What WILL We Never Know?

What is in the This Week in Science Podcast? This Week:  A Different Science Fair, Cucumbers, Zoonotic Time Travel, Tortoises, Crabs, Chimps, New Brain Cells, Dance Brains, and Much More Science to Know! Become a Patron! Check out the full unedited episode of our podcast on YouTube or Twitch. Remember that you can find TWIS […] The post 09 July, 2025 – Episode 1022 – What WILL We Never Know? appeared first on This Week in Science - The Kickass Science Podcast.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Twists. This Week in Science, episode number ten
twenty two, recorded on Wednesday, July ninth, twenty twenty five.
What Will We Never Know? Hey everyone, I'm doctor Keekan.
Tonight on the show, we will fill your head with
exploding cucumbers, zuanoses, and sensitive crabs. But first, thanks to

(00:27):
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 disclaimer disclaimer
disclaimer Like the pains of an aged tennis player, So
go these days of our lives. It hurts to get

(00:49):
up in the morning. There might be grunting and groaning,
but you know that to keep moving is to stay alive.
So get up, get moving, and get ready for this
week in science coming up next.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I've got the kind of mind I can't get enough.
I want to learn everything.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
I want to.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Fill it all up with new discoveries. It happened every
day of this week. There's only one place to go
to find the knowledge. Zek I want to know what's.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Lots happened this week in sciences. Lots happened this week
in science.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
Science to you, Kiki and.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
The good science to YouTube. Blair and everyone out there,
Welcome to another episode of this Week in Science. We
are back to talk about science. And yet again there
was a wonderfully world of wondrous. I can't use wonder
over again anyway, so much for being not repetitive. But

(02:10):
there was a lot of science this week, and so
we dug through the stories and brought them to you.
I have stories about some going back in time for
zoonotic infections. What is so exciting? Justin's not here tonight,
so I might be able to chat a little bit

(02:30):
about the complete human genome of an ancient Egyptian. And
then I've got new brain cells, which is so good,
and maybe maybe some synchronized dance brains as well. What
did you bring, Blair? What's in the animal corner?

Speaker 4 (02:51):
Well, I have an appetizer of some plant news in
the form of explosive seed dispersal. Then in the animal corner,
I have sensitive crabs and emotional tortoises. I haven't a
lot of feelings today. And then I saw that Kiki,
you brought an animal story for tonight. I did not

(03:14):
get a chance to read it at all, So I
cannot wait for you to tell me all about it.

Speaker 5 (03:19):
I did.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
I did read it a little and I went blarry,
how could you not this is and I can't believe
that this is a story, but it is so chimpanzees.
They're decorating themselves interestingly. We'll talk about that one. Okay,

(03:41):
everyone out there, if you would like to know more
about past episodes the present episode. Once all of the
stories get put up on our website, we will have
show notes available links to stories other you know, our
YouTube page. Thankfully, FOTA put some great notes up about
the sources of our stories. Same thing goes for our website,

(04:02):
Twist dot org. Wherever you are, make sure you are
subscribed to Twists. If you're not, look for This Week
in Science. Make sure that you're subscribed and you're sharing
us with your friends so that everybody can have great
science conversations and continue to learn new things, ask new questions,
and develop their practiced and considered curiosity about the world.

(04:26):
There's a difference between knowledge and wisdom, Yes, there is. Uh,
let's see anything else. No, so just subscribe. Look for
this Week in Science. We're on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Twist
dot org is our website. It's time for the show.
You ready for some science, Bring me.

Speaker 6 (04:41):
Some science, I Demandy, Okay, by demand of Blair, I
bring you my opening story of the night, which actually is.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Science. I can't tell you about well, because it's science
that we may never actually answer. There's questions that may
never be answered, at least in the United States by
the researchers that were involved in this particular event. So

(05:17):
this week and event was produced at Capitol Hill, and
it was produced by the Congressional Science Panel. So what
is this? This is The event was from the House
Committee on Science, Space and Technology and the Democrats in

(05:41):
the Rayburn House Office on Yesterday, Tuesday, July eighth, from
eleven am to two pm on Capitol Hill. They hosted
the Things Will Never Know, a science fair of canceled grants.
Were twenty or thirty or so researchers who represented their

(06:07):
work and you know the general science that has been
impacted by budget cuts, by the cutting of grants due
to words like diversity, equity, inclusion. You know, people wondering,
like one researcher wondering why her work studying cancer had

(06:31):
been canceled. She's like, I don't really understand this. Another
researcher who was reported by NPR, Sumit Shanda, professor of
immunology in micropology at SCRIPTS, focuses on pandemics preparing for
a disaster, and because of the budget cuts to science funding, Shanda,

(06:54):
along with the other scientists that were there, presented the
work that is potentially never going to be funded or
answered the questions that were involved related to pandemics and
you know, preparation to those kinds of things. These researchers
were there to bring science and the important questions that

(07:18):
have been stalled to the Capitol Hill to be in
front of not just other scientists, but in front of policymakers,
in front of stakeholders, in front of the congressional representatives
who are going to be voting tomorrow, Thursday, July tenth

(07:43):
on the budget for United States science for the next year.
So very good timing. There's a lot of great science.
Some Ours Technica reported on this, and unfortunately there were
actually several individuals who who did not want to be
reported on. Their names are not into the public. They're

(08:05):
actually they're not even necessarily afraid of repercussions at the
federal level. They're afraid of repercussions in their home states,
which are uh have certain things going.

Speaker 4 (08:18):
So so let me ask this. If I'm a researcher
and I lost my grant, am I unemployed now?

Speaker 5 (08:31):
No?

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Not necessarily, It depends on the depends on your role
at the university. Universities do higher because you could be
a professor also or with an annual salary, and you
have various roles under within that salaried position. But to

(08:53):
do the work you need to do, you need to
be able to get a grant to pay your lab assistance,
You need to be a to get funding to pay
for the equipment in your lab. You need to be
able to you know, have the funding that will allow
you to even buy time on telescopes or buy you know,
to share in some of the larger, more expensive technologies

(09:16):
that are being used. And currently this last week a
very interesting story popped out related to Harvard and some
of the other And this is not the only university
as technology transfer has been going on for a long
time with intellectual property coming out of universities and going
into startups and larger companies. Some it's a big money business.

(09:41):
Harvard has had and some of the larger IVY leagues
are looking at venture capital, private equity researchers are going
out on their own to get private equity money to
support their research. And then and then retraction Watch this
week was like, oh yeah, so this one Harvard researcher

(10:04):
who's getting who's getting I think I forget where he's
where it's coming from, But he's getting private equity for
the work that he's doing. And suddenly there are a
whole bunch of questions about reproducibility of his results, of
falsification of images of you know.

Speaker 4 (10:27):
The keep your capitalism out of my science please.

Speaker 7 (10:31):
Right, Like at the beginning of like there's there's statement
it's how do you do the moonshot stuff without like
does everything have to have like a purpose?

Speaker 1 (10:43):
And then also we know like if if it isn't
going well, when do they what happens then? Right, what
happens to the entire line of research? If somebody if
maybe it's not even falsification or other issues, but maybe
they have the right question or the right tests have

(11:05):
not been done right, but it's no longer worth the
time the money that's invested, Like how do you keep
that going? So relying solely on private money or majority
on private money to allow for the advancement of science
is putting I don't backwards steps, it's taken big moves backwards.

Speaker 4 (11:33):
This is not only is research not going to happen,
but established laboratories will need to shut which means they
will have to be reopened when funding starts again, which means, yes,
we are moving backwards, like there's going to be a
huge amount of time wasted re establishing Ye, all of

(11:53):
these labs and protocols and materials and animals, like any
labs that have animals that they're going to have to
rehome or other things because there isn't funding to take
care of those individuals anymore. So then they're gonna have
to start over.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's of course not all of the research.
There's another paper out this week that is doing, uh,
analyzing the ecosystem of philanthropy and who you know, where
money is coming from and how it's funding science and
but the bottom line there is that again philanthropy is

(12:36):
not enough to be able to take up you know,
what the government was doing. So anyway, just to put it,
put it, put it out there. There are some incredible
researchers who are studying really important questions and their work
has been, uh, has been put by the wayside, And

(12:58):
this week are Congress people are supposed to go back
to the voting about how much money to give to
American science. So hey, might be the last. If you
haven't made a phone call yet, might consider it.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
But yeah, yeah, tax cooks for the extremely wealthy?

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Sure, sure, sure, sure, because you know we all want
to be there someday. And of course right now that's
you know, yes, don't tax the rich because I'm going
to be rich someday.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
Come on, I'll pay for other people to get rich.
No wait what No, Now, look around. You don't even
own a house, not you, this hypothetical person.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
H Okay. So that was my explosion of where we
are on the federal science front again for this week.
And I'm glad that there are there's a bit of
it that's performative, but it's also educational. It's informational. It's
getting the science in front of people and hopefully hopefully

(14:26):
getting them to understand why it's important.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Why do we want to study this gene?

Speaker 1 (14:30):
Oh my gosh, because after two hundred publications it might
have cured childhood inherited deafness.

Speaker 4 (14:37):
Yeah, who needs it?

Speaker 1 (14:42):
I you know what I need?

Speaker 4 (14:44):
Well, I need you.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
I need you to tell me about explosive seed dispersal. Please.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
I loved this story. Okay. So there there are these
things called squirting cucumbers ec Ballium elaterium. They are loosely
related to cucumbers. They're in the same family as like
squash and pumpkins and stuff like that, but they perform

(15:17):
explosive seed dispersal. So when you think about seed dispersal,
you think of a few things. You think about like
those seeds that have little helicopter wings that float to
the ground. You think of some sort of wind based
seed dispersal like dandelions, right, you think about animal based

(15:37):
seed dispersal, which is you know when when animals eat
something and then they poop out the seeds. Right, So
there's all these different ways that plants have to get
their seeds out there. They want they want it to
go away from them, leave the nest, propagate the outside area.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
And so there are some in the wind.

Speaker 4 (15:57):
Yeah, there are some that are are much more active.

Speaker 6 (16:03):
And so.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
These cucumbers, these squirting cucumbers quite literally explode. They it's
quite an explosion. I was hoping that you'd pull it up.
They're also called touch me nots. And so Kiki right

(16:25):
now is showing us slow slowed down footage of the
seed dispersal. And you see if you see and then
more and then more and then more, you're like, you
got more seeds in there. Oh my gosh, there's so
many seeds coming and coming and coming. So researchers. Researchers

(16:51):
used micro computed tomography. They created a three D model
of the fruit, and then they also did micro ct
imaging and high speed videography to capture the lovating fruit
in detail. So you just saw the high speed videography.
They recorded the explosion of the fruit with high speed
videos at one thousand frames per second and ten thousand
frames per second to calculate the speed of the seeds

(17:13):
and the possible shooting distances. It happened so fast naked eye,
you're like, what happened?

Speaker 1 (17:19):
I missed it?

Speaker 4 (17:21):
And so if you if you look further down in
the research, Kiki, I think there's another video where you
can kind of see it in real time out in
the field. They also analyzed pictures of the ripening of
those fruits to measure the curvature of the stem. So
that just happened. I don't know if you saw that.
It was like, it was so fast. So they touched

(17:44):
it and anything happened before too. Yeah, and then it
kind of touched a little harder and wow, yes, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
It launched itself at the ground.

Speaker 4 (18:00):
Yes, yes, but the seeds importantly went up. They can
achieve speeds of up to twenty nine miles per hour
and reach shooting distances of up to twelve meters it's
like thirty six feet. And they also notice that the
fruit stems straighten up during ripening. They create about a

(18:20):
fifty three degree angle. The theoretical perfect angle for this
explosion is fifty degrees that would maximize shooting distance, so
the fact that they go to about fifty three is
pretty pretty good. They always exit the fruit the seeds
facing the same way, and there is a used selaginous coat.

(18:44):
I think that five times fast when they get wet,
which becomes adhesive when it dries, and so that you know,
they can get suck to things. But also it improves
the conditions for germination. So they think that you know,
most likely this is about dispersing seeds in the most

(19:05):
efficient way while not destroying the whole plant too early.
So they want to make sure it doesn't happen till
it's exactly the right moment. And so there's this huge
evolutionary drive for plants to disperse their seeds as far
as they can. Of course, like we discussed, now, why
do researchers care well aside from just basic like ecology knowledge,
which is always good. Of course, I don't know if

(19:29):
you can guess at Kiki robots, you want applications for
bio inspired launching systems as hydrogel based actuators for medical
tools and micro robots.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Interesting, Okay, so that like for medical actuators, that's fascinating.

Speaker 6 (19:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:56):
Mean they also think there's some potential applications for soft
robotics like drug delivery systems, where energy efficient launching is desired.
So I don't know if I want that explosion happening
in my body.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
But depending on where and what's yeah right.

Speaker 4 (20:15):
At what magnitude? How tiny is it right?

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Anyway?

Speaker 4 (20:20):
But yeah, exploding cucumbers, you're welcome.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Thank you for the explosive seed dispersal story. Speaking of exploding, no, no,
not exploding at all, let's talk about zoo noses.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
Hopefully not exploding.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, oh, oh my gosh, there was. There was a
point in time when I was young and did not
understand the science of hemorrhagic diseases very well, and the
sci fi horror vision of like a person just exploding
everywhere it was kind of I did have that in

(21:00):
my head. No longer, No longer everyone, because it's not really,
that's not how it happens. But how long? How long
has humanity been affected by zoonotic transmission of diseases human
pathogens that have you know, not just been human path pathogens,

(21:25):
but it came about because of us hanging out with
animals and that they joined they joined us thanks to
the animals. Well, these researchers publishing in Nature Open Access
this last week have shown their analysis of human DNA

(21:47):
that goes back thirty seven thousand years, and so the
the breadth I guess, the distance over time that we
now have in our ability to see what diseases have
been impacting humanity for millennia. Now they have got these

(22:15):
study samples that they've been able to take a look at.
And although they go back thirty seven thousand years, there's
a lot more disease the closer we get to now,
and specifically in the data sets. The most interesting aspect
of the work that they're reporting on is the fact

(22:37):
that there's an uptick in the amount of disease that
happens just about sixty five hundred years ago. What happened
around sixty five hundred years ago? Do you know do
you remember Blair Well?

Speaker 4 (23:01):
God created the earth? No, that's not right, No, I
don't know what happened cc five hundred years ago.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
So about sixty five hundred years ago, what we had,
what we what we saw was the advent of farming
and of keeping animals sure ranching and farming, and people
settling down and becoming less nomadic and becoming more settled.

(23:34):
And as that happened, there's a massive uptick in the
time source of microorganisms and how they impacted humanity.

Speaker 4 (23:48):
They were even.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Able to see like upticks through their different microbes that
they were looking at. They were able to make out infections.
They found that the micro the oral microbiome is a
great source of data for all of their for all
of their work that they've done. But this isn't necessarily

(24:10):
the stuff that we're dealing with now, which is animal
you know, going into the animal live animal markets in
very populous regions, which very likely is why we have
a lot going on right now. But historically we didn't
have as many people, There wasn't as much density. We
increased density and overlap of populations more and more when

(24:32):
we becan't when we really got into into the farming
and trade that relied on that. So anyway, Yeah, thirty
seven thousand years of human human disease history and sixty
five hundred years ago, the really interesting bit happened and

(24:55):
kind of tells us, tells us a story of you
know how we got to now.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Is there?

Speaker 4 (25:04):
Well, it wasn't the dogs then, because we domesticated them
or they domesticated us, depending how you want to look
at it.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Way before that exactly, well, that those the dogs were domesticated,
we were still very we were still nomadic in many places.
There was a lot of uh, there was still smaller
communities hunting, very tribal as opposed to domestication.

Speaker 4 (25:32):
I think that's really interesting that it took that because
we're pretty young as a species in evolutionary time compared
to other animal species around us. Yeah, so it would
just kind of be my assumption that there would be
a lot of zoonotics from day one, I imagine. But
I guess it's all relative, right, So it's just so

(25:54):
much more now, it's more than most other mammals.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Probably, Yeah, And so it's the you know, of course
there were there are zoonotics.

Speaker 4 (26:05):
Is are.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Other right, it's these micro organisms that are not are
not from us or not just between us, And so
of course as we're moving around, there were you know,
infections that occurred. I mean, there's research we've covered that
suggests herpes virus has been with us for tens of
thousands of years, you know, going away, so perfect disease.

Speaker 4 (26:31):
It doesn't kill you, and it's transmitted via sexual activity
and you can't always tell somebody has it just by
looking at thems. It's perfect. It's been made to do
its job perfectly.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yep. So there are things like herpes virus that have
been around for a long long time, right, But like, okay,
at one point it was zoonotic. Now it's endemic. Like
now it is just all it's a human disease, right.
And the plague, so bubonic plague and urzia, the Ursinia

(27:06):
pestis is one another one that they tracked, and they
saw that pop in and out and there was actually
a nice little period of time when there was no
plague in the human populations, and then it popped right
back up again and then we had dark ages in
the oopsies. But it's it's a it's an interesting look

(27:26):
at a lot of very very interesting uh using the
technology that they've been able to adapt to show us
this what they say spatio temporal distribution of pathogens in
ancient Eurasia, So going back across Eurasian history to look

(27:46):
at bacterial, viral, parasite DNA. And while they a lot
of them, like they said, in this study, are known
human pathogens, the ones that were interesting are the zoonotic ones,
which are the ones that are coming in because of
maybe are our close nature with other animals and how

(28:07):
does how did that lifestyle change impact us then and
how is it still impacting us now? Woooo humans, it's cool.
So noses are awesome, They're great.

Speaker 5 (28:27):
No, they're not.

Speaker 4 (28:28):
They're not great.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
And just like a sideline on another DNA researchers did
publish this last week of a full genome that was
sequenced from a man in a pot in ancient Egypt.
So it was the full remains of an individual from

(28:53):
ancient Egypt.

Speaker 8 (28:54):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
And they were able to sequence the DNA one human
genome ce wins to be able to say where do
you come from? And basically it was like, oh, yeah,
came from like the Egypt, Egypt.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
Yeah, but banks.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
But there was about twenty percent of the genome that
was attributable to ancestry in the Fertile Crescent, So the
Eastern Fertile Crescent across the river.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
It's not that far, it's not that far.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
But it's this the idea that no, of course they weren't.

Speaker 5 (29:34):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
And this is again you know in the what that
time period's probably about five thousand or so years ago,
forty five.

Speaker 4 (29:44):
They parted the Red Sea. You know about this.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
I don't know, sixty sixty five hundred years ago.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
They parted the sea. They crossed over. It's all good.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Yeah, anyway, they crossed over, the made friends. And so
dude found in a pot. He's he's like, yeah, he's
a he's a mixture.

Speaker 4 (30:08):
How big of a pot are we talking? An Earth
does human soup? Basically? Was it dry or liquid? This
is what I need to know.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Okay, let's see the news. I mean I hadn't actually
because I was hoping that Justin would be here tonight
and would bring this story.

Speaker 4 (30:31):
As I were going to say, I was hoping you
were going to ask me any following questions, Siri.

Speaker 5 (30:39):
We have.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
I'm going to share a picture now of this paper
from Nature and this is the paper's whole genome ancestry
of an old Kingdom Egyptian forty five hundred years ago,
give or take a few years. And they were able
to uh to be to look at the pottery vessel

(31:00):
in which the individual was discovered. They had they found
cervical vertebrae within the vessel as well, so that vessel,
not the vessel, but the vertebrae showed evidence of extreme
osteoarthritis M, which is interesting in itself, but the the

(31:23):
the bottom line to this study of the size of
the vessel. It was a mummified, preserved individual and it
was in this ceramic pot was interred in a rock
cut tomb. And because of the preservation they think that

(31:46):
also you know, the way it was interred potentially allowed
it to be very well preserved. DNA as well anyway.

Speaker 4 (31:54):
But Kiki, I must know cowl of oil or paprika?
What are we talking you route here? Is it liquid
or is it powder?

Speaker 6 (32:05):
And in the.

Speaker 4 (32:10):
Blair this is a hard hitting question. Did you come
to this weekend science?

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Okay, all right this, I'm reading the paper right now, Okay,
la la lalla, Old Old Egypt, early Dynastic Old Kingdom periods,
third and fourth Dynasty's body in a large pottery vessel.

Speaker 6 (32:39):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Probably from a higher social class.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
Okay.

Speaker 9 (32:45):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
They predicted that this individual had brown hair, eyes, skin
pigmentation ranging from dark to black skin, genetically male, had osteoarthritis,
Probably was a bad one hundred and fifty seven to
one hundred and sixty centimeters tall, between about forty four

(33:08):
to sixty four years old, heavily worn teeth osteoarthritis. So
we've got solid bone okay in this urn. So I
am going to I'm going to make an assumption and

(33:30):
I would like anybody to help me with this. These remains,
we're most likely if they are interred somewhat mummified, that
the liquids have been removed from the bossy, so.

Speaker 4 (33:44):
That dehydrated stew yes.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
But still with with stuff.

Speaker 4 (33:53):
I don't get it. I really I feel like I
have to do some research for myself just to understand.
I'm not unders not connecting the dots here of what
was in this pot, Like how do you have how
do you collapse down a whole human into a large pot.
I'm not getting it.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Oh this is okay, hold on, I have another image
I have I have a new image added to the stage.
So here we have archaeological site data where we have hillside.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
Oh that is a large pot and it is a
large pot.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
This is not a small coffee mug contained.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
Less of a pot, and that is more of a coffin.
I have to say, like that is.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah, Yeah, it's a it's a pottery coffin.

Speaker 4 (34:51):
Uh huh, Yeah it's a it's an ovular coffin. Yeah,
it's a fetal position.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
It's like a very large stew pot. Yeah, that's pottery
and is filled with desiccated, dried preserved remains.

Speaker 4 (35:08):
Yeah, okay, that makes way more sense.

Speaker 5 (35:12):
Thank you, Thank you for doing I'm glad that I
was able too to call up the researchers immediately because
it's not what you would think of as it's not
a sarcophagus.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
It's not you know, it's not. It's not that the
individual like in modern human customs where we will, yeah,
have have the remains burned and ashes put into a
small urn that fits on top of your mantle. This
would not this would be in the fireplace.

Speaker 5 (35:53):
This.

Speaker 4 (35:54):
So the original picture, the original picture didn't really have
any context for size, and so I was picturing something
almost like a La Crusette like Dutch Oven situation, like
that's a kind of right.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
I kind of was too, yeah, And I was like,
your question is very valid, and this is why I
went silent at not having that information and inquiring minds.
We need to know.

Speaker 4 (36:25):
Yeah. So I think this is also a really good
example of researchers knowing exactly what they're talking about and
not be not giving the right context. It's in a pottery,
in a pottery.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, yeah, No, it's a very wild and this is
a full this is a full size individual who they
know with their extended data, like they think that they
have been able to actually recon do some reconstructions and yeah,
from what then the majority of the skeleton was there,

(37:03):
and it really is because of the teeth and the
DNA then the dentin and you know the preservation of
those remains allowed us to be able to look at
this individual and go we know there was back and
forth across that fertile crescent east to west. Yes, this

(37:30):
is this Week in Science. Thank you so much for
joining us in this exploration of the unknown, the things
that we would like to know. Sometimes we don't even
know the questions or the stories to tell until the
we don't know the stories still until the questions are
asked in the right way. Sometimes the information and how
it's told so interesting, it's so such an essential part

(37:52):
of the whole thing. So we're glad you're here for
the entire process. Thank you for joining us if you
are interested. Did in being a supporter of This Week
in Science and an ongoing fashion one of our non
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(38:13):
show broadcast on without corporate sponsors telling us what to do,
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(38:34):
read your name at the end of the show when
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That Zazzlelink has a bunch of products and some of
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(38:55):
kind of stuff because they're Blair's Animal Corner art and
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I mean, come on, people, everything goes to support this
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your support in all that you do as a member
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(39:20):
And now we will move back to more sciencey goodness.
I don't think there's any more exploding seed dispersal, but
it is time for Blair's Animal Corner with Blair.

Speaker 8 (39:40):
Thaves Hot Creatures, five Pigs, Bill Pid.

Speaker 4 (39:48):
You want to hear about the animals except more giant.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
What you got, Blair.

Speaker 4 (40:01):
I can't believe I have to say this in the
year twenty twenty five, but tortoises have feelings, of course,
they do, of course, they do tell me more. Animal
and behavior and animal behavior and cognition experts at University

(40:22):
of London UK looked into reptile sentience and reptile emotions.
They put forward compelling evidence that red footed tortoises chillinoidis
carbonaria sounds like pasta experience long term mood states in

(40:45):
a similar way to mammals and birds. They studied fifteen
red footed tortoises that used a cognitive bias test, which
is an approach that they used originally in humans which
reveals whether individual respond optimistically or pessimistically and their judgment
of ambiguity depending on their mood. They've used this in

(41:08):
mammals and birds mostly, but this evaluates how animals interpret
ambiguous situations actually as a window and how they feel.
They found that tortoises housed in enriched environments, so environments
where there's lots for them to do and they are
happy and they're well taken care of, they were more
likely to judge ambiguous situations optimistically, which suggests a positive mood.

(41:32):
They also looked at their behavior in anxiety related tests,
which involved exposure to novel objects and unfamiliar environments. Tortoises
that showed more optimistic decision making in the cognitive bias
test also displayed less anxious behavior in response to novelty,
reinforcing the link between mood and behavior. This adds to

(41:53):
a growing body of evidence which suggests that reptiles have
more complex inner worlds than we thought. Who thought is
my whole thing? Understanding whether animals can experience moods and
emotions is crucial for informing welfare standards in pretty much everywhere.
Reptiles aren't held to the same standards of care as

(42:15):
pets than birds or mammals, and so the hope is
that studies like this will change how reptiles and captivity
are managed, how they're regulated, and what standards of care
look like. They also say further that if reptiles, a

(42:36):
group that diverge for mammals and birds hundreds of millions
of years ago, can experience moods, that would suggest that
the effective states are more widespread in the animal kingdom
than previously believed.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
What things that relate to survival, mood, emotion, etc. It's
not all just response stimulus response behavior, right, But I
gotta do the work.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
But think about it. We know that plants. Plants get
stressed out when you repot them, and sometimes plants will
look like wilty and gross for a couple of days
and they're like, all right, I'm getting used to this,
and then they perk up just fine.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
If plants tortoises are long lived, yeah, decades.

Speaker 4 (43:37):
Any especially like an animal with social structures, with interactions
with one another, with complex lives, with long lives like
you're saying.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
It's a long life with elephants.

Speaker 4 (43:54):
Any animal with agency has got to have a mood.
You can't animals feel.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
And yes, and I agree, And this is where I've
always agreed with you on it's the well duh side
of things. But from the absolute I know nothing. I'm
an unbiased scientist perspective. You have to break it down
into all of the questions, right, how what is the

(44:25):
question you can ask? And if and but and this
is the this is the balance that I think is
part of the disconnect between society and and a lot
of science is the that that absolute you know, just cutting,
you know, breaking everything down into its most great parts

(44:49):
before you can accept a learned experience.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
I think there's there's implied context that needs to be
explained aimed better, right, Like scientists aren't saying we thought
tortoises didn't have feelings, but because it's presented such as
previously to now, there's never been evidence that reptiles have feelings.

(45:17):
Like that sentence means different things to someone who is
deeply immersed in science and eats, breathes, sleeps scientific terminology
versus the average person. Because to a scientist that means
we haven't tested this yet. But if you say there's
no evidence that, to a lay person, that means we

(45:40):
don't think it's true.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
And that person who has maybe gone, you know, lived
places where they've interacted with the hurts, the reps, reptiles,
the fish, then all of the other and they go
what scientists don't know anything.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
It would be great if there was just the context of, hey, yeah,
we know reptiles probably have moods just like any other animal,
but it hasn't been tested. So let's see to what
extent reptiles have moods, how it impacts their behavior, and

(46:20):
if there's a long term kind of trend for individuals
in their moods. But that's not how scientists talk.

Speaker 5 (46:29):
I know.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
But now I'm thinking about like these gazillion decades old
parrots and elephants and tortoises and see turnal, all of
the long lived animals on the planet. And I'm like, uh, okay,
let's let's look at what are the commonalities in their cognition.
What are the common you know they're from, you know,

(46:52):
as scenes to to have a different brain structure than
the reptilian brain, which has a different brain structure too.
You know, like there's they're really interesting, interesting functional and
structural differences. And I want to know if an elephant
is thought to have a long memory, what about a tortoise?

(47:16):
Right yet? But then elephants, we know elephants that they
hang out with other elephants, they got their big group
blair do the tortoises there? I think of tortoises as
kind of individuals and independent do they have.

Speaker 4 (47:30):
It depends on the species. Yeah, some of them have
kind of little cultures and and kind of colony style living.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Absolutely, I want to know more about all that. That's awesome, amazing, Okay.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
Anyway, so cool. Well, speaking of feelings meanings, yes, I
want to talk about hermit crab feelings, and specifically, when
I say feelings, I.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Mean feelings like touching, feelings like literally touching things.

Speaker 4 (48:09):
Feelings. Yeah, hermit crabs, they're constantly monitoring their environment for changes,
for threats, for predators. When they detect danger, they retracked
into their shell and after the initial shock of being startled,

(48:29):
they'll use their sensory organs to determine if it's safe
to come out and explore again, because ultimately that's what
they have to do. They have to go find food,
they have to go find mates, they have to go
find a bigger shell. Sometimes there's plenty for them to
do out in the big, big world. In one local
species of hermit crab, this is local to the UK coastlines.

(48:51):
I love how they say that they don't clarify. So
this is near University of Plymouth. They have a local
hermit crab that as tiny hair like structures senscilla, that's
what they're called on their claws. That has to do
with how they gather information about their surroundings, including the
presence of potential predators. In this study, they actually found

(49:15):
that crabs that have more sensory hairs on their claws
or cover faster from a startle response. So actually the
kind of more metaphorical feelings are also involved here, based
on their sensilla and what they can physically feel in
sense in the water, how they feel it might be safe,

(49:36):
we're not safe to come out is as a result
of that, So animals recover faster from a startle, and
when they do, they're considered bolder. And in this study,
those animals had more little hairs all over their claws,
so researchers were even able to predict the time it

(49:57):
took them to recover from the fright based on how
many sensilla they had on their claws. Now I bring
this up also because I I've brought a couple of
horrifying research methods to twists lately, and this was a
rare situation where researchers actually took great care of the
hermit crabs they were studying. They wanted to see how

(50:19):
they used their claws and other sensory appendages like their
antennae and exploration. And so what they did is they
took some hermit crabs into the lab, they analyzed how
they responded to being startled, and then they waited for
the crab to shed their exit skeleton.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
They just waited, which they do naturally if they don't
have to force it. But so do these do these
sensilla which are kind of like whiskers or sense the
hats or mice or you know, so many organisms. Do

(51:01):
they stay in the fleshy part of the animal as
the exoskeleton comes off or are they really part of
that hardened exoskeleton.

Speaker 4 (51:11):
They appear to be hard part of the hardened exoskeleton
because when they when they collected the molts, they looked
at the shedded tissue and they looked at a scale
through a scanning electron microscope and they were able to
see the sensillas still on their claws. They were able
to mark those sensilla on the surface, and then they

(51:33):
were able to count them and they didn't have to
do that. They didn't have to remove limbs, which apparently
is how that often is done in these studies because
they want to collect everything at the same time, so
they just remove all the limbs. But in this case,
they waited for them to shed and they just counted
what they saw. Then they assessed the number of sensilla

(51:53):
related to boldness of the crab. They found that boulder
hermit crabs have more sensilla on their claw surface. They
also found that more sensilla suggested a crab had better
access to information, which appeared to make them more consistently
determine that the surrounding environment lacks risk. So basically they

(52:15):
came out sooner because the extra little hairs told them Noah,
it's good, you're good out there. There's nothing out there.
It was just like a weird wave, come on out.
And so this brings a new hypothesis about how sensation
and animal behavior are linked. And so they have termed

(52:35):
this sensory investment syndrome. And so they hope that this
will inspire other work which examines how sensory traits shape
animal personality and decision making. So if sensory investment helps
explain personality and hermit crabs, of course that might be
the case in other animals as well.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
I think this is fascinating because you've talked about previously
personality types quote quote unquote in mice, we've talked about
it in fish, and and we also have like when
when we talk about human sensory abilities, there are is
a spectrum of being highly sensitive to things like touch,

(53:19):
to being a super taster. Some people are you know,
have multi extra chromat vision. Right, So there's the sensory
aspect of what it allows you to sense. What do
you sense? What is normal? What is not normal? Is different?

Speaker 4 (53:38):
And this is yeah, so are the supertasters like thrill
seekers also? Right?

Speaker 1 (53:45):
I want and I want to know the same kind
of thing about like we're asking about this, but like
the number of like little whiskers that are on your
cat or the whisker hairs, right, the sensory hairs that
are on your cat or your mouse or your rat
or whatever, how did those relate to this correlation of
boldness or no, you're you're thrill seeking dog?

Speaker 4 (54:09):
I don't know, Yeah, absolutely, Like is my dog dumb?
Or are they just a thrill seeker?

Speaker 1 (54:17):
But yeah, and there's this is correlation also, and so
there's probably other factors involved, but this is it's this
is really interesting.

Speaker 4 (54:26):
Yeah, Like it's it's totally possible that they just got
better resources when they were when they were originally growing,
and so they got a better brain and more whiskers
on their cloths and they're unrelated.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
And maybe if because they collected the hermit crabs and
kept them in a nice environment until they shed their exoskeletons,
maybe more sinsill like we're broken.

Speaker 4 (54:57):
Absolutely, yes, there was there in true justin fashion. I
will tell you there is a story that I did
not bring tonight, and it was about how rats with
extra long second fingers. I think it was we're more
sexually active or wait aualothesis. Yes, yes, it is exactly that. Yeah,

(55:22):
And I was like, I don't have it to get
into this tonight, but yes, there's some excellent correlation. Yes,
it's it's that whole book of correlation where it's a
number of deaths and swimming pools versus number of Nick
Cage movies released that year, right, Like, it's just things correlate.

(55:43):
That doesn't mean they cause each other. Right, So it's
yeah anyway.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
And we're going to say it over and over and
over again, and it's fun. And studies like this I
think are very very instructional. They're informative, right, but they
are not the end all be all we don't like.
And here is the part, the scientist part of me,
that is, you know, pairing it down to the ultimate question,
which is for each of those Senscilla, what are they

(56:10):
detecting and what is the pathway and what is the
integration in the brain that leads to that particular behavior.
So there's yeah, there's.

Speaker 4 (56:20):
Yep, yep. And if you if this is the sad part,
if you pluck a bunch of them off, are they
suddenly less bold?

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Well that's the experiment, right, yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
Or if you like paint them with nail polish so
they slick them all.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Down, or you know, like yeah, so they can't use them. Yeah,
I mean inter like so in the same individual like
would be that would be good. Hey, grad students, there's
some good studies to do.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
No money to do it, but you know, maybe somewhere else,
maybe in the UK guys.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Yeah, I'm sure there's private equity to study hermit crabs.

Speaker 6 (56:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
Anyway, Kiki, you had a weird animal story. I do.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
I do have a weird animal story. And it's just
one of those studies that I'm like, do I really,
I'm really going to tell this story, all right, so
try to make me do it.

Speaker 4 (57:15):
But I didn't have time to read it.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Try to make you do it. Okay, So this is
still animal corner, which is why I was wanting wanting
you to do chimpanzees at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in
Zambia have have started fashionable trends that the youngsters are

(57:39):
picking up and repeating and seem to be doing this
once upon a time back in twenty fourteen, researchers reported
what they called the grass in ear behavior. And this
is it's a very simple behavior in which the chimpanzees
don't take a lot. It's not like grabbing a tuft

(58:00):
of grass. It's a blade of grass and just putting
it in their ear and letting it hang there for
a while.

Speaker 4 (58:08):
It's like a cool ear ring.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
It is like a cool earring. And the chimpanzee in
this particular image by Jake Booker from the Chimfuncie Wildlife Orphanage,
trust you know, he just the chimp looks very very cool.
So there's a new study that was just published this
last week, fourth July in behavior, and it's about chimpanzees learning.

(58:35):
There just this kind of doesn't what function does it
have kind of behavior and it's called chimpanzee socially learned
non instrumental behavior from conspecifics, which means that they're they're
learning from their friends, they saw, they they saw others

(58:55):
do things and then started doing them themselves. And now
we have, according to their abstract, over a decade later,
they've observed an unrelated group of chimpanzees at the same
African sanctuary where five out of eight individuals began wearing
grass in their ears and six out of eight from

(59:19):
their rectums within a short period of time, and neither
of these our behaviors have been observed in any of
seven other sanctuary groups that they have. It's like this
one particular group within this sanctuary except for two males

(59:40):
who were in I guess the original grass in ear group.
And so they've concluded that these these chimpanzees have learned
from each other and it's a social web. It is

(01:00:02):
it has led to yeah, the social web that has
led to the development of this behavior.

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
So I like in this article I'm reading ahead, I'm
seeing that. So there's a theory that the caretakers had
something to do with it, because the caretakers sometimes stick
things in their ear to get things out. Yes, or
what I was thinking was it might be an earring
if some of them have earrings, right, and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
That would be like, yeah, that would be where it
first started. Over a decade ago, but now they have
taken it just not just from the ear, but to
other orifices.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Yes, which I don't quite get that one. They're just experimenting,
I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
I think so. But they're seeing others experiment and they go, yeah, okay, okay, I.

Speaker 4 (01:01:00):
Guess it's fun. It's like a tail or something I
don't know, and maybe that and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Maybe that's part of it.

Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
I mean, we have absolutely no.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
Idea what is going on in the minds of these
of these chimpanzees. We see that they are that the
community structure definitely has has influence on the on the
behavior and the innovation and the time in which it
takes to spread from from or from individual to individual.

(01:01:33):
And so we've got, you know, over time, from the
innovator to the individuals that that innovator is connected to.
Suddenly you have more experimentation and play or use. And
it's not necessarily a behavior that you would suggest has

(01:01:57):
a purpose other than maybe social connectivity.

Speaker 8 (01:02:04):
So yeah, but anyway, hey, listen, they don't have the
they don't have the shame that we've manufactured for ourselves.

Speaker 4 (01:02:16):
They're just trying stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
All the power to them, chimpanzies they're like people just.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
No shame, they're just not repressed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
Anyway, I thought it was a very interesting study. I
thought that if had you had more time to dig
into it, there might be more that you would say.

Speaker 4 (01:02:44):
I don't know, have fun, guys, that's what I have
to say. You're not hurting anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Glad you're having a great time there. Yes, okay, as
we end the show this evening, I've got two stories
for my last segment. Thankfully, as an adult, research has
confirmed I've got new brain cells and you might too.
You probably do too.

Speaker 4 (01:03:09):
I need some, not all so many, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
So for years, the question has been does the adult
brain continue to develop and birth and propagate new neurons,
because it's something we do when we're young, and once
upon a time it was like, hey, you have all
the neurons say you're ever gonna have when you're a baby,

(01:03:35):
and it goes downhill from there, never gets any But
but then you think about it and it's like, well
that doesn't make any sense. And we've seen evidence of
new neurons being born in birds and mice and all
sorts of other species, and so you know, the problem
is you can't just cut up people's brains while they're

(01:03:56):
alive to find out whether or not why not aren Yeah,
Well that's the thing that hopefully scientists are to have
developed and are continuing to develop, which is ethics when
it comes to research. It's especially involving people and animals.

(01:04:17):
I mean, it's very it's very important. This work is
out of the Karolinska and Stuit in Sweden, and the
researchers have for this, uh, this study in which they
really do address that question of is their continual adult
neurogenesis in the particular area the brain that I love,

(01:04:38):
the hippocampus. The hippa campus is like if you were
to take your fingers and kind of stick them to
toward the middle of your brain. It's in there. It
looks like a little seahorse, which is why it's called
the hippo campus. It is an area responsible for much
of the learning and memory that that our brains are

(01:04:58):
capable of. It is the area it's kind of like
the librarian. It takes information in and puts it out
and connects it to other stuff. The hippocampus has been
shown in so many organisms with incredible specialized memories to
have neurogenesis, which is, you know, the birth of new neurons.
And so we've been like, wow, okay, well we've looked

(01:05:20):
at the brains of people who have died, We've looked
at this. We can't but it was always correlation. And
so now the big question was can we actually identify
proliferating neurons in the hippocampus and through looking at the
traits of proliferating neurons in other animal species that we

(01:05:46):
have identified through other methods historically, and using brain scanning
and mapping of the brains of deceased who had donated
their brains for science, as well as machine learning algorithms,
they were able to analyze the human hippocampus from birth

(01:06:07):
through about age seventy eight, so birth through adulthood. They
used single nucleus RNA sequencing. They were able to identify
all the neural progenitor cell stages in early childhood and
in adults. They were able to use antibodies for particular
markers and these machine learning algorithms and identify proliferating proliferating

(01:06:36):
neural progenitor cells, which means they were dividing, they were
creating new neurons that neurogenesis was ongoing, So yay, that's great.
Need yeah, yeah, they show that the end in the hippocampus.
The particular area that these progenitors were localized in is

(01:06:59):
the dentate getrus, which is yeah, go look up that one. Everybody,
go learn about the dentate gyrus. I would like to
ten page essay on it on my desk by next week,
hopefully not written by Claude or anybody else. And then finally,
we've talked before about the wonderful feeling of being in

(01:07:24):
a moment with other people, and we've talked about how
when you're watching a TV show, there's like sometimes an engagement,
like your brain synchronizes with activity in the show if
you're there. Has been work that suggests that even blare
you and I like, I am SYNCD with you, even
though I have crooked glasses, like I am SYNCD with

(01:07:46):
how you are and how we're interacting through this interface,
even though we are in distant places and it's probably
a weaker brain synchronization than it would be were we
in person, but there's a synchronization of our brains going on,
and the people in the chat room, people in the
audience who are watching live right now, they potentially are

(01:08:10):
synchronized with each other and with us because of that
togetherness of a live social event. And these researchers have
published their work which has been ongoing that they it's
an European initiative called neural Live, and this is an

(01:08:33):
ongoing effort. And what I love about the work they're
doing is they're trying to do like EEG brain recordings
of live performances, recorded performances, and all sorts of different
ways of engaging with performances. Most specifically, they're they're using

(01:08:54):
dance as the artistic performance that they're been looking at.
And this this latest paper that they are publishing on
they have found that the delta band of brain activity,
which is a frequency of brain activation that is often

(01:09:17):
related to social activation and also to like also mind
your mind wandering, the delta band e egs were synchronized
with live and recorded dance. And so the very I

(01:09:38):
think the the interesting aspect that is has come out
of this is not just that it's, hey, we recorded
everybody in a theater while they were watching a dance performance,
and everybody who was there live had brain activation that
was synchroniz They also showed that when they had people

(01:10:04):
together watching a movie of that dance performance, they were
all synchronized, and the weakening of the synchronization happened when
you had individuals watching something alone in a laboratory environment.
Environment that but it was still the performance and the
timeline of events and things that happen in that performance.

(01:10:29):
They asked. They had the choreographer highlight which moments they
thought were the ones that the audience would react to
the most, and those were the ones that all the
brains lined up to in the synchronization.

Speaker 4 (01:10:45):
Yeah, So next time I want somebody to go to
a concert with me or a movie with me, I'm
not going to ask them that. I'm gonna ask do
you want to go synchronize our brainsh.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
I mean, it's like, do you want to go Like
it's it's like a dance performance, but it's really going
to be like synchronized social experience for us.

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):
It's I mean, it makes me reflect on the fact
that we like to do these things as a social
activity when you can't talk, and that's always kind of
baffled me, is that I I could talk to Brian forever,
but we love to go to movies together. We love
to watch movies together, we like to go to concerts,

(01:11:28):
we like to go to live shows. And you don't
get to talk during that time at all, But for
some reason you can still look back on it and
reflect on it as an experience that you enjoyed together.
You're just sitting next to somebody your brains, we're doing
something similar, and that's like a bonding experience.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
Yeah, it is a bonding It is a bonding experience.

Speaker 4 (01:11:50):
And the.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
You know, the the interesting, important fun part of this
is that question that you're bringing up there, which is
can we or or will we ever? And why why
would we want to get rid of that live experience

(01:12:15):
that you have together. There is something very powerful about
the the sink and it's and it's not we were
there together, and of course we've all known that I
wasn't at Woodstock, you know, either of them. But you know,
people talk about those things, right, People talk about these
certain experiences that you had, these concerts, these performances, the speeches,

(01:12:41):
things that they experienced with other people, and we in
our lived experience can say how it feels. But the
fact that so it's it's common that the the beats
in the performance are something that every brain more or less.
I mean, of course there's going to be variation, but

(01:13:03):
that brains are picking up on is It's just fascinating.
So this research program has been ongoing and this is
the last year of the of it's of its program,
and hopefully the work that has come out of it
and the papers that hopefully will still come out of
it will tell us much more, especially given our experiences

(01:13:28):
from the pandemic, from social distancing, from becoming ever more
online and what that means to how we are going
to co exist as humans. Yeah. Yeah, somebody says there
there are lots of plots in this. There's there's all

(01:13:51):
sorts of them. We've got, yeah. It but the the
sitting alone, watching and recording in a laboratory en environment
was definitely where it stopped working. Where the where the
synchronization didn't happen quite so much. But there's a lot

(01:14:11):
of data in here. This is an open this is
an open access paper, and so I think that if
you're interested in this kind of stuff, that it's it's
worth digging into. Yeah, And I think another thing, just
to say out loud as I'm looking at this infographic

(01:14:33):
from the paper is that the synchronous activity in those
delta delta waves is during the moments of higher engagement,
and so during the moments where it's like people go
and mind wander off into their own spaces, that's not
the synchrony. But it's the moments in a performance that

(01:14:54):
bring people together, right the performer to be or not
to be? You know, that is the question, you know,
saying words that pull you all back together where there's
something dramatic whatever, and that's going to yeah, create create
arousal and attention and psychological modes that lead us to

(01:15:18):
where we are. I hope so. Kevin Reardan in the
chat is saying, the Greeks used to use theater as therapy.
Twist is not theater, but it's a little bit of
therapy to me sometimes, so I hope you all feel
that way as well.

Speaker 4 (01:15:38):
Disclaimer disclaim we're disclaimer. We are not licensed therapists or psychologists.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Oh no, I meant for myself. Oh geek, oh dear,
have we done it, Blair? Have we made it?

Speaker 4 (01:15:50):
We've done it?

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Oh? Yes, all right, everyone out there, chat room, those
who are listening, those who are watching elsewhere, wherever whenever
you are. Thank you so much for joining us tonight
for another episode of This Week in Science. We do
appreciate you being here and thanks as always. Shout outs

(01:16:12):
too all the wonderful conversations happening in the chatroom, gord
Our and Law Fada others who helped keep the chatrooms
nice places to have those conversations so that we can
all chat as compassionate, respectful adults, human beings. Fada, thank
you so much for doing the social media and show notes.

(01:16:35):
Really really wonderful that you're able to do that. Rachel,
thank you for editing the show, Identity for thank you
for recording the show. And as always, I really must
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(01:17:01):
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(01:17:46):
Adam Merrish, Come, Kevin Parachan, Bob Calder, Marjorie, Paul d Disney,
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that might be a nice thing to do. You can
head over to twist dot org and click on the

(01:18:08):
Patreon link to become a monthly supporter or a yearly supporter. Yeah, Claire,
what's happening? Let's see what's happening on next week's show.

Speaker 4 (01:18:21):
We will be back on Wednesday at eight pm Pacific time,
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Speaker 1 (01:18:30):
And if you would like to listen to us as
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(01:18:55):
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(01:19:17):
of a cucumber at twenty nine miles an hour up
to forty feet and we won't be able to find it.
It's gonna be all sticky, it's going to stick to something,
it's gonna be above our head. We'll never know anyway.
We look forward to discussing science with you again next week.
And if you've learned anything from the show, remember.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
It's all in your head.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
This week and science.

Speaker 10 (01:19:43):
This week in Science, This week in Science, This week
in Science.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):
At the end of the world.

Speaker 4 (01:19:53):
So I'm setting up shop. Got my banner refurl it
says the scientist is in.

Speaker 10 (01:19:59):
I'm gonna sell my advice, show them how to start
a robot with a simple device, all reversible, warming with
a wave of my hand. And it'll cost you is
a couple of grass. Because this week's science is coming
your way. So everybody listens to what I say. I

(01:20:20):
use the scientific method for all that it's worth, and
I'll broadcast.

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
My opinion all over the.

Speaker 10 (01:20:29):
Cause it's this week in science, This week in Science,
This week in.

Speaker 9 (01:20:34):
Science, Science science, science, science, science, This week in science,
this weekend science, This week in science, This week in science,
This week in science, This week in science, This week
in science

Speaker 4 (01:20:49):
This week in science,