Science Friday - Wildfire Smoke, Jurassic Park Reflection, Mosquito DNA Editing. June 9, 2023, Part 1

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Canadian Wildfire Smoke Drifts Across The United States This week, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, enveloping the Northeastern United States, casting an ominous orange glow. The smoke continued spreading outwards to the Southeast and to the Midwest. While climate change is extending and worsening the Canadian wildfire season, it’s still rare for this many fires, so early in the season. Ira talks with Katherine Wu, staff writer at The Atlantic, about the latest on the Canadian wildfires and other top news stories of the week, including; a new type of cat contraception, drilling into the Earth’s mantle, and a ‘virgin’ crocodile birth.   30 Years Later, ’Jurassic Park’ Still Inspires On June 11th, 1993, what would become one of the biggest movies of all time was released in theaters: Jurassic Park. Based on the novel by Michael Crichton, the film is about people’s belief that they can control nature. Wealthy businessman John Hammond creates a dinosaur nature park. Things go awry quickly. Electric fences break down, dinosaurs get loose, and people are eaten. At the time of its release, the film became the highest-grossing movie of all time. In the decades since it came out, the film has spawned a multi-movie franchise, amusement park rides, video games, and every type of merchandise imaginable. The movie also had a tremendous impact on visual effects, both computer animated and practical, which are still seen today in the media. When the first Jurassic Park movie came out, many of the paleontologists of today were children—or not even born yet. Ira speaks with a trio of paleontologists about the film’s impact on them as kids, and its continuous use as an educational tool to inspire young dino enthusiasts: Riley Black, Steve Brusatte and Yara Haridy.   A Biotech Offensive Against Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes Mosquitoes are the primary spreaders of some highly dangerous diseases for people: The insect spreads diseases like yellow fever, dengue fever, malaria, and zika, which kill millions of people globally each year. There’s one species of mosquito that’s invasive to the United States, and whose populations are spreading: Aedes aegypti, which is recognizable by black and white markings on its legs. Lee County, Florida is taking aim at this species with biotechnology. Their strategy is to release 30,000 sterilized male mosquitoes into the environment, who will go on to mate with females, who then will release eggs that do not hatch. Male mosquitoes don’t bite, only females do. The goal of this method is to decrease the Aedes aegypti population with every generation. Biotechnology to combat this mosquito species is nothing new. Ira speaks with reporter Cary Barbor at WGCU in Fort Myers about this strategy in her city. He also speaks with Dr. Omar Akbari, professor of cell and developmental biology at UC San Diego, about his research on using CRISPR to alter Aedes aegypti into harmless insects.   To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. 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 Iraflato. Later in the hour, we'll talk about a plant to eliminate disease-carrying mosquitoes by releasing more mosquitoes. We'll tell you how that works. Plus, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park, how the blockbuster movie inspired a generation of paleontologists and dino lovers. The first, this week, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, enveloping the northeastern United States, casting an ominous orange glow. on New York City. Poor air quality continues in some parts of the country, and while climate change is responsible for extending and worsening the Canadian wildfire season, it's still rare for this many fires so early in the season. Joining me now to talk more about this and other top science

stories of the week is Catherine Wu, staff writer at the Atlantic based in Boston, Massachusetts. Katie, welcome back to Science Friday. Always good to be here, though. I wish it were under better circumstances. chances this week. Well, that's true because for those of us on the East Coast who have been dealing with wildfire smoke, maybe for the first time in our lives, this has been sort of a wake-up call, right, for what it's like during wildfire season in the West. Yeah, it has truly been terrible. And in fact, what has been happening all over the Northeast this week has actually outstripped some of the worst wildfires out west in recent years. It is so, so, so bad. Cities are breaking air

quality records. Really, like, we have to keep in mind that this is the most populous corridor of the entire country. There are millions of people under an air quality alert this week. Recap for us why we're seeing such intense fires in Canada and why we're only experiencing it for the first time down here in the lower 48. So for the Northeast, this is extremely atypical, right? We don't typically have wildfires burning here, but it seems to be this really unlucky nexus of two things. One is that, you know, as you mentioned, climate change is just making wildfires where they appear more extreme and also making it easier for them to spread and travel really quickly. Canada has already had a terrible wildfire season, and it's really just getting

started. Keep in mind that we're still technically in spring. But already there has been 14 times as much burning this year than what's typical for the last decade. There are hundreds of fires all over Canada from west to east and the ones burning in the east right now, they happen to be caught up in a bunch of winds that are traveling southward and exposing us to that smoke. So a bit of bad luck on that part, but certainly the main source, the main troubling thing is just how badly those fires are burning. Well, this could portend the future perhaps, don't? Right. I mean, with climate change only getting worse, the temperatures around the globe only getting hotter, a lot of scientists are worried that this could be a norm.

You know, if this is the first taste East Coasters are getting, it probably won't be the last. You know, they're telling us that if you must venture outside, they're saying stay inside, there are ways to protect yourself and pull out your old mask, right? You still have your COVID mask around? Does that actually afford protection? You know, it really does. And we definitely do want to emphasize here that if the air quality, it truly is bad in your region, You can check your weather app or go online to Air Now, which is run by the EPA.

If levels are above 150 or so, that's definitely a good sign to stay indoors if you possibly can, run whatever air filters you have. But if you do have to go outdoors, as many of us do to commute, to do whatever it is we need to do outdoors, wear an N95 mask or something equivalent. The same top of the line, really high quality, well-fitted, good filtering masks that helped the most throughout all of COVID and are still helping us now. The trick is we kind of have to flip our rules, whereas indoor air that was really stale and not turning over very well was kind of not our friend throughout the worst of the pandemic. Right now, it's the outdoor air that is potentially really

hazardous. And that's where you're going to want to keep that mask on and might be safer, actually, to take the mask off when you go indoors. Really interesting. Let's talk about some other news this week. there was some about how traveling in space affects the human brain. What are we talking about here? Right. So in space, last I checked, there is still no gravity. And so the fluid in our bodies is going to behave very differently. We know that, you know, this affects our muscles and that they can atrophy and our bones and that they can lose density. But the important thing for our brains is that because our bodies are mostly water, that is going to lead these structures called ventricles to fill. fill with a bit more fluid. So without gravity to hold it down, fluid in our bodies is going to

travel upward to compensate these structures take up more of that fluid. And so basically, your brain is kind of getting a little swelly if you spend more than a few weeks in space. Keep in mind that this is for longer term space travel. This is not going to be a big deal if you're up in space for a couple days at a time. But for astronauts who are going up there for months at a time, maybe even six months or longer, this will have a big impact. What scientists are now finding is that if your brain swells during these long space flights, when you come back down at Earth, it takes quite some time to recover up to three years for your brain swelling to go back down to normal. Three years. Do we know if there are any side effects from this or long-term side effects?

Right. So that is a huge thing to keep in mind here. It's a little, and clear what the long-term health implications here are, if any, they're just observing this effect that, oh, there is a big difference here, and the body probably needs some time to recover. What is probably going to be the safest course of action going forward is to make sure that astronauts that are going on these long space lights are really trying to space them out. You can sort of think about it roughly like if you stretch out a rubber band repeatedly, it's going to kind of lose its elasticity. you can kind of burn out the rubber band a little bit.

But if you use it less often, if you don't stretch it out so often, it'll have more of a lifespan. That's kind of the similar idea here. If there is an effect, we want to make sure the brain has some time to recover, go back down to its normal size, so it can retain that flexibility the next time you go into space. Our next story takes us in the totally other direction, literally. Scientists for the first time have dug up pieces of the Earth's mantle. What is the mantle and why are they interested in these rocks? So the part of Earth that we are most used to seeing is the crest that is the outer most layer,

but the crest is really hardly any of Earth's composition. You can think of Earth as a giant cake pop and the vast majority of what's in the middle is actually the mantle. You know, there's the liquid core, but the mantle is really most of the stuff that is in Earth. And right now we're sitting on top of a very thin layer. of icing. To really understand what is going on in our planet, we need to get the recipe for the cake and not just focus on the icing or the frosting. So really having these samples is a

pretty big deal. It can help scientists figure out how our planet formed and also even how volcanism happens at the surface because deep in the mantle is where magma is, you know, melting and separating out and then getting extruded up to the surface to create volcanic activity. Cool. Let's move on to a story about ancient parasites. Scientists uncovered the oldest case of dysentery. How did they figure this out? Well, as you can imagine, this story gets very slightly gross. They were basically digging through an old archaeological site. This is from Jerusalem, or, you know, Jerusalem's Iron Age about 2,600 years ago. They found a bunch of latrines and were able to analyze a bunch of fecal samples.

And they found evidence that people, even in the richest echelons of society, had Giardia, which is a parasite that causes some pretty gnarly, bloody dysentery. Okay. Let's move on a little bit. I know you're a cat person, and this week he wrote about research into a new type of contraceptive shot for cats. Yes. This is incredibly exciting. So this is basically a one and done injection that scientists in a small trial saw,

was able to block ovulation in a small number of cats. So this hasn't been taken to clinical trials yet. This is not going to be on pharmacy shelves tomorrow. But the potential here is really big. You know, if cats are able to get just a single injection and not be fertile anymore, potentially for years, maybe even a lifetime, this could someday be an alternative to spaying. And you wrote about how the most useful application of this cat contraception could be in feral cat colonies. Tell me why that is. So spaying is, you know, something that happens to pretty much

all female pets in this country. It is a very important thing to do. But it's also something that is really important for population control. There is an estimated 500 million free roaming cats on Earth. That is a lot of And their numbers are potentially only growing because, you know, you get a couple cats in a room together and they are probably going to try to make more cats. This is a big deal, right? Like it's a nuisance for people. It's devastating for the world's birds. And a lot of these cats are just not very healthy. So, you know, there's an option to call them, which is brutal and a lot of people consider it inhumane. There's an option to catch them one by one by one by one, surgically sterilize them and release them. But that's a lot of time and money. If a single shot can replace that, we could maybe reach more of these cats and keep them and other wildlife healthier. Right, right. Finally, let's end on a word your eighth grade science teacher taught you, parthenogenesis. Scientists discovered a female crocodile who gave birth without the help of a male crocodile.

Yeah, incredibly impressive. You know, she was just hanging out in a zoo. But then she laid a clutch of eggs in January of 2018, even though she'd had no contact with any males for 16 years. It's a very cool, like, sperm-free mystery. That is cool. And what they think happened is she was able to just produce some eggs, sort of sort out her own genetic material, and produce a crop of offspring that were genetically identical to her. The sad thing here is none of the offspring actually made it to term, but some of the embryos developed enough that scientists were able to verify, oh, these are

exact pretty much carbon copies of mom, no dad involved. This is not unknown in the animal kingdom, right? Right. So this parthenogenes phenomenon has been observed in snakes, fish, lizards, birds. It's not that uncommon. It's something that a lot of animals will turn to often in times of desperation, like if there's truly no bail around, you might as well make a copy of yourself and see if your daughter has better luck finding a mate. But it's the first time we've seen it in crocodiles. What's kind of cool about that is if this behavior is common among these groups, especially, you know, reptiles and birds, maybe that points to this ability being present in a

common ancestor, maybe even dinosaurs or terrors. And that just tells us a lot about how this might have evolved and to whom it was useful. Well, Catherine Wu, you're always useful to us. So thank you for bringing us great stuff again each week. Catherine Rue, staff writer at the Atlantic based in Boston. Have a good weekend. Thanks so much. Always glad to be here. We have to take a quick break and when we come back, how scientists are using CRISPR technology to try to rid the world of dangerous mosquitoes. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. As the song says, June is busting out all over,

But it's not just the flowers. We're talking the dreaded mosquito. You've got your common ways to fight back, right? Repellence, sprays, long-sleeved clothing. But in southwest Florida, Lee County is using biotechnology to target a specific species of mosquito that can spread yellow fever and other deadly diseases. Their strategy involves releasing even more mosquitoes. Wow, what's the story here? Let's talk about this method with Carrie Barber, reporter for WGCU, Public Radio, based in Fort Myers, Florida.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. More mosquitoes? Tell us about that. How is more better? I know it sounds funny. But the Lee County Mosquito Control District actually released 30,000 extra mosquitoes in April of this year. They're male mosquitoes that have been sterilized. So when they mate with the females, the eggs that are laid will not hatch. So that eventually, in a couple of generations, that will bring down the population of the mosquitoes in that area. And what kind of mosquitoes are we talking about here?

Why are they the targets? They're called 80s-Agypti mosquitoes, which they're a vector for dangerous diseases, like you said, Zika, dengue fever, chicken guinea. They can carry yellow fever. They're an invasive species, and they're particularly hard to control for a couple of reasons. They bite in the daytime. Their habitats can be hard to target, and they seem to be becoming resistant to common insecticides. That is a problem. I know you went to the lab in Lee County where they're working on the sterilization project.

Tell me what you saw there. Well, the lab is run by Rachel Morialli, and she and her colleagues are a brief. reading 80s egypti in that lab. It's the only species they work with in that lab, and they are breeding them by the hundreds of thousands, if you want to put that in your nightmare file. They separate the females from the males in the lab, and they then sterilize the males with radiation, just a regular x-ray like you would get at the doctor's office. They do it at the pupa stage, which is between larvae and adult. And then they dust. the males with fluorescent powder so that after they release them, they can identify which ones

came from the lab and they can see how long they lived and how far they traveled, et cetera. That is really cool. It's really cool. This is Rachel Morialli describing how they dust them with the fluorescent powder. We're using infant nasal aspirators. These are loaded up with degalo Eco, which is a formaldehyde-free pigment, by just genesis. essentially squeezing. We get this very fine kind of powder mist, and we're able to very lightly, but effectively, dust the mosquitoes. And that actually will stay with them for the rest of their lives. They can't really get rid of that marking. Really interesting. I mean, but this isn't a new technology, right? It's not new. It's been in use since 1951, actually on Santa Belle Island,

which is also near here, they used it to eliminate the screw worm fly. It's been used throughout the years for various insects. Lee County started using it in June 2020. And how will we know when it's working or if it's working? What's next? Well, I just talked to them over in the lab and they said they don't have any data yet, but what they can do is eventually they will trap the mosquitoes and see how far they traveled, see how long they lived, et cetera.

And that will tell them how the population is changing and whether it's working. Well, we'll have you check back with us when we know, Carrie, okay? Sounds great. Carrie Barber, reporter for WGCU, public radio based in Fort Myers, Florida. Florida isn't alone in using biotechnology to combat the dangerous Aedes-A-D-A-Gypistai mosquito. Similar strategies have been used in California, South America, and Northeast Africa. There's another branch of biotechnology, though, that might be weaponized using CRISPR to target the DNA of these disease vectors. Dr. Omar Akbar-Bari is Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, San Diego, based in San Diego, California.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much. It's really great to be here. Oh, it's our pleasure. Okay, so explain to us how you use CRISPR to alter mosquitoes. knows. Yeah. So we're using CRISPR and a number of different technologies that we're developing. We're primarily developing genetic biocontrolled technologies. And these are essentially technologies where we can use the insect to combat itself. And so in the 80s Egypti, which is the major dengue chicken guinea, yellow fever, Zika vector, that's an invasive species. We have been basically expressing CRISPR

machinery in the genome of the mosquito such that we can we can use this to produce sterilized male mosquitoes at scale and we're looking to use this technology to basically mass produce sterilized male mosquitoes as eggs embryos and use different types of release technologies to spray these into the environment such that these male mosquitoes can hatch out of these eggs. They can go find the female mosquitoes. They can mate with them. And the consequence of that is those females won't produce any viable progeny. And over time, if you do continually release these sterilized males, the population will dwindle and eventually crash. And so you can actually eliminate the mosquitoes in a very

species-specific and safe way. You know, we just heard in Florida how they're releasing. releasing sterilized mosquitoes using a little different technique. How is your technique different? Yeah, there was a trial this year in Lee County where they released 30,000 sterilized male mosquitoes. And the technology that they used to sterilize the mosquitoes was an old technology. It's called X-ray radiation. And what that essentially does is you irradiate the adult male mosquitoes and it breaks

support their DNA such that they become sterilized. And the problem with that is that reduces their fitness, which is their ability to kind of survive and reproduce or mate in the environment. And so you have to release a lot more of those types of irradiated males. And they also have to release the adults with their approach. So it's a very difficult to scale. But it still will work. it's still shown to be effective, but it's more difficult to scale. Yeah, you're saying yours is a more efficient method, if I might describe it that way. Basically, our technologies is more efficient, more scalable. And, you know, when you're trying to suppress populations of billions of mosquitoes,

you really want something that is efficient and scalable, so you can have a wider impact. Now, as we say, Florida has tried their method. your strategy has not been deployed in the wild yet, right? When might we see this happening? Yeah, so we're actively working to transition the technologies we're developing in a laboratory to field trials. We have launched a company just last year, which we call Synbect, which we're working on

still fundraising for that company to enable a field trial so we can determine the effectiveness of this approach. And we're hoping that we can get those underway maybe sometime next year. And in addition to that, we are transitioning our technology to other mosquito vectors, such like Ennopolis Gambi, which is a major malaria vector in Africa. So we can actually hopefully make an impact there too. Yes. Tell me why you're so passionate about targeting this mosquito. Well, this mosquito, 80s Egypti, it's invasive.

And it basically was first found in California in 2011. So it's a very, very recent invasion in California. I find it in my backyard. It bites my kids. It bites my kids. It spreads a lot of diseases. It spreads dengue, chicken guinea, yellow fever, Zika virus. It puts, you know, our entire country at risk.

And, you know, I think it's very hard to control. The current technologies for trying to control it using insecticides aren't working. These mosquitoes are resistant to the insecticides. So we really need new technologies. And something that is safe for the environment is also needed. And that's why I'm really passionate about using genetic biocontrolled technologies where you actually use a mosquito to control itself. I think it's the most powerful way to control these vectors.

Do these mosquitoes look any different than the other mosquitoes? They do. They have these black stripes along their legs. So they look kind of like dark baiter. Yeah, you can identify them just by looking for the stripes. Wow. Are there ecological risks to getting rid of 80s, Egypti mosquitoes altogether? I mean, might there be some unintended consequences?

Yeah, I think in the United States or in California, removing a species that just invaded shouldn't have any long-term ecological consequences. And I think, you know, when you talk about removing mosquitoes, there's a bit of a misconceptive. there because there's there's about 3,500 species of mosquitoes worldwide. Wow. And there's really, there's only about a handful of them that transmit diseases or pathogens to us. So we're really only talking about removing, you know, maybe 10 to 15 different vectors.

And if we did that, we would, we would get rid of 99% of the pathogens they transmit. So we're not talking about removing all mosquitoes, but just specific ones that are harmful to us. And I think if you do it that way, then I don't really believe that there's going to be any major ecological consequences. And this mosquito carries a lot of diseases. It does. It carries a lot of viruses, 80s Egypti. And so if you were to remove it, then you could actually stop the transmission of multiple different viruses. And I think that's, there can be a major impact there.

Very interesting. Do you think it's possible that our next pandemic comes from a, mosquito-borne illness? It's possible. You know, the last epidemic, which was Zika virus, was mosquito-borne. Actually, was transmitted by 80s-Jypti. And that was a major problem back in 2015. I remember when I first opened the doors of my lab at UC Riverside, on the news,

there were pictures of babies that were born with microcephaly, which was caused by Zika virus. And so that was a major problem. And, you know, COVID, fortunately, was not transmissible by mosquito. But, you know, what if it was? So in a way, we dodged a pretty big bullet there. It was airborne transmissible, but not mosquito-borne. So, you know, the next one could be mosquito-borne, and we need to kind of invest in better tools and technologies to protect us.

So what would make a mosquito-borne pandemic particularly scary? What about the mosquitoes? Well, I feel that. the Zika virus epidemic was pretty scary, right? When you have pregnant women, I mean, you know, worried about traveling or worried about being bitten by a mosquito because their unborn could potentially be born with microcephaly. I thought that was extremely scary, actually. And so you could imagine something like that that may be even, you know, more broad scale.

That would be pretty scary. And because these bugs go everywhere and they bite during the day, this kind of mosquito, easier to spread, right? They do bite during the day. They hide inside your closets and your bathrooms. They come out at night. They'll feed on you while you're sleeping. They, their eggs, this is one interesting fact about AD's Ajaxia is that their eggs actually

can desiccate, meaning that, you know, they can lay their eggs like on a leaf by the water. and then when it dries out, the egg will survive in this dipos state, and it can survive like that for up to five years. And so what it will do is it will just sit there, and next time rain comes, the water will touch the egg. The egg will hatch. Out will come your larvae. Then it will come your adult. So you have this species that can just sit there in completely dried out areas, and then when rain comes, it can hatch out. And so this is another reason why it's very hard to control.

Now you have scared me, describing how, you know, how perfect. This is like a perfect disease spreading animal, right? It is. And I will add to that. And, you know, one of the things that we have taken into consideration in our technologies we're developing is this fact that we can store those eggs. So we're developing technologies that we can deploy as eggs, which would enable us to build factories where we can produce eggs and then store them,

and then we can deploy them, and out will come your sterilized males. So we really take advantage of the biology of the insect as well. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Could the mosquito, let's say, you know, you get this to work, could the mosquito evolve to be resistant to your technique? We've thought of that too. And so we have technologies where that could be problematic. where mosquito could evolve or its genome could evolve and it will evolve.

But the technology I'm talking about here, where we produce sterilized males, we're essentially producing a dead-end product. We have a factory where we produce these eggs. The eggs get deployed. Outcome your sterilized males. Sterileized males will find wild females. So mate with them, and they won't produce any progeny because the male is sterile. So there really isn't a mechanism or an opportunity for,

evolution to take place because you've kind of created a dead-end product. That's basically a pesticide. That is good to hear. And I imagine the rest of the world is waiting to see how you do. I think so. I think there's a lot of people that are looking at the technologies we're developing. They're very excited about it and they're waiting for us to figure out how to transition it, which is not an easy task, actually. Most of our work in the lab is small scale, but when you actually want to take something and scale it and transition it to the real world, that's a pretty big task, actually. And so we're trying to achieve that. Yeah, well, what are we doing in the meantime? What, this is, you know, this is mosquito season. What actions can we individually do to try to fight

this mosquito in the meantime? I think the best approach is to just wear when you're out and about, wear long-sleeved clothing or pants and to protect, you know, your exposed areas. And if you do happen to wear shorts, there are repellents and the repellents do work. So use the deep-based repellents and that will protect you. Make sure you have screens on all your windows so they don't get inside your house, keep your doors closed. These are things that actually do work. You prevent contact at all means with the mosquito.

And if you do that, then, you know, you're not going to get diseases. Well, that's great news to hear. You folks are working on this. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us and telling us about it. Thank you so much. Dr. Omar Akbar, Professor of Cell in Developmental Biology, University of California in San Diego. We have to take a break, and when we come back, it's the 30-year anniversary of one of the biggest science movies ever made, Jurassic Park. Remember, mosquitoes stuck in amber play a key role even there. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Rarely does a film become so part of our culture that it changes our language.

It evokes instant emotions, creates generations of followers. One such film released on June 11, 1993, Jurassic Park. Dr. Grant. My dear Dr. Sondon. Welcome to Jurassic Park. Based on a novel by Michael Crichton, the film is about people's belief that they can control nature, but oh, the unintended consequences.

Here's what happens. A rich guy creates a dinosaur theme park. Man creates dinosaur, dinosaur eats man. You know how it goes. In a 30 years since it came out, the film spawned a multi-movie franchise, amusement park rides, video games, merch, you name it, it's there. The movie also had a huge impact on visual effects we still see today in the media.

When the first Jurassic Park film came out, many of the paleontologists of today were kids or not even born. So for the rest of the hour, we're going to talk about this movie's impact on today's scientists. My guests are a trio of paleontologists. Riley Black, self-proclaimed fossil fanatic, author of, of the Last Days of the Dinosaurs, based in Salt Lake City. Steve Brousscibi, vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, author of the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. And Yarra Haridi, vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago,

and you know where that is in Illinois. Welcome to You All to Science Friday. Thank you so much for having us. I'm so excited to talk about this movie. Yep, really wonderful to be back on Science Friday talking to you, Ira and, you know, joined by two of my friends in the field, Riley and Yara. I know, right? It's like 30 years and this movie is the dinosaur movie to talk about. It's great to be on here to discuss it. Let me start with you, Riley. I want to start by asking all of you, if you remember your introduction to this movie, Riley. What was your first experience like watching the movie as a kid?

Okay. I could not have been more excited for a drastic part to come out. Because part of this, was I was 10 years old when Jurassic Park was hitting theaters. So this was right at the crest of this wave of dynomania. The same year, National Geographic came out with a cover story about dinosaurs, Time magazine, did the same. I was finally allowed to read Jurassic Park, the novel as like my first grown-up, quote-unquote, book, which I read like in a day. I was so excited about this. And I remember I was on vacation in Florida with my family.

And it was phenomenal. It's like all these things I've been learning about through all these news stories. books and museum exhibits. It was like seeing dinosaurs alive. And I was just absolutely thrilled. What about you, Steve? Did Jurassic Park help launch you into an interest or a career in dinosaurs? I remember it so well. I'm about the same age as Riley. I was nine when the film came out. And I remember going to the cinema and seeing it with my dad and with my brothers back in the summer in 93, back home in Illinois, where I grew up. And I was not particularly into dinosaurs at the time. really didn't like science much at all.

It was my least favorite class in school, and I could have never envisioned I would become a scientist. But my youngest brother at that time was obsessed with dinosaurs. That movie fed the obsession through his obsession. I became obsessed with dinosaurs. So really, Jurassic Park led to me becoming a paleontologist in an indirect way. But more than anything, I remember the film because the special effects were so lifelike. Those dinosaurs were so different than the dinosaurs and the books that we had at school and in the

library, these dinosaurs, they were movie monsters, but they were real animals too. And that stuck with me. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Now, Yara, I know you had a bit of a different experience in that you didn't grow up in the U.S. Was Jurassic Park on your radar as a kid interested in dinosaurs? Yeah. So this is, I guess, where I differ from a lot of my colleagues in this case, where I only got introduced to Jurassic Park probably like 10 years after it came out. So a little bit of a late bloomer there, but I have an uncle who's absolutely obsessed

with American movies and what's the newest and the things that you have to see to be a true movie aficionado. So this was just one of many movies that he showed me that he said I should study. Little did he know where I would actually end up in a career and actually. Heliotology. So yeah, I only got introduced to it super late. But you still love it.

Does it doesn't really matter? I mean, when you got introduced to it. Speaking of being introduced to it and speaking that it's 30 years ago, Riley has this science, the dino science in that first movie aged well. Well, this is an interesting question to take while, you know, the science advisor for the most recent films is on the call with me. Be careful, Riley. Be careful. I mean, I think the dinosaurs for their time for 1993 still look amazing, especially like the puppets that Stan Winston Studio made. They are still the closest I think cinema's ever gotten to trying to recreate a living dinosaur. A lot has changed since the days of the original Jurassic Park in terms of whether we want to fit feathers on some of these animals,

a lot of the basic anatomy, the behaviors that we think they might do. you know, the film in general, it makes computer scientists and mathematicians, Nat, as well as paleontologists. So it's not just us who have a few cripples about this film. So they still look great, but really at this time capsule of, you know, what we call the dinosaur Renaissance, this time period, when we're starting to think about them as more active and dynamic and interesting animals than they were before. It really captures that moment. So even though things have changed quite a bit, many of our favorite dinosaurs are still very much recognizable in this film. and you can see how it was really bringing this image to the public.

That didn't need us before. If you wanted to see a dinosaur movie before this, you're looking at a stop motion movie with, you know, big lizards dragging their tails or like, you know, rubber appliances glued onto them or things like that. This really was our introduction to like the modern dinosaur. Steve, I have to ask you, what is it like to be the science advisor on a dinosaur movie? It was surreal. It was surreal.

It was one of those, I think, once in a lifetime things. And I feel just very privileged as a scientist that I have that opportunity in that platform to communicate science to such a big audience through such an unusual but powerful medium like an international blockbuster film. And I'll say it was pretty cool, you know, meeting Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern and Price Howard and the others. So I really enjoyed it. But, you know, I knew that my mission was to just represent the science, make sure that the real science, a real knowledge of fossils, was all these in the years of the director of the writer, the writer. and the artists. And I know these dinosaurs, they're not perfectly accurate representations. They are movie monsters. They are characters. But I do agree that by and large, the image you see on the

screen are pretty realistic dinosaurs. And I am very happy, incredibly happy. One of the honors of my career so far is playing a small role in getting feathers onto these dinosaurs finally in Jurassic World Dominions. And some of these dinosaurs in the film, the sixth film that came out last summer. They're even more realistic. They're more in line with what we know a lot of dinosaurs look like. And I'm very happy that millions of people around the world were able to see feathered dinosaurs in their full glory on the big screen. Riley, was there any damage that movie did for paleontology in the look of the dinosaurs? I feel like that look has stuck with us since that first movie. I think this is what happens at the cultural osminesis that comes from something is that much

of a blockbuster, how many, not even official Jurassic part things in terms of their merch or you know, the films themselves, the games, but, you know, all the rip-offs that we see pretty consistently, even some museums sometimes. I don't know if I call it damage because we talk about this a lot, right? We talk about the primacy of like accuracy in science. And the thing with dinosaurs is dinosaurs live where science and imagination meet each other. So we're always kind of using a little bit of guesswork, using a little bit of inference, trying to give our best ideas, see what these animals look like, and two teams of scientists can come up with, you know, kind of different interpretations, right? So I think a lot of people understand that. I think sometimes you don't

give the public enough credit and we think like, oh, they're going to be stuck with this outdated image. When really, like, especially kids, they know that the dinosaurs are different. They're drawing them. They're seeing the museums and books and everything else. So I think this, you know, kind of does what Steve said, like, they're playing these dual roles as, real animals, but also the movie monsters. And I think we need so respect to public enough that they know the difference between the two. And at the very least, it's always a good springboard to talk about what we really know about these animals. Yeah. How much does the story mean to getting the science right? I mean, do you think you really need a very nice story like that for

people to remember the science in there, Steve? The storytelling aspect is what makes it memorable. I think that's what makes Riley's new book, The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, memorable. These are stories. You know, Riley goes into the characters of these dinosaurs into their everyday lives, into how they would have behaved. And I think you need that. Otherwise, you just have a bunch of really old petrified bones. And we, you know, these were fantastic animals. Dinosaurs really were.

They were, of course, birds today are dinosaurs. They evolved from dinosaurs. They are part of the dinosaur family tree. But really, there's nothing today that looks like a T-Rex or a T-Rexeratops or a Brontosaurus. These are like dragons or monsters from our imagination or from fairy tales. But they're more fantastic than that. These were real. And I think we can't just look to the modern world and to modern animals to completely grasp what dinosaurs were like.

We need to use our imagination and storytelling through films, television shows, books. this is how you really reach people. Yeah, and to just jump in on that real quick, like Craig and created the film Westworld before Jurassic Park. And it's the same basic idea, right? It's like technology gone awry, and it can't be controlled. And what Jurassic Park really did was come up with an idea to match that into something new and different.

Like he came up with an idea, something that other people have played with. There's actually an old episode of G.I. Joe that does the same thing about what if genetic material could be saved and dinosaurs could be brought back to life? Because previously, if you had a dinosaur story, it would be something like a million years D.C. where it's like cave people and dinosaurs together or like the lost world where there's some island or something somewhere. So the idea that science might intentionally bring dinosaurs

back was a form of storytelling and sort of prehistoric media in general, but we just never had before. You know, that's a good point because I remember we spent years debating whether you could take ancient blood out of a mosquito and actually recreate a dinosaur. And that Yara, it taught people a lot of science, you know. We were talking about it for years, something akin to like when COVID happened, we learned how all became biologists. Yeah, absolutely. And you know what?

People do ask me if they think that's a net negative. Oh, do people ask you about ancient DNA and how can we get DNA out of fossils? But I find that a great talking point. It's a good way to take a step back and tell them, you know, there is ancient DNA. And just recently we've been able to sequence parts of mammoth genomes, but DNA is so unstable that it does degrade quickly. So even if we did find a mosquito that did bite a T.R.X, you know, the chances are we're not getting that DNA back. I know you do a lot of youth education about paleontology. Are the Jurassic Park films still a good tool for getting kids, young kids, into,

into science and dinosaurs. Oh, absolutely. When I get to talk to classrooms full of kids, you know, they know the dinosaurs better than I do. They ask me about endominous wrecks and all these other ones. And even if they know that the animal is not real, they ask me about DNA. And it often makes kids Google DNA and ancient DNA.

And now there's such a wealth of resources online where kids can educate themselves and come with informed decisions. So in the end, I still think it's such a net positive, and it's a good talking point, not only for modern classrooms, but even just across the world. Everyone knows Jurassic Park. I can now talk to people in other countries about this particular talking point. They know what I'm talking about. So it's a great tool. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios.

I love that phrase. Jeff Goldblum's Life will find a way. And I mean, that sort of is the other theme. You're right. There's the theme of we have all these dinosaurs that we've recreated, but then we also have the conflict about can you control what you are creating or do you understand the consequences of what you're creating? And that is just still true.

Today we're talking about, right, ChachyBT, being the next dinosaur. or maybe run amok. And I will say, honestly, this is something that's due entirely with my own identity, but the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are trans icons. They change sex in the movie. That's an important plot point. So I'd want to make sure that's preserved to just have that queer representation amongst their dinosaur friends.

Are we going to get this movie banned someplace where we won't be able to see it? Maybe in Florida it would be. Yeah. There was such a period of dynomania in the 90s. If Jurassic Park didn't come out, do you think dynomania would have been so big for kids, Steve, I can't imagine it not. I think the film did play an enormous role in that. And I think that's why when people ask me, do you think the film was a good or bad thing?

Was it a net positive? Absolutely, it was a net positive by leaps and bounds. I mean, yes, of course, that dinosaurs weren't completely accurate. But my goodness, that film and the sequels have introduced new generations to dinosaurs. And that has led to so much more public interest. led to museums putting on more dinosaur exhibits, universities putting on more dinosaur courses. It's led to more jobs for paleontologists. And there was even money that Universal and NBC and Ambulin Entertainment donated to a charity called the Jurassic Foundation that was used to fund and is used

to fund paleontology research. I got a couple of those grants as a student. I was able to go to China and to Portugal to study dinosaurs from proceeds from the film. So the film did so. The film did So, so much for paleontology. I don't know if any of us would be sitting here having this conversation without it. I don't think, I mean, and I think Riley is an incredibly talented author. I think maybe I'm okay, but I don't know if we'd get our book deals about dinosaur books if there was no Jurassic Park out there. That's why people want to read our books.

And so I think that you would not have had such a dynomania over the last 30 years if it wasn't for the film. And that's why I'm eternally grateful towards it. Yara? You know, dynomania wasn't a worldwide phenomenon. It actually came later to the rest of the world. And it's been such a great talking point now that I'm a paleontologist. I can talk to anyone all over the world wherever I visit.

Even when I go back home to the Middle East, I can use it as a talking point to, hey, this is kind of what I do in a very distant way. And it really inspires people to go out and look, turn over that rock, look outside, think of what was. and how we got here. And that idea of evolution and just the mystery of deep time, I don't think could have been delivered into our cultural forebrain in a better way than such a movie. I'd like to thank my guests, Riley Black, self-proclaimed fossil fanatic, author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs,

based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Steve Brousotti, author of the Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Yarra Haridi, vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist University of Chicago, you know where that is

in Chicago, Illinois. Thank you so much for having us. That's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Yep, thank you. I was always a pleasure to chat with you, and great to be here with Riley and Yara and just a big hello,

and thank you to everybody in the Science Friday community. And that's about all the time we have for this hour. BJ Leideman composed our theme music, and of course, if you missed any part of the program or you would like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Of course, we're active all week on social media, and you can reach us the old-fashioned way. Email, our address, SciFri,

at Science Friday.com. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato.