Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Listener Questions #50

Transcript

Listener Questions #50 · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey everyone, the last question on today's episode has to
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: do with the birds and the bees, which we only
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: mention in case there are young ears around, which you'd
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: prefer to temporarily shield from this information. So FYI.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Dialects can be heard in birds from different places. Do
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: animals have scent dialects if they live in different spaces?
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Can a nuclear heater melt through the crust and dive
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: for Europa's ocean or come up bust?
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Now, I'm not complaining, because it certainly is fun. But
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: other animals lack a penis, so why do I have one?
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I get the best questions.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Wow. Whatever questions keep you up at night, even that one,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's answers will make it all right.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Listener Questions episode number 50. 50! 50!
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: We've almost hit my age in Listener Questions episodes.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: I thought you were 100. Because you always round up.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: You look, you know, 30, 35. Oh, I see.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Okay. Well, then I can round up listener questions episode
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: to 100 also. See? At some point, the differences just
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: don't matter.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Yes. We've done 100 of these and they've all been great.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Just like, you know, at some point you stop counting
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: your baby's age in days, right? And then you stop
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: counting in months. So why don't we ever stop counting
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: in years?
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Sure. It's a lot to keep track of.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: You agree with me.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Every episode from here on out will be episode 100
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: so that it's easy for us to remember.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Until we hit episode 1,000. You know, it should be logarithmic. Anyway,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Listen to our
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: questions episode number a lot.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: We have some really fun questions today. I'm excited.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: For those of you new to the podcast, I'm Daniel.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and I love answering questions from listeners.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I am a parasitologist. I study parasites,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: and I also love answering questions from listeners, even if
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: they're not about parasites.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I got an email test this week. Go on. Somebody
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: wrote in and said, Kelly says you answer emails within
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: 30 seconds. So here I'm writing to you. And I
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: wrote back in about 24 seconds and answered their question.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: No way. I mean, I totally believe it, but that's amazing.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I happened to be looking in my inbox when it landed.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So I was like, ooh, I can't miss this opportunity
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to prove Kelly right.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Amazing. And I guess, unfortunately, now might be a time
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: to remind listeners that I am not taking new questions
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: until sometime in 2027. I'll let you know when. But
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: you all ask so many amazing questions that are outside
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: of the wheelhouse of parasites that I need a little
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: time to catch up on all of them. I'm about
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: six months behind.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Because everybody out there is just so curious about the universe.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: It's wonderful. It's beautiful. It's extraordinary. And it invites curiosity.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: You can't help but wonder how this works and how
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: that works and why this doesn't work this other way
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: when you just live and take in the universe. It's wonderful.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: It's wacky. There's lots of things we'd like to know.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: And I love the kinds of questions where a listener
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: listens to one episode and it got them wondering about
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: something tangentially related. And so our first question today is
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: from Zach, who heard us talking about dialects and he
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: started wondering, are there dialects of scent, like smells for
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: animals that communicate by smell? Let's go ahead and hear
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: his whole question. But I was super excited because I
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: didn't know the answer when I read this question.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: Hi Daniel and Kelly, this is Zach from Atlanta, Georgia.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for taking my question. I'm stoked,
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: I feel honored, and I love everything that you guys
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: talk about on the pod, so thank you for all
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: that you do for science communication and for my daily commute.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So here's my question.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: I'm a speech therapist, so I'm often thinking about communication,
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: in particular verbal communication, where we're using our mouth and
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: our ears, but I don't really know anything about olfactory
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: communication and communicating via scent and pheromones and that, those
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: sorts of mechanisms. So I'm very curious if those forms
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: of communication across the animal kingdom have something akin to
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: dialects in the same way that we have variety across
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: our spoken languages. I want to know if there are
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: different ways of smelling or tossing our scent or shaking
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: about and sharing our pheromones that is communicatively meaningful across
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: different communities of the same species, and if there's anything
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: that looks something like dialects in those forms of communication.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: I'm very excited for your answer. I've been wondering this
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: for a long time, and I thought the pod would
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: be the perfect place to get an answer. So thank
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: you in advance.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Great question. You're right. I love this generalization. You know,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: this thing happens in speech. Why doesn't it also happen
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: in dance or in smell or in something else? It's
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: exactly the way we make progress in science. It's like
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: bring two ideas together and see, do they click or
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: do they clash?
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Well, this is why I always try to encourage graduate
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: students that I mentor to read broadly, because you never know,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: like when you're reading something that's not at all related
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: to what you're doing, like what questions it could bring
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: to mind that you had never thought of that are
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: actually very much related to what you're working on. And so, yes,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: you should read broadly because it gives you lots of
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: cool ideas.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: So I don't know too much about scent communication, but
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I found two papers that found stink dialects in mammals.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: And I was very excited.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Can we back up and just be like, what is
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: scent communication? I mean, I have an odor. But I
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: don't like control it. It's not like I'm deciding to
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: smell this way or that way on a certain day.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: How do animals in general use scents to communicate?
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Well, ants, I think, are famous for using scents for
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: like just about everything. But in general, animals can use
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: scents for things like marking territory. So, for example, lots
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: of big cats will leave their scents so that other
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: cats know, hey, this is mine. Sometimes it's used for
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: things like mate attraction. There have been some speculation that
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: humans have pheromones and we sort of cue into each
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: other's smell and that can impact attraction. But I think
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: when we actually dug in and look for like scientific evidence,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: we don't see a lot of evidence for that. But
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: in other species, sometimes mate choice decisions are to some
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: extent impacted by how an organism smells.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: And for example, like moths, we had Andy C on
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: the show the other day talking about how female moths
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: can release scents that then males can detect from really
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: far away. And then they know that there is a
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: receptive female out there somewhere. I just need to follow
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: this scent to get to her. So it's used for
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a lot of different things in the animal kingdom. It's
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: a little foreign to us because we as a species
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: don't use scent nearly as much as some other animals do.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Although I realize I don't do it biologically in the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: sense that I can't like control it internally. But obviously,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I do use it technologically. I mean, I wear deodorant
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: to control a scent or some people put on a
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: certain perfume to communicate X or Y or Z. And
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: that must be cultural as well. So obviously, humans must
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: use scents to communicate. I don't know what I was
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: talking about. Anyway, tell us.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: But we're not using our biological scent. Like we're trying
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: to tamp down our biological scent and we don't want
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: that getting out there too much. But yes, you're right.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Like deodorants or perfumes or whatever.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: So tell us about animals.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, so this question is trying to figure out if
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: scents differ between the same species that live in different areas.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: And there's a couple different reasons you could imagine that happening. So,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: for example, if you have the same species living in
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: two different environments, those environments might impact the way animals
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: their scent works. So for example, if you're in an
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: area that has, I don't know, more humidity or different
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: temperatures than another group of individuals in your species, maybe
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  Speaker 2: it's harder to get your scent from one individual to
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: another when the humidity is like 99% and the temperature
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: is 110 degrees Fahrenheit or something.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: So are you suggesting more broadly that having dialects, having
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: variation in the behavior across the species is always in
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: response to environmental differences? Because like, do people in the South...
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Have that particular way of talking and people in New
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Jersey speak that way because of what it's like to
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: live in New Jersey? Or can't it also be explained
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: by just like random evolutionary walk? Absolutely.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: So this is one of three hypotheses.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: And there's probably even more. But so the idea behind
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: this first one is that if you live in an
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: environment where, for example, it's hard to get your scent
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: out there, you might be selected to be stinkier or
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: have a particular sort of scent that sort of cuts through,
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know, the humidity or whatever better.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: So that does explain New Jersey.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: You know, funny New Jersey story. I was born in
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: New Jersey and I love New Jersey. Right. And my
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: husband loves picking on New Jersey.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: It's just so easy. I know.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: And we stopped at a rest stop in New Jersey
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: and I was like, they're going to see how great
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: New Jersey is. Right. And as soon as we step
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: out to the rest stop, it smells like urine. And
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know how most rest stops don't have the
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: overpowering scent of urine, but this one did. And then
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: the sign that we parked in front of said something like,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: this is a waste cleanup area. Please stay on the sidewalks.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: And I was like, oh man, totally failed here. I
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: still love New Jersey, but that New Jersey didn't show
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: up for me on that day the way I wanted
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: it to.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: We took our kids to New Orleans once and we
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: like had beignets. Then we took them to hear music
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: and we saw the art, et cetera. And then we
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: asked them, what'd you think of New Orleans? And Hazel said,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: it smells like vomit. Oh no. Yeah, that's true too.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: There's a little of that also, but all right. So
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: off of stinky cities were states and back to animal communication.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So you said you had pointed out that you can
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: have like sort of random differences. So you can have
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: like genetic drift. Where populations sort of change genetically over time,
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: maybe not necessarily in response to like an environmental pressure,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: but they just sort of like drift in different directions.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: And maybe when those populations come back together, it would
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: be hard for them to notice each other's scents or
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: they'd have different dialects. Right. Another reason you could have
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: a dialect is if you have different kinds of microbes
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: that are impacting your smell and different areas could have
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: different microbes.
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Makes sense.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: So those are some reasons why you might expect there
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: to be dialects. in stinkiness between populations of the same species.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Very cool.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: So I found two studies that I thought would be
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: fun to talk about today. The first one was looking
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: at otters in the United Kingdom and otters have.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: That otter be interesting.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, can you put in there, Matt, for us?
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: So otters have anal sacs on either side of their
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: butthole and And these anal sacs produce scents. And when
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: this scent comes out with the poop, they call that spraint.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. They call it spraint? That's a word?
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: That is a word. And I put that in bold
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: in my outline because I was like, I have to
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: make sure that everybody knows the word spraint.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And it's weird that it sounds like a combination of
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: spray and paint, but it's neither. But it does get sprayed?
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: It gets deposited with feces. I don't know how far
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: it sprays from the location. But yes, it helps scent
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: the feces.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Because the feces don't scent enough otherwise?
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess this is, you know, this is meant
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: to tell other otters that, hey, this is my territory.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: It also has information about the sex and the age
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: of the individual. So you can, so the sprint of
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: a reproductively mature male otter. I love it.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I love it, though. It's a wonderful, wonderful word, the sprint.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: And so you can tell a reproductively mature male and
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: a reproductively immature female, for example, by their sprint. So
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of information in that sprint. But the
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: United Kingdom tends to have about four different populations that
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: are genetically similar. And the reason you've got these four
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: populations is because there was a time when the otter
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: population went way down and it tended to recover in
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: these four areas. And then there were reintroductions and it
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: sort of has grown back out from there. So you've
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: got this like genetic structuring with four different populations.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: You had a bottleneck and now the populations are based
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: on those surviving populations. Small populations. Got it. Okay.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Plus some reintroductions and maybe some other introductions and stuff
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: like that. And so there are these four different genetically
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: somewhat distinct populations in different parts of the United Kingdom.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: And so they thought that maybe you would get dialects.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: And so what they did was.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Sprint dialects we're talking about here.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: We are talking about sprint dialects. We are indeed. Yes.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Presumably they thought that it would be a bit rude
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: to catch the otters and express the sprint from their
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: anal glands.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: And so what they did instead was they serendipitously took
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: advantage of situations where unfortunately an otter had died. They
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: managed to get their hands on the carcass before the
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: otter had started to decay and they put everything in
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: a freezer. And then when it came time to do
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: the analysis, they removed all of the anal glands from
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: these frozen specimens and they analyzed them all at once.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: And what they found was was that there does seem
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: to be dialects in Sprint scent between these four different populations.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: And they tried to see, does it differ geographically? So like,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: you know, within a population, how much variability is there?
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: And if you're looking at two different populations, is the
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Sprint profile more different for individuals that are farther apart
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: in these two populations relative to individuals that are like,
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: living closer together, even though they're in separate populations. And
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: there wasn't a clear sign of geography. And so it
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: looks like something about genetics has resulted in different sprint
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: dialects in otters in the United Kingdom.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: So, for example, if you took an otter from one
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: of the populations and put it into another one, it
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: probably would retain its original dialect. Its otter friends would
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: be making fun of it at school for the way
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: that it sprints.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is a reasonable hypothesis. But this study did
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: not look at behavioral impacts of these differences.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: So does that mean that we don't really know how
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: important it is? Like, you know, we haven't seen otters
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: from one population reacting weirdly to New Jersey otters or
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: the equivalent. And so it might just be like ignorable differences.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it could be. Or at least if there were
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: follow-up studies, I didn't find them. But, you know, I
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: don't think that New Jersey otters are crossing the pond
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: to go to the United Kingdom. But there could be,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: you know, communication implications within the United Kingdom for these
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: different sprint profiles.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I wonder if they find... you know, foreign sprains,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: exotic and attractive or just like weird enough pudding.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Could be, could be. I don't, well, we have the
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: answer to that question in Himalayan leaf nose bats because
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: they did do those follow-up studies.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Tell us about the bats.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I would love to. So here, the scents are not
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: coming from glands on either side of the anus. These
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: bats have glands like in the middle of their forehead, right?
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: where they secrete this stuff that is kind of stinky.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: The paper said it was a thick black secretion, and
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: so gross. But it's used for things like territorial defense.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Life on Earth can sometimes seem so alien.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: But I love it. I mean, and that's why it's
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: so much fun studying this stuff. You know, you think
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: like these animals have such different social lives, you know,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: like if I was talking to you and I got
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: too close to your house and you started secreting this
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: black thing from your forehead to let me know that
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: I got a little too close, I would call the
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: cops or something, you know, like it's very different.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: That's just how we roll here in California, Kelly. You
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: got to get used to it.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I prefer Virginia, I guess. And so I know
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: how to communicate with people here a little bit better.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And so do bats from different populations secrete different stuff?
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: And so they looked and they found that there were
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: distinct compounds that were produced in bats from different areas.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: And so like there was still some overlap and some
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: of the scent stuff, but there were a handful of
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: populations where there were very distinct things that were being
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: produced in those populations.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Of the same species, though.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Of the same species.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: And so they wanted to know, does this seem to
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: be genetic? Is this a response to different environments? Or
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: is this the result of their microbes? And their evidence
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: suggested that actually this is probably because of different microbes
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: that they harbor that like ferment the ooze coming out
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: of their head in different ways.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: It's kombucha.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: That's, oh, face kombucha.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Katrina has to try to sell that.
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: But then they did some follow-up questions to ask, does
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: this matter? And it does look like males can discriminate
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: between the scent that comes from their colony and scents
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: coming from other colonies. And if you give females the
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: opportunity to interact with scents from their colonies or scents
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: from other colonies, they prefer the scents from their own colony.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: And so it does seem like there's a behavioral implication
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: of these dialects where in this case, they're sort of
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: preferring what is familiar.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Is there a cool scientific name for this or
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: is it just face secretions?
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: You know, I didn't find a word like spraint. And
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: so let me see. They have a forehead.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Well, then let's call it scumbucha. How about that?
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: It's scumbucha.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Or is it fumbucha for like face scumbucha? Because I
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: feel like you want to get the face part because
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: that sounds super gross. Yeah.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Sfumbucha.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Sfumbucha.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Amazing. I found another paper saying that song sparrows also
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: have a gland that produces these oils that they use
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: when they're preening and the microbes that they have seem
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: to impact the scent. And so this microbe impacting dialects
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: thing might happen in other places. But it's worth noting
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: that I found another bat species paper on a closely
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: related bat species and they didn't find anything. that the
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: changes in scent between populations were associated with bacteria. So
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: there's probably a lot of variability in why different populations
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: stink in different ways. And I think we're still trying
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: to understand the implications of this, at least in mammals.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: But the answer is there are stink dialects, which is cool.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Well, it's really fascinating if the male secretes a certain
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: flavor of slambucha, grapefruit or whatever. And a female from
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the same population prefers that because... That makes you wonder
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: if there's like a co-genetic source of that, like the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: same gene codes for the male to secrete the flavor
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: that the female likes. Or if that's a learned thing,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you know, culturally, you grow up smelling grapefruit, sfambucha, and
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: so you look for that, you know, in your mate. Yeah.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Or it could be that like maybe you don't even
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: recognize as a mate bats that smell different because part
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: of just like how you recognize your species is by
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: this like particular smell. And you're like, no, you don't
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: smell right. I'm not sure what's going on there. And
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: they just avoid them for that reason. But yeah, there's
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: lots of different possible explanations. It's fun to think about.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: I have a friend who works on fruit fly mating. Okay.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: And there they sing songs. and they're very regional. And
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: so like the male has to sing the right song
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: for the female to choose them. It's fascinating.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: And the females, do they prefer the songs that they
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: grew up with or do they prefer songs from males
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: that have new... Interesting tunes.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't like those weird New Jersey imports. Actually, wait, no.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: All of this research is happening in Princeton. So it's
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: all New Jersey is local there.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Those are the good ones.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Those are the good ones. Yeah, it's a way to
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: select your population. Yeah, it's fascinating.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: So let's go ahead and send this answer to Zach
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: and see what Zach thinks about Sfumabucha.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: And Spraints.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: And Spraints. Thanks for the fun question.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: Naturally, I'm going to try my darndest to include the
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: word Spraint in all of my future Scrabble games just
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: for the opportunity to explain to my friends what that is.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: And I'll try to throw Sfumabucha in there as well.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: So thank you for that. And especially thank you for
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: providing me with that fascinating answer. It got me thinking
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: about how useful these forms of communication must be for
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: the organisms that use it across the animal kingdom. It's
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: really helpful, of course, that we can use our voice
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: to speak and our hands to sign, but those types
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: of communication are very fleeting. And so for animals that
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: in some cases can use communication that literally sticks around,
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: has to be so informative for those species. So thank
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: you very much for giving my question a sniff. I
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: hope you have a wonderful, wonderful day.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're back and we're answering amazing questions from listeners
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: that give us a chance to go off and read
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: about things we've also always been curious about but never
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: had an excuse to dig into. And so today we're
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: literally going to drill in to a listener question.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Or things that we did not know that we would
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: be interested in because it hadn't occurred to us before.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: So many reasons to thank the listeners for sharing their
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: curiosity with us. And let's go ahead and do a
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: question for Daniel from Paul from Lemoore, California.
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: Hello, Daniel and Kelly. I'm Paul from Lemoore, California. My
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: question is, when humans finally land on icy moons like
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: Enceladus or Europa, Would something similar to a fuel rod
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: for a nuclear reactor be used to melt through the
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: icy crust instead of using a drill? I appreciate you
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: taking the time to listen to my question.
• 22:33
  Speaker 6: Thank you.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Do you think l'amour is like French? Like, l'amour.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: L'amour? I don't know. Yes, I imagine it is a
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: very romantic place to live.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Let's hope so. But today we're not speculating about the
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: romantic lives of Californians. We are taking our brains out
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: into the solar system to imagine where aliens might be
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: living and where they might be having their own kind
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: of romance right in our backyard.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Daniel, I want to know what's happening on Enceladus so bad. Like,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: I really want video from underneath the oceans in Enceladus.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Right. Let's spend a minute to remind people why we
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: might go to the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: And the reason is that they're an excellent, excellent candidate
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: for life, for alien life right here in our solar system.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: You might be thinking– Aliens, if they're out there, are way,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: way out there. We'll never find them because you have
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: to travel to a distant star. But the truth is
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: we haven't finished looking in our own backyard. Yes, we've
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: driven rovers around Mars and we think Venus is probably uninhabitable.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: But if you look a little bit further out, there
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: are places where life can start that are very different
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: from the brackish waters of primordial Earth. And these are
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: under miles of ice on these frozen moons.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine there being like, I don't know, fishy
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: type things swimming around under there? Like how cool would
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: it be to see that?
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, of course you have.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: And we can go there. And the reason this is
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: so exciting is that under that ice is not just
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: like some frozen rocky core, but oceans. We think miles
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: and miles of water. And that's because these things are
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: close to giant planets, so Jupiter and Saturn, and they're
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: squeezed by the tidal forces of those planets. Remember, tidal
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: force comes from gravity, but gravity doesn't just pull on
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: the whole planet or the whole moon. It pulls on
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: the closer bit harder because it's closer and the far
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: away bit weaker because it's far away. And so it
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: tends to make something like into a football, the way
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: that like the moon makes the oceans on the earth
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: kind of into a football shape. It piles them up
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: near the moon and on the opposite side, it makes
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: the oceans thinner on the edges. And then as the
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: moon moves around the earth, the tides follow. In the
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: same way as these giant moons around Jupiter and Saturn move,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: they get squeezed by Jupiter and Saturn's intense gravity, and
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: that imparts a lot of heat. And so these oceans
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: can stay unbrozen. They can stay liquid under this thick crust,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: which means that, you know, it's a great place for
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: life to perhaps begin.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, but unfortunately for us, it's not an easy place
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: to get to. Yeah. Because you have to get through,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: as you said, kilometers of ice.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. After you go through billions and billions of kilometers
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: to get there, right?
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So what do we have to overcome to get
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: ourselves to that ocean?
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, just to get there requires getting
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: to Jupiter or Saturn, which is not easy. And we
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: recently had a whole episode about chemical rockets, et cetera,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: et cetera. First, you've got to convince your government to
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: build this thing. And the whole thing is going to
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: cost hundreds of millions. And then you've got to get
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: it there. But even once you get there, let's just
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: skip over all the political issues and the launch issues
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: and the space travel issues. Say you are lucky enough
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: to land on Europa. Now you're sitting on kilometers of
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: ice and the amazing alien payload is on the other
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: side of that ice. So you got to drill. And
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: drilling is hard. Even here on Earth, drilling is hard.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: You know, if you've like tried to drill into your wall,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: you know, or if you work like on an oil
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: rig or whatever, it's dangerous. Mechanical drilling is really hard.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: You have to have a drill bit. Drill bits can break.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: You have to have an engine, but the engine can
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: choke if you hit something hard. And so you need
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: like transmissions and like basically no drill works without some
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: expert babysitting it and constantly repairing it. But we're not
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: sending people to Europa or Enceladus, not yet at least.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: So we need some sort of autonomous drill. And that's
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: why the fact that this is ice and not rock
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: is actually a big advantage.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Because you can melt it.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: You can melt it. Exactly. So instead of like mechanically
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: trying to cut through it, you just melt it and
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: then it becomes liquid and you can slide through it.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: And you might think that sounds crazy and extra hard.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: And shouldn't we figure out how to do that first
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: here on Earth? And the answer is yes. And we've
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: done it. We have done this in the ice of Antarctica.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: We have this amazing experiment called Ice Cube.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: That's a great name for a project. Oh, no, it's
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Ice T. I'm getting my, I'm not very cool.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: No, Ice Cube is a wrapper. Yes.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, wait, there's Ice T and Ice Cube?
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: There's Ice T and there's Ice Cube, absolutely.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Nice.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Is there ice pops?
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: You know, there's some rule of the internet where like
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: whatever you can imagine, there's probably a rapper with that name. Okay.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: That's not how I remember the rule going.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I adapted it for this family friendly conversation. But Ice
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Cube is an experiment that instruments a cubic kilometer of
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: ice in Antarctica. Wow. It's to look for cosmic ray
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: neutrinos and muons and all sorts of stuff. where you
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: have super fast particles going through the ice faster than
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: light can go through the ice and making this drink
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: off radiation, this blue cone. And to capture it, you
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: need cameras in the ice. So you've got to drill
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: down through a kilometer and leave these cameras in the ice.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: So you've got to drill through a lot of ice
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: in tough conditions, right? And so they've done this and
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: they didn't use a big mechanical drill. They used high
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: pressure hot water. Basically they just melt the ice and
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: then they have this string of cameras. It's a kilometer long.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: It's basically like a long tether and it's got these
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: glass spheres on it. Inside the spheres is all the
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: delicate particle physics detectors and experimental devices and electronics and stuff.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: And so they melt it and then they drop this
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: tether down and then they just let it refreeze. So
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: that you have this equipment down through the ice and
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: they've instrumented a cubic kilometer. It's amazing. It's such a
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: huge experiment. I love it. It's like science fiction, but
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: it's real. And the hole there goes through two and
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: a half kilometers of ice and it's about 60 centimeters wide. Wow.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: And so are our plans on Enceladus, do they involve
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: hot water? Because Paul wanted to know if we were
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: going to use like radioactive materials. The Antarctica solution seems
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: like it would be difficult to port over to Enceladus.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I mean, it teaches us that this is possible,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: that you can do it as long as you have
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: a heat source. And the crucial thing to understand is
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: that you're just letting it refreeze. You're not trying to
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: keep the whole column liquid, right?
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Just the part that you're digging out as things slide down.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: And that's going to turn out to be crucial. And
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: so in the case of drilling through one of these moons,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: you're not going to have some easy source of hot water.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: You need to bring some sort of power with you.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And so, of course, the best option is some kind
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of nuclear power because that's the density. sort of fuel.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: And there are a few different options here. One is
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: you can have just like direct nuclear heating. Like if
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: you have some sort of isotope like plutonium-238, it just
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: decays and it gives off particles at like 10,000 miles
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: per second. And so if you surround that with you know,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: some sort of liquid, it will get heated up. And
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: that's like directly nuclear decay turning into heat. No power generation,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: no fission, just like directly radioisotopic decay into heat. And
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: that's pretty cool because you don't need complicated fission equipment.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: You don't need to send a nuclear reactor. You don't
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: need to generate electricity, which is very inefficient. It's very
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: nice and it generates heat. And so that's like a
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: really strong option, just like directly produce heat.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: So I've got two questions. So one, you said something
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: about we're not going to have an easy source of
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: hot water on Enceladus, but we didn't have an easy
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: source of hot water probably in Antarctica. And so how
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: did they make the hot water? Did they just bring
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: like a generator fueled with gasoline to heat it up?
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the point there is, of course, you don't
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: like have geysers. It's not like Iceland or something where
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: you have an easy source of hot water that way.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: But you are connected to some kind of existing infrastructure, right?
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: There is power. You can get fuel delivered. It's not
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: that far away. As you guys point out in your book,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Antarctica is actually like a lot easier than space. Even
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: though it's uncomfortable and unpleasant and I would never want
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: to go there, it's a lot easier to live there
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: than it is to go to space. And in the
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: case of IceCube, they use fuel power generators to run
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: heaters and melt the snow and spew it out in
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: high pressure streams. And that's not an option. You can't
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: send diesel fuel into the moons of Jupiter.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: But you can send a radioisotopic heat source. And so
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: then my other question is like, so for the Antarctica experiment,
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: they had to like heat... quickly, like all the way
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: through and then put their equipment in and then let
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: it freeze.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Does a radio isotopic heat source, is that going to
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: heat all the way through fast enough so that you
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: can put your equipment in there? Like, does it give
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: out that kind of heat?
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: No, but it doesn't have to. Okay. And so it
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: just needs to melt the part that's in front of it, right?
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: And so we can refreeze behind it as it goes.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: So it needs to like unspool a tether. So it
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: needs to bring with it like three kilometers of line.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: And then unspool it as it goes and let it
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: refreeze behind it. And so it only needs to be
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: able to melt the bit that's right in front of it.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: So it like melts a bit of ice and moves
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: into that liquid. And the liquid it was just in
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: refreezes behind it. So like there's no going back. It's
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: a pretty claustrophobic experience.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: But we're such a clever species. That's awesome.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. The issue with radioisotopic decay is
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: that it's efficient because it turns a lot of the
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: original energy into heat. But you also need power for
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: other things, right? You don't just need heat. You are
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: a little device. You need electronics. You need electricity. And
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: so it's tempting to also include something which will produce electricity.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: And you don't even have to go all the way
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: to fission reactors for that. You can just use an RTG,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: which is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. So again, not yet
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: all the way to fission reactors. You use thermocouples. So
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: these have no moving parts. It's just essentially solid state.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: And it turns radiation directly into electricity. but it's very inefficient.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: It turns like 6% of the heat into electricity. But
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: you know, if you need some electricity, then that's a
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: nice addition. So you might have like both a radioisotopic
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: heater and you might turn some of it into electricity
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: to run your system. Or if you want to go
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: whole hog, just build a full-on fission reactor, right? These days,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the fission industry is really focusing on miniaturization, building small
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: modular reactors. And so the idea is to bring a
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: small one that can actually generate enough electricity that you
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: could both power a heater and you could power the
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: device itself. But it's like a lot more mechanical complexity
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and weight. And, you know, you can't repair it if
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: it's not working.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Do we have actual like plans on the books to
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: go do this or is this all hypothetical?
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I wish that we had plans on the books. You know,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: we do have some plans to visit these planets. Like
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: there's the Europa Clipper, which is en route. It's like
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: heading there right now. And it's going to arrive in 2030. Yay.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: But it's just going to do flybys. Like people are
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: curious about this moon. Like let's take more pictures. Then
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: there's the JUICE, which stands for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: which is going to go into orbit around Ganymede in 2031.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Also very, very cool. But again, these are just orbiters.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: They're going to take pictures. They're going to help us
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: understand the surface. We want to get on the surface
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: and dig down. We want to meet those alien octopi, right?
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: We want to see what alien spraints are all about.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Drill, baby, drill.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: And so now we're into the regime of proposed experiments.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: There's the Europa lander, which is supposed to land on
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: the surface and scoop up some of it and study it.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Because we've never even been there. Who knows what it's
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: made out of? Even more exciting is the Enceladus Orba lander.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: which is not going to land. It's going to sample
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the geysers because Enceladus has a lot of activity. It
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: sprays its innards out into space. So you might capture
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: like an alien microbe or something just by flying by
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: and flying through one of those plumes and gathering it
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: and then analyzing it on board. Very cool. Not yet approved.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: So neither of these two, the lander or the orb
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: lander are approved. There are plans for something called PRIME.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: which is a lander with a driller. And also, as
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: it drills, it brings a miniature submarine with it.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: What?
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: So that it drills down through this hole. It has
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: a tether to go back up to the surface so
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: you can send data, right? Nice. And then when it
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: gets through the ice, it releases into the water a
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: submarine to go off and explore, which then communicates back
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: with the lander up the tether and sends us the
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: glorious information about everything it's discovered.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I need that to get approved.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I know. Write your congressperson or your member of European
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Parliament or whatever, because we can do this, people. We
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: have the money. We have the technology. We know how
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: to do it. We're just choosing not to know these
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: things about the universe because we want to build more
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: aircraft carriers or whatever. So this experiment is called PRIME.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: It's not yet approved, which means we haven't started building it.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: It's not on its way. Which means the earliest this
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: could happen is like, you know, unfortunately, 15 years away.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: By which point we'll all be 100.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. Well, let's go ahead and send
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: this answer to Paul and see if we have answered
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: his question.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I hope he l'amour's it.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, but a bunch.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Hi, Daniel. Hi, Kelly.
• 36:29
  Speaker 6: Daniel, thank you for explaining a few different ways of
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: melting through ice to explore the subterranean oceans of the
• 36:34
  Speaker 6: icy moons of our solar system. I'm looking forward to
• 36:37
  Speaker 6: reading about the Europa Clipper mission in the next few years,
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: but I agree with Kelly and I'm wanting to see
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: some video footage of underneath the ice. I like to
• 36:45
  Speaker 6: imagine bioluminescent alien creatures swimming around in the black background
• 36:49
  Speaker 6: of the dark sunless ocean.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you again.
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: I appreciate both of you for taking the time to
• 36:54
  Speaker 6: answer my question and sharing your knowledge with all of
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: us listening to your podcast.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: All right. We're back and we're answering questions from listeners.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And the one next is super fascinating. He asks a
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: really penetrating question, don't you think?
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Right. And this is where we remind people that we
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: are about to talk about sex. So, yes, Josh had
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: a very penetrating question. Let's go ahead and hear what
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Josh had to say.
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: Hi, Daniel and Kelly. I was thinking about the way
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: that humans, and I guess probably a lot of other species,
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: have sperm cells and egg cells. And the fact that
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: some of us have a penis and others a vagina.
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: I'm also familiar with some extreme examples of this, like
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: the pig's corkscrew penis and the arms race of convolution
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: in duck sexual organs. But this made me think, how
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: did we get here? What are the evolutionary stages to
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: get to each reproductive strategy? What are the different ways
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: to do sexual reproduction? And what evolutionary drives mean some creatures,
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: such as plants, just sort of spray their sex cells
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: into space and hope, while others have these interlocking parts
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: and specialised cells?
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: So I followed up with Josh to make sure I
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: understood the question. And pretty much the question is, where
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: did wieners come from? Which is a great question.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Especially to somebody named Wiener Smith.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: That's right. I am clearly the right person to send
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: this question to. And so I will note that my
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: research for this question involved reading a book called Fallacy
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: and autocorrect. Turned the spelling correct, but the book is
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: P-H-A-L-L-A-C-Y or something like that.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Anyway. You know, I've been to the Phallus Museum in Iceland.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: It's quite impressive.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: I really want to go there to see. They've got
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: the penis bone from a whale there and I, amongst
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: other amazing penis related memorabilia. And I would like to
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: see all of them.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: There are so many things to mention from that, including,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: for example, they have molds of the penises of Iceland's
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: most successful Olympic athletes ever.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Which is, I think, the Icelandic handball team who got
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: the bronze medal or something. And then they have a
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: picture of the whole team. And then they have molds
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: of all the penises arranged in the same order as
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: the team. So you can be like, oh, interesting.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: I feel like that's totally unrelated to handball. But congratulations
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: to those people.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's an obvious handball joke to make there.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: But I think the most interesting sociological part of that
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: museum is is the history of it. It started in
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: some guy's garage and then apparently took over his house
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: and his wife was like, out. I cannot have this
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: in my house. And so we had to move it
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: into a museum.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Wait, out to him and the specimens or just the specimens?
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Didn't say at least the specimens at the minimum. But
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: back to the biology, tell us Kelly, how long have
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: we had penises on earth? When was the first penis?
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: I did not get when was the first penis because, actually,
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: what is a penis is a complicated question. And so
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: instead of talking about penises in particular, we're going to
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: talk about intermittent organs. And so the point here is
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: there's a couple different ways of mixing sperm and eggs.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: A lot of fish do what's called external fertilization, where
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: a female will essentially excrete some eggs into the environment
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: and a male will plop some sperm on top of that.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: And that's how everything gets fertilized. When you do that,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: those fertilized eggs now need to be guarded in a
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: lot of cases because they're like delicious snacks for a
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: lot of other organisms.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: So it's not very safe for the offspring to do
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: things that way unless you've got someone who's willing to
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: stay there and watch them. Another problem is when you're
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: doing external fertilization, when the male releases his sperm onto
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: the eggs, often other males called sneaker males or satellite
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: males will like come by and deposit their sperm as well.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: It's sort of unwanted, but they snuck in there and
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: they got it. So this is another problem with external fertilization.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: A third problem with external fertilization is that it works
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: really well in wet or moist environments. But if you
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: have eggs and sperm meeting together in an open area,
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: like on land, they dry out really quick. And so
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: the way that amniotes have solved this problem is that
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: fertilization happens inside of the female. And then we can
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: either like slap, you know, a calcium shell on there
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: for the birds and then send it out into the
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: environment and it's fine. Or, you know, in mammals, we've
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: got a placenta and everything sort of happens inside the
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: mom until the baby's ready to go. So we have
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: found solutions for that like environmental problem by having a
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: lot of the stuff happen inside of mom. And that's
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: what we call internal fertilization. There's a couple different ways
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: to do internal fertilization that don't involve anything that's wiener-like.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: One of them is what's called a cloacal kiss.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Which is not as romantic as you might imagine. So
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: some birds have openings called cloaca, which I think is
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: the Latin word for sewer, because not only do like
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: sperm and eggs come out through here, but also so
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: does feces and urine and all of the waste. It's
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: like an all purpose hole for birds. And when they
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: want to reproduce, they will stick the cloacas together and
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: And the male will excrete some sperm and then just
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: kind of hope that it ends up where it needs
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: to go up inside of the female. But you can
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: imagine that having an appendage that allows you to place
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: the sperm in a little bit more specific way could
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: be helpful for increasing the probability that your sperm actually
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: fertilize an egg.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Aim it a little bit.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Aim it a little bit.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: And so throughout the animal kingdom, there are lots of
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: different ways that animals accomplish this.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Anybody who's like cleaned a bathroom that men use know
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: that having a penis does not mean you can aim.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: No, no. I mean, if you're paying attention, you can aim.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: My first job was, I was a bagger at Kroger's
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: and my job also was often to clean the restrooms.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: And there is just, there is feces in places that
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: you just, I can't even fathom how they got there.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Our species is disgusting. And you know, I always, I
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: didn't like cleaning the ladies room, but I really didn't
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: like cleaning the men's room. You guys are gross.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's happening in there. It was like
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: a different species.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Criticism accepted. I have no defense. Okay. Absolutely. Totally agree.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Dudes are gross.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, super gross.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: And so millipedes, for example, have what are called gonopods,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: which are like wiener feet. And so their eighth pair
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: of legs– actually is able to take sperm and insert
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: it into the female.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Whoa.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: And so that's not like technically a penis, but I
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: don't know, maybe it is. There's actually some debate about,
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: you know, how do you define the term penis, but
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: the broader term is intermittent organ.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: So are there conferences where people like have shouting matches
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: about this?
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, probably.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: We get upset about all kinds of stuff.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Whatever it is, there's some academic conference where they argue
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: about it. That's the new internet rule.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Then there's other ways of getting the stuff up there.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: So for example, males.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Such a delicate way to put it, Kelly. Thank you.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, I went to school for animal behavior. We just,
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: we don't take this stuff very, I mean, we take
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: it seriously, but we don't like have any reverence for
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: the topic. But so you can make things called spermatophores,
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: which are packets of sperm plus other stuff that can
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: be like placed in the environment temporarily. And then the
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: female will in some cases take it up by like,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know, squatting over it. and then sort of
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: pulling it up into her body. Or males have like
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: organs that help them sort of insert it into her body.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: And so that's another way of like getting sperm inside
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: of a female. One of the benefits for the female
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: of internal fertilization, though, is that females have evolved very
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: complicated ways to either store sperm for when they need it,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: if they found like a really great guy, but they're
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: not really ready to have babies yet, they can hold
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: on to that stuff for when the moment feels right.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: For how long?
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: It depends on the species, but definitely days for some species.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: I think there were some where it was weeks or months.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: It can be a really long time. And then there's
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: also some that have like extra compartments where they can choose,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: like they can mate with multiple males and afterwards they
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: can pick their favorite and use the sperm from that
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: one and not use the sperm from the others.
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: Wow. Wow.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Dating is so complicated. And in other species, it's even
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: more complicated.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Although, you know, you don't really know if you were
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: rejected in that case. Right. And so that's nice, I guess.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: So the lady can swipe right or left or whatever
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: it is, even after you're done.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. Life is good. And I should
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: note that in this book, Fallacy, Emily Wilmingham makes the
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: point that we've studied penises a lot. Vaginas are almost
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: certainly equally interesting, but have been massively understudied relative to penises.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: So I wanted to get a plug in for vaginas
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: while we were here and the fascinating things that we
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: learned about animal behavior when we study female vaginas.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: If you are a young scientist trying to figure out
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: where in this wide world you want to devote your energy,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Kelly suggests the vagina.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: I think we have loads left to learn about vaginas.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Cornucopia of data left to collect there. So the question
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: is like, why do we have internal fertilization? And why
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: in particular do we have devices that are used to
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: insert sperm into the female? One of the hypotheses is
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: this idea of like a lock and key. So if
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: you're trying to figure out if you have picked a
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: member of your own species to mate with, Then seeing
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: if a penis fits in a vagina is one way
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: to do that, to make sure that you're mating with
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: the right species. I should say the evidence for this
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: hypothesis is kind of mixed. You see plenty of closely
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: related species mating with one another anyway. It doesn't seem
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: like this lock and key is very specific, but there's
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: some idea that this is a first pass at trying
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: to make sure that you're mating with a member of
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: the right species. Right. Another benefit of internal fertilization, which
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: we've talked about, is that now you've got it in
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: an environment that is sort of moist, so the sperm
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: and the eggs aren't going to dry out. But in particular,
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: if you have a penis, then you can increase the
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: probability that you actually get the sperm into the female
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: at the right spot relative to something like a cloacal kiss, which,
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: you know, does work a lot of the time. But
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: it might be nice to have a little bit of
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: extra flexibility. confidence that it's getting to where it needs
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: to go. Another nice thing about internal fertilization is that
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: the eggs tend to be bigger, and especially if the
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: females are holding on to the offspring inside of them
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: until the offspring are bigger, then when you finally release
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: them into the environment, they have a better chance of survival.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: So there's lots of benefits to internal fertilization. Some of
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: them are even more beneficial when you have a device
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: that can insert right up into the vagina. But plenty
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: of organisms make do without it. They just kind of
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: come up with some clever ways of doing it. So
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: do you feel like that that answered the question? Do
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: you understand why penises exist to some extent?
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. I think it gives me an idea
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: for why there are penises. And also, though, I don't
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: think you talked about this, helps me understand why there's
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: like a plethora of kinds, you know, like we're exploring evolutionarily,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: like what things might work. And I know there are
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: like long ones and spiral ones and, you know, multi-tipped
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: ones or whatever.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: Horns, lizards and snakes have hemipenes. They have two penises
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: that they can alternate between which one they use.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Evolution is the greatest experimenter.
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. So intermittent organs have popped up, if
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: you will, multiple times throughout evolution. And yeah, they've got
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: lots of different shapes, lots of different forms. And again,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: because this is ecology, the answer is it depends. So
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: we were talking about how if you're in an aquatic environment.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: It's fine to release sperm and eggs out into the
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: environment because it's wet there. But there's plenty of fish
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: species that have organs that allow males to place sperm
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: inside of a female. And we think that that, you know,
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: increases the probability of fertilization, increases certainty that you're the
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: only one, at least in that moment, who is attempting
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: to fertilize the eggs. And so, you know, even in
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: aquatic environments, you find organisms. that have intermittent organs because
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: nature is complicated.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Nature is complicated. All right, let's send this answer back
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: to Josh and see if Your answers have gotten up
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: in there to the place where his questions were waiting.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Josh, let us know if you're okay with that.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: Hello again. Thank you so much for sharing the ins
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: and outs of this fascinating topic. The world of reproductive
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: organs is even more varied than I realized, and I'll
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: definitely be checking that book out. All right.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you, everybody, for your amazing questions. I know I
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: had a ton of fun today. Probably more fun than
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: should be legal.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: Thanks for sharing your time and your curiosity with us.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: And if you have a question about how the universe works,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: it's Sprint too late to send it to us.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, no! And sorry, remember, it's Sprint too late to
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: send it to Daniel. Kelly's on hiatus for a little while.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: But looking forward to catching up so I can get
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: new questions from you all soon.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Stay tuned, everyone. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Please go and
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: do us a favor and rate the show on whatever
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Matt Kesselman.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: He really is a wizard. You can also find us
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and X, D and K Universe.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: Come engage with us.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: You can email us at questions at danielandkelly.org. We really
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: do want to hear from you.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: And you can find our website, www.danielandkelly.org, where you'll also
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: find an invitation to join our Discord, where everybody comes
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: and talks about the amazing universe.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: an iHeart Podcast. Thanks for joining us.