Transcript of Episode 83 - Conspiracy Theory Secret Organizations
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00:00:02| [Music] humans make up vast economic crazy wild things that all these moving parts but what if I told you even humans had crazy wild moving parts that make up
00:00:17| themselves tens of millions of thousands of things make up your body just kidding folks it's in the hundred trillions we're gonna talk about microbiology today and we even brought along a little
00:00:30| guest that's me that's I'm the little guest so I'm Dan that's acting one topic at a time taking over a meeting room we've got it all covered you'll see each discussion here deep
00:00:49| diving or unique perspective taboo forbidden subjects they're all on the chopping block baby you can get a little bit there morning this podcast may contain mature language and sexual
00:01:04| content and then sport in the Hotei many purposes only so join us have a good time open up your earholes [Music] all right oh here we go that's wild
00:01:31| there's two of us here look we got a third person here yes we do look at that maybe guess that's our chest oh my goodness that's sue or use an oar Suzanne Harris
00:01:45| she's right now University of North Carolina could you tell us what uh what's going on down there anything wild hi it's finally a little bit chilly originally from Iowa so I'm watching
00:01:57| friends on social media get that snow and things like that so five inches and the world's shut down by the way today it took a lot of my friends like three hours to get home
00:02:06| yeah well you know nope nope so you're up in Philadelphia and you're in Houston yeah so I haven't I've saw no the other day actually but it didn't do anything whoa it was a flight online or in person
00:02:20| okay I ran around or Leafly outside for a second you played in it with snowflake yeah it's it'll return another few years did it look like a snowflake you've seen
00:02:32| before no I don't believe so is there all unique aren't they a unique that's incredible just like me Wow whoa well of course Suzanne was rudely interrupted by my partner Dan what would
00:02:45| you say you do down there so I am working on a PhD in microbiology and specifically yeah I'm sorry yes no idea yeah so and I specifically study how bacteria stick to plant roots so that's
00:03:09| what my thesis topic is in so many words that's pretty cool I think that was gonna come up today so we're gonna run with it this is perfect yeah this is awesome you've got like what one year
00:03:20| left oh yeah better year left yeah average is about five and a half to six years and so in about a year I'd be right at five and a half so I think so I think and then I have to figure out what
00:03:33| I do with my real life that's right touch well Maxine I think it's kind of a bummer so you're pretty much an expert yeah you know I've been so I did I'm just getting used to saying
00:03:47| that but I worked in a microbiology lab for three years an undergrad and I've been in a microbiology lab for almost five years now here in North Carolina so eight years doing something you should
00:03:58| probably be okay yeah yeah pretty good pretty good pretty average pretty pretty pretty average that's that's what we're told mostly I was like kind of disappointing
00:04:09| that's cool and listen if I may ask um I was a bio major for like a year and a half and I cut it because I figured there was a more lucrative career path with English journalism then we a
00:04:22| newspaper writer one day my parents have you ever see this hope she did a lot of people have anyway newspapers are not the future but biology might be I'm just saying
00:04:37| might they in your field like right now doing your PhD and all that is it split equally between men and women like what's what's the kind of is it you said it like that was like no well actually
00:04:51| it's really interesting because so my lab is mostly women we have a couple guys we're bringing on a postdoc who's a guy but mostly when I met in my lab and in the lower levels it's becoming more
00:05:05| and more women there's like more than 3% women coming in as trainees the interesting thing is that there's still this huge shift in like the power structure where once you actually get to
00:05:17| the management roles it's still really slanted or it's white white men yeah yeah who's no one no one wants to give up their jobs slash power slash benefits right no exactly exactly so it's kind of
00:05:29| that weird thing where depending on who you ask some people will say that's getting pretty close to 50% but if you look at who's uh who's running the show still definitely so money the money is
00:05:40| still old white men coming for you unless the holds true when I get older and they throw it at me I might just saying could they please throw me some I don't know you know that that's
00:05:57| funny because also like when people picture scientists a lot they picture a guy in a white lab coat - yeah you are more attractive than most guys in white lab coats I mean it depends on your like
00:06:09| persuasion but like yeah you're absolutely right I'm usually attracted the people who look more like Dan he would look great in a lab coat it's the dimple thing right here mm-hmm
00:06:22| it's my type I guess what you gonna do I think the dimple looks better on dudes though cuz like sometimes girls yeah that's a good point I know yeah that's a true statement I
00:06:32| disagree write it down when we fight each other in the wild it's amazing they fit perfectly that they push in between so I roam watching and it doesn't know what biology is or microbiology is or if
00:06:58| I heard an echo and then probably some office fall anyway so biology the study of life all the processes of life right so microbiology is what study of life that's Wikipedia said super small
00:07:12| microscopes hmm see my first ever I was like that's it like they were like it's too small for microscopes that's what we're gonna put you're definitely microscope but where did you get this
00:07:24| definition there's a Wikipedia so what's see that's what it was on and I thought that's a very weak Wikipedia definition so you I know you love talking about microscope Stan go ahead let us know
00:07:35| what the first microscope was come on so it's not really the microscope that I'm interested in it's the oh the idea of small things small living organisms so initially they had this thing called new
00:07:47| gota which is like the Jains jainism it's a religion they had this idea that there were these small things everywhere and that they had like a really tiny life cycle and they were just like
00:07:56| proliferating everywhere so they had an idea of it I don't know how and then it kind of just little bit like Aristotle and Plato one of them believed that um things got
00:08:06| infinitely smaller and the other believed that there was a stopping point kind of I think it's almost like the recursion like like mad black has like a marble universe it's like as you get
00:08:17| smaller and then can't perceive that stuff so I think that the Jains were kind of into that sort of philosophy and then I got around to a guy that made the first microscope using like glass beads
00:08:31| and little spheres he was actually trying to figure out the quality of a thread I think his name was Antoine then I'm gonna say like just please say it hook it and everything I was pretty
00:08:50| good this is the start link of the base microbiology that's like you know we all have to learn this part he was the father of microbiology like a whole sandy science so yeah he started looking
00:09:05| at all different things and solve it you know the thread was not really that interesting and he's early in the body he looked at what is like different blood and like just like things on your
00:09:14| hands and like all the different organisms doing around the other plants teeth and then he had a girlfriend he brought her over and said girl look at that body girl look at that body I had
00:09:27| to it was in my head I couldn't let it sorry yeah anyway yeah he yep and the next thing I was gonna bring up a sperm cuz obviously if a guy figure something out scientific he's like see what does
00:09:41| it is sperm yeah did uh-huh which has the flagella but you know little gonna flatten flageolet yeah Gel it all those are right my cell Susanna standards so I
00:09:55| mean he he'd looked at all that stuff and was like wow this is crazy and he I think he depicted it he like put in a book and said hey this is the stuff I found and everyone's like it's bullshit
00:10:04| so I was in 1620 I think around that time I would thought you're gonna say way farther back than I thought no no and it took this lead to yeah good uh it took a while until they
00:10:20| got better and better microscopes and I'm gonna skip like all over the history and skip onto me see like your nose yeah mm days people weren't even making a better microscope they were just good so
00:10:39| I think it was Carl Zeiss and then this guy Ruska which is newer so he's like nineteen hundreds and then null so they started making microscopes that worked off of different principles
00:10:49| and will different ones worked up light right just reflecting light yeah so it works like but what's the next step up is there I know they have electron microscope but what else can you do it's
00:11:02| like I'd like just add mirrors multiple optics and then the way the optics focus they're blurry so they came up with something called like uh I think this guy a B AB or a B came up with a sine
00:11:12| condition was a way of making it so the vision was not blurred focused it yeah so he focused it and then it still his name was Kodak wait the guy who invented the camera
00:11:24| I just tried to throw you'd wait so he skip to the I guess command a like electron microscope with the ruse guy and not so it's like this electron microscope work I didn't look this up
00:11:36| but I'm smart enough I can figure it out everyone listen oh you could figure this out cut take it I think it hits it with a stream of electrons and electrons smaller than the wavelength of light so
00:11:45| you can actually or yeah you can dial in on a smaller subject but it's but it's not a visual it's not actually giving you a visual it's giving you a physical representation visually like because
00:11:57| it's not you're not seeing the colors and everything it's not really showing you it's just bouncing off and giving you I guess that's what light is they're mine forever sorry guys
00:12:05| you got it it's like the easiest way to think about it is like echolocation kind of well it'd be like if you were trying to figure out the shape of something and light would be like throwing beach balls
00:12:15| at it and trying to figure out where they bounce off and you can find out what the shape is versus throwing ping pong balls you get a much like it's more defined line oh my god that's good
00:12:24| that's pretty cool you should major in this for fun yeah yeah so electron microscope like what when they run like a new microscope yeah without one like are they like well
00:12:44| let's look at everything yes we just found 800 new things like it's gotta be an exciting time right this is literally what happened so that's what's resolution give me give me a hundred
00:12:54| thousand times smaller so when you hit it with an electron Mike electronic you can actually see that much more definition and the gyroscope a dozen times more than the last microscope yes
00:13:05| or than the human eye yo last microscope check you know so this this guy risco was really like I don't know if they call him the father of microscopes but he won a Nobel Prize for it so he
00:13:20| started he actually invented like the next series that game but ya know he did like the next like three or four microscopes and he I think he made the most recent one which is like the with a
00:13:30| super resolution one and I he might have done the cryo-electron 1/2 which is less like a method of maybe not oh she's brought heartburn it's beautiful does it have coming off of it and just
00:13:51| like liquid nitrogen wafting in the background I feel like you're doing science that way it's the only way to do science really it's kind of we all agreed agree so did you know I have
00:14:05| actually a list of what's studied under microbiology and I don't know if it's right but this one was a little better than smaller than a microscope nothing which I thought was funny it was a
00:14:15| bacteria archaea viruses protozoa microscopic fungi and yeast and microscopic algae and I was like oh that's good ish is that like microbiology yeah yeah yeah okay the
00:14:30| only other thing that would fall kind of under there is that some people lump in what's called immunology so like because so Immunology meaning you systems yeah how your systems attack
00:14:46| bacteria and viruses that's one of those kind of weird ones where is it like is that human biology is that so yes that microbiology so it kind of just falls in the middle nobody likes it me know that
00:14:57| will bring up an interesting point later about um it's not called symbiosis anymore didn't I change the stupid name of it where cells work for each other and they aren't really related out
00:15:06| endosymbiont mm-hmm is that like say mitochondria help each other there you go oh you jumped ahead yes so I just want to isla back in case anyone at home is like I'm lost on this episode like I
00:15:20| hate these guys they talk them way too smart painting let's dumb it down small things folks microbes you know I'm saying small little things gonna mirror folks at you you're this so what we do
00:15:32| is we study it and there are a hell of a lot more microbes than us herbs me like that I create that term should use that I so like I I I saw a TED talk so you know it's true but on 10 trillion cells
00:15:51| make up the human body right it's a good estimate right run with it right I get you do you know how many microbes live in your body that's including bacteria probably immunization little cells
00:16:04| little all different sorts of stuff lives in your body it's not just your cells 100 trillion you're literally made up of more not you than you depending on what you consider you and not you but
00:16:17| like this stuff exists all over the world there's more bacteria than there is probably anything else is bacteria the number one oh okay oh good she's like ready actually the
00:16:30| thing you just said you just said was said like in every single microbiome talk I know we're gonna get into like what micro biomes are but basically like that's how every single scientists would
00:16:40| kick off like why people should give a shit about bacteria was that of like 10 to the X human cells versus 10 to the X +1 bacterial cells and it turned out that
00:16:53| this was some like weird science fact that came out of the back of an envelope they went back and checked it and they found out it's not that far off it's probably like a 1 to 1 well it's really
00:17:04| funny as they actually did the estimation and they were like it's gonna depend on when the last time you pooped majority of your bacteria are and so they're like that's gonna depend on what
00:17:16| you've been eating if you've had antibiotics but it is like it is true there's just an incredible number of bacteria it's important to remember that like bacterial cells are way smaller
00:17:26| than human cells so it's not like your body was like some sort of horrible sludge monster but you might be listening at home and we appreciate the regular folk question of like are there
00:17:47| more bacteria than anything we think that the most abundant thing is either viruses or the viruses that attack bacteria so yeah bacteria phages I I didn't even get into this but I read
00:18:02| that on one of the biggest Wars of all time is bacteria versus viruses and I like scary music and a big build-up and everything else but like think of it if there's more bacteria than anything else
00:18:12| and viruses like to infect things and there's a shit ton of them wouldn't there be more of them and more of them than anyone else that exists makes sense right yep
00:18:24| there you go just I don't know anything about very papyri by row by rye it's just virus right like it we're gonna run with it um I don't know much about a virus that attacks a bacteria is it
00:18:48| essentially the same that would attack ourselves or this it's it's own virus yeah it's it's totally its own virus so that they're called bacteria phage and they only attacked viruses it's similar
00:19:01| to two human viruses where there's specificity like virus that affects one bacteria won't affect infect another one for a whole bunch of different reasons
00:19:11| but yeah so we were talking about cryo-em like that's the kind of stuff where you can actually see bacteria phage like infecting bacteria and it's mind-blowing just forget and suck it on
00:19:23| the outside the shoes that that DNA in there are and excuse me Jesus Christ RNA in there am i right it depends it depends I think some have different ones and then replicating and bursting out
00:19:36| that cell it's like pornography for germs okay it's wild sonic what that would be just like the full cycle like that's like a whole pregnancy getting pregnant while having the baby just
00:19:56| burst and having so many babies burst that's that's hot yeah I'm sure it is if it isn't it is at the end of this episode so more bacteria more this so really the study of this stuff is pretty
00:20:15| damn important I would say anyone who gets a degree in it is guaranteed nine figures or should they in my honest including decimals that's not bad that's something yeah yeah would so there was
00:20:36| some where I was gonna go I was gonna hi my name is Colin poop that's awesome let's go so there's what bacterio therapy which is intended to reinforce bacteria into your body
00:20:50| yeah like probiotics but for your gut your colon or rectum so I'm like one of the sorry hand motions there's a hand motion I go a little bar sometimes so it's interesting that the human body it
00:21:04| can be affected by things like c-diff which is like like a really crippling disease or IBS which is a irritable bowel syndrome even like neuro neuro dizzy
00:21:14| like they have real quick what is IIb s like is it a disorder so it's your your body doesn't produce something at the right rate or it it has to crap too often I mean is that it's like the rap -
00:21:27| I'm too dizzy which one of my other office it's like a general LeMay ssin so like there's a bunch of stuff that links it to the microbiome that like having IBS having the symptoms of IBS which is
00:21:38| basically like your intestinal tract is really swollen and it's it's like usually diarrhea and stuff like that but yeah it's just a mess but it's linked to what's called dysbiosis so a good
00:21:53| microbiome if it gets shifted off track it's like it's it heard a dysbiosis has occurred so these things just to verify aren't a virus or a bacteria infection it's something entirely different
00:22:06| it's a non bio yeah so so like microbiome means like tiny biome right so you think about it like if a forest just dies it's probably unless there's a fire you know that it just ran through
00:22:22| all of it it's like it could have been anywhere in the food chain that things got messed up so with IBS it's like what was your body reacting which threw off the bacteria which threw on viruses or
00:22:32| like we're in this chain did it happen and that's really where a lot of this research is happening right now where it's like what is the interplay between human biology and bacteria if like you
00:22:43| said human biology is bacterial at the same time right yeah and the solution we're good with poop are you going back to poop yes I am so it's so humans take them to it
00:22:54| most of nain true possible when it's just like let's stick things in there one of the actual cures is that you take stool from a healthy person and do a fecal transplant into someone with IBS
00:23:06| or another disease and it works you because it really introduces the microbes or systems from a healthy individual in their poop and brings it to you yes is hey guys hang out here
00:23:19| how we gonna get there we do you find out the humans are the best they're gonna eat us nope we're going in hmm so that brings up so but like the gut flora can actually affect your
00:23:37| mental state so it does affect different I think it was like GABA do you know much about GABA do you want to talk about that oh no go for it it's like God do you want to say it I can hit it I had
00:23:50| to take 4 years ago I was yeah so GABA like an inhibitor and they think people that are serotonin related what is inhibit stuff so like the snare snap stuff that's like neuronal processing
00:24:08| that's based on like electrochemical impulses so like based on the terms there's gonna be electricity there's gonna be chemistry but basically it's the speed and the not resolution but the
00:24:23| sensitivity you have to those those impulses so yeah there's there's been links between like mental and emotional balance and your gut health I've actually heard this and um
00:24:37| the food you crave more of the food you crave obesity some other stuff like that right autism mm-hmm yeah I'm trying to think there's a couple others I read and I was like that's pretty important
00:24:48| there's some I mean there's all this like so the lab I used to work in they they did a study where they showed that like antipsychotics that people with schizophrenia would take there's one
00:24:59| that was given to kids which are really important right but kids were gaining like 30 pounds in the span of a couple months and that's a healthy boy that's a healthy boy yeah yeah going from 60 to
00:25:17| was had to do with microbiome shifts they still know exactly what's happening there but it's just it's all connected nobody knows so what I what I gathered from what you're talking about and from
00:25:27| what I studied for today was that um I studied for today no one knows how many months I prepped maybe I went to college both of you for a year and a half and study this for
00:25:37| this episode don't think I just looked everything up okay but essentially we treat diseases we treat bacterial infections and we try and find pharmaceuticals that um cure
00:25:52| these things but there are certain disorders that hang around like we mentioned was a Crohn's yeah certain there's no way we can fight obesity but are you saying they're finding new ways
00:26:04| in the microbiome Rome to kind of combat these things so maybe it's not a bacterial thing maybe well it's not a bacterial infection thing it's not a disease it's not a virus it's something
00:26:15| about how that gut flora makes us who we are and there's a way to change that maybe so you're saying so what you're saying that's I think that's where the money's going so that's what we're we're
00:26:27| trying to convince people right isn't it rather like relatively unknown to like people haven't studied this they don't really understand introducing certain aspects like different bacteria what is
00:26:38| gonna change how it's gonna affect the ecosystem it's kind of a crazy thing that we it's like how do you break that down into a experiment and do it on like a scale that affects all everybody like
00:26:51| I don't know that you can tell like probiotics is that's not that's sort of a science but I don't think they actually do what they say they're going to do Oh totally right so a study came
00:27:00| out two weeks ago I mean you said this is an arrant forever and a half so it's probably 200 weeks ago two weeks ago from now back in 2018 remember that shit show me here though no this study came
00:27:21| out where they took people and they gave him antibiotics to wipe out their their natural flora and half of them they gave probiotics just the stuff you get off the counter which by the way is usually
00:27:31| just lactobacillus sometimes they say like eighteen species of bacteria and you're like okay these are all almost exactly the same so they give them those and then the other half they didn't give
00:27:42| anything and they watched how fast those people got back to what was close to their baseline and not surprisingly the people who are taking a bunch of random bacteria that don't live in your gut
00:27:53| it took them a lot longer than the people who weren't taking probiotics to get back to their normal state so it wasn't a question of like if maybe if you're healthy taking a probiotic is
00:28:02| gonna help but that idea of you're taking antibiotics so take a probiotic it's something we've been saying it's not true at all here's here's a crazy question so let's say right now we're
00:28:13| running into the realm of aam interestingly enough and this fueled particulars almost pointing and saying getting antibiotics is bad which guy I don't disagree or agree with but I tend
00:28:24| to side on the we shouldn't screw with our you know our bodies we're trying to make whatever but but let's find out we we can introduce these microbes to people we can do this to people I can
00:28:35| make you skinnier I can give you this what if there's a side effect for doing this as well again we're screwing with genetics here I imagine down the road we're gonna find
00:28:44| something that says maybe it shouldn't do that little Jurassic Park thing here like finds away or whatever you want to call it is it do we get it do we run into an ethics thing here which probably
00:28:55| isn't present in your field right now right I mean it's coming out it's definitely a question it goes back to that question of like how far can we push ourselves past like what natural
00:29:07| selection is and the basic questions that people had you know tens of years ago when they were like should people be allowed to have classes at certain ages shouldn't you and people say it with
00:29:19| with allergies to I dated somebody for a long time and you know you you're much more sensitive to the kind of comments but people will make comments that are like well you know if a pants gonna kill
00:29:29| you it was it was bad those sort of funny he at least thought it was funny but but yeah I mean we're gonna be we're gonna get to a point where we're only able to survive if we can do all of
00:29:49| these weird manipulations or at least that's the fear so right yeah we don't know it's pretty weird there's a weird balance where we fear the hell out of something like everyone's gonna
00:29:59| genetically modify their bodies to be skinny and beautiful when in reality it probably won't happen there's a lot of things that step in the way but it if you could is it even is there moral
00:30:09| responsibility is there something there I don't know philosophical thing because anytime we try and change anything in nature which is by the way our nature we try to game out is that it you know
00:30:22| we're trying game ourselves there's there's always a blowback there's always a hit back there's always a something that happens so what I'm saying is take your degree and throw in the trash we're
00:30:33| not doing microbiota anymore I'm gonna let this stuff live okay but if there was some where I was going I really swear to god guys oh you guys know about cyanobacteria oh yeah is yours is yours
00:30:50| a cyanobacteria relative no let me go first this is really important actually um in high school I had to do a project on cyanobacteria and it was like my big project through the year you can
00:31:01| Gillespie you don't know buddy uh-huh this guy over here I research the shit these guys they're called blue-green algae are you gonna tell us no okay they're not algae don't make that
00:31:14| mistake folks that's just their name okay they were the only prokaryote capable of making oxygen ah Dan is on top of that they make ups how much how do they understand of the world supply
00:31:27| of oxygen I thought it was like 55 but yeah somewhere in between this so it's gonna judge yeah she's like no that's fine I mean to be honest you could probably find both figures that's
00:31:41| actually I'm saying but anyway they made their um older photos that has photosynthesis happens in their thigh colloid membrane which is unlike I believe any other bacteria I'm pushing
00:31:59| the limits of my knowledge here and but they think that somewhere back way back that they had the one of the original ndo symbiotic relationships you call it symbiotic if your simple at home but we
00:32:16| call it endosymbiotic I'm not sure why I just know we've changed so what they've eaten or shared is something that lives yeah they were essentially making oxygen it's like the
00:32:27| beginnings of like how plants started making oxygen they think possibly no one knows for sure but it's an organism that lives within the body or cells of another organism I would say with
00:32:37| mutualistic relationships hell yeah so say end to end endosymbiotic folks at home don't say symbiotic you sounds simple depends there are symbiosis that are not endo oh holy crap
00:32:54| another country heard from what's the difference I'm like trying to whisper so you told me and not the audience guys you can talk and know just means inside of so
00:33:06| it's a symbiosis where one is inside of the other but there's a whole bunch of different symbiosis there's Iannetta peas clownfish clownfish and cien enemies moseyin
00:33:16| enemies and clownfish right repeat and different orders are every symbiosis Disney doesn't movie but while finding the email that was a pretty good one right so we covered them all right there
00:33:35| so I thought you could kind of segue here as to your favorite bacteria that hangs out in plant roots or something mm-hmm yeah so there's I think and I think
00:33:50| we're gonna talk about nitrogen stuff later but yeah so I same way that we know that the bacteria and stuff that live in humans are really important especially we talked about the bacteria
00:34:02| that live in the gut and that's really important because it keeps us healthy it helps us to digest food and take up nutrients and the important things about plants are that they also actually have
00:34:13| to take up nutrients they make their own carbon or they fix their own carbon using photosynthesis but they take up nutrients and they also can get diseases they can also get infected by things
00:34:22| they have to fight off different stuff one of the things that helps them is also bacteria but they don't have a gut they instead have roots and so I study the bacteria on the plant
00:34:34| which really affects the health of the plant overall oh I don't know if I have a staple I have a favorite bacteria but I'm biased because it's like the main one that our lab studies it's called
00:34:44| bacillus subtlest and so you everyone's heard of e.coli it's sort of like e.coli is friend I don't know like cousin no microbiology they're not even like that related so e.coli is the gram-negative
00:35:08| model organism there's like two classes of bacteria gram-positive and gram-negative and so e coli is gram-negative everyone if they're gonna do gram-negative stuff you start with
00:35:20| you coli because it's easiest if you're gonna do gram positive stuff you start with bacillus Ellis because it's like we know the most about it so that's my favorite lives in the soil it's
00:35:29| everywhere you could go out like doesn't matter where you are you go outside and get some soil you can probably find bacillus Dedalus or at least some bacillus in there but it also sticks to
00:35:38| plant roots and can help them to grow bigger this is you could find it anywhere I mean there's certain things like what endo lists and then see there's another term but they were like
00:35:49| inside every rock like if you break open a rock anywhere on earth you're gonna find these organisms living there so they've been here longer than us obviously and then you literally can't
00:36:00| escape them yeah yeah it's it's pretty bizarre it's I mean there's tons of people doing stuff of like how how often do these things travel around is it just that you have a population that is in
00:36:15| one place and it they're actually traveling a lot so you know cuz they're gonna be moved around by water air thanks to us or just naturally they would storms water or all that stuff you
00:36:27| said but I feel like we move more of them now is that oh yeah definitely definitely we definitely move we we move them further right because you're not gonna really get a bacteria that's gonna
00:36:39| go from from Europe to you know the middle of Kansas so unless you have an airplane okay well we we have airplanes now by the way did you do that yeah we started in we
00:36:53| don't have that felony yet I mean we invented them it's a good catch by you Kitty Hawk North Carolina if you guys are ever gone just check it out man the Wright brothers great next segue
00:37:09| sorry go back to where we were so saving that's like an adverse aim of the planet right advertising and we just did an ad all right yeah Wright brothers Wright brothers Museum brought to you by the
00:37:23| unpin d'oeuvres coupon code unpinned or get 5% off your ticket to checkout Wright brothers museum today and an extra hour for 10% by the way don't do it for real because they didn't pay us
00:37:40| anything but if they do pass I'm just saying 5% off would be pretty cool mmm what's 5 percent 5 bucks so you save the plan gonna give you a full 5% off the review the 1% that make sense
00:38:05| I apologize just showing our star power here yeah as I can so saving the planet I guess that's your goal right for improving the yield on and plants making them grow faster
00:38:24| I assume or better or not perish right healthier yeah yeah so yeah that's the idea is that we can use these instead of using agrochemicals so we can use them as kind of like beneficial agents in the
00:38:41| field and so instead of one thing that's important to think about we talked about antibiotics at the start we're in the middle somewhere that it's important remember that antibiotics are made by
00:38:51| microbes almost across the board battle yeah yeah it's all these interactions it's like the superfast awesome signalling and warfare between them and it's just that we realized oh
00:39:06| if we grow a ton of this and then take all that certain chemical we can kill other microbes with it so the idea is that instead of taking the microbe out of the soil figuring out which chemical
00:39:17| it is and synthesizing a bunch of that chemical maybe we could just take the microbes and put them back into the soil where we want them and then they can be their own little antibiotic factories
00:39:26| they can take care of the plant we just put them in there we don't worry about it and yeah more natural so that's actually kind of true in some cases but the problem is is that this works
00:39:39| it's totally variable across different soils different fields it works really well in greenhouses but not nearly as well outside and we think that that is because the bacteria that we want to
00:39:50| grow with the plant is also interacting with the other bacteria that are living in the soil already my project comes in is like how does our good bacteria get along with other soil members so are you
00:40:04| hoping it works for almost every plant and how much better would it be how many plants would it save well I mean the the biggest loss of crop productivity is due to like light sand and Wilson things
00:40:23| like so fungus is one of the biggest reasons that we are not reaching food demands you know as we all sold bananas we got it okay yeah bananas are so sad coffee
00:40:35| coffee's having a rough time is it like bananas grow out of a rhizome so they're all interconnected and once it gets fungus in there boy it kills like an entire segment of banana plants it's
00:40:45| essentially like calling swine or like pigs are there swine flu but net are bananas ripening faster nowadays there's other thing that's where they are we buy like six or eight or whatever and
00:40:59| they're like three days later they're starting to be do you think that's a genetic overripe genetic they release ethylene and the more ethylene there is they ripen faster I'm not don't collate
00:41:09| your own science me okay I'm just told what the others - yes one above the door for good luck and you don't want the bedroom for good luck and then one on each corner of my house okay
00:41:24| so okay she needs like they send his ripen faster anyway hmm ami nevermind my apologize so this is how they thought maybe there was some to it this kind of like when you were a kid
00:41:37| your parents threw away the bananas that were right replace them with a slightly less ripe bananas to make it they're always right it's possible yes thanks mom and dad shadow did you ever see this
00:42:02| so this came out yep not bananas but like the the root bacteria came up in our extinction one is that you said back into our previous episode that was if we lost the bacteria that are exchanging
00:42:16| nitrogen our soil and we we essentially die it also comes up for like the yields on plants because the limit of the number of people on the planet is actually
00:42:26| somewhere around like 10 billion and we're at like 7 point 7 billion which is like why did they say 10 billion because of the nitrogen content they need I don't know if it's the nitrogen content
00:42:35| or like the arable earth like the amount you can note of physical space with resources including I guess water is probably a big issue - yeah well wood or whatever I mean we're not gonna argue so
00:42:50| that number like 10 billion that's we're gonna hit 10 billion and about you know you see 30 years in 2050 yeah we are folks as a smartwatch I still wear it so Suzanna might actually be saving the
00:43:04| planet by actually increasing yields your planet you're saving your your micro biomes think of how many bacteria you are you're keeping there are fit people better in their biomes just out
00:43:21| of curiosity kind of there's a correlation between its it's tricky because it seems to be more like diet really and so you're gonna have a more balanced
00:43:30| like microbiome if you're eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and lots of fiber and things like that but like that's also people who work out and do like grow there's not like a lot of
00:43:42| people who like run to McDonald's what you're saying is six-packs are made in the kitchen okay that's your phrase in the gym come on folks you all know that it's funny
00:43:56| because I also wonder how much of these results that we see are the result of correlation versus causation I mean someone who is better fit who is leads a healthier lifestyle we come off
00:44:08| a different fecal microbiome than someone who isn't so are we seeing one versus the other sometimes is it hard to tell I don't know that's just something that came up when I was watching these
00:44:18| things yeah yeah no I there okay so you talked about fecal transplants and they've done stuff in mice and they've done a little bit in people but it's all do they use a q-tip nevermind no well I
00:44:38| mean to put them into the mouse I think it's usually a collage so it's like liquidy and just like it's just like a enema but the opposite would say they want to gallop what's not a bunch gavage
00:44:51| yeah like a liquid you syringe them key word gavage okay yeah so in mice what's really cool is that you can take you can take mice this is one of the big like groundbreaking studies you can take mice
00:45:18| and you can feed them to different cows you can feed them it's the funniest labels for it they can be like on the healthy Chow or they can be on the Western diet Chow so they can either get
00:45:30| like lots of fiber and protein or you can be like you only get fat and carbs so yeah exactly and not surprisingly the de mice that are eating the Western diet are getting really fat but like that's
00:45:47| not surprising what was really interesting is that they could take a new Mouse and put it in there and then they would they would take the fecal matter they take the poop from these
00:45:58| different mice and if they took a new Mouse and gave it the healthy diet it would be fine but if they took a new Mouse and gave it the poop from the mouse eating the Western diet the poop
00:46:11| was enough to cause that mouse to gain weight so there was something about the microbiome shift so so they ate the same the better food but they still were gaining weight even with bad mouse poop
00:46:22| yep yeah so if you took new mice and gave them the poop from the up their mice the ones who got the poop from the fat Mouse also got fat have you ever said poop and mouse that many times in a
00:46:33| row I don't maybe on a date I have no idea don't really bring up the like microbiology part right that hard because usually people are like oh no well versed uh individuals in the field
00:46:53| because it's mostly women now anyway that's what I think yo can I ask you guys this is a real question so when I was getting back into bio this past four months getting ready
00:47:16| I came across that carbon is our building block I know we're going to get too much into it all that and all this my favorite thing is space I love space I just want to do a space aside here in
00:47:28| your professional opinion could we have life on another planet that is in carbon-based and doesn't use water water yes yes is it possible I think so I mean I ask you is because sorry if you want
00:47:45| to get into I don't know if you do anything about the archaea bacteria but there's like the extremophiles they like can feast on nitrogen and like ammonia they yeah they eat weird things and they
00:47:56| survive but I feel like is that an outlier could you make complex light from these systems I mean there's like so archaea are still common are still carbon-based they get sometimes get
00:48:09| their energy from different things but like still limit I think the majority of their mass is usually I just yeah I don't know much about that's how you know it's like I know that they they
00:48:23| still are off the same you know amino acids and the same DNA and things like that which are a lot of carbon it's more nitrogen but versus some of the stuff that we're made out of but they're still
00:48:34| like fixing sugars and things like that so but archaea are super common we just don't think about them because they don't cause disease and so we don't study them but they're all over the
00:48:45| place like literally all over the place highest mountains deep deep sea in the super thermal vents like Yellowstone those big vats of like acid that come out of the ground which is horrifying
00:48:59| but there's there's archaea in there as well um so but in terms of could could there be life that's totally not carbon-based I think so I think our definition of life would have to be
00:49:08| different um and so I mean that's actually a big question of when when you've got you know the rover's going out and different people even just checking the chemical
00:49:19| composition of things coming off of planets and things like that we're saying oh we don't see carbon or we don't see water and we just might have to narrow up a definition of what
00:49:29| life is because currently we don't consider viruses alive right so I I think it's possible methane-based and like and also if we go methane or nitrogen or whatever base life forms we
00:49:42| also change our our scope of where we're looking because it changes a temperature I mean a temperature gradient for nitrogen is different than gonna be for carbon-based products they don't need
00:49:51| water so now we're looking in a different range from the star it all changes with that and I think that's really cool and I think I'm gonna change my job and start studying extremophiles
00:50:01| because I want to find aliens if anyone's gonna understand in aliens it's the people who understand how the weirdest bacteria we have evolved and live just real quick the only caveat to
00:50:13| what I just said is are we assuming that life operates the same and involves the same and like with it would evolution preclude no matter where life evolves it has to right or does it we're getting
00:50:29| cheap as hell and I had a couple drinks but I'm just saying let's rephrase that one all right so what we understand when we watch bacteria they change they um they replicate but different things
00:50:41| involved they change um they can adapt to their surroundings if we found life on another planet entirely different than our version of life would it to have to adapt would it to have to change
00:50:54| or is there such a thing as life on Neptune or some some planet that looks like Neptune that's nitrogen based or ammonia based but it it's life that isn't anything like we've seen and it
00:51:06| doesn't change is that possible it's just the same like the me the same but it's gonna adapt and change based on where it is because of its environment no no what if it didn't I mean yeah I
00:51:19| guess so is that not life then yeah damn shut down why would that can change you're done I mean I I like what you're going with the idea of like is there life that does not adhere to natural
00:51:33| selection yeah because that's that's been a big question of and that was actually a big question like I don't know 25 years ago and microbiology is whether
00:51:43| not microbes follow the same rules as bigger organisms in terms of natural selection because they don't have to mate they don't they can change their DNA very quickly and they can actually
00:51:54| change their DNA in response to something so is this idea of like Darwin had the idea of yeah natural selection versus Lamarck had the idea that you know giraffes had their long neck
00:52:08| because the ones who stretched out their neck had more babies and then those were able to stretch your neck longer and Darwin was like no the ones who already had longer necks we kept those and there
00:52:20| are some really cool papers that looked into that so as far as we can tell bacteria also follow natural selection I think the same rules are applying to our key but I mean I don't know I I think I
00:52:33| think viruses still would technically fall in there just in terms of mutation occurs before they're chosen but yeah that's that's when the biggest tenets of life is that they have to adapt they
00:52:45| have to reproduce okay mm-hm so what are like bacteria that are resistant to certain antibiotics how do they change is it just random also yeah yeah so it's um it's just it's errors so
00:53:02| every time a cell look there's a certain replication error rate and so bacteria have like 4,000 genes it totally depends on the bacteria like e-coli right it's gonna have like 4,000 genes and so every
00:53:20| time you call I replicates it's gonna have like 10 to 20 errors just that happen and most of the time that's gonna happen in somewhere that doesn't matter it just doesn't who cares there's so
00:53:31| many bases but it could happen somewhere that changes something it could change the amount of a certain protein that's made and if that happens to be beneficial in that specific environment
00:53:43| that bacteria and its progeny are gonna do better than its neighbors and so very quickly your population is gonna be totally taken over and all of a sudden we're used to have one like code for all
00:53:56| of your bacteria have to and eventually your own gonna have one again but it's gonna be a new code and so your life that's living in your microbiome in that case of that
00:54:06| bacteria is going to be different and so that's that's why bacteria are that's why I think they're so cool to study they're super fast and that is why you know there's this kind of arms race
00:54:17| between humans and bacteria that like what we can do what we can change like you're saying like gaming your life we're just like barely keeping up with bacteria and not not very well superbugs
00:54:33| do you think what we're doing addicts and like cattle here we go we pump antibiotics into our food because we want it to survive isn't that a terrible practice I won't
00:54:44| that lead to like the most damaging super bug ever I mean that seems like it's a dumbass that's a dumb idea not to not to charge it in any way how do you feel yeah yeah I know there's a bunch of
00:55:03| new stuff that's coming out that's like just any when we're using a ton of antibiotics it's just not good like my opinion my personal opinion is that we should use antibiotics as the last
00:55:19| option I think I mean they're great we should definitely have them I don't agree with people who say like just never use them if you're gonna die you're gonna die I'm like no you should
00:55:29| we don't need like five-year-olds dying of strep throat that's like just silly but we also have you Stuckey Oh Beck you drop a deuce was that sorry I was naming the strep throat virus but then I
00:55:42| bacteria and then I forgot it so you both you both stopped and you're like what was it and I was like I started saying it to be smart and then I forgot it back eyo Stuckey oh it's
00:55:54| streptococcus but I can't remember oh yeah ray streptococcus well no mine yeah anyway yeah where's your damn silent you know they're mine yeah I can't sir mine's separate
00:56:06| colleges new money is that the one okay Manya is okay yeah Streptococcus pneumoniae so I was wondering but it's also the one that causes yes other things has a variety of
00:56:19| them though yeah there's a pneumococcal ones too and then we call there you go that's my boy yeah are antibiotics good or bad I don't think we should use them to make our chickens bigger what's funny
00:56:41| is that it's not only yeah yeah I mean it to be fair if we could do that for people like everyone would be just taking antibiotics all the time myself included but like as a biologist real
00:56:52| quick because I have a lot of customers people I see every day who are like yeah the antibiotics and our chicken or make our daughter's breasts bigger and I'm like it's true but I don't have the
00:57:02| signs behind it is there it's bullshit right yeah well I'm just like horrified at where your customers are like so glad I don't work people humans are terrible but yeah no I know you're trying I know
00:57:14| you're trying to save them but they're all for no I mean but no so there could be something there could totally because it could change your hormones oh yes oh yeah well the thing is is that we use
00:57:26| antibiotics we use these crazy high antibiotics in feeding our our livestock but it's actually if you look at it some of it it started out because they were like we've got bacterial infections
00:57:37| running through because we've got all these animals like crammed in a box but there's a new range giving them a bunch of antibiotics makes them bigger that's one of the things that feeds this idea
00:57:48| that it could be a shift in the microbiome that's causing them to get bigger is that an obesity thing I think kind ID yeah they've they have found that people
00:57:57| are if you take antibiotics if your if your microbiome is screwed up you're a little bit more likely to gain weight so but yeah something something weird is happening so I don't know if it actually
00:58:09| so my customers are right god damn it unless they're eating the chicken like non-stop like a that's like four four meals a day yeah that's most of their daughters yeah from from birth or and
00:58:25| today and he's like what they're doing their breasts I'm like sir I can't look again I would just believe you and take your word for it under your eight-year-old daughters Yeah right to
00:58:47| shift a little bit really conversation I'm really sorry good so I guess I guess the area I want to go into is like scientific ignorance is that the general population doesn't really know any of
00:58:58| this like I would say it's probably like what 90% of people have no clue what's going on whatsoever and I think it's getting worse she's excited oh my god she's about the go ahead and take off go
00:59:11| on alright yeah cuz like what I really want to get into is science communication and what you're talking about is really interesting because it's what a lot of scientists go off of is
00:59:23| this it's called the deficit model of Education so it's this idea that the majority of your population don't know what you're going to tell them and it actually turns out that if you go off
00:59:33| that model it's really hard to get through to people because it's not that they don't have information they have the wrong information so like most of the outreach now is focused on avoiding
00:59:46| that deficit model and going more towards like this misinformation model so the majority of people know something but it's the wrong horribly wrong just not horribly wrong yes okay if you come
00:59:59| in and you're like you don't know anything they're like oh but I do so you have to come and be like what do you know and they'll tell you stuff you're like how do you know that I mean
01:00:09| like does that make sense and eventually getting there but yeah the idea of like scientific illiteracy and I think that that is the biggest thing is that you know a lot of the things that people
01:00:20| think that don't make sense you could fit like eat those people could figure it out if they were given the tools to like feel comfortable using logic I think our school systems really scare
01:00:33| people from thinking too hard because if you're wrong it's a problem and the thing with logic is you have to hit like every single wrong answer before you get to the right one and so yeah a lot of
01:00:46| people are really good at just like picking up information and being comfortable with it because it's much better than then not having the answer but that's yeah that's where you get
01:00:57| these answers where you're like that doesn't even make sense yeah it's being afraid of failure like if you're gonna actually build and design something you're gonna fail a whole bunch before
01:01:06| you get to the final solution and that's acceptable and most people are probably not comfortable with failing that much and actually succeeding in the fit and the finished product yeah no definitely
01:01:17| definitely not so yeah so you brought up science literacy you know sorry like people come in and they're like granite is stain proof and I'm like it's not stain proof and then I'm like quartz
01:01:29| it's made of metal and I'm like well there's no metal in quartz man let me really break it down for you and then they're like can I have granite and I'm like it's you're thinking of marble what
01:01:38| you're talking about right there is marble anyway I just wanted to let you know misinformation is the number one problem in our industry people come in they think they know everything and yet
01:01:48| they don't and this applies to science in some ways so scientists are also probably not the best communicators I took that up yeah so yeah so I've dealt with a lot of scientists and they never
01:02:05| summarized things in a way that people can digest it's always here's a lot of data and they're not gonna pick things out and say this is what I think because that's kind of against what they're told
01:02:15| to do they're just yeah to present the data and then collect data yeah unless there's like a very definitive route they're not gonna tell you that it's one
01:02:23| way or the other yeah yeah that's a that's a real thing yes that's for sure an issue I mean even when I've been talking you know so I'm like oh there's a study they're like who gives a shit
01:02:34| like it doesn't mean anything if I say there's a study it just like you just say this is what we know yeah I think it makes it's a mark of a good scientist to
01:02:44| be able to back up their facts and when I give a lecture to my lab group that's what they're asking for there they don't care about what my opinion is even though whatever I'm telling them is
01:02:55| my opinion I haven't read every single piece of literature but in terms of that idea of summarizing the way I usually tell people because I do get to train so part of my outreach is I train other
01:03:07| scientists to communicate their science and it's really it's really interesting I do it through the local planetarium Moorhead planetarium it's where the Apollo astronauts trained but usually
01:03:23| the analogy I go with is like if you went into your auto mechanic I don't know anything about cars and so it's a terrible analogy for me but like if I go in and I'm like there's something
01:03:32| happening I think it's the transmission because my friend told me it's probably transmission but I think it's the transmission and they check it out I want them to be able to speak to my
01:03:41| level I don't want them to do the scientific thing of sit me down and try to explain what combustion is and give me the entire history of automobiles but I also don't want them to talk to me
01:03:52| like I'm a dumbass I don't want them to be like so your car goes vroom because you put in the spicy liquid and you're like spicy liquid liquid so I think that's what scientists need to do better
01:04:09| is realize that they don't have to pick one extreme they don't have to teach somebody every single thing that there is to know about their topic to get across the right level of information
01:04:19| but really what scientists need to do better is ask what someone's background is you know my auto mechanic should say you know like how much do you know about cars so they should add they should be
01:04:27| like so drivetrain and if I'm like I have never driven a train they should know to lower it back down scientists should be able to say like hey you know like when I say sell what do you think
01:04:40| of and if something like I work with fifth graders and they're like red blood cells are dead because their nuclei has gone and you're like okay okay so you can never assess it but like
01:04:53| that's what scientists need to get way better at just asking well what do you know about this thing and then talking at that level this is a huge problem in the medical field as well doctors and
01:05:05| like whoever when they go to tell you a diagnosis or explain something to someone or parents of a child needs a surgery there's no go-between there's no well he has a circle a bla bla bla bla
01:05:17| bla and a femoral artery number 7 number like he got boo-boo we all cut him open and you're like no so I think I think any specialized industry runs into this problem and not to undercut the whole
01:05:37| conversation but the whole problem is capitalism if you can make more money making someone feel stupid people probably will do it if you can make more money keeping your secrets hidden you
01:05:49| will probably do it if you can make more money the sentence seems to come up a lot but it is what it is money's super important yeah well you know with your job I mean I'm sure that sometimes you
01:06:01| get people in there that know exactly what they're doing and you're not gonna try to like bullshit them but if somebody comes in they're like I really want this thing and you're like whatever
01:06:08| I'm gonna give it the most hate you you're a jerk right right no it's all about communication it's a language you use and that happens on all levels and all jobs in all places so how do you -
01:06:23| like it's you come from different backgrounds sort of like you do like to me now we went to high school together okay so at least I don't like some of the same vernacular like what you know
01:06:34| if you her and stuff like that I wouldn't body-checked me into a locker and then I hated him for a little while and then we're best friends like a week story our meet-cute this is
01:06:44| our me q hi so the I guess the part I wanted to weigh on is that I think Susannah is a like an outlier like a person like you does not exist normally in nature
01:06:59| so are you an outlier do you think you're not wire yeah yeah it's kind of accept yeah you are people and so and I'm like yeah I think everybody in science used to be a nerd like everybody
01:07:16| we're like we still are and it's really awesome because you Freddie now it's different now but I'm not gonna get into that yeah yeah but like yeah but we were all the kid who got like
01:07:25| pushing do lockers so like I at least have that in common with everyone know it is it's it's it's weird and it's also something that's not it's not been valued in science it's getting better
01:07:41| now but it used to be like it was just seen as a huge waste of time to try to communicate to the public it was like why bother with that they're not gonna care they're not gonna understand get
01:07:51| back in the lab and so it's just now at a point where it's getting valued and I think that I am an outlier right now but I do think that that's gonna be changing help oh my god I hope I guess
01:08:01| my question to you is why do you think you are the way you are you why do you think your social you well-spoken have sailing microbes yeah it's all my friends Laura not nothing
01:08:12| else and then you're also going for your PhD which is extremely rare yeah yeah I think a lot of it is just privileged to be honest I think yeah I grew up in Iowa in a very safe suburb my parents both
01:08:32| went to college my dad was as well sales what no my dad he he was accused to be a salesperson but then when I was in middle school he became a high school biology teacher and so he was even when
01:08:53| he wasn't that he was always really excited about science and so I had this like huge dual opportunity where I was in a really supportive environment my parents really got me engaged in the
01:09:04| sciences in school I was like horribly socially awkward and so I like read books constantly which turns out to be nice as an adult and and yeah I was just like really
01:09:17| encouraged to always ask questions so I think that that's that's a really big piece of it as far as being well-spoken that's actually because of the social anxiety I used to be like it used to be
01:09:29| a really big problem and so I had to go to a bunch of different classes and actually like pushed it way far the other way so that's why I'm a scientist but I also don't mind public speaking it
01:09:39| doesn't freak me out interesting sounds like someone else's this podcast yeah well not me we've well surprisingly when we've done this podcast we found out I found out
01:09:47| that Nick is actually shyer than I ever thought he's more afraid of the things that took me a while to come around so there's an element of me that has become more socially aware and more outgoing
01:09:59| through this process and I'm curious like what pushed you to get more socially out there because you have a lot of information about you out there through Instagram and Twitter and she's
01:10:10| freaking out and and also like the talks that you you've given like they're out there too so there's like probably like four or five videos of you talking about whatever subject yeah whole bunch is can
01:10:21| i interject I saw a video and I was like oh let's see what she talks like I didn't know if you had an accent I didn't know anything and it was like a video where you were injecting a serum
01:10:29| to excite a bacteria and I was like let's see what's going on and that was it it was like 30 seconds long no no that was like literally I had to make a I had to make a youtube channel for some
01:10:49| older it was a holder that was not old it was just like older I was like I didn't assume you're older back then I'm works jump back yeah no I didn't do anything with that yeah I so because of
01:11:11| the outrage stuff I do I thought about getting involved in science outreach online kind of by myself and I mean as you two have probably figured out there's just like a lot of work that
01:11:21| goes into doing everything yes yeah yeah I mean you have been actually like you've both done your research on this topic so that's or at least you know you can
01:11:33| fake it really well yes PhD bullshitters thank you yeah yeah yeah no but like that's the thing is I started you see this stuff online you're like ah whatever they just pop on they
01:11:47| talk about some stuff and they're done and it's way more work so that's why I started doing I started doing more collaborative stuff so I find other people who want to chat with me or who
01:11:58| like the video editing or they like other parts I really like Instagram it's a really easy medium for me so something that I was doing anyway it's there's some pretty basic rules of like what is
01:12:11| gonna get looked at what's gonna get engagement and it's also a hell lot safer than Twitter Twitter like Twitter is gonna be why I get fired I don't know why exactly the same same yeah you know
01:12:26| how my employers don't find us yeah people are super super nice I'm more open online than I am an actual like human version but they're all version here there's a safer to show
01:12:40| your range when you say online I guess because like you're at the sort of an ominous I'm not good Danny and your can never say that word they can they live together no we doesn't sting them with
01:12:54| his tentacles it's perfect he loves his son yeah the PhD stops you in funded but so yes there I think you can't you can kind of choose which piece of yourself you want to put out at a time right
01:13:16| where he that she's doing this cuz like the range of I was gonna follow her on Twitter but I feel like my Twitter is like really depressing or dark or mean or whatever but that's where I bent a
01:13:26| lot so I'm yeah I'm gonna anger but anyway you could you could decide to be whoever you want to be some of us are a little rough around the edges than others yeah I've always wanted to do I
01:13:36| always wanted fake twitter account I don't have one and I've always wanted to make one America is it up though I will totally like beyond my rock your address and the
01:13:50| name of someone you know and be like I hope this person gets shot by a bow and out haha and then in parentheses not killed just shot yeah no I mean I don't know the
01:14:05| most annoying part to me about being recognized in some avenues like that like it's it's so useful in a lot of ways that I've gotten a lot of opportunities from doing this stuff that
01:14:16| I've never would have before but my biggest annoyance is that now when someone's a jerk online I can't just be like well I hope you go die because it's a little mental health champion but yeah
01:14:35| you have mental health human touch on anything mental healthy tackle toys wrap up you have any tattoos yeah I'm good - wait what do you have better not be the one I was thinking of okay cool so oh
01:14:52| what's yo yo I just sold the white part inside another sunrise other side there you go there you go I never saw yellow huh yeah so it's it's white and yeah it's if I get tanner it like ends up
01:15:09| being so I don't know did you see the Monty video then I don't know well that's that's a go man weird is that when someone says they've they've watched your video and they talk about
01:15:26| it I don't remember that at all pretty much like I got that stage and I was like oh she's good just happened it was good how many people are you doing in front what how many people would you do
01:15:38| it in front I'm serious it was about 350 I'm a little afraid of public speaking but I do a podcast that the world can see but anyway it's alright if you're like oh it's because there
01:15:51| their life it's like we're right in front of you coughing and sneezing and ignoring you yeah I feel like the cut-offs are like two people six people 12 people 80
01:16:02| people 180 people over 300 and then from there there's probably like a thousand and then I don't know but yeah yeah yeah so that was probably that was that was pretty intimidating but what was
01:16:18| actually scarier is that I knew that they were gonna be videotaping it and oh yeah and I don't mess with you forever would you ever touch your hair like this would you go like this would your hair
01:16:32| yeah no I so there were two really scary parts of that one was like knowing that that was gonna be videotaped and so it was like oh this is like you know even if I bomb in front these people like
01:16:46| that's there's gonna be record of this but the other weirder part was the coming off the stage so that oh my god my dogs are just like sneezing everywhere they're my whole life of the
01:16:59| best so that was there's a local storytelling group it's called the Monty and Jeff polish runs it he's actually he has a PhD in biochemistry but he just does like storytelling and all this like
01:17:11| really cool different stuff so you can get him you can get a PhD and then you'd not use it at all and there's no money there's no money there anyway I gotcha definitely not so he he helps people
01:17:24| take their real-life stories and turn them into some like spoken story and it's 12 minutes long and it's there you know how to have any props or any notes or anything like that and the story that
01:17:36| I ended up going with was it was really terrifying too because I had started this thing that's called the ph depression and it's era instagram is just a way to show an image right
01:17:51| Instagram you just see these pictures you're like oh my god they're happy and you click on it it's always a story of like I went to the beach and was amazing and I wanted to highlight this idea that
01:18:02| especially in academia we show a really like pleasant happy face and there's a lot of this really like ugly darkness in there and a paper came out earlier this year that showed
01:18:14| that about 40% of graduate students are currently dealing with either anxiety or depression and like that's pretty high like the average adults population is more like six to ten so but 40% super
01:18:30| high thing is is that I deal with depression and I felt super alone I had a really hard time a couple years ago and so I started this group the peach depression on Instagram it's since grown
01:18:41| and that's really where the social media thing has been coming from but I knew this person at the Monte Jeff Polish and and he was like hey if anyone in your group would ever want to give a talk and
01:18:54| I had told people that I had depression before or like through this social media thing and some people who knew me knew about it but I hadn't really ever told them the full story of why it all came
01:19:06| out and so the story I told the Monte was basically that it was about just like about two and a half years ago now I was having a hard time a little bit anyway but I failed this really
01:19:19| important exam and it totally threw me for a loop and it just sort of doubled down on this imposter syndrome of like I don't know I'm doing I shouldn't be here I stuck and really ended up in a really
01:19:32| dark place and the the Monti video was it ended up with me talking about how I don't know how much like y'all talked about on this podcast but what what topic what depression oh yeah depression
01:19:50| oh no so you know I got to the point where I was just in a really a really bad spot and I ended up going and getting a permit for a handgun but part one of my rules was before I actually
01:20:12| could buy the gun I would get a tattoo because of something I just would never ever do the handgun would stop you from the other yeah yeah yeah so I got the I got the permit
01:20:20| but I was like I mean that actually go buy anything until I get a tattoo and I guess I got this tattoo which is why he's referencing and that was an ever younger right you're like high school
01:20:31| yeah well so the idea for that tattoo came through college it came from some stupid reference online but it was like I had another rough time in college and you know the takeaway is like I had had
01:20:46| mental health issues all the way through it's just like it kept popping up and so in college I had this phrase that was another sunrise another new beginning but it was the idea of like okay
01:20:58| tomorrow would be better but was also that idea of there this darkness will be gone eventually and so it's a reminder to like okay wait until the next sunrise and so what I ended up getting was this
01:21:10| tattoo where the Sun is is pretty obvious if you get anywhere close to me you can see those little black Sun you see that I have a tattoo but it's actually I have to let you in and to
01:21:20| show you you know the real meaning behind the tattoo and what it means yeah so I got this tattoo and I had to wait until it healed so I can see it and by that point I had come through closer to
01:21:33| the other side of that period of depression and so I spent about another year kind of just dealing with it and it was after that year that this paper came out and I was like I wish that I knew
01:21:45| what this was so common last year and so that's why I started the pH depression is like I wish that the pH depression had existed a year before when I really needed it so it's been cool the the
01:21:58| response has been amazing there's a bunch of bummed out people out there so it's things in school do you own five handguns by now or yeah different days twos and handguns no no I don't never
01:22:16| got the never got the hand going because I don't think it was very long but but yeah so it's been interesting what did you talk about on your depression episode I mean I'll just watch it okay
01:22:28| we won't get too crazy but um I'm dealing with depression right now we're not gonna get into a real big because it's me and I'm one of the members of the episode and it's we haven't really
01:22:37| discussed my personal life a hundred percent because it's still ongoing but anyway uh I just thought up a new tattoo week ago want you guys to see it I haven't gotten it it's supposed to say
01:22:53| is like 10 to the 80 file or hydrogen is that the Sun entity no no it's not 10 to the 80th power hydrogen they surmise that based on the current rate of expansion in the universe and all the
01:23:05| stuff that's going on in it that the observable universe and everything we know is made up of 10 to the 80th molecules of hydrogen and no one else I know has this tattoo and it makes me
01:23:16| think of the universe literally the entire universe is so huge it's literally a number we can't even serve on your forearm Mike but if I could put it on my forearm it's almost like a
01:23:28| drama we have all the crazy stuff I have all the times I might think really dark thoughts or be so overwhelmed I can't breathe or you feel like you're drowning or you just want to sleep forever or you
01:23:40| just want to eat everything or you just want to drink yep you can happy perform and say hey look it's the only 10 to the hydrogen don't break it down folks 10 does the 80
01:23:53| if there's a huge number but anyway I'm thinking of getting it I haven't decided fully yet but it's it's funny you said that I just thought this up out of the other night
01:24:02| and I'm I'm feeling much better but I think that's a really cool website and when this podcast is over I will check that out it's it's going pretty well so yeah you can check it out on Instagram
01:24:13| it's like and Twitter it's at pH underscored the underscore oppression that's what that's what happens when you've got like a motherfucker that's doing branding underscore impression
01:24:24| that's cool yeah it's uh it's gone very well and I hope you get the tattoo because it's it's been helpful to me because I think that was what it was
01:24:34| the acceptance part for me was like this isn't ever really gonna be over like there's gonna be it's not just like being like hey there's a dark period less like look towards a little delight
01:24:44| it's like okay there there's probably me another dark period like act yeah it's cool to have other people in a connection you know I like that just to end it I don't want to end on that and
01:24:56| then it sounds weird or bad and I don't think that's bad or anything I just want to ask a like philosophical biological question like we see countries Australia said this to a Jesus person who said
01:25:10| Asia you know Australia said this to China United States did this with Canada whatever we see all these countries and they always act the same but when we break it down there's all these people
01:25:20| in these countries and there's a lot going on it's a political climate and I'm not trying to get political but our bodies are political right we got bacteria in here we got cells we got
01:25:31| hormones running through us and all this stuff that's going on inside of us and making us act a certain way is it weird to think out of the philosopher Alan Watts we take credit for our own actions
01:25:45| but we blame things when they happen inside of us I have a fever I'm sick I have Crohn's disease I don't think Alan Watts ever since disease but for the record we take
01:25:59| credit when we do something good or we accomplish something but we blame stuff that happens inside us we have no control over when it's the other way around Oh what are we are we this
01:26:11| combination of bacteria cells microbes all stuff going on or we this brain that makes it all do something because that I really don't know no what do you think I don't know because then I
01:26:26| just said like China said this to America I said this to Canada and we look at those and we're like that's not it it's deeper there's more than just Canada said this the United States the
01:26:38| other day it's microbes inside and the crazy complex relationships they all have to make a sports metaphor is it really just tea neighbors turn B or is it
01:26:52| preparation versus coaching versus player skill versus development versus assistance coach versus positional coach versus who is sick that day versus all this stuff and you can pull your hair up
01:27:03| going crazy trying to gamble on these games don't gamble folks but really it it almost always ends up being more complex than we could ever imagine and more simple than we can ever imagine
01:27:16| yeah I both of those analogies I I think are great you know in the country analogy it's like who has more power than thousands of people or the single government head you know like is it your
01:27:29| brain or is it all the rest of it and then with sports the same thing right like you always look at who did or didn't get the final catch the final touchdown the final shot but there's the
01:27:42| full game before that then if anything had changed you wouldn't have that exact same trajectory so no I think it's weird I think it's cool I think that the way that you approach that question tells
01:27:54| you if you like science if you're like that's weird and I want to think about it you might be a scientist if they're willing to pay for my PhD for you there are where we are always a nag interested
01:28:07| just saying do it do it so if we were doing a recap guys um all we talked about the whole episode with cyanobacteria right there it's uh all of it blue-green algae those yeah
01:28:21| red tide Dino Dino was it dinoflagellates Dyna topia someone's favorite plan Jolla and next time I did those I was weird at first Oh timing until I found out it was red
01:28:40| tide I was like oh that's nothing that's not no biggie mmm talked about England fries obeah I love them nitrogen fixing bacteria in legume root know yeah that one we also
01:28:53| covered the whole crop rotation with the corn and soy I believe nitrogen yeah nitrogen cycle we talked about it endlessly haber-bosch yeah Freddy top of that you
01:29:05| need crab 2% of the world's energy cyan and cyanamide I think that was the one real cycle we did every cycle in cycle we were permanent press swap and dry swap and dry the sexual nature of muffin
01:29:24| dry 10 billion a lot of us industry 10 trillion 2050 so microscopes is that it we covered everything yeah except we might have done cry yeah Wow my biology well folks here I am before you and I
01:29:42| want to say we like you we like you a lot thanks for donating thousands of dollars to a patreon keep it up and in the meantime if you want to check out
01:29:52| Susanna's page you have a it is it is it down below it says oh cool yeah it's in the video it's about dot me slash Suzanna hello Harris or pH depression calm cool and if you want to check out
01:30:09| our website you do that too it's you get to right there right there it might play the right way you're close that's enough thanks folks thanks for joining us tonight yeah I'm
01:30:23| good one a don't let those microbes get you down
00:00:17| themselves tens of millions of thousands of things make up your body just kidding folks it's in the hundred trillions we're gonna talk about microbiology today and we even brought along a little
00:00:30| guest that's me that's I'm the little guest so I'm Dan that's acting one topic at a time taking over a meeting room we've got it all covered you'll see each discussion here deep
00:00:49| diving or unique perspective taboo forbidden subjects they're all on the chopping block baby you can get a little bit there morning this podcast may contain mature language and sexual
00:01:04| content and then sport in the Hotei many purposes only so join us have a good time open up your earholes [Music] all right oh here we go that's wild
00:01:31| there's two of us here look we got a third person here yes we do look at that maybe guess that's our chest oh my goodness that's sue or use an oar Suzanne Harris
00:01:45| she's right now University of North Carolina could you tell us what uh what's going on down there anything wild hi it's finally a little bit chilly originally from Iowa so I'm watching
00:01:57| friends on social media get that snow and things like that so five inches and the world's shut down by the way today it took a lot of my friends like three hours to get home
00:02:06| yeah well you know nope nope so you're up in Philadelphia and you're in Houston yeah so I haven't I've saw no the other day actually but it didn't do anything whoa it was a flight online or in person
00:02:20| okay I ran around or Leafly outside for a second you played in it with snowflake yeah it's it'll return another few years did it look like a snowflake you've seen
00:02:32| before no I don't believe so is there all unique aren't they a unique that's incredible just like me Wow whoa well of course Suzanne was rudely interrupted by my partner Dan what would
00:02:45| you say you do down there so I am working on a PhD in microbiology and specifically yeah I'm sorry yes no idea yeah so and I specifically study how bacteria stick to plant roots so that's
00:03:09| what my thesis topic is in so many words that's pretty cool I think that was gonna come up today so we're gonna run with it this is perfect yeah this is awesome you've got like what one year
00:03:20| left oh yeah better year left yeah average is about five and a half to six years and so in about a year I'd be right at five and a half so I think so I think and then I have to figure out what
00:03:33| I do with my real life that's right touch well Maxine I think it's kind of a bummer so you're pretty much an expert yeah you know I've been so I did I'm just getting used to saying
00:03:47| that but I worked in a microbiology lab for three years an undergrad and I've been in a microbiology lab for almost five years now here in North Carolina so eight years doing something you should
00:03:58| probably be okay yeah yeah pretty good pretty good pretty average pretty pretty pretty average that's that's what we're told mostly I was like kind of disappointing
00:04:09| that's cool and listen if I may ask um I was a bio major for like a year and a half and I cut it because I figured there was a more lucrative career path with English journalism then we a
00:04:22| newspaper writer one day my parents have you ever see this hope she did a lot of people have anyway newspapers are not the future but biology might be I'm just saying
00:04:37| might they in your field like right now doing your PhD and all that is it split equally between men and women like what's what's the kind of is it you said it like that was like no well actually
00:04:51| it's really interesting because so my lab is mostly women we have a couple guys we're bringing on a postdoc who's a guy but mostly when I met in my lab and in the lower levels it's becoming more
00:05:05| and more women there's like more than 3% women coming in as trainees the interesting thing is that there's still this huge shift in like the power structure where once you actually get to
00:05:17| the management roles it's still really slanted or it's white white men yeah yeah who's no one no one wants to give up their jobs slash power slash benefits right no exactly exactly so it's kind of
00:05:29| that weird thing where depending on who you ask some people will say that's getting pretty close to 50% but if you look at who's uh who's running the show still definitely so money the money is
00:05:40| still old white men coming for you unless the holds true when I get older and they throw it at me I might just saying could they please throw me some I don't know you know that that's
00:05:57| funny because also like when people picture scientists a lot they picture a guy in a white lab coat - yeah you are more attractive than most guys in white lab coats I mean it depends on your like
00:06:09| persuasion but like yeah you're absolutely right I'm usually attracted the people who look more like Dan he would look great in a lab coat it's the dimple thing right here mm-hmm
00:06:22| it's my type I guess what you gonna do I think the dimple looks better on dudes though cuz like sometimes girls yeah that's a good point I know yeah that's a true statement I
00:06:32| disagree write it down when we fight each other in the wild it's amazing they fit perfectly that they push in between so I roam watching and it doesn't know what biology is or microbiology is or if
00:06:58| I heard an echo and then probably some office fall anyway so biology the study of life all the processes of life right so microbiology is what study of life that's Wikipedia said super small
00:07:12| microscopes hmm see my first ever I was like that's it like they were like it's too small for microscopes that's what we're gonna put you're definitely microscope but where did you get this
00:07:24| definition there's a Wikipedia so what's see that's what it was on and I thought that's a very weak Wikipedia definition so you I know you love talking about microscope Stan go ahead let us know
00:07:35| what the first microscope was come on so it's not really the microscope that I'm interested in it's the oh the idea of small things small living organisms so initially they had this thing called new
00:07:47| gota which is like the Jains jainism it's a religion they had this idea that there were these small things everywhere and that they had like a really tiny life cycle and they were just like
00:07:56| proliferating everywhere so they had an idea of it I don't know how and then it kind of just little bit like Aristotle and Plato one of them believed that um things got
00:08:06| infinitely smaller and the other believed that there was a stopping point kind of I think it's almost like the recursion like like mad black has like a marble universe it's like as you get
00:08:17| smaller and then can't perceive that stuff so I think that the Jains were kind of into that sort of philosophy and then I got around to a guy that made the first microscope using like glass beads
00:08:31| and little spheres he was actually trying to figure out the quality of a thread I think his name was Antoine then I'm gonna say like just please say it hook it and everything I was pretty
00:08:50| good this is the start link of the base microbiology that's like you know we all have to learn this part he was the father of microbiology like a whole sandy science so yeah he started looking
00:09:05| at all different things and solve it you know the thread was not really that interesting and he's early in the body he looked at what is like different blood and like just like things on your
00:09:14| hands and like all the different organisms doing around the other plants teeth and then he had a girlfriend he brought her over and said girl look at that body girl look at that body I had
00:09:27| to it was in my head I couldn't let it sorry yeah anyway yeah he yep and the next thing I was gonna bring up a sperm cuz obviously if a guy figure something out scientific he's like see what does
00:09:41| it is sperm yeah did uh-huh which has the flagella but you know little gonna flatten flageolet yeah Gel it all those are right my cell Susanna standards so I
00:09:55| mean he he'd looked at all that stuff and was like wow this is crazy and he I think he depicted it he like put in a book and said hey this is the stuff I found and everyone's like it's bullshit
00:10:04| so I was in 1620 I think around that time I would thought you're gonna say way farther back than I thought no no and it took this lead to yeah good uh it took a while until they
00:10:20| got better and better microscopes and I'm gonna skip like all over the history and skip onto me see like your nose yeah mm days people weren't even making a better microscope they were just good so
00:10:39| I think it was Carl Zeiss and then this guy Ruska which is newer so he's like nineteen hundreds and then null so they started making microscopes that worked off of different principles
00:10:49| and will different ones worked up light right just reflecting light yeah so it works like but what's the next step up is there I know they have electron microscope but what else can you do it's
00:11:02| like I'd like just add mirrors multiple optics and then the way the optics focus they're blurry so they came up with something called like uh I think this guy a B AB or a B came up with a sine
00:11:12| condition was a way of making it so the vision was not blurred focused it yeah so he focused it and then it still his name was Kodak wait the guy who invented the camera
00:11:24| I just tried to throw you'd wait so he skip to the I guess command a like electron microscope with the ruse guy and not so it's like this electron microscope work I didn't look this up
00:11:36| but I'm smart enough I can figure it out everyone listen oh you could figure this out cut take it I think it hits it with a stream of electrons and electrons smaller than the wavelength of light so
00:11:45| you can actually or yeah you can dial in on a smaller subject but it's but it's not a visual it's not actually giving you a visual it's giving you a physical representation visually like because
00:11:57| it's not you're not seeing the colors and everything it's not really showing you it's just bouncing off and giving you I guess that's what light is they're mine forever sorry guys
00:12:05| you got it it's like the easiest way to think about it is like echolocation kind of well it'd be like if you were trying to figure out the shape of something and light would be like throwing beach balls
00:12:15| at it and trying to figure out where they bounce off and you can find out what the shape is versus throwing ping pong balls you get a much like it's more defined line oh my god that's good
00:12:24| that's pretty cool you should major in this for fun yeah yeah so electron microscope like what when they run like a new microscope yeah without one like are they like well
00:12:44| let's look at everything yes we just found 800 new things like it's gotta be an exciting time right this is literally what happened so that's what's resolution give me give me a hundred
00:12:54| thousand times smaller so when you hit it with an electron Mike electronic you can actually see that much more definition and the gyroscope a dozen times more than the last microscope yes
00:13:05| or than the human eye yo last microscope check you know so this this guy risco was really like I don't know if they call him the father of microscopes but he won a Nobel Prize for it so he
00:13:20| started he actually invented like the next series that game but ya know he did like the next like three or four microscopes and he I think he made the most recent one which is like the with a
00:13:30| super resolution one and I he might have done the cryo-electron 1/2 which is less like a method of maybe not oh she's brought heartburn it's beautiful does it have coming off of it and just
00:13:51| like liquid nitrogen wafting in the background I feel like you're doing science that way it's the only way to do science really it's kind of we all agreed agree so did you know I have
00:14:05| actually a list of what's studied under microbiology and I don't know if it's right but this one was a little better than smaller than a microscope nothing which I thought was funny it was a
00:14:15| bacteria archaea viruses protozoa microscopic fungi and yeast and microscopic algae and I was like oh that's good ish is that like microbiology yeah yeah yeah okay the
00:14:30| only other thing that would fall kind of under there is that some people lump in what's called immunology so like because so Immunology meaning you systems yeah how your systems attack
00:14:46| bacteria and viruses that's one of those kind of weird ones where is it like is that human biology is that so yes that microbiology so it kind of just falls in the middle nobody likes it me know that
00:14:57| will bring up an interesting point later about um it's not called symbiosis anymore didn't I change the stupid name of it where cells work for each other and they aren't really related out
00:15:06| endosymbiont mm-hmm is that like say mitochondria help each other there you go oh you jumped ahead yes so I just want to isla back in case anyone at home is like I'm lost on this episode like I
00:15:20| hate these guys they talk them way too smart painting let's dumb it down small things folks microbes you know I'm saying small little things gonna mirror folks at you you're this so what we do
00:15:32| is we study it and there are a hell of a lot more microbes than us herbs me like that I create that term should use that I so like I I I saw a TED talk so you know it's true but on 10 trillion cells
00:15:51| make up the human body right it's a good estimate right run with it right I get you do you know how many microbes live in your body that's including bacteria probably immunization little cells
00:16:04| little all different sorts of stuff lives in your body it's not just your cells 100 trillion you're literally made up of more not you than you depending on what you consider you and not you but
00:16:17| like this stuff exists all over the world there's more bacteria than there is probably anything else is bacteria the number one oh okay oh good she's like ready actually the
00:16:30| thing you just said you just said was said like in every single microbiome talk I know we're gonna get into like what micro biomes are but basically like that's how every single scientists would
00:16:40| kick off like why people should give a shit about bacteria was that of like 10 to the X human cells versus 10 to the X +1 bacterial cells and it turned out that
00:16:53| this was some like weird science fact that came out of the back of an envelope they went back and checked it and they found out it's not that far off it's probably like a 1 to 1 well it's really
00:17:04| funny as they actually did the estimation and they were like it's gonna depend on when the last time you pooped majority of your bacteria are and so they're like that's gonna depend on what
00:17:16| you've been eating if you've had antibiotics but it is like it is true there's just an incredible number of bacteria it's important to remember that like bacterial cells are way smaller
00:17:26| than human cells so it's not like your body was like some sort of horrible sludge monster but you might be listening at home and we appreciate the regular folk question of like are there
00:17:47| more bacteria than anything we think that the most abundant thing is either viruses or the viruses that attack bacteria so yeah bacteria phages I I didn't even get into this but I read
00:18:02| that on one of the biggest Wars of all time is bacteria versus viruses and I like scary music and a big build-up and everything else but like think of it if there's more bacteria than anything else
00:18:12| and viruses like to infect things and there's a shit ton of them wouldn't there be more of them and more of them than anyone else that exists makes sense right yep
00:18:24| there you go just I don't know anything about very papyri by row by rye it's just virus right like it we're gonna run with it um I don't know much about a virus that attacks a bacteria is it
00:18:48| essentially the same that would attack ourselves or this it's it's own virus yeah it's it's totally its own virus so that they're called bacteria phage and they only attacked viruses it's similar
00:19:01| to two human viruses where there's specificity like virus that affects one bacteria won't affect infect another one for a whole bunch of different reasons
00:19:11| but yeah so we were talking about cryo-em like that's the kind of stuff where you can actually see bacteria phage like infecting bacteria and it's mind-blowing just forget and suck it on
00:19:23| the outside the shoes that that DNA in there are and excuse me Jesus Christ RNA in there am i right it depends it depends I think some have different ones and then replicating and bursting out
00:19:36| that cell it's like pornography for germs okay it's wild sonic what that would be just like the full cycle like that's like a whole pregnancy getting pregnant while having the baby just
00:19:56| burst and having so many babies burst that's that's hot yeah I'm sure it is if it isn't it is at the end of this episode so more bacteria more this so really the study of this stuff is pretty
00:20:15| damn important I would say anyone who gets a degree in it is guaranteed nine figures or should they in my honest including decimals that's not bad that's something yeah yeah would so there was
00:20:36| some where I was gonna go I was gonna hi my name is Colin poop that's awesome let's go so there's what bacterio therapy which is intended to reinforce bacteria into your body
00:20:50| yeah like probiotics but for your gut your colon or rectum so I'm like one of the sorry hand motions there's a hand motion I go a little bar sometimes so it's interesting that the human body it
00:21:04| can be affected by things like c-diff which is like like a really crippling disease or IBS which is a irritable bowel syndrome even like neuro neuro dizzy
00:21:14| like they have real quick what is IIb s like is it a disorder so it's your your body doesn't produce something at the right rate or it it has to crap too often I mean is that it's like the rap -
00:21:27| I'm too dizzy which one of my other office it's like a general LeMay ssin so like there's a bunch of stuff that links it to the microbiome that like having IBS having the symptoms of IBS which is
00:21:38| basically like your intestinal tract is really swollen and it's it's like usually diarrhea and stuff like that but yeah it's just a mess but it's linked to what's called dysbiosis so a good
00:21:53| microbiome if it gets shifted off track it's like it's it heard a dysbiosis has occurred so these things just to verify aren't a virus or a bacteria infection it's something entirely different
00:22:06| it's a non bio yeah so so like microbiome means like tiny biome right so you think about it like if a forest just dies it's probably unless there's a fire you know that it just ran through
00:22:22| all of it it's like it could have been anywhere in the food chain that things got messed up so with IBS it's like what was your body reacting which threw off the bacteria which threw on viruses or
00:22:32| like we're in this chain did it happen and that's really where a lot of this research is happening right now where it's like what is the interplay between human biology and bacteria if like you
00:22:43| said human biology is bacterial at the same time right yeah and the solution we're good with poop are you going back to poop yes I am so it's so humans take them to it
00:22:54| most of nain true possible when it's just like let's stick things in there one of the actual cures is that you take stool from a healthy person and do a fecal transplant into someone with IBS
00:23:06| or another disease and it works you because it really introduces the microbes or systems from a healthy individual in their poop and brings it to you yes is hey guys hang out here
00:23:19| how we gonna get there we do you find out the humans are the best they're gonna eat us nope we're going in hmm so that brings up so but like the gut flora can actually affect your
00:23:37| mental state so it does affect different I think it was like GABA do you know much about GABA do you want to talk about that oh no go for it it's like God do you want to say it I can hit it I had
00:23:50| to take 4 years ago I was yeah so GABA like an inhibitor and they think people that are serotonin related what is inhibit stuff so like the snare snap stuff that's like neuronal processing
00:24:08| that's based on like electrochemical impulses so like based on the terms there's gonna be electricity there's gonna be chemistry but basically it's the speed and the not resolution but the
00:24:23| sensitivity you have to those those impulses so yeah there's there's been links between like mental and emotional balance and your gut health I've actually heard this and um
00:24:37| the food you crave more of the food you crave obesity some other stuff like that right autism mm-hmm yeah I'm trying to think there's a couple others I read and I was like that's pretty important
00:24:48| there's some I mean there's all this like so the lab I used to work in they they did a study where they showed that like antipsychotics that people with schizophrenia would take there's one
00:24:59| that was given to kids which are really important right but kids were gaining like 30 pounds in the span of a couple months and that's a healthy boy that's a healthy boy yeah yeah going from 60 to
00:25:17| was had to do with microbiome shifts they still know exactly what's happening there but it's just it's all connected nobody knows so what I what I gathered from what you're talking about and from
00:25:27| what I studied for today was that um I studied for today no one knows how many months I prepped maybe I went to college both of you for a year and a half and study this for
00:25:37| this episode don't think I just looked everything up okay but essentially we treat diseases we treat bacterial infections and we try and find pharmaceuticals that um cure
00:25:52| these things but there are certain disorders that hang around like we mentioned was a Crohn's yeah certain there's no way we can fight obesity but are you saying they're finding new ways
00:26:04| in the microbiome Rome to kind of combat these things so maybe it's not a bacterial thing maybe well it's not a bacterial infection thing it's not a disease it's not a virus it's something
00:26:15| about how that gut flora makes us who we are and there's a way to change that maybe so you're saying so what you're saying that's I think that's where the money's going so that's what we're we're
00:26:27| trying to convince people right isn't it rather like relatively unknown to like people haven't studied this they don't really understand introducing certain aspects like different bacteria what is
00:26:38| gonna change how it's gonna affect the ecosystem it's kind of a crazy thing that we it's like how do you break that down into a experiment and do it on like a scale that affects all everybody like
00:26:51| I don't know that you can tell like probiotics is that's not that's sort of a science but I don't think they actually do what they say they're going to do Oh totally right so a study came
00:27:00| out two weeks ago I mean you said this is an arrant forever and a half so it's probably 200 weeks ago two weeks ago from now back in 2018 remember that shit show me here though no this study came
00:27:21| out where they took people and they gave him antibiotics to wipe out their their natural flora and half of them they gave probiotics just the stuff you get off the counter which by the way is usually
00:27:31| just lactobacillus sometimes they say like eighteen species of bacteria and you're like okay these are all almost exactly the same so they give them those and then the other half they didn't give
00:27:42| anything and they watched how fast those people got back to what was close to their baseline and not surprisingly the people who are taking a bunch of random bacteria that don't live in your gut
00:27:53| it took them a lot longer than the people who weren't taking probiotics to get back to their normal state so it wasn't a question of like if maybe if you're healthy taking a probiotic is
00:28:02| gonna help but that idea of you're taking antibiotics so take a probiotic it's something we've been saying it's not true at all here's here's a crazy question so let's say right now we're
00:28:13| running into the realm of aam interestingly enough and this fueled particulars almost pointing and saying getting antibiotics is bad which guy I don't disagree or agree with but I tend
00:28:24| to side on the we shouldn't screw with our you know our bodies we're trying to make whatever but but let's find out we we can introduce these microbes to people we can do this to people I can
00:28:35| make you skinnier I can give you this what if there's a side effect for doing this as well again we're screwing with genetics here I imagine down the road we're gonna find
00:28:44| something that says maybe it shouldn't do that little Jurassic Park thing here like finds away or whatever you want to call it is it do we get it do we run into an ethics thing here which probably
00:28:55| isn't present in your field right now right I mean it's coming out it's definitely a question it goes back to that question of like how far can we push ourselves past like what natural
00:29:07| selection is and the basic questions that people had you know tens of years ago when they were like should people be allowed to have classes at certain ages shouldn't you and people say it with
00:29:19| with allergies to I dated somebody for a long time and you know you you're much more sensitive to the kind of comments but people will make comments that are like well you know if a pants gonna kill
00:29:29| you it was it was bad those sort of funny he at least thought it was funny but but yeah I mean we're gonna be we're gonna get to a point where we're only able to survive if we can do all of
00:29:49| these weird manipulations or at least that's the fear so right yeah we don't know it's pretty weird there's a weird balance where we fear the hell out of something like everyone's gonna
00:29:59| genetically modify their bodies to be skinny and beautiful when in reality it probably won't happen there's a lot of things that step in the way but it if you could is it even is there moral
00:30:09| responsibility is there something there I don't know philosophical thing because anytime we try and change anything in nature which is by the way our nature we try to game out is that it you know
00:30:22| we're trying game ourselves there's there's always a blowback there's always a hit back there's always a something that happens so what I'm saying is take your degree and throw in the trash we're
00:30:33| not doing microbiota anymore I'm gonna let this stuff live okay but if there was some where I was going I really swear to god guys oh you guys know about cyanobacteria oh yeah is yours is yours
00:30:50| a cyanobacteria relative no let me go first this is really important actually um in high school I had to do a project on cyanobacteria and it was like my big project through the year you can
00:31:01| Gillespie you don't know buddy uh-huh this guy over here I research the shit these guys they're called blue-green algae are you gonna tell us no okay they're not algae don't make that
00:31:14| mistake folks that's just their name okay they were the only prokaryote capable of making oxygen ah Dan is on top of that they make ups how much how do they understand of the world supply
00:31:27| of oxygen I thought it was like 55 but yeah somewhere in between this so it's gonna judge yeah she's like no that's fine I mean to be honest you could probably find both figures that's
00:31:41| actually I'm saying but anyway they made their um older photos that has photosynthesis happens in their thigh colloid membrane which is unlike I believe any other bacteria I'm pushing
00:31:59| the limits of my knowledge here and but they think that somewhere back way back that they had the one of the original ndo symbiotic relationships you call it symbiotic if your simple at home but we
00:32:16| call it endosymbiotic I'm not sure why I just know we've changed so what they've eaten or shared is something that lives yeah they were essentially making oxygen it's like the
00:32:27| beginnings of like how plants started making oxygen they think possibly no one knows for sure but it's an organism that lives within the body or cells of another organism I would say with
00:32:37| mutualistic relationships hell yeah so say end to end endosymbiotic folks at home don't say symbiotic you sounds simple depends there are symbiosis that are not endo oh holy crap
00:32:54| another country heard from what's the difference I'm like trying to whisper so you told me and not the audience guys you can talk and know just means inside of so
00:33:06| it's a symbiosis where one is inside of the other but there's a whole bunch of different symbiosis there's Iannetta peas clownfish clownfish and cien enemies moseyin
00:33:16| enemies and clownfish right repeat and different orders are every symbiosis Disney doesn't movie but while finding the email that was a pretty good one right so we covered them all right there
00:33:35| so I thought you could kind of segue here as to your favorite bacteria that hangs out in plant roots or something mm-hmm yeah so there's I think and I think
00:33:50| we're gonna talk about nitrogen stuff later but yeah so I same way that we know that the bacteria and stuff that live in humans are really important especially we talked about the bacteria
00:34:02| that live in the gut and that's really important because it keeps us healthy it helps us to digest food and take up nutrients and the important things about plants are that they also actually have
00:34:13| to take up nutrients they make their own carbon or they fix their own carbon using photosynthesis but they take up nutrients and they also can get diseases they can also get infected by things
00:34:22| they have to fight off different stuff one of the things that helps them is also bacteria but they don't have a gut they instead have roots and so I study the bacteria on the plant
00:34:34| which really affects the health of the plant overall oh I don't know if I have a staple I have a favorite bacteria but I'm biased because it's like the main one that our lab studies it's called
00:34:44| bacillus subtlest and so you everyone's heard of e.coli it's sort of like e.coli is friend I don't know like cousin no microbiology they're not even like that related so e.coli is the gram-negative
00:35:08| model organism there's like two classes of bacteria gram-positive and gram-negative and so e coli is gram-negative everyone if they're gonna do gram-negative stuff you start with
00:35:20| you coli because it's easiest if you're gonna do gram positive stuff you start with bacillus Ellis because it's like we know the most about it so that's my favorite lives in the soil it's
00:35:29| everywhere you could go out like doesn't matter where you are you go outside and get some soil you can probably find bacillus Dedalus or at least some bacillus in there but it also sticks to
00:35:38| plant roots and can help them to grow bigger this is you could find it anywhere I mean there's certain things like what endo lists and then see there's another term but they were like
00:35:49| inside every rock like if you break open a rock anywhere on earth you're gonna find these organisms living there so they've been here longer than us obviously and then you literally can't
00:36:00| escape them yeah yeah it's it's pretty bizarre it's I mean there's tons of people doing stuff of like how how often do these things travel around is it just that you have a population that is in
00:36:15| one place and it they're actually traveling a lot so you know cuz they're gonna be moved around by water air thanks to us or just naturally they would storms water or all that stuff you
00:36:27| said but I feel like we move more of them now is that oh yeah definitely definitely we definitely move we we move them further right because you're not gonna really get a bacteria that's gonna
00:36:39| go from from Europe to you know the middle of Kansas so unless you have an airplane okay well we we have airplanes now by the way did you do that yeah we started in we
00:36:53| don't have that felony yet I mean we invented them it's a good catch by you Kitty Hawk North Carolina if you guys are ever gone just check it out man the Wright brothers great next segue
00:37:09| sorry go back to where we were so saving that's like an adverse aim of the planet right advertising and we just did an ad all right yeah Wright brothers Wright brothers Museum brought to you by the
00:37:23| unpin d'oeuvres coupon code unpinned or get 5% off your ticket to checkout Wright brothers museum today and an extra hour for 10% by the way don't do it for real because they didn't pay us
00:37:40| anything but if they do pass I'm just saying 5% off would be pretty cool mmm what's 5 percent 5 bucks so you save the plan gonna give you a full 5% off the review the 1% that make sense
00:38:05| I apologize just showing our star power here yeah as I can so saving the planet I guess that's your goal right for improving the yield on and plants making them grow faster
00:38:24| I assume or better or not perish right healthier yeah yeah so yeah that's the idea is that we can use these instead of using agrochemicals so we can use them as kind of like beneficial agents in the
00:38:41| field and so instead of one thing that's important to think about we talked about antibiotics at the start we're in the middle somewhere that it's important remember that antibiotics are made by
00:38:51| microbes almost across the board battle yeah yeah it's all these interactions it's like the superfast awesome signalling and warfare between them and it's just that we realized oh
00:39:06| if we grow a ton of this and then take all that certain chemical we can kill other microbes with it so the idea is that instead of taking the microbe out of the soil figuring out which chemical
00:39:17| it is and synthesizing a bunch of that chemical maybe we could just take the microbes and put them back into the soil where we want them and then they can be their own little antibiotic factories
00:39:26| they can take care of the plant we just put them in there we don't worry about it and yeah more natural so that's actually kind of true in some cases but the problem is is that this works
00:39:39| it's totally variable across different soils different fields it works really well in greenhouses but not nearly as well outside and we think that that is because the bacteria that we want to
00:39:50| grow with the plant is also interacting with the other bacteria that are living in the soil already my project comes in is like how does our good bacteria get along with other soil members so are you
00:40:04| hoping it works for almost every plant and how much better would it be how many plants would it save well I mean the the biggest loss of crop productivity is due to like light sand and Wilson things
00:40:23| like so fungus is one of the biggest reasons that we are not reaching food demands you know as we all sold bananas we got it okay yeah bananas are so sad coffee
00:40:35| coffee's having a rough time is it like bananas grow out of a rhizome so they're all interconnected and once it gets fungus in there boy it kills like an entire segment of banana plants it's
00:40:45| essentially like calling swine or like pigs are there swine flu but net are bananas ripening faster nowadays there's other thing that's where they are we buy like six or eight or whatever and
00:40:59| they're like three days later they're starting to be do you think that's a genetic overripe genetic they release ethylene and the more ethylene there is they ripen faster I'm not don't collate
00:41:09| your own science me okay I'm just told what the others - yes one above the door for good luck and you don't want the bedroom for good luck and then one on each corner of my house okay
00:41:24| so okay she needs like they send his ripen faster anyway hmm ami nevermind my apologize so this is how they thought maybe there was some to it this kind of like when you were a kid
00:41:37| your parents threw away the bananas that were right replace them with a slightly less ripe bananas to make it they're always right it's possible yes thanks mom and dad shadow did you ever see this
00:42:02| so this came out yep not bananas but like the the root bacteria came up in our extinction one is that you said back into our previous episode that was if we lost the bacteria that are exchanging
00:42:16| nitrogen our soil and we we essentially die it also comes up for like the yields on plants because the limit of the number of people on the planet is actually
00:42:26| somewhere around like 10 billion and we're at like 7 point 7 billion which is like why did they say 10 billion because of the nitrogen content they need I don't know if it's the nitrogen content
00:42:35| or like the arable earth like the amount you can note of physical space with resources including I guess water is probably a big issue - yeah well wood or whatever I mean we're not gonna argue so
00:42:50| that number like 10 billion that's we're gonna hit 10 billion and about you know you see 30 years in 2050 yeah we are folks as a smartwatch I still wear it so Suzanna might actually be saving the
00:43:04| planet by actually increasing yields your planet you're saving your your micro biomes think of how many bacteria you are you're keeping there are fit people better in their biomes just out
00:43:21| of curiosity kind of there's a correlation between its it's tricky because it seems to be more like diet really and so you're gonna have a more balanced
00:43:30| like microbiome if you're eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and lots of fiber and things like that but like that's also people who work out and do like grow there's not like a lot of
00:43:42| people who like run to McDonald's what you're saying is six-packs are made in the kitchen okay that's your phrase in the gym come on folks you all know that it's funny
00:43:56| because I also wonder how much of these results that we see are the result of correlation versus causation I mean someone who is better fit who is leads a healthier lifestyle we come off
00:44:08| a different fecal microbiome than someone who isn't so are we seeing one versus the other sometimes is it hard to tell I don't know that's just something that came up when I was watching these
00:44:18| things yeah yeah no I there okay so you talked about fecal transplants and they've done stuff in mice and they've done a little bit in people but it's all do they use a q-tip nevermind no well I
00:44:38| mean to put them into the mouse I think it's usually a collage so it's like liquidy and just like it's just like a enema but the opposite would say they want to gallop what's not a bunch gavage
00:44:51| yeah like a liquid you syringe them key word gavage okay yeah so in mice what's really cool is that you can take you can take mice this is one of the big like groundbreaking studies you can take mice
00:45:18| and you can feed them to different cows you can feed them it's the funniest labels for it they can be like on the healthy Chow or they can be on the Western diet Chow so they can either get
00:45:30| like lots of fiber and protein or you can be like you only get fat and carbs so yeah exactly and not surprisingly the de mice that are eating the Western diet are getting really fat but like that's
00:45:47| not surprising what was really interesting is that they could take a new Mouse and put it in there and then they would they would take the fecal matter they take the poop from these
00:45:58| different mice and if they took a new Mouse and gave it the healthy diet it would be fine but if they took a new Mouse and gave it the poop from the mouse eating the Western diet the poop
00:46:11| was enough to cause that mouse to gain weight so there was something about the microbiome shift so so they ate the same the better food but they still were gaining weight even with bad mouse poop
00:46:22| yep yeah so if you took new mice and gave them the poop from the up their mice the ones who got the poop from the fat Mouse also got fat have you ever said poop and mouse that many times in a
00:46:33| row I don't maybe on a date I have no idea don't really bring up the like microbiology part right that hard because usually people are like oh no well versed uh individuals in the field
00:46:53| because it's mostly women now anyway that's what I think yo can I ask you guys this is a real question so when I was getting back into bio this past four months getting ready
00:47:16| I came across that carbon is our building block I know we're going to get too much into it all that and all this my favorite thing is space I love space I just want to do a space aside here in
00:47:28| your professional opinion could we have life on another planet that is in carbon-based and doesn't use water water yes yes is it possible I think so I mean I ask you is because sorry if you want
00:47:45| to get into I don't know if you do anything about the archaea bacteria but there's like the extremophiles they like can feast on nitrogen and like ammonia they yeah they eat weird things and they
00:47:56| survive but I feel like is that an outlier could you make complex light from these systems I mean there's like so archaea are still common are still carbon-based they get sometimes get
00:48:09| their energy from different things but like still limit I think the majority of their mass is usually I just yeah I don't know much about that's how you know it's like I know that they they
00:48:23| still are off the same you know amino acids and the same DNA and things like that which are a lot of carbon it's more nitrogen but versus some of the stuff that we're made out of but they're still
00:48:34| like fixing sugars and things like that so but archaea are super common we just don't think about them because they don't cause disease and so we don't study them but they're all over the
00:48:45| place like literally all over the place highest mountains deep deep sea in the super thermal vents like Yellowstone those big vats of like acid that come out of the ground which is horrifying
00:48:59| but there's there's archaea in there as well um so but in terms of could could there be life that's totally not carbon-based I think so I think our definition of life would have to be
00:49:08| different um and so I mean that's actually a big question of when when you've got you know the rover's going out and different people even just checking the chemical
00:49:19| composition of things coming off of planets and things like that we're saying oh we don't see carbon or we don't see water and we just might have to narrow up a definition of what
00:49:29| life is because currently we don't consider viruses alive right so I I think it's possible methane-based and like and also if we go methane or nitrogen or whatever base life forms we
00:49:42| also change our our scope of where we're looking because it changes a temperature I mean a temperature gradient for nitrogen is different than gonna be for carbon-based products they don't need
00:49:51| water so now we're looking in a different range from the star it all changes with that and I think that's really cool and I think I'm gonna change my job and start studying extremophiles
00:50:01| because I want to find aliens if anyone's gonna understand in aliens it's the people who understand how the weirdest bacteria we have evolved and live just real quick the only caveat to
00:50:13| what I just said is are we assuming that life operates the same and involves the same and like with it would evolution preclude no matter where life evolves it has to right or does it we're getting
00:50:29| cheap as hell and I had a couple drinks but I'm just saying let's rephrase that one all right so what we understand when we watch bacteria they change they um they replicate but different things
00:50:41| involved they change um they can adapt to their surroundings if we found life on another planet entirely different than our version of life would it to have to adapt would it to have to change
00:50:54| or is there such a thing as life on Neptune or some some planet that looks like Neptune that's nitrogen based or ammonia based but it it's life that isn't anything like we've seen and it
00:51:06| doesn't change is that possible it's just the same like the me the same but it's gonna adapt and change based on where it is because of its environment no no what if it didn't I mean yeah I
00:51:19| guess so is that not life then yeah damn shut down why would that can change you're done I mean I I like what you're going with the idea of like is there life that does not adhere to natural
00:51:33| selection yeah because that's that's been a big question of and that was actually a big question like I don't know 25 years ago and microbiology is whether
00:51:43| not microbes follow the same rules as bigger organisms in terms of natural selection because they don't have to mate they don't they can change their DNA very quickly and they can actually
00:51:54| change their DNA in response to something so is this idea of like Darwin had the idea of yeah natural selection versus Lamarck had the idea that you know giraffes had their long neck
00:52:08| because the ones who stretched out their neck had more babies and then those were able to stretch your neck longer and Darwin was like no the ones who already had longer necks we kept those and there
00:52:20| are some really cool papers that looked into that so as far as we can tell bacteria also follow natural selection I think the same rules are applying to our key but I mean I don't know I I think I
00:52:33| think viruses still would technically fall in there just in terms of mutation occurs before they're chosen but yeah that's that's when the biggest tenets of life is that they have to adapt they
00:52:45| have to reproduce okay mm-hm so what are like bacteria that are resistant to certain antibiotics how do they change is it just random also yeah yeah so it's um it's just it's errors so
00:53:02| every time a cell look there's a certain replication error rate and so bacteria have like 4,000 genes it totally depends on the bacteria like e-coli right it's gonna have like 4,000 genes and so every
00:53:20| time you call I replicates it's gonna have like 10 to 20 errors just that happen and most of the time that's gonna happen in somewhere that doesn't matter it just doesn't who cares there's so
00:53:31| many bases but it could happen somewhere that changes something it could change the amount of a certain protein that's made and if that happens to be beneficial in that specific environment
00:53:43| that bacteria and its progeny are gonna do better than its neighbors and so very quickly your population is gonna be totally taken over and all of a sudden we're used to have one like code for all
00:53:56| of your bacteria have to and eventually your own gonna have one again but it's gonna be a new code and so your life that's living in your microbiome in that case of that
00:54:06| bacteria is going to be different and so that's that's why bacteria are that's why I think they're so cool to study they're super fast and that is why you know there's this kind of arms race
00:54:17| between humans and bacteria that like what we can do what we can change like you're saying like gaming your life we're just like barely keeping up with bacteria and not not very well superbugs
00:54:33| do you think what we're doing addicts and like cattle here we go we pump antibiotics into our food because we want it to survive isn't that a terrible practice I won't
00:54:44| that lead to like the most damaging super bug ever I mean that seems like it's a dumbass that's a dumb idea not to not to charge it in any way how do you feel yeah yeah I know there's a bunch of
00:55:03| new stuff that's coming out that's like just any when we're using a ton of antibiotics it's just not good like my opinion my personal opinion is that we should use antibiotics as the last
00:55:19| option I think I mean they're great we should definitely have them I don't agree with people who say like just never use them if you're gonna die you're gonna die I'm like no you should
00:55:29| we don't need like five-year-olds dying of strep throat that's like just silly but we also have you Stuckey Oh Beck you drop a deuce was that sorry I was naming the strep throat virus but then I
00:55:42| bacteria and then I forgot it so you both you both stopped and you're like what was it and I was like I started saying it to be smart and then I forgot it back eyo Stuckey oh it's
00:55:54| streptococcus but I can't remember oh yeah ray streptococcus well no mine yeah anyway yeah where's your damn silent you know they're mine yeah I can't sir mine's separate
00:56:06| colleges new money is that the one okay Manya is okay yeah Streptococcus pneumoniae so I was wondering but it's also the one that causes yes other things has a variety of
00:56:19| them though yeah there's a pneumococcal ones too and then we call there you go that's my boy yeah are antibiotics good or bad I don't think we should use them to make our chickens bigger what's funny
00:56:41| is that it's not only yeah yeah I mean it to be fair if we could do that for people like everyone would be just taking antibiotics all the time myself included but like as a biologist real
00:56:52| quick because I have a lot of customers people I see every day who are like yeah the antibiotics and our chicken or make our daughter's breasts bigger and I'm like it's true but I don't have the
00:57:02| signs behind it is there it's bullshit right yeah well I'm just like horrified at where your customers are like so glad I don't work people humans are terrible but yeah no I know you're trying I know
00:57:14| you're trying to save them but they're all for no I mean but no so there could be something there could totally because it could change your hormones oh yes oh yeah well the thing is is that we use
00:57:26| antibiotics we use these crazy high antibiotics in feeding our our livestock but it's actually if you look at it some of it it started out because they were like we've got bacterial infections
00:57:37| running through because we've got all these animals like crammed in a box but there's a new range giving them a bunch of antibiotics makes them bigger that's one of the things that feeds this idea
00:57:48| that it could be a shift in the microbiome that's causing them to get bigger is that an obesity thing I think kind ID yeah they've they have found that people
00:57:57| are if you take antibiotics if your if your microbiome is screwed up you're a little bit more likely to gain weight so but yeah something something weird is happening so I don't know if it actually
00:58:09| so my customers are right god damn it unless they're eating the chicken like non-stop like a that's like four four meals a day yeah that's most of their daughters yeah from from birth or and
00:58:25| today and he's like what they're doing their breasts I'm like sir I can't look again I would just believe you and take your word for it under your eight-year-old daughters Yeah right to
00:58:47| shift a little bit really conversation I'm really sorry good so I guess I guess the area I want to go into is like scientific ignorance is that the general population doesn't really know any of
00:58:58| this like I would say it's probably like what 90% of people have no clue what's going on whatsoever and I think it's getting worse she's excited oh my god she's about the go ahead and take off go
00:59:11| on alright yeah cuz like what I really want to get into is science communication and what you're talking about is really interesting because it's what a lot of scientists go off of is
00:59:23| this it's called the deficit model of Education so it's this idea that the majority of your population don't know what you're going to tell them and it actually turns out that if you go off
00:59:33| that model it's really hard to get through to people because it's not that they don't have information they have the wrong information so like most of the outreach now is focused on avoiding
00:59:46| that deficit model and going more towards like this misinformation model so the majority of people know something but it's the wrong horribly wrong just not horribly wrong yes okay if you come
00:59:59| in and you're like you don't know anything they're like oh but I do so you have to come and be like what do you know and they'll tell you stuff you're like how do you know that I mean
01:00:09| like does that make sense and eventually getting there but yeah the idea of like scientific illiteracy and I think that that is the biggest thing is that you know a lot of the things that people
01:00:20| think that don't make sense you could fit like eat those people could figure it out if they were given the tools to like feel comfortable using logic I think our school systems really scare
01:00:33| people from thinking too hard because if you're wrong it's a problem and the thing with logic is you have to hit like every single wrong answer before you get to the right one and so yeah a lot of
01:00:46| people are really good at just like picking up information and being comfortable with it because it's much better than then not having the answer but that's yeah that's where you get
01:00:57| these answers where you're like that doesn't even make sense yeah it's being afraid of failure like if you're gonna actually build and design something you're gonna fail a whole bunch before
01:01:06| you get to the final solution and that's acceptable and most people are probably not comfortable with failing that much and actually succeeding in the fit and the finished product yeah no definitely
01:01:17| definitely not so yeah so you brought up science literacy you know sorry like people come in and they're like granite is stain proof and I'm like it's not stain proof and then I'm like quartz
01:01:29| it's made of metal and I'm like well there's no metal in quartz man let me really break it down for you and then they're like can I have granite and I'm like it's you're thinking of marble what
01:01:38| you're talking about right there is marble anyway I just wanted to let you know misinformation is the number one problem in our industry people come in they think they know everything and yet
01:01:48| they don't and this applies to science in some ways so scientists are also probably not the best communicators I took that up yeah so yeah so I've dealt with a lot of scientists and they never
01:02:05| summarized things in a way that people can digest it's always here's a lot of data and they're not gonna pick things out and say this is what I think because that's kind of against what they're told
01:02:15| to do they're just yeah to present the data and then collect data yeah unless there's like a very definitive route they're not gonna tell you that it's one
01:02:23| way or the other yeah yeah that's a that's a real thing yes that's for sure an issue I mean even when I've been talking you know so I'm like oh there's a study they're like who gives a shit
01:02:34| like it doesn't mean anything if I say there's a study it just like you just say this is what we know yeah I think it makes it's a mark of a good scientist to
01:02:44| be able to back up their facts and when I give a lecture to my lab group that's what they're asking for there they don't care about what my opinion is even though whatever I'm telling them is
01:02:55| my opinion I haven't read every single piece of literature but in terms of that idea of summarizing the way I usually tell people because I do get to train so part of my outreach is I train other
01:03:07| scientists to communicate their science and it's really it's really interesting I do it through the local planetarium Moorhead planetarium it's where the Apollo astronauts trained but usually
01:03:23| the analogy I go with is like if you went into your auto mechanic I don't know anything about cars and so it's a terrible analogy for me but like if I go in and I'm like there's something
01:03:32| happening I think it's the transmission because my friend told me it's probably transmission but I think it's the transmission and they check it out I want them to be able to speak to my
01:03:41| level I don't want them to do the scientific thing of sit me down and try to explain what combustion is and give me the entire history of automobiles but I also don't want them to talk to me
01:03:52| like I'm a dumbass I don't want them to be like so your car goes vroom because you put in the spicy liquid and you're like spicy liquid liquid so I think that's what scientists need to do better
01:04:09| is realize that they don't have to pick one extreme they don't have to teach somebody every single thing that there is to know about their topic to get across the right level of information
01:04:19| but really what scientists need to do better is ask what someone's background is you know my auto mechanic should say you know like how much do you know about cars so they should add they should be
01:04:27| like so drivetrain and if I'm like I have never driven a train they should know to lower it back down scientists should be able to say like hey you know like when I say sell what do you think
01:04:40| of and if something like I work with fifth graders and they're like red blood cells are dead because their nuclei has gone and you're like okay okay so you can never assess it but like
01:04:53| that's what scientists need to get way better at just asking well what do you know about this thing and then talking at that level this is a huge problem in the medical field as well doctors and
01:05:05| like whoever when they go to tell you a diagnosis or explain something to someone or parents of a child needs a surgery there's no go-between there's no well he has a circle a bla bla bla bla
01:05:17| bla and a femoral artery number 7 number like he got boo-boo we all cut him open and you're like no so I think I think any specialized industry runs into this problem and not to undercut the whole
01:05:37| conversation but the whole problem is capitalism if you can make more money making someone feel stupid people probably will do it if you can make more money keeping your secrets hidden you
01:05:49| will probably do it if you can make more money the sentence seems to come up a lot but it is what it is money's super important yeah well you know with your job I mean I'm sure that sometimes you
01:06:01| get people in there that know exactly what they're doing and you're not gonna try to like bullshit them but if somebody comes in they're like I really want this thing and you're like whatever
01:06:08| I'm gonna give it the most hate you you're a jerk right right no it's all about communication it's a language you use and that happens on all levels and all jobs in all places so how do you -
01:06:23| like it's you come from different backgrounds sort of like you do like to me now we went to high school together okay so at least I don't like some of the same vernacular like what you know
01:06:34| if you her and stuff like that I wouldn't body-checked me into a locker and then I hated him for a little while and then we're best friends like a week story our meet-cute this is
01:06:44| our me q hi so the I guess the part I wanted to weigh on is that I think Susannah is a like an outlier like a person like you does not exist normally in nature
01:06:59| so are you an outlier do you think you're not wire yeah yeah it's kind of accept yeah you are people and so and I'm like yeah I think everybody in science used to be a nerd like everybody
01:07:16| we're like we still are and it's really awesome because you Freddie now it's different now but I'm not gonna get into that yeah yeah but like yeah but we were all the kid who got like
01:07:25| pushing do lockers so like I at least have that in common with everyone know it is it's it's it's weird and it's also something that's not it's not been valued in science it's getting better
01:07:41| now but it used to be like it was just seen as a huge waste of time to try to communicate to the public it was like why bother with that they're not gonna care they're not gonna understand get
01:07:51| back in the lab and so it's just now at a point where it's getting valued and I think that I am an outlier right now but I do think that that's gonna be changing help oh my god I hope I guess
01:08:01| my question to you is why do you think you are the way you are you why do you think your social you well-spoken have sailing microbes yeah it's all my friends Laura not nothing
01:08:12| else and then you're also going for your PhD which is extremely rare yeah yeah I think a lot of it is just privileged to be honest I think yeah I grew up in Iowa in a very safe suburb my parents both
01:08:32| went to college my dad was as well sales what no my dad he he was accused to be a salesperson but then when I was in middle school he became a high school biology teacher and so he was even when
01:08:53| he wasn't that he was always really excited about science and so I had this like huge dual opportunity where I was in a really supportive environment my parents really got me engaged in the
01:09:04| sciences in school I was like horribly socially awkward and so I like read books constantly which turns out to be nice as an adult and and yeah I was just like really
01:09:17| encouraged to always ask questions so I think that that's that's a really big piece of it as far as being well-spoken that's actually because of the social anxiety I used to be like it used to be
01:09:29| a really big problem and so I had to go to a bunch of different classes and actually like pushed it way far the other way so that's why I'm a scientist but I also don't mind public speaking it
01:09:39| doesn't freak me out interesting sounds like someone else's this podcast yeah well not me we've well surprisingly when we've done this podcast we found out I found out
01:09:47| that Nick is actually shyer than I ever thought he's more afraid of the things that took me a while to come around so there's an element of me that has become more socially aware and more outgoing
01:09:59| through this process and I'm curious like what pushed you to get more socially out there because you have a lot of information about you out there through Instagram and Twitter and she's
01:10:10| freaking out and and also like the talks that you you've given like they're out there too so there's like probably like four or five videos of you talking about whatever subject yeah whole bunch is can
01:10:21| i interject I saw a video and I was like oh let's see what she talks like I didn't know if you had an accent I didn't know anything and it was like a video where you were injecting a serum
01:10:29| to excite a bacteria and I was like let's see what's going on and that was it it was like 30 seconds long no no that was like literally I had to make a I had to make a youtube channel for some
01:10:49| older it was a holder that was not old it was just like older I was like I didn't assume you're older back then I'm works jump back yeah no I didn't do anything with that yeah I so because of
01:11:11| the outrage stuff I do I thought about getting involved in science outreach online kind of by myself and I mean as you two have probably figured out there's just like a lot of work that
01:11:21| goes into doing everything yes yeah yeah I mean you have been actually like you've both done your research on this topic so that's or at least you know you can
01:11:33| fake it really well yes PhD bullshitters thank you yeah yeah yeah no but like that's the thing is I started you see this stuff online you're like ah whatever they just pop on they
01:11:47| talk about some stuff and they're done and it's way more work so that's why I started doing I started doing more collaborative stuff so I find other people who want to chat with me or who
01:11:58| like the video editing or they like other parts I really like Instagram it's a really easy medium for me so something that I was doing anyway it's there's some pretty basic rules of like what is
01:12:11| gonna get looked at what's gonna get engagement and it's also a hell lot safer than Twitter Twitter like Twitter is gonna be why I get fired I don't know why exactly the same same yeah you know
01:12:26| how my employers don't find us yeah people are super super nice I'm more open online than I am an actual like human version but they're all version here there's a safer to show
01:12:40| your range when you say online I guess because like you're at the sort of an ominous I'm not good Danny and your can never say that word they can they live together no we doesn't sting them with
01:12:54| his tentacles it's perfect he loves his son yeah the PhD stops you in funded but so yes there I think you can't you can kind of choose which piece of yourself you want to put out at a time right
01:13:16| where he that she's doing this cuz like the range of I was gonna follow her on Twitter but I feel like my Twitter is like really depressing or dark or mean or whatever but that's where I bent a
01:13:26| lot so I'm yeah I'm gonna anger but anyway you could you could decide to be whoever you want to be some of us are a little rough around the edges than others yeah I've always wanted to do I
01:13:36| always wanted fake twitter account I don't have one and I've always wanted to make one America is it up though I will totally like beyond my rock your address and the
01:13:50| name of someone you know and be like I hope this person gets shot by a bow and out haha and then in parentheses not killed just shot yeah no I mean I don't know the
01:14:05| most annoying part to me about being recognized in some avenues like that like it's it's so useful in a lot of ways that I've gotten a lot of opportunities from doing this stuff that
01:14:16| I've never would have before but my biggest annoyance is that now when someone's a jerk online I can't just be like well I hope you go die because it's a little mental health champion but yeah
01:14:35| you have mental health human touch on anything mental healthy tackle toys wrap up you have any tattoos yeah I'm good - wait what do you have better not be the one I was thinking of okay cool so oh
01:14:52| what's yo yo I just sold the white part inside another sunrise other side there you go there you go I never saw yellow huh yeah so it's it's white and yeah it's if I get tanner it like ends up
01:15:09| being so I don't know did you see the Monty video then I don't know well that's that's a go man weird is that when someone says they've they've watched your video and they talk about
01:15:26| it I don't remember that at all pretty much like I got that stage and I was like oh she's good just happened it was good how many people are you doing in front what how many people would you do
01:15:38| it in front I'm serious it was about 350 I'm a little afraid of public speaking but I do a podcast that the world can see but anyway it's alright if you're like oh it's because there
01:15:51| their life it's like we're right in front of you coughing and sneezing and ignoring you yeah I feel like the cut-offs are like two people six people 12 people 80
01:16:02| people 180 people over 300 and then from there there's probably like a thousand and then I don't know but yeah yeah yeah so that was probably that was that was pretty intimidating but what was
01:16:18| actually scarier is that I knew that they were gonna be videotaping it and oh yeah and I don't mess with you forever would you ever touch your hair like this would you go like this would your hair
01:16:32| yeah no I so there were two really scary parts of that one was like knowing that that was gonna be videotaped and so it was like oh this is like you know even if I bomb in front these people like
01:16:46| that's there's gonna be record of this but the other weirder part was the coming off the stage so that oh my god my dogs are just like sneezing everywhere they're my whole life of the
01:16:59| best so that was there's a local storytelling group it's called the Monty and Jeff polish runs it he's actually he has a PhD in biochemistry but he just does like storytelling and all this like
01:17:11| really cool different stuff so you can get him you can get a PhD and then you'd not use it at all and there's no money there's no money there anyway I gotcha definitely not so he he helps people
01:17:24| take their real-life stories and turn them into some like spoken story and it's 12 minutes long and it's there you know how to have any props or any notes or anything like that and the story that
01:17:36| I ended up going with was it was really terrifying too because I had started this thing that's called the ph depression and it's era instagram is just a way to show an image right
01:17:51| Instagram you just see these pictures you're like oh my god they're happy and you click on it it's always a story of like I went to the beach and was amazing and I wanted to highlight this idea that
01:18:02| especially in academia we show a really like pleasant happy face and there's a lot of this really like ugly darkness in there and a paper came out earlier this year that showed
01:18:14| that about 40% of graduate students are currently dealing with either anxiety or depression and like that's pretty high like the average adults population is more like six to ten so but 40% super
01:18:30| high thing is is that I deal with depression and I felt super alone I had a really hard time a couple years ago and so I started this group the peach depression on Instagram it's since grown
01:18:41| and that's really where the social media thing has been coming from but I knew this person at the Monte Jeff Polish and and he was like hey if anyone in your group would ever want to give a talk and
01:18:54| I had told people that I had depression before or like through this social media thing and some people who knew me knew about it but I hadn't really ever told them the full story of why it all came
01:19:06| out and so the story I told the Monte was basically that it was about just like about two and a half years ago now I was having a hard time a little bit anyway but I failed this really
01:19:19| important exam and it totally threw me for a loop and it just sort of doubled down on this imposter syndrome of like I don't know I'm doing I shouldn't be here I stuck and really ended up in a really
01:19:32| dark place and the the Monti video was it ended up with me talking about how I don't know how much like y'all talked about on this podcast but what what topic what depression oh yeah depression
01:19:50| oh no so you know I got to the point where I was just in a really a really bad spot and I ended up going and getting a permit for a handgun but part one of my rules was before I actually
01:20:12| could buy the gun I would get a tattoo because of something I just would never ever do the handgun would stop you from the other yeah yeah yeah so I got the I got the permit
01:20:20| but I was like I mean that actually go buy anything until I get a tattoo and I guess I got this tattoo which is why he's referencing and that was an ever younger right you're like high school
01:20:31| yeah well so the idea for that tattoo came through college it came from some stupid reference online but it was like I had another rough time in college and you know the takeaway is like I had had
01:20:46| mental health issues all the way through it's just like it kept popping up and so in college I had this phrase that was another sunrise another new beginning but it was the idea of like okay
01:20:58| tomorrow would be better but was also that idea of there this darkness will be gone eventually and so it's a reminder to like okay wait until the next sunrise and so what I ended up getting was this
01:21:10| tattoo where the Sun is is pretty obvious if you get anywhere close to me you can see those little black Sun you see that I have a tattoo but it's actually I have to let you in and to
01:21:20| show you you know the real meaning behind the tattoo and what it means yeah so I got this tattoo and I had to wait until it healed so I can see it and by that point I had come through closer to
01:21:33| the other side of that period of depression and so I spent about another year kind of just dealing with it and it was after that year that this paper came out and I was like I wish that I knew
01:21:45| what this was so common last year and so that's why I started the pH depression is like I wish that the pH depression had existed a year before when I really needed it so it's been cool the the
01:21:58| response has been amazing there's a bunch of bummed out people out there so it's things in school do you own five handguns by now or yeah different days twos and handguns no no I don't never
01:22:16| got the never got the hand going because I don't think it was very long but but yeah so it's been interesting what did you talk about on your depression episode I mean I'll just watch it okay
01:22:28| we won't get too crazy but um I'm dealing with depression right now we're not gonna get into a real big because it's me and I'm one of the members of the episode and it's we haven't really
01:22:37| discussed my personal life a hundred percent because it's still ongoing but anyway uh I just thought up a new tattoo week ago want you guys to see it I haven't gotten it it's supposed to say
01:22:53| is like 10 to the 80 file or hydrogen is that the Sun entity no no it's not 10 to the 80th power hydrogen they surmise that based on the current rate of expansion in the universe and all the
01:23:05| stuff that's going on in it that the observable universe and everything we know is made up of 10 to the 80th molecules of hydrogen and no one else I know has this tattoo and it makes me
01:23:16| think of the universe literally the entire universe is so huge it's literally a number we can't even serve on your forearm Mike but if I could put it on my forearm it's almost like a
01:23:28| drama we have all the crazy stuff I have all the times I might think really dark thoughts or be so overwhelmed I can't breathe or you feel like you're drowning or you just want to sleep forever or you
01:23:40| just want to eat everything or you just want to drink yep you can happy perform and say hey look it's the only 10 to the hydrogen don't break it down folks 10 does the 80
01:23:53| if there's a huge number but anyway I'm thinking of getting it I haven't decided fully yet but it's it's funny you said that I just thought this up out of the other night
01:24:02| and I'm I'm feeling much better but I think that's a really cool website and when this podcast is over I will check that out it's it's going pretty well so yeah you can check it out on Instagram
01:24:13| it's like and Twitter it's at pH underscored the underscore oppression that's what that's what happens when you've got like a motherfucker that's doing branding underscore impression
01:24:24| that's cool yeah it's uh it's gone very well and I hope you get the tattoo because it's it's been helpful to me because I think that was what it was
01:24:34| the acceptance part for me was like this isn't ever really gonna be over like there's gonna be it's not just like being like hey there's a dark period less like look towards a little delight
01:24:44| it's like okay there there's probably me another dark period like act yeah it's cool to have other people in a connection you know I like that just to end it I don't want to end on that and
01:24:56| then it sounds weird or bad and I don't think that's bad or anything I just want to ask a like philosophical biological question like we see countries Australia said this to a Jesus person who said
01:25:10| Asia you know Australia said this to China United States did this with Canada whatever we see all these countries and they always act the same but when we break it down there's all these people
01:25:20| in these countries and there's a lot going on it's a political climate and I'm not trying to get political but our bodies are political right we got bacteria in here we got cells we got
01:25:31| hormones running through us and all this stuff that's going on inside of us and making us act a certain way is it weird to think out of the philosopher Alan Watts we take credit for our own actions
01:25:45| but we blame things when they happen inside of us I have a fever I'm sick I have Crohn's disease I don't think Alan Watts ever since disease but for the record we take
01:25:59| credit when we do something good or we accomplish something but we blame stuff that happens inside us we have no control over when it's the other way around Oh what are we are we this
01:26:11| combination of bacteria cells microbes all stuff going on or we this brain that makes it all do something because that I really don't know no what do you think I don't know because then I
01:26:26| just said like China said this to America I said this to Canada and we look at those and we're like that's not it it's deeper there's more than just Canada said this the United States the
01:26:38| other day it's microbes inside and the crazy complex relationships they all have to make a sports metaphor is it really just tea neighbors turn B or is it
01:26:52| preparation versus coaching versus player skill versus development versus assistance coach versus positional coach versus who is sick that day versus all this stuff and you can pull your hair up
01:27:03| going crazy trying to gamble on these games don't gamble folks but really it it almost always ends up being more complex than we could ever imagine and more simple than we can ever imagine
01:27:16| yeah I both of those analogies I I think are great you know in the country analogy it's like who has more power than thousands of people or the single government head you know like is it your
01:27:29| brain or is it all the rest of it and then with sports the same thing right like you always look at who did or didn't get the final catch the final touchdown the final shot but there's the
01:27:42| full game before that then if anything had changed you wouldn't have that exact same trajectory so no I think it's weird I think it's cool I think that the way that you approach that question tells
01:27:54| you if you like science if you're like that's weird and I want to think about it you might be a scientist if they're willing to pay for my PhD for you there are where we are always a nag interested
01:28:07| just saying do it do it so if we were doing a recap guys um all we talked about the whole episode with cyanobacteria right there it's uh all of it blue-green algae those yeah
01:28:21| red tide Dino Dino was it dinoflagellates Dyna topia someone's favorite plan Jolla and next time I did those I was weird at first Oh timing until I found out it was red
01:28:40| tide I was like oh that's nothing that's not no biggie mmm talked about England fries obeah I love them nitrogen fixing bacteria in legume root know yeah that one we also
01:28:53| covered the whole crop rotation with the corn and soy I believe nitrogen yeah nitrogen cycle we talked about it endlessly haber-bosch yeah Freddy top of that you
01:29:05| need crab 2% of the world's energy cyan and cyanamide I think that was the one real cycle we did every cycle in cycle we were permanent press swap and dry swap and dry the sexual nature of muffin
01:29:24| dry 10 billion a lot of us industry 10 trillion 2050 so microscopes is that it we covered everything yeah except we might have done cry yeah Wow my biology well folks here I am before you and I
01:29:42| want to say we like you we like you a lot thanks for donating thousands of dollars to a patreon keep it up and in the meantime if you want to check out
01:29:52| Susanna's page you have a it is it is it down below it says oh cool yeah it's in the video it's about dot me slash Suzanna hello Harris or pH depression calm cool and if you want to check out
01:30:09| our website you do that too it's you get to right there right there it might play the right way you're close that's enough thanks folks thanks for joining us tonight yeah I'm
01:30:23| good one a don't let those microbes get you down
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