Episode 34 | Brain Freeze
A full transcript of this episode is available below thanks to donations from our Patrons!
00:00:00 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, Paleopals, drinking, some kind of theme. There’s no guest this week, just the usual knuckleheads. It only takes a few minutes to get through, SCIENCE happens soon.
00:08:03 - After hearing that who on earth would feel inspired to become a scientist? Probably no one, but then again the Paleopals haven’t attained pop-culture icon status… yet. Someday in the future people will definitely say “I became a scientist because of Science… sort of!” Those will be grand days indeed.
In this segment we also mention the superhero The Atom, cause he's a physicist, and Ryan recommends the comic Identity Crisis for those jonesing for some good Atom action.
00:21:55 - Asteroids are full of chemicals, some more interesting than others. Charlie tries to unboring up this story for the guys while Ryan complains about the media… again. Guys really got a hard on for reporters, must be some history there. Best not to ask and just move on to…
00:32:38 - Trailer Trash Talk (T^3) which this week is talking about another brainy guy with issues while reviewing indie movie The Scientist. Opinions are mixed, hearts are broken, little is accomplished.
00:50:12 - Ryan has your weekly CalAcademy Nightlife breakdown; it’s your best chance to see a Paleopal in their natural environment (i.e. drinking around SCIENCE). Like the show, all interactions with live Paleopals will be pre-recorded and highly edited.
00:41:14 - If you’re not bored with the show yet, then you’ll love this next bit. If you are bored you’ve likely yawned, well your brain has tricked you into paying attention! HA! Take that stupid brain. If you feel that you were tricked you should send your complaints to us which may earn you a spot in the…
00:52:39 - PaleoPOW segment! We love the Paleoposse and devote (an increasing) chunk of the show to singing their praises. This week Ryan B. raises a question in the wrong solar direction, James P. P. (actually) and Patrick will not let whole fly penis thing go, and Ryan is pronoun confounded on iTunes. Of course Ryan also has more to announce such as:
Another Iron Man article, this time on User Interface at marvel.com
Another iFanboy article about how comics have predicted the future at ifanboy.com
Another guest spot on the Nerd List #20, this time talking Marvel villains vs. DC villains at thenerdlist.com
Music this week provided by:
Still Alive – Jonathan Coulton & GLaDOS
The Motivation Proclamation – Good Charlotte
Rest My Chemistry – Interpol
Scientist – The Dandy Warhols
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones
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Episode 34: Brain Freeze
Patrick: Yeah, I think I mean, I won't fool with a podcast that’s less than 20 or 30 minutes long just because it's over by the time I'm, I'm usually trying to, especially if I'm in the clean lab trying to do something, you're not supposed to like dig in your pockets...
Ryan: You’re not? Oops.
Announcer: Hello, and welcome to Science sort of.
Music
Ryan: Hello and welcome. You are listening to science sort of Episode 34. This week's theme is brain freeze. I'm your host Ryan and joining me as always are my buddies the Paleo Pals, Charlie.
Charlie: Hey, guys.
Ryan: And Patrick.
Patrick: Ohayou Gozaimasu.
Ryan: Whoa, droppin’ the Japanese on us, sir.
Patrick: Well, I I feel like I always say the same thing when you introduce me, so I was...
Ryan: No, I guess I get stuck in that rut too. I think it's important to try, try and diversify our introductions.
Patrick: I think that's right.
Ryan: Well, one thing about our introductions that are always very diverse is what we're drinking. So what are you drinking Patrick?
Patrick: I'm drinking, I'm drinking wine. I'm drinking Grayson Cellars, 2008 Chardonnay. And Grayson Cellars is up the road from Berkeley, Berkeley and St. Helena or St. Helena. I don't know how you choose to say that. I guess it depends on what part of the country you're from. But anyways, Grayson Cellars’ deal is they like to make handcrafted wines in small lots. And so I'm drinking from lot number 11. And ah, it's, it's good. It's, it's not one of the buttery Chardonnays. I like both the buttery and the citrusy ones though and I guess this one's more on the citrusy side.
Ryan: That's really more of a lot 14 guy, huh?
Patrick: Mmm, mmm, yeah.
Ryan: Sure.
Charlie: Sounds good.
Ryan: Charlie, what about you? What are you drinking?
Charlie: Well I'm still in Hawaii and it's only 4:30 so I was drinking a green tea that I poured over ice but I have a tequila sort of in back.
Ryan: You want to remind people...
Charlie: It’s on deck.
Ryan: You want to remind people who may not have heard the previous episode what a tequila sort of is, it's one of our official cocktails.
Charlie: A tequila sort of is Hornitos Reposado that's an aged, oak aged tequila. And it's not Añejo, Añejo is two or three years aged. Reposado is just, like, about a year aged. Even though Añejo would lead one to think that that means one year even though Añejo‘s a couple years.
Ryan: Alright.
Charlie: Yeah, and some soda water and some limes, lime slices and some ice cubes. If you, if you have ice cubes, I don't have ice cubes.
Ryan: They don’t have ice in Hawaii?
Charlie: They, I think they do. I've had it at the resorts but I'm in my little apartment that I'm staying at and I don't have an ice cube tray. And I could, I could probably improvise but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Patrick: Ah, you're not drinking, have you had any Mai Tais since you've been there Charles?
Charlie: Yeah, I've had a few Mai Tais at the resorts. I like the ones made with real fruit juice rather than corn syrup.
Ryan: Yeah, for sure.
Charlie: Yeah, they're pretty good. I mean, I like how it has like light and dark rum in it and...
Patrick: That’s a recipe for disaster.
Ryan: Have you tried a zombie yet Charlie?
Charlie: No.
Ryan: It's one of my favorite Tiki drinks. It's a developed back in LA I think in 50s or 60s, for, some dude was super hungover, came into the Tiki Bar Don the Beachcomber, the original tiki bar down in LA and he needed, he needed a hangover cure because he said he felt like a zombie. And so Don the Beachcomber, mix him up a drink that they later called the zombie and it's just all the rum in the bar mixed with a little bit of fruit juice, good hangover cure if you can stomach it.
Charlie: Wow. It sounds like the drink I like around here. It's called a tropical itch. And it's pretty common in a lot of the bars I've been to in Hawaii and it's just some bourbon and passion fruit juice, soda water and a stick of sugar cane.
Ryan: Nice.
Patrick: Yeah, it sounds good.
Ryan: Good deal. Well, Charlie...
Charlie: What are you working on?
Ryan: Well, I warned you before we started recording that I had something you were gonna, you're gonna be envious of, I assumed. So if people were following me on Twitter, they might have noticed that I was in Portland last weekend where I met up with two Paleo Posse and it was sweet. Ryan Brown and Jamie Berg. Thanks for coming out guys. We painted the town red once or twice over. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed meeting them and hanging out with them. And apparently, I'm you know, I'm not a douche. So there was some, there was some concern before they came out that that might that might happen. But...
Patrick: I have to say, if I only listened to you, I might be concerned as well. Yeah, that's good they came out.
Ryan: No, we had a great time and they're both from Portland and Ryan, Ryan was very gracious with his time and taking us to the right places and the right bars and we hit up some really cool places. There's a video on Facebook of us at Voodoo Donuts at probably about 2:30 in the morning.
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Charlie: Oh, I love that place. Bacon on a maple bar...
Patrick: That's pretty awesome.
Charlie: It’s a beautiful thing.
Patrick: Did you get some of the cereal ones...
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick: The Cocoa Puffs and Captain Crunch.
Ryan: Yeah, the video invo, includes me force feeding my old roommate Captain Crunch.
Patrick: Did you take the, did you take the challenge?
Ryan: We did, like, just the Tex-ass.
Patrick: Yeah, the Tex-Ass.
Ryan: No, we did just the the Voo Doo Dozen where they choose 12 donuts to give us. So they were surly at Voo Doo Donuts
Patrick: Nicely done.
Charlie: Yeah, they can be. They’re hipsters.
Ryan: Exactly. We also went to this bar called Ground Control that was an arcade with beer. Thumbs up to Ground Control.
Patrick: Don't they go to that in that Comedians of Comedy? Don't they go to that bar, I think?
Ryan: I haven't seen it. But I got, I got one more shout out to give, and that's to Jamie's roommate who didn't want to come out with Jamie because the roommate said based on my picture on the Science sort of “about Ryan page”, there was no way I was possibly straight. So, thanks for that. But I am straight.
Charlie: And why would it matter?
Patrick: Sort of.
Ryan: I'm straight sort of?
Patrick: Yeah, see comments about, well, past trailers
Ryan: I just said he would make a good Flash. Anyway, I had a really good time in Portland and one of the things I picked up while I was there was a couple of bottles of liquor from the Rogue Brewery because they distill their own stuff. They distill their own liquors up in Oregon. And the thing I'm drinking tonight is their pink spruce gin, which is spruce gin so it, it substitutes a little bit of the usual Juniper flavor for some spruce flavor. So it's a little pineyer than most gins and then this is aged in pinot noir barrels.
Patrick: That sounds horrible.
Charlie: Dude, you better save some of that, by the time I get back to California.
Charlie: Yes, sir, it is fantastic. And I'm drinking it just on the rocks with a twist. That's it. And it is, ah, it's a nice sipping gin. It needs to hit the right temperature. It's very temperature dependent for a gin and in the time it's taken me to describe this I'm actually going to add another ice cube, ice tray here...
Charlie: See, that's why I don't have ice cubes, it takes too much effort.
Ryan: I was reaching, I got a mini fridge.
Patrick: In your studio.
Ryan: Drinks are important. So it's just, just a really good age gin which is kind of a thing I've been into lately. So there you have it.
Charlie: Cool.
Patrick: Well speaking of things you're into, let's talk about how you get into science.
Music
Patrick: Okay, well I ran across an article by Peter Schmidt that discussed where professors found their inspiration to rise from the lower classes to the middle class or perhaps the upper middle class. And they might not be what you would think. So, I'm not sure exactly what, how scientific this study was.
Ryan: That's a, that's something that I gleaned reading this, that it was less than rigorous.
Charlie: Okay, so let's let's run through the premise of it. They’re basically saying that they became college faculty members from working class backgrounds because of television and rock and roll.
Patrick: Yeah, basically pop culture, pop culture influences inspired them to sort of rise above what was expected of them and join the ranks of academics.
Ryan: Right. Academia, not necessarily science. There are plenty of academics who are not scientists.
Patrick: Right. And it's not as if academics are, they're certainly not on the same pay scale as lawyers and doctors for the most part, right.
Charlie: Yeah.
Patrick: In general, those professions make more money than than your average professor.
Ryan: Mmmmhmmmm.
Patrick: So I'm not sure how far they actually, I guess, maybe culturally, they they, they escaped the working class but, but, um, wage wise, they, they didn't rise that far above what was expected on them.
Charlie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they're, they're part of professional or high society because they're, they're in the intelligentsia. They're part of like, what forms and shapes opinions and and thought and culture.
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Patrick: Right So in general, there's lots of, there's lots of sort of vague references to, you know, I listened to British Invasion rock bands and it inspired me to want to see more than just what was in my immediate vicinity. I wanted to see what was out there, kinds of things, kinds of quotes. But one in particular Ryan, this guy referenced the, the comic...
Ryan: Yep.
Patrick: ...Atom. So I actually did some looking into this and actually The Atom is, is has multiple incarnations, is that...
Ryan: He does. I think he's referring to the Ray Palmer incarnation.
Patrick: Yeah, it seemed, it seemed that way. But anyways, he, he was inspired by the comic book hero The Atom to pursue science.
Ryan: And the, The Atom’s a comic book hero who is a professor as his day job. He's a physics professor actually and he invented a machine that allows him to shrink. That's his, that's his deal.
Patrick: To the size of an atom or...
Ryan: Smaller than that, he's gone subatomic before.
Patrick: I thought he died by going too small, or disappeared...
Ryan: He did, he disappeared. Well, there was, it's a whole big thing I don't want to spoil the story for anybody.
Patrick: Okay.
Ryan: If you're, if you're interested in The Atom read the book Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales. It's pretty easy to grab in trade. I’ll try to remember to throw up a link on the website with the show notes for this episode.
Patrick: But, um, so, but, anyways, that, so basically anybody from the Rolling Stones to Agent Scully got a shout out in in this article, and then The Atom. But as far as, and that's about it, as far as specifics goes. But the comments of this article were actually pretty interesting. Some people basically saying that they weren't inspired by pop culture as far as they could remember. So I thought it'd be interesting to just sort of go around the table and see if you guys think your career paths were influenced by pop culture references.
Ryan: Okay, uh, I kind of suspected we were going to do this, but it's interesting, because by all accounts, I should have been considered in this study because I grew up in Appalachia. And you know, that's a very non academic area for all intents and purposes, but my background definitely wasn't working class. So I don't necessarily feel that, that I'm the target market for this study. And the more I've thought about it, like I would love to say that I was inspired by comic books if I had to pick one superhero it would definitely be Spider-Man, because he's definitely a science brain. But at the same time, there was never any doubt that I was gonna go into some form of science. Like that was always just a given. Because that was what I was into. And it just, it just so happened to be convenient that Spider-Man was also a science guy. He wasn't my inspiration. He was just who I related to already. So, so...
Patrick: Right.
Ryan: I guess there's a there's a connection there, but tenuous.
Charlie: It sounded like it was more like your innate curiosity with the natural world and your predisposition or inclination towards science that, more than any...
Ryan: I don't come from a working class background, but I am also the first in my family to go into academia. So there is a bit of a breaking out of cultural roles there.
Patrick: So if you had to pick one external force that that you think, pushed you in that direction, can you, are there any?
Ryan: I mean, it would probably be Spider-Man if I really had to pick but like I said, I think I was more interested in Spider-Man because I was already interested in science and he was too.
Patrick: Yeah.
Ryan: So.
Charlie: Yeah, I don't necessarily come from a working class background, as well. So I might not be the right, right, target question either. There are one or two academicians in my extended family and, but, I can't think of, like a pop culture source as predisposing me towards science. I've, I've always been very curious about the natural world from when I was a small kid, if anything influenced my love of the natural world and desire to understand it would be, my parents and my older brother. We just spent a lot of time exploring and I would be very curious as to like, why, why my, like, the lake that I lived on, drains into the ocean and why things work the way they did and cetera, etc, and why sand dunes were shaped the way they were and why the tides went in and out and what they had to do with the moon. All sorts of questions like that when I was a kid, so I read a lot. I‘d find encyclopedias. My parents would buy me scientifically geared encyclopedias for children, like little book sets, and I had, I’d read those when I was in first and second and third grade. I didn't read fiction. I only read, read nonfiction when I was a child. And so I can't think of like a pop culture reference.
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If there was one thing it'd be Carl Sagan. But that was because they’d had the PBS video series that he put out on the cosmos. And again, that that came from my parents. So it's difficult to say that the pop, pop culture steered me towards science rather than just natural curiosity and people in my family fomenting and supporting that natural curiosity.
Patrick: Right. Um, I think for me, I mean, I think you must be right that you just sort of, people tend to kind of lean that way. I mean, I guess like dinosaur kids books were a big influence but I'm assuming they were only continued to be put in front of me because I was really into the first one I came across. But like, Charlie, you know, I, when I was a kid, I tended to read lots of nonfiction stuff as much, and like, reptile field guides. I remember having one as a kid that I would read before bed every night. So yeah, maybe not pop culture so much although dinosaurs are borderline pop culture, I would say.
Ryan: Uh huh.
Patrick: Um, and when I got older, I don't know, Richard Feynman’s book, Surely You’re Joking...
Charlie: ...Mr. Feynman.
Patrick: Yeah, was a big influence I guess. But that was around late middle school or high school age I guess before I read that book.
Ryan: It's funny, I am, I was thinking about mentioning the dinosaur books that I had and I certainly had a lot of those as well. But I've gone back and looked at a lot of the dinosaur books I had growing up and have realized since that a good chunk of them were dinosaur books that were also creationist propaganda.
Patrick: Oh, yeah?
Ryan: Which, was not, you know, Charlie, you spoke very highly of your parents giving you some really cool stuff as a kid and this is definitely was not my, an attempt by my parents to trick me to being a creationist, this was just how, how I was brought up. And they were just giving me the best books that they had, they had access to and could think to give me and they just happen to be creationist books because I was, you know, raised in a Christian tradition. And it's funny going back and looking at them and I've got a few of them here out in California with me I still have them because I just look at them and, and they make me laugh in their own, their own funny way. Because, because the thing is they've got a lot of great information about dinosaurs. And then right at the end of the book, they just start taking digs and evolution and you realize like, oh, okay, that's what they're doing.
Charlie: Yeah, so the background and results section are good, but the discussion section leaves a little to be desired.
Ryan: Yes, exactly.
Charlie: Huh. You, Patrick, you mentioned things changing in middle school. And that's when I, I started interacting with teachers that, that really steered me towards academia and studying science. I mean, I had a middle school teacher, Mr. Latham, who is absolutely amazing. Science was by far my favorite class and in high school I had a teacher, Mr. Cottam, that made chemistry so interesting that I wanted to be a chemist. And that's what I went into as an undergraduate before, I had to take the physics prerequisites and realized that physics was a little bit more fundamental than than chemistry. Not, not to say that chemistry isn't fundamental, but it seemed to dive a little deeper. And so, so teachers, I guess, would, would, was also a much larger influence than pop culture. So it's probably parents first, then teachers, then pop culture for me.
Patrick: I wish I'd had your teacher influences. I was much more inspired by my humanity, by the humanities and art side, in terms of teachers, so I had to sort of swim against that current to find science. So...
Charlie: Yeah, so, I don't know, I don't know what this article is talking about.
Patrick: Well, you know, none of, we've all said that we're, well I guess, I didn't say but I should also say that I wasn't exactly a working class background, either.
Charlie: Yeah, I guess, yeah, that's...
Ryan: But Patrick, you know what's interesting, I was thinking about while I was reading this, is that you and I both have been heavily influenced by someone who is of a working class background and was inspired by pop culture to be a scientist.
Patrick: And that is?
Ryan: My undergrad and your graduate advisor, Dr. Paul Koch, who will be on the show sometime in the future.
Patrick: And he, um, yeah, I don't know where he, it would be interesting to find out where he drew his influence.
Ryan: He readily has admitted to me that it was the X-Men.
Patrick: Yeah, so that's...
Ryan: He's told me that he read the X-Men as a kid and he thought to himself, I want to make my own mutants. I guess he wanted to be Charles Xavier, which probably explains why he's managed to get so many graduate students through his lab. And yeah, we actually had like a weirdly informed discussion with me, him, Justin and Sora the other day. Justin and Sora, both previous guests/Paleo Pals of the show, we had this weirdly informed discussion of me and Paul talking in depth about who's going to be in the Avengers movie.
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And he kept, kept with me point for point and just blew Justin and Sora out of the water. It was really funny because I didn't even realize he knew that much about Marvel Comics and hey, good on him.
Patrick: Yeah, he knows, he knows a lot. Well, Paul knows a lot about a lot of things.
Ryan: That's true, smart guy.
Patrick: But yeah, I think, yeah, I knew he was into the X-Men. I didn't, I had never heard him credit that as his sort of inspiration for his scientific pursuits. But it kind of makes sense. I mean, if you don't have your parents pushing you that way, and you don't happen to come across a teacher that is influencing you, then where are you gonna, I mean, what else have you got that's gonna push you that direction.
Ryan: Mm hmm.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah.
Patrick: And I guess...
Ryan: And Paul came from rural Pennsylvania, from, from a working class background, I thought.
Patrick: Yeah, I think that's accurate. Yeah.
Charlie: Yeah, I mean, I came from the middle of nowhere, the beautiful Oregon coast, but...
Patrick: I think we're all sort of rural, growing up in rural places.
Ryan: Mmmhmmm, just not necessarily working class.
Patrick: Right.
Charlie: Yeah. But my parents came from, from elsewhere. They came from big cities. And I was, I was very much aware of the greater world around me. All of growing up.
Ryan: And now you're aware of greater worlds around you.
Charlie: Yeah.
Ryan: Planets.
Patrick: Asteroids.
Charlie: Outer space.
Patrick: Well speaking of those other worlds...
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Charlie: Right, let's talk about some prebiotic compounds that were found on an asteroid. The name of the asteroid is 24 Themis and it's gonna...
Patrick: Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, Themis. So Themis is a big deal, right?
Charlie: Ah, I, I mean, it's, it's a very large asteroid. It's...
Patrick: Right.
Charlie: It's one of the more like moon like asteroids in the, in the asteroid belt.
Patrick: And it's, it's caught NASA's attention for sure, right?
Charlie: Yeah...
Patrick: Because that's
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. And it's a big deal because it doesn't behave like a typical asteroid. And the bizarre behavior that it exhibits is that it is, some of the other members in its family, so an asteroid family is a collection of, of asteroids that's, that share the same orbit. And they often come in like kind of a wave packet, like an envelope where you have like smaller and smaller ones towards the extremity of this packet of asteroids and larger ones towards the center. And so the idea is like, maybe they originated from the same body and they were disrupted, either tidally or by an impact event, and shattered and now that just this collection of debris that, that orbit, and shrapnel, that orbit the Sun together. And so 24 Themis is, I don't know what the 24 means, maybe it's, it's labeled number 24 of that family, is the largest asteroid in this family. And some of the other asteroids in this family were, leave dust trails. And so NASA pointed its telescopes at this asteroid family, to figure out what, what this dust trail is. Because asteroids don't leave dust trails, comets, leave dust trails.
Ryan: Hmm.
Charlie: It turns out that that dust it’s leaving behind is some organic rich material and water vapor and they detected, specifically, some water vapor, water vapor, water ice and organic compounds on 24 Themis, using infrared spectrometers the same sort of things that we used to look at mineralogy on other planetary bodies like Enceladus, and Rhea and Mars, etc. Yeah, so this is interesting because this material is the building blocks of life. And usually we find these things on icy moons or places like Earth, not on a small asteroid. And it's significant because asteroids, you know, too small to have an atmosphere obviously. And so, to hold on to this vol... so called volatile material, it might be coming from inside of it as if it was made out of cometary material. And yeah, so that's, that's about it.
Patrick: So, so there is some, there's some ice water and there's some, this organic rich stuff.
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So, and oftentimes in biology, amino acids are called the building blocks of life. Is this stuff, does this have amino acids in it? Or are they just using that, that phrase to describe other carbon rich material?
Charlie: Um, I'm not very good with organic chemistry, but from what my understanding is, I think they're even that, I think they're prebiotics. I think they might be even more basic than...
Patrick: Than amino acids.
Charlie: ...you know, acids. Things like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, like CH 2 and CH 3. I'm just thinking of things that are seen on, on comets. Um, and, but I mean, the interesting thing is one theory for life, the origin of life is that you have comets that have this prebiotic, this kind of recipe material for, for life and amino acids, which later lead to protein which later lead to more complex biological constructions. One theory is that comets impact Earth and so you have energy you have liquid water and you have these prebiotic materials and maybe they'll, they'll swirl together and and make life but it, it I don't know if you guys are familiar with the Miller-Urey experiment.
Ryan: Yes, famous experiment. Why don't you go ahead and lay it out for us Charlie.
Charlie: A famous experiment in the 50s where, I forget his first name, but I think Stanley Miller and his advisor Harold Urey, I may have gotten that wrong. They, they took some simple compounds, some prebiotic compounds and it I think like water methane. Was ammonia in there?
Patrick: Yeah.
Charlie: Yeah. Cuz there's a reducing environment. So, water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen. And then they, they sent like a little, like electrical spark through it to simulate lightning, basically, this was all in a test tube. And it generated, you know, 10 amino acids and, and repeats experiment in modern day laboratories that can detect more amino acids reproduce all of them, all 22 or so amino acids. And so it doesn't take much to recreate these amino acids, which are the predecessor to life. and so that is an exciting, exciting experiment. But I guess I just want to temper all this with the fact that I mean, just because you have these probiotics does not mean you're going to get life. I, we have yet to be able to, to reproduce the origin or the genesis of life in the laboratory.
Patrick: Right, right.
Charlie: I think, I mean, one analogy that I came up with in my head when I was reading this article, I've been experimenting with sauces lately, I mean, like, so Hollandaise is really, really hard to make. And just if you drop egg yolk, butter, lemon juice, salt and cayenne into a bucket, you will not end up with Hollandaise. So you can have all the right ingredients, but you're not going to end up with life. So, and these things have, these types of things have been detected all over the, all over the solar system. I guess this article is exciting because it's on an asteroid, but I don't know.
Ryan: Well, that's a, that's an excellent point, Charlie. And there's one other thing that really, really, really bugs me about this article. And it's the second line in the subtitle that said findings that support a theory for the origins of life on Earth. And that is not, at all, what this story does in my mind. Because there's, you know, like you said, there's the theory of life, of life on earth that life was originated elsewhere in the cosmos, and then hit us on an asteroid or a comet or something and seeded the earth with life.
Patrick: Yeah.
Ryan: And this study doesn't support that. It just prevents that theory from being dismissed.
Patrick: I, I, semantics.
Ryan: I don't think it’s a semantic argument, I think, maybe, it's a semantic argument. But I don't know, like, saying that it supports a theory because that doesn't, supporting that theory doesn't mean that the other theory of that life evolved naturally on earth without any help from extraterrestrial sources isn't any less valid. And I think it's a...
Charlie: Yeah, it provides one of the necessary conditions for that hypothesis, but...
Ryan: Precisely...
Charlie: But it’s by no, no means sufficient.
Ryan: Yeah, well, I mean, just the public seems to have a confused enough relationship with the word theory that I think the media which, you know...
Charlie: Yeah.
Patrick: Nobody knows what it means.
Ryan: But I just think the media should be more careful with how they portray things, phrases like “bolsters a theory” and stuff like that, and they won’t because they don't care, but they should.
Charlie: I'm glad that you, you're focusing your disappointment towards the media, because I doubt this, the scientists said this in the report. And this report comes from two different, independently working scientists...
Ryan: Mmmhmmm.
Charlie: Science, science laboratory groups that were studying this 24 Themis asteroid and it's, I should mention that both these studies were in the recent article of Nature. One was led by Joshua P. Emory at University of Tennessee. The other study was led by Humberto Campins at the University of Central Florida.
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Patrick: You can fail.
Charlie: Their, their work was, was, you know, top notch science. They're using spectrometers to study something that's 3.5 astronomical units away from us and they're seeing prebiotics of water on a rock in outer space so that’s...
Ryan: What’s an astronomical unit, Charlie?
Charlie: Oh man, astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, the average distance between the Earth and Sun as it as it orbits around the sun. I forget the exact number. I think it's like 150 million kilometers but...
Ryan: 93, 93 million miles.
Patrick: Miles? Who talks about miles?
Ryan: I’m, we have a lot of listeners in the America...
Patrick: Well, those are close. Yeah.
Charlie: 150 million kilometers sounds right. Yeah, I just looked it up, it's right. Okay. 150 million kilometers. And so this is at 3.3 to 3.5 astronomical units, so between Mars and Jupiter.
Ryan: Cool. That's, that's where the asteroid belt is.
Patrick: Yep.
Ryan: Any school child has hopefully been taught.
Charlie: Yes. So I don't know, are you guys, are you guys yawning? Are we bored of this?
Ryan: I mean, I'm just glad that, I'm glad that scientists are doing a good job.
Patrick: Wow, I don't know where we're going now.
Charlie: Man hearing you yawn made yawn. That's weird, it's like contagious.
Ryan: I didn't yawn. Did Patrick yawn?
Charlie: Patrick yawned.
Ryan: Oh.
Patrick: I guess we're going to yawns then.
Ryan: Oh. I was thinking we needed to throw in a little trailer action before moving on to more science.
Charlie: All right before we get to yawns and what they all mean, let’s do Trailer Trash Talk.
Ryan: Charlie, you are a master, you’re a master podcaster.
Patrick: Little TTT.
Ryan: T3, coming at you.
Patrick: T3 cubed. I like that one.
Ryan: You like that one?
Patrick: I do.
Music
Announcer: Hey y'all. It's trailer trash talk.
Patrick: Okay, so the trailer this week is The Scientist and it's actually already out but it's an extremely limited release. It's directed by Zach LeBeau and the cast of, Bill Sage is the main character. I don't know, anyone else has much bearing on this. And I, the trailer, very short, perhaps the shortest trailer on Science sort of thus far. Did anybody time it? I don't know how long it was.
Ryan: Barely over a minute.
Patrick: Really? It didn't even seem that long. Here's the synopsis, a brilliant scientist, Dr. Marcus Ryan, that’s Bill Sage.
Charlie: He's a physicist.
Ryan: It's under a minute, Patrick it's 55 seconds.
Patrick: Yeah, that's about right.
Ryan: And then, he’s like The Atom, Ray Palmer, also a physicist.
Patrick: Ah, his, apparently his wife dies and as well as his daughter and that, I don't, this sounds so familiar for some reason I can't remember why.
Ryan: Ah, Mr Freeze.
Charlie: Frequency.
Ryan: Oh, I was gonna say Mr. Freeze from Batman.
Patrick: Yeah, see, see why this sounds familiar, everybody, this is, everybody's influenced by their spouse and child's death and it and it makes them invent some kind of wacky machine. Anyways, this machine is going to generate energy, endless energy and he's building in his basement. And it turns out the multi dimensional energy unleashed by the machine triggers a series of events that propels Ryan towards a higher level of consciousness. Um, so, what do you guys think?
Ryan: It seemed like Primer with a love story.
Patrick: It did seem a lot like Primer. That, that trailer really made me think of Primer.
Ryan: Ambiguous, like an ambiguous machine.
Patrick: Yeah, exactly.
Ryan: What are your, what are your thoughts Chuck?
35:00
Charlie: I mean, Primer was, was amazing because yeah just had this Deus Ex Machina like machine that you don't know how it works but they just use that as a, as a tool to explore philosophical questions. This has been, much more, like, you know made for Hollywood. It's a love story.
Ryan: It's also, looks a lot like a, what’s the movie that just came out with Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Patrick: Oh my God, this looks nothing like that.
Ryan: Alright. Nevermind.
Charlie: It reminded me a little bit of Frequency. So in Frequency, the guy's trying to get back into contact with his lost, with his dead dad. Here, I think he's, yeah, he's compelled to invent a machine to get back in touch with his wife and daughter who he obviously misses terribly and why wouldn't he? I mean, it's, it's a, it's a compelling common story to all human beings. People you know and love die and you wish that you could still remain in contact with them. And you wish that we were immortal. And so, I mean, everybody's going to relate to this story as a human being, but it's, it's not science.
Ryan: No, definitely not science. And I think that's one of the things that scares me about this movie. Is that people will take it as science. I mean, not necessarily, I don't think people are gonna think this is a documentary. But I also don't think they're necessarily going to understand that, you know, there aren't actually scientists out there working on this kind of stuff. Which, I guess, is ironic, considering we just talked to Mary Roach, but I don't know.
Charlie: I mean, there aren’t scientists working on this because there's no lead. There's no, no place to start.
Ryan: There's no prior plausibility.
Charlie: Yeah. It's, it's a question that science can't, can't work on with the tools we have presently. So, yeah, I don't know.
Ryan: So how did that make you feel about, about the trailer in the movie and all that stuff?
Charlie: I thought it was kind of abusive towards science or the scientist.
Ryan: Yeah, I'm kind of with you.
Patrick: I'm, I’m kind of a sucker for this.
Charlie: Yeah, at the same time, I understand why, I mean, a lot of scientists are, follow, some scientists very much follow their intuition, and they're compelled by drives that are irrational. I mean, not all scientists are the Jungian archetype of judgemental. Some very famous scientists are the Jungian archetype of intuitive. I mean, Einstein is the most famous of those intuitive type scientists. So I mean, scientists do follow irrational leads sometimes to brilliant discoveries, but they are and end up in the quack department.
Ryan: And, and I mean, scientists also, you know we're not, we're not all Sherlock Holmes we're not all hyper rationalist to the point of being obnoxious. I mean, we could still be obnoxious without being hyper rationalist but...
Charlie: Right.
Patrick: I gotta say that movies that I think this looks like, Primer, um, what was the one about John Nash, A Beautiful Mind?
Ryan: A Beautiful Mind, yeah.
Charlie: Yeah.
Patrick: And one other one I'm thinking of, um, not a science movie, but The Prestige.
Ryan: Yeah.
Charlie: Oh yeah.
Ryan: Yeah.
Patrick: Those are all movies that sort of remind me of this thing and I liked all those movies. So I think I might like this movie, regardless of what it says about how scientific the premise is.
Ryan: So Patrick, it sounds like you're going thumbs up.
Patrick: I think I'm gonna thumbs up it. Yeah.
Ryan: And Charlie, you sound like you're conflicted.
Charlie: I'm gonna go through up but I just had to say that whole like five minute spiel I gave to defend the fact that I'm not totally irrational. It just looks like, it looks like a compelling movie to me.
Ryan: Hey man, whatever, whatever helps you sleep at night in your beautiful island paradise next to your wife, must be tough.
Charlie: It's, it is very rough.
Ryan: I’m going thumbs down. Just, I don't, I don't think this movie's gonna make any money and I don't think I'll ever see it. Even though it looks vaguely interesting in a, I like Mr. Freeze kind of way, but, that's about where it ends.
Patrick: Right on. I like the controversy. I like it when we don't all agree.
Charlie: Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah, but what we're talking about when we say thumbs up and thumbs down is the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which is a website you can find at the web address, hsx.com, where Science sort of has an account and we have a league. And if you would like to join in on this kind of weird Thumb up Thumb downing of movies, you can go to hsx.com and sign up for a free account and get some free fake money and start betting on movies. Like you would the stock market and join our league and get trounced by ReJinx.
Charlie: Pretty much.
Patrick: Yeah. But that's basically the way it's gonna go. Yeah.
Ryan: But it's a lot of fun. If you're any good at it and it's easy to ignore if you're not that good at it, like me.
Patrick: Yawn.
Ryan: And if you're not, if you're not that, you're not that into betting on movies and you find that kind of boring, it might make you yawn.
Patrick: There you go.
Ryan: Nice one Charlie.
Music
Ryan: Yeah. Okay, so what we're, what we're sleepily trying to transition to is a new study out in the Journal of the..., wait, what? The May 2007 article, how old is this? Okay.
Patrick: Only three years.
Charlie: Wow.
Ryan: In the interest...
Charlie: Just do it anyways, it's new to us.
Ryan: No, no in the interest of full disclosure, um, this was actually sent in by a listener. We don't get a lot of stories senate from listeners listeners tend to not, they send it they send in good feedback and we really appreciate that but they hardly ever send in like stories for us to cover, which is one of the reasons I thought this was so interesting. And I actually got it in the form of a cut out of a newspaper article about it. It was sent by my mother, back in, back in “West by God Virginia”. Wild wonderful.
Patrick: This is a your mother the listener?
Ryan: Yes, my mother. I don't have any other mothers. I got one, one mother.
Patrick: Okay.
Ryan: But it comes from the Contra Costa Times, which is just north of you, Patrick. Well, I guess northeast.
Patrick: Fair enough.
Ryan: Contra Costa is where Walnut Creek is.
Charlie: It’s county, California.
Ryan: Yeah.
Patrick: Yeah, it's northeast but just barely. Mostly east, I guess.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Well, I thought, I just thought it was funny that I got an article from a West Virginia newspaper about about a story reprinting something from Contra Costa. But it's from a, the May 2007 issue of Evolutionary Psychology, which I, you know, I have my, I have my own opinions about Evolutionary Psychology. But let's take this story on its own merits as we like to do as honest scientists. And the story says that, “psychologists attribute yawning to the need to cool the brain and pay attention”.
Patrick: Is there any data?
Ryan: Ah, yes. So yawning is one of those weird things that a lot of animals do.
Patrick: Yeah.
Ryan: There's not a whole lot of...
Patrick: A lot of mammals do it.
Ryan: Yeah, a lot of mammals do it. And there's not a whole lot certainty why. It's one of those kind of legitimately ambiguous mysterious things in science and biology. The theory that I've heard most often and kind of like the best is that among social mammals, like primates and dogs and wolves and things like that, yawning is a way to synchronize sleep and wake cycles. So if you see the guy next to you yawning, it's, it's either, depending on the time of day and the light levels and things like that, it's either time to start going to sleep or start waking up. And it's just a way to keep the group cohesive in when you're sleeping and when you're waking up.
Patrick: I had heard, the theory I had heard previously and, and think has a lot of merit, is that it's an oxygen, it's an extra oxygen boost for the brain. And that's also why you yawn when you’re bored, I guess, to try to try to boost your brain a little bit. So you can Listen to the last 15 minutes of the lecture or whatever.
Ryan: Yeah. And I think that's the common knowledge.
Charlie: That's what I've heard too. But that's the data of this study seems to argue against, not, I guess, argue against it, but just to say that, that that's not necessarily the case, because people will yawn regardless of the amount of oxygen. So people will be breathing an environment, with a mask on, of 100% oxygen, and they'll still yawn.
Patrick: They’ll still yawn.
Ryan: Yeah. And I've heard things like that, too. So what these scientists are arguing is that yawning actually reduces the temperature of the brain. And they use the analogy of a computer, which runs better when it's cool, which is why your computer's got a fan that we have to try and not record. Not your fan. I'm speaking of our fans at this point.
45:08
Charlie: Yeah. So I mean, yeah, I guess you open up new air conduits and pathways throughout your skull and sinuses and forces air quickly through those cavities and will remove heat.
Ryan: And that it, um, must widen the blood vessels or something, must be a basal dilutant.
Charlie: Basal dilator.
Ryan: Yeah. But it's a super short pop press article, and I'm skeptical of anything from the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology. I’m not gonna lie.
Patrick: Well, I don't think anyone knows, so this is from, crocodiles and alligators, they'll sort of prop their mouth open. And it's thought that that, I mean, there's no one really, I don't think anyone really knows why that happens. But cooling the, cooling off is a big reason, a big, the leading probably argument for why they do that. So, so it works in other animal groups, perhaps so maybe, maybe there's something to it.
Ryan: Huh.
Patrick: We regulate our temperature more, more tightly and perhaps better than crocodiles and alligators do, so it's not clear to me that we would necessarily need to do that.
Charlie: Yeah, I mean, we have this giant heatsink that's called our skull at a very vascular, you know, tissue called our scalp over our skull. I mean that's why if you get cut in the head it bleeds like crazy, because it's got so much, so much vascularity to it because it's trying to cool our head with, with blood flow.
Ryan: Yes. And the Paleo Pals are all familiar with this, because we're always getting into fights where our scalp gets cut with a knife or blade, Portland...
Patrick: If I had a nickel every time I got my scalp cut open.
Ryan: You'd be 100 air.
Charlie: No, I mean, I've never been in a knife fight or anything, but I've done dumb things like putting away dishes and standing up from the bottom from leaning over to put a dish in the bottom cupboard, standing up and hitting my head against an open cupboard door on the top and...
Ryan: Yeah.
Patrick: Oh man.
Charlie: My skull, my head will bleed like crazy.
Ryan: Yeah.
Charlie: I mean luckily it's got a natural coagulant which is just hair. You just let let your hair get bloodied up.
Ryan: That is disgusting.
Charlie: No, ask, ask any, I mean my wife's a doctor, if you...
R: I know...
Charlie: ...if some, someone comes in with a head wound like, you let the hair do the job. You don't, you don't shave their head. You give them stitches but you leave, you know, you leave the hair there because it, it provides a natural gauze.
Ryan: Alright.
Patrick: If only we were still as hairy as the Yeti.
Ryan: We used to have a Yeti on the show.
Charlie: I mean you want, eventually, as soon as the cut heals a day or two later you, you'll want to wash your hair.
Ryan: Really.
Charlie: Otherwise, otherwise that's just unattractive.
Patrick: Well, hygiene tips from the Paleo Pals. Patrick: Exactly.
Ryan: Bathe regularly after head wounds. Wow.
Charlie: Um, so at the very end of this article it says, and I quote, "So the next time you're telling a story in a listener yawns, there's no need to be offended. Yawning is physiological mechanism designed to maintain attention turns out to be a compliment."
Ryan: I disagree.
Charlie: I totally disagree. Because if your story is compelling enough, they won't need a yawn to maintain attention, they'll maintain attention just by interest alone.
Ryan: If you're listening to this podcast and you yawn during it, I want you to slap yourself in the face.
Patrick: That's when you throw in the "then I found $20".
Ryan: Yes, yes. So then Patrick stabbed him. I always prefer the stabbing. Speaking of knife fights, I always preferred the stabbing to the $20 method. The Nick Swardson anytime you're telling a story that you realize is gonna be really boring, you just end it with so then you fucking stabbed him.
Patrick: I like the $20.
Ryan: All right.
Patrick: Cuz I don't think people are gonna buy the, then he stabbed him. I think it's the, yeah...
Ryan: Because you didn't you didn't grow up on the streets?
Patrick: No, I guess not. Although in previous podcasts, you've claimed that I grew up on the streets.
Ryan: Well, I guess I was wrong.
Charlie: So, $20 is a little less psychopathic
Ryan: Science is self correcting. So, I now admit that you didn't grow up on the street because you don't understand just how common knife fights are.
Patrick: You think $20, you're just hanging out in the cornfield?
Ryan: I found $20 in my pocket the other day.
Charlie: I love when that happens.
Ryan: I'll tell a boring story right now and end it that way. So I was getting ready to go to the beach and I put on my board shorts, and I was hoping to go and get a fish taco after the beach and I found $20 in my shorts.
50: 03
Patrick: Now I'm listening.
Charlie: That's like four fish tacos.
Ryan: Well, Margaritas cost more than fish tacos, which was the other part of that equation. But speaking of, speaking of drinks, and things like that, I guess would now be a good time for me to toss in a little bit of the Cal Academy nightlife insiders action. Last night, we're recording this on Friday, which is kind of rare for us. But last night I went to the Cal Academy nightlife. Hurray!
Patrick: And that's because...
Ryan: Because I am a Cal Academy Nightlife Science Insider, which means that I go to all the nightlife events and I have a fantastic time and you should too. So if you're a listener from the Bay Area, and you've got some time on your hands on a Thursday night, you should totally go check out the Nightlife because it's super sweet. And you get to hang out at the Cal Academy for like half the price of what it would cost to get in during the day but without children, so you need to be over 21 to go. And there's cocktails and DJs and all the exhibits and stuff are open. So you can go see the extreme mammals and last night was all about sharks so I got a picture of me standing in the jaws of megalodon just like the old sciency photo that I'm gonna put that up on the Facebook page for people to check out and on the website on the sciencesortof.com website. Um, yeah, so if you're in the Bay Area or near the Bay Area. There's always plenty of parking too, which is rare for the city. Because it's in Golden Gate Park later in the evening. So, you know, go check it out. And if you do check it out, 1, find me on Twitter. I'll be tweeting with the #NLInsiders. So that's what you can search for to find all the, me and the other Insiders, as we go around and do our thing. And I don't know just come have a good time, have a drink. Come say hi to me and whatever Paleo Pal I managed to drag along with me that week, Patrick or Charlie. And I think hopefully we'll, we'll get there in force one of these days.
Charlie: Yeah, I'll probably be there next week.
Ryan: So it's gonna be a really good time. And I highly recommend it and if you do come, let us know even, even if you don't see us at the event. Let us know afterward. Shoot us an email, send us a tweet or something like that because it lets the Cal Academy know this program is working and that's pretty cool. If you do email in that you went to Cal Academy Nightlife event that could very well make it into a future Paleo POW.
Music
Patrick: So now the Paleo POW.
Charlie: So mine comes from Ryan Brown, one of the steamed individuals that was romping around Portland with Ryan.
Ryan: Hello.
Charlie: The other Ryan.
Ryan: Hi.
Charlie: I the other weekend.
Ryan: That's me.
Charlie: And he wrote to me, I assume because I study planets. And he writes "I hope this question makes sense. Would metamorphic rocks be more prevalent on Venus than on Earth due to higher temperatures and surface pressure?" So before I attempt to answer this question, I want to preface my answer with the fact that I haven't looked up any of this material or studied it. So I'd like some help with my fellow Paleo Posse members, Ryan and Patrick. And it's a little bit like the quiz show that we have planned later on where you the listeners write in questions, and we will not be aware of these questions and have to try to come up with answers on the spot. Kind of stumps, stump the chump sort of deal. So I'll let Patrick explain before I attempt to answer Ryan's question.
Patrick: I was just gonna say if you, if you're going to send us a question, send it to quizmaster@sciencesortof.com, all one word quizmaster, ah, so that we don't see it ahead of time.
Charlie: Right. So again, to repeat the question from Ryan, "Would metamorphic rocks be more prevalent on Venus than on Earth due to higher temperatures and surface pressure?" So, let's first talk about Venus's higher temperatures and surface pressure. I was talking to Ryan briefly about this topic just before the start of the show. And he knew the surface temperature of Venus off the top of his head. And so what is the what is the surface temperature?
Ryan: 900 degrees Fahrenheit and you yelled at me for using Fahrenheit. You did.
Charlie: Well, Fahrenheit...
Ryan: You did, you yelled at me for using Fahrenheit, Charlie, admit it.
Patrick: I think we yelled at you for using miles later.
Charlie: Yeah, miles and Fahrenheit, they're, they're not good units to use because you can't communicate with other physical properties.
Ryan: I agree and I prefer Celsius. But I only knew the Fahrenheit temperature of Venus. That was the only, I didn't have the Celsius memorized.
Charlie: Which I think is amazing. I mean, because if you have the Fahrenheit temperature, then you can quickly type into any calculator or Google 900 F equals C.
55:05
Ryan: I can, I can rough it in my head.
Charlie: Yeah, you can, exactly you can rough it in your head too. So, I mean, 900 Fahrenheit, equals, in Celsius terms, it's about half that or so. So you'd guess 450 stupidly...
Ryan: I guessed like 480.
Charlie: And the real answer is 482.
Ryan: Yeah, because it's half that plus 30.
Patrick: Yeah.
Charlie: Right.
Patrick: Well, it's actually 5/9 but yeah...
Ryan: It's 5/9 plus 32. But half that plus 30 is a decent approximation.
Patrick: Exactly.
Charlie: All right, so the surface Venus is 480 degrees Celsius. Hot.
Ryan: Yes.
Charlie: The pressure of Venus is 90 bars, which is 90 times the surface pressure of, of Earth at sea level, that's where the unit bar comes from. One bar equals 105 Pascals in SGI units.
Ryan: That's like where you're sitting when you're in Hawaii, a bar at sea level.
Charlie: Or in Santa Cruz or in Berkeley.
Ryan: That's true. We're all at sea level and we're all at bars.
Patrick: Ah, we're not all at, well, I don't know where Ryan is. I'm up, I'm up a ways.
Charlie: Yeah, you have a pretty amazing view of San Francisco from your perch in Berkeley.
Ryan: I'm, I'm maybe 100 feet above sea level, probably not even that.
Charlie: And I'm in, I, up on a hill, on, high up in an apartment high rise, so I might not be at one bar either. Anyhow...
Patrick: Anyways.
Charlie: So Venus is hot, high pressure, heat and pressure cause rocks to change mineralogically. And again, this is off the top of my head. However, these temperatures aren't that hot. And these pressures aren't that high. The pressure...
Patrick: Exactly. I was surprised at how high the pressure was but the temperature, I mean, that's that's not that big a deal compared to what metamorphic rocks need.
Charlie: The equation for pressure is, one equation for pressure is pressure equals the density times the gravity times the height of whatever material you're underneath. So in physics terms, that's (rho)gh in formulaic terms. And so the density of rock is three grams per cc or 3000 kilograms per meter cubed. Gravity on Venus is same as Earth, because they're roughly the same size, so we'll call that 10 meters per second2 gravitational acceleration. And so if you take 3000, which is the density times the pressure, I mean 10 times the gravity, so 3000 times 10 is 30,000. So you're already at a few, few bars just under a meter or so of, of rock.
Ryan: You almost said, Pascal's, which is another unit of pressure that people might want to be aware of.
Charlie: Yeah.
Patrick: Yeah. If you're, if you're 10 feet underground, you're, you're equivalent to Venus. Right?
Charlie: Yeah. So, so those those pressures would be very uncomfortable to, to, you know, walk around in, are not high enough to, to induce any more metamorphic change in rock than they would on earth. And the other thing I mean, I'm not a petrologist, but one thing I understand about metamorphism and rocks is that you need water to produce a lot of these chemical and mineralogical changes and Venus is very dry and does not have water. So if anything I think metamorphism is inhibited on Venus relative to Earth.
Ryan: BAM. POW.
Patrick: Well done.
Ryan: Wow.
Charlie: What do you guys think? You guys helped me out, through that though.
Ryan: I think that was an exceptionally erudite answer to his question.
Patrick: I agree, all around, yeah, it's answered. Venus, not at, I mean, I'm not saying metamorphism doesn't happen on Venus, but at surface temperature and pressure, it's unlikely it's...
Ryan: Do we even know if Venus is tectonically active?
Charlie: Um, it's very confusing...
Patrick: You need, you need the water for that to happen. I think it's probably not happening because there's no water.
Ryan: Huh.
Charlie: So again, I don't know the mineralogy of Venus, I'm suspecting it's basalt, like Mars and much of earth...
Ryan: Really Ryan, way to ask a question in the wrong direction of the solar system for Charlie to answer.
Charlie: Yeah. I mean, Earth has much more complex mineralogy because of things like plate tectonics and the presence of water.
Ryan: Go Earth.
Charlie: Venus doesn't have very many craters, and we use craters in planetary science to determine the age of the surface, which means Venus was resurfaced and the age of all the surfaces on Venus are similar.
1:00:01
The way this is described as isotropic. And that means that the entire surface of Venus went through some catastrophic, violent upheaval where the whole planet was resurfaced at the same time, and so...
Patrick: That would imply that plate tectonics is going on there, right?
Charlie: Yeah, but it's almost like one plate tectonic where the whole, the whole surface, burped and recovered itself. So it's like so, I mean, you have like a thin film on the top of a boiling pot of soup. And plate tectonics would be like that film is being pushed around and, and knocked under parts of it and other things. This would be like that entire film like catastrophically flipped over and a new film formed. But I don't know. That, this is not my area of expertise at all. So you know a lot about Venus, I apologize.
Ryan: As opposed to yawning science which, you're right, you know, you're widely considered to be an authority in that field.
Charlie: No, but it gets trickier with, I mean, with yawning science I can just totally BS and people will understand. With planetary science, I'm supposed to know something so I get much more defensive and self cautious.
Ryan: Well, that's fair.
Charlie: When it, when I don't know what I'm talking about.
Ryan: Well, we wouldn't want you to be defensive and self conscious. So we should move on. And speaking of other places, and things that are tough to walk around in, Iron Man.
Charlie: It takes takes practice.
Ryan: Which is my awkward and clumsy transition into the fact that I've been writing some articles for Marvel.com lately about the science of Iron Man. The most recent article that came out this week was all on the UI, which is the user interface, which sounds like a really boring topic, but I actually had a lot of fun researching that one. And I thought that it turned out pretty well. Coming out next week will be all about the offensive and defensive capabilities of the suit, and that's coming out on Tuesday at marvel.com and I'm also writing for iFanboy. My article that came out this week for iFanboy was called "The world of tomorrow" and it's...
Patrick: I did read that one.
Ryan: It's five things that were thought up in the world of comics, and have since been discovered or created by the world of science.
Patrick: As, sort of, four things anyways.
Ryan: What was the thing that you disagreed with?
Patrick: Ah, the time travel.
Ryan: You didn't, you don't agree with Sergei Avdeyev?
Patrick: No, well, I mean, the fact that general, general relativity came before most of the comics...
Ryan: Oh, yeah, I own up to that. But you know, my logic was that we didn't have the capability to actually get a human to experience general relativity until after the comics so...
Patrick: Yeah, you really don't have a way of measuring it now, though. You just, it's still theoretical.
Ryan: Well then post a comment on iFanboy.
Patrick: Well, the thing I was thinking you were going to talk about was the nerd list, right.
Ryan: I also, just to continue the plug fest that is my life at this point, was recently on the nerd list, which is a podcast hosted, cohosted by Paleo Posse member John, John Lopez and I was on there discussing villains. So it was, it's Episode 20 of the nerd list. I'm gonna put a link up on the website and on the Facebook page. And we basically, I came up with a grudge match of 10 different Marvel villains versus DC villains and John and Shawn discuss who would win each of those battles until, and then we keep score of Marvel Vs DC to see who's got the better villains with surprising results. And that was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed talking to those guys. They have a good podcast, you should go check out the nerd list.
Patrick: I got a, I got an email from James, James P, James P. P, actually. And he had a comment about the last show which was Episode 33. And it's kind of long, so let's see if I can cut this down a little bit. Basically, he was listening to the show and he's actually been working with Drosophila which are the fruit fly and, ah, he had an idea for how you would hold the fly still do shave their genitalia.
Ryan: Manscape.
Patrick: Yeah, how you would manscape the flies. And that was, that would actually be done using a CO2 fly pad. And so that's a common piece of equipment. If you studied Drosophila and you hook it up to a CO2 tank and it evenly and gently releases carbon dioxide out of it. I'm thinking like an air hockey table. And when the flies are on it, they're anesthetized and you can move them around and look at them under a microscope or whatever because they have a lot of air sacs they don't die from this right away they just sort of get knocked out and when they get put back in normal air they revive and fly around again.
Ryan: That's pretty cool.
Charlie: Yeah, that's awesome.
Patrick: Ah, the second, and he goes on to say that he thinks that they have these, that we, he thinks we missed a reason for why they don't have these barb's although I think I touched on it very, very briefly. But anyways, he says that he thinks that it might be a reason that they, they prevent competitive sperm because the female might be damaged a little bit from mating with a male with big barbs on the penis. And then the female might, might avoid future mating encounters because she's a little sore, I guess. She's and John goes on to say that their brains kind of suck. So they don't remember that they've recently made it but they might avoid future mating encounters because of their physical pain. So he thinks that might might be a reason. And anyways, he's a bio-psychology students at Viterbo University in Wisconsin.
Charlie: Awesome.
Ryan: Well, good on you, man. Thanks for emailing in.
Charlie: Fly brains suck. I would have never thought.
Ryan: They seem like such intelligent...
Patrick: He didn't say their brains necessarily suck. Well, he kind of does. He does. They just have little brains so their memory sucks. So yeah, maybe their brains do suck.
Charlie: Not a lot of storage.
Ryan: Like an iPod Nano. Speaking of things made by Apple, my Paleo POW comes from the iTunes review page.
Charlie: Clever.
Ryan: Thanks. So we had, we had a good, good week for iTunes reviews. And I would like to thank everyone who was kind enough to take the time to leave an iTunes review. We recognize that it's not something you have to do. It's something you choose to do. And it means a lot that people go and say such nice things. And just because I'm not reading your review out the week that it was written doesn't mean that it won't get read out eventually. So for this week, I have chosen to read the review from the AspiringBillionaire who gives us five stars and titles his review "Funny, science, awesome." Let's see. Okay, so we're gonna do another weird pronoun situation because I almost called AspiringBillionaire he because I'm a man and that makes me, I guess, anthrocentric?
Patrick: And sexist.
Ryan: I think anthrocentric makes me sound less sexist but, so, AspiringBillionaire, I apologize if you're not a he, but I'm gonna assume that you are just for the purposes of this next sentence. He says that "I listened to a couple of these science podcasts where people talk about science, or they're making fun of science to be funny. But these guys are amazing. I am actually learning scientific stuff because not only are they brilliant, but they have legitimate sciency guests, and they are funny and witty to boot. This is an entertaining hour or so podcast. My only complaint is that they need to do it more often. I want to see Science sort of every other day. Not much else to say, if you're interested in science, or just basic nerdery you have to listen to this podcast."
Charlie: Those are very, very kind words.
Ryan: You viscerally reacted to the every other day thing though.
Patrick: Yeah, it's a lot.
Charlie: It's, that'd be a lot. I mean, a lot goes into the show. We have to read articles. We have to think about them. We have to communicate with each other, schedule time to record the show, recording takes much longer than what you actually hear. And then people use, then people have to edit it. Ryan usually edits it. And he...
Patrick: The vast majority of the time Ryan edits.
Charlie: Yeah. Almost all the time all the time. All the time Ryan edits and he does an incredible job. And it's a lot of work and we're happy to do it. We do do it for free and, because it's fun, but we also have real jobs too. Some of us are postdocs, some of us are grad students, some of us will be grad students shortly. And this is something we do on the side for, for fun, and we can't do it every other day.
Ryan: Right.
Charlie: But we are, we are very flattered that, that we have listeners that would be willing to listen to this...
Patrick: Definitely.
Charlie: I'm amazed with that. I don't know if I can listen to myself every other day.
Ryan: Well, you know, Charlie, you bring up a really good point. That, you know, this is something we do for side, on the side, and we do it for fun and things like iTunes reviews are a huge help. Things also like Ryan Brown, the Paleo POW, the Paleo Posse you mentioned in your Paleo POW, actually has donated to the show. And, and there are lots of things like that you can do to support the show. And these aren't things we plug very often, but they do make the show easier for us to do. And that's things like our affiliates, which we have all listed on the website.
Patrick: Definitely. So if you ever shop at Amazon or ThinkGeek, one easy thing to do is go to sciencesortof.com first and use our link on the right hand side of our webpage to go to, to go to Amazon or go to ThinkGeek or go to any of our other affiliates. And when you do that we get a really small percentage of whatever you buy there. And that doesn't change the price for you, but we get we get a really small percentage of your purchase. So if you're thinking of going to one of these vendors anyways, please use our page first to link to them.
1:10:11
Ryan: And what you can even do if you want to make it that much more convenient as you can go to Science sort of once and just click on the Amazon, ThinkGeek, Busted Tees, whatever website you're trying to get to And you can bookmark that and just call it amazon.com. And then every time you go there, it'll be like you're going through our website.
Charlie: And this, so this will help us offset operating costs for bandwidth and maintaining our website and things like that.
Ryan: Right. Because we're not going to stop ever providing a free hour or so podcast every week. But there are things you can do to make that easier for us. And things like using our affiliates and even donating to the show are ways to do that. We had another iTunes review that I'm not really going to touch on, other than to say that he wasn't super happy with our sound engineering and said that he would throw in a few dollars if it would get us to more professional sounding results. And I'm not sure if he was listening to earlier episodes or not because I feel like our audio quality has been better, but it is possible to throw us a few dollars. So you, there's not, if that's really how you feel there's not really an excuse not to.
Patrick: Fair enough.
Ryan: And, yeah, thanks for everyone who supports the show with the Paleo POW segment. It's ah, I don't know, it's always the most interesting segment because we, we don't really talk to each other about what we're gonna do. We kind of just show up at the show recording with Paleo POW in hand.
Patrick: And we love getting emails.
Ryan: It's true. It's, it's, it's always fun.
Patrick: So if you want to send us an email, you can send it to the show generally by emailing science, or sorry, paleopals@sciencesortof.com or you can email the Paleo Pals individually if you prefer. I'm Patrick@sciencesortof.com.
Charlie: I'm Charlie@sciencesortof.com.
Ryan: and Ryan@sciencesortof.com. And as we mentioned before, just to touch on it again, if you'd like to contribute to the quiz show, which is coming up very shortly you're running out of time. Go ahead and email quizmaster@sciencesortof.com and if you would like that to be a voicemail so we can hear your lovely voice you can call 312 paleo pals, which we've, we know it's too many letters, okay, but just put it in the phone and call it and if you are really not comfortable with punching in letters, you can punch in the numbers. 312-725-3672. Start the voicemail off by saying this is a question in a loud, clear tone so we don't keep listening. And we'll save it for the quiz show.
Patrick: Also, we have a Google Voice widget on the webpage. If you go under the about section on the left hand side of the sciencesortof.com webpage. You can scroll down and find the Google Voice widget and we'll call you if you don't want to pay for the call. And you can just click on it, enter your phone number, your phone will ring and you can leave a voice mail from there.
Charlie: Technology.
Ryan: Yeah, you know, Facebook, Twitter, social media.
Patrick: All that.
Ryan: It's fun, Twitter, twitter.com/sciencesortof and Facebook, just go and search for Science sort of, join our fan page, now called just a Like page or something like that. We have our own website, as is appropriate. And that's just sciencesortof.com and that's where we post show notes and hilarious pictures that go along with whatever episode we're doing. If you haven't gone and checked out Mimas, you absolutely should.
Charlie: Walka, walka, walka.
Ryan: From episode 32 and ah, the photo from Episode 33 is maybe the funniest photo we've ever, ever used in my opinion.
Charlie: Yeah, that one was pretty good.
Ryan: Yeah. And we're not even going to say what it was. And the, even the caption for the photo is just presented without comment. So just remember the theme of sex bugs and rock and roll and go check that out at sciencesortof.com and I think that about wraps it up for this week.
Charlie: And if you're a scientist and you want to write in why you became a scientist, the first article we talked about, we'd be happy to hear it.
Ryan: Hey, that's gonna be great...
Patrick: Paleo POW.
Ryan: Yeah. Thanks, Charlie, way to go man. Pull it out at the last second right before I say the line. This was Episode 34. The theme was brain freeze. Hope you enjoyed it. And we hope you'll come back next week for Episode 35 and a little bit more science...
Patrick and Charlie: ...sort of.
Ryan: Nice. Well done, guys. Well done.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to Science sort of. Our show notes are available at sciencesortof.com, which we'll have links to all the stories we talked about today. You can follow us on twitter@twitter.com/sciencesortof, you can get in touch with us at paleopals@sciencesortof.com or on our Facebook fan page. A great way you can support the show is by subscribing to our feed on iTunes and writing a review so other people have a better chance of finding the show. And if you have a friend you think might be interested, tell them to give us a try. That's all for this week. Thanks for listening, and see you next time on Science sort of.
Music
1:15:05
Ryan: Kapow! Kablam! One day we should change it up and just call it like the Paleo Kablam or some other some other Onomatopoeia comic book noise.
Patrick: I think we should definitely come up with a, kablam...
Ryan: Paleo kaboom!
Patrick: Acronym.
Ryan: Kablam... for the...
Patrick: For the knowledge listener.
Ryan: I was gonna say the completely completely awesome... oh boy.
Patrick: With the K.
Ryan: Yeah... Well, it would phonetically, it works. Completely awesome boisterous listener active missive...
Patrick: For next time.
Ryan: Yes. I like that...
Patrick: Charlie, it, lay it on us.
Ryan: Listener active missive. Blam.
Charlie: I don't really know what you guys are talking about anymore but I'm reading my Paleo POW.
Ryan: Do it.
Patrick: Do it.
Transcriptions provided by Denny Henke of Beardyguycreative.com
