Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Listener Questions #31

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Daniel and Kelly answer questions about how it can both be true that humans share 98.7% of their DNA with bonobos and that fraternal twins share 50% of their DNA, why black holes don't have color charges, and whether or not you could treat a fever or let it ride.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Hart podcast, guaranteed human. Hi, it's Joe Interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces' intuition with Capricorn power moves.

So I'm, like, delusionally proud. of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Clayton Eckerd in 2022. I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone. viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is

unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?

When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone in sleeping with you. I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming.

Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. Higgins, and if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on my iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I hear so many contradictory stats about DNA.

It makes my head spin. I'm 99% similar to a chimp, but only 50% similar to my fraternal twin? Black holes boast mass, spin, and charge so fine. Yet why not color or weak charge in their design? Yeah, Daniel, I think that your rhymes need to be much longer so that people have trouble remembering what the rhyme is supposed to be. Here, check out my next one, ready? Okay.

I have a high fever and I'm suffering through the flu. Can I lower the fever with meds or is the fever helping? What should I do? Longer's better, Daniel, probably. More moaning is better also. Yeah, that's right. Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's answers will bring your fever down and make it all right.

Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. This is listener questions episode number. 31. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I particularly love to answer questions from everybody out there. Hello, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites and space, and I also love answering questions, in part because it helps me figure out what I actually didn't understand, because nothing helps you understand something better than trying to explain it to someone else. I saw my daughter have that experience. I explained a little bit of math to her last week, and then she came home and said, hey, I explained this to all my

friends at lunch and now I really understand it. Oh, nice. And also, how exciting that your daughter is explaining math to her friends at lunch. Like, that's a good sign. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's such a fun moment to see her enjoying, sharing these ideas and also to understand how teaching something really is the best way to understand it. Classes that I've taught as a professor are the ones I understand the most deeply in topics we've covered on the podcast are things I understand. I understand. understand much better than I used to. Yeah, absolutely. Same. And whenever I see my daughter getting excited and, like, trying to explain a concept to me

or to her friends, I always back off and I'm like, a beautiful thing is happening. Don't ruin it, Kelly, by trying to explain some extra stuff or trying to be like, oh, now let's try to like, let's make a play about this or something. It's like, back off because you could ruin this. You're going to ruin this. So I always get nervous. And then I try to not ruin the beautiful thing. But these listener questions episodes are not just for me and Kelly.

to understand things by explaining them, we think that everybody else out there might also be curious about the things these listeners wrote in about. So that's why we share these questions with you because we figure, I bet somebody else out there wants to hear this answer. Absolutely. And let's start with Rob's question, which I'm guessing is a question that a lot of people have had. And I'm so glad that Rob went ahead and asked. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. You guys do an extraordinary job explaining this extraordinary universe that we live. in. So I'm hoping that you can explain something about genetics for me, please. The question is this.

In the context of different species and how closely related one is to another, I'll read things like humans share 98.7% of DNA with bonobos, or we are 4% Neanderthal, or fraternal twins share 50% of their DNA. All of these statements seem mutually contradictory. How can we share more DNA with bonobos, which, although our closest evolutionary relatives, are nevertheless from a different genus, than we share with any human, let alone a sibling or another homo species. Thanks very much. Dr. Nathan Lentz is a professor of biology at John J. College, City University of New York, and the author of multiple books, including The Sexual Evolution, How 500 Million Years of Sex, Gender, and Mating shape modern relationships. We chatted with Nathan about this book in our episode from February

February 27th, 2025. Be sure to go back and check that out. We got loads of nice comments about that episode, and you should check out the book as well. Nathan has done research looking at genomes of modern humans, African apes, Denisovins, and Neanderthals, and we're thrilled that he agreed to come on the show to answer Rob's question. Welcome back, Nathan. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much.

All right. So Rob's first question was human share 98.7% of DNA with Bonobos. So let's unpack that first. What does that mean? Well, actually, I think the easier way to think about this is to think about what you share with your siblings. So the question came that, you know, there's 50% DNA from our siblings and how is that so low compared to sharing 97% with chimpanzees? Let's start with what you share with your siblings. So that measure is actually a literal shared ancestry quantification.

You literally have 50% of the DNA from the same source as your full sibling. So the reason why is you have two of every. chromosome. You have chromosome number one that you got from your mother that is entirely derived from your mother and then chromosome number one from your father entirely derived from your father. And your sibling will have the same. But interesting, this is where it gets interesting. They won't be the same once, right? So because remember that your mother also had two chromosome number ones, one from her mother and one from her father, your maternal grandparents. And what she gave to you was not one or the other, but a mixture.

of those two because we break our chromosomes into chunks when we pass them on to the next generation. So you will not pass your intact chromosome number one, either one of them, to your offspring. It will be a combination of the material from the two chromosome number ones that you have. And those chunks are called segments. Chromosomes are broken up into either two, three, or four segments every time they're passed on from one generation to the next. So we can literally look at the segments of all of your chromosomes and the segments of all of your full siblings chromosomes and 50% roughly will be derived from the same source. I'm literally from the same DNA. That's what we mean when we say 50% for full siblings, 25% for half siblings, 50% from parents and so on.

So let me clarify first. When you say 50%, what exactly is the numerator and what exactly is the denominator? Is the denominator the entire genome? Right. The denominator is the entire genome, and the numerator would be pieces of DNA of whatever size you want. So you could look at 100 base pairs of DNA. You could look at 1,000, you could even look at a million. And if you broke the DNA into whatever segment size you want, you would be able to derive 50% of them from one parent or the other. And in fact, actually, if we had your grandparents' genomes accessible to us, we could tell exactly which chunks are which, where the chromosomes were broken. We would need to be. your grandparents' genomes to do that. But if we did that, we could actually tell exactly which chunks of, which segments of each chromosome came from which grandparent. And so on down. I have another question just to clarify, make sure everybody's following along because I'm not an expert in this either. So I have two copies of every gene. One comes from my mom, one comes

from my dad. But my mom had two copies. So I get either A or B version from her and either A or B version from my dad. And when you say 50%, that's an average figure, right? Because there's a randomness there. That's right. It could be that my brother and I have exactly the same genome. That's very unlikely, but 50% is the average, right? That's right. It's right. So is it possible to have two siblings with exactly the same genomes without being a monosagotic twins? It is possible, but you're talking about something that is in the order of trillions to one chances, even from the same flipping a coin a zillion times and getting heads every time. Exactly. Exactly. It's, it's, I don't know exactly how many zeros zillion has, but it's an extremely large number. Because remember, chromosome number one, you know, it's 20 million base pairs long. It can be cut anywhere along that 20. It's not like there's, it's, you know, one half or the other half. It can be cut one, two, or three times anywhere along its length. So it really does get to be this astronomically large number of combat. It's not like there's, it's, you know, one half or the other half. It can be cut one, you know, one, So but 50% is an average and there must be a distribution around that.

Yeah, it's a pretty tight distribution around 50% because like I said, there's so many segments that we're talking about. Right. Okay. And but thankfully, we actually have the same versions of most genes. So that's why, even though you might get some DNA from one grandparent or the other, the odds of them being importantly different, like different in any way that matters to you or it's actually pretty small because most of us have all the same versions of all the same. genes. We actually differ very little in our genetic differences among us, which is something that we're going to talk about in a second. So if you imagine breaking these chromosomes into all of these segments each generation, you do that backwards in time. What you will end up with, by the time you get to maybe eight or ten generations back, you've cut the genome into such small pieces that there will be some ancestors that you don't have any DNA from in this literal sense. Because it just got chopped up so many times that none of their chunks actually ended up in yours. So you might have an

ancestor eight or ten generations back that you got zero DNA from. They're called genetic ghosts. And they start to appear, you know, like I said, somewhere around 10 generations back. And then if you go another 10 generations back, most of your ancestors will be genetic ghosts and they don't actually give you any DNA because it is in these discrete segments. So the discrete segments is important because it decreases the number of options somebody has to contribute to you, right? If you have like zillions and zillions of base pairs, then it's very unlikely none of them are going to come from an ancestor. That's right. But if you group them together, then there's sort of fewer roles of the die and it's more likely that somebody gets left out. That's right. That's right. If we keep going back all the way

back to, let's say, the first human Neanderthal hybrid. So this was an individual who had a Neanderthal mother and more likely a human mother and a Neanderthal father. We can talk about why that's more likely in a minute. But a true hybrid. I definitely want to hear about why that's more likely. Where half of the chromosomes all came from humans and half all came from Neanderthals. Well, remember, we have very similar genomes to Neanderthals. And so the chromosomes would pair up and mix up just as if they were from the same species. And when that happens, the entire Neanderthal chromosome number one keeps getting, you know, chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces. And so now in the present day, we can only detect these small stretches of DNA that come from

Neanderthals. And the reason we know they come from Neanderthals is because we've sequenced the Neanderthal genome. We've sequenced ancient human genomes. And we see these stretches of little markers that we know came from Neanderthals because of the order that they're in because they haven't been broken up yet. By the way, if we win another 1,000 generations, these pieces would probably be so broken up that we might not even be able to tell where they are. But right now we're at an interesting point in human history where we can still detect that mixture. And so you have these segments.

Hold on that's really fascinating because I guess it means that the number of segments determines basically how many of your ancestors can contribute, which is connected to basically how far back in time you're getting contributions. So if you go far enough back, then most of your ancestors are genetic ghosts, right? Most of the ancestors are genetic ghosts. And the ones that are not, they themselves are going to have a complicated ancestry with Neanderthals showing up many times in their family tree. And when we say that the average human of European ancestry has around 3%, 2 to 3% Neanderthal DNA, it's important to remember, that will be different from person to person. So my 2% Neanderthal DNA will not necessarily be the same as yours. In fact, it's unlikely to be the same. Something like 30 or 40% of, 40% of the neonatal genome appears in human genomes scattered all around, but obviously any one person

only has a small part of that. So we can detect neonethyl DNA almost everywhere in the genome in someone, but in any one specific person, you're going to have a tiny percentage of it. But we have scattered bits of it all throughout the genome. So that's what we mean when we say two to three percent is there are segments still intact in many of us, not all of us, that we need. We need. know because of the order of the markers, they haven't been broken up yet, that they derive from Neanderthals. Can we talk a little bit more about what we mean about the order of the markers? Because, like, I would imagine that Neanderthal and humans, we didn't diverge that long ago

or have a common ancestor that long ago. How could we tell the difference between Neanderthal and human DNA? It's a great question. Great question. So imagine a string of Christmas lights that were all, let's say, a thousand Christmas lights long. Or let's be more realistic, a million Christmas lights long. Well, all of us will have the same color in most of the position. So 99.9% were all, let's say, let's say that the common color is black.

We all have black. So it would not be noticed. And then scattered are a few blue lights and red lights and green lights and yellow lights and whatever. Well, there are segments, say, of a red here and then a blue and then a green in a precise order that we don't necessarily see in most humans, but we know came from Neanderthals in that. order and it hasn't been broken up yet. Now this is where things get probabilistic. So the law of large numbers here works in our favor, but is it possible that you could have ended up with those markers and exactly the configuration that Neanderthals had just randomly? Yes, it is possible, but that is such a small percentage that we can effectively ignore it. The much more likely scenario is that you

inherited that chunk from an ancestor in your deep past, a Neanderthal ancestor in your deep past. So it's the precise order of those markers. And when they haven't yet been broken up by recombination, that shuffling process, then we can, we know that they came from Neanderthals. Now, importantly, most of these markers are actually not important, meaning they don't code for anything. They're in non-functional, non-coding DNA. Because most of our DNA is non-functional, non-coding, most of these markers are therefore

sort of irrelevant into our physiology. But a couple of these, a couple of these. very few are actually in important genes. And when that happens, that's the really fascinating. When we say that this version of this gene was not human in origin, but Neanderthal, Neanderthal's gave us this version of this gene. And that's where things get really, really interesting. But it's important to remember that's a tiny, tiny part of the overall contribution of

Neanderthals to our genome. Most of it is in the junk, you know, littered with, you know, repetitive sequences and things like that. Here's a nitpicky question. Is it possible that there's a chunk which is identical between humans and Neanderthals and therefore indistinguishable? And that my version of that did come from a Neanderthal ancestor, we just can't tell. A hundred percent. That will definitely be the case because most of the Neanderthal genome is identical to the human genome.

And so those markers would look the same. There'd be no way to determine their origin, except if we looked from generation to generation. So if we had a grandparent and a parent, and then we could piece it to time. together. So when we say 4%, what is the numerator and denominator there? It's still the full genome, but the numerator is only the ones that we can distinguish between the enderthal in human? That's right. It would be stretches of markers, so segments of linked markers, so markers that are still linked together, that we can definitively identify as the endothal in origin. So is that an underestimate of what they contribute? On average, it's probably a good estimate. On any individual,

then, yeah, it could be under or over-counting, right? But that's, again, law of large numbers really works in our favor. You know, it's one of these things where the odds of you winning the lottery are very low, but the odds of someone winning the lottery are very good. And that's what we look at when we talk about thousands of generations and lots of shuffling. If we look at enough people, we'll be able to see the Neanderthal DNA. I think this ghost ancestor thing is super fascinating. Can you estimate how far back in time,

most of your ancestors are ghosts by just doing like log base two of the number of segments. Is it that simple? Yeah. So I think I said it before. About 10 generations back are when the genetic ghosts start to appear. And another 10 generations from that is when the vast majority are genetic ghosts. Only 20 generations. Yeah.

It's not that long ago. The identical ancestors point, which is what we call the point at which we all share the exact same group of ancestors, is really only a few thousand years ago. So a few thousand years ago, there are humans that were the ancestors of all of us. And it was a tiny minority of the ones that were alive at that time. It's one of the things we've noticed about population genetics is that it's really uneven. There are some individuals that have billions of descendants, and most individuals have zero descendants.

Reproduction is just really uneven. So when they say that, you know, we're all descended from Genghis Khan because he had so many children, the fact that he had so many children doesn't guarantee that any of his genome is actually in us, does it? Right, except for the Y chromosome. Now, and let's explain. I'll get to Y to chromosome is a difference. But in the rest of his genome, yeah, it's very unlikely that any of us have Genghis Khan's DNA, literally inherited from him unless you're a male in Asia,

and then you have a pretty good chance of having his Y chromosome. And the reason why the Y chromosome doesn't participate in this shuffling. The Y chromosome is inherited intact from generation to generation. The only thing that alters it is mutations, which do appear randomly. And Genghis Kahn's Y chromosome, we actually know Genghis Kahn's Y chromosome with a great deal of certainty. Because even though his body was never found, like it was, we don't have his remains. But we know a Y chromosome that originated in Mongolia and then spread through Asia around, you know, 800 to 1,000 years ago. And that was because, of course, the Khan, as he was called, went around his entire empire, leaving his white chromosome everywhere he went. And then remember that his paternal grandson did the same thing. Kubla Khan did the same thing. So you have the same Y chromosome being spread all around. And remember that having ancestry from the Khan made you a high station in life. It was a status symbol in a lot of these regions to have been a descendant. And so therefore, even greater likelihood that that white chromosome,

would continue its prolific behavior. So we actually know his Y chromosome purely through deduction. That's incredible. Yeah, and probably Charles, Charles the Great Shark, Charlemagne, had a similar effect in Europe, and most Europeans are descended from Charlemagne. And is that connected to why you speculate about the paternal and maternal origin of the first human Neanderthal hybrid? Okay, so that's an interesting.

result just came out. So when two species mix, right, you'll have all the same chromosomes, all the same genes, but different versions. And what you, but that individual was, it was going to be raised in one culture or the other, right? So they almost certainly would have been raised by Niannithals, if they had a Niannifal mother and vice versa with a human mother. What we've found is some genes actually don't operate as well in the other genetic background. So we know that there's a gene that's involved in heart function that that we may very well have received from Neanderthals. But we also know that our version in an otherwise Neanderthal heart actually makes that heart perform not as well. So their cardiac capacity goes down. So it might very well be that some

genes are not really well received by the rest of the genetic background because of some kind of interaction and then other versions. And so when Neanderthals and humans intermixed and we call that gene flow, natural selection would have then continued and selected some versions of genes as being better in one population or the other. And there's no guarantee that a Neanderthal gene that works great in us would be, with the opposite would be true for the human version in their genetic background. And so what we're finding is that in these moments of hybridization, there was probably a lot of various selection that happened within those versions of genes. And both species probably benefited from the exchange by selecting the sort of the good variant and the way that they lived

and eliminating bad variants, again, based on the way that they lived. I thought there was something interesting with the mitochondrial DNA going on. Am I misremembering? No, so, no, you're exactly right. So mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from the mother. So you can think of it as similar to the Y chromosome inheritance as being only from the paternal side. Miticondrials only from the maternal, except for that all individuals have it. you know, we don't have, you know, it's not just a female-only genetics, but females are the only ones that pass it on. And what we do know is that the mitochondrial genome of Neanderthals did not come into the human gene pool. So the gene pool of all modern humans is derived from a very ancient lineage of mitochondrial DNA that was not affected by the Neanderthal introgression.

And so what we think that means is that the Neanderthal DNA that we do have came from male, Neanderthal males into human females and the lineage proceeded that way, so that we absorb the genes from males. Now, what happened on the opposite side? We're not sure. We don't have enough genomes from Neanderthals. They seem to have their own distinct mitochondrial haplotypes, which, which we remember will be similar to ours,

because, of course, we share a common ancestor with them about 800,000 years ago. So at one point, we all had the same mitochondrial type. But when they split, they seem not to have intermixed after that. So we've had a purely human version of the mitochondrial genome that was not affected by Neanderthal interbreeding. Fascinating. Amazing. We are having way too much fun, so we need to get to the last part of Rob's question. And the last part of Rob's question is we share something like 98.7% of our DNA with bonobos.

What does that mean? So now this, we can't do the segmental analysis at all. because by the time you get to seven million years ago, which is when we have the common ancestor with the two species of chimpanzees, then the segments have all been obliterated. But the DNA is obviously still there. So we have a common ancestry, but the chunks are so small that we can't link up the markers and look for stretches.

So this kind of 3% Neanderthal or 50% with your siblings, none of that would apply when we're comparing chimpanzees to humans. What we do instead is we do alignments. So we take the chromonies, the chromosomes and segments of chromosomes and align them. And what we do is we see how similar are the sequences. So when we can align them very well, which is most of the time, about 85% of our DNA lines up very, very well with chimpanzees. When we line it up, the sequence similarity is around 98 and a half percent, meaning it will be basically identical versions. You know, 98 out of 100

base pairs will be exactly the same. That's what we mean would we say. So it's more of a genetic similarity, not necessarily strict inheritance. It's not shared inheritance. It's sequence similarity. And that's 98.5%. But remember, that's only within the segments that do align very well. We have another 13 to 15% of our genome that actually doesn't line up at all with chimpanzees in humans. And that's because it's gobbledygook, right? It's been invaded by parasitic DNA, by these repetitive elements that just copy themselves. About 9% of our genome is virus carcasses, like the remains of virus infections. So that will be different from lineage to lineage. Chimpanzees have their carcasses and we have our carcasses. So when we say that it's 98% similarity, that's just similarity in the regions that we can align, which would

have all the genes in them, all the important stuff. The other regions of the genome are much harder to align because they are repetitive. So they get stuttered. They get broken. They they invert, they break off and move to a different chromosome, that kind of, you know, we call that kind of gobbledygook just because that DNA in almost all cases doesn't do anything. It's not functional. It may be transcribed a little bit, but it doesn't really do anything. And so, and it's impossible to really compare because, you know, if you have, you know, two puzzles that are made of different, you know, color pieces, they don't fit together, how similar are they, you know, it doesn't really make any sense. But in, you know, about,

Like I said, 85 to 87% of the genomes align very, very well, and their sequence similarity is around 98.5%, something like that. That answer was perfect. Thank you. So great. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. We're going to share this question with Rob and see what he has to say. Thank you so much, Kelly and Daniel. And especially thank you to Nathan for that comprehensive and clear answer. I was particularly surprised by the revelation that except for the Y chromosome, we don't just get copy A of a given quote. homoism from one parent and copy B from the other, but take more of a genetic buffet approach. In hindsight, I really regret only taking biology classes up to the age of 14, which is about

the worst time for a boy to stop learning about biology, but as this is a family show, that's all I'm going to say on the matter. Thanks again, guys. Keep being extraordinary. gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppi. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast

Doubt the case of Lucy Letby we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm

at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt the case of Lucy Lettby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life.

And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic, Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives. and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A son and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all.

If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chartside view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, This episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast, starting on February 24th, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would.

But what happened to Clayton after the show? made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral.

The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is love-trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said.

and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car,

you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder. and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all,

NLP, might actually work. This is wild. Listen to mind games on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back and we're answering questions from listeners. And the next comes from Abinit in London, who has a great question about black holes. Hi, Daniel and Kelly.

I'm Abheneet from London. Thank you so much for your podcast. It's really helped me reconnect with topics. I've always been curious about, but never seriously explode. I had a question about black holes. We often hear that black holes are completely described by just three things, their mass, spin and electric charge. But I'm curious, why not color charge or V charge as well?

I asked, since hawking radiation involves virtual particles, wouldn't that include quark anticoak pairs too? And if so, couldn't that give black holes some kind of a color charge? Thank you again. and looking forward to your thoughts. All right. Oh, my gosh. Okay.

Color charge, I got to be honest, I am still kind of confused about why you all decided to give a charge color. But, you know, actually, that is a, like a colorful thing you all did. I dig that. I like when you all are whimsical, like the charm quarks. That is a good name. I like it. Maybe we should start with what are color charges. Yeah, good.

So when we talk about charge, we usually assume electric charge. and we're used to the idea of electrons having minus one and protons having plus one and all that good stuff. But we've talked on the podcast a lot of times about how charge is a more general concept. Electric charge is for the electromagnetic force, but there are other forces out there like the weak force. And it has its own charges that tell you what things pull on each other and what things push on each other, et cetera. And there's the strong nuclear force. And it has charges. And those charges we call color charges because of the weird way.

that the strong force works. You don't just have plus and minus. You have these weird colors, red, green, and blue. But the bottom line is that some particles have some of these charges, and some particles don't. So, for example, an electron has electromagnetic charge, and it has a weak charge. It has no color charge. So it doesn't feel the strong force. But a quark has all of those charges, so it feels every force. A neutrino has a weak charge, but no color charge and no electromagnetic charge. So the charge, tells you which forces a particle feels. Okay, got it.

And we often talk on the podcast about what black holes can do. And black holes have this incredible ability to hide whatever is behind their event horizon. And they're featureless. There's this no hair theorem that tells you that once something goes beyond the event horizon, you can't tell anything about what's inside. Did you say a no hair? Yes, a no hair theorem. That's exactly right.

Why no hair? It's a way to say that black hair. holes have no features. Like, if you have two black holes of the same mass, they are exactly identical. There's no, like, hair on them that tells you this one's different from that one, or you dropped bananas into this one and apples into that one. So it could have been a no-nose or a no-nows-thirum, but you guys- Or a no bonobos. Yeah, why? So why no hair? I think it's just physicists trying to be colorful and, you know, come up with the ways to envision this stuff. Hair being like a texture. You know, there's no amount of zooming in on the

black hole you can do to learn more about it. And the things... I'm not a whimsical bunch. Hey, look, we're trying to take ourselves seriously over here, okay? Oh, I'm so sorry. So sorry. But you can't know some things about a black hole. Like if you drop something into a black hole, it becomes more massive, right? So you can know that there is something inside the black hole. You can't know what happened to it or Where is it on the inside? What's going on beyond the event horizon? But you can tell the difference between black holes that are big and small, right?

So you can measure their mass. You can also measure their electric charge. Electric charge is conserved in the universe. If I have a black hole that's neutral and then I drop an electron into it, that black hole now has a charge of minus one. So I can measure that about a black hole. Also, angular momentum is conserved in the universe. If I spin my black hole, then I can tell that it's spinning.

It has frame-dragging effects around it. So I can know the black hole's mass. I can know the black hole's spin. And I can know the black hole's electric charge. That is what the no-herom theorem says, that you can know those three things about a black hole. And Abanit says, hold on a second. If you have other kinds of charge,

why can't you tell if you've dropped those charges into a black hole too? No-herom theorem? No-hair theorem. Did I say no-herom? You did, yeah. I was like, wow, that is one exciting black hole. a lot about a black hole. It's got a harem. Well, I think if you have no hair, you probably also have no harem, but I'm not sure how

things work out there. There's a lot I want to say about that, but this is a show that kids can listen to. So let's move on. So why can't you see the color charges, Daniel? Yeah. So first, let's understand why you can see anything about a black hole. People sometimes wonder, like, well, if the electron is inside the event horizon, how do we know that it's there? Isn't that communicating information? outside of the black hole. So let's be clear about what you can and can't know about the black hole, which you can't know is the internal arrangements what's inside the event horizon. But you can know

the total charge. There's a theorem in physics called Gauss's law that tells you that the total flux of all the electromagnetic fields depends on the total and closed charge, whatever the arrangement is. And that also applies to black holes. And so you can tell if there's a charge, within some volume of space just by measuring like, what is the total flux of electromagnetic fields? So what you can't know is like, what happened to that charge? Where is it inside the black hole? Did it mutate to something else with the same charge? But you can know that there is a charge. And the way to think about it is to say that charge is now applied to the event horizon. Think of it like a membrane of charge around the event horizon. The event horizon itself has a charge.

You don't know what's going on internally. that's what the black hole is keeping hidden. But the fact that the black hole itself is charged, think of as like a charge on the whole event horizon, which is accessible to you in the same way that like the event horizon's mass is. If you have a black hole out in space, you can feel its mass even if you're far away.

You feel its gravity is quite powerful, even from beyond the event horizon. In the same way that a black hole's mass can affect things beyond the event horizon, so can the black holes charge, even if you don't know the internal configurations. Does that make sense? Yeah, but is this hypothetical or is this something we actually do?

Do we actually measure the charge of black holes? We have never measured the charge of a black hole directly. We do have some images of black holes and their accretion disks, and those are consistent with black holes, having mass and spin and charge. But we haven't directly measured the charge of black hole by, like, dropping an electron near it and seeing the effect or anything. So in that sense, it's still theoretical. Okay. So we know we can measure the electric charge.

We know we can measure the mass. So what about a color charge, right? What if you take the same method experiment and instead of dropping an electron into the black hole, you drop a cork? A cork has a color charge to it. Why doesn't that color charge spread across the membrane of the black hole? Yeah, why not? The reason is that you can't do that experiment. You can't have free corks, right?

You can have a free electron. You can hold one in your hand. They can be floating in space. It's all cool. But quarks or anything. that has a color charge can't exist on its own because the color force is so powerful that when you create, for example, a cork and anti-cork pair, they have this very strong force between them. If you try to pull them apart so you get like an individual cork, then the force actually gets

stronger as they get further apart. It's the opposite of like electricity or gravity. As things get further apart, they get a stronger force. More energy is now stored. It requires more energy to push them apart. It becomes crazy high energetic. So much energy is stored in that flux tube between them that that energy pops out into new corks. And so the universe does not like to have corks be that far apart. It'll create more corks and antichorks in between them to keep them from getting separated. That's kind of cute. Yeah, it's amazing. And we see this all the time in the Large Hadron Collider. We create corks in anti-corks. They're shooting apart at super high speed. And then out of the vacuum pop additional corks and we get these jets of part.

sprays of particles instead of individual corks. But where do they come from? Well, their mass just comes from the energy, right? You have to have enough energy to push these things apart, and then that energy gets turned into mass of new corks. So you can't do this experiment. You can't drop a free cork into a black hole, because there are no free corks.

All right, so that feels a little bit like an evasion, right? I've avoided the question. What about the weak charges, right? Because you can have neutrinos. Neutrinos have a weak charge, and they have no color charge, and you can have individual neutrinos out in space. So what happens if you drop a weak charge into a black hole? I don't know.

Why would you ask me, Daniel? It was a rhetorical setup for myself. Oh, got it, got it. Okay. And so weak charge is fundamentally different from electric charge. Electric charge is conserved in the universe. There is a symmetry of the action, if you remember the episode we just did about action, that via another's theorem enforces conservation of electric charge absolutely in the universe totally conserved.

Weak charge does not have the same symmetry, so there is no conservation law for weak charge. So it's not like if you drop a neutrino into a black hole, it has to keep that weak charge. It can morph into something else. Also, weak charges are short-range forces. So the electromagnetic force is communicated by photons. These have infinite range. Like if you have an electron across the universe, you can in principle feel that it's there because the electromagnetic force has an infinite range.

The weak force, because it's communicated by massive bosons like the W and the Z instead of the mass-liss photon, is a very weak-range force. And you might be wondering like, all right, but if I drop a neutrino into a black hole and then I'm like really near the black hole, couldn't I still somehow tell that there was a neutrino dropped into there, even if it's a short-range force? And here we have to clarify exactly what the No Hair theorem says. It's often said, okay, you can measure the charge, the mass, and the spin of the black hole, and that's it. But really it says that you can only measure the mass, the charge, and the spin of a black hole from very far away and over time. So these are the only long-term things you can measure from very far away. Black holes can have other properties short-term. Like, for example, if two black holes merge, their event-hore. horizons are not spherical briefly so you can tell something about the internal arrangement or the history eventually it settles down into a nice symmetrical spherical shape that's where the long hair

theorem applies the long hair theorem i'm going to give this theorem like 10 different names before we're done the long harem theorem the no hair theorem so the no hair theorem says that for a black hole that's had chance to stabilize the things you can measure from very far away, essentially from infinity, are mass charge and spin. But for a black hole that recently you dropped a neutrino into it, if you're very near it, you could tell that a neutrino got dropped into it. So that's consistent with the long hair theorem if you... That's consistent with the Mohawk theorem. Let's keep going. That's consistent. with the no hair theorem. I'm going to get it right once as long as you spell it exactly what the

no hair theorem says, right, which includes those caveats that it's after the black hole has had a chance to settle and your observer is far from the black hole. So Abney was right that you can measure the weak charge in a black hole under the right condition. You can measure the weak charge of a black hole if you're near it soon enough after neutrino was dropped in. You're not guaranteed that that weak charge it's going to persist or that you can measure it from far away so that doesn't violate the Kelly's hair theorem of black holes. I like Mohawks. I think it should be the Mohawk theorem. And the last part of his question was about hawking radiation, which is often told as this story of particles and antiparticles popping out of the vacuum near the event horizon and one falling in and one

not. And the one that doesn't fall in is the hawking radiation. That is not hawking radiation. That is a cartoon picture in popular science which does not reflect what actually happens to generate hawking radiation. We don't know what actually happens because we don't have a theory of how gravity works for particles that would require a theory of quantum gravity. And hawking radiation is a semi-classical approximation that says when you have an event horizon near a quantum field, there will be some radiation. But there's no accurate particle picture. This hand-wavy story about particles and antiparticles is very misleading. Actually, Hawking is the one who came up with it in one of his popular science books, and he acknowledges that it's not accurate and maybe misleading,

and it's just like pervaded all of popular science and leads people astray in exactly this way. So discard, if you can, the picture of hawking radiation from your mind. It won't teach you anything about what actually happens. I detect a touch of frustration in your voice. That's the Daniel's pulling his hair out theorem. Oh, yeah, I think we should call it the bad hair day theorem. There you go. Okay.

All right, let's send that answer off to Abanit and see if it answers his question. Thank you so much, Daniel and Kelly, for answering my question. The explanation really made sense. It was great to get a clearer understanding of what the no hair theorem actually says and why properties like color and weak charge can't show off a black holes in any observable way. I also really appreciated the clarification around hawking radiation. It's always helpful to unlearn some of the pop science imagery we pick up along the way. And it definitely made me wonder what other common misconceptions are still floating around,

like the one with the Hicksville, for example. Maybe that's something we'll hear more about in the future episodes. Thanks again for such a thoughtful discussion. I really enjoyed it. In 2020, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended.

A verdict? A villain. A nurse named Lucy Leppie. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox. And in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived in.

To ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Lettby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver.

The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom-loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are miscellaneous. understood. A son and Venus and Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want to chart side view into how a leading artist integrates

astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast, starting on February 20, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would.

But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand, and to ever. ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it.

This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of He Said She Said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio Al. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

It's about engineering consciousness. Mind games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild.

Listen to Mind Games on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, our last question of the day is from Gordon, who hopefully is over his flu by now. Let's go ahead and listen to the question. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. As I'm recovering from the flu, I was wondering about the various symptoms and treatments we tend to use for certain incurable diseases that we can't treat directly. As I understand it, some symptoms, like a fever, are ways our immune system is trying to combat the disease. In that case, trying to kill the infection by cooking it.

Of course, we find this very uncomfortable, and so often try to relieve such symptoms, like trying to cool ourselves down. So my question is, how much do our attempts to relieve the various symptoms actually hinder our body's natural mechanisms for fighting the diseases? Would we be better off in the long run just bearing with the discomfort and allowing it to fully run its course,

or even possibly amplifying the effects if it could be done safely? Thank you so much. Love the podcast. Ooh, this is so fun because I also have this question. I'm often wondering if the Tylenol or Advil I'm taking to lower my fever is making me feel better at the expense of my body's ability to fight this infection. So, Kelly, who is not a doctor, give me some medical advice. Thank you for reminding everybody that I'm not a medical doctor. Right. But yes, okay, first I want to clarify that fevers are different than hyperthermia, which is heat stroke.

So when you have heat stroke, you should always try to lower your body temperature. But fevers are actually this evolutionarily ancient strategy for fighting infections. And so there's this field called evolutionary medicine where people study the way our bodies respond to infection by looking at the way, you know, other bodies have responded to infection over evolutionary history. So it turns out that birds and other mammals will get fevers when they're sick. And animals like lizards and insects, when they get infections, will generate fevers by sitting under the sun. So these are animals that are, you know, what we'd call ectotherms. They can't generate their own body heat. And so in order to raise their body temperature, they need to do things like lay on warm rocks under the sun to raise their body temperatures.

And the idea here is that pathogens don't do as well under high temperatures. And so they are raising their body temperatures to try to kill the pathogens. So why are pathogens more sensitive to temperature than our cells? So there's a couple different hypotheses for what's happening here. So one idea is that our immune cells work better at higher temperatures. And so there have been sun studies showing that certain immune cells like phagocytes, so these are cells that essentially engulf pathogens and like eat them, do better work under high temperatures. And so those cells would just be better at their jobs when your body is hotter.

And then the other idea is that rapidly dividing pathogens are more likely to die or have trouble dividing, and the cells that they might infect would be more likely to die when those temperatures are high. And while you don't want your own cells to be dying, if those cells are infected by a virus, you might be willing to sacrifice them to your high temperature if it kills the pathogens as well. And so those are the two of the current hypotheses for why high temperatures are worse for pathogens than they are for you. And to be clear, the idea isn't that the high fevers don't harm you at all. The idea is that the high fevers are worse for the pathogens than they are for you. Because they're pretty bad for me.

I mean, I am miserable when I have a fever. You're like achy and in general just feeling icky everywhere. Yeah, I get that. There have been some studies where they found that people who mount high fevers, tend to recover quickly and for certain kinds of diseases are less likely to die if they mount a high fever.

The problem is those are observational studies and an observational study might just be telling you that somebody who mounts a high fever just in general has a body that's doing a better job at like going all out attacking an invader. There have also been some experimental studies

where they've done things like randomly picked individuals who come into the ER to put in a bed that's meant to cool their whole body down. And some of those studies have had to be shut down because it was clear that cooling people's bodies down was not helping and that the fevers seemed to be part of the way

that the body was proactively responding to an infection. So there is some good experimental evidence that fevers are part of how our body is proactively responding. And so evolutionary medicine folks would say, you know, bodies of all types have been doing this for millions of years as our way of responding to infection, you know, let's go ahead and believe that in a lot of cases this is good. But it is worth noting that, again, this strategy is accepting that it is also bad for the host,

but it's hopefully going to be worse for the pathogen. But when you, for example, are pregnant or when you are very elderly, this becomes a riskier strategy because you are compromised in a variety of ways. And so this risky strategy might not play. out in your favor under these conditions. And in general, you know, you should go to a doctor if you are feeling particularly crummy. Fevers are terrifying also. Our son Silas had a shockingly high fever recently due to an infection. And as a parent, you're like, oh, my God, that number terrifies me. Yeah. And so when you get a shockingly high fever and you're worried, you should always call a doctor

or bring your kiddo into the hospital. You should probably call the doctor first. But I was going through a bunch of websites like the Texas Children's Hospital and stuff like that, looking to see at what point should you start giving your kiddo medication for bringing their fever down. Yeah. And the advice is much different than what I remember, the advice being that my mom got. Because when my brother got a high fever when he was a kid, they dumped him in a container of ice water to bring his fever down. And he was miserable.

Yeah. And I remember a big concern was febrile seizures, which are very scary to watch. But apparently, based on these websites from children's hospitals that I was reading, one, quite often giving kiddos medication to bring the fevers down won't necessarily reduce the risk of getting that kind of seizure. And two, those seizures don't seem to, in most cases, be associated with long-term neurological outcomes. So you're just supposed to let them happen? Again, you should always call your doctor if your kiddo has a high fever and go with their advice. But yes, and they're more likely to happening kids that are six and younger. So, like, you know, call your doctor.

Call your doctor. Well, it sounds like you're saying that the fever is not just a byproduct of your immune system at work, but actually part of its tactics. And that by reducing your fever, you may be suppressing or inhibiting your immune response. I've always thought that reducing your fever helps you sleep better and rest. And that would actually be helpful in recovery. What is your non-medical advice opinion about that? Yeah, so in the Weiner Smith household, I ask my kiddos, like, hey, if you really feel like you can't sleep and you're going to be absolutely miserable all night, I will give you medication.

But I think you will feel better sooner if you can let the fever run its course and just try to sleep best you can. But for example, my autistic kiddo clearly kind of suffers at night when he's got a high fever and is not really sure what's going on in a lot of cases. and I will give him medication to reduce his fever if I think he will, if he'll feel better. And, you know, if I ever thought that he was feeling particularly bad, I'd take him to the doctor. But I don't take fever reducing meds when I can avoid it. Okay, and so Gordon also wanted to know

if there are any other symptoms of sickness that we should be not treating because maybe they're helping in some way. Should we be like cracking open our wounds to let the blood flow or anything else? No, that seems ridiculous. In a lot of cases, it's really hard to test this kind of stuff. And so I don't know that we have clear answers to too many other things.

I think fever, we've got a pretty good handle on the fact that a lot of times. Oh, real quick fun, medical history fact. So syphilis, not going to go into too many details about where you get that disease from. Suffice it to say, this is a bacterial disease that is very unpleasant. And in the era before antibiotics, it could cause neurological issues when you couldn't get rid of it. You can probably avoid syphilis if you follow the no-harum theorem. That's right. That's right. That's right. This used to be treated by giving people malaria, which gives people very high fevers because in some percent of the cases, the very high fever would kill the bacteria that causes syphilis. And then we could treat people with the medication.

for malaria, and then you wouldn't have malaria or have syphilis anymore. And someone got the Nobel Prize for that. And then the next year, penicillin was discovered. And penicillin is way better than malaria. So that became the standard treatment. Anyway, so we have used fever as a way to treat disease in the past because it is helpful. Another medical history note, Katrina was telling me that the first trial of penicillin only worked in three out of five cases.

Really? Two out of the five patients died. And so, you know, preliminary studies, like, be careful with your conclusions. It's a good thing we weren't like, oh, penicillin, nah, not really that effective. Let's move on. Holy cow. That's, wow. Yeah, you got to be careful with small sample sizes.

And it's amazing. We are in the position we're in now. So there are some other hypotheses for other sickness behaviors. For example, why do you have reduced appetite when you're sick? There is a hypothesis that actually the pathogens that, actually, the pathogens that are, are infecting you need nutrients and energy as well. And the food that you've just eaten is a more easily accessible source of nutrients and energy than the food that you've already stored, for example, in like fat in your body. And so by eating less, you're sort of starving the pathogens

more than you're starving yourself. I'm not necessarily sure that I buy that. And I really love an excuse to have wonton soup when I'm sick. But that is a hypothesis that people are floating. That flies in the face of like generations of chicken soup based knowledge also. It does. It does. You know, it's an interesting way to think about things. This is Kelly's no soup theorem for treating fevers. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. In my family, we buy everybody ice cream. We don't, we don't go that route. Okay. And then the last one, there's this idea that, you know, in a recent episode we talked about kin selection and the idea that some behaviors are meant to, like, increase the fitness of your family members.

And so there's a hypothesis that sickness behavior where essentially you withdraw and you isolate yourself is meant to protect your family from getting sick. And I really feel like I don't necessarily buy that because I feel like when you're sick, your family is the one who, like, comes in to take care of you. And, like, you're way less likely to get your community sick and way more likely to get your family sick. And so, yeah, I don't know that kin selection really helps explain that one so well. Well, when I'm sick, I tend to be miserable and moan a lot. And that makes everybody else around me miserable too.

And I'm wondering, is that helping me get better? Is complaining actually part of the healing process or is that just part of being me? I think from a kin selection standpoint, you should keep complaining so that your family stays away from you and you don't get them sick. I think that's adaptive. Keep doing it. There you go. Moaning and groaning has reasons, people.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's good. All right. So Kelly is squashing the no moaning and groaning theorem. Mm-hmm. No, Daniel can complain as much as he wants. Maybe that's why men are such babies when they're sick. It's, you know, to protect the women. No, I don't like what that's doing. Exactly. It's altruistic, actually. No, no, no, I don't like where that's going. All right. Well, before we digress into dangerous topics, let's send this answer to Gordon. And here, if we have answered his question. Wow. Thanks for looking at this in answering my question. While it confirmed my suspicion about the potential benefits of not resisting a fever, I had no idea we shared this particular immune response with such a diverse range of animals, even as distantly related as the ectotherms. I find the idea of using one disease to treat another somewhat ironic, given the one being used just happens to be one of the deadliest

in human history. But then I'm reminded we actually have a long history of using different diseases, parasites, and infections against each other for medical purposes, which is probably a whole topic on its own. Anyway, thanks for answering my questions. All right. Thank you very much, everybody who sends in your question who shares their curiosity with us and with a wider community of listeners. If you would like to chat with everybody about questions on your mind, you can always send your questions to us to questions at danielandkelly.org. Or if you'd like to chat with the community of listeners, join the Discord. You can find the link on our website, www.d Daniel and Kelly.com. Come and chat with us. Thanks for listening. Have a good one.

Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeart Radio. 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.

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Don't be shy. Write to us. Hi, it's Joe Interesting, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves.

So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract.

Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.

Can you hypnotize someone into sleep? with you. I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic

programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins,

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