Science Friday - Measles, Poetry Month, Lemur Hibernation. April 26, 2019, Part 2

Episode Date: April 26, 2019

Back in 1963, before the development of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, there were 4 million cases of measles every year. It took nearly four decades, but by 2000, enough people had become vaccinated that the measles virus was eliminated in the U.S. But since then, the ranks of unvaccinated people have grown, and the measles virus has been reintroduced into the U.S. This week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials report over 600 cases of measles across 22 states. Dr. Saad Omer, professor of Global Health, Epidemiology, and Pediatrics at Emory University joins Ira to answer questions about the current outbreak, including how much worse conditions could get. Every year, hundreds pack Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, New York for “The Universe In Verse,” a live celebration of writing that has found inspiration from science and scientists. This year’s event, which featured readings from guests including Amanda Palmer, David Byrne, and Josh Groban, celebrated the 100th anniversary of Sir Arthur Eddington’s groundbreaking experiment to prove general relativity. The poems also honored Albert Einstein’s legacy in describing the universe as we understand it today. Maria Popova, founder and editor of Brain Pickings, and astrophysicist Janna Levin, both writers as well, join Ira for a conversation about the enduring link between art and science, and share readings of their favorite works. What has big eyes, a bushy tail, and is the only primate to go into hibernation six months out of the year? It’s the fat-tailed dwarf lemur, an endangered species endemic to the island of Madagascar. During their hibernation period, the lemurs enter a state of torpor, which essentially disables the animals’ internal thermostat. It turns out we humans possess the same gene that is activated when the lemur initiates torpor—we just don’t know how to activate it. Science Friday video producer Luke Groskin traveled to the only captive colony of dwarf lemurs in the world outside of Madagascar, the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina, to investigate the sleeping cuties’ hibernation habits—and how they could apply to humans. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, the poetry of science, poetry about science, and what it means to bring the two under one roof. But first, back in 1963, before the MMR vaccine existed, there were four million cases of measles every year, and it took nearly four decades. But by 2000, enough people had become vaccinated that we had eliminated the measles virus here in the United States. But since then, the ranks of the unvaccinated have grown and the measles virus has been reintroduced into the U.S. This week, the CDC official report, it reported nearly 700 cases of measles across 22 states. I put a little perspective on that number. Considering that one in every thousand cases will develop a fatal complication of an encephalitis, a swelling of the brain, it is likely that sooner or later, for the first time in 20 years, as the number of cases grows to about 1,000, someone in the U.S. will die from the measles. We all need to take this measles outbreak seriously, and that starts by getting the facts right. How is the virus transmitted? How do you know if you're still immune?

Who is most at risk of infection, and how much worse can this outbreak get? Here to share the facts with us is Sott Omer, Professor of Global Health. epidemiology and pediatrics at Emory University. Dr. Omer, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Glad to talk to you. You know, we've been hearing about the measles virus almost every day now. This week, a case of measles reached two California universities and public health officials ordered a quarantine for hundreds of students

who couldn't prove that they had been vaccinated. Just how bad can this outbreak get? So I don't want to be unnecessarily alarming, but I am concerned. In 2016, we looked at what proportion of the U.S. population is protected against measles, and we applied a slightly different approach. So usually when we look at vaccination rates, it's a snapshot, and we don't generally take into account those who are already unvaccinated and those too young to be vaccinated. And what we found was that at that time, around 2016, 2017, in the U.S., our protection

levels were hovering close to the so-called herd immunity threshold, i.e., the threshold of protection at the population level, below which you start seeing outbreaks, et cetera. So since we were close to that, we remain concerned. But this is not inevitable. There are things we as a country and a community can do. Is there, though, a tipping point that we need to look out for, a number that if we reach it, it's going to make it really harder to come back from this? So probability takes over or stochasticity takes over when you're close to these numbers,

because for two reasons. First of all, that coverage or vaccination rates are not homogeneous across the country or across populations. And so there are subpopulations that have higher rates and other populations where you have clusters of even lower rates. And so what you start seeing is larger and more frequent outbreaks as you approach that number at a broader national level. So that's what we are seeing, and that's a little bit concerning. So unfortunately, it's not a single number, but at a single number, but at a number, you get close to that number, you start seeing these phenomena happening. Okay, you mentioned the word herd immunity.

We've heard it. We've heard herd immunity quite a while. Give us a definition of that terminology. So a simple definition is that if you protect a certain proportion of the population, the virus or a bacterium, depending on the disease, doesn't get, find enough susceptible peoples to take hold in that community. So if you introduce a case, the epidemic dies out. almost on its own.

And so that's the level of protection at the population level. The percentage protected is called the so-called herd immunity threshold. And the broader phenomenon that a fraction of population or a proportion of population is protecting everyone, including those who are too young to be vaccinated and are not vaccinated due to immunocompromised status, is that overall phenomenon is called herd immunity or community immunity or herd protection. All right, let's go through some of the questions people have. First of all, does the vaccine you get when you are a baby ever go away?

So we don't have any evidence of waning immunity against measles. And so we should be protected for a long, long time if you have followed the schedule accordingly, especially if you have gotten two doses of vaccine in your childhood. So our evidence suggests that, at least for measles, this waning immunity phenomenon is not much of a concern. I've heard of people, you know, who have said that they have gotten two doses of their vaccine and they've gone to their doctor to see if they're immune, and they are no longer immune. They're, you know, millennials, no longer immune. So at the population, it's a different phenomenon, but, you know, not, even our most effective intervention in any field are not,

are rarely 100% effective. And so there will be a small fraction, and the good thing is with two doses, the efficacy and effectiveness of measles vaccine schedule as a whole is 97%. So when you're talking about 97%, there will be a small fraction, which even after two doses will not be protected. But that's less of a concern in terms of at the population level policy, et cetera, and from a public health perspective, than to get people two doses. Are you ever too old to get the vaccine?

No. So you can get vaccine at pretty much any age after you become eligible. So you become eligible after 12 months under routine circumstances. And there are situations, for example, when a baby is traveling, where you give the vaccine a little bit earlier than the 12 month, the first dose that is given before 12 months, and in certain outbreak situations. Generally, if you're getting the vaccine on schedule,

you are not too young to get it after 12 months and not too old to get it if you're getting it a little bit later. I've also heard that if you were born before 1960 or so, you've probably been exposed to the virus and therefore you are naturally immune. Is there any truth to that? Yes, there is. So we in this country have this concept of evidence of immunity. So see, the CDC based on evidence from epidemiological studies and other evidence, suggests that they're broadly forwarded. criteria for evidence of immunity. First of all, if you have written evidence that you have received the required doses for your age and your risk status, a laboratory lab confirmation

of your immunity or lab confirmation of you getting the measles virus, the fourth criterion is if you were born before 1957. So that's the cutoff we use in this country, and the understanding is that there was a lot of measles there. New York has more cases than any other state right now, over 600, and state legislators are saying it's time to crack down on people receiving religious exemptions for the vaccine. This is New York State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz. Whatever concerns, I think, are overridden by the public safety concerns. We have to do everything that we can to save lives and protect children and protect people in general. And making New York a state where only medical exemptions are allowed is one way to do that.

Dr. Oma, do you think that tightening restrictions for exemptions is going to improve vaccination rate? So starting in 2006, my group and my colleagues and others, then subsequently, started looking at what is the nature of these laws? Does that impact your vaccine refusal rates and disease rates? And we found that the tighter these restrictions, the more effective they are in reducing vaccine refusal rates and even disease rates for diseases that people have looked at. or infectious diseases people have looked at. In case of elimination of all non-medical exemptions, California is the first state that has tried in 35 years. We do know that tightening exemptions work.

California's initial indication is that they did improve their immunization coverage, but the picture is a little bit nuanced because they had an administrative crackdown on the abuse of these exemptions, even non-medical exemptions. And so therefore, it's hard to say that it was eliminating non-medical exemptions that increased it. But nevertheless, there are other modes that states can use and have used, for example, adding a requirement to go to your physician to discuss the risks of non-vaccination for yourself or your baby and others that have been shown to be highly effective in certain states. Now, we're talking about the MMR vaccine.

Of course, the other two letters in that is Mumps and Rubella, correct? Yes. Is there any sign that since people are not getting the triple in one dosage, that those other two, Mumps and Rubella, might come back or be on the rise? So in this country, we use this trivalent vaccines. In fact, there's an option of adding a fourth antigen in the same vaccine that some people get, the Vercellar one. So they are getting those, especially.

If they're getting measles vaccines, people are getting the other two as well. But with mumps, here we think there is a waning immunity concept playing a role in increasing the risk of outbreaks, let's say, in young adulthood, et cetera. Rebella is, you know, we have been okay overall in terms of rebella. So of the three, we are concerned about measles for other reasons, such as refusal, et cetera. for months, waning immunity may be playing a role. One other question about getting, how contagious is it? If you're in the same room with someone who is contagious

or even if that person has left the room, can you still get it? So I don't want to paint a sci-fi scenario, but unfortunately, measles is a very unforgiving disease. So the reason why it's unforgiving is that it hangs out in the air itself for up to two hours, and then beyond that, if on the surface, so if someone has left a room, and for a couple of hours, the risk is pretty high of that transmission. And it is one of the most infectious common diseases that we know of.

Wow. I don't know. So I see why then people are really pushing to getting the vaccination as the way to stop this. Yeah, exactly. So none of this is inevitable. We have, so for certain diseases, we have vaccines. that work overall, but are not super effective. Here we have really super effective vaccines available.

So we have a solution, which is to get vaccinated. And if you're eligible for two doses, to get the full schedule. Well, we've run out of time. I want to thank you very much for taking them to be with us today. We might get back to you, Dr. Omer, because we're going to be tracking this story as the measles outbreak continues, hopefully not very much longer. Do you expect to see any signs it might go down?

We'll get back to and ask you about that. Dr. Sautomer, Professor of Global Health Epidemiology and Pete Atrix at Emory University. After the break, we're going to catch up with National Poetry Month, bringing back some favorite poems about science for one last polite applause. Stay with us, but right back after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. April is National Poetry.

month when the literary world celebrates with readings and extra effort to bring new readers to the joys of a well-written poem. And here at SciFri, we want you to think about science and poetry. Poets like Diane Ackerman, whose work about the beauty of the cosmos enchanted Carl Sagan, and Adrienne Rich, who wrote about the Hubble Telescope, Hidden Poetry Figures, and Astronomy and more. In fact, once you start looking, it is easy to see poetry about science, all over the place, not to mention a certain poetry inherent in the work of scientists. We celebrated this confluence at the beginning of the month with U.S.S. Pole laureate Tracy K. Smith and physician poet Raphael Campo.

And now we're circling back to put Poetry Month to bed with two of our favorite sight arts enthusiasts. Let me introduce them. Dr. John Levin, Barnard College Astrophysicist and author of Black Hole Blues. Welcome back. Thanks. Always good to see you. Maria Popova, editor and founder of the site Brain Pickings and author of a new book, Figuring. Wonderful to have you back.

It's wonderful to have you in the studio with us. I know. I love this. So much more fun to be present in the studio. And you folks are the brains behind an annual science poetry party in Brooklyn, the universe in verse. Tell us about it. Which one of you like to talk about it? Well, Maria is really at the brains.

Mia curates this masterfully. I just open our doors for it. Tell us about it. The universe and verse began in 2017, and actually at the inaugural show, we had Tracy K. Smith well before she was poet laureate. You know her back when? Way back when, and I'm not implying causation, only correlation. We have some great people, and they go on to do great things.

It started out of a sort of confluence of factors. I was a latecomer to poetry. I kind of dismissed it very hubristically in my 20s, and a friend of mine introduced me to and began educating me, really. She's a philosopher of science, a comedian named Emily Levine, and over the years she would send me poems and poems and poems that she loved from the classics today. And eventually by 2016, I mean, Jenna and I met through her book, Black Hole Blues, which is an incredibly beautiful poetic book about science.

I ended up spending quite a bit of time at Pioneer Works. It was unlike anything I'd seen, and I fell in love with it. And then at the same time, I was deep in research into the lives of people from the last 400 years who have changed the way we understand the universe and ourselves, artists, writers, scientists. And one thing that kept coming up in their diaries and letters and papers was this intimate dialogue between poetry and science. So Kepler's personal motto was a line from a poem, actually quite a depressing line from a Perseus poem. Mariah Mitchell, the great astronomer who paved the way for women in science to whom we dedicated the first. universe and verse, she would hold these dome parties at the Vassar College Observatory,

where she taught the first class of women astronomers, and they would come over for star study and conversation and would write poems about whatever they were working on astronomically. And conversely, a lot of the great poets of the era, Dickinson and Whitman and Shelley had a deep interest in science in the natural world and the discoveries of their time. So in between all those things, I'm swimming with these ideas, and I'm spending time of this unusual space, and then we had certain political events in late 2016, and I was doing work with the Academy of American Poets, and we did a couple of pop-up readings, just sort of as a source of hope for people and solace and protests and all of that, and it was astonishing to

see people turn up, turn up and sit and turn to poetry for all these deeper purposes. And so one day, I guess I said to Jana, why don't we do an event that's a celebration of science or poetry? And can I say what I said? Yeah. I said, it's a beautiful idea. Nobody's going to come to that. Oh, yeah.

But she said, but let's do it. Let's do it anyway. And people, you built it and they came. Yes, it was quite insane. It was stunning. The lines were around the block. And Pine Eric's is this really big building. This own Ironworks factory, which is now this community artist's science space.

And the lines were around the block to all of our amazement. They were more than a thousand people the first year, which was incredible. And the president of the Academy of American Poets was there. and she afterwards said, I've never seen a standing ovation at a poetry event, which kind of is lovely and heartbreaking because poetry is worthy of that. And this year, Janet, you dedicated the event

to a very special solar eclipse, the very famous 1919 Eddington. So, or so Arthur in Eddington used it to prove science. Yeah, so. Einstein's theory of general relativity. It is a wonderful story. So Eddington, who's a pacifist and an internationalist,

it's only six months after World War I, and takes an excellent. expedition to off the coast of Africa and Prince of Hay to see a total solar eclipse. And the idea is that he wants to look behind the sun. But of course the sun, you can only look behind it if Einstein is right. So he wants to verify this new theory of general relativity that Einstein had only very recently in the past few years published. If Einstein is right, the light will spray around the sun and be redirected towards Africa. And he would be able to take a picture of a star that was literally right behind it. But you can't do that unless there's a total

solar eclipse because the sun is blindingly bright. So you have to wait for this miraculous accident of our solar system. And that was May 29th, 1919. And in the rain and the cloud cover, they're fearing disappointment in the seven minutes of totality, but the clouds break. And they capture an image actually of the star cluster Hades, which they knew they should not have been able to see because it was position directly behind the science. Einstein's an overnight celebrity. Yeah. Well, and more than that, though, quite apart from the scientific triumph, it was this beautiful moment, uniting humanity under the same truth and this divisive time and this beautiful invitation to perspective. And I actually have to add, part of our original idea was to make the whole event charitable so that all the

proceeds would support some science or poetry cause. And this year, we're doing it to support the first ever public observatory in New York. And I love the idea of little kids walking in. I mean, Pioneer Works is situated around low-income housing with young people just starting out their lives. And I love thinking which kid is going to be the next Eddington, the next Einstein, the next Murray Mitchell looking through this telescope. Interesting. You brought us a clip, Maria, from this year's event musician Amanda Palmer, read a poem by Adrienne Rich dedicated to the Hubble Telescope. Let's hear that. The Hubble photographs after Sappho.

It should be the most desired sight of all, the person with whom you hope to live and die, walking into a room, turning to look at you, sight for sight, should be. Yet I say there is something more desirable. The ex-stasis of galaxies. So out from us, there's no vocableness.

vocabulary, but mathematics and optics, equations letting sight pierce through time, into liberations, lacerations of light and dust exposed like a body's cavity, violet, green, livid, and venous, gorgeous. Beyond good and evil, as ever. stained into dream, beyond remorse, disillusion, fear of death, and life. Rage for order, rage for destruction, beyond this love which stirs the air every time she walks into the room. These impersonaligh, however we call them, won't invade us as on movie screen. They are so old, so new. We are not to them.

We look at them or don't from within the milky gauze of our tilted gazing, but they don't look back. And we cannot hurt them. Wow. It seems that Hubble has inspired a lot of poetry, doesn't it? I mean, that was amazing. It was stunning the second time. It was stunning to be there live, and the appreciation of the audience.

The audience is just wrapped. It's really something to see. What do you feel it's important to bring poetry and science together, Maria? Well, I think they are not inherently separate. I think the indivisibility of culture is something we need to get back to and really defend today when everything is so fragmented artificially so. I'm reminded of Rachel Carson to whom we dedicated the second universe and verse, and when she won the National Book Award for her book, The Sea Around Us, which was this really new aesthetic of writing about science in a poetic way, she said, if there's any poetry in my writing about the sea, I didn't deliberately put it there. It's just that you cannot regard the truths of the science of the sea without attending to the poetry of it. Jenna, I know that you also performed at this event and you brought something to read today by Maya Angela.

Yeah, so I read this. When did I read this, Maria? The second year? Last year. Last year. It opened the show in 2018. Yeah. Go ahead. It is an absolutely stunning poem. It's one of the things I've really come to appreciate is hearing poetry over reading it. So this is a brave and startling truth by Maya Angelou. We this people on a small and lonely planet, traveling through casual space past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns,

to a destination where all signs tell us, it is possible and imperative that we learn a brave and startling truth. And when we come to it to the day of peacemaking, when we release our fingers from fists of hostility and allow the pure air to cool our palms. When we come to it, when the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate and faces sooted with scorn or scrubbed clean, when battlefields and coliseum no longer rake our unique

and particular sons and daughters, up with the bruised and bloody grass to lie on identical plots in foreign soil. when the rapacious storming of the churches, the screaming racket in the temples have ceased, when the penance are waving gaily, when the banners of the world tremble stoutly in the good, clean breeze. When we come to it, when we let the rifles fall from our shoulders, and children dress their dolls and flags of truce, when landmines of death have been removed, and the aged can walk

into evenings of peace, when religious ritual is not perfumed by the incense of burning flesh, and childhood dreams are not kicked awake by nightmares of abuse. When we come to it, then we will confess that not the pyramids with their stones set in mysterious perfection, nor the gardens of Babylon hanging as eternal beauty in our collective memory, not the Grand Canyon, kindled into delicious color by Western sunsets, nor the Danube flowing into blue soul into Europe, not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji, stretching to the rising sun, neither father Amazon nor mother Mississippi, who, without favor, nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores. These are not the only wonders of the world.

When we come to it, we this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe, who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, and the dagger, yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace. We this people, on this moat of matter, and whose mouths abide cankerous words which challenge our very existence. Yet out of those same mouths come songs of such exquisite sweetness that the heart falters in its labor, and the body is quieted into awe. We this people on this small and drifting planet, whose hands can strike with such abandon that in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living. Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness, that the haughty neck is happy to bow and the proud back is glad to bend.

Out of such chaos of such contradiction, we learn that we are neither devils nor divines. When we come to it, we this people, on this way, floating body created on this earth, of this earth, have the power to fashion for this earth, a climate where every man and every woman can live freely without sanctimonious piety, without crippling fear. When we come to it, we must confess that we are the possible, we are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world. That is when, and only when, we come to it. That is beautiful, Jan 11 reading Maya Angelou

on Science Friday from WNIC Studios. Why did you choose that one? I mean, you can hear her, right? Maya, that's her voice. Why did she write that? Why did you choose to read it? Well, when we walked in, I said, all I can hear is Maya.

Nobody can read like Maya Angelio. Actually, Maria chose. You did very well. Well, thank you. Maria chose the poem for me, and I think it encapsulates so much of what the entire universe and verse is about. It is about the science and the poetry and the mixture and the, you know,

we are the people looking at the world that we are then reflecting back on ourselves in that world. And also creatively, a little known backstory is that she composed this poem shortly after Carl Sagan delivered his famous pale blue dot monologue. And if you notice that there's a line in there, the mote of matter, which is directly referencing his language. So by all probability, the poem was inspired by the pale blue dot, which became so popular within months of him delivering it at Cornell. And the poem actually traveled to space. Which spacecraft was it?

I don't remember. I don't remember. It went up in the Orion, I think. Oh, okay, yes. So also, even the fact that Carl Sagan convinced the NASA team to turn Voyager around when it's some billions of kilometers away to look at the Earth with zero scientific merit in the picture. but just this kind of reflection and it's one of the most beautiful passages

you'll ever read when he writes about it. And it's a poetic act. That decision is not a scientific act. It's a poetic act. Yeah, and we've also said it's only in science that you come with a straight face talk about beauty anymore. It's like the one cultural discipline

in which we use beauty and elegance to actually formulate our proofs. When we did the poetry first time, the next person I interviewed with Stephen Strogett, the mathematician, and he said spontaneously, you know? I heard that.

Yeah. Wait, what did he say? He said that we do as mathematicians see the beauty, the poetry in math also. And he's a wonderful writer and mathematician. Yeah. We're going to take a quick break and come back and talk lots more with Jan 11 and Maria Popova. More about why science continues to inspire arts. Our number 844-724-8255, if you'd like to join the conversation.

It can also tweet us at SciFRI, S-S-I-F-R-I. Stay with us. We'll be right back with Jana and Maria after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We are talking about the poetry that science has inspired and why scientists need poetry. We're talking with astrophysicist, Dr. Jan 11, brain pickings founder, Maria Popova, both of them authors dwelling at the intersection of art and science themselves. I want to get to the next poem, but before I don't, Maria, I know you wanted to see something more about science and poetry. What Janice said about beauty reminded me of, I think there's actually something deeper going on with these historical figures. The scientists will love poetry and the poets who love science.

I think they intuit that these are two complementary languages of apprehending and making sense of the world. And one, mathematics being the language of truth. We use to discover and discern these fundamental laws that are unfeeling, that are devoid of meaning. But then within them, we use the language of poetry. to make meaning, to make beauty, discover beauty. And to me, that is something that modern culture is a little bit impoverished of. That's a good way of looking at it. Rachel Carson was inspired by poetry to begin her work of protest talking about that.

We also have another recording from the first universe and verse of another example of protest and poetry. And this is Jane Hirschfield's On the Fifth Day. Tell us about that poem. This poem, Jane, who is one of the great contemporary poets and also an ordained Buddhist, she composed that for the March for Science, the first March for Science, when the new administration came in. And we had it in the first universe and verse, and it was read by my friend Emily, who introduced me to poetry, who actually just died a couple months ago. So this year's show was in part a tribute to her.

So this recording of her voice is this bittersweet part of her legacy, the universe and verse would not exist without her. Okay, here is Jane Hirschfield on the fifth day, read by Emily Levine. On the fifth day by Jane Hirshfield. On the fifth day, the scientists who studied the rivers were forbidden to speak or to study the rivers. The scientists who studied the air were told not to speak of the air. And the ones who worked for the farmers were silenced. And the ones who worked for the bees. Someone from deep in the bad lands

began posting facts. The facts were told not to speak and were taken away. The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent. Now it was only the rivers that spoke of the rivers and only the wind that spoke of its bees. While the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees continued to move toward their fruit,

The silence spoke loudly of silence, and the rivers kept speaking of rivers of boulders and air. In gravity, earless and tongueless, the untested rivers kept speaking. Bus drivers, shelf stockers, code writers, machinists, accountants, lab techs, cellists, cellists, kept speaking. They spoke the fifth day of silence. Wow, you could see where Rachel Carson got that

inspiration. Right? Well, this is no, Jane Herschel is contemporary. This poem was written. She's around. She lives in California. She actually was present when this recording that we just played you could hear. It was not a very high quality recording. You could hear birds and ocean. This was actually recorded because

after Emily's terminal diagnosis, I started taking her in these little self-organization. We called them poetry retreats. We would rent a cabin for a weekend and just read poetry together. And Jane Herschfield came down to that, and we just recorded it on our iPhones. And then after the fact, heard the birds and all the sounds that this poem speaks to and decided to play it imperfect as it is, but in a way even more perfect. Yeah.

No, it's a beautiful poem, beautifully read. I'm glad you did that. And our condolences to loss of your friend. Thank you. Johnny, you've written about black holes. or run an event that frequently brings together science and culture. You obviously must see, you know, how to get people involved. Yeah.

Going, using, you know, the arts, poetry. It's really interesting. I very much believe that science is part of culture. It's literally my motto when I'm thinking about events or writing or topics. And yes, people are really responding to these extraordinary events. like Universe and Verse, but also they come just for the science. So I'm bookending this whole program on May 29th, which is the Centenary of the Eddington Eclipse expedition,

we're having an event on black holes, which uses the same technology, essentially the same natural phenomenon, which is the bending of light in a curved space time, that recently was used to return the first image ever of a black hole. And I know you had the Event Horizon Telescope people on your show very recently to talk about it. So it's really bookending these two events are complementary. I also must add that it's completely astonishing to me and what drew me to Pioneer works,

that Janah has these scientific controversies events that are hardcore scientists in conversation about unanswered questions, and it's not a kind of fluffed, pop-sci kind of thing. This is like serious scientists in conversation about what most puzzles them, and you see a thousand people, 1,200 people come in to hear about string theory and dark matter. consciousness. And it's just like the 18th century when Tesla and Faraday would fill theaters with lay people. Right. When you don't know what 96% of the universe is made at. We do not. It's a great playground for poetry. And it's a great playground for ideas and to wonder who are we in this context. And the scientific questions we ask are ones that are

meaningful to us. So even what we choose to set out to do, like take a picture of a black hole, is motivated by something about us and a reflection on ourselves in the scheme of things. I think we have time for another poem. Another space poem, one that actually was written for your event, we've featured at Science Friday before. And it's a tribute to Stephen Hawking by poet Marie Howe. Johnny, you read this at an event that we held last summer. What makes this poem so powerful for you?

I mean, it's difficult. In a way, it's so intimate the subject. Hawking was somebody I knew, obviously incredibly influential. I think she captures something of his playful spirit in the actual writing. And I mean, some of the things Hawking did that made him famous, like realizing black holes can evaporate, it was almost like a trick he played on the rest of us. And he left us with this legacy of trying to figure it out for 30 or 40 years,

and we still can't. Well, let's listen to the poem Singularity by Marie Howe. Do you sometimes, do you too sometimes want to wake up to the singularity we once were? So compact, nobody needed a bed or food or money, nobody hiding in the school bathroom. or home alone, pulling open the drawer where the pills are kept. For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you, remember? There was no nature.

No them. No tasks to determine if the elephant grieves her calf. or if the coral reef feels pain. Trashed oceans don't speak English or Farsi or French. Would that we could wake up to what we were when we were ocean? And before that, when Earth was sky, and animal was energy and rock was liquid, and stars were space, and space was not at all, nothing.

Before we came to believe humans were so important, before this awful loneliness. Can molecules remember it? What once was? Before anything happened? Can our molecules remember? No I. no we, no one, no was, no verb, no noun yet, but only a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny dot brimming with is, is, is, is, all, everything, home.

Thank you. singularity written and read by Marie Howe. Let's talk a bit in a moment or two we have left, Marie, about the future. Any subjects that you might feature in the future that come to mind? I mean, I think we're very spontaneous and organic.

I don't know if we'll do another, what it'll be about. The Eddington thing lent itself very well because of the 100th anniversary, but there are a million, a million. Anniversaries are always a good, catalyst for ideas, right? Yeah, and well, I think also

there are astronomical events that inspire us, and a lot of this idea to build this first ever public observatory in New York City was inspired again by people descending and excitement over things like the eclipse that we totally underestimated the enthusiasm. I was going to say that

somewhere there must be poetry written about that eclipse. That hasn't been voiced we haven't heard yet. The Great American Eclipse, there probably is. Well, actually, Amanda Palmer, who we heard from earlier who read, she later in the show the other day on Tuesday performed a song. She has a beautiful new record and on it there's a song called Drowning in the Sound

which is about the 2017 eclipse and Hurricane Harvey and her kind of experience of that. So she performed the eclipse song at the show. Right. We'll have to wait and hear that. Maybe some other time. I want to thank my guests. Maria and Janet and the universe in verse. Maria Popova is founder and editor of Brain Pickings, author of the new book Figuring, and I'll have to come back and talk about.

That sooner or later. It's a stunning book. John 11, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College and author of Black Hole Blues. Great book also. Thank you. It's the universe inverse. We don't know what's going to come next.

We'll have to stay tuned, right? Stay tuned, right? Stay tuned. Thank you both for taking time to be once in a team. What has big eyes, a bushy tail, and is the only primate to go into hibernation six months out of the year. It's the dwarf lemur.

You knew that, right? Our video producer Luke Graskin went down to the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina to investigate the lemur's strange sleeping habits for our latest macroscope video up now at ScienceFriety.com slash lemurs. Hi, Luke. Hi, Ira. And I want to remind everybody that this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. So tell us what is that a lemur, first of all, because we don't know that.

Sure. Sure. So lemurs are primates that live on the island of Madagascar. You can only find them on the island of Madagascar. And you've probably seen them a lot in pop culture. You've probably seen them in the movie Madagascar. Most people associate them with the ring tail lemur, the ones with the little striped tails. They've got big eyes, and they are primates, again.

But the lemurs that I went to film at the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina are fat-tailed dwarf lemurs. So they are about the size of a squirrel. They're gray, and they have giant eyes. They're nocturnal. So you can only see them in these red rooms. And they have this big fat tail that they use in order to survive hibernation. So why do people want, are so interested in? Why are they so interested in studying lemurs there?

Well, in the case of the fat-tailed dwarf lemur, this animal goes, is the only, primate that goes into hibernation. So for six months out of the year, this animal basically becomes reptilian. It becomes cold-blooded. Its thermostat shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts shuts off completely, almost completely, and it becomes pretty much dormant. And then every so often, every two weeks or one week, two weeks, depending on the temperature, its thermostat sparks up for a couple hours.

It goes into a sleeping state. Again, hibernation is not sleep. Sleep is an active brain state. Hybernation is a not active state. So it starts to sleep, and then it goes back into hibernation again. It's amazing because you can see this video on our website at sciencepride.com slash lemurs, and these are primates, right? We are primates.

So I'm getting to see a connection here. Yeah, that's where a lot of the interest comes in. we actually possess some of the genes that the dwarf lemur has that enables it to go into hibernation. Now, we don't know the mechanisms, the biological mechanisms that enable the animal to do that. But we do, we know that we share the genes. So there's a lot of interest in perhaps we could trigger hibernation in ourselves. Well, if we trigger it, we must study have to stop it. Yes, I mean, ideally we would, once you know how to turn it on, you hopefully would be able to turn

I don't know that's an assumption. A whole other round of studies. Okay, so what would you do with? Let's say you could put somebody into Tupor. Well, how do you, torpor? Is that what we? Torper is another way of saying hibernation. Sure.

So there's a lot of things that you could probably do with it. If you're going in for heart surgery, your surgeon wants to lower your circulation as much as possible. And so the easiest way to do that is to lower your blood pressure, lower your body temperature, and that makes surgery a lot more safe for them. There are diseases where going into a coma with a much lower body temperature would be really beneficial. The disease would work its way through your system, and then you could wake up, and ideally

it would be out of your system. And then, of course, NASA is really interested in this because they could reduce the payload on their rockets. If you don't have to bring tons and tons of food for the rockets to eat on their way out to Saturn or Mars or wherever they're going, then you could save a lot of pay, you know, stuff in your rocket. That's a payload. Yeah, payload.

That's where I was looking for. But also, you know, one of the biggest problems of traveling in space is radiation. Sure. So if you were in a sleep state, you could just be put in a cocoon of lead or something, right? And maybe survive all that radiation. Ideally, ideally. I mean, I mean, they haven't sent any dwarf lemurs into space. They are endangered, so they're not going to.

And that's the problem. You're saying in the video, one of the problems is it's an endangered species, so you can't poke at it or experiment. Exactly. The Duke Lemur Center has set up, has this captive breeding population. And they do that because a lot of the areas where these animals are living are being deforested. So they have this captive breeding population, and you can't really poke or prod or dissect these animals, so they have to be very careful about their studies. But one of the interesting parts, and this is a great video, as I say, it's up on our website at Science Friday.com slash lemurs, is that when they wake up, it's like they've been awake all that time, right? I know. I mean, so if they're not crawling.

out of bed tired. So people that are in comas, when they wake up, their muscles have been so degraded that they have to regain muscle function. And that takes a long time. These dwarf lemurs don't have any of those problems. Their kidneys function completely. And scientists don't understand

how they do it. So there's a lot to be learned from these cute, adorable creatures. And you can see those cute, adorable creatures up on our website at ScienceFriety.com slash lemurs. Luke Roskin, thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having another great video. B.J. Leaderman, and composed our theme music, and if you missed any part of the program, we're on social media,

everywhere you get your podcast, where you got you there, even your smart speakers. If you ask it to play Science Friday, it will. You'll get the latest episode. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato in New York.