Episode 35 | Change Over Time

You're a good man, Charlie Darwin.

A full transcript of this episode is available below thanks to donations from our Patrons!

00:00:00 - The Paleopals go through the motions of introductions but they’re tired because they were up late and they were up late because they were at the Cal Academy Nightlife. Which was pretty cool and they’ll tell you why.

00:08:36 - What happens when a species gets divorced? Does that mean they don’t love us anymore? Patrick explains the delicate and debated topic of speciation; specifically some cute little lizards on islands.

00:26:20 - The trailer this week involves some irresponsible scientists with a tale as old as time as the Paleopals tackle Splice. The tale of creating a monster you can no longer control. The Paleopals get a little harsh on this B-movie plot that perpetrates the image of the irresponsible scientist.

00:36:13- Another tale from an old time is a dinosaur tale. And they may be back soon if the Canadians are allowed to have their way with Chicken DNA. Everything you just read is true. Moving on.

00:50:10 - PaleoPOW this week brings a scientific inspiration from Hannah Elliot, Patrick’s favorite iTunes review, and Ryan pleading to stay ahead of some nude academics on podcast alley.

Music for this week’s show:

• Extreme Ways - Moby

• Island in the Sun – Weezer

• Experiment Number Six – Lemon Jelly

• Things I Don’t Remember – Ugly Casanova

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Episode 35: Change Over Time

Ryan: Outtakes are important. They don’t just happen.

Charlie: Yeah they do.

Patrick: That's the idea.

Charlie: And they are at their best when they just happen.

Ryan: Planning to plan.

Announcer: Hello and welcome to science sort of.

Music

Ryan: Welcome to Science sort of Episode 35. I am Ryan and joining me always as always are the Paleo Pals, Charlie.

Charlie: Hey guys.

Ryan: And Patrick.

Patrick: Hello Paleo Pals.

Ryan: This week’s theme, it's change over time, it's gonna be a tight show, hopefully. We're going to start to show off as we start off every show with what are we drinking? So Charlie welcome back to California and tell us what you're sipping on.

Charlie: Well I've had a long week and I'm a little tired right now so I wanted to have something light to keep me awake and fresh throughout the show so I'm drinking a Moosehead logger from Ben Tippett’s homeland, Canada.

Ryan: You come all the way back to California from Hawaii to drink Canadian beer? Really?

Charlie: Yeah it's a proudly independent Canadian...

Ryan: Traitor.

Charlie: ...brew from the oldest independent brewery in New Brunswick Canada.

Ryan: That is Ben's neck of the woods.

Charlie: Yeah, it's just clean and crisp.

Patrick: Won't fill you up, never slows you down.

Charlie: Yeah tomorrow after a full nights sleep I'll have something heavy and delicious like an IPA, but for now just a nice refreshing lager. How, what are you drinking Patrick?

Patrick: I'm drinking something heavy and delicious I guess. It's actually, it's actually a little bitter even for me. Ryan, I don't know if you've had this before but this is Sierra Nevada’s is Bigfoot Ale, the barley wine style.

Ryan: I have had that.

Charlie: I've had that. Yeah.

Ryan: It is, I'll be perfectly frank that it’s not my favorite barley wine style I think it's a little too syrupy.

Charlie It's got some high alcohol content.

Ryan: Yeah, it does.

Patrick: Yeah it's 9.6%. But I hadn't had the opportunity to purchase it before and so when I ran across it I had to.

Charlie: Understood.

Patrick: Yeah, it's so – so.

Ryan: Yeah it'll get you there and back. It'll take you to flavor town.

Charlie: Just remember...

Patrick: Can you... oh sorry.

Charlie: Just remember, that the alcohol content, the six pack actually equals a half rack so you could run into trouble if you work your way through that thing.

Patrick: Oh man, there is no way and work my way through...

Ryan: Yeah I was going to say, it takes Patrick two weeks to get through a six pack so I think he's all right, probably be good to drive.

Patrick: Oh, man. What about you RH?

Ryan: I'm having Moylan's Danny’s Irish Style Red Ale which I've never had before. I've tried some beers from Moylan's before but it was always under circumstances where I couldn't really appreciate the beer so, I honestly, I have negative associations with this brewery but I don't know if they are valid and justified and after a terrible pour the head is much too thick for me to get a good sip of it. But I am also, I am feeling a little tired too, and we should probably take a moment and tell people why we are a little tired.

Charlie: Because we were out late last night enjoying the nightlife at the California Academy of Science.

Ryan: It’s true, it's true. So you might have seen the Twitters, Facebookingness of it all, but all three of us rolled into the Cal Academy last night.

Patrick: Woot. So we are a little tired today because we were up late sciencing.

Charlie: They have this new exciting exhibit called extreme mammals that was pretty awesome so I wanted to ask you guys what your favorite extreme mammal was.

Ryan: I think I know what Patrick is going to answer.

Patrick: Really?

Ryan: I wish, I wish there was someway that I could, like, whisper to Charlie where you wouldn't hear. Here, wait close your eyes I'm going to tight it on the screen.

Patrick: I am having trouble thinking what my favorite mammal was anyways. Let's see...

Charlie: I don't remember the names of any of them but I could just describe them I guess.

Ryan: Go for it Charlie.

Patrick: I mean, I've seen an Andrewsarchus skull before but it's always cool seeing that thing which is, it's an extinct carnivorous mammal, maybe the largest carnivorous mammal that ever lived.

Ryan: Yeah that was pretty cool.

Patrick: At least the largest skull of a carnivorous mammal. I think probably my favorite part of that exhibit was the segment at the end where it discussed the animals that had been recently, the mammals, that had recently been discovered to science.

Ryan: Yeah that was cool.

Charlie: Yeah that was really interesting.

Patrick: Let me see, what did you say Ryan?

Ryan: Pangolin.

Patrick: Oh, the pangolin.

Ryan: You love the pangolins.

Patrick: I do love pangolins but I didn't think that was but I didn't think that was a particularly extreme, I mean...

Ryan: Extreme!

Patrick: Yeah it wasn't, I mean they're kind of extreme but they didn't exactly sell that in that exhibit, that the pangolin was an extreme mammal.

5:00

Ryan: Yeah.

Patrick: They are cool though.

Ryan: Seeing a platypus is always cool. I really like the bat fossil, the really old bat fossil because bat evolution is kind of a wonky thing. What about you Charlie, what stuck out for you as a planetary guy?

Charlie: I didn't know the name of it but just the sheer horror of it I found compelling. There is this armadillo like creature but it had, it didn't have three plates like an armadillo or however many plates they have, it had like hundreds of them and they're all these...

Ryan: That's the pangolin.

Charlie: Oh it is?

Ryan: That's what we were just talking about.

Charlie: It was these giant thumbnails covering the whole thing.

Ryan: Yeah that's what they are.

Patrick: Yeah that's the pangolin.

Charlie: And so I, I mean, Ryan and I were talking about how awful would it be to pick that thing up by its belly and scrap it against a chalkboard, that would be pretty extreme.

Ryan: Extreme. Extreme.

Patrick: It would be like doing the dew.

Charlie: Yeah.

Ryan: All right Charlie.

Charlie: And there was like a rabbit toothed deer which was pretty cool.

Ryan: The fanged deer thing.

Patrick: The Chinese water deer.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah.

Patrick: That was pretty awesome.

Ryan: So it's a deer that instead of antlers it has evolved fangs for fighting with vampires.

Charlie: For snaggling.

Patrick: They look like kind of that Monty Python bunny.

Ryan: It did. It did.

Charlie: Yeah.

Ryan: So, I'm sipping on this beer now and it is super sweet and it's not hoppy at all, It's really barley-E which I guess is the Irish style red ale because I'm used to the more Oregon, California style red ale being pretty hoppy. So this is not what I was expecting, it's not bad, but yeah it's a surprise. An extreme surprise. I am extremely surprised right now.

Charlie: Yeah so if any of you listeners are in the bay area you should come check out the Cal Academy Nightlife every Thursday night and you'll more often than not run into at least one of us Paleo Pals there.

Patrick: Definitely Ryan, he is contractually obligated.

Ryan: Hello yep, I am there. I'm doing, I'm doing it every week. I will be there drinking for science. It's the least I can do. I mean it's cool, it's fun, it's a cool thing it's a cool gig. Like we were talking about this as well it happens kind of early enough in the evening that you kind of just go there straight from work and then hang out for a little while and then takeoff and go do something else and the night is still, if you are young and vigorous like myself, the night is still fairly young and you can go do other stuff and have a good time just being in San Francisco and being in Golden Gate Park. It's good stuff. Well I wouldn't recommend staying in Golden Gate Park after night life ends, that's dangerous but... You can go do other fun stuff. Well, the extreme mammals exhibit, they had, had a Dimetrodon and I pointed that out to Patrick and you were not, or you were, as I pointed it out, saying that the reptiles are getting a love in the extreme mammals exhibit, you...

Patrick: Which is not true.

Ryan: Yeah you called me out on that, so we should probably talk about some actual reptiles.

Patrick: Let's do it.

Music

Patrick: I picked out an article this week from PLOS Genetics and one of the cool things about the PLOS, that stands for Public Library of Science, is that these are peer reviewed journals that are available for free for anyone so if you're interested in this article so you can just steer yourself to the PLOS website without having to go through, you know, a big university library that has an institutional subscription to fancy journals. But this paper is called “Genetic Tests for Ecological and Allopatric Speciation in Anoles on an Island Archipelago”. So anoles are lizards and they are spread throughout the Caribbean as well as well as a lot of the United States and north and south America.

Ryan: And Central.

Patrick: And Central America.

Ryan: Are there many things that are in North and South America that are not in Central America.

Patrick: I would say probably not, like, I mean, like, I suppose there might be some temperate species.

Ryan: Right but I mean, if their temperate, it's likely that they are only in one or the other north or south. It's tricky, it's tricky for a temperate species to get across the Central America Area.

10:00

Patrick: Right.

Ryan: Yeah. But anoles are cool I like anoles, they are good lizards as lizards go.

Patrick: So anyways the anoles in the Caribbean are sort of classic examples of, well, they are terminate ecological speciation and what some people may argue is that they are examples of sympatric speciation. So when one species turns into two, that’s, we call that a speciation event.

Ryan: Oh oh, do we need the listeners to sit down. We have something very important to tell you. When two species love each other very much...

Patrick: No no no when one species stops loving itself...

Ryan: Well that's sad. Oh so it's not that we don't love you Paleo Pals, Paleo Posse.

Patrick: When species gets divorced basically.

Ryan: Okay, continue.

Patrick: So along the divorce analogy, you can think of, if you were to get divorced and still live in the same house that probably wouldn't work out very well.

Ryan:Aawkward in this economy though.

Patrick: Well, yeah exactly. So typically when you get divorced, you know, one party moves out and goes somewhere else. And that's the way we think that speciation events usually work. Is that something separates a single species so that two parts of the range of that species can no longer communicate with each other. So there's a mountain range or a river or an ocean or something that separating the two. And then after a while these two things no longer being able to breed with each other, they eventually lose the ability to breed with each other and become individual breeding populations, two different species. However it's theoretically possible that a species could not have to be physically separated and two parts of that breeding population could just start breeding with each other for a variety of reasons that are often discussed. Some examples are if the, they, like songbirds have hey certain song so if a male has a funny song that most of the females don't recognize but one female breeds with him anyways then his offspring inherit that funny song and then so on and so on. And so basically you have two different populations of this bird that sing two different mating songs and so that could could drive that species apart eventually.

Ryan: It's like if this chick, if that, like there was this chick out there who was still really into disco and so she went for all of the disco guys and then there would be the sub species of humans that's still like disco.

Patrick: What are you saying, you don't like disco?

Brian: I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I mean bird song from the 70s, it's probably, birds had disco too. Because they've done studies that have shown that bird songs from, you know, the 60s and 70s, don't attract the same number of females from a modern population that a modern male song from the same species attracts. So the birds actually have a cultural style evolution of their songs much like our music.

Patrick: Right. So basically what's happened in the Caribbean with these anoles is that you'll have have an island with no anoles on it, right.

Brian: That’s sad.

Patrick: And then one anole, a pregnant anole or a couple of anoles float over to this new island from another island and they start populating the island with little anoles. And what will happen pretty quickly is that these anoles start taking over different parts of the ecological landscape. So some of them might specialize in living in trees, some of them might specialize in living in the hot sandy parts, some of them might specialize in eating a particular kind of insect. And eventually these separate specializations split into a new species. And so what you have is that anoles that look very different on one island. They all, all these different specializations look very different from each other because they have evolved for specific things. But they are all actually more closely related to each other than they are to an anole on any other island. Does that make sense? So you have this again and again and again, so every island on the Caribbean has all of these different eco morphs of anoles and they look, so the tree anole looks the same on all of the islands basically. Like you have to have a specialist, you know, illegal shipments of anoles Will show up in the United States and they have to call in someone who really knows their stuff to be able to sort out which anole goes back to which island. Because all of these tree anoles look exactly the same. But keep in mind that the tree anole on island A is more closely related to all of the other anoles on island A than it is to the tree anole that lives on island B. Does that make sense?

15:02

Charlie: Yeah it's surprising though. It seems like they evolve some similar adaptations to fill a particular ecological niche independently of each other.

Patrick: Right are you reading from the author summary?

Charlie: No I was just thinking in terms of geomorphology in valley networks on Mars.

Patrick: Nice.

Charlie: Given a particular topography the same sort of kind of valley will form.

Ryan: Man, I love that about scientists, that they just, they take one piece of information and instantaneously can apply it to whatever else they are familiar with. That seems to be something that scientists are really good at.

Patrick: That's because they only know, they know a lot about one certain thing.

Ryan: Yeah we were kind of past the...

Charlie: Patterns.

Ryan: We are past the, we are past the age of the Renaissance scientist were you could be an expert in engineering, physics, math, chemistry all at the same time.

Patrick: So you have to take all of your knowledge about the one specific thing that you know about and try to apply it two other situations. I guess it usually works, I mean not usually, but it sometimes works out pretty well.

Charlie: You have to do it carefully I guess.

Ryan: I mean geological processes also experience change over time, so.

Charlie: Right..

Patrick: Yeah.

Ryan: That's this week’s theme.

Patrick: So this paper by Roger Thorpe and others looked at the island of Martinique in the Caribbean which used to be split into more than one island and only relatively recently have these islands pushed together to make Martinique. And so they were looking at lizards from different parts of the island and they were, they were looking at them genetically and they came to the, and they were comparing how different these, you know, remember these lizards all came from what were different islands and they had been separated for like 8 million years. And so they were comparing the genetics from these lizards that had previously been on different islands to, say, the lizards that were all on that island that had different eco-morphs. And what they found was that in terms of reproductive isolation, the animals that were on the same island but had different eco-morphs were more reproductively isolated from one another then the animals that have been on separate islands, which is kind of crazy. Because evolutionarily they are all more closely related, they have a more recent common ancestor. Are you guys following me or have I lost you?

Ryan: I follow you but I have, I am always, I don't know, I feel like, I don't really believe in sympatric speciation. Like, I've never heard an example that didn't boil down to, well really you just look at it with a close enough scope and they are living in different habitats.

Patrick: Yeah, I mean, I'm not...

Ryan: Yeah I'm not saying you are arguing for sympatric speciation but this seems like, I don't know, there's just, sympatric speciation is one of those things that's debated and I have yet to see an example that really impressed me for something being sympatric and I like that this study takes it from an ecological separation even though it is geographically a very small habitat.

Patrick: Yeah and what I think is interesting is that may be, it makes a little bit of sense that this happens because it seems like if you were living on the same, if you had, you know, four or five species living on the same island, even if you are separated ecologically, it might be beneficial to develop some, some things that inhibit reproducing with something that's not your specialization type. Does that make sense? Where as if you were on a separate island, it doesn't really, I mean, it can evolve however slowly it wants to evolve. You are not going to go meet back up with that other type. So I'm just saying evolution may actually be driving this, this reproductive separation when you're all on the same island.

Ryan: Which is pretty cool. I love this type of evolution the speciation and all that, that's the kind of stuff I like. It's big, it's macro, it's happening.

Patrick: It is macro.

Ryan: So, what are the, What are the, did they give any time scales for how quick, for how quickly this is happening?

Patrick: If they did I don't remember them. Like I said the islands of Martinique, the parts of Martinique had been separated for about 8 million years. But I don't know how fast, once an anole gets on an island I don't know how long it takes it to start splitting, that population to start splitting into the different eco-morphs.

Ryan: I mean I imagine it's pretty quick if the niches are available.

Patrick: Exactly, yeah, if you've got open, open space it probably gets filled pretty quickly.

Ryan: Cool, what do you think about all this Charlie, as the planetary guy? I always like getting, I like getting your perspective on these kinds of things since it's easier for Patrick and I to just kind of bounce off each other and talk biology.

20:00

Charlie: I don't know. I'm always amazed that the complex relationships and, I don't know, for the lack of a better word, the complexity and beauty that nature seems to build randomly through chance and iteration and you know mutations that are detrimental, mutations that are beneficial and through this constant rolling of the die, it comes to a solution that's much more workable and advanced then could be, I guess built from the top down. Instead it's a built from the bottom up. It's amazing to me.

Patrick: Yeah, it's pretty astounding the way that, you know if that hypothesis that the, that evolution is actually working to separate these eco-morphic types that are all on the same island. It reminds me of something that I, I forget what class I learned this in, if it was biochemistry or genetics or whatever, but if you take, if you just take DNA and you expose it to different wavelengths of light, the visible light spectrum actually causes more mutations then, I mean, obviously if you hit it with X-rays or something I think it's pretty bad but, the, the spectrum of light that we experience a lot will cause more mutations than nearby...

Charlie: Wavelengths.

Patrick: Yeah, exactly. So, it's basically DNA has evolved to mutate in the surroundings that it's in.

Ryan: Well, because that's one of the sound clips that you hear a lot, is that mutation is the raw material for evolution because that’s where you get the significant changes in DNA over short periods of time, or relatively short periods of time. And then the ones that don't work get selected out and most of them are silent and the ones that do work can be incorporated.

Patrick: Yeah, sure, I mean, that's the way it supposed to work. Who knows, right?

Ryan: Well there was one thing that kind of intrigued me because I just kinda went on this rant about how I don't really believe in sympatric speciation, but reading the abstract, it says that there’s no complete case of allopatric speciation in spite of strong prima fosse case for it. I don't really know what that means.

Patrick: Yeah, I guess...

Charlie: What's prima fosse mean?

Ryan: I don't know it's italicized. I'm guessing it's some logic thing.

Charlie: I mean, it's a Latin...

Ryan: It's a Latin expression meaning on its first appearance or at first sight.

Charlie: ...prime face, yeah. But like I, the logic thing I was just like...

Ryan: That's what I'm asking...

Charlie: What does that even mean, On first sight, it's like as like one would intuit which is like...

Ryan: Yeah tell us what it means Patrick.

Patrick: I don't know exactly what it means. Yeah I mean I think it's a long those lines. Like, it's easy, in a thought experiment it's easier to understand how allopatric speciation would work where are you have geographic separation that separates one population into two parts. That's easy to conceive how that would work. Where it's hard to conceive of allopatric speciation would happen without, you know, involving some convoluted reproductive timing or song or ritualistic dance or something.

Charlie: How long does this take to happen? Like, if we sent some humans off on a space mission and we didn't interact with their offspring for 10,000 years or something, would they be a different species?

Patrick: Probably not...

Ryan: 10,000 years is a little short.

Patrick: ...because I figure, like...

Charlie: Okay.

Patrick: ...the human, the human population on Australia was probably isolated for 10,000 years.

Ryan: Yeah that's true. But, well it also, it depends a lot Charlie, on the size of the population that you send to the other planet. Because you have things like founder affect. So if you sent a really small population to this other planet there could be significant genetic changes over time based on the particular genetic frequencies within that much smaller subset of our grand population. Which gets into some crazy statistical stuff.

Patrick: Yeah, it's basically just statistical. It's just sampling error. You send a small population, there's a good chance it could be really wacky in terms of its genetics.

Ryan: Yeah. Right.

Patrick: Whereas in a large population that's probably going to get weeded out.

Ryan: Which you actually, you actually see in small towns that are kind of cut off from the world, like there are these small towns in...

Charlie: West Virginia? Oh, sorry, what?

Ryan: I was going to say, actually Germany and South America, where the, the proportion of twin births is abnormally high and it's because they have these really, it's actually because there are a lot of people right around World War II that went from Germany to South America and they established their own little towns and kind of kept to themselves. So you had this small group of people moving from a large population to a smaller insular population that had a higher probability of getting twin births. So now you've got these entire towns that have really high proportions of twin births...

25:11

Charlie: You know...

Ryan: ...on a pretty regular basis.

Charlie: I read an article about that town and it wasn't very favorable.

Ryan: Oh okay...

Charlie: No, no it's fine it's just that...

Ryan: Nazis.

Charlie: Yeah, they were nuts. They were...

Ryan: Nazis, I said Nazis. You said nuts.

Charlie: Bad guys.

Ryan: Bad guys, right. I’m with ya. Well speaking of...

Patrick: Yes.

Ryan: ...messing up DNA and doing bad things, we doing some trailer talking?

Charlie: Speaking of experimentation.

Patrick: T-cubed

Ryan: Yeah, T-cubed coming at ya.

Patrick: Yes, let's do it.

Music

Announcer: Hey y'all it's Trailer Trash Talk

Ryan: So this week on trailer trash talk we are talking about Splice which is a horror sci-fi thriller from director Vincenzo Natali.

Patrick: Nice.

Ryan: Starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Poly and a puppet thing. So, the synopsis which I'm not gonna read end it entirely but I got to read the first line which is “superstar genetic engineers Clive and Elsa specialize in splicing DNA together from different animals to create incredible new hybrids” which sounds like something everyone can enjoy. But I just love that there are superstar genetic engineers...

Patrick: yeah...

Ryan: ... In this world. Like, can you name one genetic engineer right now off the top of your head.

Patrick: Um...

Ryan: No, you can't.

Patrick: Like even in Jurassic Park where that was the whole premise they never actually named one of the genetic engineers.

Ryan: No.

Charlie: I used to work at a genetics lab but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna demean the people I used to work with by calling them out.

Ryan: You're not going to name names?

Charlie: They, I mean they were definitely superstars though.

Ryan: Oh, for sure. But they I'm in you could be a superstar without getting the recognition you deserve. I'm not saying we shouldn't have superstar genetic engineers. It's unfortunate that we can't name any but in this world these guys are superstars.

Patrick: I think it's the founder of eBay although it may, it's one of those silicone valley companies that is married to, to a genetic engineer.

Charlie: Well I thought wasn't she trying to, she's running for governor right now, right?

Patrick: Really?

Charlie: The CEO of eBay, maybe she wasn't the founder.

Patrick: Oh, okay. Yeah, Right, the CEO of eBay is trying to run for governor right now. No this woman started a company called 23 and We where, it's one of those companies where you can swab your, you order their kit, you swab your cheek and you send it to them and they will tell you like, where your ancestors came from and what diseases you're going to die from.

Ryan: Nice.

Charlie: Cool.

Patrick: But anyways, back to the trailer add hand.

Charlie: So what, yeah these superstar genetic engineers are up to no good.

Ryan: Well they're up, their intentions are good Charlie.

Patrick: Really?

Ryan: Of course.

Charlie: They are going behind the back of their company. Their company said knock it off and so they went rogue.

Ryan: Well I mean that's the classic, I mean ever since, you know, Frankenstein or even you could probably go back and say ever since Icarus you know there's been stories of people taking technology and taking it too far and having shitty results.

Charlie: And there in lies the story it's simply Icarus wrote Frankenstein wrote Splice. Done.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah I mean and that's exactly what this looks like. This looks like a B movie with a budget.

Patrick: It looks like that movie we, it's like one of the first trailor trash talks we ever did...

Charlie: So they try to make, they try to make a super human right?

Ryan: I think they just, I think they just try to make some thing that's close enough to be useful for humans studies but isn't technically human so it's not breaking the law. I think, was the idea.

Charlie: I cut you off Patrick, What movie were you talking about?

Patrick: I can't remember the name of it it was a space movie where they...

Ryan: Oh, Pandorum.

Patrick: Pandorum, yeah, It looks like, it looks like that movie except in a lab instead of a spaceship.

Ryan: Which was a really unfortunate name for the movie after avatar came out.

Patrick: I guess, I mean it could only help it I suppose.

Charlie: Yes.

Ryan: You’re on Pandorum.

Charlie: So it's illegal to genetically engineer and clone humans and so they get around this by making this...

Ryan: Something that almost human.

Charlie: ...Yeah. It has a lot of human genes but it has some animal genes in it as well.

30:00

Patrick: Something else spliced in there. Spliced in there.

Charlie: Yeah, so in the trailer the the gestation period of the, the spliced individual animal being thing was really, really short and, shorter than the superstar genetic engineers calculated it to be. So it breaks out of his incubation chamber early and they were gonna kill it with fire, quite literally but then Elsa...

Ryan: It was too cute.

Charlie: ...Elsa found it too cute so she let it go. Then they...

Patrick: Did she let it go...

Charlie: They didn't, they didn't let it go but...

Ryan: It escaped.

Charlie: ...they let it, they let it continue to, to grow, to...

Patrick: ...to not die.

Charlie: ...yeah.

Ryan: Because they had like the little they had it in a little ET box like when ET dies at the end of the movie they put them in that thing. They had one of those but then they were going to kill it while it was inside that but it was cute.

Charlie: Yeah. And so, then the rest of the trailer as far as I could tell was Species.

Ryan: Yeah, it was just a horror movie. It did look a lot like Species. So there you have it that's Splice.

Patrick: Okay, so I’m, I've been trying to give this movie a more, I guess, balanced view because this genre I think has been done, like, the first couple times it was done okay but now it's getting old. I think you've got one thing that's running around and whatever killing people off and it's creepy looking. And so just based on that I'm not I'm not gonna go watch this movie in the theaters. But I'm trying to think, okay, given that it is the this genre of movie, was this trailer done well and I don't think that it was necessarily done all that well.

Ryan: I agree with you, it's all over the place. It starts off, like you can't tell for the first half of the trailer, is this thing they've created going to be this cute little baby that they raise and it's gonna be like three men and a little spliced mutant or is it going to be a horror movie? And it turns out at the end it looks like it's going to be a horror movie but I feel like half the trailer you're expecting Tom Selleck bottlefeeding a mutant.

Charlie: Right.

Ryan: Which, I would see that movie.

Patrick: But Adrien Brody, nah.

Ryan: Nah. He doesn't have the mustache.

Patrick: No he needs the mustache.

Ryan: Or Ted Danson. So maybe I've seen Three Men and a Little Lady too many times or Three Men and a Baby. Three Men and a Little Lady is the sequel which I have also seen.

Patrick: That franchise only got better with time.

Ryan: There were only two. I don't think they were down for a threepeat.

Patrick: There's only two genders. Well I guess the first one...

Ryan: No, no, the sequel...

Patrick: ...girl in the beginning...

Ryan: Yeah the sequel is just the girl who grows up. The first one is good though, it's got like heroin dealers and stuff. It's crazy. Sorry, we are not talking about Three Men and a Baby right now, we are talking about Splice and I'm giving Splice, I'm pretty, you know, it’s not like, I’m not excited about giving a thumbs down but I feel like it makes scientists look like irresponsible jerks. Thumbs down.

Patrick: This genre is no good and this trailer does nothing to disprove that hypothesis so thumbs down.

Charlie: And I, I'm definitely giving this trailer a thumbs down if not a slap down because it disrespects science and what science is trying to do. It caters to the fears and ignorance of society and caters to Luddites and technophobes. We should be educating ourselves and learning about new technologies not propagating ignorance and superstition and fear. I think things like modified foods, new energy tech including even old energy tech like nuclear, needs to be revisited and thought through with a critical, educated I rather than blatant stupidity, fear and ignorance. And this is what this movie is catering to. Thumbs down.

Ryan: Nicely put.

Patrick: Wow.

Ryan: I like it.

Patrick: You need your own Glenn Beck or Rachel Maddow style show, Charlie.

Charlie: I don't know I'm tired and this thing got me upset.

Ryan: Hey, remember folks, Charlie is not a Luddite he is a curmudgeon.

Charlie: Yeah, I'm definitely not a Luddite, I love my technology.

Ryan: You’re just a curmudgeon because you don't want to be on Twitter.

Charlie: I'll send out a tweet real soon.

Ryan: This is becoming the much anticipated Charlie's first twitter.

Patrick: So much, you follow...

Ryan: Exactly, I hope everyone is following twitter.com/charlesbarnhart, is that what you went with? Or charliebarnhart?

35:00

Patrick: I think it's Charles.

Ryan: You don't remember do you?

Charlie: No it's probably Charles.

Patrick: I checked him out on that trust me site where it gives you your Twitter score.

Ryan: Oh yeah, he is Charles Barnhart so go, everyone go follow Charles Barnhart. The hart is just with an a, no e.

Patrick: And no D as I have seen before.

Ryan: Yeah, Charlie and I talked about that, it's the old spelling, the Germanic spelling.

Charlie: It's very phonetic. Anyhow, yeah so I guess that's a hat trick thumbs down for Splice.

Patrick: Yeah.

Ryan: Charlie if you think science should progress even against societal norms and expectations and follow the science and not the culture you were going to love this next story because were talking about scientists vowing to reverse engineer dinosaurs from chickens.

Charlie: Cool.

Music

Ryan: This is a story that actually came out right when we first started the podcast.

Patrick: Not this current podcast but episode one.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah this is a story, I've been saving this one for a while. I don't know why I didn't tackle it sooner. It's just for some reason it seemed to be too good to be true for our show so I think I was scared of it. But, as Charlie pointed out, we shouldn't fear progress, we should embrace it. So that's what we're doing, we're going to talk about it. So, in Canada they are going to make dinosaurs from chickens. Go.

Patrick: Yeah at McGill University, right?

Ryan: Yeah.

Patrick: Yeah.

Ryan: Hans Larson has said that he is going to build a dinosaur.

Patrick: Hans Larson.

Ryan: Hans Larson.

Patrick: Yah.

Ryan: Yah. Dinosaur.

Charlie: He writes, when I was a kid the only animal I wanted for a pet was a dinosaur.

Ryan: How could you disagree with that statement?

Patrick: Well, pangolin.

Ryan: It's cute and true. Pangolins are dinosaurs.

Patrick: They are not. Peacocks are dinosaurs.

Ryan: Alright, well Patrick you've got some genetic knowledge. Drop it on us, on how you could, actually, like what's the plausibility behind this? What’s the science?

Patrick: So, so the idea, well I mean OK so birds are, are in fact dinosaurs, so..

Ryan: Yeah.

Patrick: So, a chicken is more closely related to tyrannosaurus rex for example then tyrannosaurus rex is related to, let's say, triceratops. So two things you have on your mind definitely are dinosaurs, right, you know from kids books that triceratops and tyrannosaurus rex are both dinosaurs. This thing that you don't consider a dinosaur, a chicken, more closely related to one of those dinosaurs than that dinosaur is to the other. That's the synopsis here.

Ryan: That requires a diagram I think.

Patrick: A cladogram.

Ryan: Well, yeah, I mean a cladogram is a type of diagram.

Patrick: It is...

Charlie: Wait, what, a chicken is more closely related to...

Patrick: T-Rex...

Charlie: ...a certain dinosaur than that dinosaur is related to a different kind of dinosaur.

Ryan: Yep.

Patrick: Well, to specific dinosaurs. So, theropods, the meat eating walking on two legs dinosaurs.

Ryan: Rrarwr.

Patrick: Are more closely related to birds then they, than those two legging meat eating dinosaurs are related to any other dinosaur you can think of.

Charlie: That's pretty awesome.

Ryan: Yeah. And so the group theropods includes T-Rex and the velociraptors and the allosaurus and the dilophosaurus. There's only one group of dinosaurs that evolved to be carnivorous which is kind of surprising but those are the theropods. If you don't count Therizinosaurus. Which somebody mentioned on the Facebook page because they said Therizinosaurus Looked too weird to ever have existed. I pointed out that sloths and giant anteaters.

Patrick: That was the perfect so is your face.

Ryan: Yeah. So is your mammal face. Go extreme mammals.

Charlie: Are humans an extreme mammal? We should be. Anyways.

Patrick: While you were waiting in line there was signage to that effect.

Ryan: That you are extreme Charlie.

Charlie: We are pretty crazy.

Ryan: Yeah. We ingest poison for fun.

Patrick: Right. Okay so this guy Hans Larson, he, his idea was okay, so chickens and say, T-Rex have all this, all this DNA in common. They are fairly closely related and occasionally you get weird birds that have teeth or will have a claw in their wing.

Ryan: Okay, okay this is a good segue, my favorite bird, It's the hoatzin. Have you heard of this one Patrick?

40:00

Patrick: Yes.

Ryan: it's the greatest bird ever. Charlie have you, you probably haven't heard of it, right? I'm gonna lay this on, it's going to blow your mind. The hoatzin, when they are born, when they are hatchlings or whatever, They have fingers and they climb trees in the jungle until they molt. They have like a catastrophic molt and become adults and they lose their fingers and fly around.

Charlie: That sucks for them.

Ryan: No, it's the old...

Charlie: Like that's the ultimate peter pan. Like, if I was one of those birds and I grew up I'd be like man I wish I could go back to having hands.

Ryan: No, but they can't fly when they’re babies, that's why they have to climb around. But it's the only...

Charlie: Okay, being able to fly is a pretty awesome trade.

Ryan: It's the only bird in the world that can give you the bird. Think about it!

Charlie: I did, I didn't laugh.

Ryan: Alright. It makes me smile every single time I think about this bird.

Charlie: It did make me smile. It is a pun, you know it was one of those kinds of humor things.

Ryan: Yeah.

Charlie: Cool.

Ryan: So moving on, sorry.

Charlie: How do you get, how do you get the feathers off the chicken?

Ryan: Well, well first of all, the dinosaurs we are talking about, these therapod dinosaurs, a lot of them probably had feathers when they were still what you would recognizably call a dinosaur.

Patrick: Right.

Charlie: Okay, how do you make it green?

Ryan: Well step one is to get rid of the beak Charlie. Let's get rid of the beak and get some teeth in there. And that's what Patrick was starting to talk about when I cut him off to talk about bird birds.

Patrick: So Hans Larson’s idea is that okay, so these, that probably still in this DNA is the sort of the instructions to be able to grow teeth or to be able to grow claws on your four limbs, to be able to grow a long tail and what's probably happened is that through evolution birds have turned off those genes. And those genes are probably still in the DNA, they are still in the genome, you just have to tweak the, you know, tweak the G's, T’s, C, what am I missing?

Ryan: Gattica.

Charlie: Yeah.

Patrick: Tweak the Gattica. Ah, to make the gene turned back on and grow teeth again or grow fingers again and so he started looking into doing that with some success.

Ryan: Yes, there are chickens with teeth out there.

Patrick: And so his plan is basically just to keep tweaking the DNA. As far as I understand it he doesn't have a real good roadmap of how this is going to work. He's just going to keep tweaking genes.

Charlie: Does he have, like, an ugly quotient?

Patrick: Yeah basically until it fits his idea of what a dinosaur should look like. Which, you know is, is an interesting thing to do anyways, I guess, if you can understand one animal's genome well enough to turn genes off and on it could lead to lots of other beneficial knowledge. As far as looking exactly like a specific dinosaur that once existed in the past, I don't know if we're ever going to get to that exactly. We're just going to flip on lots of genes that have been dormant for a long time and make it look like what we think a dinosaur probably looked like.

Charlie: A post modern construction of a dinosaur.

Patrick: Basically.

Charlie: Cool.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah it's pretty cool.

Patrick: It's the shadow on the cave.

Charlie: Yeah. And we can all have our own flavor.

Ryan: Our own flavor of dinosaur?

Charlie: Uhhuh.

Ryan: I've often argued, much to the, much to the disagreement of, basically everyone else, that velociraptors would have been intelligent enough that you could train them like a dog.

Patrick: We've discussed this on previous, on one of the very first episodes. I basically said that it would eat you before you got it trained.

Ryan: I am not convinced. But the real question, I think, is how much would you pay for a plate of Dino chicken wings?

Patrick: Yeah, I mean this would be great.

Charlie: Less than I 'd pay for Shackleton whiskey.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly this is very much in the same league as the Shackleton whiskey.

Patrick: I just think that you could get, that there would be wings, thighs, breasts...

Ryan: Oh yeah I would eat the whole thing, for sure.

Charlie: Yeah.

Patrick: And a tail, you could get tail in the bucket of parts.

Charlie: These would be some awesome cuts though. Like, you could have a huge roast.

Patrick: Well I guess, I don't know if the chicken, you have to find the right gene to flip on to make it grow big...

Charlie: Big.

Patrick: But currently I don't think the size is changing, he is just flipping on these weird traits like teeth and tails.

Ryan: Well hopefully the size will change.

Charlie: I'm not buying no tail cut.

Patrick: That's gonna be awesome when he grows a T-Rex sized chicken. God yeah, man, you could feed, that's how you feel Africa.

Ryan: T-Rex sized chicken? That's how you, well yeah, because half the people in Africa would be eaten by the chicken first.

45:00

Patrick: Not half, I don't think...

Charlie: You guys are still...

Patrick: They take care of, do you know, elephants and things over there, they can handle a big chicken.

Charlie: You guys are ignoring the second law of thermodynamics.

Ryan: Which is, oh, the fact that having a giant chicken would take more energy then you could with just feeding the people with the chicken would eat.

Charlie: Yeah. You kind of lost 90% of the calories.

Patrick: Yeah but try funding sending, you know, corn over there.

Ryan: Boring.

Patrick: You are going to have much better luck collecting money to send a T-Rex chicken to Africa.

Charlie: I'd rather eat every 10 days if I got to eat a dinosaur.

Patrick: Yeah.

Ryan: This is awesome, has great potential, nothing will ever come of it and we'll never hear of it again.

Patrick: We might hear of it again when he gets a long tail on it or like or like some weird...

Ryan: They've already done the teeth thing right?

Patrick: Yeah, yeah. But we've still got, like fingers and tails, that will make the news if he ever gets it to work.

Ryan: Why would you start with the chicken, that's my question? Why not pick, why not use a hoatzin?

Charlie: Maybe there is a lot of genetic data available for the chicken.

Patrick: Yeah, it's probably well studied and easy to get a hold of, I would say. Hoatzin probably has a lot of...

Ryan: Ever try to grab a chicken? Not that easy to get a hold of.

Patrick: I'm talking, like, paperwork wise.

Charlie: Personally I would say best of luck to both Hans and Canada.

Ryan: Best of luck to Canada when they've got a giant, rampaging chicken to deal with.

Patrick: We, I mean, we could...

Ryan: You did that yourself.

Patrick: ...we could potentially get Hans on the show actually.

Ryan: Yeah? Do you want to give Hans a call?

Charlie: Yeah.

Ryan: Remember the last time we talked about a Canadian, all of the sudden he was on the show.

Patrick: Yeah that's right.

Ryan: Episode 9.

Patrick: Be careful approaching the Canadians.

Ryan: They’ll weasel their way into your podcast.

Patrick: You might get what you asked for.

Ryan: Hey do you wanna come on the show? Yes I'll come on your show again and again and again. We love you Ben.

Charlie: He's rescued a show on several occasions.

Patrick: He has, he really has.

Charlie: He would probably rescue us right now.

Ryan: He's not online or I would so call him.

Patrick: He is so good natured about the Canadian ribbing because a lot of Canadians are not.

Ryan: He doesn't ever fire back with America bashing, I want him to...

Charlie: That's so easy.

Patrick: I know, yeah it would be hilarious to hear what he had to say about it.

Ryan: Well I'll see if I can record him secretly...

Patrick: Bashing America?

Ryan: Get his true feelings on the show.

Charlie: I just realized Americans might have the lowest encephalization quotient of any...

Ryan: Of all humans?

Charlie: Nationality, yeah.

Ryan: That's sad.

Patrick: I don't know, maybe. Probably not.

Charlie: Well, don't we have big body size.

Patrick: Well that could be, yeah.

Ryan: Oh that's a good point.

Charlie: That's what I'm saying, like, brain to weight ratio.

Ryan: Interesante.

Charlie: We have the same size brains as everybody else but our weight is different.

Patrick: Samoans.

Charlie: Okay, this all needs to get edited out.

Ryan: I'm gonna edit out the Samoans because that's racist but I like the fat people.

Patrick: That’s statistics.

Ryan: Your statistics are racist dude.

Patrick: Impossible.

Ryan: Okay, so when you are in the south and like, somebody's got a confederate flag, the excuse is always, “it's heritage not hate”.

Patrick: Yeah.

Ryan: I just want to get “it's statistics not hate”.

Patrick: Yeah. That's a good one, that's a good bumper sticker.

Ryan: Alright. Available soon in the Science sort of store.

Patrick: Yes definitely with the brachialope next to it, a little bumper sticker.

Ryan: You are so excited right now.

Charlie: That's pretty awesome.

Patrick: Awesome.

Ryan: Alright.

Charlie: On the contrary, speaking of people with high encephalization quotients...

Patrick: You love to butter up those listeners.

Ryan: He’s so good at it in his sultry, his dulcet tones. I know the listeners respond to Charlie's voice more than any of us.

Patrick: I don't actually believe that it's Charlie. I've listened to the show and I know what he sounds like and that’s not him.

Ryan: You think he's adding somebody's lines? That's why you always sound like a contemplative one Charlie it's because you're writing down the stuff for the reader that you've hired.

Charlie: Yeah I, let’s talk about our Paleo POWS. Paleo Posse. Paleo POW.

Ryan: So we, so Charlie I'll explain this to you. We are the Paleo Pals.

Charlie: Alright.

Ryan: Our listeners, may they be fruitful and multiply, are the Paleo Posse.

Charlie: Got it.

Ryan: And the segment we do every week is the Paleo POW! with their feedback. Because it's the pick of the week.

Patrick: That’s the Paleo prisoner of war.

Ryan: Yeah. Exactly. Not forgotten.

Charlie: Alright, thank you Ryan for that.

Music

50:14

Ryan: So Charlie now that you are clear of our myriad distinctions and Paleo variations, what is your Paleo POW this week?

Charlie: Well my Paleo POW is to all of us and comes from Hannah Elliot. And last week we were talking about pop culture influence on making scientists and lack there of or, what it is that brought you towards science and wanting to spend time studying it as a student or continuing on working as a scientist throughout the rest of your life. And so, Hannah brought us her story and she writes “I just wanted to comment on the whole pop-culture influence on science. I am a first year masters of science candidate in paleontology. My undergrad was in biology education. I became interested in science when I visited the Museum of Natural History in Chicago and saw that brachiosaurus. I love the story of a paleontologist putting the wrong head on the body only to correct their mistake later. I am from an upper working class to middle-class family and had tons of dinosaur books and read the encyclopedia all the time. I'm still loving the show and I'm trying to think of a question for the quiz show.” - Hannah

Ryan: That's a good time to mention that the quiz show is fast approaching. We're gonna do it here in the next couple of episodes. So, if you have a question you would like to try and stump us live on air you should email that in to quizmaster@sciencesortof.com or call into our voicemail line.

Patrick: Say you have a quiz question before you ask it.

Ryan: Yeah, so we won't listen to the voicemail in it's entirety if you begin it with the phrase “This is a question” and if you would like to call that voicemail line it is, what's are voicemail line? Somebody tell me the number.

Patrick: 312-Paleopals.

Ryan: Which is 312-725-3672. It's a sexy number and I like it. Call in, leave us a question, just say hey, tell us where you're calling from and, you know, keep it, keep it to a reasonable length, speak clearly with good diction, something we've had to learn to do on the show. It takes practice, it's alright. Call in a couple of times, you wouldn't be the first. We have gotten multiple voicemails that are all very similar and we just use the best one. Will make you sound good, we promise. Yeah.

Charlie: Indeed.

Ryan: So thanks for writing and Hannah, that was awesome and I'd love to have a continuing, on going series of peoples inspirations for getting into science. I think that's totally inspiring and Patrick was going to say something so I'll let him say it.

Patrick: I'd say even if it's not academic, even if you're not a professor or on an academic track, if you have a career that involves science at all, I would say, let us know why you chose that instead of being a lawyer.

Ryan: Or an astrologer.

Patrick: Yes.

Ryan: Cool.

Patrick: Not those two careers have anything in common.

Ryan: Yeah, if we had said stock market analyst and astrologer, they might, but... Patrick what is your Paleo POW this week?

Patrick: Oh, my Paleo POW, this, this is one of my favorite iTunes reviews of all time.

Ryan: Wow! Big words.

Patrick: It’s titled “I am loving it” and it's five stars and it's by McCrawfish.

Ryan: I would eat a McCrawfish sandwich by the way.

Patrick: I would too. So already it's ranking way up there with the, amongst my favorite. But he says, he starts it off great, he or she...

Ryan: I know, that silly iTunes pronoun problem.

Patrick: “I am going to be brief here. If you like science you need to subscribe to this podcast and leave it a five star review.” That's great advice. “the Paleo Pals do an excellent job of keeping the show lighthearted and focused on the positive and interesting aspects of science instead of getting caught up on all the silly little controversies is that plague the subject. Instead of hearing the evolution/creationism debate played out for the umpteenth time, the Paleos talk about naked mole rats, space and obscure physics, often all at once. Listen and you may actually learn something. Keep it up guys, as long as you put them out I will listen. This didn’t turn out all that brief did it?”

Ryan: Nice.

Patrick: Was this review helpful? Why yes it was.

Ryan: That's a good point, I'm glad you brought that up Patrick. So, if you've left an iTunes review or, for whatever reason or just morally against leaving iTunes reviews, one thing you can do to participate in the iTunes review situation is to go through and click yes on the reviews you found helpful and no on the reviews you didn't find helpful. It helps, it's again, one of those little, minor things that iTunes will notice even if not a lot of other people do and it gets us placed higher in their different metrics and rankings which is good for us because it gets more listeners for the show.

55:03

Charlie: For a space fact, Mars has two moons. One is slowly revolving towards it and one is slowly evolving away from it. And for a naked mole rat fact, the naked mole rat eats its own feces.

Patrick: What?

Ryan: Now we need something from obscure physics. Patrick go!

Patrick: Great. Ah, obscure physics.

Ryan: If you drop a penny and a textbook from the same height they will hit the ground at the same time.

Patrick: I don't think that's obscure. A more surprising way of saying that is that if you fire a bullet and drop a penny at the same time, if you fire the bullet at 90° out in front of you, you will, they will hit the ground at the same time.

Ryan: Whoa. That's crazy.

Charlie: That's awesome.

Ryan: All right cool. It's time for my Paleo POW. I'm ready, I'm going to do it. Podcast Alley, it's a new month Paleo Posse. Fortunately we've got a dedicated group of people who, at the beginning of every month, seem to remember or are prodded by the Facebook post to go and vote for us on Podcast Alley, which is actually one of our, it contributes a significant portion of downloads after some of the bigger aggregators like iTunes. So, we really appreciate being high placed on Podcast Alley and right now we are number one for the month of May but it resets every month. And the Naked Scientists are, as usual, hot on our tails. So, if you haven't gone to vote at Podcast Alley yet this month please go do so, it takes 15 seconds. You just click vote put in your email address they sent you a little confirmation thing you click yes. If you want you can leave a comment on the show which we also really appreciate. And a couple of the comments we have gotten for May, well, I'll just read one of them. The title of the comment is ”Scientists: they do hideous things to fruit flies, don't miss the fun” by Paul Loon who is a frequent contributor and we greatly appreciate everything he does to help promote the show and interact.

Patrick: Is it Paul Loon or is it, how do you pronounce it?

Ryan: I pronounce it Paul Loon.

Patrick: I always thought it was Paulo1.

Ryan: Yeah, it is. But I pronounce it Paul Loon, on purpose.

Patrick: Okay. I see.

Ryan: Yeah, that's what I do.

Patrick: We can edit that then.

Ryan: No, no, I think it's worth pointing out because I think other people would give me flack for it so it might as well be you, you be the one giving me flack for it. And I would also like to argue that we don't do the hideous things with fruit flies, and I think the fruit flies look much better after they've been manscaped, so.

Patrick: Yeah.

Ryan: No comment there?

Charlie: It doesn't change my opinion of a fruit fly before or after.

Ryan: Alright. That's fair.

Patrick: I mean, I would like to be able to say that but, I, you know it's just not true, I think it does look better after.

Ryan: It's less terrifying, that's for sure. But, ah...

Charlie: Conceptually, yes.

Ryan: But we appreciate the podcast alley love that people give us. It means a lot and goes a long way to getting us more listeners. And one other thing that we rarely say is that if you do like the show tell a friend. Just talk to people, word-of-mouth. It makes a big difference. A lot of people just don't even know about podcasts. They don't know what a podcast is. They don't know how to get it. So if you've got friends like that and they're into science but they're not in the podcasts, tell them about the show, tell them how easy it is to get it if they use iTunes regularly if they are just online a lot, they can get it's from our website. We put direct unload links for all the shows or, there is a flash player on the website. There are tons of ways to get it, it's super easy, and if a person just isn't familiar with podcasts just introduce them and show them what's up and get them listening to the show and that would be really, really appreciated.

Patrick: Yeah, the other thing you can do is send us some feedback and you might get your own, I don't know, minute and a half of fame on the Paleo POW. And you can send it email at Paleopals@sciencesortof.com or any of us individually by putting our name in front of sciencesortof.com, for example Patrick@sciencesortof.com.

Charlie: Charlie@sciencesortof.com.

Ryan: And Ryan@sciencesortof.com and just to emphasize it again, deadline coming up for the quiz show so send those emails to quizmaster@sciencesortof.com, that's one word, quizmaster. We are on Twitter, we are on Facebook, we are on all of the, I was going to say all the social media do you frequent but those are really the two big ones at this point.

Patrick: LinkedIn.

Ryan: Are we on LinkedIn?

Patrick: No. That's kind of a big one.

Ryan: I have a Linkedin account. It's just it's there. It does nothing. Twitter is where it's at.

Patrick: Twitter.

Ryan: So make sure you're following Charlie for his first tweet.

Patrick: Rumor has it he is going to tweet soon.

Ryan: You know what Charlie, let's set a, let's set a, a goal right now, how many listeners or how many followers do you have to have before you'll tweet?

Charlie: I don't even know how many I have right now.

1:00:00

Ryan: All right we can find out, you have 19.

Charlie: I'll send out a tweet Monday.

Ryan: No, no, well, the show is going to come out, that's ridiculous.

Patrick: We need a numerical.

Ryan: Yeah, give us, set a number of followers that you need to have before you’ll tweet.

Charlie: I have 19 followers right now?

Ryan: Yes.

Patrick: I have a proximately 50 so I think you should shoot for 65 or so.

Ryan: I have, like 300.

Charlie: I was gonna say 25.

Ryan: That's too small, we have way more listeners than that.

Charlie: Alright 50. I'm not, I'm not gonna be greedy because I don't have much of a product to offer.

Ryan: But you're going to start offering a product once the people show their interest, that's the goal.

Charlie: That's not how capitalism works.

Ryan: I, based on our current financial crisis...

Patrick: That's how the NFL draft works.

Charlie: It's true, okay, as soon as I get 50 listeners I will send out a tweet.

Ryan: Awesome.

Charlie: Followers.

Ryan: Go follow Charlie at twitter.com/charlesbarnhart but you can also follow Patrick who tweets regularlyish.

Patrick: Ish, yeah.

Ryan: Regularlyish at twitter.com/pvwheatley and I am just twitter.com/haupt which is my last name. So check us out there, that's a really good way to interact with us just throughout the week if you've got things to say. We are there.

Charlie: Two out of three of us.

Ryan: Well yeah.

Charlie: But I am stepping up soon.

Ryan: As soon as you get 50, make it happen Paleo Posse. We turn websites on their head when we say so, so make it happen. So thanks everyone for listening and thank you if you're someone who was told by a friend to listen and you're listening and this is your first show and I think this is probably a bad first show to listen to, I don't think. What do you guys think?

Patrick: Ah, it was fairly sciencey.

Ryan: Yeah.

Patrick: We have some shows that are more sort of. And this one was more science than sort of.

Charlie: It changed over time.

Patrick: Nice work.

Ryan: Very well done. And that was the theme, for episode 35 which you’ve been listening, to and I've been your host Ryan and joining me as always have been my Paleo Pals...

Patrick: Patrick.

Charlie: Charlie.

Ryan: I don't know I figured I'd experiment with that, I figured I'd try something, it didn't work.

Charlie: Well usually when you're introducing a friend you're not like here's my friend and then you could just stare at them?

Patrick: That's what I do when I can't remember someone's name.

Ryan: To be fair, to be fair, neither of you can see it but I gestured to you and not just at the screen I gestured at the appropriate cardinal direction of where I know you to be.

Patrick: Like east and north?

Ryan: Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. Well hopefully whether you're coming in from the east, north, south or west you will join us again next week for episode 36 where you will get another hour or so more of Science...

Patrick and Charlie: ...sort of.

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

Ryan: I know you hate links Charlie but did you see the pangolin?

Charlie: Oh, let me click that thing? Is that thing still around?

Ryan: Yeah... Alive today.

Patrick: There's more than one species of them.

Ryan: It will fight you.

Charlie: This one's actually really cute.

Patrick: They are awesome. It's hard to believe it's a mammal.

Ryan: I know.

Charlie: Yeah.

Ryan: Oh, there is a baby one. Doesn't Kano want one of these as a pet or was that the aardvark?

Charlie: Oh man, they can roll up.

Ryan: Yeah.

Patrick: Yeah.

Ryan: Somebody, oh, somebody else made a suit of armor, Charlie.

Patrick: Out of that?

Ryan: The scales, yeah.

Charlie: Somebody made a suit of armor out of a pangolin?

Ryan: Yeah.

Patrick: That's got to be illegal.

Ryan: It's probably old, I don't know.

Charlie: What a psycho.

Transcriptions provided by Denny Henke of Beardyguycreative.com