Science Friday - Science Of ‘The Last Of Us’ Fungi, New U.S. Nuclear Power. Feb 3, 2023, Part 1

Episode Date: February 3, 2023

Wind And Solar Were Europe’s Top Energy Sources In 2022 The European Union reached a major renewable energy milestone in 2022. For the first time, wind and solar generated more energy in the European Union than any other power source. Ira talks with science writer Roxanne Khamsi about Europe’s energy future and other top science stories of the week, including deer harboring old COVID strains, an endangered marsupial who’s losing a lot of sleep in search of sex, and why mammals live longer in groups.   U.S. Approves First Small Nuclear Reactor Design Late last month, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave final approval to the first small-modular nuclear reactor design, known in the industry as SMR. It’s not the kind of power plant you might picture when you think of nuclear—gone is the massive cooling tower and tall, domed containment building, in favor of a 15-foot-diameter steel cylinder equipped with passive cooling. And instead of being bespoke designs built to order on site, these reactors can be manufactured in a factory and hooked together in the field—an approach that can shave years off the construction time for a new nuclear facility. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.   ’The Last Of Us’ Hands Fungi The Spotlight The Last of Us, a new TV show from HBO, has had audiences hooked from the very first episode. The sci-fi show and the video game it’s based on tells the story of people trying to survive a mass fungal outbreak: one that turns ordinary people into murderous, mind-controlled monsters. The fungus in the story, Cordyceps, is a real one. It’s known to take over the minds of insects like ants, moths, and beetles and control them to advance its own survival, but that doesn’t happen with humans. Dr. Patty Kaishian, mycologist and visiting professor of biology at Bard College, joins Ira to talk about the science behind The Last of Us. They dig into what’s real, what’s fiction, and how fungi shape our lives.   Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. 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 Plato. A little later in the hour, we'll tease apart what's fact and what's fiction in HBO's new fungi-filled series The Last of Us. Any one of them could become capable of borrowing into our brains and taking control, not of millions of us, but billions of us. Billions of puppets with poisoned minds permanently fixed on one unifying goal, to spread the infection to every last human alive by any means necessary. Plus thinking about new technology for a small modular nuclear reactors. But first, speaking of energy, there's a milestone in renewable energy. For the first time, wind and solar generated more energy in the European Union than any other source of power. Joining me now to talk about this and other top science stories of the week is Roxanne Comsi, science writer based in Montreal. Roxanne, welcome back to Science Friday.

Thank you so much, Ira. I am energized to be here. I can tell. Let's make use of that. Let's talk about what's going on in the EU. Who would have thunk, right? Years ago, more energy generated by wind and solar? Yeah. I mean, I could barely believe it when I read this news. But apparently, according to this think tank called Ember, there's been this massive shift where now, as of 2022 last year, wind and solar overtook these other forms of energy sources. And the reasons that that happened are really interesting. But it's really a landmark moment if you think about how far we've come in terms of renewables. And the reason why it happened? What was the catalyst, as we say, in science?

Well, so they point to three factors, which I find fascinating that it's so multifactorial. One of them is the war in Ukraine, which obviously has created all sorts of disruptions to the flow of energy from places like Russia. and another reason is that there was a massive drought, and so there was less energy coming from hydro, which has historically produced a bunch of energy. And then kind of related to that, the weather has been a little bit milder, so there was less of a demand for energy.

So these three forces kind of combined to create this environment where wind and solar now have taken the forefront. I would imagine that we're seeing the same pattern taking place in the U.S. We are, except it's slightly different. So over in Europe, now wind and solar account for a fifth. And if you want to do the math, that's 20% of all energy. In the U.S., the situation is slightly different where wind and solar account for 13% of energy sources. And that's changing, but it's not quite yet at the 20% that Europe's seen. All right. Let's move on to something that we here on Science Friday have been following for quite some time. But with a new twist, and I'm talking about a study showing that older strains of the coronavirus

are still circulating in the white-tailed deer long after they have disappeared in humans. Tell us about that. Yeah, so we've talked a lot about the animal reservoirs of coronavirus, because coronavirus is not just something that humans get affected by. It's something that a lot of different animals do. And one of those animals is the white-tailed deer. And what the researchers did was they looked at samples from hunting. about 5,000 tissue samples from the hunting seasons of 2020 and 2021.

And they saw that there was a jump, first of all, in like, the number of samples that tested positive for coronavirus. So it went from less than 1% to 21% of samples testing positive for coronavirus. And they found that humans, we'd seen waves of alpha and gamma, but then we'd moved on to Delta, unfortunately, because of course Delta wasn't great. But in the deer population, the alpha and gamma just hung around for a while. And so that's kind of fascinating in terms of implications for us and the deer. Oh, dear me. What about the deer? Could all these old coronaviruses be actually harming them?

Yeah. Well, so that is a real concern that somehow, as you know, coronaviruses have this propensity to mix and match. So alpha and gamma and delta, there might be an opportunity for them to recombine and to form some other kind of version of coronavirus that might not be as good for the deer or might not be as good for us. So we're keeping an eye on this long tail, if you will, of coronaviruses in animal reservoirs like the deer. Let's move on through the animal kingdom. I know your next story is about qualls, an animal that's willing to skip sleep in favor of sex, but to the extreme. Yes. Let's back up a bit and tell us what a qual is for those of us uninitiated. It's a

golden-hued cat-sized marsupial that lives in Australia with these cute little white spots. And as you say, it's kind of going the distance, if you will, for sex, but at a great cost. What do you mean? What did the researchers find? So they found that some of these male qualls were traveling more than six miles in a night, which for a human is like 24 miles. So imagine walking 24 miles to get busy, if you will. And then what kind of toll that would put on these male coals that are making that journey. So they're living about a year, whereas the females are living about four years. And in a population that's endangered, the researchers are finding that that journey is actually costing the males a huge amount. So they're dying from exhaustion is what

you're saying? They're dying from exhaustion. As they're exhausted, the parasites are more likely to latch onto them and cause havoc for them. They're just going too far, if you will. And they're paying the price. They're paying the price. But haven't they always behaved this way? Is there something new here that the scientists have discovered? Well, as you might imagine, the habitats that these animals are living in are becoming more fragmented. So they do have to travel longer distances. So that's a speculation in terms of one factor that's kind of supercharging, if you will, the cost of these long journeys. Yeah. Let's go on to another story. And this one is connected to Neanderthals. And And I like this story because it turns out that Neanderthals, we think we know so much about them, right?

But we constantly discovering new stuff about how they live. And this one is about Neanderthals traveling in big enough groups to kill and eat giant elephants. Yeah. Neanderthals like to party, apparently. Big time. Having raves. What's going on there? So this was super interesting because these bones have been around as long as I have.

They've been around since the 1980s. And what researchers did is they took a fresh look at them and they said, what are these signs of butchery? So, you know, when you butcher something, sometimes that thing that you're, the tool you're using will hit the bone and leave a mark. And they looked at the mark of these giant elephants that are now extinct, but imagine like straight-toothed giant elephants roaming thousands and thousands of years ago. The amount of meat on that elephant would feed about 400 people or 400 Nandertals, if you imagine they've got appetites like similar to ours. And yet they got every ounce of meat off of that elephant. So clearly they weren't just taking a chunk and leaving it because we used to think that they would just travel in small groups.

This suggests that perhaps there were hundreds of them gathering at a time. I can imagine that they must coordinate and have maybe a group and then they go out hunting together. It could be. It could be. I mean, if only we had a time machine to go back in time and see. Well, how does this change our understanding then of how Neanderthals lived? I mean, they lived in much bigger groups than we thought. That is exactly what it is challenging.

It's challenging this thought that we had that they were always going in small groups. Now, I mean, hundreds of them potentially gathering around this feast really upends to some degree, our thought, are thinking about who Neanderthals were, how they behaved, all that stuff. I love this stuff. Okay, let's continue on the theme about the importance of. community. Researchers recently published a study showing that mammals who live in groups tend to live longer than ones who live alone. Please tell us more about that one. So this particular story for me really hit home because we've been talking a lot about isolation during this pandemic. And what the

researchers found is they looked at more than 900 different mammal groups or types of mammals. And they found that those that live in groups, those that are social animals, if you will, tend to live longer than those that tend to be more solitary. So your elephants that like to be in groups with highly complex social structures live longer than tigers. And actually, the naked mole rat really shines because it lives for 31 years. And whereas other animals similar to it live less long. Naked mole rats, of course, have these extremely complex social structures to make up for, frankly, in my opinion, not looking so great, being all hairless and stuff. How long do they live, naked mole rat?

They live 31 years. Wow. They live an extremely long time. And to the calculus of these researchers, that really underscores the idea that something about group living is helping mammals live longer than those that don't. Is it the same for people, do you think? Well, there is some studies in baboons that suggest that more social baboons live longer than other baboons in the group that aren't a social. We do know that having social ties does help people in old age live healthier and longer. So there's something about living together, perhaps that's the protection of the herd, perhaps it's

the stimulus of being together that helps us extend our life. All right. Let's wrap up this with a story about mummies. See what I did there. Okay. Researchers have uncovered the recipe for mummification. So what's in a mummy that mummifies? So for a long time, what scientists had to do was look at the mummies themselves and also ancient text to try to understand the process of mummification. So what they did in this case is they found a treasure trove, if you will, of pots and jars that are about 2,500 years old. And they did a chemical analysis of what was in those jars to see what was used to make the mummies. And they found extracts from juniper bushes, cypress trees, cedar trees, things. so that were grown really far away in the Mediterranean. And they even found resins that came from

trees in Asia and Africa and some from India and Sri Lanka. So this was no backyard, you know, by the seat of their pants. It makes you wonder how they got that stuff there, you know? It does make you wonder how they got that stuff and why they got that stuff. What was it about this process that they really went the distance for these ingredients? And you have to wonder, why did they do it. Like all good science, it answers some questions, but then it opens up some new ones. Roxanne's been a pleasure as always. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much, Ira. It's always a pleasure. Roxanne Comsi, science writer, based in Montreal, Quebec. We have to take a break.

And when we come back, looking ahead to new nuclear reactor technology, a new kind of plant just got approval in the U.S. Instead of the tall concrete containment domes that you typically think of, We've gone to a very small steel, high-pressure containment vessel, which houses a small reactor vessel. It's about 15 feet in diameter. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Last month, the U.S. government okayed the first small modular nuclear reactor design, SMR, as it's called.

It's a new kind of nuclear power plant. It's not the kind of plant you might picture when you think nuclear. Gone is that massive cooling tower in favor of passive gas of. cooling. And instead of being bespoke designs, these reactors can be manufactured in a factory and hooked together. So what does that mean for the use of nuclear energy in the U.S.? Are smaller, more modular power plants? The future? Joining me to talk about that are my guests. Dr. Jose Reyes is co-founder and chief technology officer at New Scale Power. That's the company behind the small modular reactor design that was just approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

and Christine King, she's director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear at Idaho National Lab. That's in Idaho Falls. They support R&D for a next generation of nuclear power. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Same here. Thank you very much.

You're both welcome. Jose, tell me about this reactor design, SMR. How small are we talking about? Give me a thumbnail, if you will please. Sure. Each of the modules will produce. about 77 megawatts electric, and physically it's about 73 feet in length and about 15 feet in diameter. Now, that includes the containment as well as the reactor vessel. So it's a very different

design in that regard. Instead of the tall concrete containment domes that you typically think of when you look at nuclear power, we've gone to a very small steel, high-pressure containment vessel, which houses a small reactor vessel. And that whole package is factory manufactured. And like I said, It's about 15 feet in diameter. So it's a relatively small cylindrical system. I see why it's called modular, because you make them in the factory and then you might put them together on site. That's right. Yeah.

So we've got different design options depending on what the customer wants. Four module plant would produce about 308 megawatts of electricity, a six module plant, a 462 megawatts electric. I mean, go up to 12 module plant, which will produce 924 megawatts, so almost the gigawatt class size land. Now, I don't have to tell you that historically nuclear power plants take many years to build. Does your design speed up this process at all? It does. And so what we've done by going to factory manufacturing, we've significantly reduced construction time. So while you're doing all your civil construction on site in parallel, you're doing all your high-quality manufacturing in a factory.

This takes us down from a five-year schedule to about a three-year schedule just by doing this in parallel. And who's this designed for? Is this going to replace something my power company would have, or is it smaller than that? We've sized it with the customers in mind. And gosh, since 2008, we've been talking to about 28 utilities in the U.S. and Canada. We've kept here in two things. They said we have aging coal fire plants that need to replace. We'd like to replace them with clean energy. And we also have the need for grid stability. We have a lot of renewables. We need something to stabilize the grid. So we sized our plants with that in mind. And so we're getting a lot of interest globally for coal fire plant replacements in this size range. As someone who spent a couple of weeks at Three Mile Island in 1979, I am fascinated by no cooling towers, passively cooled.

Tell me how that works. Yeah, the secrets in it being small. So in this design, under the worst case conditions, the reactors will shut themselves down without any operator or computer action. without the need for AC or DC power, and they'll remain cooled for an unlimited period time without the need to add water. So this is a big breakthrough for commercial nuclear power. It hasn't been done before, but now it's approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Christine, can you have your finger on all kinds of reactors? What are some of the other possibilities out there? And how does Jose's reactor fit into this picture?

So Jose's reactor is an advancement on the existing fleet that we have. So he's continuing to use the light water reactor technology. Lightwater being a reference to the coolant that takes away the heat from the nuclear reaction itself. But there's about two dozen companies working on different advanced reactor technologies. And there's a variety of different sizes, designs, coolants associated with that. So right now, the things that are under development span from micro reactors, producing less than 50 megawatts electric to medium-sized reactors in that 300-200-magawatt electric sizes. And similar to what Jose was mentioning, this is about tailoring the technology to meet

the changing energy system. The other aspect of these new designs is that, we will do more than produce electricity. So a lot of our industrial partners rely on high-temperature process heat from fossil fuels, either coal or natural gas. And to decarbonize and give them clean energy, you need something that can operate in that same temperature range. So some of these other designs will operate at a higher temperature than what the new scale design does. And the advantage of that is what? Well, the advantage of that is when you have renewables available, you can actually use your nuclear reactor to produce process heat.

You might use that heat to drive a high temperature electrolysis to produce hydrogen and other synthetic fuels to support a clean economy. Or you might use that as a direct input to build close to load. So we're talking about producing more than electricity with these new energy. class of reactors. You know, they used to say that nuclear reactors were the most expensive way to boil water because you're creating steam to drive a turbine. And I hear what you're saying is that's different. And Jose, you're laughing at that.

Yeah. No, I mean, that story's been around for a long time. We typically think of nuclear power is producing steam and being a base load technology. But this new generation of reactors is really looking to be a more flexible for the modern grid. And so as Christine said, looking at hydrogen production. So we currently have a study ongoing with Shell Global. And they're looking at hydrogen production as a possibility for energy storage, as well as for a commodity to sell.

But we're also looking specifically at something we call the energy imbalance market. We have a lot of renewables and you need to store some of that energy during the day and then release it in the form of electricity in the evenings when renewables may not be available. So it's a very different dynamic that's occurring for this modern grid. And we're excited to be part of that. One study we did with Idaho National Lab, one of our modules, coupled to this high-temperature steam electrolysis, could produce almost 50 tons of hydrogen per day. And we're also looking at desalination.

That's the next big issue that we're working on. One module produced about 77 million gallons of clean water today. So the opportunities are really endless. Christine, you mentioned this being a light water reactor. What about other reactors with different cooling approaches like gas or even liquid metal like sodium? Yeah, so actually there's two full-scale demonstration projects underway that are building out those technologies and will be operational in the latter part of the 2030s, 20, 27 and 2030. The Natrium reactor is a sodium-cooled fast reactor that is paired with a molten salt-based energy storage system to do exactly

what Jose was mentioning, the ability to peak in the evening such that you have the power that you need as the sun goes down and the renewables are not available. This project is being built in Wyoming by Terra Power and it's being built adjacent to a coal station. And there's a lot of good things associated with those particular choices. One, you have the infrastructure to connect to the grid. You also have the workforce from the coal station. So in terms of an energy justice perspective, for those people that have given us reliable power for 100 years from our fossil fuel plants, nuclear is a way for them to have another career. The other project that's under development and co-funded by the DOE is the X Energy XE 100. And this is a high temperature gas reactor using triso fuel. Using what?

structural isotropic particle fuel. Essentially, it is a particle of uranium that's encapsulated in three layers of carbon and ceramic coating. And so that particle in and of itself is a new fuel form. And those layers prevent the radioactive fission products from being released. So the the particle itself acts as its own containment. You have anticipated my next question because I can see my email exploding now, asking, what about radioactive nuclear waste disposal, theft for terrorist attacks? Jose, how do you answer those points? Yeah, so certainly early on in these programs, you do a safeguards assessment,

and that's something that we've done two assessments with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. And we've also been working with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The conclusions of those studies was that these reactors, because they're low-enriched, really don't present a threat from the standpoint of terrorism or non-proliferation. In terms of the waste that's produced, we're talking about very small quantities of used fuel. For our design, for example, the one that we're building in Idaho, that's a six-module plant. For 60 years of operation with that plant, all the used fuel that's generated could be stored on 0.8 acres of land. So it's a very small amount of waste that's being generated from these plants.

And that's over a very long period of time. And the storage is on a very small footprint. But yet again, Christine, we haven't got a permanent storage solution, a central storage solution yet, do we? No, sir, we do not. And however, the DOE does have active work underway to pursue consent-based siting to look at a central storage solution. I think another exciting aspect of waste for the advanced reactors is the opportunity to recycle the waste from our existing fleet for the fuel for some of these new reactors as well. ARPA-E has funded some work to look at the technologies necessary for recycling. And having a centralized facility where you're bringing all of our spent fuel together would also be an excellent enabler for a,

recycling process. Other countries do recycle their spent fuel. They have what's called a closed fuel cycle. So we would need to make that decision that we wanted to have a closed fuel cycle and then enable the infrastructure by which to do that. But it does start, I believe, with a consolidated facility. So in the near term, our advanced reactor developers and those buyers of these reactors will need to plan for on-site storage, similar to what we do today. day with our nuclear waste. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios. Are there any radical new designs that are waiting to be finished or testing or something that we just never thought about before? I think one of the more interesting aspects of the class of reactors coming out today are truly

in these smaller reactors, these micro reactors. And we will see two of them operational by 2025. The Department of Defense through Project Pele is looking at having a fully transportable small reactor to support their operations. The state of Alaska is looking at how a microreactor might help with some of the more remote communities in Alaska and how to provide them reliable power. I think that is an exciting aspect of what's going on. I also think these medium sized reactors and being able to support the decarbonization of our industrial sector. I think we understand in a lot of the decarbonization plans how electricity plays a role. But as a chemical engineer, if I had a highly tuned chemical process for producing a polymer,

so to speak, I don't think I'd really want to change my process to incredibly. I just would like to get the same amount of energy I had before it's just coming from a clean source. How do you get past the NIMBY part of this? You know, not in my backyard. I think it's a great idea. But, Jose, I don't want this one in my backyard. How did you deal with that in Idaho and the new project? Yeah, it's really a community-based outreach that has to happen. And that was, I think there were over 120 meetings with the community, in terms of town halls and opportunities for the city councils to examine what we're doing and to understand the process that was ahead of them. What was great about those outreach was it also shared one of the different energy options.

Why is it important to go green in terms of clean energy sources? So I think those outreaches are very, very important. And that's something that UAMP in particular has kind of spearheaded working with Newscale for that first project in Idaho. So you have the OK to go ahead. head. When might we see the actual operation? Are you talking three to five years, as you mentioned before, about three years? Yeah, so we've got the next steps, basically are the owner, UAMS, will be applying for the site permit, the construction operating license application approval. So that's going at the end of this

year. That's a two-year review. And then in 2025, when that's approved, construction could begin at that point. So that's a three-year bill from that point. So we're looking at sometime in the end of 2029 to get those first modules delivered and fully operational all six modules by 2030. Christine, what about extending the lifetime of existing installations? I know that I think it was Diablo Canyon in California was set to go out of business and now they've extended the life of it. Do you think we'll see more of a trend this way?

Actually, we already are. So today we have 92 reactors operating in the United States. United States at 53 different sites. Only 10% of those still have a 40-year license, which is the original license you would have on a nuclear station. 65% of them have already extended their life to 60 years. Now, if we don't extend those licenses to 80 years, we will see those plants come offline in the 2040s. And that's about 60 gigawatts of power. It is important for us to extend that fleet to give us what I would call ramp into the 2060s. We already have six plants with approval to operate to 80 years, and 15 more have either submitted an application

to extend or are expected to apply soon. You know, people are going to be worried about a plant that's 80 years old. Well, so, you know, I tend to think about the process of license renewal similar to the process of those milestone birthdays we all have and those doctor visits where the doctor looks at your own history and looks at your family history. And in some cases, just generally recommends that you do some inspections so that we make sure we understand how to manage you going forward. Doctors recommend colonoscopies for people when they turn 50. But if you have a family history, they may ask you to do that earlier, and you may need to do that more frequently. Managing the life extension of your nuclear plant is similar to managing your own personal

life extension with your doctor. Well, it's interesting that you've compared nuclear power to colonoscopy. Well, hopefully I don't go viral for that. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with me today. Jose Reyes is co-founder and chief technology officer of New Scale. Power based in Oregon. Christine King, she's the director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear. That's at Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Thank you. We have to take a break. And when we come back,

what happens when to take an aggressive fungus and you combine it with a zombie movie? You get the last of us. We'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm I, Refleto, I don't know about you, but it's been a long time since a zombie apocalypse show has kept my interest for more than, let's say, an episode or two. But the last of us from HBO has me hooked. It's based on a video game in which a fungus, a fungus spreads throughout the food supply and infects most of the world's population, turning ordinary people into murderous, mind-controlled monsters. Billions of puppets with poisoned minds. permanently fixed on one unifying goal,

to spread the infection to every last human alive by any means necessary. And to no surprise, one of my favorite plot lines is about the fungus itself, where it came from, what it does, how it spreads. So today we're going to separate fungus fact from fiction because many times fact is more fun than fiction, and I promise no spoilers here. Joining me now is Dr. Patty Kaysian, a my-comy, and visiting professor of biology at Bard College in New York's Hudson Valley. Welcome to Science Friday.

Hi, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Nice to have you. All right, what did you think of seeing a fungus in a show like this? It's been really exciting to see fungi in popular media because it's really rare for that to happen, actually. So in the show, we have a fungus called cordyceps, correct? It takes over, turns people into zombies. Cordyceps is a real fungus, right? Yes, so cordyceps is a real group of fungi. The name corticeps is actually like a genus of a fungi. So you have a lot of different species within that group. But scientists and mycologists specifically talk about corticeps as sort of a catch-all for a lot of different groups of fungi that infect insects and kill their host. The sort of portrayal in the show is that the fungus enters the person's body and grows throughout their skin. in flesh and then takes over their minds. And this is something that happens with some species of these fungi on insects. Well, should we people be afraid, be very afraid it could happen to us? So I would say no. I personally do not live in fear of this happening to me, even though I

study fungi and think about them all the time. And that's because these relationships that exists now in nature with the fungi growing on particular insects are ones that have been developing for millions and millions of years. So they're very host-specific, very, very particular to the chemistry and the physiology of the host body, and they're not something that just can spread easily to other groups. For a fungus to evolve that could infect humans in a similar way, it would take a really, really, really long amount of time, far beyond any of our lives or probably the lifespan of humans on this planet. Well, of course, that's not to say that we don't interact with fungus.

There's certainly fungus that can mess with our minds, right? I'm thinking of psilocybin and rye ergot, which can cause hallucinations. Sure, certainly. Yes, fungi are, we're interacting with fungi all of the time in various ways. And of course, there's kind of a reputation that fungi are inherently dangerous and a risk to our health. And there are some species that can hurt us if we were to eat them. Like you mentioned, the ergot, which is a rot that grows on different grains, especially rye.

And if you eat that, it actually causes sort of like a compound in there that's similar to LSD, but one that's really, really bad. And it can cause like really disturbing hallucinations, but also physiological problems like gangrene and things like that. So we are, you know, we certainly need to be aware of the fungi that are around us. But there's also lots of fungi around us all the time that are. doing really helpful things in our environment. So most fungi are actually pretty, pretty beneficial for us. Give me an example. Basically, most terrestrial plants have some sort of partnership with fungi,

meaning the fungus is providing nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus and water and other beneficial things to plants. And actually 95% of plants on land have a partnership with a fungus in which they're really depending on that fungus to survive. So when you think about the forests that are around us and our agricultural systems. Fungi are really intimate parts of those systems. And actually, we wouldn't be able to recognize these systems if it weren't for the important roles that fungi are playing in those environments. Right. So they do really useful things. But sometimes they can interact with us negatively. I'm thinking of people getting fungal infections like athletes foot, stuff like that. Yes, there are things that you don't want. So athletes foot would be a sort of,

you know, maybe a less severe type of fungal infection. And then particularly people who are immunocompromised are extra vulnerable to various types of fungal infections that can become systemic. There's some species of yeast called candida that can become dangerous to human health, particularly if your immune system is suppressed. So certainly we do want to know what's going on with fungi. It's really important that people are studying them and sort of thinking about them in the context of human health, because it's true that some can pose a great risk to us. Yeah. Yeah, but getting back to the show, there's no fear of mind control, right? But the fungi can't cause outbreaks like they did in the show. Yeah, so I'm not afraid of like a zombie

apocalypse caused by a fungus, but it is true that there could be sort of outbreaks of other types of fungi that could be detrimental to our health. So Candida oris is one species of fungus that is sort of causing a bit of a stir. It used to be found mostly in desert climates in the U.S., but as the planet has warmed a bit, it's starting to spread more and more north. And that can cause, get into your lungs and cause some serious health problems for you. But nothing that's going to like fully take over your body and cause you to become a monster. Yeah. And there's this really harrowy moment in the show when the mycologist says there's no treatment, no hope for infected people in real life, fungal infections, are they that hard to treat? Yeah, so fungi are really hard to treat

when they infect a human because fungi are actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants. So when you're trying to kill fungal cells in your body, the medications that we have often are also harmful to our own cells. There's often a large amount of side effects with fungal medications and they can just be very persistent and difficult to fully eradicate. The other problem though, is that we know very little about fungi in general. It's a really understudied discipline. So we just need more research to understand the life cycle of these organisms, their basic chemistry and biology, and even just to know what species are out there. So we just have a lot of work to do. So one thing that's concerning about a potential fungal outbreak is that we would

have very little, like, starting information if it were to occur. And as a mycologist, I hope you don't mind me referring to you as a fungi. nerd. That's accurate. Well, then you must be watching the show with a critical eye. And I'm asking that because I want to know if there's anything else that the show gets wrong that really bugs you. Maybe bug is the wrong term here, but yes. So I'll start by saying that I really liked the show and I've been really enjoying it. The storyline is well executed. I actually played the game when it came out and I really enjoyed it at that time. And I think the show has been really gripping and I love the costume design. But of course, as a mycologist, I can't fully take off

my mycology lens. And I think one thing that kind of bugs me is during the credits and the opening credits, they show a fungal-like organism sort of spreading and traveling and it ends up mapping out kind of roughly the United States and continues moving. And actually, that's not a fungus. what they're showing is a slime mold, which is something that used to be in kingdom fungi, but it now recognized as being an amoeba. So it just, that was a little bit irritating to me. But otherwise, I mean, I think that the show is doing an interesting job and weaving elements of fungal biology accurately,

but it's also relying on different elements of fungi that don't exist in one single species. So visually, a lot of the aesthetics of the fungi that are showing are, are kind of other species more like polypores, which are fungi that grow on wood and trees. And then they're kind of combining that with elements of the cordyceps group. And then they're, you know, sort of blending in these slime mold. So there's sort of this panoply of fungal representation. A lot of literary license going on here. Yes, for sure.

But one thing you did point out about that beginning of the show where you see it's sort of spreading, that's really how don't fungi talk to each other through. the ground because in the show, the infected humans communicate with each other through an underground fungal network? Yes. So they're relying on this idea of the mycelial web. So mycelia or mycelium is the network of fungal cells that extends through substrate. So through soil or wood or through animal tissue. And basically, we know that fungi can communicate over long distances through their mycelial networks. They can send information about their habitat. They can send resources to one another and to other organisms. So they are sort of utilizing that reality to move the plot. Let's take a listen.

They're connected. More than you know, the fungus also grows underground. Long fibers like wires, some of them stretching over a mile. You step on a patch of cordyceps in one place, and you can wake a dozen. infected from somewhere else. Now they know where you are, now they come. And the show talks about climate change in that it could affect how fungi spread and behave in that if the average temperature of the earth goes up, that makes more amenable to the growth of the fungi. Is that an actual concern? So yes, climate change in all its forms is a concern for diversity. When we're talking about a warming planet, there's are some species that are going to go extinct when the temperature rises, because all species have

evolved to be successful in particular niches, and that's often involving a pretty narrow, you know, temperature window. So if you go higher than that temperature window, the species can go extinct. And this is true for organisms, including fungi, but most organisms in general. But that also then opens up windows for new species to thrive. So when you increase temperature, some will go extinct and some can expand into that range and then be more successful. So we know that climate change is going to just really shift a lot of things. And overall, we expect there to be lots of biodiversity loss. And that's mostly caused through habitat destruction. But we know that like changing in rainfall patterns, you know, certain areas becoming wetter, certain areas becoming drier. This is

definitely going to lead to some species going extinct and other species sort of thriving. So it's hard to predict what that's all going to look like. None of it's particularly good, though. How did you like the way visually the fungi were drawn? They're actually very pretty, very gorgeous depictions of them. Yes, I love the artistic rendering of fungi in this show. I think it's done beautifully. Certainly creepy, but as a mycologist, I'm used to dealing in what other people would consider creepy. So I think it's done really beautifully. Aside from it, kind of combining multiple aspects of different species into one, I think that it definitely gives a very fungal feeling. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Kayser joining us. We're talking

with mycologist Dr. Patty Kachian about the fungi-inspired TV show The Last of Us. And how do you feel that fungus has become a topic of conversation now? Everybody's seeing the show and talking about it. It's interesting. Mycologists are used to people sort of of ignoring fungi for the most part. In the last couple of years, there's been a bit of a shift, which is exciting. People are a little more open-minded about learning about fungi and welcoming them into our lives. So this is a more negative portrayal of fungi. But what's really exciting is that it's gotten a lot of people asking about fungi. So maybe if this show came out like 10 years ago, I don't know that I would be contacted for an interview about them. So this time around,

people are, I think because people were exposed to some positive press about fungi over the last few years, now people want to know, you know, as you said, sort fact from fiction. So that's been, I think it's good, I think it's good overall. But you've been excited about fungi for years. I mean, what makes you so excited? Why do you love to study them? So yes, I've been studying for fungi for a little over a decade now. And I was really drawn to them because so few people understood them. They were this mysterious entity in the forests that really excited. me and sort of, I felt sort of a natural alignment with them because of ways in which I've, you know, I guess as particularly as a younger person, moved through the world in a way that, you know,

wasn't necessarily particularly well understood. So I just felt the kinship with them. I was felt really excited by how dynamic they are in our ecosystems and how much potential information they hold that we know very little about. Tell me about that. So we know less about fungi than we know about fungi, right? What else is there to learn? There's, there's, like, so much to learn. So I can start by saying we think that there's over three million species of fungi that exist on Earth. And of that three million or so, possibly more, we've only described about 150,000 species. So really just a small sliver of the fungal diversity on this earth has been described in a formal way. So we're talking about millions

of species that exist around us. Some of them, you know, large, obvious mushrooms, some of them micro fungi, and we don't know what they're doing or how they're doing it. So in terms of what ecological functions they're playing in a forest or in a grassland or within a single leaf on a tree, we know that they're involved in, you know, nutrient cycling and mutualisms between plants. They're in our own bodies. One really fun fact I have is that there are actually more fungal and bacterial cells in our own bodies. then there are human cells, which is a little bit crazy, but true. Microbiome, we love to talk about it.

Yes. Why is it that we know so little? That's kind of a complicated question, but I think that people have been disinterested in studying fungi because they didn't seem important to us, particularly from the cultural framework of European-American sort of Western science. And I think they were sort of seen as things that were gross or creepy or slimy and deadly. And there was just a negative perception of them. And I think that that actually has materially impacted the formal study of them.

So it's actually hard to find a place to learn about mycology in like an formal way. So there's very few mycologists working at colleges and universities. Only a handful of institutions will grant, you know, degrees that are super focused on mycology. So we just have a long way to go and sort of recognizing how important they are and then actually allocating funding towards those research programs. That seems crazy. It is a little crazy. You know, if something is so essential to how nature works and we don't understand it, that's kind of nuts.

Yeah, I know. I think so too. Well, I'm glad that you're working on it, at least. Yes, yeah, it's been fun. And, you know, as I mentioned, the tide is starting to show. shift a little bit. My college students have expressed a lot of interest in fungi, and I see that interest growing. So I'm hopeful that more mycology programs are going to start to pop up, and there will be more chances to study them and more funding available. So I think we're heading

in the right direction. That's great. So you see, fungi is not so scary once you get to know them. Yeah, once you get to know them, they're pretty nice. Patty, thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thanks for having me. This was great. Dr. Patty Kachian is a mycologist and visiting professor of biology at Bart College in New York's Hudson Valley. And that's about all the time we have for this hour. Here's Jason Rosenberg with some of the folks who helped make this show happen. Thanks, Ira. Kyle Marion Viterbo is our community manager.

Annie Niro is our individual giving manager. Guy Peter Schmidt and Emma Gomez are our digital producers. Nahima Ahmed is our manager of Impact Strategy. And I'm Jason Rosenberg, grants manager. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Jason. B.J. Leederman composed our theme music, and of course, if you missed any part of the program, or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts, or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday.

Have a great weekend. I'm I Refledo.