What is Your Science Policy?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Twists. This Week in Science, episode number one
twenty six, recorded on Wednesday, August twentieth, twenty twenty five.
What is your science policy? Hey everyone, I am doctor Keeeky,
and tonight on the show, we will fill your head
with plants for robots, jackalopes, and bat hugs. That sounds nice,

(00:25):
But first, thanks to our amazing Patreon sponsors for their
generous support of Twists. You can become a part of
the Patreon community at patreon dot com. Slash This Week
in Science.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Declaimer disclaimer disclaimer. Authoritarianism is nothing new. It rears its
ugly head every half century or so manages to persistgnantly,
malignantly in some places until it can be removed from
power once again. What follows is a slow process reforming

(01:00):
society around freedom's lost truths and knowledge forbidden. Progress is
made towards peace and prosperity. At some point, the generation
that suffered, through, fought and overcame the past. Authoritarian movement dies,
collective memory fades. Struggles of modern life evoke nostalgia for

(01:24):
an age that never existed. At first, it's a form
of escapism, an indulgence in magical thinking, an over idealized past,
stripped of all its failings. Power hungry narcissists pounce on
the opportunity readorned themselves in the pageant try of strong men,
promising return to the mythical old ways as a path

(01:47):
to the future. Arrogance, ignorance, revisionism promenade around his pride
manufactured hatred is presented as a justifiable cause, placing the
failure of the world to be perfect upon the weakest,
most vulnerable targets, with increasingly divisive rhetoric, blaming of the others,

(02:11):
all of the others, so many others. It's hard to
see who would even be left if every other went away.
Anyone that pushes back on this propaganda, who challenges lies
with truth becomes a co conspirator, becomes an other. Journalists, teachers, historians, scientists, comedians.

(02:35):
If it doesn't matter who you are, if you're not
licking the boot, you will find it at your neck
till you fight back, and fight we will with this
week in Science coming up next. I've got that kind
of mind. I can't get enough.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
I want to learn everything, I want to fill it
all up with new discovers. It happened every day of
the week. There's only one place to go to find
a knowledge.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
I think I want to.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Know what's happened. What's happened, That's happened this week? Kids, Science,
that's happened.

Speaker 4 (03:17):
Let's happen.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Name it's happening this week Science.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Good science to you, Kicky and Blair.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
And a good science to you too, Justin Blair and
everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week
in Science. We are so thrilled to be back together
once again, all of us able to get our power
to work, our internet to be strong, and our children
to agree to bedtime or to go outside and chop

(03:48):
wood in my case. I hope everyone is doing well
this week, and we've got a fantastic show in store
for you. We are joined by a guest tonight interview
with a science policy expert, Adriana Bankston. I've got stories
about baby bait, Babby's no baby brains, making plants for robots,

(04:09):
and translating your inner thoughts. What do you have first, Justin?

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, I have a mystery hominine skull that has finally
been dated, and I have reversing autism symptoms with an
epilepsy drug. May have found one of the key ingredients
within the brain that has been causing some of the

(04:36):
downstream symptoms of autistic traits.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Huh, what is in the animal corner tonight, Blair?

Speaker 5 (04:46):
I have jacalobes and I have bat hugs.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Hey, if you have jaclobe you better bring jaclobes.

Speaker 6 (04:56):
You got them. We'll see.

Speaker 5 (04:59):
I'll see that I can do for you. Justin rabbit.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
This is nothing else will be accepted.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
We'll see. All right, it's a yes, it's not a no.
I will tell you that.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
It's complicated as so many how many times I spent
my sent my three dollars to get those X ray
glasses we're in the back of the comic book.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Ads never worked?

Speaker 1 (05:28):
All right, everyone, As we jump into the show, I
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you over to our merchandise so you can buy some

(06:09):
cool stuff. But right now it is time for us
to dig into the science and as we do so,
I'm going to bring our guest for this evening to
the stage, doctor Adriana Bankston, and I'm going to we
are crowded in here tonight, so I'm gonna take give
us a little space on the screen.

Speaker 6 (06:29):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Adriana Bankston is uh has a PhD in Biochemistry, sell
and developmental biology from Emory University and currently works as
a Triple as Science and Technology Policy Fellow to support
federal scientific research, innovate and innovation innovation in the US
House of Representatives. Adriana works at the intersection of scientific research,

(06:54):
higher education, and STEM workforce development with a focus on
science policy to advance our nation forward through evidence based
practices and inspire the next generation to get involved. She's
an advocate for scientific research and innovation at the federal level.
Welcome to Twist, Adriana.

Speaker 6 (07:13):
Hi, everyone, thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 (07:15):
On.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Thank you so much for joining us. For years, we've
been bringing science policy and politics into our little science show,
and it's been you know, up and down. Sometimes people say,
don't add your politics to my science, don't add the
science to my politics, right, But now it has come

(07:39):
to a head and over the last few years, this
year especially, we seem to be talking about science policy
and science related policy and funding more and more and more.
And so we're interested as these people in our various
states and towns with science enthusiasm and background. But how

(08:01):
did you how did you get into working in science policy?

Speaker 6 (08:06):
Yeah, so, first I'll say I've been around science really
my whole life. My parents are both academics. I've been
in the university world forever, you know, thought about doing
academia myself, but I think, you know, over the years,
have kind of gravitated towards how can I use my

(08:27):
PhD for something doing something good in the world, you know,
and also informing the public and the folks about what
science can do for them. So kind of long story short,
I to to present day. I guess I initially worked
for a small nonprofit California, and that had a couple

(08:51):
of jobs in DC, working with Congress, trying to push
for better policies that are evidence based, and so really
not knowing a whole lot about really what it's like
to be in Congress itself, obviously, but knowing that this
is sort of where things happen. So yeah, I think

(09:14):
I've been a lot on the other side of trying
to you know, highlight what we can do, but also
you know, as scientists at citizens folks in the public
that want to influence policy. Before I really came to
what I'm doing today.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, so what you're what you're doing now, like you
actually are working for a state representative or a congress person,
and tell us who you're working for and what are
you doing, like you're actually on Capitol Hill. You're in there.

Speaker 6 (09:49):
Yeah, so you know, it's obviously it's been an interesting
and also unusual a year to be here. But I
think to the context of this podcast, it's a good
time to have scientists in an a role like this.
But yeah, so I work for Representative Bill Foster, who's
the only PhD physicists in Congress currently, one of a

(10:14):
few members that have science backgrounds, which plays an interesting
role to what the work we're doing because he he
ran for Congress to support science and that's a rare
thing but also interesting to work for him. So, you know,
day to day and again thinking through, right, what's happening this.

Speaker 7 (10:34):
Year, but.

Speaker 6 (10:36):
The sorts of things that we do introduce legislation to
support science and research and education. We co sponsor bills
from other members. You know, a lot of this is
very collaborative as far as having different numbers support each
other bills and letters. We did send letters to the

(10:57):
Trump administration talking about our disapproval to all the funding
cuts happening and firings and a staff specifically, So in
that sense, it's a it's a And also the other
thing I was going to say is we do they
do a lot of speeches about why science matters and
kind of showing Congressional support for that and for for

(11:19):
young scientists who are trying to figure out o their futures.
So this year, you know, it's been an obviously combination
of trying to think about what the members interested in.
You know, as staff, we do have some influence as
to what's being done, but then you also have district

(11:43):
issues that they work on, right, they have to respond
to constituents in the district and also all the national
issues going on. So it's a lot to balance at
a given point. But I think this year it's been
even more so kind of a balance of our day
to day work with you know, high do we respond
to all the things going on in administration?

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Right, So, you so you started this, it's a year
long fellowship that you're in right now, and so you
started it prior to the new administration. You've had about
six seven months of you know, six months of each
just about if we were to split it. But so,
what kind of changes and shifts did you see in

(12:24):
the attitudes towards science, if any at all.

Speaker 6 (12:28):
Yeah, hard to say. You know, it's sort of slow
at first. I think we because I also joined at
the end of September, you know, end of last Congress,
things was pretty slow. A lot of you know, some
members in the House, including Bill you know, got reelected.
So we're sort of like, let's wait and see what happens.

(12:50):
And then everything kind of took off in January, right,
So I think for me, you know, it's I didn't
really know what to expect. I was sort of like,
I want to see kind of how Congress works. You know,
what do they do? You really like in the weeds
of everything, right, But for them, you know, they said that,
well we we have you know, been in the situation before,

(13:14):
in previous Strump administration. So you know, that's part of
the work, is like you're working with people who have
done this before and have been there for many years,
and you're still plugging into a system that we're like, okay,
we kind of know what to do. But even then,
I think even for them, it was unprecedented, I think precedent. Yeah,

(13:34):
So in some ways, I think, you know, there's it's
nice to have some of this prior knowledge and credit
to the office because I think it's one of the
few offices where the staff tend to stay stay on
a long long time, which is not usually the case
in Congress, so people come and go pretty often, but
testament to kind of the culture that they're building there,

(13:56):
and you know, they're there's staff, there's staff. You tend
to stay and have gone through a lot of different administrations.
So I think, you know, one thing I wanted to
say is, you know, seeing a lot of you know,
concerns from young scientists right and their future talking to them,

(14:18):
trying to understand what they can do and you know
how Congress can help them, which has been interesting to
be on the side obviously, and again to kind of
what I alluded to the beginning, the impact in the district.
You know, we're Illinois eleven, which is close to Chicago,

(14:38):
having you know, impacts in the universities in the in
the state, but then also just having both constituents and
and other folks calling us and saying what is Congress
doing for science? Right, So there's that local issues, but
then also broadly more national concerns.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, and I think that's you know, you know where
you are. You know, you're looking at it from this
kind of federal lens, right, But at the same time,
you know, you're you're privy where you are to all
these things that are happening and learning about what's had
the processes in Congress and how you know, how the

(15:21):
sausage gets made.

Speaker 6 (15:23):
Right.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
So from outside, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, you know,
we vote for people and then they go and then
they vote for things, and then you know, it's like
this battle back and forth now between the two parties.
But it's also it's it's a little opaque for people

(15:45):
who aren't in politics, I think and I don't know.
I mean, I think when we think about it, like,
is making a phone call to your representative? Is that
is that really helpful? Like should get like from what
you're seeing and where in the work that you're doing.
Like when people say call your representatives, Like, is that
honestly a really good step that people can take to help?

Speaker 6 (16:08):
I mean, we we pick up every phone call, so
not everyone does, I think again testament to a member
who cares and the staff that does. I think, you know,
if people want to get involved, you know, there's different
things you can do, right, you can email, you can call,
you can come to meet with us, you know, do

(16:30):
a Capital Hill Day, kind of different levels of engagement. Right,
all the things help from our side. You know, we
do have a system where all the phone calls and
emails go into a database, which then gets some sort
of response. So there is either something more general like

(16:50):
you know, thank you for calling. If there's something really
specific people call about and they want to know we
do call back or respond to emails. So I think,
you know, those don't go into the void.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
If that's a question, it's really I think it's good
to know these things, because sometimes it's like, Okay, I
left a message or I sent an email and you're
just like, did that do anything at all?

Speaker 6 (17:16):
It's been interesting to see that, Yeah, there is a
system where these things go and they do get responded to.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, what is what is the sort of general level
of support for science right now?

Speaker 6 (17:32):
It's hard to say an our end. You know, I
work for a Democrat at a Republican House, right it's
a you know, to be frank about that, being a
minority is limiting and the sense of certain things are
not moving. However, there are a few Republicans that support

(17:54):
it for different reasons, and these are some of the
things we've done. For example, we've introduced to immigration bills
that are both bipartisan. My bosses leads one of the
caucuses of just basically like a club of you know,
members that come together on different topics they're interested in.
Then they do we do events on the hell that's

(18:16):
also bipartisan. So there are and also there's other members
that have science backgrounds that are Republicans too. So I
think there are you know, a few people that we
know are going to support it. There's a lot of
new members that came on in this Congress that are,
for example, on the Science Committee because they're interested in

(18:38):
the topic. Right, So I think like the base is growing.
There are certain things that seem to go better on
on the other side, as far as like I said, immigration,
lots of talent, you know, competition with China. There's some
topics that do seem to resonate on both sides. Not
everything well, but and again you have to know kind

(19:00):
of who the allies are, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Because my impression has always been sort of that there's
an element of fear about it, Like these are largely
people who went to pretty good colleges should have been
exposed at some point to scientific method or at least
an understanding that science is a real thing. Technology that
we've driven from medical care, that we've driven from it

(19:25):
actually exists in the real world, but maybe for a
political reason, have chosen to oppose that. I'm sure of,
like is it like, yeah, I understand like maybe a
stem cell treatment. I understand it's good science, but back
home they won't let me vote for it. Or is
it or is there fundamental misunderstanding in those leaders of

(19:48):
what science actually is. Maybe they skipped all their science
question all the way.

Speaker 6 (19:53):
I think they're right about how did I put this?
The voters, I guess make a big, big difference, right
if if they sort of that's part of the job.
I guess they have to listen to what the voters
are saying. I think still there's very few members that

(20:13):
even know what this is or have a science background
of any kind. Right again, I'm an this is an exception.
This office is very science heavy and people know him
for it.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yeah, I think you're super lucky to be in that
environment and not having to fight too hard to tell
tell Bill about about science.

Speaker 6 (20:39):
Here.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
This is some interesting new stuff. It'll support this bill.

Speaker 6 (20:44):
Yeah, so I think there is. But I think so
to your p on the other side of like, there
is some growing concern. I think if anything has come
out of this year is that there's more awareness that
science matters and impacts our daily life from trying to create,
you know, find those day to day examples of things

(21:05):
of science. Is like your cell phone and things that
you use day today. There's some science and research that
went into that, and there's a scientist to design something
like the part.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Of that, And I almost I almost can't think of
of of an illness that has a genetic basis that
there isn't a stem cell treatment that's made making fantastic progress,

(21:33):
Like everybody has to have people who suffered from any
one of those many, many, many diseases that this is
working on as an example.

Speaker 6 (21:43):
And I think things like, you know, the COVID pandemic
is always a good example that people most people can
relate to that and say, yeah, the vaccines do work right.
Trying to find those examples.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, there's but there's an interesting place in age and
I have met previously as a result of talking about
science communication more generally. And you know, something that was
brought up by someone recently talking they do climate science
and climate science communication, and even with their family members

(22:18):
as there's new budget cuts and you know, NASA's atmospheric
and climate monitor monitoring functions are being defunded and those
responsibilities are being reduced, and you know, climate science is
being less and less funded, or at least it seems
as though this administration is minimizing the funding of climate research.

(22:42):
The family member said, you know, it's like a passing
of a pet or something. I'm so sorry about your
climate change, your climate funding, you know, and it's like,
but it's not mine, it's it's this is going to
impact you too, Right, So I think the question is,
I mean where in your position interfacing right, having been

(23:05):
a scientist, having helped scientists learn how to write policy stuff,
and now actually being involved in the policy making, Like,
where do you see disconnects? I mean that people could
maybe that we can address more, like what are we missing?

Speaker 6 (23:25):
I think some of the stuff we've been discussing more
education as to where science is impacting us day today. Right,
Even those sorts of things like you know, cell phone
or anything that really has science basis. Climate, I think
is a little I guess more complicated in some ways.

(23:45):
If we I guess I'll bring this back to what
we talked about, like if we think about what's happening
to the future of science again, there are certain things
that will resonate more on both sides of the aisle. Right.
I think it's interesting, I guess Congress is you know

(24:08):
a large body of somewhat individual offices, Like so each
office obviously cares about certain things or members run because
some of them are very pro climate, and you know
that's most of what they do. And people that want
to work there know those things, right, So that's part
of it, I think, like knowing the background of the

(24:29):
members and like what they care about, whether they're likely
to support or not, and then going to those people. Yeah,
but again like just just making these these points of
where science in our daily life, right or talking about
COVID or something. There's there's some things that do resonate
to find them. Whether those are those are I.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
Guess so are you would you with with where you are?
You know, we're taught. We've been talking a lot about
you know, the big view beutiful bill, the science, the
funding of science moving forward and which is going to
impact everything in the future, you know, you know, our
future students moving into the schooling, moving into the workforce,

(25:15):
like you know so much. Is the funding still the
place that we need to be putting effort as citizens
if we want, if we support science and research and development,
should we still be putting pressure on the funding aspect
or should be we we be working on other things
like should we be looking at specific departments like NASA

(25:39):
or you know where should we be putting our efforts
based on what you're seeing?

Speaker 6 (25:44):
Yeah, I think I'll kind of go back to this
knowing who you're talking to, because for example, you know,
members may have for example NSA or NASA on their
distracts for example, those people are going to care, right, Okay,
those are good targets.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
And that's where And that's what's kind of amazed me
about the size of the breadth of these cuts is that, uh,
these cuts should have resonated on both sides of the
aisles because of the amount of research funds that were
taken out of red and blue states, and there wasn't
there wasn't like the political will to even stand up

(26:23):
for the what's usually like that bring home the bacon
kind of legislation that you should be oh, you know,
I have no problem at home because you're really representing.
But it was still allowed to fall away, you know,
university funding and research funding and all of this. It's

(26:46):
a surprising. It's just surprising, Like those are the things
that you should be counting on, what you're saying, but like,
somehow it didn't seem to have an impact this time.

Speaker 6 (26:54):
Yeah, I think I think the funding is still the
place to go, but you have to be kind of strategic.
But then the other side is I think also training
and again depending on if the members are aware kind
of what's happening to science or they know a little
bit about the pipeline, Like we need to be training

(27:15):
our students to be able to succeed in the workforce
in addition to just throwing money. Like here's you know,
all this, but like what do you do with that?
And like are we teaching them how to use this
in the real world? Right, So that is another aspect
of you know, what has transpired at least last year
around certain topics like AI for example, which is a

(27:37):
big topic that you know, they there's legislation, you know,
supporting AI education. So some awareness that you know, these
technologies are coming to fruition or kind of to the
front of people's minds now, but we're not training people
how to use them, or we don't even how to

(27:58):
use it well. Right, that's a big question. What does
it mean to even use an eye in an ethical
way and teach people how to do that and teach
students that want to use it to use it well.
So that's the other side. I think part of it
is money. The other one is like how do we
teach people to use technology as well? On the education

(28:19):
side or more the training side of it, which those
resonate to a next tent and and and.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
That that should be whenever the somebody is making fun
of a silly sounding study, right, Yeah, the thought that
always jumps into my mind is like, yeah, well, we
put you know, we put people in jet planes to
fly around in circles, burning you know, one hundred thousand
dollars worth of jet puel because it's training. They're not

(28:46):
they're not in the air to engage in combat and
hopefully they will have to. But our when we're doing
this for our our researchers, then it's a problem that
you know, they spend money searching something that might not
sound obviously impactful right now. But we need all of
those all of that funding and all those studies to

(29:09):
give people that that practice, that flight time doing research
so they can be part of you know, more impactful
teams in the future. So that pipeline, that pipeline is
the scary thing. You both, that's fine, right that if
that breaks down, then we don't have trained pilots or
we don't have trained scientists who we're going to make

(29:31):
those contributions on larger scale or more impactful projects in
the future.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Are you from your experience on Capitol Hill and you're
coming to the end of your fellowship here? But are
you are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic for sign like,
I mean, can you say this out loud in front
of an audience.

Speaker 6 (29:57):
I'm optimistic, But that's just my personality, I think. And
I think this is you know, something that my boss
says too.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
You have to.

Speaker 6 (30:05):
You have to do that to do a job like this,
because it can be really grueling. You know, people you
know call and say all kinds of things on over
the phone. You just have to brush it off and
say like, Okay, you know, got it, thank you for
telling us this, you know whatever, and then go back
to work because you still have to do your day
job no matter what people say. So I think there

(30:27):
is like a certain.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
A YouTube creator.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
I know the bridge you're talking about, it's a little
higher than I would normally jump off of. So I
don't think I'm going to take the advice, but thank
you for the recommendation.

Speaker 6 (30:42):
I think, you know, and that's that's part of a job, right.
We have to listen to people who call us because
they vote for us, you know, the people want to
get re elected. But I think one thing, you know,
I think that I've I've learned at least the people
that I've worked with, you know, want to do a
good job. They can about science. Yeah, I work for

(31:04):
a good member who's trying to do the right thing,
And I've somewhat have a renewed confidence in Congress. I
think even like that's coming from again not knowing anything
really about it and the working in this office. You know,
people do, Karen, are trying to do good things. So
everyone is that some people are, so I keep going

(31:27):
to those offices that are that are listening.

Speaker 5 (31:32):
That's really encouraging to hear. I feel like.

Speaker 4 (31:35):
From the outside looking in, it definitely feels like we're
in an unprecedented time where I hate saying that now
every day is unprecedent at this point, but that, you know,
science always used to kind of be funding. Science used
to be a crowd pleaser, right like it was an
obvious yes. And I think there's this like there's this
fear that we've talked about on this show that a

(31:59):
halting of funding and halting of support of certain fields
of research are going to create a pretty big lag
that we're going to have to spend a long time
catching up from. And I also, you know, part of
me does also wonder that people aren't going to want
to endeavor to do kind of longer term studies because
you know, maybe I'm only going to apply to do

(32:21):
this program for three to four years because I don't
know what my next round of funding is going to
look like. Right, So, like, I'm just kind of curious
if the if the kind of overall kind of narrative
around federally funded research is shifting in that way.

Speaker 6 (32:38):
I think certainly that's true for you know, students and
people who are in research now and saying like, Okay,
I'm halfway through grad school.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
What do I do?

Speaker 6 (32:48):
Like, I just want to graduate because I don't know
if the grant will be renewed and that sort of thing. Right,
So it's a reality. You know, we're not saying that's
not doesn't exist. We're just trying to encourage you not
to give up on science. I think we still need talent,
and you know this is going to be I think
at some point ideally we're all kind of come out

(33:12):
of this chaos and kind of rebuild some of this
because again, this has happened before. It's not the first
Trump administration that's ever existed. It's probably the worst. But
we've come out of this before, so that's kind of
what I'm here.

Speaker 4 (33:28):
Yeah, And it is also helpful for us to hear
you say that they're Republican members of Congress that still
support science, because we obviously mostly hear the loudest, most
outrageous individuals, and it starts to feel like they're taking
up more and more space in Congress. And if there
are still people that you know, have some semblance of

(33:50):
sanity when it comes to funding science and supporting science
and believing in science, then there's it's easier to come back. Right.
It's just a few key players that are really rocking
the boat as to half of the seats, right, And
I think that I would like to be hearing more about.

Speaker 5 (34:07):
That, even if I don't agree with everything that.

Speaker 4 (34:10):
The Republican believes in, if they do still support and
forward momentum on cancer research, I need to hear that
so that I don't lose my marbles. Right.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
I actually don't want them to say anything, just change,
I think right now, what.

Speaker 6 (34:31):
I can say is, we have some Republican friends that
routinely support what we do and you know, co sign
on things. Like I said, if there's something like they
have an agency in their district, that's most likely that
care because that's a lot of their voters and revenue
comes from that.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
Yeah. Has the you know, the the reality of the
way that NSF funding actually impacts local economies. Has that
hit the consciousness of the representatives and congress people that
are doing the voting, because it seemed like for a
minute there it was like everybody to completely forgot what

(35:16):
kind of an impact the federal funding of R and
D actually has on the entire country.

Speaker 6 (35:24):
Yes, so I think one thing that's been happening. A
lot of the members have been I guess more outspoken
against what's happening. That included my boss to doing and
this has actually been kind of part of fun of
the job is to write speeches for him to talk
about why science matters, which is you know, on c

(35:45):
SPAN or somewhere, so that does happen. I get to
write those kinds of things and those are out there
and then again we are showing support and that stuff. Obviously,
it's been a big topic also because of their seven
fifth anniversary, which happened right around when the workouts happened
to and then we're like, how do we message this

(36:08):
that it still matters? And we're you know, seventy five
years of all the good things they've done, and we
try to highlight that instead of you know, obviously saying
what's happening?

Speaker 1 (36:16):
But yeah, yeah, it's a lot. Is there anything we
don't want to keep you for the whole night here?
I appreciate you joining us from the East coast, but
if you, you know, could think about things that people
should be putting kind of in their awareness right now,

(36:36):
Like what are some of the key key points that
you want that you'd like people to know or to remember.

Speaker 6 (36:46):
I mean, the one thing I'll say that Congress still
cares about science, you know, at least some people, and
find those allies, right talk to members that represent you
becase because you vote for them, and that's part of
the job. And then I think, like, for me, a
lot of it comes back to what's happening to the

(37:09):
future of science and how do we make sure they
don't lose that interest which a lot of them are
about it. You know, I'll say, we try to include
some of their views into the projects that we've been doing,
like letters and speeches and other things that you know,
we do listen to the students that came to our
office and talk to us. So if you have, you know,

(37:31):
students who are listening to this, you know, keep going
to your member of Congress because they're there to listen.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Yeah, I think I think that's also it's one of
the things that is, you know, hard for people to
sometimes we've become so dissociated from especially Washington, right it's
so far away. But the political process in general, we
vote when it's time to vote, but what other things
can we do to really be a part of the

(38:00):
entire process.

Speaker 6 (38:02):
And yeah, and also you also remember that they do
local events too. So we didn't talk about this, but
you know, in August when we were in recess here,
they were at home doing events and meeting with constituents
on the ground in their district. So if those sorts
of things happen, like they do town halls and other things,

(38:24):
so do go to those things because that's a good
way to get in touch with them too.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
If you're not in Washington, actually go to a town hall.
What amazing?

Speaker 2 (38:36):
So good?

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Okay, is there is there anything else that that you
want to share with everyone about your experiences and you know,
your hopes for science policy.

Speaker 6 (38:50):
Uh, I think, I guess my hope is that we'll
come out of this situation and kind of see you know,
building at some point. Some of these numbers I don't
think are as bad as predicted, since that was some
of that I guess was biricked in the budget and

(39:10):
then it wasn't quite as bad, right, I think? Yeah,
that just people keep believing that you know, science matters
and keep doing their part and that in their communities. Yeah,
we still need to do that regardless of what's happening

(39:32):
in dcs.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Yeah. I think global act local. We can all do it.

Speaker 6 (39:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
I think it's always a good motto. So if people
are interested in learning more about you know, science policy
or the you know the future of science and the
workforce and want to follow you online, where where can
they find you?

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (39:59):
So I have a web site also LinkedIn Twitter and
blue Sky. My website actually has all the channels on there.
So happy to get involved in chat more. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Your your website is great. It's very clear, and it's
got all sorts of wonderful information on it. It's you
do a good job of keeping keeping that up to date.
I am, I am not as good at and I
think mine is like from two thousand and seven or something. Adriana,
thank you so much for joining us tonight and telling

(40:35):
us a bit about you know, your experience and what's happening,
what's happening up on in DC and in Capitol Hill.
And I hope aside from you know, stay optimistic and
keep doing the work that you're doing. And wherever you
end up next, I know it's good. You're going to
do some good things. So I'm glad that you're working

(40:56):
for science. Oh, thank you, Thank you guys, thank you
so much for joining us.

Speaker 5 (41:02):
Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 8 (41:05):
All right, everybody, we are going to take a break
right now, really quickly. I want to tell you all
about more about this weekend Science. Do Do Do Do
Do before we come to our stories.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
That's right. We have got a website, Twist dot org,
and if you love the show, I do hope that
you will head over to twist dot org and click
on our Patreon link. The Patreon link is a wonderful
way to support the show in an ongoing fashion. You
can choose your level of support ten dollars and more
per month, and we will thank you by name. I

(41:41):
will try to pronounce your name correctly at the end
of the show in rapid fire fashion. Additionally, we have
our Zazzle store and there are all sorts of wonderful
products that are contained in our Zazzle Store. Many of
them come from past years of Blair's Animal Corner Calendar
and the artwork is just fantastic. All a part of

(42:03):
the proceeds always come back to Twists to help keep
us doing what we're doing, make sure that we can
pay for, you know, all the infrastructure, the little things
that keep the show going. And additionally, you know, it
would be really great if you shared the word about Twists.
Help us get the word out so that there are

(42:24):
more people finding out about things like Adriana's position in
science policy and that this is a potential career path
for people, that there are people out there working for
good in science on Capitol Hill, local government, around the country,
lots of people who do believe in the potential for

(42:46):
science and technology research and development to do a lot
of good for our world moving into the future. And
how you know, how we can all work together on that.
So anyway, there's the more the merrier share Share, share
twists with all the people who you care about. Just
it's sharing is caring, it really is. And we really

(43:08):
appreciate your support. We cannot do this without you. Thank
you so much. All right. You know we normally start
out the show with a bunch of news stories, but
you know what, it's just time right now for Blair's
Animal Corner with Blair.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
She Lopes hot creature.

Speaker 9 (43:36):
By Pied Bill pedn't if you want to hear about
the animals.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
Except your giant.

Speaker 10 (43:46):
Pads yet, Blair, I have jack lopes, really really not?

Speaker 2 (43:58):
You better? You better bring them what I have.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
I don't know, I don't know what to tell you.
I don't know how to let this kind of guys
go on. But this, so this was all over the
internet this week, so I wanted to talk about it.
A group of rabbits are found in Colorado.

Speaker 5 (44:18):
They had different names.

Speaker 4 (44:20):
They were called Frankenstein bunnies, they were called zombie rabbits,
they were called demon rabbits, and they were making the
rounds on social media. They are, in fact, what is
most likely the inspiration for the jackalope myth of in
North America. So this is this is the closest to

(44:43):
real jacolobes you're going to get, because this is where
the idea came from. But basically, these rabbits are showing
up with growths somewhere on their head, in their mouth,
and their nose, on their forehead, coming out of their
eyes that I'm sorry as it's kind of gross.

Speaker 5 (45:01):
They're warts.

Speaker 4 (45:02):
They're wart like growths that eventually metastize so that they're
kind of they become hard and they look like horns,
and so they can also end up kind of branching
to look more and more like horns. So if they're
coming out of their eyes or their head, they look
very horn like. If they're coming out of their nose
or their mouth, they look kind of like, I don't know,

(45:23):
like a Geeger esque the thing situation. But they're freaking
people out.

Speaker 6 (45:30):
But the thing is.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
This is caused by a virus. It's the shop papilloma virus.
It's been around. It was discovered a hundred years ago,
it's been around for probably much longer than that. In
most cases, it does not harm the rabbit. The rabbit's

(45:54):
immune systems will fight the virus, and once they do,
the growths recede and disappear unless it's coming out of
their eyes or mouths enough to interfere with eating, and
then it can end up causing the rabbit to pass away.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
But in most cases, in most cases, it doesn't like
hurt them, just freaky looking.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
But what's interesting is the study of this virus starting
one hundred years ago. This was so it was it
was discovered by Richard Schope, doctor Richard shop professor at
Rockefeller University, discovered in the nineteen thirties, and their study
of this virus over the last hundred or so years

(46:41):
has actually been really beneficial to human health as well
because papaloma virus right, So it's actually helped to help
to kind of draw the connections between viruses and cancer.
So in humans, we have HPV human papaloma virus, and
that can cause cervical cancer. So it's a virus that

(47:04):
can lead to somebody having cancer. It's not a direct
virus causes cancer, but virus causes changes that make cancer develop.

Speaker 5 (47:16):
Right, So scientists have been studying this.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
Virus to help understand the connection between viruses and cancer.
Prior to them figuring out what was going on with HPV,
and cervical cancer, developing a vaccine, all these sort of things.
So it's actually a pretty interesting virus. It's pretty impactful
on the scientific community, and so people who study these
things are probably like, oh, yeah, we've been seeing this forever.

(47:42):
But because of the Internet, some people saw this, flipped
out posted it online, and now we got jackalopes or
Frankenstein bunnies just running rampant across your pages on the Internet.

Speaker 5 (47:58):
But they are real.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
They are as close to jackalopes as we're going to
get in the real world. And or the almost like
cthulhu esque rabbits, the very strange looking but yeah, it's
they're fine. Most of them are fine.

Speaker 6 (48:17):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
I think it's really interesting and like one of the
one of the big questions, uh, I don't want to
share my search for other pictures, but one of the
questions from Zombie Zombie Tom Hanks here is is that
the same virus as tree Man, And so it's I
don't believe it's the same exact virus because what you're
talking about is a papaaloma virus that is specific to

(48:42):
the cottontail rabbits, and looking in Wikipedia for this particular virus.
There is the c TPV cottontail papaloma virus is known
as Kappa papaloma virus too, which is really fun today.
But that's not a human papoloma virus.

Speaker 5 (49:04):
It does look like.

Speaker 4 (49:05):
Tree man, but it's a crap syndrome. Is also a
papaloma virus though, so it's related.

Speaker 5 (49:12):
Yeah, that's interesting. I did not know about that. These
pictures are rough.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
I was going to try and find pictures and it was.

Speaker 5 (49:22):
Yeah, you can google that at your own leisure.

Speaker 6 (49:27):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (49:28):
Justin what do you think?

Speaker 4 (49:29):
Does that satisfy your desire for jacalopes or are you disappointed?

Speaker 6 (49:36):
No?

Speaker 2 (49:36):
I actually I think that's an amazing possible source of
the story.

Speaker 4 (49:42):
Yeah, it's the first thing I thought of when I saw,
which is why I opened the story, even though the
headline was all about the Frankenstein bunny, and I was like,
that looks like the origin of the jacolobe myth.

Speaker 5 (49:52):
Let me go ahead and open this article. And then
towards the bottom.

Speaker 11 (49:57):
There it was.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Is that the region where the myths started?

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Is it Colorado?

Speaker 2 (50:05):
Perfect? Yeah?

Speaker 6 (50:06):
There it is.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (50:09):
So and of course here in California we have we
have the chip loop instead, which is yes, but but
that is I do not believe there's any chipmunks running
around with papaloma virus. I think that is just for
fun because jackalope's therefore chip loops. It's you know whatever.
Go to Confusion Hill check it out.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
I think I mound the jackalope walrus. It's a yakes jackalless,
it's called it's called big fangs anyway.

Speaker 5 (50:42):
Ya big shark.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Amazing? What like just a different set of instructions will
do like this is chasing keratin right your skin fiber
and basically saying grow horns, grow fingernails, like out of
the different parts of your skin. It's taking keratin and
enforcing a different program. And it's or yeah, overwriting the

(51:10):
program that's in those cells that are infected by the
virus and causing a totally different growth. I think that
in itself is just fascinating. But I am fascinated by
very weird things.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
So so my last story is that I wanted to
bring you to something that was perhaps the sweetest story
I've seen in a very very long time, and it
is all about.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
I'm going to withhold my ah because I always feeling
to set up.

Speaker 5 (51:47):
No, this is really just very very sweet. Did you
know that bats like to hug each other and cuddle
and share that? Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
In particular, this is the world the largest carnivorous bat.
It's a spectral bat vimiprium spectrum and uh, they were
previously assumed to be solitary foragers. You can guess where
this is going. They are, Like I said, they're the large,

(52:20):
the world's largest carnivorous bat. They're about Their wingspan is
about three feet aka a meter.

Speaker 5 (52:27):
Thanks guys.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
And researchers installed motion sensitive infrared cameras inside a hollow
tree in Costa Rica, where they're from, to see what
they were up to. After three months of filming filming,
they found that they were way more sociable than they
previously thought. So my first question is to the ether,

(52:52):
why do we think that, Why do we think that,
why do we think they were solitary?

Speaker 5 (52:59):
And how could we so wrong? They actually found eight
main types of.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
Behaviors, including social interactions, food, provision, and play. So I'm
gonna talk a little bit more about each of those
within the roost. One of the social interactions they had
is they would groom each other and make social vocalizations.

Speaker 5 (53:18):
They would have a greeting.

Speaker 4 (53:20):
Yes, ah ah, they had a greeting similar to a hug,
which there's a diagram of in this paper, which is
very funny.

Speaker 5 (53:29):
Diagramming a hug. It's perfect.

Speaker 4 (53:34):
Where one bat would that's kind of Nope, they're they're
feeding each other. Keep going, oh co feeding there it is.

Speaker 5 (53:42):
That's the diagram of a hug. In case your is
on the top top row.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
A has two beats approaching each other, two bets getting
even closer, and then one bat enveloping the other with
its wings.

Speaker 6 (53:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (53:57):
So specifically, you see there's one on bat that's like
hanging and one bat flies in from outside.

Speaker 5 (54:04):
We'll call that like bat bee flies in from the outside.

Speaker 4 (54:08):
So they hang kind of near bat A, and then
bat a shimmy's over and envelops.

Speaker 5 (54:12):
Bat v after they returned from being out. Hi, you've
been outside. I'm gonna give you a hug and yeah, welcome.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
Arm, welcome bats. And then maybe you'll vomit in my mouth.

Speaker 4 (54:27):
Yes, so that's actually not the vomiting, but the sharing
of food is part of this. That's more the vampire
bat thing is the vomiting. This is they're sharing food
is part of this though. So they found some adults
bat adult bats. I'm really having trouble talking today. They

(54:49):
had adult pats returned to the roost and they were
voluntarily transferring the food to younger bats. So maybe they're
trying to transfer them off milk. Maybe they're just being
generous because youngins aren't as good as at hunting.

Speaker 5 (55:05):
Who knows.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
They also found bat's leaving the roost together, which, again,
why did you think they were solitary? My initial thought
is like, oh, they must go and hunt alone, and
so they've only ever seen them out in the world alone,
and so they're like, they're solitary animals. And then we
go in the roost and they're like, oh, no, they're

(55:28):
hanging out. But no, if they leave together and they
hunt together, then why did we think this right? They
also found prey transfer from an adult male to a
lactating female, so they're like, oh, hey, you're working hard
in here, didn't have time to go hunt because you're
feeding our baby. Let me help you out, yes, and

(55:50):
also showing some cooperative care and feeding for the baby.
So this is pretty rare among mammals. To see both
parents caring for young and so they seem to do
that as well. And then they also, this is my
favorite one, they'll make a cuddle ball when they fall asleep.

(56:12):
So a large group of bats. It could be just
a family unit of four, or it could be more.
They wrap one wing around their nearest neighbor and then
huddle in so they have this cute little like almost
pinwheel style cuddle. And then they have all their snouts
touching each other.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
That is adorable for three long bats.

Speaker 5 (56:38):
Yeah yeah, three foot long wings.

Speaker 4 (56:41):
So yeah, so their bodies probably if I had to guess, yeah,
like like yeah, maybe even a foot yeah probably, but no, no,
but they're not carnivorous. So these guys are the largest
carnivorous bat. The fruit bats are the largest bat.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
Yeah. Especially, these are not any slouches. These are big.
These are big bats.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Especially.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
You know, we've got pipistrellas and like some of the
others that are just the little tiny ones that are
people are worried about getting in their hair.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
This is.

Speaker 6 (57:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (57:18):
So this three months of data, they found eight types
of behaviors in all these different categories. And then at
the very end of this, you know, kind of interview
with the lead researcher. The her name is Maria.

Speaker 5 (57:36):
H t t te ye tig is the best of
me to do that? Very German? Or maybe maybe yeah,
you're right, maybe it's set.

Speaker 4 (57:54):
I don't know anyway, point being yes, throws in at
the end of this article here as an anecdote that
she was also astonished to find that the bats seemed
to recognize her. After a few consecutive weeks of visiting,
she was greeted with threat like calls, and originally bats
broke from the roosting formation to hide in corners, but

(58:15):
after she had started attending regularly to this one roost,
they would just kind of look around, see her, not vocalized,
remain exactly where they.

Speaker 5 (58:23):
Were, and relaxed.

Speaker 4 (58:25):
And so even after she spent nine months away and
then came back, they appeared to recognize her immediately. So wow,
this is just an instant, a throwaway comment that was
not part of her research.

Speaker 5 (58:38):
That honestly, here's another piece of research for you to do.
Get to it. Go to a postdoc.

Speaker 4 (58:46):
I guess I don't know, but these bat bats that
are so social, it seems like they might be able
to extend that kind of social intelligence onto humans in
their space as well, which is which is really cool.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
That's amazing at least to at least to understand non threat,
right that this is you know this not this not
bat isn't coming in and attacking us.

Speaker 6 (59:14):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
They're just here and so that's fine.

Speaker 4 (59:18):
You know.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
It's the social awareness of the of the environment and
other individuals and other species. It's connectedness to that ecosystem,
the habitat. Yeah, but social they're gonna be like that
cockatoo next thing, we know, hugging each other and getting
into garbage cans.

Speaker 6 (59:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Perfect, Blair. You you've you've worked in the zoos yes,
I have, and in the aquariums. Yes, I don't suspect
it from fish, although I've heard that it's also true
in some fish. But can you think of an animal
that like doesn't recognize the zookeeper that the normally tends

(01:00:02):
to them, Like, are their animals are just like don't
recognize people?

Speaker 6 (01:00:09):
Why?

Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
That's really hard.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
That's really hard to say. For a couple of reasons.
There's a lot of confounding variables.

Speaker 5 (01:00:16):
Like there was.

Speaker 4 (01:00:19):
A famous story about a vulture who couldn't stand this
one woman who was his zoo keeper, and the same
vulture was obsessed with her husband, who was a zoo keeper. Okay,
and very tragically the husband died, and in the wife's grief,

(01:00:40):
she started wearing some of his clothes because it smelled
like him. Okay, and she went to work and the
vulture loved her all of a sudden. Okay, So in
that case, in this case, they were like, Oh, they
know they're zookeeper. Nope, used to smell. In one situation,
I cared for an animal, thought that they definitely knew

(01:01:02):
who I was. Somebody else borrowed my keys, those keys
jingled in the very specific way that my keys jingled,
came running right. So there are other things, yes, that
are signaling it. And with animals like reptiles and amphibians,
I like to think they know and they are comfortable

(01:01:23):
with individuals. But it could also be that I am
comfortable working with that particular animal. My hands are steadier,
my heartbeat is slower, I am not exuding any kind
of like hormones like cortisol or anything right that like that,
and those.

Speaker 5 (01:01:39):
Could be cues that they could be picking up on. Right, So.

Speaker 4 (01:01:44):
Really difficult to say. What is just all animals across
the board recognizing threats and non threats, and what is like,
what about that is what they're recognizing? Are they recognizing
an individual human or are they recognizing certain kind of
cues or very that couple a non threatening situation?

Speaker 5 (01:02:03):
Right, so it's it's super super complicated.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Yeah, yeah, now that now that you're framing it that way,
I see how there's everything would be you'd have to
have a very specific type of experiment to try to
set that up.

Speaker 5 (01:02:19):
But that being said, all the animals I cared for
love to me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Of course, of course they did. Of course they heard
your jingle keys and they knew they were about to
get fed. And that's where they can't running. Now we don't.
You're basically running the can opener and had the cat
show up.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
But it's also that they come running. But then do
they behave differently once they see that the keys are
held by somebody different?

Speaker 7 (01:02:42):
Right?

Speaker 6 (01:02:42):
Is that?

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
You know what's the behavior post the first signal? Because
you know, if somebody borrows my car and my cat's here,
you know my cat hears uh, you know the squeaky
breaks in my car outside, come into the driveway, the
cat's going to come to the front door to look
for me, but maybe I'm home in the basement, you know, right,

(01:03:05):
they they're coming to the sound of the squeaky break tires.

Speaker 4 (01:03:08):
Mm hm.

Speaker 5 (01:03:10):
And if you had cat treats, would they care?

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Would they care?

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
Exactly?

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
You know the cats. It's like that one. Uh gosh,
was it a movie character or was this real? Because
it's terrible.

Speaker 6 (01:03:26):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
I think it's like a real person. No, training a
child like by giving them Uh oh no, this was Stalin. Yes,
a real person. Mm hmmm. Stalin used to love playing
manipulating people and was spent like some time in the

(01:03:47):
at a country house with one of you know, a
fancy elite person and they're white. The family had a daughter,
little daughter, and every day for a week he gave
the little girl a little little candy treats. And then
at the end of the week, you know how to
bet with the mother, You know that you know who

(01:04:07):
the daughter would come to when they when they called her,
the little girl went to Stalin as opposed to their
mother and their mother.

Speaker 5 (01:04:18):
And then he took her away, never to be seated again.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Okay for you this time, little girl.

Speaker 5 (01:04:24):
Oh my goodness, gracious wow.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
On science podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
For a minute, I was like, where do I remember this?
This story from?

Speaker 5 (01:04:35):
Well, that's also in as good as it gets about
a dog aunt bacon.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Kids no better than dogs?

Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
Fair enough? Yeah, well that's all I got for the
animal corner this week.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Awesome, thank you Blair. Justin what do you have to
talk about this week?

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Uh? This is a mystery.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Just like Dragon Man.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Well, this one's a little bit more recent, lot more
recent than Dragon Man. This is This is a cave
in Greece. Petralona Cave has been perplexing researchers ever since
a skull was found there in nineteen sixty. So sometimes

(01:05:25):
you can you can figure out in a layer of
earth you can kind of date back how far that
backdu was and and sort of know it your site,
what sort of age range you are looking at, based
on different features and known time points in soil. This

(01:05:47):
is in a cave, and it was discovered cemented to
a wall, so it didn't have anything covering it. And
in the cave is kind of a weird environment because
while it can preserve things and protect things, you also
don't have the same kind of sedimentary layers and things

(01:06:07):
like that going on, they're going to give you a
date break. So essentially the date on this skull was
somewhere between you know, the life of what they think
the cave, the functional functional life of the cave just
about it was about one hundred and seventy to seven
hundred thousand years was the range for this skull. And

(01:06:31):
it's an interesting skull because it's definitely human or homogeneous,
but it's not a current modern human. It's much more
primitive than a current modern human should look like. And
it's not a Neanderthal. So what is it? Well, they
got this, you know, the skull and so, but way

(01:06:56):
they don't even know where it fits in. Is this
like this could be if it's seven hundred thousand years
at the outset of the old time frame, my gosh,
I guess it could be even an early Neanderthal. Possibly,
maybe it was an even early human ancestor possibly, But
if it's one hundred and seventy thousand years, then it's

(01:07:18):
just a completely different prominence. Another human that we have
the name that was wandering around the planet and this
time increased so.

Speaker 10 (01:07:31):
They went.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
But now this time they have found a way to
use new U series dating U series or U line,
which we've talked about a few times, is going to
take advantage of the calcite, these little crusty formations on
the skull presumably from when it was a catch to

(01:07:55):
the cave wall, and by looking at the uranium to
thorium ratio at that at the level closest to the skull,
they can actually date when it was formed. So the
way that that system works is you have you have

(01:08:16):
natural uranium. It's just an environment. It rains and you
know where uranium just sort of drifts and covers soil. Now,
if you went and tried it to look at the
uranium to thorium ratio and the dirt is to see
how old the dirt was, you you'd have no luck.
You couldn't tell what thorium came from what uranium, and

(01:08:37):
you don't have the start date when it turns it
when it goes from uranium to thorium. It's TikTok atomic
clock style. It's a half life that we can actually
pinpoint the speed at which that process takes place. But
when you've got all kinds of different uranium deposits, it
from different starting time points, and the differentium out, you

(01:08:59):
can't figure out the ratio. Well, what's interesting is is
the happenstance is that uranium is water soluble. So when
it rains and the moisture moves down through the soil
and that moisture finds its way into a cave, runs
down a cave wall, it brings with it all these

(01:09:19):
little trace minerals, including the uranium isotopes, but no thorium.
The thorium is not water solutary. It stays behind, it's
stuck in the soil up above. So what happens then
is this little drip comes down the cave wall, it evaporates,
leaving the trace minerals stuck to it, and you have

(01:09:42):
uranium that's all by itself, no thorium, and it begins
to convert to thorium. And you look at that trace,
You look at that ratio of how much thorium there
is to how much uranium is present, and you can
tell exactly when that process starts more or less. Okay,

(01:10:02):
tomic clok, We're very precise. Yeah, So what happened we've
dated previously some cave art right there was famously this
couple of caves in Spain where they used this technology
and found that the cave paintings had to be much older.
They were older than sixty five thousand years and were
probably Neanderthal made, not current modern human right because they

(01:10:26):
were just too old. So it doesn't tell you how old.
It doesn't date the thing. It can only tell you
the minimal starting point. So that's skull they determined through
looking at the U series dating is around two hundred
and eighty six thousand years old. That would be the

(01:10:54):
minimum old date, right, yeah, because it could have and
in that it could have been in the cave and
not getting any moisture on it. It could have been
covered in the cave. It could have been just the
on the dry side of the cave. Who knows. But

(01:11:14):
once that cowcite material started to form on it, they
can tell by looking at that layer closest the thorium,
the uranium ratio closest to the skull, they can tell
right when that started two hundred eighty six ass okay,
But it doesn't give you the other day. It doesn't
say how you know, uh, with the oldest it could

(01:11:38):
have been placed in there, It's the minimum oldest, but
not the oldest oldest that makes.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
Any sense, right, So there's not like like full bounds
on the age. It's like it could be this, but
it could be much older.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
We just didn't. Yeah, Okay, the floor of the cave
also has these deposits, and if you've got a stalagmite
veil that's on one of the walls, they can test that.
And so they do these tests, and they have age
ranges that are, depending on where they're looking, no more

(01:12:14):
than five hundred and thirty nine thousand. But if it
was if it was stuck to the wall, if it
was just if it wasn't actually stuck to the wall,
because there's a little bit of mystery about whether it
was completely stuck to the wall or was just leaning
against the wall when it was first down in nineteen sixty.
If it was just on the floor, it could be

(01:12:39):
an old oldest date of four hundred and ten thousand years.
If it's attached to the wall, it could be as
old as five hundred and thirty nine thousand. So that's
the range. If it's the initial report that says it
was attached to the wall. If we go with that,
we now have about two hundred What do I keep
saying two hundred and eighty six thousand to around five

(01:13:00):
hundred and thirty nine thousand years old. That's the age
drink much more likely to be near the three hundred
thousand mark, much more likely that it's pretty close to
when when the residues started forming. And that's interesting because
that's going to overlap, yeah, with Neanderthal presence, so.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
That who is and we just so we don't know
who the skull is, but it's not it's not Neanderthal.
It's some kind of hominid, but it's not like we
can't say which it is.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
If it was seven hundred thousand years ago, it was
like the oldest possible first analysis, old analysis of the day.
It could have been a contemporary of the earliest Neanderthals,
which means it may have been some sort of a
sister specially, or may have been a divergent kind of
a thing, like we don't know, but that's around the

(01:13:58):
time that Neanderthals are thought to have started around seven
eight hundred thousand. The fact that this thing is in
the in the nearly in the two hundred and eighty
something thousand to three hundred thousand years, well, we're getting
into the range where Neanderthals were. We're getting pretty well
spread out across Europe. Even this is well after the

(01:14:19):
older older hominin there were like a million years ago
that were running around Europe had died off. So this
this guy of a new mystery. We find it on
this you know. They're in Greece, sort of in the Nexus,
kinda close to Africa, the swam Port, I guess, yeah,
looking more primitive than a current modern human would have

(01:14:43):
two hundred and eighty something three hundred thousand years ago,
and definitely not a sister origin of Neanderthal, but a
contemporary something that was wandering around at the same time.
So we do really need we need more skulls, more.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
Evidence, find more skulls. Everyone. They don't even know how
the skull got into this particular cave. It's just one skull,
that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
That's all they got. But it's an intact cranium. I mean,
it's that's the that's the nice thing. It's not just
a fragment of a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
It's oh, it was the Greek gods. They threw someone
down in a pit and that just the head just.

Speaker 5 (01:15:24):
Sounds like they got lost. Poor bugger, you know, exactly
out here.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
It is just risky.

Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
Am I. My last is gonna be From Stanford Medicine
scientists investigating a neurological underpinning of autism spectrum disorder. They
have narrowed it down to hyperactivity. Not that not the
entire disorder, but they have found that hyperactivity in a

(01:15:58):
specific brain agent could drive behaviors commonly associated with the disorder.
So they did all of this research with a mouse model.
They identified the and you're gonna have to help me
out brain words that for some reason, my brain doesn't know,
which seems like it should because it's a brain region,

(01:16:20):
like it would be like knowing the streets in your hometown.
I should know all of these. But the researchers identified
the reticular thalamic nucleus, something that serves apparently as gatekeeper
for sensory information between the thallamus and cortex, as a
potential target for treatment. They were able to reverse symptoms

(01:16:47):
similar to those of autism, including susceptibility to seizures, heightened
sensitivity to stimulus, and increased motor activity, as well as
repetitive behavior and decreased social actions, by giving them drugs
that suppressed that specific area of the brain. The same

(01:17:07):
drugs are currently being studied for treatment of epilepsy. So
this is maybe where the process underlying autism spectrum disorder
and absolute and epilepsy kind of overlapped in the brain.
There's a lot of that overlap and diagnosis with people
who have autism also having epilepsy, or is it the

(01:17:29):
other way around? Kind of hard to tell, but the yeah,
I mean, it's not saying it's going through reverse autism,
but these are quite a quite an extensive list of
the things that are identified as being autism that it

(01:17:50):
would be putting some controls on in mice. This is
still this is still early and it's an off target
again because this being designed as the epilepsy job.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
However, they found it that it was impacting these behaviors
more generally, and so they're like, hey, what happens if
we look at it in autism in autistic model mice? Right,
these aren't necessarily autistic mice because that's a human thing,
but they're mice with a that are a model for autism.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Yeah, it says, yeah, the population of autism is autistic mice.

Speaker 6 (01:18:32):
No, was it?

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Epilepsy is much more prevalent and that I had no idea.
Epilepsy is much more prevalent in people with autism than
the general population. Numbers around thirty percent really compared to
about one percent in the general population.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
That is very So that's very interesting. So there's that
massive overlap that is, Yeah, it's not necessarily treating the epilepsy.

Speaker 2 (01:19:01):
Right and so, and also that region sounds like it's
connected to a lot of the other symptoms that autism manifests. Yeah,
not that it's causal, but it seems like this this
interface of sensory information communication in the brain that in
the extreme case, it seems the extreme malfunctioning would be

(01:19:24):
it delves into epilepsy, but all of these nuanced behavioral
traits may also be arising from this. It's communication points
in the brain.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
M that's cool. This is the kind of thing that
you wonder how it or if it is translatable to humans,
like if the complexity of the system is similarly complex,
or if this is where the complexity just like where
they branch off in too many distinct directions for this

(01:19:57):
kind of treatment to map over.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
But if we have a reticular file and nuclears, then
and it's probably set up about the same way. That
sounds like that sounds like one of those old streets
in the brain town. Yeah, it's been there, and you know,
we we have we have a lot of One of

(01:20:22):
the reasons we use mice and sometimes rabbits in studies
is they they kind of split off from us around
the same time that you know that that primates split
off from everything else, Like we're kind of down the
same we're down a similar evolutionary path more so than
you know, a lot of overlap that we would have

(01:20:43):
with other other creatures. So no, I think that I
think we probably got plenty of brain region equipment that
hasn't hasn't needed updating or changing over the years.

Speaker 1 (01:20:58):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:21:00):
Studies like this always I struggle with because when you
talk about symptoms similar to those of autism, so it's
it's not how do you yes, but also how do
you uncouple the parts of the autism spectrum that someone inhabits,

(01:21:28):
let's say, right, that makes them them, versus things that
are symptoms that you'd like to alleviate, right, And how
are those things coupled and how much is that going
to fundamentally alter that person's personality?

Speaker 6 (01:21:47):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:21:48):
Like, like, there are people who are actually really proud
of their autism. There are people who see that as
part of themselves. A lot of people now, right, Like,
it's it's been a lot. It's a lot of mess,
less of a stigma to be on the autism spectrum. Now,
of course, there are people that are very far on
that spectrum, and there are kind of barriers to them

(01:22:11):
doing things that they might wish to do, right, and
so it would be good to be able to lessen, inhibit,
alleviate whatever words you want to use, like those elements
of symptoms that come from their autism. Right.

Speaker 5 (01:22:27):
But like, but there is this piece where I'm like,
how how much of somebody's autism is? Like how much
is that of that is them? You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
Answer, here's the answer. I got it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
You got it? Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:22:43):
Would you take a pill that makes you autistic? No?

Speaker 4 (01:22:51):
No, but I like I need more information, Yeah, Like
would I take a pill that would make me autistic
if it made my migraine go away?

Speaker 5 (01:23:00):
Maybe?

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
Like so I might take it. You know, see what
it's like, Oh, this is kind of what it's like.
Oh gosh, oh my gosh, I didn't hear those sounds
before and now they kind of bother me and they
didn't before. That's really true. This is a this is
a drug. This isn't this wouldn't be a severing and

(01:23:21):
rewiring and brain that this is a drug you could
take and try it.

Speaker 5 (01:23:27):
Of course, of course, no, totally. I'm not saying this
isn't something we should follow.

Speaker 4 (01:23:31):
I'm just saying, as this field get me off of it,
or as this field like is explored, I'm curious about
that piece, That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (01:23:41):
Right Like, if the people.

Speaker 4 (01:23:42):
Who are in the in the clinical trials are like,
I didn't like this, I didn't feel like myself, right,
or the people around them say I don't recognize this person,
you know, Like, those are the things that I'm really
curious about. I also think it's really important to have
that fundamentally figured out before you start looking at this
in children, because I also know that there is you know,

(01:24:07):
in society, there's this push to make kids.

Speaker 5 (01:24:11):
Like act normal, which what is normal?

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
Right, there's nothing and so just whatever gets along with society.

Speaker 4 (01:24:18):
Yeah, exactly, And I really hesitate to do something, even
if it is something that you could just stop taking
the drug. Right if you do it at a time
when somebody is forming as a human that can also
fundamentally change the trajectory of their lives.

Speaker 5 (01:24:33):
Right, So I'm just saying there's like a lot going
on here.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
Yeah, I mean, like I think have being able to
have those the direct available so you could take the perspective,
you know, I mean some people like if you're doing
perfectly good self care and and everything's fine, you might
not even be curious about trying. But you know, like
I'm sure there's I'm sure there are novel writers of
old and poets who tried an anti depressive medication and

(01:25:00):
we're like, nope, no, I can't write, or an anti
anxiety medicine. And then like what like there's there's going
to be people who function better because they grew up
with their diversity of whatever type.

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
Like you said, there are individuals who are potentially very
very far on the spectrum, and they're for families some
kind of a treatment that would alleviate the symptoms and
control the reticular thlamic nucleus and actually make allow kids
to be more social, to allow them to interact with

(01:25:43):
their families more, allow them to maybe not experience extreme
stimulus discomfort that leads to neural storms and anxiety attacks
and temper tantrums that can sometimes be incredibly violent.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
And while those may form who you are.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
My families, there could be better choices, oh for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:26:07):
Yeah, No, I in no way am I trying to
say this is like a bad idea, right, I'm just
saying that I do think that's a piece of this
that you can't look at it mice. You can't look
at it in a mouse model, right, But that's something
when you start a human trial on a treatment like this,
that's that's a piece I would be interested to kind
of see the results of.

Speaker 9 (01:26:28):
There's people though, there's like people I know who like
are you know, would would you could be a dramatically
different personality?

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
And you're right, like if that's if you're talking about
late in life and they've already formed relationships and things,
and you know, oh my gosh, I could an artistic
couple of one ticket and the other didn't and oh
my goodness, work like there's all kinds of drama available.

Speaker 1 (01:26:57):
But this also, this particular study though, is genetic modification, right,
so we're it could potentially lead to genetic modification and
then designer drugs. So so that there's like very specific
activi activation of the reticular thalamic nucleus, right, it would,

(01:27:17):
it could. The question is, how do you specifically get
to stimulating only the reticular thalamic nucleus in a human brain?
You know, something that's easy to do in a mouse
because you can electrode it or you can you know,
you know it's easy to do knock out mice or
you know, relatively easy anyway. But yeah, the suppression of

(01:27:42):
that overactivity in mice is a different story than it
is in a human being. So this is a long way,
a long way from happening, but I think it's worth
talking about though. Right it's the there are people who
are who lack the ability to hear or lack site,
and they're in communities and where people want to bring

(01:28:04):
back hearing or bring back site. There are people in
these communities who say, no, I'm not disabled, I'm differently abled,
and I do not want it to be fixed. I
like myself the way it is. And so this is
you know, that choice is very important, and so that's
I think I think it's important to bring up for
all these technologies that, especially when it's with kids, right,

(01:28:26):
when is it? When is it good? Speaking of babies,
I have a baby story and justin it's microbes as well.
So it's a story bringing together the world of microbes
and baby brains. We've talked about the question of whether

(01:28:46):
or not microbes are beneficial, whether you know, natural birth
or sea section impacts the health of babies and their development,
often talking about their immune systems and how well they're
able to fight off various diseases, or what that acquired
microbiome from natural childbirth versus one that is acquired later

(01:29:10):
just in the environment after c section, you know how
that impacts their health. This particular study is interesting in
that it was published in Hormones and Behavior a couple
of weeks back, and the researchers they weren't looking at people. Again,
this is mice. So we're doing wonderful work in the

(01:29:30):
world of understanding mice and helping helping their newborns and
their offspring develop appropriately. But the researchers took took germ
free mothers and non germ free mothers. So these are
sterile mice that are in a completely sterile environment. They

(01:29:51):
have no microbes on them, They are not in a
place that has microbes. There's no microbes that the researchers
is like, you know, a clean room for these mice.
Their womb is a clean room. There's no microbes anywhere, right,
And then they had mice in a normal situation, and
they and they cross fostered different pups, and they also

(01:30:14):
had they looked at the offspring of the sterile mice
versus normal mice, the germ free versus with germs, and
looked at the brains of the pups, and they looked
to see how many neurons were in a certain part
of the brain that is called the hypothalamic pair of

(01:30:35):
ventricular nucleus. And this hp N the hypothalamic pair of
ventricular nucleus, or sorry, they it's not it's the pair
of ventricular nucleus. So pv N is the acronym that
they're using. This pair of ventricular nucleus is really important
at like a basal level for a lot of biological

(01:31:00):
or physiological mechanisms and also for also social activities. So
it's like the hypothalmus this is a very essential area
of the brain. And what they discovered is that there
was a decrease in the number of neurons in the

(01:31:21):
brains in this area of the brain the pair of
ventricular nucleus in the germ free baby mice, and this
is coming from the mothers who were germ free as well,
so when they cross fostered there, and that's basically taking
germy babies and giving them to germ free moms, and

(01:31:43):
then taking germ free babies and giving them to germy moms.
The germ free babies they're born with the lower number
of neurons. Their neurons increase a bit, but they never
reached the same number of neurons as those that are
fully born from in and develop in germed environments. So

(01:32:11):
the interesting question here and what they're bringing up is
that it's not just the birth canal microbes that are important.
It's actually the microbiota of the mother themselves. So during gestation,
the microbiome, the microbiota of the mom impact the development
of the brain of the offspring. The birth and the

(01:32:34):
microbes that are acquired during birth also impact the development
of the brain of the offspring, and development itself is
part of the picture. And they even they did experiments
with adults as well, swapping them over and they found
that if you take germs away at any point, this
pair ofventricular nucleus is impacted, but it's just impacted to

(01:32:58):
different degrees at different times depending But if the if
the microbes are not there with the mom pre birth,
there's a deficit starting immediately. Microbes impact party, make impact

(01:33:20):
brain development.

Speaker 6 (01:33:21):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
Yeah, that's the that's the when I was.

Speaker 4 (01:33:27):
Uh, when I was doing research on the like smearing
or smear or not to smear. Right, the whole idea
is if you have an emergency C section.

Speaker 1 (01:33:37):
Do you wipe?

Speaker 6 (01:33:38):
Wipe?

Speaker 5 (01:33:38):
Yeah, do you do a smear?

Speaker 4 (01:33:41):
And a lot of hospitals don't even ask you if
you want to do it or not.

Speaker 6 (01:33:47):
It's like.

Speaker 4 (01:33:49):
Anyway, there's not a lot of research on smear or
not to smear, which is why a lot of hospitals
don't kind of have that in their menu of But
most of the research that I did read, the limited
research that was available, was around just developing the microbiome.

(01:34:10):
It's not in it wasn't in the connection to the brain.
That is not it's just about gut. It was about
gut health pretty much only. And that research is there's
not a lot and that's because there's so many other
places that you get your gut.

Speaker 1 (01:34:33):
Micro but as you start, you know, you start breasting
or like whatever's on you know, if you don't have
a completely sterile bottle nipple, right, so there's bi.

Speaker 5 (01:34:44):
What's on your skin?

Speaker 4 (01:34:44):
You're doing skin to skin all the time. Do you
have a dog in the house that licks your baby's
foot and then they stick their foot in their mouth,
Like there's there's all these differ places, yeah, that they're
getting microbes from aside this one entry point.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
So the thing is that it's there are there is
that one And so this is beyond just you know,
the gut or the immune system. This is this is
the brain and neurons in the brain. And what I
find really interesting about the PVN is that so this
is like physiological mechanisms, so stress, right, blood pressure, your

(01:35:21):
osmotic water balance, whether you're bloated or not, or dehydrated
or whatever. But the social behavior is one of the
really important things here too. But in terms of regulating
stress and things like blood pressure, what this There have
been a number of studies that suggest that there are

(01:35:41):
that the neurons coming into the gut influence the immune
system in the gut, and there is this feedback loop
between the microbes in the gut, the immune system, and
the nervous system. This is also taking place in the
lungs as well. The vagus nerve is impacting impacts how

(01:36:02):
you recover from the flu. Like the vague if you
get rid of your vagual nerve input to your lungs,
but won't you won't be breathing. But anyway, but if
you get rid of the vague nerve input, there are
no susceptors. There are these There are these receptors from
the vaguest nerve in the lungs that respond to inflammation
and macrophages and all sorts of stuff. And if you

(01:36:24):
get rid of them, the immune system goes crazy and
then you over the immune system goes too far, and
so the nervous system is balancing the immune system. And
this is all attached to the brain to stress, stress
in the immune system. We know they go together. I mean,
I am jumping to conclusions here, but I am the
link between the microbes the brain development in an area

(01:36:47):
that is responsible for helping to regulate stress and social behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:36:51):
Like well, it's also aligned with neuronal tissue.

Speaker 1 (01:36:57):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
That's that that brain connection is neurons that are you know,
throughout your digestive system. So it makes sense that it
would still be with the studies we're showing about the
difference in to get microbiome is probably where is sourcing
the contribution to the brain developed, No doubt that would

(01:37:23):
be very large.

Speaker 6 (01:37:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
The one thing I missed from the study though, how
did the German babies, the Germy Germany babies do with
the germ free uh upbringing?

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
Yeah, so they did have a It did diminish the
number of of the Pvan neurons, So.

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):
You've got to be Germy all the way around.

Speaker 1 (01:37:52):
Yeah, they had more neurons still than the ones that
were born in the German free but it decreased the
number because they were in a germ free environment after
So there is a continued interplay during development between between
the environment, the microbes and our brain development. This is

(01:38:15):
I mean, this isn't mice there, but it's a I
think it's really the next step. Now we have to
measure it. You're gonna have to cut up some note mind,
don't listen to me.

Speaker 2 (01:38:31):
I just hope the research mice are still getting funded
because the money.

Speaker 1 (01:38:37):
Yeah, well, if they're not funding the research mice, maybe
they're funding the research robots. The some new some new
research out of China, which is a little concerning to me.
I don't know if you guys are going to feel
the same way. But this paper published and sell this

(01:38:58):
last week. Researchers are are genetically modifying, modifying tomatoes and
soybeans and other crops that could be hothouse farmed or
greenhouse farmed to make them more easily pollinated by robots.

(01:39:21):
So the what they are, what they are, what they
are doing is genetically modifying. So we know that through evolution,
through adaptation, many flowers have adapted to specific pollinators and
pollinators have adapted in turn. So like the honey creepers
of Hawaii are an example that as their flowers are

(01:39:43):
going extinct because of human land use and development and
climate change, the honey creeper birds that have specialized on
very specific flowers aren't able to find those flowers or
access food anymore because maybe their curve beak is too
short to get to the bottom of a long flower,
and so the birds are dying. Oh no, where are
all the pollinators going. It's Okay, we're gonna put all

(01:40:04):
of our plants into hothouses and pollinate them with robots now,
because robots are less expensive than people. Because it's really
expensive apparently to do hybridization and to hand pollinate tomato
crops and also like soybeans and others, there are large

(01:40:28):
proportions of you know, the costs that go to actually
paying people to do pollination by hand. So instead, let's
just genetically modify the flowers so that robots can do
it in a hot house really efficiently and fast. And
that's what they're doing. Great, So anyway, I might have

(01:40:48):
like glossed over specifics of this study, but this is
the big take home of what's what they're doing. Yeah,
but they're making specific flower designs so that the parts
of the flower that are necessary for pollination are easily
accessible by robot parts.

Speaker 2 (01:41:10):
And so yeah, so if that's the only great, if
that's the only thing that they've changed, it's the only modification,
then and nobody will like this. My one requirement is
that they also set those plants out into the wild.

Speaker 1 (01:41:31):
But see that's yeah what wro because then.

Speaker 2 (01:41:36):
Because what you're talking about doing is if if this,
if you flash forward to this becomes agriculture. Right, say,
this is as good an idea as everybody who's engineering
it thinks it is. And it replaces pollinators, which is

(01:41:57):
you know, the fear of colony collapse created a global
famine is real. The I think it would need to
a third of humans would be required to run around
pollinating because we can't. We can't pollinate as efficiently as
a be.

Speaker 6 (01:42:13):
You can't.

Speaker 2 (01:42:14):
A third of humans would be pollinating as a job
full time like that. It would be ridiculous, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
But so wonderful, calming job. I think of any job
that could be great.

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):
The next years, we create monocultures that all pollinate by
these robots, we would like we would, I would, I
would expect that we should have an allowance for uh
a a an actual pollinator out in the wild, to

(01:42:50):
take advantage to evolve with or away from this however
they see fit out in the wild while we're doing
this experiment of humanity.

Speaker 1 (01:43:00):
Are pros and cons to uh changing these traits of flowers?
Right there's you know, these these are very energetic parts
of the flowers, and if they get eaten by you know,
if they get out in the wild. You know, very
often flowers are like I'm preserving this part just for
the pollinators, and they don't want it to get eaten

(01:43:22):
by a deer or whatever. Blair, what I have a question.

Speaker 4 (01:43:27):
Okay, why why are we engineering the plants to be
pollinatable by the robots instead of the robots to be
the right shape for the plants?

Speaker 2 (01:43:43):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:43:44):
This is a really great light. Oh, because because many
crop traits obstruct the application of AI based robots.

Speaker 4 (01:43:54):
Oh yeah, the design a new robot, design a new
robot that seems easy, you're then creating it did end.

Speaker 2 (01:44:03):
No, it's to prevent my plan. It's to make it
harder to pollinate, so that if it goes out in
the wild and you don't have the right robot, you
didn't buy the right robot, you can't pollinate their plant.
You can't.

Speaker 4 (01:44:15):
Yes, it's the same like when mon Santo was making
the horn that wouldn't Yes, and then it escaped and
then they everybody sue them and.

Speaker 1 (01:44:23):
Creates a proprietary plants and so and what they have
created here in this particular study are sterile male lines
with flowers with exerted stigmas. And then they trained a
mobile robot to automatically recognize and cross pollinate the stigmas,

(01:44:45):
and so they have automated F one breeding. It's efficient
comparable to manual pollination, facilitating the rapid breeding of stress
resilient and flavorful tomatoes when combined with denovo domestication under
speed breeding conditions.

Speaker 5 (01:45:04):
Yeah, this should not be allowed.

Speaker 4 (01:45:07):
You can have robots, you can have robots that pollinate
that is, I don't have any problem with that, but
this should not be allowed.

Speaker 1 (01:45:17):
It's imagine hothouses like Amazon factories manned by robots and
in the future where there's they're flavorful.

Speaker 11 (01:45:29):
Apparently, fine, tomato is not a real thing anyway, that's
a that's a human uh manipulated.

Speaker 1 (01:45:41):
Soybeans are, and soybeans are another one of the crops
that tomatoes.

Speaker 2 (01:45:45):
Tomatoes were basically berries before the Chilean hold of them.

Speaker 4 (01:45:52):
Anyway, Yes, you're right, but then yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:45:58):
They're working on already modified through breeding over ten thousand
years or whatever. But yeah, that's already robot control. That's fine, And.

Speaker 1 (01:46:07):
They've been looking at doing robots.

Speaker 2 (01:46:11):
The tomato caterpillars we're doing all that time where there's
so many waiting waiting.

Speaker 1 (01:46:22):
With the cheshire cat waiting to see what to do.
But anyway, yes, robots and genetic modification of plants, so that, yeah, yeah,
you got to make it easy for the AI bots
to be able to pollinate things in the warehouses when
all the humans are gone, when the humans are dead. Anyway,

(01:46:42):
there is a brain computer interface researchers at Stanford have
been working on to decode and translate your inner thoughts.
So if you think in words and have thoughts in
your head that you do not speak aloud and not
planned speech, so you could be I'm going to say,

(01:47:03):
thinking of what you're going, But there's the inner thoughts,
the inner thoughts that are not pre speech kind of things,
right not, And so they they worked with their new
brain computer interface that demonstrated seventy four percent accuracy in
translating inner speech.

Speaker 4 (01:47:23):
Yeah, it's probably with a number like that, with the
number of seventy four percent, it's probably ninety.

Speaker 5 (01:47:30):
It's probably ninety because it's it's people who are like,
that's not what I was thinking.

Speaker 4 (01:47:36):
I won't tell you no, I wasn't wondering what that
dirt tastes like, Like it's just weird stuff like that
that they're like, and you'm not.

Speaker 5 (01:47:44):
Copping to that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:46):
It's the end of society. It would be basically like
putting everybody on a truth detector, and then it would
be no negotiations, no, no between countries never.

Speaker 5 (01:48:00):
You don't want to know. You don't want to know
what people are thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:48:02):
You don't you really don't like I even when they
talk and they're saying the words, I don't really want
to hear that party there most of the time, let
alone the part that they didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:48:13):
Say, like yeah, So they could They were able to
figure out the difference between attempted speech whereas like people
like you know, like thinking about like I'm going to
go and inner thoughts and they said, wow, the signals
were similar. They were able to tell the difference between them.

(01:48:34):
So they were able to tell the difference between the
things that people wanted to actually say or we're gonna say,
versus those inside thoughts that you hang on. Where is
the study Stanford University and.

Speaker 2 (01:48:49):
Stanford like they could have and I'm saying they did.
That's a that's a college with a lot of introverts.
I'm if they hadn't read an introvert, I will tell
you what they were they're interpreting Italian fishermen.

Speaker 1 (01:49:10):
You're going off, you're going off here, you're going off here.
And the study actually involved four people who were paralyzed,
so severe paralysis from als or brainstem stroke. So these
are people who cannot necessarily speak well. And so the
idea is that by using these brain computer interfaces, they

(01:49:32):
could help people who are not able to communicate easily
actually be able to participate using a translated speech.

Speaker 6 (01:49:42):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:49:43):
But this is where we went immediately, is also where
these where these studies are going. And so you know,
the idea that eventually advanced devices would be able to
either not just restore community but also be used in
other in other instances, is you know, to destroy civilization

(01:50:09):
of course.

Speaker 6 (01:50:09):
Right right.

Speaker 4 (01:50:10):
The other thing I'm wondering, though, from like a brainy,
from from just a brain interest in how brains work perspective,
is I'm wondering if, because this is what I was
thinking of too, is people who've lost the ability to
speak or have struggle with the ability to speak, right,
would it be the same for people who have never
been able to speak?

Speaker 5 (01:50:31):
Would it be the same pathways in their brain?

Speaker 6 (01:50:33):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:50:34):
Because if they if they were born without the ability
to speak, then are they still using the same parts
of their brain that people who lost the ability would right,
Probably not question.

Speaker 1 (01:50:46):
Yeah so, but if it's an individualized brain computer interface,
potentially the neural signals could be trained, you know, once
they've got kind of the system down, maybe they could
be trained.

Speaker 4 (01:50:57):
But I guess my question is, are there two distinct
pathways still? If you have never spoken, do you still
have inner thoughts versus dialogue?

Speaker 1 (01:51:11):
Or is it would you even have would you even
have dialogue or would it just be images?

Speaker 4 (01:51:15):
Right, because you'd still probably be like, oh, I want
to convey this, I want to sign this, I want
to write it down, I want to write, Like, is
there a similar pathway of I want to I want
to convey this information to somebody else versus I'm having
an inner thought. Probably it's still two unique pathways, I
would assume, But I'm curious if this interface would be
able to figure it out in the same.

Speaker 1 (01:51:36):
Way that probably.

Speaker 2 (01:51:39):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to take the under on that
seventy four. I'm going to take like, uhh yeah, I'd
say something like that. That was pretty elegant, rights, right man? Yeah, sure, Yeah,
I was pretty well said, I'll say I was going
to say that of course that was of course this

(01:52:00):
is AI talking for people on some level. Then then
it's just like, well, it's going to speak with confidence.
And if you haven't been able to communicate and you're like, yeah,
I did know that information and that I just shared, apparently, yeah,
I don't know. Now I'm now I'm more wary.

Speaker 1 (01:52:24):
I think that's it's it's good to be wary. But
they they looked at different different areas within the within
the brain, within the gyrus in uh primary motor cortex,
and they in looking at particular areas, they found most

(01:52:45):
of the ones for there was certain areas that were
best for decoding inner speech. They found some areas that
were better for attempted speech, and some areas were really
good at listening and so they were able to code
kind of what the brain was was decoding as hearing

(01:53:05):
as listening to language as opposed to actually attempting or
the kind of inner speech of the brain. And then
there was there were some areas.

Speaker 2 (01:53:17):
The question, Blair, you don't have to have the speech
pathways if you've got the hearing pathways and you're thinking
in the sound, yeah, is that one would that work?

Speaker 1 (01:53:30):
Yeah, And this is all basically in the auditory areas
and so yeah, so if you're if you don't think
with sound, this might not work.

Speaker 5 (01:53:40):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:53:41):
Yeah, but I think that's a really interesting question. And
you know, of course they're using large languid models to
match these neural signals to words to try and put
this whole, this whole system together, And I don't know,
I think it's pretty pretty interesting. Beyond that, I don't

(01:54:01):
have much more for tonight except that researchers published a
study in Plus one the end of July that we
didn't talk about that I think everybody needs to know
communicating astrobiology and the search for life elsewhere. So this
is this study did a scientific analysis on of media

(01:54:27):
representation of the search for life in space. Basically, they
found that there's rampant speculation and over selling of the science.

Speaker 5 (01:54:41):
We could have told you that, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:54:43):
So, Hey, if you've been listening to Twists for a day,
or twenty years or twenty five years, you know this
is the place to come where we speculate, but we
always stick to the facts as far as we know them.
That you know, you're right to counter some of that rampant, rampant.

Speaker 2 (01:55:05):
We tend not to be on the bandwagon too quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:55:10):
No, I look at headlines and you know, if anytime
it's got Ari Lobe in a headline, I'm like, nope, no,
just don't even listen.

Speaker 5 (01:55:20):
No, we found a squirrel on Mars JK. It's a rock.

Speaker 1 (01:55:26):
Yeah, it's just gonna be a squirrel like rock. But
it's not even like a squirrel. It's more like a rock.

Speaker 7 (01:55:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (01:55:35):
Laugh now.

Speaker 2 (01:55:36):
But the squirrels have been there for decades. They're way
ahead of it.

Speaker 5 (01:55:42):
Squirrels you mean rocks. You're right, yeah, they're not.

Speaker 2 (01:55:46):
They're not marching squirrels. Don't be confused. Don't believe squirrels.
Those are earth squirrels that made it there well ahead
of us. They have technology we haven't even dreamed of before.
You got it all hidden in the trees.

Speaker 4 (01:56:02):
He built a whole space elevator and then it's just
you know, doesn't work right, it's a little squirrely.

Speaker 1 (01:56:13):
Yeah, but it is amazing that you know, a study
they you know, we have to do. We need a
study to tell us that the complex dynamics of science, communication,
and astrobiology where speculations and promises can generate public excitement
and influence research funding. Also risk misrepresenting science uncertainty and

(01:56:37):
creating unrealistic expectations. Do we need a scientific study to
tell us that about the way that some science is
represented in the media.

Speaker 4 (01:56:50):
That sounds like some scientists were really angry at science
media and they were like, how do I how do
I tell them?

Speaker 5 (01:56:57):
How mad I am?

Speaker 4 (01:56:58):
I know, it's like the ultimately Mike drop of I'll
write them a letter. It's no, no, no, I'm gonna
do a research paper.

Speaker 5 (01:57:06):
That's what I'm gonna do. I'll show you that's I'm
gonna have a strongly worded piece of research. That's all
tell them.

Speaker 2 (01:57:14):
See. Yeah, So like, is that like a big deal?

Speaker 5 (01:57:24):
I it's a big deal because of the Internet.

Speaker 4 (01:57:29):
I feel like I feel like it's a big deal
because it used to be like, oh, if you watch
the ten o'clock news, they'd say something in your kitchen
may kill you, and you're like, yeah, ten o'clock news, Okay,
I'm sure it's bleach again, got it? But then you
know now that we have the Internet and we have
social media, and we have accessibility to this science news everywhere.

(01:57:52):
It's not it's not as easy to recognize what's real
and what's faked, recognize what's sensational and what's not. And
people don't have the time to be to click on
every single thing and go is this reel?

Speaker 5 (01:58:06):
Is this real? Is this real?

Speaker 4 (01:58:07):
They're just like, oh, I saw this article that like
there's Frankenstein, there's zombie bunnies. Did you hear their zombie
bunnies in Colorado? And then they're like, oh, man, really,
and then.

Speaker 5 (01:58:17):
They tell there there's zombie bunnies in Colorado, and then
you know it's so I do feel like it's a
it's a.

Speaker 4 (01:58:24):
Bigger problem than twenty years ago because of that, A
lot of the same tactics are getting used to catch
people's attention, but there's way more to lose.

Speaker 1 (01:58:36):
Yeah, So, as far as I was gonna say, as
far as speculation is happening in these in these studies
and the representation in different publications research paper versus press
release versus news articles, the news articles are always multiples

(01:58:58):
of of speculation higher than the research paper. The research
papers do have significant speculation when it comes to existence
or the conditions, because these are speculations they're guessing. It's
like probably in the conclusions, we are you know, guessing,

(01:59:20):
and they probably say, we're speculating that this could exist,
you know. And it's also the speculation as they lead
into the next study that they're going to do or
the next paper that the you know, the next hypothesis
that they're generating. But the one thing that is very
interesting is that when it comes to evidence, pretty much

(01:59:41):
they're all pretty much on par. They all pretty much
stick to the evidence, except the news the new news
articles do go a little bit higher in the speculation
on the evidence. And then well, the usually yeah, if
you think of like the importance of speculation, the press releases,

(02:00:04):
which are usually coming from universities where the research or
institutions where the research is happening, they they overestimate or
speculate the most on significance of the study, so that
the news articles, yeah, according to this analysis astrobiology.

Speaker 2 (02:00:24):
Here's here's a proper academic paper. Though, keep it very concise,
keep it very limited. Speculate maybe not at all, but
just present what we've done now.

Speaker 1 (02:00:37):
And then the press release goes you need to this
is significant because they want to get the news media's attention,
so they get big and then the news media goes, oh,
this is exciting, and then they speculate more about life
on a planet that's Earth, like what they.

Speaker 4 (02:00:56):
They conduct interviews with people who can say, Oh, I
had nothing to do with this research, but I think
it means this.

Speaker 2 (02:01:04):
Yes, here's what I'm now.

Speaker 1 (02:01:07):
I'm a science writer, so I'm going to tell you things.

Speaker 2 (02:01:10):
Well, I'm looking at significance. Now, the research paper isn't
going to be talking about where it necessarily falls in
the ten other research papers that come out where it
falls in terms of how this launches everything forward.

Speaker 1 (02:01:29):
Usually though, if they do, it's like, this is the
first time this has been discover like this is this
is possibly the first time anyone's described this.

Speaker 2 (02:01:38):
This might possibly lead to a pathway for it to
be a first time addition to an ad hoc Like
it's very conservative to a good paper. The paper is
not being very conservative about its significance other than like
the data's significance, right, you should run away. Then there's
probably a problem with it right now. Yes, then they

(02:02:01):
have the hype people, But the hype people are also
able to say, like, here's where it fits into the
next drug that's coming out. Here's where it fits into
ten other diseases that this is in the realm of
working on that might look like, but then look at
the significance when you get to the press on that one,
see how it's below because the regular press was like,

(02:02:23):
I don't know, I don't know why that's it.

Speaker 1 (02:02:27):
The difference and the significance is not necessarily the thing
that gets eyeballs.

Speaker 2 (02:02:34):
But it could also just be lost on them.

Speaker 1 (02:02:37):
Yeah that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:02:40):
Yeah, yeah, maybe they just might be lost on them
and so they can be misunderstand. I would say that
that I would go with the Looking at all of these,
I would say I would roll with the press release
in most of those cases. Most university press releases aren't
doing uh too much proofery. Really, they're not really like

(02:03:04):
it's not that bad. It's not like I don't know,
I don't I think they're usually sticking pretty good to
where it's at.

Speaker 4 (02:03:12):
How many of the conversations we have in this show
are about this exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:03:17):
It's a lot of press release.

Speaker 4 (02:03:19):
Yeah, there's a lot of it is about oh they're
saying it means this, but really like why it's you
know what I mean, it's a lot of the conversations
that we.

Speaker 2 (02:03:29):
Have university, I find usually sticks pretty well to the study,
but might explain its significance better and might get a
little bit more excited about it.

Speaker 1 (02:03:41):
Now is normally where like a lot of like framemakers
that everybody uses.

Speaker 2 (02:03:47):
And then if you're reading a treatment or article on it,
that's when you're like, did you even read the press release?
When this was really like, how can this be so different?

Speaker 4 (02:03:56):
So justin you you really like to bring those. I
really like to bring the ones that say, you know,
oh you think that this bird is dancing? How about
their doing body language?

Speaker 6 (02:04:11):
Right?

Speaker 4 (02:04:11):
So I think that there's two there's kind of two
different types of that. Like you do a lot of
the medical stories where they try to extrapolate in these
crazy ways that you're describing. I think I bring a
lot of stories that where the press release is the
one where they have an interview with usually the lead researcher,
if not, you know, some grad students and some other things,

(02:04:34):
they have an interview with, sometimes an unrelated professor from
another institution entirely right, But that's where a lot of
the kind of editorializing from people close to the story
come in and I think that's where I run into
a lot of trouble when I am kind of interpreting

(02:04:56):
a story that I don't fully agree with. It's actually
in the press release m hm. So I think there's
different categories, right, And that's why there's the the data
spread exists because it's it's kind of.

Speaker 5 (02:05:09):
A deterioration from the original source material in each step.

Speaker 1 (02:05:16):
Ultimately, and that we need to use convolution, so we
go from the news stories back to the original lab
research that was done.

Speaker 2 (02:05:27):
And then I mean I've seen I've seen studies where
you're like, how do you presenting this data in words?
One way? But then you're giving me the numbers.

Speaker 4 (02:05:37):
That or you say it's this fundamentally amazing study and
it had two people in it or something, right, yeah,
which I.

Speaker 2 (02:05:47):
Mean depending on you know, if it's if it's an
end of likening, like a lot of the medical stuff
that really cutting edge treatments, you're going to find that
you're gonna first time you're going to hear about it,
it's going to be one person because that person die
and they're not going to do thirty people if they
all might die. But it must be important enough to

(02:06:08):
try it, that person might die. True.

Speaker 1 (02:06:12):
That tough anyway, But this was just astrobiology. Looking at
the speculation and who knew. There's a lot of speculation
in the media about science related to astrobiology, and that's
going to sell.

Speaker 2 (02:06:26):
That will sell, right, And you you don't start up.
You got to hype out a little bit because you
don't want to start off with, like, what's it like
to be an astronaut? Well, the first thing I'm going
to tell you is that you drink recycled urine. Oh
you know what, I'm going to go look at a
different ourselves instead of an astronaut somethinnaria. Don't have to
drink my own pea.

Speaker 4 (02:06:46):
But I mean, if we can try to bring this
like full circle to how we started tonight, there has
to be a certain amount of interpretation and maybe sensationalization
to get funding, to get support from from political allies, right,
but also yeah, to like how do you indicate NASA

(02:07:08):
is important? If you just talk about Doppler for weather
so that you can like decide when to pour concrete,
that's not as sensational as talking about mapping the stars, right,
And so I think that's.

Speaker 5 (02:07:24):
Right, right, exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:07:26):
So there is a piece of this that you have
to do to make science interesting and valuable and uh
cutting edge, which is what some people want to see
from their science, right, And so where.

Speaker 12 (02:07:42):
You or I might sit here and be like, oh
my god, they they thought X y Z, but it's
actually ABC like this is so cool, Like somebody else
can look at it be like why do I care?

Speaker 4 (02:07:53):
Right? And so there there there is a job to
do in communicating science to make it exciting, to make
it thrilling, to.

Speaker 1 (02:08:02):
Make it groundbreaking people as possible.

Speaker 5 (02:08:06):
Yeah, Yeah, to to make.

Speaker 4 (02:08:07):
Sure people value science, understand science, and and and continue
to support it. So like, I understand why a certain
amount of this needs to happen, but it can't happen
at the detriment of truth, right, And I think that
that's where we often get so frustrated.

Speaker 1 (02:08:27):
Yep, I get frustrated, Yeah, to the detriment of truth.
I think that is where it when it breaks down.

Speaker 2 (02:08:35):
I've seen what else is out there.

Speaker 1 (02:08:37):
I'm a very critical I know I can only deal with.

Speaker 2 (02:08:45):
Is over hyping a science stories far far far more accurate.

Speaker 1 (02:08:51):
It's funny because I feel like this is the overhyped story.

Speaker 4 (02:08:55):
Yeah, the places that we get our sources from usually
is kind of a recent release. The paper came out
very recently, but so we get I feel like the
place that I get stories from usually the few sites
that I go to, it's fairly unadulterated. Still, it's close
to the original sources. Heial, it's close to the original

(02:09:18):
press release. But what I find is when my friends
and family will come up to me and be like,
did you hear about this one story? And I hear
kind of pieces of it, and I go, oh my god,
that's like four months old. That's two years old. The
farther you are away from the published date, usually the
wilder things are in there. When like you get your

(02:09:38):
Yahoo News or you get your like Dodo, or you
get whatever it is. I'm not saying those things are bad,
but a lot of the time, the game of telephone
has moved so far that you hear pieces where you're like,
that's not what that said, And so I have to
be the doubter that's like, yes, I did read that
a long time ago, and here's what the story is

(02:10:00):
actually was.

Speaker 5 (02:10:01):
I'm sorry, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:10:04):
I think I'm I think I'm very often the scientific
well actually, yes, I'm sorry. No, I'm not I'm not
sorry at all. We have actually come to the end
of our show though I don't have any more stories
to talk about. Do anterview, do either of you?

Speaker 2 (02:10:22):
No, I've got three more that just came up hands.

Speaker 1 (02:10:25):
No, we're gonna finish the show right now. Because we're
gonna finish the show. Everybody. Thank you so much for
joining us. I hope that you have enjoyed all of
the stuff that we've talked about. I hope that you
found the interview valuable with Adriana Bankston earlier tonight, you know,
find a little hope out there and have a little

(02:10:48):
bit more connection to what's going on at Capitol Hill
related to science. Additionally, I am, you know, just so
thankful to certain people who help the show. So, Fata,
thank you so much for your help with show notes,
and thank you for the social media help. Last week.
You put on an extra message when my power went
out and we weren't able to make the show happen.

(02:11:11):
There were, you know, parental duties and other things and
so many apologies for not making it, but Fata, you
allowed us to get that message out there, and I
really appreciate that. On top of that, thank you to
gord Ur and Lare and so many others who helped
to keep our chatrooms great places. All of you in
the chatrooms who are here talking, Thanks for keeping it

(02:11:32):
real right and being nice and you know, respectful of
everybody and having fun, being curious and having fun. Thank
you to Identity for for recording the show, and to
Rachel for editing the show, and to our Patreons sponsors.
Thank you to Robert Norland, Lauren Gifford, Dana Lewis, Eden, Mandel,

(02:11:54):
Alan Biola, Aaron Anathema. Wait did I start? I did?

Speaker 6 (02:11:58):
Wait? Did I read that?

Speaker 7 (02:12:00):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (02:12:01):
Okay? Hold on, Robert Norland, Robert W. Farley, Lauren Gifford,
Dana Lewis, Eden, Mandel, Alan Viola, Aaron Anathema, Arthur Kepler,
Craig Potts, Mary Gertz, Teresa Smith, Richard Badge, Bob Coles,
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Bay Guard, Chef'stad, Donathan Styles aka Don Stylo, Ali Coffin
Schubrew Don Mandy's Pig, Stephen Alberon, Darryl Meischek, Andrew Swanson,

(02:12:23):
Frontus one O four, Paul Ronovich, Kevin Brden, Noodles, Jack,
Brian Carrington, David A. Young Blood, Shawn Clarence Lamb, John McKee,
Greg Riley, Marquesselough, Steve Leasman, aka Z mckenn, Hayes, Howard Tan,
Christopher Rappin, Richard Brendan Minish, Johnny Gridley, Remy Day, Gee,
Burton Latimore, Flying Out, Christopher drier Ardy, I'm Greg Briggs,
John Outwood, Rudy Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, John Rodney, Lewis, Paul Phillip, Shane,

(02:12:45):
Kurt Lars and Craig Landon, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, David
Dave Neighbor, Eric Naplon, makes Eo, Adam Mishcon, Kevin Parachant,
Bald Calder, Marjorie, Paul Disney, Patrick Peccaro, and Tony Steele.
Thank you all for supporting Twists on Patreon, and if
any of you out there are interested in being a

(02:13:07):
Twist supporter through the Patreon community, head over to twist
dot org, click on that Patreon link and I will
try and pronounce your name if you're If you support
us at that level on next week's show.

Speaker 2 (02:13:23):
We will be back Wednesday, eight pm Pacific time, broadcasting
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Speaker 4 (02:13:31):
Want to listen to us as a podcast, just search
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Speaker 2 (02:13:41):
For more information on anything you've heard here today. Show
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Speaker 4 (02:13:57):
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Speaker 2 (02:14:23):
We look forward to discussing Science Review again next week,
and if you've learned anything from the show, remember.

Speaker 1 (02:14:32):
It's all in your head.

Speaker 7 (02:14:36):
This week in Science, This week in science, This week
in science, This week in science. At the end of
the world, So I'm setting up shop, got my banner unfurled,
it says the scientist is in. I'm going to sell
my advice. Tell them how to stop the robot with.

Speaker 3 (02:14:59):
A simple the I'll reverse all the warming with a
wave of my hand.

Speaker 6 (02:15:04):
And oh it'll cost you is a couple of grass.

Speaker 2 (02:15:09):
Because this week's science.

Speaker 6 (02:15:11):
Is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say.

Speaker 7 (02:15:16):
I use the scientific method for all that it's worth,
and I'll broadcast.

Speaker 6 (02:15:21):
My opinion all over the go.

Speaker 3 (02:15:25):
It's this week in science.

Speaker 2 (02:15:27):
This week in science. This week in science, eScience.

Speaker 7 (02:15:31):
Science, Science, Science.

Speaker 3 (02:15:33):
This week is science, This weekend Science, This week in science.

Speaker 6 (02:15:38):
This week is science. This week in science, This week
in science, This week in science.

Speaker 2 (02:15:45):
This week is science.

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