecular signals that suggest these things
are important. They went in and they have three D image.

(01:34:48):
They use calcium imaging. They have gone in and been
able to look at where astrocites actually connect around synapses,
and there is what they call leaflets now and I
wasn't aware of this previously. So astrocytes have leaflets, and

(01:35:12):
the leaflets wrap around synapses and are communicating via calcium
via electrical stimulation with the synapse. The astrocytes are not
only connected to this one synapse with a leaflet, they
are connected to multiple synapses, multiple leaflets, and so the

(01:35:34):
astrocytes are moderating the communication that's occurring in the local
area of neuronal communication. And so where we've talked before
about like upregulation down regulation, like the neurons, like the
neurons doing their thing. This actually this study has actually

(01:35:58):
created a visual representation of how these astrocites and the
endoplasmic reticulum that is like all up in the leaflets
to release the calcium when it gets stimulated in the
right way. They have done this three D electron microscopy
that is visually showing that when multiple synapses are being

(01:36:20):
held by an astracite, that the astracite is like oooh
and like moderating the whole thing. It is. It's a
beautiful study, and I just I think it's really amazing
to be able to go from the biggest salt of
we have evidence that astracites are involved, we have evidence

(01:36:42):
that the astracites are doing this calcium signaling. We have
evidence that astracites are involved in the immune says oh,
we've got this is visual evidence. And it's just this
really really really really well done study. And I just
want to say it's pretty incredible. And I think one

(01:37:04):
of the people, Lucas Benoit, is the first author. I
think I'm not sure if they are an older laboratory person,
but anyway, the researchers who who did this work have
created something that is entirely special, looking at them in

(01:37:26):
the mouse brain, not in a dish, but looking at
cido architecture, slicing it up in lots of pieces, and
trying to figure out, you know, really how the brain works.
I think it's I'm I'm gonna open up the actual

(01:37:48):
study page and this. They have a bunch of supplemental
videos that they've put together that are hard to make out.
But the one I'm putting up here on the screen
right now is a visual representation of shafts and leaflets,
these different morphologies that are part of the peripheral astracites

(01:38:10):
and their processes and how the three D nature of
their existence within the brain, how it works, and the
stacks of these two D images to be able to
create using electro electro microscopy is pretty special, and there's
a whole bunch. So they've got calcium C forty three

(01:38:32):
immun gold labeling to be able to reveal leaflet domains
connected by gap junctions, and so gap junctions are these
structures between cells that allow the flow of ions and
nutrients and other things, and so they're able to identify
these gap junctions. The gap junctions basically mean that there's

(01:38:55):
a connection there, that there is a flow of ions,
probably calcium most off most most usually, But they've made
some incredibly beautiful detailed videos of these regions of mouse brains.

(01:39:19):
Being able to identify parts of the neurons from two
D images to three D is where we're at right now,
and it's it's allowing us to really really understand the connections.
And I'm not not being conceptual here, like literal connections
between different cell types and how important, how important astrocites

(01:39:43):
are to our.

Speaker 3 (01:39:44):
And this is this is quite different than than the
model that we've been working with, Right, how do you mean.

Speaker 2 (01:39:54):
I mean historically, Historically the model is that neuron gets input,
neuron sends input down the axon, it sends it to
the synapse, neurotransmitters come out. Neurotransmitters do the electrochemical thing
to the next neuron and the dendrites and then it stimulates.

(01:40:14):
But then you have the dendrites of a neuron grab
information and stimulation from or or like turn off signals
from lots of different places, right, and they average all
of that to determine whether or not that neuron fires

(01:40:35):
and goes and does something else. But now what we're
saying is that these astrocites are there wrapped around and modulating.
If they're a modulator, right, I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:40:49):
Yeah, I'd not heard of them, Yeah doing having this
like function before.

Speaker 2 (01:40:58):
Yeah, so like this.

Speaker 1 (01:41:00):
Signal processing, like yeah, yeah, it is exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:41:04):
And so when we talk about you know, neural networks
and this whole idea, like this kind of stuff, it
has been like fudge factors and pluses and minuses in there,
but nobody really has taken astrocytes into it, like these
modulators into account for how the signal like how signals

(01:41:25):
get transmitted, and the astracites could be like yeah nah,
like it could be the astracites just going nah, We're
not going to go there.

Speaker 1 (01:41:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:41:36):
So now what are the implications for like every neurological
disease or an affliction, Like have we checked up on
everybody's astrocyte health? Is that a thing we need to
go back and look at for everything?

Speaker 2 (01:41:54):
Well, I mean that is part of this the way
we're moving forward because it's glial cells like they like
they manage the brain. They're like they're they're they're taking
care of everything. But I've heard yeah, this is this
is all so so cancer the brain inflammation in the brain.

(01:42:20):
When we're talking about this stuff this like aging disorders,
neurodegenerate diseases, that is astrocites, Like.

Speaker 3 (01:42:31):
We're talking about their failure to protect Yep, we're not
talking about We've I've not heard them talking about there's
a failure of misfiring, a failure of processing for you know,
an interference by uh just a failure to protect but

(01:42:52):
not actual active potential for an active interference.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
Uh So, like dust off every paper where you.

Speaker 3 (01:43:01):
Saw astracite anomaly as weekly associated in some way with something,
and go and get a refined look at it now,
and like let's dove into those research papers and see
what all's there.

Speaker 2 (01:43:14):
Yeah, because it's not as simple a system, and we've
known this for a long time, but it's this really
shows that this is especially like in the HIPI campus,
you could say, like the tripartite synapse where it's like one,
two three, you have three synapses and that's the simple
pathway and blah blah blah, but no astrocites are involved

(01:43:34):
in the whole thing. And so there are what they
say here. A leaflet frequently provides a matrix embedding multiple
synapses multiple zoo. Well, some leaflets showed no apparent contact
with synapses, possibly being philipodia like structures not yet synaptically engaged.

(01:43:59):
So maybe ast sites are involved in our synaptic plasticity.
Maybe they're part of that whole process. We've never considered that. Really,
most leaflets embedded a number of synapses proportional to their volume.
Large leaflets likely leaflet domains embedded numerous synapses. Ninety percent

(01:44:28):
of the synapses they looked at were part of a
synaptic cluster that interacted with a common leaflet from the
astracite That.

Speaker 3 (01:44:40):
Almost gives it a hierarchical curl perspective.

Speaker 2 (01:44:44):
Right from the astracite perspective, forty five percent of the
leaflets were associated with a single synapse. The remaining fifty
five surrounded multiple most often two to four, but quite
frequently also five to ten. Sometimes large leaflet domains housed
ten to fifty synapses, and in an exceptional case, one

(01:45:09):
hundred and one synapses. Anyway, we honestly have so much
to learn. This is amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:45:21):
Yeah, that's a good story.

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):
I'd start, Oh my gosh, okay, and the last one,
last story. Are you ready for nightmare fuel? Like, honestly,
this is right.

Speaker 1 (01:45:35):
It is right before bed.

Speaker 3 (01:45:36):
So I don't know why why I would waste that
nightmare fuel on the first thing tomorrow morning.

Speaker 2 (01:45:43):
Oh right, now, let's go there. Oh my gosh, okay,
I really really wish that Blair. We're here because spiders.
Let's talk about spiders. Is everybody loving all the orb
weaver spiders that are outside their door? Right now, like
it's Halloween spider season. The spiders are out, they're making.

Speaker 3 (01:46:05):
It's all lady orb weavers. I don't know where all
the where the male orb weavers are. It's all lady
orb weavers everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
But you see them solitary or do you see them social?
Do you see hundreds together?

Speaker 1 (01:46:22):
I haven't everyone. We've seen one at a time. I
haven't seen the social.

Speaker 2 (01:46:27):
Yeah, so social spiders are like zero point one percent
of all spiders. They are really in the minority. But
there are spiders, probably mostly in Australia that in the
huntsmen and other species where there are social and solitary

(01:46:50):
representatives among the species within a genus. So this study
that was published in Integrative zoo Ology looked at spider brains.
The researchers looked at the brains of huntsmen and crab spiders.

(01:47:12):
Because they found solitary and social examples of each, they
brought them back to the lab. It's super exciting. So
basically the bottom line is that if you're gonna get
bitten by a spider in Australia, make sure it's a

(01:47:33):
social huntsman because the social huntsman spiders have less like
poisonous venom because they all share their prey. The spiders
did not have a decrease in their venom, So there's

(01:47:53):
different ecological aspects I.

Speaker 1 (01:47:54):
Guess that can make I guess I could see why.

Speaker 3 (01:47:57):
My fear is that the social ones are are going
to also be like they'll have like some sort of
social hunting technique. So if you get bit by one,
chances are there's another one sneaking up right behind you.
It's just a distraction for five others to leap on you, and.

Speaker 2 (01:48:14):
They're they're not socially hunting and coming to get you
like that. But yeah, the huntsman spiders in this study,
apparently they can have colonies of up to three hundred spiders,
which huntsmen are like, they big spiders and wow, so

(01:48:35):
a lot of these predatory big spiders coming together in
a colony, Like, how did that happen? So this is
a really interesting study because they're looking at it also
from evolutionary perspective, and they acknowledge they can't answer most
of the questions that they have, and they're like, this
would be a great question to study. This would also
be a great question to study. But as they addressed

(01:49:01):
their question, which was, let's look at these different ecological strategies, right,
social versus solitary, And let's look at the brain, because
we know that in social insects, in social mammals, all

(01:49:22):
sorts of animals, there are specialized areas of the brain
that have become larger, not just because of body size,
but because of use. And so in social insects we
have the mushroom bodies that are larger. There are you know,
lots of things, and so I just want to point
out that in the spider brain, it's not like our brain,

(01:49:44):
where it's a brain in a brain case, and it's
this separate thing. The brain of a spider is this
mush of cells that is in the middle of everything.
It's next to the esophagus, next to the venom gland.
It's like it the visual nerves come in. It is
this tiny, tiny organ in what is it the the

(01:50:11):
thorax of the spiders. And so the spiders, they brought
them into the lab, they got them out of the wild.
They they looked at their brains, they looked they did
CT imaging and were able to look at the size.

(01:50:32):
They weren't looking at number of neurons but they were
looking at overall volume, and what they were able to
say is like, oh, look, these spiders that are social,
these ones that make leaf colonies, they have a growth
in their visual areas. So the areas that are larger

(01:50:52):
seem to be visual. But the ones, the different species
that they looked at, they're like, hmm, I'm not really
sure if that's because they made themselves a little shaded
colony out of leaves and they hide in the dark,
and so their eyes are bigger and so they need
a bigger visual field in their brain to check it out,
or if it's a result of social cues. So they

(01:51:15):
don't know that, but they were able to say that
in these insects and insects they're spiders, these arthropods. They
were able to show that the mushroom bodies, which are
important for bees and other organists, of the arcuate nucleus,

(01:51:38):
these parts of the brain that are important for learning
and other insects, they also were important for the spiders.
But they're not really sure about how exactly. There's no
causal link. And this paper was so great because they
really were like, I can't link it causally, but we've

(01:52:01):
got some stuff here and they're like, yeah, they're really great.

Speaker 1 (01:52:06):
This is so interesting. But I want to go back
to the first graphic you shared.

Speaker 2 (01:52:09):
The first one with the spiders snow the brain, Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:52:15):
What's behind?

Speaker 1 (01:52:16):
What is right behind the esophagus there?

Speaker 2 (01:52:19):
The sucking stomach.

Speaker 1 (01:52:22):
What I'm learning a thing here? What is a sucking stomach?

Speaker 3 (01:52:28):
Is that how they like inhale, you get inhaled into
a stomach?

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):
Is that what's happening?

Speaker 2 (01:52:35):
Kind of uh m hm, yeah, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:52:43):
You get slurped in with the sucking stomach or is
it sucking the juices out of you when you're in there?

Speaker 1 (01:52:49):
Like what is it?

Speaker 3 (01:52:51):
It's part of the it's happening in the sucking stomach.

Speaker 2 (01:53:00):
So I think it's it is like a what do
you call it? When a sucker thing, like when you
want to suck juice out of whatever, Like it creates
a because of the muscles changing the cross section and
the volume of the stomach. As it opens, the volume

(01:53:24):
changes and it sucks the juices from the prey that
have been digested because of whatever was digestive enzymes that
were put into the prey through the chilliss ray that
those are sucked in like a straw.

Speaker 1 (01:53:41):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:53:43):
So it's the stomach is not theyre's not muscles like
we have are swallowing muscles. There's a whole process that
we're not. It's not that our stomach gets bigger and
sucks stuff into it, but with spiders, their muscles open
it and it creates a pressure differential.

Speaker 3 (01:54:05):
Yeah, yeah, Brian Burwell, Yes, a turkey baster.

Speaker 2 (01:54:12):
Perfect, thank you, Brian. Yes that's what I was going.

Speaker 1 (01:54:18):
For, all right, answers pump as well. Yes, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (01:54:23):
Yeah. So in these spiders, but the brain is like
maybe as big as the sucking stomach.

Speaker 7 (01:54:32):
It's not that it's a little smaller even yeah, smaller.

Speaker 2 (01:54:35):
Right, So the question is like, what is in the
brain that is going to be doing things? And this
is the big question.

Speaker 3 (01:54:43):
Also shows that we have so much brain that we
just we did probably aren't using, right, because if your
spider can make webs and do cool stuff and do
all the you know, be social even and do all
the things with that tiny, tiny, teeny tiny brain, I
feel like we should know more things. I feel like

(01:55:05):
I should at least remember the names of plants.

Speaker 2 (01:55:08):
So here's the question, right, And this is where this
study ends up going which is very interesting. They looked
at the solitary species, they looked at the social species.
They found that in both of the social species there
were increases in these mushroom bodies and also the visual areas.

(01:55:32):
And it was only in the huntsmen that you had
the decrease in the venom lands. But the question is
what they ask is what led to each of these
different species getting into the social way of being because
spiders really like to be solitary most of the time.
So there are multiple hypotheses, which is that with spiders

(01:55:58):
carrying they're young, not you know, not eating, they're young
as quickly getting more okay, with other spiders being close,
that suddenly that led to this social thing. But that
doesn't happen all the time. And so in these instances,
the crab spiders and the huntsman spiders, they came at

(01:56:20):
it differently, and so you have potentially different personalizations, different
adaptations within the brain and within the physiology. Hard to tell, right, Yeah,
And so like the crab spiders are more like they

(01:56:42):
like leaves and they create these they like surround themselves
and leaves and they love all that, but they hunt
differently than the huntsmen. It's like very it's different. They're different,
different species, different arganisms. And so the cephalothorax is the thing,
like this area, they've got neurons coming into this little

(01:57:04):
tiny area, and this little tiny area has like three
little teeny tiny areas in it, and they determined that
there's one the proto cerebrum, that is the part that changes.
That's like the big thing for the spiders. And so
the question now is like, what really is going on here?

(01:57:29):
This is something that's not related to body mass. This
is a change in the way that resources and mass
have been allocated that is specific to the way that
these species have decided to live socially versus solitarily. And
so the question is what's going on It's arcent body,

(01:57:52):
the mushroom body, when there are other areas that really
aren't that different. But at the same time, we're still
looking at error, the standard of error that they all overlap.
So it's really it's a very interesting story. And I
think because we're looking at these social spiders that are

(01:58:18):
only zero point one percent of all spiders, we've ever
discovered spiders that like to live live together, share food,
share parenting, not eat each other zero point one percent.
Perhaps this is not the old way of spiders, but
perhaps it is something that is currently undergoing evolution, and

(01:58:41):
so maybe we are finding it at a step in
its transitions.

Speaker 1 (01:58:48):
The early stages of the Starstrip, Starship Troopers, Bug Planet.

Speaker 3 (01:58:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:58:55):
Anyway, I hope everybody just thinks about the spiders all
the time, Like the spider brains, think about the spiders.
Think about the spiders who are living together in their colonies.

(01:59:20):
Who can live like three hundred spiders.

Speaker 1 (01:59:25):
Together another statistically insignificant. Well, there's always gonna be a
little overlap. And that overlap might.

Speaker 3 (01:59:32):
Be you're like the one social spider in the anti
social colony.

Speaker 1 (01:59:38):
You're like, hey, want to hang out? They're like, no, no,
go away.

Speaker 3 (01:59:42):
Oh come on, I just got a big screen TV.
I'm cooking up a bunch of bees on the barbecue
over here. No, I don't want to hang out free
slur bees. I don't know what the And then on
the other hand, in the social spider group, there's gonna
be some that just you can't be bothered, just never

(02:00:02):
show up.

Speaker 1 (02:00:03):
They pretend like they're going to go, oh, there's an event.

Speaker 3 (02:00:06):
Yeah, oh, yeah, I'll probably be able to get over
there at some point.

Speaker 1 (02:00:09):
Yeah, and they never.

Speaker 2 (02:00:11):
So this is the question, Like, there is a suggestion
with mushroom bodies and bees that it has to do
with social dominance, and that the larger the mushroom body is,
the more dominant the individual is within the hive. We
know bees have like a crazy social system and that
their brain allows them to do that, and that individuals

(02:00:34):
genetically are like set up to have different brain arrangements,
right that we haven't fully elucidated yet, but we do
know that they've got mushroom bodies that are bigger than
non social colonial insects, that there's stuff going on there,
and that it's related to hierarchy, and so what else

(02:00:58):
is happening within the spiders? I love though this This
paper really written very well. They set up all their unknowns,
they're like, yeah, yeah, I don't know it, like I
really from a transparent perspective of what we know and
what we don't know, and what we set out to
do and what we can do and what we'd like

(02:01:18):
to do. They put it all in there. It's really
well done.

Speaker 3 (02:01:22):
So yeah, and it's good that that always boost confidence.
I've always find an overconfident or overstatement filled paper to
just seem less reliable.

Speaker 1 (02:01:37):
It makes me, it makes me like, it makes me doubt.
They're hard data, which is weird. It makes with.

Speaker 2 (02:01:44):
Their data they're like, but we we couldn't do this,
somebody should. This is a great direction to study. It
is very well done. But anyway, I hope you all
go to sleep and dream of spider brains. What would

(02:02:04):
it be like to be a social spider, to nestle
in with your spider brethren brethren for a good night
of sleep, justin.

Speaker 3 (02:02:20):
Hey, are we if if you're a spider dude, or
if we were spider dude and the lady invites you
over for drinks.

Speaker 1 (02:02:31):
Don't do it, just so you know she means you.

Speaker 2 (02:02:39):
Because they have a sucking.

Speaker 1 (02:02:40):
I think we've done it.

Speaker 2 (02:02:41):
Gosh, yeah, I think we do all right. We got
we got through all of our studies, all of our stories. Tonight,
thank you for joining us. So wonderful to be able
to hang out with you on another Wednesday evening. Thank
you for enjoying the science the evidence brought the curiosity
as well, and thank you for bringing your own curiosity
and wit to the chat room. Love it. Jack Frost,

(02:03:05):
come on, that was a meet. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate you being here, and thank you for
sharing this week in science. And thank you for appreciating
the show brought tonight. I hope you you did. I
mean you're telling me you appreciated it, so I appreciate you.
Thank you. Yeah, Live long and prosper. I just want

(02:03:29):
to thank everyone in the chat room though, no matter
what amount you're able to give, you're here. You're giving
your comments and yourself and your time. So thank you
for being here in the future. Those of you who
are watching Time Shifted, thank you for being here also,
and additionally I have to thank Justin for co hosting

(02:03:52):
and doing it. Yeah. I love that you're here with me.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:03:56):
You didn't have a choice. You tell me you did,
You'd be like if I didn't show.

Speaker 2 (02:04:01):
Up, I can't reach you from up here, not any more, geez.
I mean it's easier than when you are in Denmark.

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But come on, this is why I do the show.

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Keiky has blackmail Ani and she makes threats. I just
want to put that out there in case anything happens
to me.

Speaker 2 (02:04:18):
This is I don't I only have good things only
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Gord oar and Loore others who help keep the chat
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(02:04:39):
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Would they would hear us without him? I know, no
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I know.

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Uch makes the podcast sound intelligent, makes it sound rye,
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(02:06:43):
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This week in Science,

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