Science Friday - Xenotransplantation, Internet of Things, Sea Life Essays, Water Taste-Testing. Dec 2, 2022, Part 2

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Consider Empathy For The Yeti Crab (And Other Sea Creatures, Too) It’s easy to empathize with certain animals: soft fur, big eyes, and family units make it simple to relate to creatures like panda bears, cats, and dogs. Even some undersea critters like dolphins and whales have large fan bases among land-dwelling humans. But the ocean is filled with many more creatures than just mammals, and many of them fall in the category of “weird.” Defector staff writer Sabrina Imbler thinks a lot about these critters that evade our categorization of “cute.” Things like deep sea worms, jelly-like invertebrates called salps, and the ghostly, hairy yeti crab are Imbler’s bread and butter. Imbler’s new book, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, is filled with essays comparing aspects of their life to bizarre creatures of the deep sea. From exploring their queer identity through the underwater dance parties of the yeti crab, to grappling with living as a mixed-race person through hybridized fish, each essay is poetic and intimate. SciFri producer Kathleen Davis chats with Imbler from their home in Brooklyn, New York, about the importance of finding empathy with the strangest creatures on our planet. Read an excerpt from How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures here.   Advances In Pig-To-Human Organ Transplantation Hold Promise Earlier this year a pig heart was successfully transplanted into a human for the very first time. Unfortunately, the patient lived for just under 2 months. But it still marks a big milestone in the field of xenotransplantation, or transplanting organs from one species to another. Scientists are optimistic that advances in pig-to-human organ transplantation could save the lives of some of the over 100,000 people in the waiting for organ donations in the United States. Ira talks with Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, professor of surgery and director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, about what he’s learned in the 10 months since the historic heart transplant, and about the barriers to widespread acceptance of interspecies organ transplantation. Later, Ira talks with Dr. Megan Sykes, professor and director of the Center for Translational Immunology at Columbia University about how scientists decided that pigs were suitable organ donors in the first place, and the latest advancements in pig-to-human organ transplantation research.   Teaching Your Smart Devices To Get Along If you’ve ever tried to connect a new Internet of Things device in your home, such as a smart plug or light, you know it can be a complicated process. Not every device works with every other device, and even the most tech-savvy customer may find themself turning to Reddit for help troubleshooting. These are problems a new Internet of Things standard called Matter aims to solve. Created by a coalition of home device companies, Matter allows devices that run it to speak to each other, set up seamlessly, and communicate securely. The standard officially launched in early November with dozens of new Matter-enabled devices. Ira talks to Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge about the problems Matter aims to solve, and some of the practical hitches along the road to a more seamless smart home.   Putting Tap Water To The Test Every time you turn on the tap, you become the last stop in a complicated journey. Water from snow and streams collects in lakes and reservoirs, and cities pump it through complex filtration systems to make it pure enough to drink. The particular balance of invisible minerals in each pour from your kitchen tap makes for subtle differences in every glass. One might call it the terroir of tap water. In a bustling hotel ballroom, surrounded by exhibition booths showing off the latest pipes, pumps and filters, a panel of judges gathered to spot those differences. I was one of them. The American Water Works Association assembled a panel of water wonks for its Rocky Mountain regional meeting in the ski resort town of Keystone. Here, we put tap water to the test, blind tasting samples from six cities across Colorado to crown a winner.   To read the rest of the article, visit sciencefriday.com.    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 am Ira Flato. Sci-fi producer Kathleen Davis has joined me. Hi, Kathleen. What's up? Hey, Ira. I want you to play along with me for just a moment. And think of the ocean. Picture some of the critters that live there. Hmm, ocean. I love the ocean. Okay. First things to come to mind are your dolphins, your whales, and of course,

octopuses. Those can all be very charismatic creatures. They're pretty easy for us humans to relate to them. I mean, we can connect to the playfulness of dolphins, the family ties of whales, the intelligence of octopuses, so on and so forth. Absolutely. But I'm wondering, Ira, have you ever had a connection with a creature that is a little less flashy, maybe a little more unpopular? Something like a cuddlfish or bubble-like invertebrates called salps. Salps.

I don't think I'm familiar with salps. Well, you will be once you get your hands on a new book by friend of the show, Sabrina Imbler. It's called How Far the Light Reaches, a Life Intense Sea Creatures. Sabrina is a staff writer at Defector, and in this book, they explore parts of their identity through a collection of essays, each one floating between details of Sabrina's life and those of a sea creature. Sabrina, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen. So a lot of the creatures that you write about in your book are not, I would say, very popular or maybe generally appreciated. What is it about these more obscure, sometimes strange creatures that really intrigues you?

I love strange creatures, I think, because it is a bit more of a challenge to find connection with them. Like, in trying to learn more about creatures that have very, very different ways of living or ways of socializing or ways of like eating in the world than we do. I think it has set up a challenge to me really to look into that creature and to find residences that might be unexpected or might be, you know, like not not the obvious kind of relation that we have when we think about, you know, a grieving whale or, you know, an elephant that has a society and, you know, mourns her dead. For example, when I was thinking about the deep sea Yeti crab, which is a really, really strange creature that lives at the bottom of the ocean on hydrothermal vents. And I just kept looking at it.

And I was like, you know, there's no better way to say this is this crab kind of looks queer. It looks like a little bit flamboyant. And I think, yeah, being able to really sit with creatures and find these unexpected connections, I think I find more exciting. I'm going to go back to the Yeti crab in a minute here because I love that essay. But I want to kind of hammer home this point that it is harder, I would say, for people to relate to creatures that aren't maybe traditionally cute or cool. I mean, we're so much more likely to project human emotions and personalities onto, you know, a creature that's fluffy and has big eyes and is really adorable looking like a, you know, a cat or a dog or anything like that. It's harder to do that with a creature that is maybe a scaly or a little slimy or blabbish. in some ways this book feels like a mission to get people to, you know, know these creatures and to appreciate them. I mean, is there something you think that there is to gain about connecting with these creatures that are a little bit more off the beaten path?

Absolutely. I mean, it's a really good point. We are so quick to, you know, find connection with something fluffy. Like, that's why pandas like are doing so well and have so many conservation dollars funneled toward them. But, you know, we can't only care about the pandas and the dolphins. and a lot of the stranger and less savory creatures have crucial roles in their ecosystems and also need help surviving in this world that we have irrevocably altered in some ways. I think it's a really good practice of empathy to really find intimacy with strange or bizarre or unsavory creatures. It is my mission in the way that I write about these creatures to really understand them on their own terms, like to understand what they need to live and what they need to eat and, you know, how they reproduce and how long they live and, you know, do they sleep? Do they hibernate?

And I think maybe just trying to describe like the everyday life of this, of this different creature, maybe that makes, you know, this animal feel more like a neighbor, more like a friend than something that we sort of like fixate on like, why is it, you know, snout so long or like, it's legs. look really creepy to me, but really trying to understand the creature on its own terms, I feel like is something that I try to do and maybe helps us build that connection with our friends on the earth. I want to go back to the Yeti crabs, which you had very pleasantly described to us earlier. One thing that you talk about in your essay about the Yeti crabs is that they will gather at the bottom of the seafloor and have what kind of looks like a dance party.

How did you find yourself relating to these crabs? It's a funny story. I first learned about the Yeti crab, I think on Tumblr. There is this image of the Yeti crab, I think taken from a nature documentary. It was just sort of perched on this rock amid like the dark waters of the deep sea. And there was this quote at the bottom that said, this creature is like adapted to the crushing pressure and oppressive darkness. And when I first saw this image, I was. living in a new city for the first time and Trump had just been elected and I was like,

I can relate like me too. And so that was like my first moment. Just this meme of connecting with the Yeti crab. But the more I learned about it, the more I really felt like this crab, its everyday way of living reminded me a lot of the ways that, you know, I found community in queer nightlife. And I would watch footage of these crabs just crawling all over each other in these dense crowds at the bottom of the sea, you know, around these heat sources. And I was thinking about the times when I would dance with my queer friends, like in a club. And we would all be packed, you know, so closely next to each other. Then I actually learned about this one species of Yeti crab, Kiwa Paravita, that actually dances to farm its own food. So it waves its claws in the heat of these hydrothermal vents.

And they have bacterial mats on their claws. And waving the claws sort of helps the bacteria grow. And then they can eat the bacteria on their own claws, which I was like, this crab is literally dancing to live, just like me. So aside from exploring your queer identity in the book by, you know, maybe evoking certain sea creatures, you also talk about your experience as a mixed race person. And the way that you illustrate this with sea creatures is really poetic. Can you walk me through what creatures you chose to express this part of your identity with? Yeah. So the essay, in the book where I talk about being mixed. You know, I'm Chinese and white is an essay about hybrid sea creatures, specifically hybrid butterfly fish. And I have always been interested, I think,

in taxonomy in the ocean, just because it's interesting. I feel like things that would appear very closely related are not always very closely related. And the idea of a hybrid fish, you know, it's an easy parallel to being mixed race, right? This fish is the product of two different species, reproducing, you know, doesn't have a species name of its own. But I think I didn't realize until I started writing this essay that I was thinking about all the moments in my life where I have tried to find like taxonomy for my own existence and my own experience of race. Like growing up as someone who was half Asian, I often was trying to find, like me and my half Asian friends, we would try to find like the right word to describe us because like half Chinese, half white is so long.

And a lot of these similar instincts to categorize and to give things, you know, specific names, they also exist in taxonomy in the ways that we try to categorize creatures and, you know, name different species. So I found it was really generative to look at this hybrid butterfly fish that really is like it's a product of serendipity, right? Like butterfly fish release their eggs and their sperm in clouds in the ocean. And, you know, sometimes like an egg of one species and a sperm of another species or they'll collect. lied and they'll produce, you know, this, this rare and serendipitous hybrid butterfly fish. And I felt like it was, you know, an organism that wasn't expected and no one really knew what to do with it. And I found myself relating a lot to that. This is a really deeply personal book. I'm curious if you

learned anything about yourself while you were writing it. You know, this book is, it's a memoir. And I talk about a lot of experiences that I had growing up. And I think when I started writing this book, a lot of my feelings about those periods of my life were like shame or regret or guilt. You know, I came out later in life. And I think a lot of my life has been like, why didn't I know I was gay? Like, what does that mean? But I think being able to delve back into these stories of my youth and also like tell them alongside the narratives of these creatures, like I felt like I was, I felt very united by our shared sort of struggle and our shared. you know, interest in in staying alive and thriving. And I think I was able to find a lot of tenderness

for my past self in understanding, you know, I, you know, I'm just another organism, like on the sidewalk. Like, I'm also trying to find, you know, nutrients and find a maid and, you know, find community and the things that I need to survive. And I acted imperfectly in some instances, but, you know, I was, I was really trying my best. So I think, yeah, the biggest thing that I discovered about myself was, I think, tenderness and care for my younger self that I didn't have going into the book. So we're just about out of time here. What do you hope that people take away from your book? I hope that this book helps people appreciate the ocean in general and, you know, the creatures that live in it. We don't often get a chance to see sea creatures in the same way that

we see birds or bugs or, you know, things that sort of exist more easily on terrestrial ground. And I hope that, you know, people learn about new creatures and appreciate things that maybe were strange to them before. But I also hope that this book gives people permission to see themselves in the natural world in ways that maybe, yeah, didn't seem obvious before. Like, I really think that it's a powerful tool to look at different organisms on Earth and to see, like, what connection can I build with this creature? Like how can I like how are we how are we similar? Like what is our point of sameness? And I think that it's been so powerful for me to learn about myself through through these sea creatures. And I imagine that, yeah, it could be powerful for lots of other people. So look into the ocean and see what sparks joy or wonder or yeah, similarity. Thank you so much, Sabrina for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen. Sabrina Imbler is a staff writer at Defector based in Brooklyn, New York. Their new book, How Far the Light Reaches, A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, goes on sale December 6th. You can read an excerpt from the book at ScienceFriiday.com slash sea creatures. I'm Kathleen Davis. Thank you, Kathleen. I'm going to put that on my gift list for me. We have to take a break, and we're going to change direction and talk about transplanting pig parts into people, so stay with us.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Earlier this year in a cutting-edge medical experiment, a pig heart was successfully transplanted into a human for the very first time. Unfortunately, the patient lived for just under two months, but it marks a big milestone in the field of xenotransplantation, that is, interspecies organ transplantation. What went wrong and what went right and how might these scientific advances help solve the problems of thousands of people in the U.S., waiting on organ-discay. donation lists. Joining me now to talk more about it is Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, Professor of Surgery and Director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program, University of Maryland School of Medicine, based in Baltimore. He's part of the team that performed this historic pig heart transplant.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. How could transplanting pig organs into humans help those waiting on organ transplant lists. I mean, you know, no matter what we do, how much awareness we have about organ transplantation, there will never be enough organs available from humans to transplant in the patients who are waiting for the organs. There are about 150,000 of them waiting right now just in the United States. And unfortunately, most of them will die waiting for those organs. So genotransplantation, if successful, will provide an unlimited supply of organs for not only these patients, but we can intervene at an earlier time point before these patients reach the end-stage heart failure.

As I mentioned in the introduction, the recipient of the first pick-the-human heart transplant, David Bennett, survived for just about two months. Have you been able to determine why his heart failed? The cause of the heart failure or the patient death is not one, but there are multiple causes that overlapped. The major cause why this heart did not function well in the later part of his life

was his own preconditions. As you may know, this patient was very sick to begin with and his immune system was very, very weak. So that prevented us from giving him the immunosuppression or the

antiviral treatment that we wanted to give and in fact had to terminate one of the major immunosuppressant and the antiviral therapy around like 20 days. His heart, however, survived or functioned for 50 days without any issues and, in fact, worked better than an allot transplant, like a human-to-human transplant. No kidding. Why is that? I mean, because most of the heart donors are not healthy unless you get a young person in traffic accident or something like that. This pig was a young, one-year-old pig without any issues.

So the heart function was better than we expect from an allot transplant. You also detected fragments of porcine-cidolomegovirus in the patient as well. Do you think that may have contributed to the heart failing? We are still trying to determine what part this virus may have played. We accept that our detection methods at the time of transplantation were not sensitive to detect this virus in the pig, which was in a very latent form. However, after Mr. Bennett's passed away, we have developed very sensitive tests to detect this virus, and we have not seen any sign of this PCMV disease in the patient. So somehow the virus was there in a latent form, whether something else that caused the cell death and led to release of virus or the virus itself caused, you know, the cell death is very debatable at this time. You recently published an article about how the pig heart changed its electrical signals once implanted in a human.

Is that a cause for concern? No, it is not, at least for the. 60 days this patient lived, there are some conduction delays or changes that are observed in patients after transplantation. In this patient also, we did see difference in conduction compared to the pig heart in pig or pig heart in baboon or human heart in human. However, I would stress here that these changes did not affect the function of the heart. or not, they will affect in the long run that remains to be seen. So given all that you've learned from this transplant, how is it going to shape your approach

going forward? I'm sure you must be trying this again. No matter whether the virus caused any damage or not, we don't want a virus to be transmitted. So we are making every effort to develop testing, sensitized testing, to eliminate this virus from our donors. The next one we will do, we'll make sure that this virus is not transmitted. It is not 100% guaranteed that that will happen. So we are also trying to see if we can develop antiviral therapies. And we also are looking at patients who are not as sick as Mr. Bennett,

because most of the issues we saw was because of his pre-transplant condition. And the third thing is the IVIG that you must have heard. that we had to give to build up his immunity. That IVIG is a pooled immunoglobulin from many patients, thousands of patients, and some of them have, you know, reactivity to pig cells. We all do. So we will try not to give IVIG again. So these are the three major things that we intend to do in our future experiments.

You know, I think many listeners might be a little uncomfortable with the idea of pig organs becoming the Norman organ transplants, are there perception barriers to overcome for patients to consider this a viable option in the future? Yeah, we are trying at best to bring awareness, and you will be surprised to know that how many emails, phone calls, and communications have received from patients who are on the waiting list, and they are offering themselves for this procedure. So a young, healthy person may have some reservations, but a person who's at the deadbed and

have been told that there's no alternative left for him or her, you know, may have a different perception. Do you think other surgeons, other people who are doing xenotransplantation with other organs, maybe liver or kidneys, are they watching your success and learning from it and rooting along with you? Of course. I mean, you know, this success, not only this, but, you know, a few years ago when I was an IH, having survival of big heart in a baboon for long period, kind of revived this field. And now with this success, we've made a lot of believers out of people who thought that this was not possible. Dr. Mahouyadine, thank you for taking time to be with us today. And good luck to you. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Mohamed Mohiardine, Professor of Surgery and Director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, of course, that's based in Baltimore. I mentioned that pigs are being studied as donors for other organs besides hearts, but how did scientists decide that pig organs were suitable for use in humans in the first place? And what are the benefits and drawbacks of interspecies organ transplantation? Joining me now to continue our conversation about the latest in pig to human organ transplantation is my guest, Dr. Megan Sykes, professor and director of the Center for Translational Immunology at Columbia University, based in New York City.

How did the scientific community land on pigs as the ideal animal for organ transplants? Well, pigs are a good choice because they're quite close to humans in their organ function and physiology. A lot of pigs are quite a bit bigger than humans, and that's something that might become a concern if their organs grow in a young person, for example. But there are certain lines of pigs that are closer to humans in size,

like miniature pigs that we use in our research. They breed well in captivity, have large litter sizes, and a relatively short gestational period. So that also makes it easier if you want to inbreed them for certain purposes relative to their uses organ sources. Why is it that we did not go right to primates? I mean, we are primates, pigs are not primates.

Aren't they more genetically similar to humans and why are they not good choices? Primates certainly are more genetically close to humans. And the way that you're thinking about it is the way that many researchers thought about it. And in fact, there were attempts at primate organ and bone marrow transplants to humans in the 1980s and in 1990s even. But what people realized when that was tried was it's ethically challenging to be using non-human primates that are so close to humans. But secondly, that infections can be more easily transmitted from non-human primates to human primates, particularly viral infections, than they can be from a species as different as a pig to a human.

Do you genetically modify the pigs that you're using? Well, the first genetic modification that really provided a breakthrough in the field in the early 2000s was to remove the gene that produces a sugar. that decorates many proteins and lipids in most species, but not humans. And the consequence of not having that enzyme that produces that sugar in humans and old world primates is that we make natural antibodies against it. We have antibodies that recognize that sugar. So given that pigs have that sugar on so many proteins and lipids,

It means that the sugar is expressed on the endothelio cells, the cells that line the blood vessels. And if you just put a pig organ into a human from a wild type unmodified pig, those natural antibodies would very quickly bind to the sugar on the endothelial cells. And they would initiate a whole cascade of events that would result in events. very dramatic, inflammatory process and very rapid loss of blood supply to the graft, and it wouldn't survive more than a few minutes or hours. Pigs harbor something called porcine-endogenous retroviruses, PRVs and other pathogens that could be very harmful to people. So how do you make sure that those viruses don't get into humans? Well, fortunately, they don't seem to do that very easily. Really, the fear about P.E.R.Vs came up in the mid-1990s. But since then, people have looked

very assiduously at humans and non-human primates who have received pig tissues or organs to see if that virus has spread into the recipient. And there's been absolutely no evidence that it has. Are there other issues? I mean, why don't we see this being used generally now? What other issues need to be worked out before pig organs can be used more widely in people? Well, there are quite a few issues still. There are antibodies that recognize other targets in the pig. There are several genetic engineering approaches that are being used to eliminate those additional targets. But what we really don't know right now is how many of those genetic modifications are needed and which ones are needed. and it may be different in the context of different human recipients

because different humans have different levels of each type of antibody. You know, some of the details of the physiologic compatibility of pig organs will really only be worked out with studies in humans and with longer-term studies than have been performed so far. patients are treated with immunosuppressive drugs. Some of those are metabolized in the kidney, some liver, et cetera. If the kidney is from a pig, how will that affect the metabolism of the drug? So there are many, many questions to address. It doesn't mean we can't go ahead and try it in people who don't have any other options, but we still do have a lot to learn.

This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking with Dr. Megan Sykes from Columbia University. You know, some listeners might be thinking, hey, can't we just skip all these complicated issues we're talking about and put research money towards artificially grown organs instead of getting them from the outside? Why not just grow them in the lab? Well, that's certainly an exciting possibility. and there are a lot of people working toward that, but we're just not close to having a lab-grown organ that can function like the real thing. You know, I said in my introduction to this story

that the first pig heart to human transplant made a lot of news earlier this year, but this isn't the only pig organ being studied for transplantation into humans, right? What other organs and structures are being studied? Well, the one that is most widely studied right now in addition to hearts is kidneys. Our group is most interested in inducing immunological tolerance in the recipient to the donor so that lifelong immunosuppressive drugs will not be needed. And to do that, we're also transplanting thymus from the pig. The thymus is the organ that generates and educates T lymphocytes.

And we can educate primate T lymphocytes to think of pig as self. And the other way is to transplant bone marrow, which also educates the recipient immune systems. And several groups are also working on transplanting islets of longer hands, which are the structures that include beta cells, which are the. the cells that make insulin. And so this is a possible cure for diabetes that is very exciting because there aren't that many potential islet donors from humans. That is cool.

How close are we then to clinical trials and then pick the human organ transplantation becoming norm? Well, there are a few groups that are working toward being able to do small. trials of pig kidney transplantation to humans. So those are not far off at all, we hope. I suspect we'll see trials of pig kidney transplantation in the next few years. Heart transplantation, likewise. You know, I think it's at a stage given that the first patient has actually received a big heart.

We're really at the stage of needing to work with regulatory authorities. to define the conditions and the type of patient who could be treated in that way. Dr. Sykes, we have run out of time. So much interesting stuff to talk about. Dr. Megan Sykes, professor and director of the Center for Translational Immunology, that's at Columbia University in New York City. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. We have to take a quick break. And when we come back, a new standard called matter could be what the Internet of Things needs to make smart homes appealing to the masses. We'll get to the heart of the matter after this short break. Stay with us. Hi, Ira here. As a listener, I don't have to tell you that the

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Once again, that link is ScienceFriday.com slash support. And thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flito. For the last few years, I have been trying to turn my house into a smart home where smart devices anticipate my needs. For example, when I walk into a room, the lights go on. When I go to bed, I tell my smart speaker, good night and it turns off all the lights in the house. And at sunset, my smart switches know how to turn on the outdoor lights and turn them off at sunrise. It has been an exciting journey, but also a very frustrating. One. Here's the rub. Each of these smart devices has its own master. Some of them obey commands from Google, some from Siri, some from Alexa. And unless you're a super geek who can MacGyver them together, you may wind up with a whole bunch of motion sensors, switches, and lights that cannot talk to one another. You wind up having to remember which sensor is doing what, which is where I am at now. But there's hope. A new development. A new development,

that may help bridge this digital divide called Matter. Unrolled officially earlier this year, matter enables your devices to talk to each other securely and quickly. Jennifer Patterson-Tooey is a reporter covering smart homes and the Internet of Things for the Verge, and she has been writing about the rise of matter, plus what's still left to do before we can live the dream? Welcome to the show, Jen. Thank you, Ira. I'm very pleased to be here, very excited to hear about your smart home journey as well.

You know, let's talk about better. Why was it so hard to develop this in the first place? I mean, couldn't we have had this from the very beginning? Yes, the biggest issue was competing companies. Everyone was trying to kind of make their mark in the Internet of Things Gold Rush. It was going to be this amazing new platform. There was tons of money. Everyone was going to buy smart devices. So everyone was rushing to be the first and the best.

Then we kind of hit this wall where not everyone was doing what you did and going out and buying smart home. devices and making them work in their home because it was too complicated. You couldn't always find the right device that worked with your phone or with the smart speaker you'd chosen. And finally, all the companies started to realize, we need to do something about it. So they literally got together around a dinner table and were like, okay, we need to reset the smart home and we need everything to talk to each other because it's just not working otherwise. And so Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung and a whole host of companies got together with an organization called the Connectivity Standard Alliance and came up with Matter, which is basically a new language for your smart

home devices. So hopefully going forward, it'll be a lot easier to get the smart home set up for everyday consumers not MacGyvering or needing to, you know, pull in their techie neighbor to help them get their doorbell set up. Absolutely. Does that mean I'm going to have to go out and buy? a whole new set of devices that work with Matter? Hopefully not. The plan from the beginning was that many devices could be brought into Matter. Matter works over different protocols that already exist in the smart home.

So Wi-Fi, which is ubiquitous. Most people have Wi-Fi today, Ethernet and Thread, which is a newer protocol, but is something that many devices are able to be either upgraded to or bridged to, which unfortunately would mean you'd have to maybe buy a bridge, and then all your smart bulbs will work in matter. But there probably will be instances where you're going to need to go out and buy something new, which is going to be a bit frustrating.

Let's talk more about this thing you called thread. What is thread? And why do people see this as so crucial to smart devices moving forward? Thread is relatively new, but it's almost a decade old. So it's been around for a while. So there's already thread devices out there. it is the first protocol that has been designed specifically for the smart home. Most other protocols that you use, Bluetooth, ZigB, ZWave, Wi-Fi, they have other use cases as well.

They weren't really designed just for the smart home. Thread itself is specifically for low-powered, low-bandwidth devices like bulbs, motion sensors, small things that don't need a lot of power, but that do need to be able to communicate quickly. It's a mesh network. So the more thread devices you have in your home, the more the connectivity will extend. And this has been one of the frustrations in the smart home is that, you know, if you don't have strong Wi-Fi signal throughout your home, then maybe that doorbell camera you bought isn't going to connect properly and you're not going to be able to see a good feed.

So one of the problems they're trying to solve with matter is that kind of reliability. And thread is built in with reliability. That's kind of its main sort of focus. Isn't there also a security advantage of matter in that devices, when they talk to one another, they don't need to send their conversations out into the world, out into the internet, they stay in the house? Correct. That's one of the key focuses of matter again is it's a local protocol.

It does have the ability to communicate to the cloud so that you can use things like voice assistants or your streaming music services and also get updates, which is key for security. But because it's local, you don't have so much of what's, called an attack vector. So there's less likely people going to turn your thermostat into a DDoS attack and bring down your local network or, you know, there have been some awful horror stories about internet of things, devices causing all sorts of problems. So matter was sort of designed to have a very unified basic security principles for all devices that are on your network. So every device has to prove that they are, what they say they are. However, devices aren't out in the wild. So we haven't been

able to, and security researchers haven't been able to kind of prove this concept yet. So we're going to have to wait and see, but that is definitely the promise is that this will be, you know, if a device has the matter logo on, which is how you'll know whether it's matter enabled when you go and buy your smart devices, then it also comes with this basic set of unified security principles that will mean you shouldn't have to worry about your thermostat or your fridge going rogue. Speaking of what people are worried about, you know, I realize there may be a lot of people out there listening who don't know why they should be investing in this technology.

I mean, why bother making it a little easier for a smart speaker to turn on your lights when it's easy enough to flip a switch, right? It's true. It's a lifestyle choice to some extent at this point. It is a lot of fun, though. I mean, personally, my household runs. everything is automated and there's a lot of convenience. But just some basic things that I think most people would kind of relate to, for example, you know, I have like a good night scene. So I can just

press a button or say good night to my smart assistant and my thermostat will turn down. My door locks will lock themselves. My lights will shut off. My security system will arm itself. And if I have, you know, window shades that are open, the shades will close. And then the reverse can happen in the morning, I can wake up using motion sensor by my bed. The lights will turn on at a nice light that's not going to blind me and my thermostat will adjust. My radio will start playing, my local South Carolina public radio station. And then I will walk into the kitchen. The lights will turn on. My coffee maker will start running. And I've just saved myself, you know, five minutes of my busy morning. There's also a lot of benefit sort of in the long term. And this is something that

matter is really going to help with, I think. So up to this point, devices haven't communicated with each other. So it's been hard to sort of really get the benefit of the sort of energy management side of the smart home, which, you know, that was kind of the original promise when the nest thermostat came out. Everyone was so excited, you know, this is going to transform energy use in our homes and we're going to be able to save money and save energy and help the smart grid. But that hasn't really materialized. And the next sort of key part of matter as it moves forward is energy management and being able to get every device that uses electricity in your home kind of talking to each other so you can really see how your home consumes energy and hopefully maybe adjust and be able to save

energy. And then in the long run, there's potential as we go forward to use that energy management to sort of look at how homes can work as part of a dispersed power grid, you know, the demand side response, helping, you know, counterbalance when there's too much demand on the grid. Homes that have EVs or energy storage can, you know, actually act as small little power plants for the grid. Those kind of things could be, you know, transformational in the long run. And, you know, it's not just about, oh, it's convenient to turn my light on. It's actually about helping us manage our resources better. Okay. So those sound like great things to look for in the future. when are we going to get there? What's it going to take? What does matter still need to take off in this way?

The key is getting people to use the devices and put smart, light, smart plugs, connected appliances, connected HVAC systems in their homes. And right now there's been a lot of resistance to those things for a number of reasons. Price, security, privacy, simplicity. That, again, is what matter is trying to solve. Whether it's going to do it or not, with, you know, the jury's still out. But I think the key part here is that matter will make it easier to buy a device. So when you, right now, when you think about buying a new light bulb, most people don't think I'm going to buy a smart light bulb. When you think about buying a new fridge or a new washing machine, most people don't think I'm going to buy a smart one. And if they do, and then they get it home and connect it,

they can't make it work and it's frustrating. This is the kind of core principle of matter. So you buy one of these devices, you bring it home, it will work with any of your smart assistants, it will work with whatever smartphone you have. You don't need to pick one that works with Amazon's assistant, one that works with Google's assistant or one that works with apples. You buy one device, plug it into your home and it's just going to work. So once we get there, then I can see that we could start to build some of these experiences and some of these sort of beneficial energy management, those kind of solutions.

we can build on top so much more easily than we can today. Because today the smart home is full of silos and it's full of areas where there's so much promise, but we can't actually enact that. We can't find that data and bring it together to be useful, even just ourselves in our own smart home, let alone trying to do something on a larger scale. Well, I can't wait to do that. I can't wait for the future because I have to say goodbye and go home and adjust my power system here.

Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, Ira. It's been a pleasure chatting. Jennifer Patterson-Tooey, a reporter covering smart homes and the Internet of Things for the Verge. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. New York, Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance.

If you've toured wine country, you know that some people, perhaps yourself, Take wine tasting very seriously. You swirl the glass, you sniff it in different ways. It's a whole operation. But did you know that a similar type of tasting also happens with tap water? Yes, in Colorado, no less, where water is a resource a lot of people have their eyes on. So what is it like to taste tap water like it's fine wine? Joining me with an inside look is my guest, Alex Hager, water reporter for KUNC Public Radio in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks for having me back. It's great to be here. Alex, set the scene for us. What does it like to be at this water tasting convention? So we've got this panel of judges sitting at a long banquet table and it's in the middle of a bustling trade show. You know, it's all these booths filled with people selling filters and pipes and pumps. It's all the type of infrastructure you don't really think about, but it's all part of a system that plays a really big role in the background of our lives. You know, if there's anything I've learned on this beat, it's that there are so many people, a lot of whom are working for publicly funded agencies like your city water department or your state environmental control agency. And they are all keeping the lights on, keeping the water flowing, all of that background stuff that we can sometimes take for granted.

And a lot of those people in the water world were the ones in attendance at the conference. Any qualifications needed to be a judge? I mean, how do they decide if you're qualified? Well, the only real qualification was being some kind of a water walk, but that could take a lot of different shapes. I follow a lot of water policy, but I am far from a scientist. So I asked one of the other judges who was very qualified, and he said that it didn't really matter. You know, this is Victor Sam. He's an engineer with Stan Tech, and he has a master's degree in water, taste, and odor. Well, overall, you just want to have a pleasant experience.

So does it quench you? Does it taste good to you? But from a more scientific part of it, you can judge it from maybe a mouth feel, if it's slippery, or is it grainy? Is it maybe dry? So it's kind of like wine tasting, where you taste the water

and you kind of get that feeling. Yeah, that's really interesting. We who drink tap water, we know there are all kinds of tastes in the water, certain minerals, chlorine. Are you finding that there also? Yeah, I mean, that's really the main thing. that changes how water tastes. Again, here's Victor Sam.

A lot of times, if you actually drink pure water, it doesn't taste that good. Because what's happening is you're just drinking H2O, no minerals, and you're essentially tasting your own tongue. And that's pretty much exactly the reason why a lot of bottled water companies brag about the minerals they're putting in their water. It's a taste that feels more kind of quenching. And of course, some chemicals we do not like. For example, one of the waters that Victor gave a low score had sort of a chlorine taste. Yeah, I would hate that to be a winning water. And speaking of winning water, who had the winning water.

That would be Grand Junction Colorado. I talked with some of the folks from the winning water department afterwards, and they said that choice was a no-brainer. And why do you think that people love Grand Junction Water so much? Because it comes straight from the Grand Mesa. The world's largest flat top mountain. Yeah. So, yeah, gorgeous place, great water.

And the experts agreed with that. The reason mountain water tastes so good and so pure is because it is. It sort of just melts from snow, flows straight down to the city, and it doesn't spend a lot of time in contact with the dirt and the rocks that can rub off too many minerals and give it a stronger taste that some people might find off pudding. Could you tell, as an amateur judge, that this was the best water? Now, personally, I could not.

my scores were not exactly in line with the final winning tally. Look, you know, I take a lot of pride in staying very hydrated, but I suppose I don't exactly have a discerning tongue. There was actually one point where I leaned over to Victor, the expert, and I was like, okay, I got it. I'm actually picking up some of the flavor here. I think this one tastes kind of like citrus. And he goes, yeah, that's pretty unlikely. Are you sure you didn't eat anything citrusy for lunch? And I hadn't, but you can imagine my disappointment when I reached into my pocket and remembered my sweetme. Mandarin-flavored chapstick. Oh, oh. So let's talk about what happens to the results here. Does the info get back to municipalities? I mean, what's the point of all of this, I guess, is what I'm asking. Yeah, it does get back to them. The cities get to see how judges scored their water. So they do get the feedback and they see the comments of sort of what tastes the judges picked up. But I talked to one of the other judges. She's a scientific expert. And she said, this is mostly just for fun. Good tasting water is ultimately really subjective. So it's hard to make a really empirical judgment with the results of this taste test. But the winners do get to go on to the North American

Championship that's next year in Toronto. Wow. I wonder what the training for that is like. I know you're a water reporter and the previous times you've been on Science Friday. We've talked about the troubles the Colorado River has had and the West has had with all the water that's missing. What does it like to talk about water and not have to focus on the challenges posed by a water shortage? Yeah, I spend a lot of time chronicling this slow-moving train wreck that is drought in the southwestern U.S. So it was nice to have a little diversion, you know. There is just so much to learn about how water behaves and how our government makes decisions about who gets to use it. And I would really encourage everyone to learn a little bit more about just how the water gets to you and why your kitchen sink stays flowing.

Great idea. Great idea and great story, Alex. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you, Ira. Alex Hager, water reporter for KUNC Public Radio in Fort Collins, Colorado. 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. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.