Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Listener Questions #17

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Daniel and Kelly answer listener questions about screwworm at the southern border, life without the Moon, and the status of synthetic blood.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denials easier.

Complex problem solving takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the. iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught.

And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grasias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition?

No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of a little bit of. achievement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great bevras you've

come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dresses Come Again on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast Season 2 takes a deep look into

One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe, save my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Screwworms have invaded beyond the Panama Canal. Will they infect Texas cows grazing amongst the chaparral? How would life evolve without a moon? Would we have people, cats, and funky mushrooms? How long is the wait until synthetic blood goes on sale? I promise I'm not a vampire. I'm just a little pale. Whatever question keeps you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's answer will make it all right. Welcome to another listener questions episode on Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't like to eat blood.

Hello, I'm Kelly Weider-Smith. I study parasites and space, and I also am not a big fan of eating blood. One of those blood sausages or whatever that are popular in the UK? Yeah, I can't do that. Or at least I've never tried. Maybe I'd like it, but I can't get myself to try it. There's some line for me between like normal muscle and like the rest of the body and the blood and the brain and the guts and stuff that just creeps me out. Though Katrina has a friend who's big into cooking organs and she has a website, I think it's called Awful Recipes, O-F-F-A-L.

You know, I feel like it's actually a deficit of my character that I'm not into eating more of the animal because I do feel like, yeah, that if you're going to take another animal, life. You really should make the most of it. But I just really have problems with the texture and stuff. So my solution has been to try to cut down on meat as much as I can. No, I totally agree. It feels weird to just throw away parts of an animal because you're like, ooh, icky. And really the whole thing is kind of icky if you think about it too much, which we all should. We all should be thinking about it too much and feeling okay about our choices. That's right. Yes, we should think through our choices. It's so easy to be separated from the food that you eat and not think through the implications of what's happening there.

But nobody's going to have an appetite after this episode anyway, right, Kelly? I'm here to help. All right. So let's jump right into question number one from John. This is a topic I've been wanted an excuse to dig into for a while. And so let's hear what disgusting thing John wanted to know about. Well, friends, at this point in the episode, we thought we were going to drop an audio file where our friend John reads his questions. But sometimes an audience member.

we'll send a question, and then they disappear. Maybe they've moved away, maybe they're busy, hopefully they're well. We never got the audio file, so I'm going to go ahead and read the question from John. Here we go. Please do a segment on the current situation at the South Border concerning cattle and the re-emergence of the parasitic fly and their maggot offspring known as screwworms. Is the current embargo something worth worrying about? Will it spread across the border regardless of what we do? Are there any human diseases related to the parasite?

After eliminating them back 50, 60 years ago, how did it become a problem again, catching us by surprise? Thanks. Oh, man, Daniel. All right, nobody... Why were you so excited to get this question, Kelly? Well, because I had been hearing about screwworms for a while, but had never really dug in,

and so they were on sort of like the periphery of my consciousness. And I was like, oh, great. Now there's a new parasite that I have an excuse to learn about. But I, what is a really good word for, like, I'm begging? I beseech you. I beseech you. Do not look up pictures of screw worm or, like, what screw worm does to people. Because the photos.

Oh, God. It's really horrible. And if you do, we will go ahead and record some video so that we can put your reaction up on Blue Sky and our Instagram. accounts because it's really horrifying. So let me go into the life cycle before we do anything else. Okay. Tell us what is this thing, basically, because I know just because it's called a screw worm doesn't

mean it's a worm. It's not a worm. It's called a screw worm doesn't mean it screws anything. So what is it and how does it live? It is not a worm, but it does screw. So it is we're talking about the new world screw worm. There is another species in the quote unquote old

world. And so the deal here is it's a fly. mom lays her eggs around the edges of wounds or on mucous membranes. So like around your eyes or in your mouth and stuff. Oh, no. I know. I know. Bad start.

The eggs hatch and the larvae, like the babies hatch out of the eggs. And then they start screwing into the flesh to get into the flesh to eat it. And that's why they're called screw worms. I guess they sort of screw in the way a screw screws into wood. Why did they screw? I mean, they can't just like chew their way in like any normal. I mean, I guess they're doing both. But also, a lot of parasites aren't, like, chewing their way through flesh. So, for example, you know, hookworms have, like, hooked mouths and they sort of bite down, but they're not, like, kind of chewing their way through and migrating through the flesh, whereas screw worms are migrating through the flesh, which is really, truly horrible. Why are they migrating through? Like, where did they want to go? I happen to be between them and their destination. Well, no, they've consumed the flesh. They're done with it. They want more flesh. And so they're screwing in to get more of it. And so, you know, we talked in a previous episode about maggots that specifically ate dead tissue and so they were useful for cleaning

out wounds but these flies are specifically eating the live tissue wow and they are not pleasant so they screw in they eat when they're done eating they fall out and off the host onto the ground all right they do a stage called pupating and then when they hatch they emerge as adults who go off in search of more flesh to lay their eggs on. How come nobody called these like zombie flies or something? So we usually reserve the word zombie for instances where a host behavior is being sort of like manipulated in a way that benefits the parasite at the expense of the host. I love this.

They're like semi-official rules in biology for what you can call a zombie. Oh, no, no, there's a lot of fighting over this. There's there are people who feel like you shouldn't be. using the phrase zombie at all because you're just going to confuse the public. They're not coming back from the dead. I feel like the public gets that. Like you need to give them a little bit more credit. Are there similar rules for like werewolf or mummy?

I don't think so. No. No, all right. So it's a free for all folks. If you discover something, feel free to call it a werewomen. Oh, no, no. There are, there are aphid mummies. And so they essentially shells of their former self because parasites have like eaten their insides and stuff.

and they're like pale relative to the others. I don't know too much about aphid mummies. Anyway, so to get back on track, I ended up watching a video lecture that veterinarians are supposed to watch to get like, you know, credit for the requirements for their field about screw worms. And they were like, sometimes it'll just be like a pinprick hole

in an animal because like, you know, dogs and stuff can get this too. And you just have to feel the hole and you feel the worms moving around inside. So it's not even that it's like a big, anyway, super gross. So you can be walking around with like a sack of these worms inside you? You would know, but yes.

Yeah. The answer is yes. So females lay something like 200 to 300 eggs at a time and they can lay two to four batches in their lifetime. So you can pretty quickly, once you have an open wound, it attracts more screw flies or more screw worms. So if you're in an area where there's a lot of screw worms, you can pretty quickly build up a life-threatening illness because they're just eating so much of you or you can get

secondary infections because now you have this growing wounds that can, you know, acquire bacteria and you die that way. So it's truly awful. And what do they usually eat? Is it mostly people or is it dogs? Are they totally indiscriminate? Anything they can really get their hands on. So quite often, they're going after livestock or they can go after wildlife. Sometimes you find it in pets and occasionally you will find it in people. And do they have the same preference for flesh as Kelly does? Like, do they prefer the muscle, or would they eat, you know, organs and eyeballs and any sorts of things? So I don't preferentially eat wounds on animals, and they have a tendency also to go for mucus membranes and, like, genitalia, stuff like that. And so I would say they do not have similar preferences to Kelly.

I'm not trying to put you together in a category. I was just using you as an example. I'm feeling a little insulted, but I'm going to, I really like parasites enough that I'm going to rise above. and decide that's a compliment. But so this used to be in the United States. It was a huge problem. Like in 1935, 180,000 cattle died in Texas alone from this parasite.

Wow. So you typically find it in South and Central America, and it was in North America for a while, tended to be in the southern states because that stage that lives off of the animals is cold sensitive. So if it freezes, that kills them, but they can come back during the summer. So you can still get them pretty.

far north just depending on on where they've managed to travel but this was such a big problem for agriculture that the united states said all right we absolutely need to do something about this yeah and so what they did was they developed in 1958 what's still called the sterile insect technique and this is something i think you might enjoy so essentially they they get the flies well wait for it wait for it i love hearing about sterility as a rule so yeah oh yeah well i know that's a thing for you. What? I don't, I don't know.

You started this path. I just took the next step. All right. All right. Walk us through. What is a sterile insect technique? Okay. So they take a stage of the flies and they expose them to radiation.

And in particular, they're exposing them to low doses of cobalt. And this essentially sterilizes the male flies. And then they release loads of male flies out there. And the thing that you need to know about screw worms is that the females only mate once in their life, even though they're laying multiple clutches of eggs. So if a female mates with one of these irradiated males, the eggs that she lays will not hatch. And so by doing this, you essentially are like pulling females out of the population, like they

still exist, but they're not making any viable eggs. And so every generation, you put more sterile males out there. And over time, you can drop the population down to zero using this mess. Down to zero, really? Down to zero. Wow. So actually, we started doing this in 1958, and by 1966, the United States was free of New World Screwworm.

How do you get down to zero? I understand that you can suppress the population because you have some males that are sterile, but as long as you have any males that are not sterile, won't you keep getting some more screwworms? They do this generation after generation after generation, and they swamp the population with these sterile males. And so they're literally, like, loading up airplanes and drop. dropping airplanes full of these. No, no, no, no.

This is how they distribute the screw worms. They drop airplanes full of these sterile insects. If anything is going to inspire conspiracy theories about the government, then like dropping airplane loads of intentionally irradiated flies on the population, wow. Flesh-eating flies. Yeah, that's right. Flesh-eating irradiated flies. Oh, my gosh.

All right. But it's good for you, folks. Really, it's in your interest. Trust us. Trust the scientists. All right. So they did this and it worked amazingly. Yay, science. Mm-hmm. But the problem was that screw worm was still present in Mexico. And so it kept getting across the southern border. And so this problem didn't go away. So we decided, okay, you know what? We're going to eradicate screwworm from Mexico as well. Yeah. And so they started with the Mexican government's permission, this was a collaboration, they started dropping plainfuls of sterile

screw worms over Mexico. And by 1991, Mexico was free of screw worm. Yay. Which is amazing. And so they ended up marching screw worm back farther and farther and farther until screw worm was only found on the southern side of the Panama Canal. This seems like such good news. It must be ironic foreshadowing for some terrible twist you're about to drop on us. I mean, this is, no, this is good news full stop. There were like decades where we were completely without screw worms. It's amazing. Like, go science. And so Panama has this facility where they're constantly making these sterile insect males and they're constantly dropping them in the Panama Canal region to try to make sure that screw worm doesn't make its way back up again because it's still present

south of the Panama Canal. Why doesn't the South American governments do this as well so we can eradicate this guy? Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know. I don't know if it's too expensive or what, but the countries that did eradicate it had American help and collaboration to sort of scale up to keep this going. But it's kind of amazing that it hasn't gotten past because we move a lot of animals around, you know? And so like in 2000, a gelding, which is like a kind of horse, but I don't know much about horses because I hate horses, was imported.

Well, technically, it's a sterilized male horse. Okay, thank you. Sterilized surgically. Oh, yeah, not with radiation, not with cobalt? No, snip, snip, no. Okay, got it, got it. So a snipped, snipped male horse was brought to Florida from South America and, And as it was coming across the border, it was discovered that it had screw worm and it went into quarantine, got treated, and so it didn't spread.

Yay. In 2007, a dog from Trinidad was sent to Florida, and it had screwworm larva, you know, snacking behind its eyes. Oh, God. I know. I know. And the dog made it to Mississippi. And so it could have been spreading it. But a veterinarian in Mississippi found them, reported it.

It was controlled. It got treated. The dog lived. It didn't spread. Amazing, but it feels like fingers in the dike. Yes, yeah, it does, right? So in 2016, there was an outbreak in the Florida Keys. We don't know how screw worm made it to the Florida Keys, but it got there and it ended up in the

key deer population, which is an endangered subspecies of white-tailed deer that you find in that area. And 135 of them died. That was about 10% of the population. It also infected dogs, pet pigs, cats and a raccoon. I know. Super sad. but we put sterile males out and we were able to get it under control again.

So using that sterile insect technique, we wiped it back out again. Wow. Amazing. But this current outbreak, as I understand it, is the most concerning outbreak that's happened so far. So Screw Worm has managed to jump above the Panama Canal. I don't think we know how it happened. And it has been sort of creeping its way back up, heading into Mexico and getting close to the border. So Zach was just in Texas visiting his family, and he said that there were like commercials about, you know, watch out for screw worm, check your animals, keep an eye out because we really want to make sure this thing doesn't establish here. Check your eyeballs.

Check your eyeballs. Oh, gross. So it's been estimated that if it takes hold in the U.S., it could cost over one and a quarter billion dollars to eradicate it from the U.S. if we had to deal with this again. It was recently announced that $8.5 million is going to go to building another facility to raise some. sterile male insects in Texas. And then they're going to work with the Panama facility to try to wipe screw worm out between Panama and the U.S. in the areas where it's taken hold. So they are putting a lot of energy and money into trying to tackle this because it would be a big deal if it got across the border. I really hope they tackle it before it gets to my house.

Yes, absolutely. Well, you know, they probably don't want to go to California anyway because it's like kind of a boring place. I'm more worried about Virginia. But they don't like mountains. They don't like oceans. They don't like beautiful weather. You're right. They should head to Virginia. Oh, yeah. We've got much better wildlife here. And I'm sure the wildlife is delicious. And so, you know, come to Virginia. This got weird. So, Virginia will change our motto from Virginia is for lovers to Virginia is for screw worms. But anyway, so John wanted to know, should we worry about this problem? I'm already worrying. Yes. Yeah. The answer is yes. We should worry and people are worrying and taking what seems to be appropriate measures to me. And are there any human diseases related to this parasite? I wasn't able to find any. So the parasite can infect and live in people. And that's horrible. But I don't think it spreads any diseases as far as I was able to tell. And how did it manage to catch us by surprise? I would say it didn't catch us by surprise. Monitoring for this is pretty widespread. And we've been constantly sort of

working to keep this below the southern border, to be honest, I am amazed and very proud of our efforts that it hasn't gotten above Panama more often. Like this, it's incredible that we've been able to control it to the extent that we have. So, you know, something just managed to move across the border that was infected by screw worm and we're on it again. This is probably, unless we completely remove screw worm from the face of the planet, this is something we're just always going to have to deal with happening from time to time, would be my guess. well let me take the other side of this let me be the screw worm advocate you know many things are unpleasant or ekey or gross but then it turns out they serve some positive function in the ecosystem if we remove screw worm from the earth we just like delete all of them is there some beautiful critter that like eats screw worms that's no longer going to be around no no so i i don't actually know the answer but what i can tell you is that for decades we have managed to eradicate screw worm from America and most of Central America, and we haven't seen ecosystems collapse or something like

that. You know, so it's possible that there is that birds really liked eating screw worms and they have a little bit less food to eat. Yeah. But I think this is one of those things where as a pro-human individual, I think that any ecosystem costs would be worth it because otherwise the, you know, the cost for our livestock and our pets and and for, you know, endangered species like the key deer, it would be better to not have it around.

And then Kelly wouldn't have to think about gross pictures online as she eats her hamburger. My God, it was a horrible photo of like the head of a key deer that I won't, I'll stop. So, John, thank you for this fascinating question and go science. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass.

The injured were being loaded into. to ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA.

Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I had this, like, overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then.

And I just hit call. I said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation. And I just want to call on and let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a nonprofit fighting, in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month,

so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat Army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission.

Don't have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of The Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's Honey German, and my podcast, Grasas Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment,

with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters

sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vibras you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the... code switching.

I won't say white watch because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. Yeah. But the whole pretending and cold, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasas Come Again

as part of my Cultura podcast network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay. Next up, we have a question from Robert from Richmond. Thank you very much, Robert, for reaching out to me to ask this question. And remember to everybody out there, if you have a question about the way the universe works,

something you want to understand, and you'd like Daniel and Kelly to break it down for you, please just write to us to Questions at Danielankelly.org. Don't ask chat GPT. Don't read some nonsense online. Reach out to us. We really will set you right. All right, here's Robert from Richmond. This is Robert from Richmond, Virginia. I was wondering how life on Earth would have evolved differently, if at all, if we didn't have the moon.

So we wouldn't have tides to mix the primordial soup. We wouldn't necessarily have as much of a tilted axis. Even nocturnal predators wouldn't have the light of the moon at night to hunt. The moon has been there for so long that it's kind of interesting. to see how it would be different without it, but also there are so many planets that have more than one moon. We're kind of unique in that way. How would life evolve differently with more moons? I know there's a lot to unpack there. I appreciate all the hard work. Keep it up. Look forward to hearing from you guys. Well, this is a great question, which is exactly what I would expect

for a fellow citizen of Virginia. Which is what a Virginian? Is this a Richmond? Richmondian? Virginian. Richard is a Virginian. A fellow Virginia. And Richard is doing something which I do all the time in which I love seeing in people, which is thinking about how the universe could be different. Why is it this way? And that's like one of the big questions of science. That's why we do science to understand is the way our universe works an accident? Is it happen for a reason? Are those reasons important? Do they determine why we're here? All these things help unravel like the context of our lives. So yeah, awesome, Robert. Thank you for thinking big. Or maybe Robert's just writing a science fiction novel and need some help. And we're happy to do that, too. Yeah, no problem, no problem. So this question has a lot of angles.

You could think about whether life would have evolved if Earth never had a moon, or you could think about what would happen if we lost our moon. So I started with that one because it's sort of like a fun science fiction scenario. Like, hey, we have a moon. Are we going to have it forever? Is it possible we could lose our moon? And the answer to that is yes, you know, people think about the solar system as sort of static and this slow moving parade of planets around the sun that's been happening forever. But that's not true. The solar system is kind of chaotic. It's just on longer timescales than we mostly think about.

You know, the order of the planets we have today is not the same order of the planets we've had forever. Planets have migrated in and then migrated out. There are theories that we had another gas giant that when Jupiter and Saturn migrated to the inner solar, system and then back out, one of these was tossed into outer space. So there might be like a lost sibling planet out there. I like to imagine the noise it made as it got flung out into space. Why me? Exactly. And maybe that planet had like the best climate on the whole solar system. Maybe the solar system lost its California in that interaction. That's fine. That's fine. And so in a similar way, we could lose our moon.

You know, something could, like, hit the moon and deflect it and knock it out of orbit. In fact, right now, scientists are tracking a new interstellar comet. This is a piece of the universe that comes from another star, like a big chunk of rock and ice thrown out of another solar system that's passing through hours. And we don't think it's going to hit the Earth or that close, but it's moving really, really fast. And if it did hit the Earth, wow, that would be devastating. And if it hit the Moon, it could certainly knock it.

out of orbit. You know, I remember when I heard that, my first thought was, oh, right, hitting the moon, that would be like a bummer for a lot of reasons, but that would be better. And then I'm like, wait a minute, maybe that wouldn't be better. Or it would be better, but like not much better. Yeah. In fact, there's a great science fiction novel called Seven Eves, which starts out with some aliens basically destroying our moon. It's never really explained how it happens, but most of the book has to do with trying to survive the destruction in the moon because if it turns into rubble and then starts falling into earth and you're filling the atmosphere with this stuff and you basically have a nuclear holocaust on earth it's end of days

kind of stuff so we don't want our moon to be obliterated into dust but it could also just be knocked out of our orbit we could just lose it and go wandering into the solar system no and so that lets us think about like well what would life be like on earth if we didn't explode the moon if it just sort of like drifted away somehow well the moon plays a big role in biological experience right like we know for example, that the moon causes tides, right? High tide and low tide. This is because of gravitational tidal forces. That's why they're called tidal forces. And the physics here is really fun, and it sounds complicated because it's gravity and all that stuff, but it's pretty basic. You know, one side of the earth is closer to the moon than the other side of the earth. And so the moon's gravity pulls on the

earth harder on the closer side than the further side. So it turns the earth into something like a football instead of a sphere. It's like squeezing the earth. And the water on the earth is the squishy as bit, and so it responds the most. Most people don't realize, though, that all of the earth gets squeezed. There are these things called land tides that move the distance of the surface of the earth relative to the center by meters. Yes, as the moon goes around the earth, it squeezes and massages the earth, changes its shape, not just the water, but the land also changes its shape. Lies. That's amazing. Yes, these are lies propagated by flies that the government drops over California, infected with conspiracy theories.

You could be dropping worse things, probably. Yes, and most people know about the moon's effect on water tides, but not so much about the moon's effect on the earth, right? And also, the sun gives us tides, right? Like, the sun is much further away, but it's also much more massive. So if you got rid of the moon, we would still have tides. Right? Tides are a combination of the sun's tides and the moon's tides, which is one reason why tides

are complicated. Like if you look at a tidal chart, it's never like, it goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. It's a simple sinusoid. It's complicated. It goes up. It goes down. It comes up less. It goes down more. It's really complicated. And that's due to the sun and the moon and the shape of the inlets and stuff. Tides are really complicated. Isaac Newton started working on them hundreds of years ago. And it wasn't until like a hundred years ago or so that we had a pretty solid understanding of the physics there. Tides made my Ph.D. super confusing. Because I had, you know, I had to go out and collect snails when the tide was low. And I would always think like, oh, I remember when the tide was the other day. I'm going to extrapolate forward.

And, you know, it was not as predictable as I wanted it to be. Yeah, I know. They're complicated. Yeah. And people think that this complexity might have really been important for the development of life. Like, number one, if you got rid of the tides, a lot of life by the seashore would be very confused. And a lot of assumptions they make and things they rely on. on would be thrown into chaos.

So the conditions for life on Earth would be drastically different and some things would live and some things would not live. But also historically, people imagine that tides played a role in the evolution of life, that when you're on the border between fresh water and salt water, you have these brackish water systems. And there's a lot of mixing up that happens. And you can imagine, like, water sloshing up into these tide pools and mixing this bit of biochemistry, but that bit of biochemistry.

And maybe that's even plays a role in abiogenesis. A lot of this is very speculative, right? Like, hmm, maybe it is. And this seems like a compelling story. None of it is the kind of science where we can like, let's do the experiment. Let's have an earth without a moon and an earth with moons. And let's see if life starts more often. It's just sort of more like a reasonable sounding story.

And that doesn't make it like non-scientific. It just means, hey, this is the most we can do right now, sort of think about it clearly and try to imagine. So we don't know the answer to like, could life have evolved without a moon? would life evolve differently without a moon? But there are strong arguments to make that it's certainly possible. So estuaries are ecosystems where freshwater meets saltwater. If you didn't have the moon, would estuaries narrow? Yeah, there would be a narrower band there, right?

Because it would be less mixing, right? Because the moon brings the saltwater up further into the freshwater, absolutely. Estuaries play an important role for ecological services, and they're economically important because they, end up being places where baby crabs and baby fish that we like to eat start their lives. So anyway, let's keep the moon. There, I've decided. The moon makes things yummy.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, the moon makes yummy things. And the moon also affects global weather in other ways because it changes current patterns. You know, it helps stabilize climates by mixing up the air. Like, it's pulling on the air as well. So it's not just water. It has all sorts of effects on the air and on the land. In addition, of course, the moon provides light at night, right?

It's like essentially a huge mirror in space reflecting the sun down to Earth. And so any critter that like takes advantage of a little bit of moonlight for hunting is going to be disadvantaged. This is another in the category of like things would be different. We don't know exactly what that would mean, but we can sort of speculate intelligently. And it seems certain that it would dramatically change the conditions for life. Would it be good for our favorite creatures, which are. are rats that would it help them hide at night? It would. It would be good for rats that are out at night, especially because it would be bad for owls, right? Owls that do a lot of rat eating.

But also, it would be good for astronomers. Having a moon is really bad when you're on the ground with your telescope and you want to look at some star and then boom, you have this huge sun mirror shining into your eyeballs. It's a lot harder to have dark nights. So a lot of our dark nights are ruined by a moon. So, you know, maybe there's a conspiracy out there among astronomers to get rid of the moon. Hey, guys, knock it off. Knock it off. We need the moon.

And there's even more dramatic effects that the moon plays on the Earth. It's not just the ties. It's not just the air. It's not just the night. But the Earth's rotation and tilt are strongly affected by the moon because the moon is pretty big, like especially for our moon, right? Lots of moons in the solar system are much smaller than our moon. But our moon is big enough that it carries a significant fraction of the angular energy of the Earth's moon system.

So people think that the Earth's rotation itself is affected by having a moon and that the tilt of the Earth is sort of moderated by the moon. So like if we didn't have a moon, Earth's tilt might be even crazier, might be much deeper. That would affect seasons. It absolutely would affect seasons. Or it could also have no tilt, right? And we can end up with no seasons. And so the Earth's rotation and the Earth tilt is a product of this balance between the Earth and the Moon. And there's another fun thing that's happening there, which is that as these two are sort of massaging each other, right, tidal,

and they're using their angular momentum to massage each other. And it takes some energy to squeeze the Earth into a football. As it does that, it's losing some of its angular momentum. And so the Moon is actually getting further and further away from us every year. And not by like some tiny amount, like microns or something. It's happening by one centimeter per year. I mean, that's still a tiny amount. I thought you were going to tell me, like, a mile a year or something.

But, you know, I'm still concerned because I'm Kelly and I'm concerned about everything. But, like, the centimeter doesn't sound like a lot. Convince me it's a lot. Well, it's not a lot for a year, but if you have a lot of years, that's a lot of centimeters. Imagine what the moon might have looked like a million years ago or two million years ago as our ancestors are walking across the plane. They had a bigger moon in their night than we did. Dinosaurs saw a bigger moon. Yes, exactly.

Oh, that's kind of cool. Yeah. Okay. Dinosaur astronomers had an easier time understanding the surface of the moon because it was closer. Now I care. Did dinosaur entomologist drop sterile insects on Californians? One of my favorite dinosaur stories is somebody who reconstructed the path of the asteroid that hit the Earth, 65 million years. ago. And at least one of the possible

pass includes a close flyby before it actually hit. So that means that dinosaur astronomers had plenty of warning. Oh, wow. They could have seen this thing in the sky before it hit, like weeks beforehand and prepared. But man, they didn't fund astronomy enough. So there's a lesson,

folks, fund astronomy. That's right. Dinosaur NASA should have gotten a lot more money. And on that note, you know, this interstellar comet is fascinating and it's not going to hit the Earth, so nobody should worry. But you know, If it was pointed at the Earth, then we would have very little time to do anything about it, which means we should be getting ready to do something about it before we spot these things.

So, like, we really should be spending more time and energy on Earth Protective Services, if you ask me. So that's two squares on your DKEU bingo card, if you're not keeping track. There's existential dread and more funding for science. Especially because these scenes could be lobbed in our direction by aliens. So there's another bingo square for you. Bing! Yep, yep, yeah. Oh, sorry. We still got a hit on cannibalism and poop. We'll get there. All right. So if we lost our moon or if Earth never had a moon, we're looking at a very different situation for life. We know that life on Earth would change a lot or may have not evolved or could have evolved very differently.

I don't have any reason to believe this, but my hunch is that if Earth didn't have a moon, we still might have gotten life. It just would be very different. You know, it's easy to say these conditions were required for life to turn out as we know it. it, therefore, life wouldn't have evolved if you don't have those conditions, but I think it's also equally likely that life just would have been weird or indifferent. But the other side of Robert's question is not just losing our moon, but what about more moons? What if Earth had two moons or seven moons? What would that be like? And is that possible? And yes, it is still possible at this fairly mature stage in the solar system to get more moons. We think this happened a lot with Jupiter and Saturn, for example. Some of their moons were formed as the planets formed sort of left over stuff

that was too far out and moving too fast to fall into the planet, sort of the same way the planets didn't fall into the sun. And these moons tend to orbit in the plane of the solar system. But some of the moons have like wacky orbits. And this might be because they're captured. They're just something that came by and the gravity of Jupiter or Saturn grabbed onto it. And so the Earth could do that too. You have some chunk of stuff from another solar system or from somewhere else in the

solar system comes by at the right angle and the right velocity. The Earth could grab it. And then we could get two moons. Wow. And then we'd have even wackier tides. If you had to guess probabilistically, if something comes close to Earth. Yeah, zero. Oh, yeah.

Okay. So it would be more likely to smack into us and do damage than create another moon, right? Yeah, absolutely. Most likely it hits us or it totally misses us. But to get captured, you need to have exactly the right velocity and radius match, right? Like, you know, first your physics, you can do the orbital mechanics. At every radius from the Earth, you need a specific velocity in order. order to be in orbit. And so those things have to match and the angle have to match. And so yeah,

it's unlikely. But, you know, obviously it has happened. There definitely are moons that have been captured. So it could happen to us. And so it would affect the tides. They would be even more complicated for grad students trying to plan their experiments. Trying to go get snails. Yeah. It could affect the earth's tilt and spin if it's a big thing, right? So it could have a real impact. And those two moons then would have complicated interactions. They could even like squeeze each other and induce, like, you know, stuff going on inside those moons. You could end up with, like, a volcanic moon in the sky. That would be pretty awesome.

Could we get a ring? Could they break each other apart and give us a ring? Absolutely, yeah. The moon could destroy the other one or the other one could destroy the moon. We could end up with a ring. It could be really fascinating. So is this something you should worry about? It's pretty unlikely that we would lose our moon any time in your lifetime or your children's

lifetime or the next thousand years. If we lose the moon, it's pretty survivable. If the moon gets destroyed, then yeah, you'll be glad you built that bunker. But, you know, I think you have bigger things to worry about. I think you should be more worried about screw worm than moons. And science funding. And science funding. All right.

Well, thanks very much for that question, Robert. Let me know how your science fiction novel is turning out. Awesome. Thank you, guys. So basically, we don't know. And I kind of love when this happens because it's finding the edges of what we know and don't know. And it just shines a light on areas of future research, you know. maybe if we figure out how the moon or moons might play a part in evolution, then that might

help future SETI-type programs to search for exoplanets with only one moon if we find that that's a critical part of life creation or focus on planets that have moons and ignore the ones that don't, whatever that case is. But I appreciate it. Thank you very much. And Yay, go fund research. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.

Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back.

In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in place. sight that's harder to predict and even harder to stop listen to the new season of law and order criminal justice system on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey sis what if i could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance bro tell you how to manage your money again welcome to brown ambition this is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards if you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start

shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months, you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace.

You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has ever. echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangles of tangles, up identities, concealed

truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of family secrets. Listen to Family Secrets, Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Hola, it's HoneyGerman, and my podcast, Grasasas Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment, with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition?

No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters, sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start.

We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vibras you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me.

Yeah. But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasasasas Come Again as part of my Cultura podcast network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're back and we're answering questions from listeners, and we're going back from physics into the gross world of biology.

So finish up that snack before he listened to the rest of this episode. Let's listen to a fantastic question from Anthony. Hello, Daniel and Kelly. I'm Anthony from Orlando, Florida. I enjoy your podcast and learn a great deal from you both. Your recent conversation on preons was fascinating and scary. I believe there is a comment in that discussion on synthetic blood. What is the progress in developing synthetic blood for general use?

Are we any closer to it being used? Would it be universal or type like regular blood? Again, thank you and love your podcast. All right, Kelly. So what is blood anyway? Yeah, so it's complicated. It's not, it depends, but it's complicated. So blood, depending on how you want to slice it, blood can be three or more things.

So one of them is plasma. This is like the fluidy part of your blood. It's something like 55% of your blood. I've never understood why do they call it plasma? Because to me, plasma is a gas that's been heated up until you get ions. Is there some similarity between physics plasma and blood plasma? Gosh, you know, if I had to put money on it, our plasma came from. first.

And so I don't know the answer, but you guys probably stole it from us. Fair, fair. All right. So, yeah, this, it carries stuff around like electrolytes and hormones and antibodies made by your immune system. And it's the bulk of blood, like 55% of blood. Hmm. It also carries around stuff that helps with coagulation, so like when you get a cut.

Okay. And your cut sort of clots up and makes a scab. And then about 44% is red blood cells, and inside of the red blood cells is hemoglobin, and hemoglobin is what carries oxygen to different parts of your body. And then the last part is platelets, and these are like little parts of cells that are really important for coagulation and clotting up wounds. So as somebody who's naive about biology, I always imagine the blood is like, you know, it's a circulatory system. It's like the highway for the body, everything that needs to go from one place to another, gets dumped into the blood, and then somebody else pulls it out. Yep.

And so we're talking about water, electrolytes, antibiotics, red blood cells, platelets, all this stuff is just flowing through the blood and useful to some bits of the body. Is that fair? Yes, your blood vessels are the highway system, move in the blood around. So then why do we have different types of blood? What makes blood A or B or O or whatever? Yeah, right. So we've known about this for a while. So I'm just going to quick back up into history.

So for a while we were like infusing blood from dogs into people or blood from lambs into people. Actually, I think it was mostly lambs. And it was there was a bit of a religious like lambs are sort of innocent, lamb of God sort of thing. And so that's the right kind of animal to be putting into our bodies. And so for a while lamb blood was going into people. But we learned that not only is it bad to put blood from other animals into humans, it can also be bad to switch blood from one human to another. And Austrian physician Carl Lansziner in 1900 started mixing up different blood from different people. And he was like, well, sometimes when you mix blood together, it coagulates and sometimes it doesn't.

And it's always the same if you take blood from... He wasn't doing these experiments in people. He was like doing this in the lab. As I understand it, he was extracting blood from people in his lab. And he was like, you know, if you extract blood from person A and person B, every time you do that and mix the bloods together, it clots. But person A and person sees blood every time you do it, doesn't clot when you put them together. So what the heck is going on there? And he eventually gets the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for sort of figuring this out.

And the answer is that blood have like proteins that are like sticking out on the cells. And some people have different kinds of proteins than others. And if two people have different proteins on their blood cells, then your immune system will recognize it as foreign and attack it. And that's what the clots are. And the clots are like the immune system. I'm clumping it up. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

And so, but so you asked, why do we have different blood types? And the answer, we do not know. And so for a while, it was popular to postulate that it had something to do with, like, our ancestry and where we came from, like type A blood is maybe, you know, like hunter-gatherers. And so those people actually should be eating more of, like, a hunter-gatherer diet because their blood is like a, that's what evolved for. But the answer is that blood types show up in primates. before humans. So, you know, chimpanzees have blood types. And we don't really understand it could

have something to do with differences in immune functioning. So, you know, maybe people with type A blood might be more susceptible to some virus that sweeps through the population. And type B blood would be less susceptible. And this variability popped up at some point and then was retained because it helped some parts of the population avoid diseases. But the answer is we really don't know. But it happened before humans came around. All right. So then it can't be explained by, for example, irradiated flesh-eating flies distributed on the population by the government. Guys, those flies that are irradiated, it's a good thing. It's a good thing. The science is helping us. You Californians are always jumping to conspiracy theories. Oh, it's just so fun. It's just so

easy. Now I see why they do it. It feels good, doesn't it? Yeah. You don't need evidence. It just need a compelling story. That's right. All right. So we have all these things inside the blood. So why do we think about synthetic blood? Why do people work on making fake blood? So right now what we do is we get blood from donors. And that's great. And when you donate blood, often what happens is your blood is sort of separated out into different parts.

The red blood cells, the plasma, the platelets. And they can go to different people depending on their need. A major need for blood, though, is trauma. So, you know, for example, if you get into a car accident and you lose a lot of blood when you get to the E. are when you get into the ambulance, they might want to try to increase the amount of blood that you have, and so donated blood gets used for that purpose. And then another important use for blood is in wartime. And here it's particularly hard to transport blood from blood banks back home because blood has a shelf life. So red blood cells are good for, you know, a bit more than a

month, month and a half, depending on like where you are and what their rules are. I think platelets are good for something like a week. And so this stuff isn't good indefinitely. And it takes a long time to get it from a bank to overseas, for example, if you're talking about a war situation. And so having synthetic blood would be great not only for these situations where, you know, it's hard to get the blood to where it needs to go, but also every once in a while we have shortages.

So for example, the Red Cross has declared blood shortages at different times. And so if you can't get enough blood from people, it would be nice to have synthetic blood. And the purpose of synthetic blood is really just to hold you over until your body can start making your own. Wouldn't it also be nice to have synthetic blood because then you could prevent like the spread of blood-borne diseases, right? Yeah. So, I mean, that's worth considering. But at this point, we have a lot of complicated screening procedures to find out if blood is carrying infections. And I believe that we extract out, for example, white blood cells before you give people blood because white blood cells, you know, could be carrying things like HIV. And so the probability

that you pick up a disease from a transfusion in the United States and the UK is very low. It might be higher in other parts of the world, but we're very careful about screening it here. Yeah. And so how do the various human blood types connect to this question of like making synthetic blood, but we have to make several different synthetic blood types? Well, so that's the great thing about synthetic blood is hopefully you don't have to worry about typing anymore because you can make synthetic blood that doesn't have those sort of protein sticking on the outside that are going to attract the attention of the immune system. And so it would be helpful. For example, like, you know, imagine there's an accident and somebody whose blood type you don't know is going to need a bunch of

blood. You, I guess you need to take all of the different kinds of blood with you. And then you need to take the time to get a small sample of blood from the trauma patients to figure out what kind of blood they have, or at least you need to make sure you've got enough of the universal donor's blood, which is type O, to bring with you. So it would be much less complicated if you didn't have to worry about blood typing at all. And you could just universally have a synthetic blood that you could bring with you that was more shelf stable. This would solve a lot of problems. So most of the research so far has been done on making synthetic red blood cells. So this is, again, about 45% of what blood is made of. And initially what they were doing was they just got hemoglobin, which is

the part that binds to the oxygen, and they were putting hemoglobin in people. They were like, well, the important thing is the oxygen transport in an emergency to keep everything going. Yeah. But hemoglobin interacts with other kinds of oxygen in the body. So nitric oxide is used by our blood vessels to control vasodilation and vasoconstriction, so essentially to control how open or closed your blood vessels are. And so just putting hemoglobin in meant that the hemoglobin could interact with the nitric

oxide and could tinker with vasodilation. That sounds bad. Or at least that was what was claimed by a meta-analysis that sort of changed the way the whole field felt about these things. And so, for example, there's a product called hemopure, which was developed in the 90s. And it's essentially a cow hemoglobin, which has been purified. And now it's only used in compassionate use cases, like you absolutely need it to try to save someone's life, but there's some concern about it, you know, messing with vasodilobin.

but some doctors still use it. And in fact, there are doctors who argue that, like, look, this isn't actually a massive problem because people are only using this for, like, a day or two before their body can start making enough red blood cells to replace them. This isn't a real long-term problem. We're overreacting. But the field has essentially decided that this pure hemoglobin route is not the best way to go. So what do you do?

So there's a new company called Arithromere, and they're made. making a red blood cell analogue. So essentially what they do is they get hemoglobin. In this case, they are extracting hemoglobin from blood that has been donated but is now past its shelf life. So if that blood doesn't get given to someone in time, they take it. They remove the red blood cell outer part. They extract the hemoglobin. And then they put the hemoglobin in a lipid layer that they have made. So they essentially like enclose it in a tiny, fatty capsule. It's smaller than a usual red blood cell, but it keeps the hemoglobin from interacting with the nitric oxide and messing with the vasodilation stuff. And this is actually a really clever molecule.

So it's pH sensitive, which is important. So when it goes to the lungs and you have high pH, it allows oxygen to bind to the hemoglobin. And then when you get to the parts of your body that are in need of oxygen, that ends up being a low pH environment. and the hemoglobin can like let go of the oxygen and the oxygen can go oxygenate your other cells like it needs to, which is like kind of fascinating to me. Like what a cool thing to have been able to figure out. Yeah.

And it's universal, so there's no compatibility problems. You don't have to type a patient beforehand. It's a freeze-dried powder, and so you mix it with saline. So you essentially get this like plastic bag that with the divider in the center and you've got the like freeze-dried erythromere on one side and say.

alien on the other side, which is like salt water that's the same sort of saltiness as our blood. And then you like break the divider between them. You mix the whole bag up. And now you've got red blood cells or, you know, synthetic red blood cells that you're ready to give to a patient. And they're thinking this could be shelf stable for up to two years. And they've like tried this at work. They like actually carries the oxygen in the way that you need. They have done experiments on animals. And it seems to be doing well in the animals. And it seems like their lipid case for the hemoglobin gets, you know, processed by the digestive system the way you would expect it to, and you sort of pee it out when you're done with it. And so the animal studies

so far have been promising. And a lead guy on the project is Dr. Doctor. And so I feel like we have to trust that this is being done well. Like his last name is Doctor and he has the title of Doctor. That's exactly right. Yes. And if he was at a German university, he could be like, Dr. Professor, Dr. Doctor. Yeah. Yes. Amazing. We should move him to Germany.

So I'm really surprised that you can replace red blood cells with something so simple. Like, aren't red blood cells complicated? Aren't they doing something else? Is there anything else that red blood cells are doing that we're not capturing with just hemoglobin in a fatty drop? Probably, but you really just need to keep someone alive for, like, again, for the time that it makes for their bone marrow to make their own red blood cells. And so this is definitely just a short-term.

solution to keep your heart kick in so that you have time to, you know, do the recovery on your own. This seems kind of amazing. Is this something you think we're going to see in hospitals and trauma centers? I think they're going to be starting experiments in humans in the not too distant future. So it's possible we'll see this. But this is really hard because, like, who do you decide to give it to first? It's going to be tough to design the human trials because we know that red blood cells donated from a human work. And so figuring out the first person who you're going to be like, oh no, you're in it. This is a trauma situation. You might die, but we're going to give you this experimental thing. Even though we could give you this other thing that we know would work,

you know, that's a little bit difficult. And so I'm sure they're going to have a little bit of trouble designing and finding the right population to try this on. You can imagine the compassionate use. You could give this to trauma centers. And then when they are in a situation where they just don't have blood and somebody's going to die, they're like, all right, well, let's dip into the fake stuff. Yes, absolutely. Yep. Or you could send it to folks who are out at the front lines in a war, and they might not be able to blood type someone or something like that, so they can't tell, and they might not be able to get blood donations. And so, yes, you absolutely can't imagine situations where having this on hand as a backup

could get you the data that you need. All right. And what about the rest of the blood? What about synthetic platelets? Yeah. So Dr. Ashley Brown's lab at North Carolina State University has a platelet-like particle that is an animal testing right now, and the animal tests have gone pretty well. So essentially what they did was they've got this like very tiny nanoparticle that they made.

And it's like a tiny microgill. So it's sort of soft and squishy. And they've attached to it a protein that binds with this thing called fibrin. So when your body starts to make a clot, fibrin is a protein that's used to sort of get that clot sticking together. And so essentially your body starts dealing with the wound. And then you're putting this stuff in there, which is going to bind with the fibrin that's already in the clod. that's already in the clot, and it's going to move the clotting process along more quickly. So it essentially finds where clots are forming by having this antibody that binds with something

you find in clots. Or at least that's my understanding. And so they did it in mice and pigs, and things went well. They said that they might be a few years before human trials, and there's things that they want to do, like get clumping to work a little bit better. And this is definitely not like, oh, hey, we have created platelets again and everything. everything that platelets do, we're able to do with this synthetic product, but it could be a really good measure for, like, again, you know, there's a trauma situation. You just got to get somebody to the point where their body can recover and take over this work on its own. And so anyway, so the take home, Anthony wanted to know, how close are we? Yeah. And the answer is that

we've got synthetic blood components that are being tested in non-human animals, and the current designs would be universal if they work out. But we're mostly in the trial phase. And so we're still relying on blood from human donors more than anything else. There are some other products on the market that we didn't talk about, but sort of in general at the moment, we are mostly relying on human donors. And I'm sorry for all the vampires out there. We still have some work left to do. True blood is not ready yet. I'm so glad you made a vampire joke because I feel bad. I fell down on the opportunity to make a werewolf joke in the moon question. You know, I know.

Oh, my gosh, Daniel, we could have had zombies and werewolves. And you know what? Let's start recording again. We're going to do this again. All right. Well, that's exciting. And I'm also sort of surprised. You're sort of like optimistic and upbeat about this.

This seems like great news. Have you spent some time in California recently? What's going on? No, I'm surprised, too. You know, I didn't get enough sleep. And, you know, the ant, so, all right, here, let's go ahead and we'll do the Kelly treatment. All right. It should be worth noting that we have tried things in the past that have not stuck.

So, for example, you know, that the straight up hemoglobin without a, like, lipid layer, you know, was tried and we ended up deciding this is not really the solution for us. So it's possible that will happen with these other things that we talked about today, too. So there's the Kelly treatment. All right. A little bit of cold water. But, yeah, on the whole, this seems very promising. Yeah, it does. It doesn't.

So I am really looking forward to when the vampires can come out of hiding and we can start dating them. Yay, science. Yeah, that's right. That's right. All right, well, let's see what Anthony thinks about our answer on synthetic blood. Daniel and Kelly, as usual, you guys knocked it out to park. I appreciate your answers.

I learned a great deal. I was particularly interested in this because I have relatives whose religious convictions would prevent them from accepting blood transfusions. Perhaps as this science develops, they'll have another choice or an alternate decision that can save their lives possibly. I appreciate your answers. Love your podcast.

Thank you. Okay, thank you, everybody, for these wonderful questions. We love hearing from you. Please do write to us to questions at danelonkelly.org. We say we will write back to everybody and we really, really mean it. We want to hear from you so that you can hear from us. We look forward to hearing from you.

Have a good one. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by IHeart Radio. We would love to hear from you. We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe. We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you. We really mean it.

We answer every message. Email us at Questions at Daniel and Kelly's. Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, blue sky, and on all of those platforms, you can find us at D and K Universe. Don't be shy. Write to us. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA.

Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grasias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there.

Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great bevras you've come to expect. Listen to the new season of Dacus Come Again on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation

about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denials easier.

Complex problem solving. Takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone and there is help out there.

The Good Stuff Podcasts, Season 2 takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a nonprofit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe, save my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.