SciShow Tangents - Superhero Tropes Compilation

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's another Tangents compilation! In these fantastic, superpowered episodes, we learn about the real-world ways these superhero tropes show up all around us. Strap on your utility belt and flutter your cape, we're off to do some heroic stuff!Episodes in this compilation:S1 E25 - Mutation, original airdate: April 30, 2019S2 E37 - Glowing Things, original airdate: August 4, 2020S3 E4 - Immortality, original airdate: February 9, 2021S3 E21 - Cyborgs, original airdate: June 29, 2021S4 E25 - Radiation, original airdate: September 20, 2022Sources for each episode can be found in the descriptions of the original episodes on your preferred podcasting platform.SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! And go to https://complexly.store/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on socials:Ceri: @ceriley.bsky.social@rhinoceri on InstagramSam: @im-sam-schultz.bsky.social@im_sam_schultz on InstagramHank: @hankgreen on X

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase, starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series Sci Show happen this week. Taking my place on the science couch is the thing that is not me, a very special guest. It's a Trace Dominguez. Hello! Trace is of the YouTube series Uno Dose of Trace, which you can find at YouTube.com slash Trace Dominguez. Can you spell your name for me? It is T-R-A-C-E.

And then D-O-M-I-N-G-U-E-Z. Thank you for coming. I've been watching you on YouTube for many years. Thanks, thanks. Yeah, this is exciting. I've never tangented with y'all. I'm excited to go on tangents. To make a thing with you.

Yay. Trace, what's your tagline? Stickers are great. Oh, glad you like a... Did we provide you with a sticker? I got a SciShow sticker, and I'm really excited about it. We have also SciShow Tangent stickers that are available at D-F-T-B-A-com. Designed by Heroku Matsushima.

And we're also joined on the science couch by Seych. Mary Riley, hello, Sari. Hello, I'm here, too. How are you feeling about today's topic? Oh, I'm excited. I'm a little bit nervous. This is something that I paid a lot of money to get a piece of paper to say that I know it. So...

You better know it. I better know it. Sorry, what's your tagline? Just a floating head. Oh, yeah. Wow. Which is a visual joke. Sorry shirt is exactly the same color as the couch, so we are all a little bit thrown off.

Just imagine what color the couch is. Pick your favorite. People have everyone knows. It's canon. The science couch is yellow. If they're true HFS fans, from back in the day, they know what color of the couch is in. Sam also matches the couch that he's on. A little bit.

He's sort of not a floating head. He's like partially invisible. Like predator camo. You need some leaves on the couch too. Sam Schultz is also here. Hi, Sam. Hello. What are you working on these days?

I'm working on the SciShow Science Kits Universe Unboxed is what they're called. Yeah, and you can order them online. Universeonbox.com, I believe. That's so exciting. Yeah, and there's videos that go along with it so you can see how the experiments work. Yeah, you can see Hank getting goofy and a lab coat.

It's been really fun. Yeah. And Stefan is, oh, sorry, what's your tagline? Just a floating butt. Together we make a human. No, a button and I have together to not make a human. Yeah, you connect them. There's two holes.

That's a lot of the amount of rain is. Oh, right, right, yeah. You've got the digestive system is complete. Yeah, that's all you need. Stefan, hi, how are you? Hello, I'm doing all right. Where should I get new shoes? That's a strange question, Hank.

I have really wide feet, so I have to order large shoes. Do you have a smashed pinky toe? My pinky toe's all squished. I have a squishy pinky toe. My pinky toe nail is like a disaster. It's like a joke. I look at it like, why are you here? What is your purpose?

I don't know how to trim it, so I just like grab it and pull it off. Yeah, and then you're like, did I get all of it? I don't know. This is all me, too. Seri is glorified. The rest of us are like, yes, exactly. You just pull off your toenail

and expect me to accept that. It's like, yes, this is a grooming thing that I do. Remove big chunks of my body. It doesn't feel like anything. It just comes down. Yeah, barely hanging on. Yeah, barely hanging on.

Is that your tagline stuff in? Sure. I am Hank. I'm really excited to tangent today. I don't have to do anything except host. I can't win, but I didn't have to prepare any science facts, which seems like a great deal to me. He can't lose either. I can't lose. That's my tagline. Hank Green, can't lose. All right. Every week here on tangents, we get together. We try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science

facts. We're playing for glory, and we're also playing for Hank Bucks. We tend to go on tangents sometimes. If we deem a tangent unworthy, we will take away one of your Hank Bucks, and you can go negative. Now as always, we are introducing this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sam. You may know mutants as people who shoot optic blasts or can read people's minds or can run really fast, but my friend, you are wrong. The reality is mutations are everywhere. I'm telling you this. The reason your cat has a cute, squishy face is because of slow DNA changes to the whole feline race. It's why spiders spin webs and newts have cold blood. It's Why Sloss do whatever it is that Slots does.

All these. There's so many things you could have just changed to find a better rhyme, but you didn't. Like what? I don't know anything. The nukes have cold blood. Many animals have many traits. You could like, why, like, sloths have the fuzz? This is an unprecedented interruption of the time.

BART. All these changes in time slowly add up and be. become every living thing ever, like every single one. But while that is profound and amazing, I will have to admit, I still wish I could fly or shoot claws out of my mitts. So, Sarah, our topic is mutation. What is that? It's genetics. So genetic mutations are when DNA gets changed permanently in some way. And DNA is important because it codes for RNA, which codes for proteins, which make up all the, like, the functions that all your cells need to survive. To do the things.

To do the things that make you humans. Yeah. And DNA codes for all that. That's why mutations can change the way that things look or act or the way their cells act because a small change in DNA can cause a change in a protein, which changes a whole system. If it's on purpose, though, is that a mutation? Like if I intentionally change a genome, is that a mutation? So you can intentionally introduce what's known as a mutagen, which is a compound or something like radiation that can mess with DNA and cause a random change.

But I think mutations are inherently random changes to DNA. And if you insert a gene to a specific spot that you mark and use genetic engineering techniques, that's genetic engineering. It's not mutation. Mutation has to be random. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. And it can either be like one DNA base. So I don't know, you have ATGC. And if you swap one letter out for another, that's like a point mutation. And that happens all the time where our cells are constantly mutating. We have a lot of point mutations going on all the time. Sometimes those affect the way of protein forms. And sometimes they do nothing because it's already in a non-coding region of DNA. So we don't really care. Or it can be a whole chunk of a chromosome that gets swapped out or mixed around or like part of a gene. And when. Bigger things happen, those are usually when bigger phenotypic changes happen or things, like systems break. Right. Because a gene breaks and you needed that to see. Like a whole hunk of stuff either got taken out or got shoved in and the protein is like, I'm going to be different now. Yeah.

Or like entire genes could be copied multiple times and sometimes that adds a lot of function to it. Sometimes that does nothing and you just have a bunch of copies of the same gene. And sometimes this is interesting, you'll have the same, like a slightly different copy of the same gene and that protein will be very. similar, but somewhat different, and that will allow for, for example, animals that can exist at multiple different temperatures often have multiple copies that code for a different protein that's basically the same, but works better, but actually works at a high temperature and one that works at a low temperature. That's cool.

All right, it is now time for... One of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment, but only one of those is real, and the rest of us have to guess which one is the real one, and if we get it right, we get a Hank buck. If we don't, then this week, Stefan, we'll get that Hank buck. Stefan, do you have three mutation facts for me? I sure do. Can you tell me what they are? Yes, I can. Fact number one, several populations of humans who have lived at extreme elevations for thousands of years have mutations that help them survive there in places where there can be as much as 40%

less oxygen than at sea level. But if you go below sea level, oxygen is also much less available to us. But Jiao people in Southeast Asia, who spend much of their time fishing underwater, have a similar mutation, which gives them an increased level of hemoglobin in their blood, allowing them to store more oxygen and dive for over three minutes while holding their breath. This is a good fake fact. I like that fake. That's a good one.

Number two. There are people with a mutation that has been linked to low bone density, but a different mutation of the same gene can also cause extremely high bone density, making their bones seemingly unbreakable. One downside to this mutation, though, is that these people can't go swimming because their unusually dense bones cause them to sink.

Okay. Okay, great fake fact. I like that one. That's very good. Fact number three. 38 members of a single family living in a small town in Italy have been found to have a genetic mutation that can be traced back to a single family member that was born in 1780.

The mutation has been linked to significantly lower rates of lung cancer, so all of them are heavy smokers. and some of them being in their 80s and 90s, none of them have gotten one cancer yet. Also, so I feel like I've heard about a weird Italian family, for sure. I don't remember what it was that was weird about them. I feel like there's so many stories of this one mutation is just this family, and so they do this thing.

I don't know, like, I think I read something about HIV resistance in certain families or groups of people that they were resistant to the plague. I think. Oh, like, same people were resistant to the plague and to HIV? Yeah, and I don't know how those things are connected, because one's a virus, ones of bacteria infection, but... Okay, so I'm going to ask you about this Italian family in their lung cancer. Okay. Why, like, just because I'm not going to get lung cancer, doesn't mean I'm going to smoke.

Yeah, I like that you presented it, like, they smoke because of course, now that you know, but also it's obnoxious. I mean, maybe they just think like, oh, we seem to live a long time regardless of what we do. So we might as well do all the bad things Right, I'm just speculating Do they also just like eat like sticks of butter? Yeah, let me go ask them real quick I'll shoot them an email I would do that

Eat butter or email that it was fine I would I feel like if I knew that I wasn't going to get lung cancer From smoking cigarettes I would still just vape I don't vape Wow dude I didn't know you're that cool Everybody looked at me really hard It was a lot of silence there. So what were the other ones? So also, yeah, to do the things, we had humans in Southeast Asia,

number one, who can dive longer because they have more hemoglobin in their blood. I feel like I've seen, like, a documentary on it. Yeah, I've definitely seen these divey people. Pretty video of some dude walking along on the bottom of the, you know, people who are good at diving and there's a reason they're good at diving. Right. I can't remember what is the thing. We also have high bone density people who have nigh unbreakable. What was the word you use? Seemingly unbreakable. Seemingly unbreakable bones. Okay, I have a point of order. I have never broken a bone. Oh.

And I am terrible at floating in water. Can you swim at all? I can swim quite well, but I have to swim. I can't float. All the, like, floating tests, I can't do it. I always sink. So, and you sink. And I think, so maybe this is real.

I have decided I am an Italian family of 38 people who like to smoke cigarettes. Oh. Wow. You are? I am. I know that about you. I'm going to go with bones because. I have broken a bone

and I float really easily so opposite of trace using these two data points that's my guess I feel like that's all you need in science is two data points yeah totally

I got a good gut twinge about the diving people it sounds familiar sounds real I think I heard before yeah same I feel like that documentary video just keeps playing in my head

it's like two seconds long yeah like a gift and it's like the sun's filtering through the ocean and someone's swimming to the bottom definitely

and they're saying I'm gonna go yeah divers Stefan the real fact was the bones the bone

I don't believe the bones that seems extra fake no it was extra real just a normal amount of real can they so you said they can't swim

yeah so they all seem to be related and they discovered it because the one guy got into a car crash and like didn't break any bones I assume it was a bad enough car crash that they would have expected him to break bones.

And then they sent him to a bone doctor, and he was like... Bone doctor. What happened to me? The bone doctor was like, hey, you've got bones that are eight times denser than normal. That's weird. Eight times denser than normal? That is a lot. So they ended up tracking down all these people, and there's like, I don't know how many,

but there's a bunch of them that seem to be related, have this same mutation, and they all have super dense bones. None of them have broken a bone in their lives. And one of them could not get a hip replacement because they weren't able to grew the prosthetic into that person's hip. Wow. Yeah, it's very weird. That's cool.

And the guy who got into a car accident so that he could not swim and always sunk. I mean, that's really dense. Eight times. That's a lot. So, but tell me about my Italian family. They're real, right? Their Italian families are real. Fact.

But it's like based on an article from 1994 in the L.A. Times that was, was about an Italian family of 38 people who had a mutation that made them resistant to heart disease. Okay. They were all smokers, or almost all smokers, for some reason, but they, mostly they were, like, eating...

Yeah, smoking does cause heart disease. Yeah, that's true. But also lung cancer? Yeah, that's more of the risks. Yeah. So it doesn't really make sense, but they had, like, terrible diets and were, like, taking advantage of this mutation.

They live in life of the forest. So it was real. It was real, at least, according to a 1994 article in the L.A. time. Yeah. Which I didn't verify. So, who knows? I was making it up. So it's all good.

Stuff I said about the people living in high elevations is true. At least for the people who live in the Andes, they have more hemoglobin. People who live on, like, the Tibetan plateau and other places don't. It's like a different way that they cope with high elevation. But the Bajiao people in Southeast Asia, the way that they cope with diving for a long period of time is by having larger spleen's up to 50% larger. So it turns out that for humans, just in general, you have in your spleen like a bunch of extra blood, and then in response to diving without equipment, one of the things your body does

is squeeze all that blood out into the circulatory system so that you can, I think part of it is maintaining the pressure inside your lungs, and then part of it is just so that you have more oxygen. Yeah, because it specifically stores oxygenated red blood cells, right? So it's like you have that extra store that doesn't need to flow through your whole body. It's just they are ready, squish out into your blood system. I honestly didn't know what the spleen was for.

I think it does other stuff too. Organ that cartoons made up. That sounds like a funny thing that they made up. Yeah. Next up. We've got the fact off, but first, a word from our sponsors. Welcome back, everybody. We got our Hank Buck totals for you, Sarah. You have one Hank Buck.

Trace, you got nothing. Oh, man. Yeah, I know. Me too. It's okay. Stefan, you got three. I'm cleaning it up, raking it in. Hit me with it.

Sam's got. One. Do you have anything to say? about that. That's about as many as I normally. All right. So I'm very excited for Stefan to be so far in the lead. Oh, me too. Oh, man. Now it is time

for our fact-off, where two of our panelists have brought science facts to present to the others an attempt to blow their minds. The three of us have a Hank buck that we can award to our favorite fact, and to decide who goes first among our science couch participants here, Sari, and Trace.

We are going to go back and forth naming X-Men. And this is going to be judged by Sam. I'm so stressed out. Your heart is reading so fast. Tracy, you go first because I think you have an advantage. I'm going to go with Cyclops. Sure.

He's got a thing. Yep. Maybe the easiest one. That's a good one. Well, the second easiest one. Oh, gosh. Gene Gray. Is one.

Perfect. Beast. Good. Quicksilver. Perfect. Wow, yeah. A little bit more obscure. I don't know what's obscure. or not.

I'm going to go with Professor X. That is last great. North Star? Oh my gosh. Wait, is North Star a mutant? I have to Google that. I have to, too. North Star is in Alpha Flight, but I think

I think he's a mutant. I think Alpha Flight's all mutants. I'm going to go with Angel. Yeah, mutant. Perfect. From Buffy? Yeah, Angel from Buffy. Yeah, the vampire meme. The souled demon vampire.

Flame boy. Flame boy No Human torch You've remembered You can't just say Flame boy And then come back

After we say no Okay Trace You go first So my science fact Today is about Your eyeballs So in your eyeballs You have rods and cones

And they enable you to see In the dark And also to see color The rods do low light vision And the cones do color And also spatial acuids

Right? So we have three different types of cones, though. Mostly people just think of them as either one or the other, but there are three different types of cones, one for each of the major color groups that we can see. They're each sensitive to blue, green, or red. Now, those cones are coated by the X chromosome. That's where they live. So that's why sometimes men specifically will be red, green, colorblind. But only red and green are coated on the X chromosome by the OPEO.E. OPN1 family of genes. Huh. And so the long is the red, the medium is greenish yellow, and then the short is a blue. The name for that is trichromacy. It means three colors. And then that's why it's rare for people with two X chromosomes to have red-green color blindness, where people with X, Y, have the regular site sometimes and sometimes have a

dichromacy or two-color site. So that brings me to the blue receptor, which is coated on chromosome seven. And each of the cone gives you 100 shades. So a hundred cubed, you get about a million colors if you're a trichromat. But because blue is separate, you could also have a mutation on the X chromosome of your red-green chromat, or chromosome giving you a shift not away from red-green, but into a different spectrum altogether. Oh. So then you can have four cones.

So that would be called tetachromacy, and the first evidence of it was in 1948. Is the thing that people can have? Human, women, specifically, can have tetachromacy. Oh, it's been also seen in a lot of different animal species. Sure. You know, fish and, like, mantis shrimp have, I think, five or something. It's crazy. I don't know.

But four-coned women do exist. These different groups of people, they think, roughly 12% of women might be tetachromats and not know it, which is so cool. How do you know? Far into that range can they see? So it depends on your mutation. But they think, essentially, if you imagine 100 shades with four cones, you could see 100 million colors. So you can see potentially millions more shades than an average person. And the problem is, which I think is just amazing, we have trouble finding them because they don't know that they're seeing more color.

That's just how they lived their life. So they write up said, we would never be able to make a satisfactory match because the participant would be able to sense color gradations beyond those available on the test. Which is great And I thought to myself A dude wrote that Yeah Because if a tetrochromat scientist Created a tetrochromat test

They could potentially see the same thing So you have to like find out That you're a tetrapromat somehow Either through genetic testing Or by being like You can't tell the difference between those things Right Yeah

And so then there's this woman who's British Who's an artist And has been interviewed a bunch because she's one of the tetrachromats who's like out there, I guess, one of those mutants. And she said, quote, when she looks at leaves, just like regular old leaves on trees, she sees around the edge, orange, red, or purple in the shadows. And you might see a dark green for you, but I would see violet, turquoise, and blue, like a mosaic of different colors. What?

When she looks at leaves. And I'm just like, what is that? You just crushed my dreams. I was like, maybe I am. Maybe I'm one of the total percent. I have two X chromosomes. But all leaves are normal. Yeah, leaves look pretty normal to me.

I'm good at the gradient tests online where you can like, let's sort these colors by a gradient. It's neat because it's like, it would be impossible. Color experience is so personal. There's no way to know what someone else sees, right? Yeah. So they said, well, even if you asked her to describe what she can see, it'd be like trying to describe red to someone who is born blind. Like, how do you describe that? Or like what the fourth dimension.

dimension looks like to us boring three dimensional people the thought like do we all see the same colors as the same colors there's no way to know thought uh i feel like is one that everybody has at some point in their life and it's just like oh man i gotta tell my dad about this so what you're saying is yeah my dad you don't go to your dad every time you have like a cool philosophical thought no he he texts me his a lot though sorry do you have a fact for us no i don't know i just didn't bring one today. Oh, well, the trace one. I do have a fact. I thought it would be fun. It's not funny. It was a bad joke. Cut it, Sam. No, I can't. It's too late. Okay, so a lot of the time when you hear about mutagens, radiation comes up. Like, it's in all the superhero stories,

radioactive spider, radioactive gamma rays, or things like that. Cosmic radiation were worried about DNA damage from UV light. But chemical mutagens are really fascinating, too, because of all the ways that they can mess with the cell biology in like multiple ways besides just damaging the DNA directly. So I'd like to introduce you all to a compound called Colchocene, which is a toxic chemical found in purple flowers called the Autumn Crocus. Specifically, it's an alkaloid, so one of those nitrogen-containing compounds. And humans, by and large, use it as a medicine. So some sources have said that it is mentioned in Egyptian medical texts to treat inflammation. And that's the main genre of things that it's useful for.

Nowadays, it's in gout medication, which is a form of arthritis that involves inflamed joints or blood vessels swelling or things like that. And we've kind of narrowed down its mechanisms of action. The big thing that it does is mess with the formation of microtubules. And microtubules are a structure that influence cell things like shape, and they can help cells move sometimes. They help with ion channel stuff. And really importantly, they help with cell division. And so during cell division and mitosis, chromosome segregation is a big part. So you replicate all the genetic material inside a cell.

And then as the cell divides, you need to divide up that genetic material. So you have two identical cells. And if something goes wrong in that process, usually bad things happen. Because colchicine influences microtubules, it can mess up the segregation step. So without microtubules, all the chromosomes could end up, like everything will get replicated. and then all the chromosomes will end up in one of the daughter cells in mitosis, and the other one will just be empty. Like, it doesn't split up.

Wow. And that situation is called polyploidy, where you have more than the number of sets of chromosomes that you should have. So because it affects the genetic makeup of cells, papers call this a mutagen, even though it's not a point mutation, which I thought was kind of interesting. Yeah, it's not even a mutation to the genome. It's just there's extra genome.

It's like doubled the amount of genome every time? Yeah. Yeah. And so there's mutagenic activity. And I assume that so in animals like humans, having way too much genetic material in a cell is bad. It's very bad. Our bodies don't know what to do with it. I mean, cell death usually.

Yeah. But in plants, they're just chill with it for some reason. They're just fine with having multiple copies of their genome at once and can still survive. Good on you. Yeah. Way to go plants. Or one of the big things that we've created because of it are seedling. watermelons.

That's how we got, though. As is the question you've got to ask is how do you get a seedless watermelon if you got no seeds? So what they do is they dose, I think they soak seeds in colchicine solution to mess up the cell division in a seed. Watermelons normally have two copies of chromosomes, so they're diploid like humans. And so if you dose them with colchicine, they'll end up with four chromosomes. So they'll be tetapoid instead of different. Yeah. You can cross a tetrapolyde watermelon with a diploid watermelon and get a triploid watermelon that has three sets of chromosomes. Oh, wow. Wow. So kind of like you create a liger or a mule or anything that where the chromosome mismatchesatches. And that watermelon is seedless because if you have an odd like a mismatched set of chromosome. Yeah, it's sterile. It's a sterile. It's a sterile watermelon. You have to cross it every single time.

Yes. Which is why being like a seedless fruit farmer is really, I don't know if it's more expensive, but it's more. complicated. And that's it. That's the fact. So, like, the reason we have seedless watermelons is because of this mutagen. Weird. That's cool. That's neat. Yeah. Okay. So we've got polyploidy watermelon seedless colchicine-doped stuff from Sari. And from Trace, we've got tetra chromatic ladies of the world have no idea how many colors they can see. Yeah. one question though wait a minute so the thing with the watermelons yeah it's not exactly a mutation they call it a mutation is that just because they don't have another thing to call it i think it falls under the category of manipulating genetic material in a way that would happen by chance because it is a toxin being introduced into the cell it's not like scientists controlled taking the chromosomes out and putting them in right and i think they call it a mutagen because after this happens there's probably

crossover events that happen where the chromosomes can exchange information and things like that. Okay, I'm going to give mine to Trace. Ooh. It is very cool. I would give mine to Trace, too.

Oh, I'm going to give it to Sari because I like bathing seeds in... No, I don't do this, but I like the idea that we do this. And we have to do this. Yeah, it's one of... Yeah, Stefan's got a whole bathtub full of Colchicine at home. I like watermelon and I like seeing stuff.

So I think I'm going to go with Trace. Oh, man, I got some bucks. I went from zero to two so quick. You did. Wow. It's time now for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finally honed scientific minds. I'm not on the couch today, so I don't have to do anything. Sam, do you have the question for us?

I do. At McLeckstick asks, I've heard 17% of Tardagrade DNA comes from other organisms. Do larger human-sized animals get DNA from other organisms as well? I'm going to rephrase the question. If I put a bunch of snakes in my mouth, can I be part snake? I'm going to go with no. No. So unanimous vote.

Yeah. I'm going to be a snake man. I mean, you would be a snake and a man. So you can't just steal genes from whatever you want. You can't, like, walk around, eat a snake, touch a snake. touch a plant and be like, I want that now. But what this question is asking and what that, what Hank's like refraising is asking, foreign DNA doesn't come from like the tardigrade coming in contact with another organism

and then incorporating that into its genome somehow. It usually comes from microorganisms like bacteria or viruses that work by different mechanisms or like bacteria or viruses that use different mechanisms to incorporate their genocer genetic material into another organism. So with viruses, humans have a bunch of old viruses in our DNA, which is wild to think about. It's so cool. Yeah. Those are evolutionary holdovers a lot of the time, I think. So I don't know if they've been incorporated recently, but probably way back in evolutionary time, whatever our ancestor was was infected by a virus. And viruses can't replicate without co-opting a host's genome. So they integrate some of their genome inside. And if that is

in a gamete, so like a sperm or an egg cell, that gets passed on to the next generation as part of the normal. Usually it kills the cell, but like if it happens to not kill the cell, and if it happens to be in a gamete, then it's like, you got new DNA, friend. You're the winner of some viral DNA. And so that's how viruses work. So viruses are like a separate class of thing, and they can insert the genetic material. But bacteria can do this thing called horizontal gene transfer.

And so if you think of a parent having a child, that's vertical gene transfer, where you're passing it down through generations. And so horizontal gene transfer is passing genetic information within a generation. If you have a bacterium that somehow came up with a mutation that lent it antibiotic resistance. So when you spray it with an antibiotic, it doesn't die, then it could hypothetically, using horizontal gene transfer mechanisms, pass that gene on to a buddy and just be like, Hey, friend, here's this stream that will protect you from the antibiotic. Now we can all survive together. Here you go, Jerry. Yeah.

So, yeah, so horizontal gene transfer happens and has happened in the past. And with tardigrades, they're still like a relatively small and more simpler organism. And so it seems more... There are single-celled organisms bigger than tardigrades. Yeah. And so it seems more likely that they would be influenced by horizontal genes. transfer, but a big source of contention is whether that happens in animals like humans that are more complex because it would mean our whole idea of evolution is wild.

Like, we have tons of gut bacteria in us. Are those bacteria giving us genes and inserting genes into our somatic cells and our stomach lining? And it's starting to be, it's like literally who knows? Like, we actually don't know. Yeah. I vote yes, just because that would be awesome. I'm different.

I'm determined it. If you want to ask the science couch, your questions, you can follow us on Twitter at Sy Show Tangents, where we will tweet out the topics from upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to Geekly Unique, Patty Masha, and everyone else who tweeted us your questions this week. And now I have for you our final Hank Buck scores. Sari, you have two. Trace, you have two, Sam. You have one. Stefan is this week's winner with three Hank Bucks.

Congratulations, Stefan. Thank you so much. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's really easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That is very helpful and lets us know what you like about. the show. You can tweet out your favorite moments from the episode, which we always love to see. And finally, if you want to show your love for Tangents, you can just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sarah Riley. I've been

Stephen Chin. I've been Sam Schultz. I've been Trace Dominguez. You can find Trace at YouTube.com slash Trace Dominguez, where he makes Uno Dos of Trace. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly in WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz and Caitlin Hoffmeister. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna Maddish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno, and we couldn't make any of this stuff without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you so much. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. thing. Calipagy sheep are a type of sheep with a mutation that makes the sheep amass muscle around

their butts instead of fat, resulting in the sheep with extra super big mussely butts. The first known callipagy sheep was a ram named Solid Gold. And all of his descendants have big musly butts also. Calipagy is the Greek word for beautiful buttocks. You got to have one of those. Hello and welcome to Syshow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series Size Show happen. This week, as always, I'm joined by Stefan Chen. Hey, yo.

What's your tagline? Why is it a pair of pants? Think about it. Sam Schultz has joined us as well. Hi. How are you finding TikTok these days? I don't have it downloaded it yet. I'm not ready for that.

And I feel more and more obsolete as the days go by. And I see you talking about it. And I see Sari talking about it, especially Sari. She's never known anything I haven't known until TikTok. How's that feel? Really bad. It legitimately feels horrible. I'm the youth coming for you, old man.

What's your tagline? Brain, brain. Sari, hello. Now that you know about some music, what's your favorite TikTok song? Oh, I like the one. It's the meme where a lot of indigenous folks do the dance to it, where it goes like, da, da, da, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. Yeah, that one.

I like that one a lot. It, like, brings me such joy. See, I hate this. Take that, Sam. And what's your tagline? Burples. And I am Hank Green, and my tagline is there's a hole in my basement connected to poop. And to get...

Well, it's kind of true for everyone. Yeah, but it's a direct connection in my baseball. You got sewer gas? Yeah, I had sewer gas. Did you figure it out? I did. I just shoved a shirt down the hole, so fingers crossed that that'll work. No, that's right.

Every week here on SciShow Tensions, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts. We also will give a little bit of plumbing advice. We're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score and awarding sandbucks from week to week. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by our previous conversations, we won't be great at that. So if the rest of the team deems your tangent unworthy, we'll force you to give up one of your sandbox. So tangent with care, unless you're me, in which case, all bets are off, baby. I'm not winning this season. And now, as always, we introduced this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sam.

You're asking me why I glow? Well, friend, I don't rightly know, because I'm just a wee insect. But, hmm, I'll give it a go. Here's the thing that I suspect. Two enzymes, they intersect. In my cute little rear end, and I think I am correct,

that one is luciferin, and the other I am Darren, to say is luciferase, and combined, they start barren. A green flash that, with some grace, tells predators, give us space, because we aren't all that yummy.

A flash could also showcase that we want to get chummy with a firefly honey. So there's my best guessing, even though I'm a dummy. As to why my butt's fluorescent, my shiny ass is a blessing. It helps me in expressing thoughts my bug heads possessing. So the topic for the day is things that glow, of which firefires is just one thing.

Fireflies, fireflies. And there is lots of glowing in nature, is nice, because sometimes it's dark, and we need to bring the light to the darkness. Metaphor. New York Times best-selling author, Hank Green, everyone. When you end a metaphor, you say metaphor. That's the last lines of the new one. Yeah, that was a sneak peek.

Sari, what is glowing? I would define it as emitting light in some way. I was a little torn. So does like a street lamp glow or does that shine? Or is that the same thing, functional speaking? I think generating light, yeah, releasing photons. I think too, if you're going to glow, you kind of have to like make light, but like in a very sort of like comforting motherly way.

So like a street light can glow, but it depends on my mood. It depends on how it makes me feel. So would an anglerfish make? light in the comforting motherly way and then just, you? Yeah, because I'm comforted, so I'm swimming toward the light. And then I, yeah, like, if it was shining,

I'd be like, mm, my eyes. So you would you say glow sticks are motherly? Are they soothing? I like to look at them. I don't usually associate them with comfort. Yeah, that's party time, glow.

Yeah, like my, yeah, my eighth hour of dancing at a raise. It's not like, ah, that reminds me of being of a little babe snuggled upon my mother as we drift off to sleep. But maybe, I don't know. Do you guys not rave? Is that just me? Am I the only raver in that room? I have never raved.

Uh-uh. Obviously have never raved. Yeah, I haven't either, if we're being honest. Oh, yeah. I would say anybody here, you'd be most likely to rave. I think that's true. Yeah, I probably got close a couple times. Well, what's glowing?

We never even talked about it. I took the broadest possible definition. I looked at fluorescence and phosphorescence and luminescence, and they're all just, like, emitting light in various ways, whether they absorb light at a different frequency or generated it through a chemical reaction or, like, store it up, and then re-emit it later on in time. I love those ones to store it up. It comes from the proto-Indo-European root.

which means to shine with derivatives that relate to bright materials and gold. All right, everybody. So I guess now that means it's time for which is the part of the podcast where I have brought in three facts, but only one of them is true. And the rest of you have to decide

either by deduction or wild guess, which is the true fact. And you can play along at home at Twitter.com slash SciShow Tangents, but make sure you listen to the facts first because it won't make any sense if you don't. otherwise. And I've brought in facts about Foxfire, which is not just what my in-laws call their web browser. It's also the name of the glow of bioluminescent fungi that grow on decaying

wood. And people have been noticing this glowing fungi for a long time, going all the way back to Aristotle, and I'm sure before that, but Aristotle described it as a cold fire. Over the centuries, people have found clever uses for this glowy fungus, including one of the following things that was used by Americans during the Revolutionary War. Fact number one, Betsy Ross stitched the stars of the first American flag with threads dipped in a mixture of bioluminescent mycelium, which made it so that they would glow when in the perfect darkness of the night, which everybody thought was really dope. Or, fact number two, the compass on board the first wartime submarine, which, yes, happened during the American Revolution, was hard to see because it was dark in there, so they illuminated it with foxfire. Or number three, members of the culper spiring, which was also a real thing during the Revolutionary War, would place a small batch of foxfire to signal that a house was a safe house so that members would know where. they could find safety, even in the middle of the night. So we have these three facts.

Betsy Ross made the stars of the flag glow, or we used it to make the compass in the first wartime submarine glow, or it was used to mark safe houses by the Culper spiring, a ring of intelligence agents that operated around New England. And true or false, that's real, that's real, that's a real, that's a real spiring. Yeah, that's a real, that's a real spiring. There was a real flag. There was a real submarine. All those things were real.

There was a real first American flag, yeah. Whoa. I cannot believe that the first one would have glow in the dark stars, and every other one would not have glow in the dark stars after. That's too good to have an idea. Maybe it wasn't widely available? I don't know. Yeah, maybe a pain in the butt.

Also, there are definitely flags with glow in the dark stars. Yeah, but every single one should. There's no reason not to. The other thing to notice that this wouldn't be a forever effect. it would just be sort of a temporary thing. I don't know anything about these mushrooms, but how long would it last? Maybe you can't even fall out.

They glow while they're alive. So the glowing is part of their metabolism. And then so as they die and their metabolism starts to slow down. And I don't know how long, but I know that it's like, I think it's like days. You just missed the flag a little bit. Keep them nice and moist. Yeah. The submarine, though, what do they, are they rowing?

How does the submarine work? I honestly couldn't tell you how it was powered. You're like stick out the bottom and just all the bottle kicks. They got flippers on. What's the third? Oh, the spies.

That one seems pretty reasonable, but everyone would know it at it glows. Like anyone walking by will be like, oh, that's a weird glowy thing. But you wouldn't know that it was marking the spy houses. You'd just be like, cool fungus, dude, not knowing that you are talking

to the leader of, the spiring. Is it a common fungus? It is apparently fairly common. Okay. Because there's not here. Do they have glowy fungus in Montana? Or is this an East Coast thing?

Well, it's also wherever Aristotle was. Ah. Where was Aristotle? I actually don't know. Somewhere around that, you know. Yeah. Where all the smart guys are from back then. Italy, Greece, something like that.

Would they have to cultivate the fungus? Can you tell us anything? Did they just like pick a tree that? had fungus in it and then bring it back to their house? Or did they, like, bring the fungus and then grow it outside their house? They would have to gather it and then put it in a place. Got it. The other thing about this fungus is that it often doesn't glow particularly brightly.

Like, it's not going to be, like, right up in your face that, like, look at this guy's, like, glowing door. You'd have to be paying a fair amount of attention to notice the glow. Right. Sarah, you put first. No, I want to go last. But you're so smart. Sarah maybe knows something. Yeah, I may or may not have suggested a fact for my fact off,

and then Caitlin was like, you're already talking about this. I will go with the spy houses. I will go with the submarine, for similar reasons as Cary. Oh, no. I'm going to go with the submarine, too. God dang it. I tried to do the submarine like a year ago for some different episode, but I couldn't find enough to make it a whole fact off.

Perfect torf, though. Yeah, so this was potentially suggested by Benjamin Franklin, who actually apparently used Foxfire to read at night because, like, candles were, like, dirty, and that was good for being used in the submarine because the submarine was made out of wood. What? Made out of tarred wood, which sounds pretty flammable to me.

But also because there's only so much oxygen in there, and you don't want to be sharing it with flame. It was like a piece of wood with the fungus still in it. So the fungus was still thriving on that wood. And then he would like hold it up to the compass and the barometer to see how deep he was and which direction he was going in to try and plant bombs on the side of other ships, which never worked. And he was eventually captured.

His obituary said the pilot of this craft was, this officer is the only man of which it can be said that he fought the enemy upon land, upon water, and under the water. In the submarine, I don't know if I told you was called the turtle, which is a really good name. But wait, how was it propelled?

Did they have like a steam engine in there in a wooden boat? I couldn't tell you. I think he had a little bicycle in there that worked a screw or whatever. No, no, it had oars. that were, like, had seals between the oars.

And so he would, like, turn the oars and then turn them and push the oars. Yeah, so it was, like, oars sticking out of the side of the turtle with, like, rubber seals on the end of them so that water wouldn't leak in. I can't believe this guy survived. I would have used up all my oxygen just trying to, like, row the oars and getting tired. This is so bad. No, no, I'm wrong. They did. It wasn't, it wasn't oars. This picture definitely shows oars sticking out of it. But this, this picture of a model of it shows that there are petals that you push that turn a propeller. Okay. And I don't know how he was supposed to deliver a bomb with this thing. He would go above the water and he had a little like, he had a bomb with like a screw on it and he would like put it into the side of the boat. But then what I read was that he went to the boat and the boat had metal plating on it and he couldn't do it.

And he just went home. It's got a safety weight in the bottom so that you're, so it doesn't turn upside down, which would be bad. And Foxfire, the reason it's called Foxfire is not because of the animal, but is the same root as the word false. So it's like fire, but not real. False fire. There was a restaurant in my hometown that was called Foxfire, and everyone knew that that's where you went if you wanted to meet older ladies who had money.

Wow. Did you go and meet an older lady? No, but you could see it from the freeway because they had like a fire on the roof of the restaurant going all the time. You always know if you need to get out of your life. You can always go meet an old lady there. Wow. I would love to see Ben Franklin's reading apparatus with the Foxfire. though.

It wasn't a reading apparatus. It was just a log with some focus on it. That's gross. That's an apparatus. It's nothing wrong with a stick. Sticks aren't gross.

He said a mushroomy stick next to his bed. He was dedicated. He needed to read. He needed to stay ahead of the competition. I guess. I don't know who the competition is, but whoever Ben Franklin's competition is,

I'm sure he was a pretty competitive guy. Yeah. The Betsy Ross thing was pretty much a lie. Like, there have been people who have used Foxfire for decorative purposes before and they didn't even necessarily, I don't even know they had safe houses for this spy group.

I just read about the spy group. It was all lies. Disappointing. But you could probably figure out how to make an American flag glow if you wanted to sell that product on Amazon. But I'll leave that. I'll leave that to the listeners.

Next up, we're going to take a short break, and then it'll be time for the fact off. Welcome back, everybody. Sam Buck totals. I've got one. Sarie's got one, and Sam has two. And how many does Stefan have? None.

Stefan has zero. Stefan's got nothing. All right. And now it's time for the fact-off. Two panelists have brought science facts, presented to the others in an attempt to blow their minds. We each have a Sam-Buck to award to the fact that we like the most, and to decide who goes first.

I've got a trivia question. for you. Milky Sea Effect, or Muriel, is when large areas of seawater glow thanks to bioluminescent dino flageolates. The largest milky sea area ever documented it covered how many square kilometers of ocean surface. Hint, they used satellite data to figure this out. I'm going to say 3,200 kilometers, square kilometers. Oh, okay. I'm going to say 100,000. I don't know why.

Now that I've said it, it seems like way too big, but let's go. The answer is 15,400 square kilometers. So, Sari is closer. Just barely. I will go first. So there's a lot of philosophical and biological debate about what death looks like in organisms. It's basically a systemic break. down and shut down or degradation of cells.

But in one species, the roundworm C. Elegans, there's a surprisingly obvious marker of their passing called death fluorescence. Basically, under UV light, a compound called anthronilic acid fluoresces bright blue. It's produced by little granules throughout the worm's gut, and we're not entirely sure what the gut granules do as organelles, but there are just a lot of them, and they make this glowy thing. And so when C. Elegans dies, whether it's because of a lethal injury or peaceful

old age, the cell death starts at one end, usually the front, and propagates to the other over several hours. And this wave of death is started by a flood of calcium ions, triggers processes that bursts cells, and explodes those little gut granules. So under

UV light, there's like a wave of blue fluorescence as the worm dies across its whole body. And having this clearly visual indication of death is just like wild. You can watch videos of it. And it can help us understand how cell death might propagate in more complex organisms, for example, humans, or as a clear indication of death in lab tests that involve measuring lifespan. These scientists experimented a little bit with this and were able to knock out proteins in the worm to stop the cell death wave because

of injury, not because of old age. And so that could potentially be a first step in helping us develop medicine to stop necrosis from things like injury or infection or something damaging like that. So, like, reducing the amount of fatal injuries because we don't set off this cascade. So they stopped the cell death? Did the worm not die then? Yeah, it didn't die. I don't think it died as quickly. I think it died eventually because they've been like Frankenstein it, but... And here is a video. So I'm watching death spread throughout a worm. Yeah. It's like kind of eerie, if you're thinking about it. It's like, I'm watching these worms die.

It makes me think that if people were able to see this centuries ago, for some reason they shined UV light on these nematodes, this would be very like a poetic inspiration for thinking about death. It's like, ah, we all glow blue and then go dark. So like they die and then they start to glow? Yes, asterisk. When do you declare death is? So their cells are still vaguely functional, but then once they all burst, then that's when they start glowing. So that's why I kept it kind of vague because I didn't feel like becoming a philosopher for this episode of the podcast. So it's just like a wave of death generically. And you can interpret that to mean whatever you want.

It may not be death, but it's definitely glowing. Yes. Yeah. And after the glowing is done, it did. Stefan, what do you got for us? Okay, so some species of millipedes basically look identical to one another. You just couldn't tell them apart with using your own stupid eyeballs. But you could use DNA analysis to tell them apart, but that's kind of complicated.

So researchers at the Field Museum in Chicago found that certain body parts of millipedes fluoresce under UV light. Specifically, their genitals glow different colors. and in different patterns that are unique to the species of millipede. These aren't really like millipede dicks. Male millipedes have a whole near their second pair of legs where the bluish sperm liquid comes out, and then their seventh pair of legs are adapted to transfer sperm. And so they like...

Can I make you pause and tell you that you said bluish sperm liquid like I knew that already? You know, where they're bluish sperm liquid. comes out. You don't know where it comes from, but everybody knows that millipedes have bluish sperm liquid. That's what they call it.

Clearly. So their seventh pair of legs are called gonopods, and they like dip them in their sperm hole, cover them in sperm, and then they run around trying to find a mate.

So those gonopods have different features that are unique to the species. So there's like little spiky knobs or like bristly looking thing. and under UV light, the differences are much easier to see

between the different species. They don't know why the millipedes evolved this because they can't, I guess, millipedes don't have very good vision. They said they don't even know if millipedes can see color, and they definitely can't see UV, but from imaging all these different gonopods,

they were able to condense. They thought in their collection they had 12 different species of millipede, but they were actually only eight, and so they were able to more accurately identify the specimens in their collection. I feel like it comes up a lot that people are like, we don't know why they have these glowing stripes on them

because the animal can't see them. But it seems like the animal just must be able to see them. They're lying to us. Or they just don't know what the animal can see. Apparently we don't really know much about millipede sex either because they do it in the ground. And if you take them out of the ground or put them in the lab, like they don't do it.

Oh, no. Well, and if they do it in the ground, then it's extra. hard to see anything. That's the hardest place to see anything of all places, I'd say. You didn't really have me until I found out that they didn't just glow. They glow different colors. Oh, color and light is very weird, you guys.

I feel sad that we can't see more of it. Yeah. Like, we can't see scorpions glowing and stuff. Seems like that would be useful to us. We can with a little bit of help. I know, but I want to see them without help. I want to know they're coming. I feel like I would get a headache if I was like a bee.

bee eyes where everything glowed intensely. I wouldn't want to look at flowers. I like flowers now. Wait, can bees get headaches? All right. I don't know. Okay, nobody knows. I have no idea.

I'm not even going to try to answer it. Nobody knows. Because someone who actually knows things about animals will come after me. So, it is now time for us to vote on our favorite fact. Are you guys ready? Three, two, one. Stephanie. I just liked a lot of it.

His presentation style was great. He was waving his arms around a lot. It was really doing it for me. Wow. You've got to do a little bit. The subjectivity is just getting out of hand. I see. Yeah.

This audio podcast needs a visual component during recording. Well, you should have seen him. He was doing a hell of a job. And now it's time to ask the science couch. We've got a listener question for our virtual couch of finally honed scientific minds. This is from at Great Pretending. Does putting a glow stick in the free? or actually make it, quote, last longer, and if so, why?

I mean, I assume, yes, because it slows down the reaction, whatever the reaction is that's producing the light. There has to be some kind of ongoing chemical reaction that is releasing that energy, and the molecules will hit each other less frequently if they are moving less quickly. Yeah, they'll hit each other less frequently and also with less energy. With less speed, yeah. Yeah, in the collision, which means that there's less, like, less, likely for something to happen.

They got a hit hard. Does it glow less brightly as well? Yes. So if you want to save up your glow stick for like, you know, tomorrow's rave, you can have a diminished glow stick for tomorrow. Once it warms up, I guess it might start glowing good again. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it just like compared to the temperature.

So while it's cold, the reaction will be going slower and it will be glowing less good. but if you heat it back up again, then it'll be glowing hot and bright for as long as the reaction progresses. And it's nice because then your glowsticks are all cold, so you start dancing and you're hot and you put your cold glow sticks on your body, put them in your mouth because you like to, I don't know.

I shouldn't put them in your mouth. Should you? I feel like you shouldn't put them in your mouth. That's what I'm going, okay, so like the kids do crack them open and fling them at you. Was that really bad? It's not horrible.

It's not like you, cyanide or anything. The things inside, and the big part of the tube, is bifenal oxalate and some sort of dye that colors it neon. And then the little, like, crackly sound is there's usually a small glass cylinder filled with hydrogen peroxide, which is something you might have in your medicine cabinet. It's really good at, like, removing blood stains. I realize that's, like, a serial killer kind of thing to say, I don't know.

Some people have periods and you bleed all over, so suck up that laughter. But yeah, so that's the reaction that happens is biphenyl oxalate gets oxidized by hydrogen per oxide, which produces a bunch of different compounds, including one that is unstable, that decomposes into carbon dioxide and releases energy, which the dye absorbs so that electrons get, get excited and then fall back to their less excited state and release photons. And so like the chemicals that you're spraying on people are like hydrogen peroxide biphenyl oxalate, just like minor irritants, but I don't know. Like it won't take a bath. It's like it's dilute hydrogen peroxide. Is the crackle like little, um, little chambers that you're breaking or what?

Okay. I think it's one, just one chamber of like one cylinder of hydrogen peroxide. Yeah. And then you can break it a bunch of times, but you only need to break it once. Ah, I love breaking it a bunch of times. Yeah, it comes out faster that way. Oh, my. Breaking it a bunch of times will also speed up the reaction because you'll just, like, have more points of contact instead of, like, just having one hole.

Tips. Tips for the rave. You always come to SciShow Tangents for your rave tips. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes. every week. Thank you to at Tangential Otter, at Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca, four, and everybody else who you to do this your questions for this episode. Final scores, it's a tie game between Sari and Sam. Stefan and I come in and last sharing it with one point each, which means that Stefan is still

in the lead. He's still in the lead. And Sarah and Sam are two and three points behind, respectively, and I am nine point. behind. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show and it helps other people know that our show is good because we want more people to listen to it. I don't know exactly why. There are business reasons. There are personal reasons. But we do, we too, however, love all of our SciShow Tangents listeners and it's such a joy to have you

be here to listen to our voices. So thank you for being those folks. We love it. Thank you so much. If you want to tweet out your favorite moment from the show, you could do that too. And finally, if you want to show your love for Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Cary Riley. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Shultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and the Wonderful Team of WNYC studios. It's created by all of us. And produced by Caitlin Hofmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes along with Heroku Matsushima. Our social media

organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is Toboki Chakravardi. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna Meddish. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. Glowing butt fact. Glowing butt fact. There's a lot of glowing butts. A lot of bugs have glowing butts, including glowworms,

which aren't worms but the larva of certain types of Australian fungus gnats. They live on the ceilings of caves in what the University of Melbourne describes as chandelier-like webs that consist of several snare lines covered in sticky mucus. And to lure their food into these snare webs in the dark caves, they light up their butts and they trick nocturnal insects into flying towards them and getting stuck, just like how a moth does to a porch light, basically. And bonus but fact, they don't poop. All their waste is air quotes excreted as light. What?

You don't believe me? You don't believe the University of Melbourne, then? Bringing up with them, huh? They got to poop at some point. Maybe once they turn into bugs No, when they turn into bugs They don't have an anus And so they just have to live fast, die young

Because they can't poop Okay It's like yolo But with no poop You only poop You only... Yopo You only...

You know po. Hello and welcome to Syshow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase. I am your host, Hank Green, and today joining me, as always, is our science expert, Sari Riley. Hello, expert is a very generous term. And also our resident, Everyman, Sam Schultz. Good day, mate. Oh, gosh. With the reboot of the show, I'm going to adopt a new personality and accent.

Like every episode or like from now on you're going to be Australia? I don't know. Whatever, whatever happens, happens. Well, you've already lost it. Finally, our special guest for the week, Saja Tangens, editorial assistant, Deboki Trakervardi. Hello, Deboki. Hello. Duboki helps make all kinds of things, hosts Crash Course Organic Chemistry.

Also helps me answer the sciencey questions on Dear Hank and John, sometimes on my TikTok. But more than any of that is always here helping us at Tangents, make sure we get stuff. right and answer questions when we're confused so debaoki i appreciate you for coming out and all three of you i want to ask you a question because of the topic for today's episode if you could know when you were going to die would you sign that contract somebody comes up like a man he looks very mysterious he's glowing and he says hello i have a like you have to say yes or no right now do you want to know when you're going to die you can't do anything to prevent it you can't take any like you can like live your life differently but you you're going to

on this day, and now you know. You don't know how it's going to happen? You don't know how it's going to happen. Is the man telling the truth? The man is telling the truth. You guys are asking a lot of questions for me. I'm just like, no. I don't know interest in knowing.

Yes, I would do it. I think I would do it too. I don't think it would change anything. Well, I guess that's hard to say because I won't know. Yeah. I think the real gamble is if you're going to die of natural causes or not, and that would be the thing that you'd find out, that would be like, oh, shoot. Yeah, if it's 10 years from now, you're like, oh,

That's not. Yeah. So, DiBoki, tell me what you think of my reasoning here. I feel like the worst part for me about the fact that I'm going to die is that it could happen at any time. Yes. I don't mind the idea of dying. Like, that's good enough for everybody else so far. I should be okay with it.

But, like, I want to be able to plan. I feel like that's a big life event to have no control of. Yeah. I don't know that knowing when you're going to die is really going to get. give you the sense of control that any of us are seeking from any knowledge of death. It's going to feel like control, but at the end of the day, I just, oh, the idea of knowing when I'm going to die, I, like, you guys were saying earlier, like, it wouldn't change anything. I know for me it would change everything.

Like, I would... Oh, it would totally change. I could not live comfortably and, like, just the countdown, oh, it would be too much for me to handle. You do already have a piece of knowledge that is similar, which is that you will die. Yeah. Not proven, but true. I am so sure that I would learn and then forget so fast. Like, I'd be really productive for, like, two weeks, and then I would just forget and be like, oh, well.

Yeah, and then somebody asks you, and they're like, you found out from the guy who tells you when you die, right? He came to you, and you're like, yeah, but I spaced it. It was sometime later. Like, it wasn't around now, so I just spaced it. Yeah. I feel like for me, maybe this says a lot about me in ways that I don't know. It would be like any other sort of important date of like, oh, I'm graduating for college in four years, counting down to that, and then it's giving me another milestone to look forward to as opposed, I guess not look forward to, but just to like count down to, because I'm out of those. I'm out of formal schooling, which gave me plenty of, like, nice milestones of like, I can be done with this. Sarie Riley just wants another deadline.

That's the thing I was thinking about is also in terms of planning, like knowing that like, okay, this is the date that I'm planning for. I mean, I know myself and I know that either way, I'm going to wait for the last moment. So I might as well not know what that last moment is. Well, that's a great point. You are winning me over a little bit that the reality is that the worst feeling is knowing that you procrastinated up to the,

point of your actual death. Yeah. It was like, like, for me, I can be like, well, I didn't, I didn't make it to Ireland, but I didn't know. Yeah. I didn't know if I was going to die or live. Yep. But if I die and, like, I knew it.

And I was like, man, like, it was on my bucket list. And I just didn't fucking do it. Like, I knew when I had to get it done by and I didn't do it. Yeah. All right, everybody. Thank you for answering my dumb question. Every week here on Slashio Tangents, we get together to try to stump and one up and amaze each other with facts about our world.

and we try to stay on topic, but the name of the show is tangent, so we're not great at it. Our panelists here are playing for glory, but you're also playing for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play, and at the end of the episode, one of you will be crowned the winner. And now, as always, I will introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem. There are a lot of people who are working very hard, so that each of us can spend less time in a graveyard. They stay up late at night because they want to cure diseases,

from the most severe to just the ones that give you. you little sneezes. And if they just keep working, work better, and work fast, might there be some limit where a barrier's surpassed? Our lifespans do get longer with every passing year, and sometimes those leaps happen faster as new breakthroughs appear. So what if lifespan increased by one year for every year? That's what people mean when they say the singularity is near. Download our consciousness into computers for all time, create a cryogenic bath that keeps us in our prime, rejuvenate our bodies with techniques we can't foresee, and soon we'll find we're on our way to immortality. That is until the sun explodes or we give up on our endeavor. There isn't

much that makes me think that anything's forever. Our topic for the day is immortality. One thing that I know, and would like to say up front to all the people listening, is that you two will die, and nothing lasts forever. So let's find what we value and move forward from there. Sarie, what is immortality? Well, on that cheery note, mortality is what we're all subject to, the fact that we're going to die someday. And immortality is not that. So it is just not dying.

Are there ways that this happens? Because I hear about them, jellyfish and stuff. Yeah. So biological immortality is usually defined in terms of senescence, which is this word that means biological aging. and is the gradual deterioration of the function of biological organisms over time, whether that's, like, DNA stability or other genomic instability. This is where telomeres come in, and, like, after you've copied your DNA a certain amount of times, these, like, bits at the end get cut off.

But there's also just things like getting worse at transferring nutrients and your cells getting old and holding their liquids and their things less good. You actually do get less good at holding your liquids. That's a real thing. And so there are organisms out there that have negligible senescence, that hydrozoan that Hank is mentioning is one of them where we can't see the like the biochemical effects of aging in ways that are recognizable to us. So like they have stem cell populations that don't die off or they can revert back to

a less mature form and then grow older again and then revert back and then grow more mature again without losing that biological function. In order to live forever, you also have to not get killed. So like living forever, like biological mortality is the idea that like you could, but you're probably not going to because something's going to happen. Like the real problem with immortality is that like you don't get the option of natural death anymore. You will die in an accident. Like, if the singularity comes, everyone who dies will die an unnatural death, you'll just get hit by a car eventually. In my definition of immortality, at least, it's like you can stop the aging, like the natural aging of yourselves, but you can still get

something like cancer as a disease. So like that as a natural cause of death, but like disease that racks your body is different than delaying the effects of aging. I don't. I do very much want to delay the effects of aging like i don't hold out any hope for immortality but i would love to be a sprightly 70-year-old it's hard to get to get used to this idea but i may be a little too old to to really benefit from the effects of all the anti-aging therapies that are on the horizon but the horizon is still pretty far away you got to clear the way for the kids to take over eventually that's the thing i worry about the most that's true yeah got to get some new viewpoints in there.

Thanks for throwing a little bit a social science into it, Sam. Yeah. The word immortality, I guess its root is mort, which all I know is that that means death, but I guess it's named after like the god of death, whose name is mort.

Oh, I certainly don't know that. There's the proto-Indo-European root mare that means to die or like rub away or harm. I don't know, all kinds of bad things. But what was interesting to me is it's also the root of mortgage. Which means dead pledge, so-called because the deal dies when the debt is paid or when the payment fails, presumably because the person is deceased. All right, it is time for our first game of the day.

It's a game that I have developed with a little bit of help from Duboki, but I didn't let Tobokie know the answers. So this game that we're going to play is called What Lasts Longer, and I'm going to go round Robin, and I'm going to ask you each. I'm going to give you a pair of two things, and you're going to tell me which of those things lasts longer. Is everybody, everybody ready for the thing? Seems straightforward enough, yeah. All right. We're going to start out with Deboki. DiBoki, you're going to answer me this question.

What lasts longer? The average molecule of oxygen 20, the isotope of oxygen that has four extra neutrons, or the average bowel movement. A human bowel movement? The average human bowel movement. Important clarification. Okay, I'm going to guess, I'm going to, I'm going to guess the bowel movement. Duboki, most atoms around us will live for as long as the universe, but oxygen 20 exists for only 12 seconds on average before it decays into other things, and that is less time than it

generally takes to poop. I think that you could probably get one out in less than 12 seconds, but on average, it's, it's more like, I think I saw a generalized minimum of 16 seconds, and I was like, who did this piece. Yeah, I want to know what the start time and end time is. Yeah. If it's 16 seconds, it's not from when your butt hits the seat. I mean, unless you got to

the seat late. All right. We got to keep moving. Sam, this next question is for you. An adult female may fly. Or the average YouTube video, which lasts longer? Oh, shoot. I bet there's so many second long. Or is there a minimum upload? I'll just go with the mayfly last longer.

Than a YouTube video. People usually talk often about how mayflies don't last long. They're famously short-lived. And I sometimes hear that they last, they survive for one day. But there is a species of adult female mayfly that exists for five minutes after hatching into its adult phase. During that time, they have to mate and lay eggs. That is half the length of the average YouTube video now. Wow.

Which are over 10 minutes long. That is very surprising. Sarah, answer me this. What lasts longer? The Titanic or the African pygmy mouse? The Titanic from like point of construction to point of iceberg? From the moment it hit the water to the moment it was beneath the water. Okay.

I'm going to say the mouse. Lasts longer and you are correct. The Titanic lasted for 308 days after it hit the water. And the African piggymy mice is a very short-lived mammal. And they live for around two years. DiBoki, it's back around to you. A pigeon or a dandelion, which lasts longer? I feel like dandelions could last a while.

I think plants are hardy. I'm going dandelion. Dandelion, on average, can live for 12 years. A pigeon is actually a very short-lived bird at just six years. Sam, we're back around a cat, a cat, or a termite. What the hell? This seems like a double trick question. I'm going to go with a cat.

No, Sam. No. So the average termite, now an individual termite lives less time than a cat, but a queen, a termite queen, can live for over 50 years, and we are not sure. What? We think that they might live up to a hundred years. Oh, no, that's horrifying. To be by far the longest-lived insect, it's a bit of a mystery, and other insects that live that long tend to be dormant for a lot of their lives, whereas the termite queen is just doing its business the whole time. So termite queens might outlive people.

Sari, a chameleon or a peacock, which lasts longer? I'm going to say a chameleon, just because. Now, a lot of these ones that I pitched to you, they are actually quite close. This one is not at all. You are wrong, chameleons live one year, peacocks live 20. Duboki, an ostrich or Harry Potter's parents, which lasts longer? They were like 30-something, right? Let's go ostrich.

You are correct, but you were wrong about how old William James Potter was. or they were 21 years old when they were mortared by Voldemort. Ostriches can live up to 75 years. Sam, the Gutenberg Bible or a Tuatara, which lasts longer? Oh, God. The Gutenberg Bible. You are correct, Sam. You did it.

Tuatara, unlike chameleons, can live over 100 years. So you think they look like lizards, but they are not closely related. And Tuatara, for some reason, live a very long time. The oldest one is 120 years old, and he looks very cute still. I saw a picture of him, whereas the Gutenberg Bible is much older than that. But it's a science podcast, so I'm not even going to tell you how old. Sari, the oldest lichen or the oldest coral, which is older. Oh, I'm going to say the oldest coral just because marine things have figured it out earlier than land things.

I hear you on that, but you are wrong. Oh, no. The oldest coral that we have found is a deep sea. coral. It's over 4,000 years old, whereas the oldest lichen we have found is also in a cold climate. So this is a sneaky thing that when it's colder, you can last longer, is over 8,000 years old. Too rude. Took all the adaptations from the ocean creatures and then just went into the cold land. Toboki, a tortoise or a clam, which is older, which lasts longer. I best up the game.

I'm going to go with a clam. A clam is correct. There's a clam named Ming. Ming was collected in 2006 off the coast of Iceland in an ocean dredging experiment where they were doing some science to figure out climate change stuff, brought Ming up, counted the rings,

because you could do that on clams, 506 years old. Oh, whoa. Oldest individual animal that we know of is this clam. Did they put it back? No, it was dead by the time they got to. But we imagine that there are others like that out there. And does it hurt? Does it hurt a little bit? It does.

That's correct. Sam, the oldest shark or the oldest whale? Oh, the oldest shark. You are correct. The bowhead whale lives over 200 years of the oldest whale. The Greenland shark famously lives over 400 years. How does it do that? As far as we can tell, by doing basically nothing ever. I love those guys. And finally, Sary, what lasts longer? A sun-sized star or an Earth-sized planet? Oh, no. A sun-sized...

Star? Yes. I don't know anything about space. You chose a good one for me. An Earth-sized planet can last for as long as it wants, as long as it doesn't

get eaten by a sun-sized star, but stars have a lifespan, whereas planets are just rocks. I knew that one. I under- overthought it. I don't know. I panicked. All right.

Final score. Seri, did you really only get one right? I'm really bad at this game. Wow. Sarah only got one right, one point, Sam has two, Duboki, all four correct. What the heck? Reigning champ of this one game. No, I guess that's why you're in charge of making sure we get stuff right.

Next, we're going to take a short break, and then it will be time for the fact off. Welcome back, everybody. It's time for the fact off. All three of our panelists have brought a science fact to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank Bucks in any way I see fit. And to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question. As of the recording of this podcast, the oldest verified living person in the world is Kane Tanaka. How old is she?

I'm going to go first if that's okay. I'm going to guess 110. I'll go 10015. Ooh, big number. Seri. I'm going to go 114. Boxing Sam in a little bit. Connie Tanaka is 118 years and 31 days old.

Wow, congratulations. Yeah. The oldest person on record was 122. Connie Tanaka's coming for that record. Wouldn't it be wild if you were 80 years old and you're like, well, I'm on my way out and then 30 years later, you're still kicking? So that means that

Devoki gets to decide who goes first. I will go first. So in 1956, some scientists wanted to know what would happen if you shot a massive amount of gamma radiation at some canned ground meat. So they used a dosage that is... I'm sorry, I interrupted you

I don't think Sam and I can beat that meat. It's all right. Okay. They used a dosage that is 250 times higher than you would need to kill E. coli. So this seemed like a pretty respectable way to kill everything in the meat, except that something survived. A new bacteria, which they named micrococcus radiodurans, though they later changed the name to Dynacoccus radiodurans. The big reason why Dynacoccus should not have been able to survive. survive all of that gamma radiation is because that type of high energy radiation can break

the bonds in DNA. And usually, like, if you break one strand of DNA, that is bad and you need to fix it. If you break both strands of DNA, it's really, really bad and even harder to fix. And so it usually doesn't take that much damage like that to kill an organism. If you're an E. coli, you can get to, like, eight to nine of those breaks per, like, copy of your genome. And at that point, that is, like, when you will probably die. But if you are a Dynococon, radiodurans, though, it takes about 275 breaks per genome copy to become lethal. So it's able to withstand about 30 times more DNA damage than E. coli. So it turns out that Dynoccus isn't any better at preventing that damage, but it is

much better at surviving it because it's basically like the Wolverine of DNA repair. So while like all of our cells, they have these types of different DNA repair mechanisms, dinococcus's enzymes and pathways are just like way better at it. It has multiple genome copies, which means it can have more than 1,000 breaks to piece together, depending on how much damage you've inflicted on it. So it's basically this, like, semi-dead organism that can only revive itself by putting together a thousand-plus piece puzzle that it also cannot get wrong. And again, there are a lot of DNA repair mechanisms out there,

but Dinococcus radiodurans is just, like, operating at this whole other level. These methods likely evolved to protect the organism, if ever gets dried out or doesn't. which can also damage DNA. But it's also not like DNA is the only thing that gets damaged during desiccation or radiation. There are other molecules in the cell that are going to be damaged too. So it's still not even clear, even though we know that it has these mechanisms in place. It's not clear even like how they can initiate those mechanisms. So scientists are still studying the microbe to learn more.

And of course, because we are humans, that means we've done the only thing more natural to us than shooting tons of gamma radiation at CanV. we've shot Dinococcus into space where it spent a year outside the ISS exposed to the sun and it is also survived that. I mean, pan-spermy is totally a thing. We're not from Earth. We came from somewhere else.

Okay. I have a question, did they leave the meat out for a while? Or does like all canned meat have a bunch of Dinococcus radiodurans in it? I do not know. So there were a lot of papers that are talking about this papers,

but the original research paper itself, the methodology I was having a hard hard time hunting down. So I don't know how long this meat is like lying around. But I think we're probably okay. I don't know. I hope. Well, yeah. I mean, my guess is that Dinocococcus radio durans probably doesn't do that much damage to a person. I wouldn't want to eat E. coli. But if you're going to like, if it's like way too hard to kill every single bacteria, don't kill the ones that aren't going to hurt me. I'm eating some right now. All right, Sarah, you are second in guessing the age of Kane Tanaka. What is your fact? So like the hydrozoan species, we briefly

mentioned in the definition section, one of the weirdest natural phenomena to me is reverse development where organisms are like, nope, conditions are not favorable right now. So I'm going to go back to being baby and grow up later. And I recently learned about... If only the graduating class of 2020 could do that. I hadn't heard of this before. I recently learned of a dermestid beetle named trogoderma glabrum that is in the same family as the ones used to clean bones for taxidermy or for museums, but this beetle feeds on grains instead of scavenging flesh. And normally, this beetle's development works, the babies eat and molt into larger larvae until they eventually pupate and then become an adult. But if you deprive the larvae of food and water

before they pupate, they will molt the other way like a Russian nesting doll and become smaller larvae instead, kept in perpetual youth. So even though time is passing, they're physiologically getting younger and reversing the genetic steps towards maturity, and this can prolong their lifespan. So normally, these beetles live from egg to death for about eight weeks, but in a paper from 1972, two scientists kept larvae alive for more than two years through 20 to 36-ish week cycles of food deprivation and regrowth. And it could probably work for longer, but they just got bored, question mark, and wanted to see if the beetle larvae would pupate into adults, which they did.

So this staying baby process isn't perfect immortality because they still showed some cellular signs of aging. For example, it took the larvae gradually longer to redevelop into their original size from nine days in the first de-age-reage cycle to 28 days in the fourth cycle, and their fat cells had DNA composition similar to adults instead of babies,

which the authors speculated could have caused those longer re-aging timelines. But as far as I can tell, this 1970s paper was the only, only big experiment on these beetles, but more people could be studying this. And maybe people aren't interested because humans don't molt and pupate. That's my guess. But I think someone should be studying these beetles.

There is definitely an economics comparison here. If you almost let people become adults and then you throw them in economic crisis, they will revert. That's been the last 30 years of life here on Earth. That explains a lot of stuff about me. Oh, God. No, I mean, none of us are grown-ups. Sam, don't worry. All right.

Very weird, very good. Sam, can you top it? Probably not, but I'll try. So in some respects, living forever seems nice, but let's say you're a vampire and then think it out to its logical conclusion. So assuming that you weren't vampire hunted, would you live through the destruction of the earth

or the sun burning out or the heat death of the universe? Eventually would you, like, feel all your atoms lose coherence and drift apart? Probably, and then you'd be dead. But then what about the particles that those atoms are made of? Are they the one thing in the universe that's truly immortal or would even they eventually die too? Well, that question, the part about the particles dying and not the vampire speculation, is what an international team of scientists set out to answer in 2015.

I love it. Great, great frame, Sam. One thing that we never think about is how do we make this understandable to Sam Shultz? It's the only thing I ever think about. So now I'm going to talk about particle physics, and I'll probably be wrong, but I'm going to try. An electron is the least massive charge-carrying particle. True or false?

Yeah? True. Cool. And we've never observed an electron decaying. And in fact, if I'm understanding my brief scam of the Wikipedia article for the standard model of particle physics correctly, a lot of the way that we understand how the universe is put together depends on the fact that electrons don't decay.

For one thing, have to lose their charge, which would, I think, disprove the law of conservation of energy, which seems bad. But there are non-charge-carrying particles out there that are less massive, like photons and neutrinos, and I guess it's not entirely out of the question that an electron could break the laws of physics, as we know them, lose its charge, and split into these smaller particles, even if we've never seen it. So the researchers went to Italy's Buraxino detector, which is basically a 300-ton tank of super pure petroleum-based, quote, organic liquid shielded from any outside radiation and also under a mountain to further shield

it from radiation. It's lined with thousands of special cameras that can detect some subatomic particles. And I think it's basically like an aquarium, but it's full of a known quantity of particles instead of fish. So what they were looking for is there's a hypothetical idea of what it would look like if an electron decayed. And part of that idea is that the electron would let out a flash of light, that would be detectable to the equipment in the detector. So they set it to detect this flash of light, and after 408 days, they didn't see any of those flashes. So there are 10 to the 23rd electrons in the tank, which I guess is a super huge number,

and none of them decayed. So the researchers were able to math out that an electron's lifespan is probably more than 66,000 yada years, which is 6.6 times 10 to the 28th years, which is, which is, you know, is five quintillion times longer than the universe has been around. And that's like the, that's the lower limit. Yeah, a quintillion is 18 zeros. And since the detector isn't perfect, it's probably even longer than that. That's just as far back as we can math it out right now.

So the law of conservation of energy is safe for now, and we can rest easy slash be terrified to know that the basic building blocks of our reality will still be floating around quintillions of years after we're gone, even ones that currently make up you, me, and vampires if we have electrons in us, which I'm only like 90% sure we do. We have electrons. Yeah, I am 100% sure we have electrons. Okay, cool. Few.

Oh, God. Sam, that was really well done, man. Thank you. You got all that right. Cool. And I love you. You took immortality to it's like, it's furthest possible extent. Yeah, I'm not going to be around.

No, maybe the Earth isn't going to be around. around forever, but our electrons will be. And it really seems like maybe forever, though, who knows? Maybe there is a state at which eventually the universe kind of collapses into a bunch of black holes that become future big banks. Not my problem. So. Well done. Oh, gosh. And now I have to choose between the three of you. I think I'm going to give Sam, I think I can give you four points. Because, like, you, like, the vampire thing was very good. You, like, you, like, drilled down and got, like, got a bunch of particle physics, which isn't easy, and I appreciate it.

And I understood what was going on, which I don't always, when we get into that. I'm going to give Duboki three points because that was my second favorite thing, and I forgot what it was already. We were ionizing cans of meat. Oh, yeah. You ionized a can of meat for me, which I always appreciate. And Sarah's coming out with. two, because it was also very good.

And that means that the winner of today's episode is Toboki Chakra Vardi with seven points beating out Sam by just one solitary stinker. And it also means that it's time to ask the science couch. We've got some listener questions for our couch of finally honed scientific minds. This question is from at Rebecca Rebecca 4. What is the science slash reality behind cryonics? Can you really freeze something and bring it back to life? I know that you can freeze a nematode and bring it back to life, but I don't know if it gets much bigger than a nematode.

Something bigger than a nematode has been frozen and then thawed, but not a whole organism. Rabbit kidneys for some reason in the research that I was doing are like the prime experimental material for preserving an organ and then thawing and trying to transplant it back into an organism. And so in 2009, a group of researchers used quick freezing techniques, and I think with chemical cryopreservants, which basically act like antifreeze. So when it freezes, the anti-freeze solution doesn't crystallize the way that blood would in the kidney, which would be bad because then the ice crystals would form and that would damage cells. So they used this anti-freeze concoction to preserve and then thaw a rabbit kidney, and then they put the kidney back. into a rabbit, and it worked for 48 days. And at that point, they were like, hmm, looks good. And they euthanize the rabbit so they could study it. So I don't know if there have been any

experiments since then that have lasted longer, but it seems like rabbit kidney transplantation is the most promising field before, I guess, in all of cryogenics, in my opinion. I also briefly researched a company that will freeze your brain, and they say that eventually they'll figure out how to unfreeze it. They just don't know. We promise. Yeah, a lot of that, I think in terms of like whether or not there's any like science behind cryonics, like there are companies that will do the freezing and whatnot, but the

idea that they're actually, like they can freeze you just fine. The idea that they're going to be able to revive you is really the crux of the issue. And that's going to be pretty, pretty tough to do. But there are cases like with surgeries where people will, like the surgeons will actually cool a body down and have it go to like really, really, really cold temperatures. so that there's basically no pulse, no blood pressure, like no blood brain activity, or at least really minimal, and that's to make the surgery easier.

But, like, even then, like, that is in a very controlled setting, and it is still really difficult. It is still pretty risky, I think. Right. I don't know if it's gotten safer. I think the closest we can say to, like, being able to thawed a human is probably with, like, frozen embryos at fertility clinics,

which is still remarkable, but it's still going to be a bit away from being able to revive a frozen, full-grown human being. Yeah, I mean, it does make me think that there's like a version of it that's just torpor where it's like, you're not like frozen with like ice crystals. But like, let's put this person into a state where they could, you know, maybe go to Mars and not have to be awake the whole time. Or if you're very sick, you put somebody to sleep until they get to a place where or a person gets to them who can take care of.

of them or something like that. I think something like what you're describing is also a key part of cryonics that we don't talk about as much because usually people talk about like freezing their brain after they die, whether of an illness or of old age. And then that adds an additional problem beyond taking your brain back to life. You have to like that you've died. Yeah, you get to fix what killed you also. It's like if you put yourself into stasis, like if I put myself, my 26-year-old body into stasis, then when I, like, unstasist, then at least my cells wouldn't have aged, and I can, like, resume living my life. But if you're an old person and you die and then you freeze your brain, then it's like, even if you, like, rejuvenate your body,

you're still old. You still like, if you died of natural causes. Or if you had cancer in the brain, then you still have that illness that scientists have to work on and cure. Well, also, if you've, if you've died, your body is starting to decay. Like, and so there's an ethical concern here, like, I'm not going to freeze you if you're not dead, but if you are dead, you have already started the process of like, actually returning to the soil. But there's also these things with cryonics that are potential actually useful therapies when it comes to giving rabbits new kidneys or being able to do surgery on people in situations

where otherwise there would be just too much blood. All right. If you want to ask the science couch, your question, you can follow us on Twitter at Syshow Tangents, where we'll tweet out the topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at Mama Paul Bear at Crystal R. 99, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions. For this episode, Deboki, what are you working on these days?

You got anything you want to plug? Watch Journey to the Microcosmos. It's a pretty good show. And if you like Duboki, there's also tons of episodes of Tangents that Dubokie's been a guest on. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen.

That's helpful and helps us. know what you like about the show. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from the episode. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sarah Riley.

I've been Sam Shultz. And I've been Devokey Chakrabardi. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hofmeister and Sam Shultz, who edits a lot of these episodes along with Hirokamatsushima. Our social media organizer is Paolo Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is Tobokuch-Ravardi. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna Meddish, and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon.

you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. One way to immortalize poop is to let it fossilize into what's called a coprolite, a dried out piece of poo. The oldest human copperly was found in Oregon's Paisley Caves and, thanks to radiocarbon dating, it's estimated to be about 14,000 years old. I just love that there are some people who are like, they look down and they're in a cave and they're like, that's not a rock. How would you ever know that in a million years?

I don't know. I think, I'm assuming it's one of those things where once you know, you see it everywhere. Oh, yeah. All you see is rocks and poop. Poop and not poop, probably. It's a binary filter on the world. Hello and welcome to Side Show Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Sari Right. I feel like I need an asterisk next to my science expert for this episode, too.

Just, just little imagine it. And also our resident Everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. And we also have a special guest today, Twitch streamer and artist Ashley Roboto. Hi, everybody. I love having guests. I'm very excited. Ashley, what's the best Zelda game?

Oh, my gosh. Okay, considering this is a conversation I've had much today, I think personally, yes, my favorite Zelda game is Majora's Mask just because I am a fan of creepier stuff and is one of the first games I ever played. And I just, I love it. I feel like every time I play it, I discover something new and nuanced about it and it's really cool. But replayability, I feel like Ocreen of Time and Wind Waker. are pretty solid. I think that I have spent the most of my Zelda time in Majora's Mask personally. So I appreciate that.

Oh, that makes me. I feel very sophisticated. Solid. That was college time for me. Yeah, I can't picture a version of Hank that has time to play video games. I haven't played a video game in so long. Oh, no. I'm very sorry.

Also, I won't tell you when I played Majora's Mask. I'm going to leave that age off the table then. No, I'm used to that. this. Yeah. I usually say something. Like, I played Majora's mask when I was little and it scared me because I was too small. And so the moon coming down was just like, ah, this is too frightening for me. Because Sarah hadn't been born yet. She was just an embryo playing Majora's mask. She saw through her mother's stomach, the moon coming at her and got scared. Yeah, through the belly buttonhole. That's how it works. Science. This is a science podcast that

Exactly how it works. Yeah, that's why it's there. It's a peephole. I had a great conversation today with Maddie in the SciShow studio where we both discovered that we watched Blues Clues at the same time, but I did it as an adult because I didn't want to think about my responsibilities. Oh, very valid. She did it because she was in preschool.

She did it because she was a preschool work. That's awful. This thing that you're listening to right now is SciShow. tangents. Every week we get together, we try to one up a maze and delight each other with science fact, all while trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory, but we're also playing for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play, and at the end of the episode, one of you will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we introduced this week's topic with the traditional science poem. This week, it's going to be from me. Resistance is futile, they say with a smile,

As we visit the Apple store, walk down the aisle to see AirPods and watches, we can add to our bodies. There are hundreds of dollars, but still don't feel gaudy. They connect us to others and to our own selves. They're always upon us and never on shelves. Helps you sleep, helps you wake, helps you bake a sweet cake, helps you get from your house to a good steak and shake. There's this idea that someday we might be part machine, with sensors embedded in our skin so serene. But that isn't a day that we someday aspire for, because already, Most of us have become cyborgs.

And our topic for the today is cyborgs. Oh, my God, do we even, we don't even get a snapping break. That was beautiful. Oh, please, everybody snap. If it's good. Wow, Sarah didn't snap. It was fine. Sarah's been on a poem hot streak lately.

It's true. It's true. Look, we keep getting better at poems, and so occasionally one may be a little bit misses the mark. I feel like that last stanza I could have worked. harder on it. Well, nothing rhymes with cyborg, literally. Sarah, what's a cyborg? Well, I think you approached the heart of the debate in your poem, which is that it doesn't really have a scientific definition. So it's kind of like wherever

you want to draw the line, the line can exist. But the principle of a cyborg is that it is like a shortened form of cybernetic and organism. And it's used to describe something that is part biological and part technical. And so for some people, it's like, well, we're riding a bicycle or we're wearing glasses, and that's like a piece of technology that is enhancing our physical form in some way. But some people are like, you need to have like the traditional sci-fi picture of a cyborg is someone with like a laser eye or a completely replaced chunk of their body that not

only performs the function of that chunk, but like enhances it and is. seamlessly integrated with the biological parts of their flesh as opposed to, like, a phone that you hold in your hand. That was a little more broad than I have ever thought. And as soon as you said glasses, I just kind of sat here for the rest of the time thinking about if that really makes me a cyborg. You're totally a cyborg. Yeah. That's like up to you to decide as a glasses wear. Do you want to be a cyborg?

I think it just sounds cooler. Yeah. But also what counts as technology, right? Like language is a kind of technology. So from that perspective, humans have kind of been cyborgs from the very beginning. That's the thing that makes us so spectacularly able to survive. Maybe a little bit too able to survive if you ask some other species. So, like, what is the technology and what is it integrated?

How is it integrated into us? But I really do feel like the AirPods, that makes me feel very much. Like, I'll be across the house and then Siri will be like, hey, Hank, you just got a text from your mom and here's what it says. And I'm like, you took the Internet and put it into my brain just then. I'm not going to make Sarah tell us the etymology of the word cyborg, because it seems pretty recent. It's recent, but it's interesting. I was excited for this one.

All right, you go. It was coined in 1960 from a paper co-authored by two dudes, Manifed Klein and Nathan Klein, unrelated, who were specifically writing about people exploring space. And they made an argument that instead of creating human-like habitats in space, so like a lot of NASA research is, like, seeing how human bodies are affected by space and how we can build spacecraft or, like, habitats on other planets to protect humans and mimic an Earth environment. They suggested that what if we solve this problem by creating cyborgs? So changing the human body to adapt to a space environment rather than changing space to adapt to humans. And that is why they came up with a term. They were like, we can't adapt fast enough to extraterrestrial conditions.

So we should just become cyborgs if we want to go to space and adapt our bodies with technology instead. I mean, it's a real win. It's a win of a term. Cyborg, it just sounds very good. I often think sometimes whether or not an idea sort of sticks in our culture really comes down to whether you come up with a good word for it. So good job, Klein and Klein. Yes. The dynamic duo.

And because it's a constructed word, maybe that's part of why it doesn't have a lot of good rhymes. The only one I can think of is morgue. Yeah, I did. I looked at morgue. I thought about morgue for a while. Not a great, not very fun, though. No, yeah. Fly morgue.

You can make it kind of, I guess, fly the organism or fly cool. It could be a cool place where dead people hang out. Fly more, it's like, not like for the dead flies, but like the hip version of a fly. Yeah, the lit one, as I say, right? They have been cool. Uh-huh. It's a fly morgue. Now that we're fully up to speed on where the word cyborg comes from and what it means,

it's time for the quiz portion of our show. This week, we're playing a quiz called Secret Ingredient. So scientists have been exploring a variety of different methods to integrate plants into our potential cyborg future by using their internal biology and chemistry to create all sorts of cool things. So not a cyborg human, but a cyborg plant. This work is still very much in progress. So a lot of what they're making are just proofs of concept that might help us understand more of how we might combine plants and electronics. So for today, we're going to be playing secret ingredient where I will describe a cyborg plant technology, but I'm going to leave out

a key ingredient, and you will have to guess of three options, which that key ingredient is. Okay. Round number one. In 2015, researchers at the linkoping University in Sweden, I'm sure that's how it's pronounced, demonstrated the ability to add electronic functionality to a plant by assembling simple circuits that combined the rose with electronic materials. What was the secret ingredient behind their methods? Was it? A, an electrode that is activated by the puncturing of horns, horns, thorns? B, they don't have those. Roses don't have horns. B, genetically engineered protein that amplifies voltage, or C, a polymer electrolyte mixture

that assembles inside the xylem of the plant. But why? But why what, Sam? Why are they doing this? I said it's a proof of concept. We don't know yet what we're going to do with it. Maybe we're going to make the rose do a little dance for the one that you love.

That would be nice. You know, it's like Jurassic Park. It's like it's about if you could, not if you should. Yeah. Yeah, movie definitively proved that every time you should. Just keep doing. Well, I'm going to pick the xylem one. I see.

That's a word I know. Yeah. Zilom. Sounds like you could fit something inside there. It seems like the most specific to me. So I think there's the most thought there. So I'm going to go with C as well. Okay.

The thorn one sounds fake. I don't know what you'd do with puncturing thorns. Yes. So I'm going to go with B, just for the heck of it. You just want to add a little variety, a little spice. Yeah. Well, Sarah, you usually. should not have because the answer is C.

So scientists incorporated electronic components into a rose by submerging the stem in a solution of a conducting polymer called P dot. The P dot goes into the xylem. It's just sucked in via capillary action, and it creates wires that run through the rows. The scientist then tested the xylem wires out by cutting bits of the stem and seeing how they performed in different circuits. So boom, rose wires. Why are we doing it?

Don't ask questions. All right. That makes sense, because that's how they make roses, like, fake different colors. You know, the ones in the grocery store that you see that are bright blue. They just, like, put them in food coloring like that. One of the other things that they did is they used a different polymer, and when they run a voltage through that polymer, it changes color. So maybe that's what they're going to do.

Coming to a flower shop near you, color changing roses, if you plug them in. Round number two, everybody. Scientists at Nan Yang Technological University in Singapore created a soft electrode that would allow them to monitor a plant. as well as send electric signals to the plant to control its movement using a smartphone. To prove this concept would work, how did the team test out their system? Did they? A, turn a Venus flytrap into a set of pliers that can grab on to little tiny wires. Or B, construct a braided structure out of grapevines by controlling the movement of the vines,

or C, pull a lever connected to a sunflower by controlling the plant's bending. Plants can move, and now we can make them move, because we can't control ourselves. Yeah, but why? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. See, it was super cool in theory, but now that we have, like, a practical application, I don't like it as much. It's creepy. Yeah.

So my first thought when you said moving plants was sunflowers, because I know they move pretty dramatically to follow the sun and, like, even watching them in our yard. Like, they rotate throughout the day. That's really cool. So I'm going to just go with that one because I've seen them move and seeing as believing. Really, I have no idea, and I was just trying to make a reasoning behind, I guess. Grape vines are really flexible in the way that you can, like, weave them around things. Yeah. Like any sort of viny plant is.

And Venus flytraps already have the little mouth. The little mouth that opens and closes. And I just imagine it would be harder to pry it back open. but if you understood what electrical impulses or like what mechanism closed it, I imagine you could open it as well. Well, yeah, it must be somewhat similar-ish to like being able to electrode like your arm. Sure.

Right? Oh, no, I was kind of solid in my answer now. I don't know anymore. But I'm just going to guess B because it just felt right at the time when I heard it. I don't think of. Venus flytrap would be very helpful in any situation with little wires. So I'm going to also say B. Well, Sam, it doesn't matter whether or not it's useful. You just do it because you're a scientist.

Because it turns out the answer is indeed A. So many plants, it turns out, have really irregular surfaces and that makes it hard to attach electronic devices to them. But hydrogell electrodes, similar to what are used in EEGs, are easier to attach and to test out whether these electrodes could work At controlling a plant, scientists connected to them to a Venus flytrap and then sent electrical pulses through like Bluetooth or the smartphone or something to get it to close the leaves. Now, did they get them to open them back up? I don't know. That's not in my notes. Probably not.

But that's the thing. Then they connected the plant to a robotic arm and they were able to get it to pick up a little wire. And look, it's just so you can get a headline out. of it. That's the whole point. Yeah, fair. And finally, round number three. Scientists at MIT in the U.S. connected electrodes to the stems, leaves, and ground of a potted plant, using the plant's own internal chemistry to send signals to a robot attached to the pot. The robot has a key part that allows it to respond to what the plant is feeling. What is that part? Is it, A, a set of wheels that moves the pot when the plant senses light, B, a heated wall that turns on when

the plant gets cold, or C, an arm that transports water to the plant when it is thirsty. Okay, that's cute. It's one of those, and regardless, it's awesome. They're all cool. Maybe robots and plants can be friends. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, could you imagine how much it would help people that just cannot keep a plant alive? It's like, that's in the robot's hands now.

I got it. A heated wall sounds so boring. I feel like sea is watering, right? I think that would probably be the first place that, like, you know, if I was smarter and a scientist, I would try to make that work. I think it's C. They're all very plausible, though. What's it to do? The first one, what was A?

A was a set of wheels that moves the pot when the plant senses light. Maybe wouldn't you want it to move when the plant wasn't sensing light? Well, that's like maybe the thing is if it's not at the right level of light, then the wheels wheel it to get the right level of light. The answer was, though, I believe, when the plant is sensing light, right? Oh, we're going into technicalities. It does. It moves the pot when the plant senses light.

Hmm, suspicious. I think it's the watering one. I think it's the watering one, too, just because that feels like, plants sense that really obviously. But the other thing that they sense really obviously is light. Oh, no. Oh, no. And look, I don't know why they had the plant move when it sensed light.

I guess just because they could. Because they couldn't figure out how to do it when it didn't sense light, maybe. Exactly, yeah. Or if a plant isn't sensing light, it just drives itself around forever. Like a robot. Yeah. It's like just searching, searching. I love this so much.

Maybe it, like, moves toward the light. I don't know. I don't think it does. I think it just moves when it senses light. But there's a name for the system. It's called the Eloan, E-L-O-W-A-N, so it sounds very elvish. Yes. And I, yes, I, any time, I just, like, the plant just driving itself around.

It makes me really happy. Someday plants will have cars. That is a little more scary. I like the little tiny-potted little cars, though. That's cute. Yeah. Yeah, someday plants will have cars And they will just drive faster and faster

As long as there is sun It's like, I love this so much And they just crash into each other And that's the thing that finally stops us And gets us on trains again Yeah, just shove a bunch of sunflowers On the auto bond and let them go. Exactly.

Well, that means that overall, none of you did particularly well. But no one as poorly as Sary. The scores are Ashley with one point, Sam with one point and sari with zero Hank bucks. Next, we're going to take a short break, and then it will be time for another game. Welcome back, everybody.

It's time for Trisha Fale. Contact lenses, have a long history. history, including one contraption proposed in 1637 by René Descartes that involved filling a tube with water and placing the tube in contact with your eye. No, don't do it. Not in that time. Yeah, come on, Descartes. I thought you were smart.

Fortunately, scientists and doctors have come up with a lot of advances since then, and many of us have been able to correct our vision thanks to the lenses that we put directly onto our eyes, which I haven't done since high school because I just didn't like how it felt. But of course, technology continues to advance, and scientists have developed ways to integrate electronics into our contact lenses so that they can do more than just correct our vision. The following are three stories of cyborg contact lens advancement for medical purposes, but only one of them is real. Which one of them is it? Are you ready? I think so. Maybe. Fact number one. Scientists have invented a contact lens that monitors changes in the shape of your eyeball, collecting data.

and sending it wirelessly to a device so that doctors can diagnose potential disease. Or is it fact number two? Scientists have invented a contact lens that clears persistent floaters from your eyes using small vibrations that are programmed so that when worn, the contact lens will shake the floaters and clear them away. Wouldn't you, wipers? Yeah, basically. For your eyeballs, eyeball wipers. Or fact number three, scientists have invented a contact lens that helps reduce eye strength.

by using light-sensitive materials that trigger the muscles in your eyes to temporarily relax when you've been staring at a screen for too long. That sounds dangerous. Look, we've just gone over the fact that scientists are making plant cars, and we're all going to die. I feel like the most useful one is the first one. It would be like monitoring that kind of nonsense, which is helpful. People are very into this. just like covering our body in sensors so that we can always know when we are experiencing or not experiencing disease. Just put the whole doctor business out of business.

Well, there's like this increasing push towards personalized medicine that's also like a surveillance state that I don't know how to feel about because I'm not smart enough. Apple's like I know how firm your eyeballs are. Yeah. It's like you know how many steps I took. You know my sleep patterns and you know my eyeball firmness. Like, is that good because you can tailor my care? Yes. Maybe is it bad because, I don't know, you can market me things based on my eyeball firmness.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Are we going to have like a temperapeutic eye firmness scale? I've never worn contacts. I'm terrified of them. I don't like touching my eyes. No, I, hilariously enough, I've worn glasses since I was like in sixth grade. But in high school, instead of, you know, normal contact lenses with the prescribes.

description, I wore colored contacts and then my glasses just to really make my life hell for a while. Yeah. Sounds very high school. Yeah, it sounds eye infectiony. Didn't do it for very long, so thank God. Yeah, I stopped wearing my, I stopped wearing contact lenses when I went to a warped tour and I lost them both in a mosh pit. Oh, no. And I had to call my mom to pick me up.

Oh, you loser. It was a loose mosh pit. there were not very many people in the audience, but there was one man who put me in a headlock and then raked his whole arm across my eyes and extracted both of my contact lenses. Oh, that is way too much eyeball contact for my liking. How did you keep your eyes open through that whole problem?

I don't know. It was very intense. You were scared. Mosh fits, man. You can't close your eyes. You never know what's going to happen. I guess so. Wow. Yeah. Oh, my Lord. Do you guys want to hear him again?

I'm still going to go with number one. Yeah, you've got your wireless eyeball shape monitoring contact lens. You're vibrating floater clearing contact lens or your light sensitive muscle relaxing contact lens. Do your eyeballs change shape? Yes, yeah, they do. I guess when you squint, you're making them a different shape, huh? Well, like, even when you focus on things. So this is another cool part.

I read an interview with the guy who made up the term cyborg, and he's like, we already kind of are because, like, we. We get muscle feedback. This is a cool tangent. I wanted to work in the episode, so I'm glad you asked. Oh, you look so excited. We get muscle feedback. So if you think, like, oh, I want to clench my fist, you can, like, feel that and, like, see the consequences of that. But the control of the lens in our eyes happens not quite subconsciously, but, like, without that kind of motor feedback.

We just, like, think about what we want to focus on, whether it's at a distance or up close. And our eye lenses and our eye muscles adjust that. for us and like the the feedback is that we see the thing that we want to see more clearly but we don't like feel those muscles move necessarily and I like sat after reading that and thought about it for like 10 minutes because it's just like I don't know I couldn't tell my lens like while I'm focused on something up close like to focus far away or focus at a different distance I can make it either like blurry or not but not with the precision that my eyes and brain do without me consciously thinking of it. Yes, eyes are very much, like, surprisingly

out of our control. And also, like, the information we get from them is surprisingly not what we think it is. It's a kind of illusion oftentimes. I will still never get over just thinking about, like, the cones in our eyes and how different animals have so much more. Like, I have no idea what we don't see in the world. And that is an uncomfortable thing to think about. The light-sensitive muscle relaxing thing, what if you forget that you have them in and you're driving down the street and all of a sudden you're like,

is that what happened? Man, I don't know. I don't think that dramatically, probably. I help not. That sounds too dangerous. So I'm going to go with number one also. Okay. Okay, I'm going to do just try to be different

and it hasn't worked out from so far. I'm going to go with the muscle relaxing one just because, I don't know. I'm going to keep you all guessing a little bit and let you know that Sari was wrong, but was close because scientists have been developing contact lenses with artificial irises that respond to light for people who have damaged irises. So if you aren't able to contract your own iris anymore,

scientists are working on a thing that responds to light and contracts an artificial iris. So you are right that it is a thing, but it was not that thing that I said. that it was. It was close, but not quite there. Now, did the other two people get it right? You, in fact, did. Yay! Good job.

So, yeah, this soft contact lens has a microprocessor in it and an antenna in it and a strain gauge, a device that measures the amount of strain the lens is experiencing, and it's used to measure intraocular pressure, which is a major risk factor for glaucoma. And you can do this. When you go into the eye doctor, sometimes they'll, like, shoot a puff of air at your eye, and that will give you that moment's intraocular pressure.

But those measurements don't capture the variation that can happen over the course of a day. So that contact lens, which is made by a Swiss manufacturer, Sensimed. It's called the Triggerfish, which is a lovely name. And it's designed to be worn over the course of 24 hours, during which time it will take 300 strain gauge readings over 30 seconds every five minutes, producing 80. 6,400 data points over 24 hours, and that is just sent to a recorder on the patient, and the data then gets into a computer where the doctors can assess your patient's eye health so that we can know for sure how your glaucoma's doing. Okay.

So do you always wear this, or is this like when you're doing a sleep test? Okay. Yeah, it's like you just get monitored for 24 hours because they might probably only if there was some sign that things aren't ideal. Yeah. And they'd be like, oh, you're sort of at the edge of the range. Let's wear this for 24 hours. hours. Is the windshield wipers real? Sam, windshield wipers are real. They go on cars, but there

isn't a good way to break up the floaters that you have in your eyes. Ashley, do you have a science background, or are you just a science genius? Oh, I wouldn't call me a genius, but I, honestly, I just have been super into science for like a hot minute. Fun fact, mostly because of crash course. I've just been really kind of into science, and it's just been one of those things. the internet is vast and you have access to so much knowledge so sometimes i go on deep dives it doesn't bode well that you just beat the content the main editor of crash course at a science game i think nothing of the sword i'm just over here i edit the content i don't need to generate it i hire experts to generate it and i've been deep in organic chemistry which is

is not cyborg-related at all. I could tell you about Aldol and Clayson reactions. I can push electrons around. I've basically spent two years taking two semesters of organic chemistry and I'm ready to take the MCAT now. Oh, my God.

And never again, well, you have to think about an owl. But thank you for that very important work. It has not, as we say, helped you. And you have been punished for not snapping for my poem with zero Hank books. at the end of the episode, whereas Ashley and Sam have tied for the win. Yay!

See, that's what we get for snapping for the pump. That's what it is. That's how it works. Now it's time for Ask the Science Couch, where we've got listener questions for our couch of finely honed scientific minds. This question is from at Giant Bonsai. How is the mind able to send pulses to technology to control it like our actual body in the parts that require conscious voluntary control?

How do the signals know where to go? So this is a thing that we're seeing now with some prosthetics where you can actually think about moving a prosthetic and the prosthetic will move, which is wild. And new to my life. Like it did not exist when I was a teenager and now does. I don't know the answer to this question, though. Sari, do you have any idea? I do. I'm being punished by having to do more work for this podcast.

As always. But yeah, so there are multiple kinds of prosthetics. Like you said, some are just cosmetic, like filling in the missing space on the body. Some of them are muscle controlled and provide structural support through like a harness or cables attached. And then now we are venturing into the expensive myoelectric prosthetics. Mayo is like from muscle and then electric is electric that work together with the electrical impulses from the nervous system and like the muscular system and have rechargeable batteries and other. electronic components. And basically what it does is it takes advantage of the fact that our bodies are powered by electricity and our muscles already use electricity to move. Neurons and muscle cells

can use membrane potentials to generate electrical signals. They generally at resting state have a negative charge inside and a positive charge outside and then when they want to send an electrical signal or when your brain tries to send an electrical signal, then sodium channels or like different ion channels open so that the charges can rush in and then when they reach a certain threshold, that creates an electrical impulse. And so neurons signal other neurons and then neurons can also signal muscle cells. And that's what causes the muscle cells to start contracting. And in myoelectric prostheses, it's not as simple as like changing a light fixture. So our bodies don't have wires and we don't understand the nervous system

that much. So like in the way that you know what you're going to see when you pull a light off the wall, like you'll have a ground, you'll have a positive and a negative and maybe like a fan cable, your arm doesn't have those hookups. So it's like you don't have like this, this finger nerve goes here. We know where the muscles are, but when we're building a prosthesis that hooks up electrically, there are electrodes that sit over working muscles or active nerve areas that still do generate that electrical impulse and that changes from person to because different people have different kinds of nerve damage and different working areas of their body so that when they move certain muscles in a certain way, and like they try and place the electrodes and program the response to the arm or leg or whatever limb is being replaced in such a way that when they flex certain muscles that mimic what they would have done with a biological limb, the microprocessor and the motors in the electronic prosthesis mirror that. If, for example, you had a prosthetic arm and you flexed a muscle

that you typically would to clench your hand, then that would send a signal to the robot arm to clench. And it's very difficult to do. And a lot of them don't work very well and people don't trust them super well because it's like everyone's body is different. And there's often like a really delayed reaction time where like if you if you think about clenching, your hand, it's almost instantaneous. And when that doesn't happen instantaneously with a prosthetic, that becomes really discouraging for folks who are doing these motor tests. And so there's a whole bunch of literature not just about how they work, but how they work

not well enough to be mass produced or, like, very usable for people because they get frustrated or, like, feel out of sync with it. To me, that seems like it might be like a pretty hard problem to overcome. as well. It's just hard to, it's, the nervous system is not electronics. And so that interface where you've got this like cool metal arm, like forearms sticking out of your elbow does seem a bit of a ways away. How does the nerve impulse get through this skin? Is it just very close to the skin? Yeah, I think it's very close to the skin in the way that you can kind of like, like with a defibrillator, you can put patches on the outside of the skin and restart a heart.

I think the skin is conductive enough to transmit the electrical signal or transmit enough of an electrical signal to be read. Yeah. Because in like, you know, science fiction, comic book cyborgs, it's just like the flesh just fuses into, but that is not how this works. We have to contain the body. Has to stay on the inside. Otherwise, there's going to be a lot of issues.

Yeah. I think that part is definitely. I don't know. We've like sort of explored that territory. And I didn't research pacemakers and things like that. There is separate research into technology that integrates with organs safely. But that is, it's not necessarily controlled. It like can help control the electrical impulse of the organ. So like a pacemaker helps you regulate your heartbeat, but is not in turn controlled by your heart. Like you're not thinking about it. It's just a battery. that is taking along.

One day at a time, science, I have faith in you. But the bad news is I will die probably before you finish that job. Put your brain in a jar and then put wheels on it and then it'll drive toward the light. Yeah. Yeah, there you go.

If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at Judah Kras at Mala Monster and everybody else who tweeted us to your questions

for this episode. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us. If you want more Ashley Roboto, where can they go for that? Thank you so much for having me. It was an absolute pleasure to be here. Oh, my gosh. I am just buzzing with excitement that I was even here with y'all. It was a great time.

If y'all want more of my content, I stream Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday on Twitch at twitch.com. Ashley Roboto and just at Ashley Roboto is where you can find me anywhere. Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, all those. I'm everywhere. Thank you so much, Ashley. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's super easy to do that.

You can subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you're new and you are just coming to listen to Ashley, you can also go to Patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents and become a Patreon and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes of our show. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show and helps other people know how great we are.

And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, Just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sarah Riley. I've been Sam Schultz. I've been Ashley Ramato. Hi.

SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hofmeister and Sam Schultz who edits a lot of these episodes. Our social media organizer is Palo Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is to Boki Chalk Rivardi. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna Meddish and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you.

And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be light. But one more thing. In the mid-2000s, Gett Galvin of Yorkshire, England, was in a terrible motorcycle accident in which he suffered severe internal injuries. As a result of the accident, he needed to use a colostomy bag. But in 2009, he underwent an experimental surgery to build him a new colon. Doctors removed a muscle from his leg, molded it into a sphincter, and filled it with remote control electrodes that allowed his sphincter to open and close

with the push of a button on a cell phone-sized remote control that he carries with him. And since he is British, many of the articles about GED's new sphincter, call it a bionic bottom. So, great. Holy, what? Why don't I know about that? Button operated, too. It's just like, I'm no straining to poop.

Just, I want to poop now. Open that shoot. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangent, sits the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host Hank Green. Joining me this week, as always, is our science expert, Sari Riley. Hello. And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz.

Hello. But you know what Sam Schultz isn't ignorant of? Oh, no. Don't. Don't do this to me. The Vampire Diaries. Can you explain to me how the vampires work in the vampire diaries? Well, they used, they at the beginning of the show in the first season.

Like normal vampires? Can they go out in the sunlight? They need a magic ring to go out in the sunlight. Grain? No, no, I'm like ring. A ring, a ring. A ring. A ring. You know, they eat a piece of toast. Yeah. Yeah, they need magic grain. That would actually be cool.

It's Keenwa. So, yeah, when you first meet Stephan Salvatore, the main vampire of the show, He's got this big ugly ring on. Oh, he can go outside. That's what he needs to go outside. It's a daylight ring. And the witch has to make it for you. And eventually everybody just has one.

Oh, it's okay. It's not just like one. And it can get more. So it's not like the Highlander where you have to like stab Stefan Salvatore to get the ring. Well, in the first season, that is kind of the way it is. There's like, there's only two when it's like, oh, we need these rings. But then like the next few seasons, it's just like, oh, yeah, my necklace is one. So they're just people who drink blood now.

Yeah. Yeah. Do they like garlic? Yeah, they can eat garlic. That's a very specific. There's a scene where Stefan's cut in garlic, and he's like, I love Italian food. So that was made up. Yeah, that one was made up.

They can't turn into bats, which is really dumb. I think they should be able to turn into bats. I think that's, like, the coolest vampire power, I think. Yeah, but it's really hard. I understand turning into a cloud of bats, but turning into one bat, that's just against all science. Oh, it's hard scientifically. I thought you meant, like, the graphics would be hard to do. Yeah, it's just conservation of matter is kind of a big deal. You can give you one really heavy bat.

That's right. Yeah, a large bat. Yeah, it's just all the protein. It's like a neutron star inside of the bat. Yeah, infinitely dense bat. Yeah. Perfect. You've solved the problem.

Yeah. Any other questions? Yeah. So they do drink blood. Do they kill people? Oh, all the time. There's some of them that drink blood so hard that they make the head pop off of the person who's blood they're drinking.

That's not how that works. They're called rippers. They suck so hard that it just goes, whoop? Or do they bite into? Who really? could say but they are going to grab a person they bite and then at the end of the biting their head just pops right off their body it's really cool actually but they're bad vampires we don't like them because they make the heads pop off instead of just killing they're good and bad

vamp so is there like there are there some like listat who just like uh stumble around the streets of of paris france and chew the heads off of rats uh oh yeah that's stephen he's like that Except he's secretly a ripper, and he can't control himself. So he has to drink animal blood, because if he gets one drop of human blood, he'll go nuts, and he'll start popping people's heads off. Does he pop animals' heads off? No, he can drink that stuff normal. He could, like, need a cow and the other stuff, yeah.

Just like mice with just, boom, boom, boom, boom, boo, boom, boom. Yeah, you're shotgunting mice, and their heads are just flying out there. Yeah, these are all better ideas than the vampire diary explorers. Is it like the princess diaries? No, they write in a diary like one time in the first episode And then there's no diaries after that There's a few and every like once a season Somebody will write in a diary

I love garlic Pop, pop Yeah Why are you asking me about this to make me embarrassed? No, you seem to know a lot I feel like I should be aware of how it works It's a good show It's an everyman's sort of knowledge

I think Then there's werewolves, too. We haven't even got into the werewolves. Do they also drink blood? No. Do they also pop heads off? They could if they wanted to. Then there's half wolf, half vampire.

They can do all. They can do all of the above. Whoa. Okay. Are there witch wolf vampire? No, you can't be magical and be a vampire or a one. Oh, that's a rule. That's a real rule.

Yeah. If you get turned into one of those, you lose your magic. Except, Stefan's mom. There's a lot. Always the one. Spoilers. Okay. Good to warm up for

Halloween, guys. We're getting in the spirit. So every week here on Syshow Tangerins, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts and vampire diaries facts, while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank Bucks, and I'll be awarding those as we play, so at the end of the episode, one of them can be crowned of the winner.

But as always, we've got to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week it's from me oh a treat a treat for the for the people who aren't uh watching on video you you only know that the treat made a number of noises yeah a thing we've known through modernity atoms are unchanged for eternity even when they change their chemicals Oxygen is oxygen and hydrogen is hydrogen. Always the same, they never change. Whoa, but then they do big atoms can decay from one element to another cascade. Particles emitted, they're emitted, particles emitted, they're emitted.

Whoa, oh, they're radioactive. Oh, oh, they're radioactive, radioactive, radioactive. No one tell Imagine Dragons. We didn't get the rights to this song. Please don't tell on us. We'll get in trouble. You're allowed to say that was really cool, but you have to be kind of secretive about it. Oh, yeah, yeah.

When you're tweeting about it. The topic for the day is radioactive, specifically, I could have kept going because there's other kinds of radioactive. I feel like. You're saving that for your new. album right but i got to save for the new album uh you know i think you committed a crime that weird owl doesn't commit where weird out changes the uh the the chorus i think that's where you're going to get in trouble i change the chorus what is it they're not i'm their radioactive oh see okay we're fine we're fine yeah so our topic for the day is radioactive sarie what

does radioactive mean? Did I get everything in my 85 word song? I mean, you got the gist of it, which is all we can ever hope to do with this definition section. So, uh, radioactivity is just radiation admitted by a radioactive material. And that can be lots of different forms. It can be alpha particles, beta particles, neutrons. These are specific things. One of those things is like a high energy electron maybe or photon or what are they beta particles are electrons that are not attached atoms so like spinning out an electron alpha particles are the chunky ones so they're uh two protons two neutrons oh so big big boys big large boys that's basically that's basically a that's basically a nucleus at that point yes basically like a little bigger than a high it's like a heliumish size

yeah it's a helium nucleus that's an alpha particle the giant one uh beta particles are like spewing out a little electron. The third is a neutron, which is like a hydrogen kind of. It's a little smaller, but spewing that out. And then there's electromagnetic radiation, which is like x-rays, gamma rays, visible light. And that's just like light. Yeah. Light. Yeah. Light and different. And the gamma rays are like light that'll do you a damage. Yeah, there's light that will not do you damage. And then there is light that is high energy enough that can get in there. You get into atoms and molecules, yeah, and start messing things up. So radioactivity is it, pium, pium, shooting?

Is that what radioactivity is? Something shooting off of something? I read a lot about radioactivity. I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Oh, wow. Especially nuclear energy. So there's the radiation. This is the confusing thing.

There's radiation that comes off of radioactive things. And something that's radioactive is, I think all it's really saying is that, like, Like, there are waves, there are, there's emissions coming off of this thing. But I think that in general, when we say radioactive, we mean things that are emitting particles, like actual pieces of themselves. And when that happens, they can actually decay into other elements. Okay. Can we talk about how you said, oh, wow, after I said I read about it and couldn't make heads or tails of it? Look, you know about vampire diary?

You said the thing I said. No, I wasn't. Yeah. It's not, yeah, it's not, that's, that's, that's, I wasn't awowing you. I was awowing the, like, terminology mess that we got ourselves into because we didn't really understand what was going on when we first started naming this stuff. Okay. Yes.

Yeah. That is the big problem. It's like, depends on where you draw the circle. Because technically, if you wanted to be stubborn about it, you could claim that, well, like, so many. That, like, my LED is radioactive because it's emitting lights. A light bulb is radioactive. Because it's okay, I see, I see. Well, because everything, to some extent, or a lot of things, are emitting small doses of radiation.

And there's like a background radiation everywhere. Yeah, there's cosmic radiation in the universe. I'm radioactive both because I have potassium in me. That has some unstable potassium, a little bit of stainless. But also because I emit infrared light because I'm warm. That's nice. So where does this word come from? that we're so confused about.

Yeah, radioactivity. So I looked up radioactivity, but I assume radioactive is similar. It's fairly recent, which is probably why we're so confused about it, because radioactivity comes from the French radioactivete, which I think is like, which was made up by Pierre and Marie Curie in 1898. They were like, what is this new element? they had some predecessors who had studied uranium and the fact that it emits radioactive particles,

but they were the ones to first use radioactivity as an adjective or a noun. Whatever part of it, radioactive as an adjective. This is a science show. This isn't a grammar show. To describe what they were working on in uranium and polonium and radium. And they were like, radioactivity is a property that these things have.

And further back than that, I tried to trace it. There are several different ways that we started incorporating, like, radio into words, and especially in recent history, where, like, radio means the machine, the radio, and then we tack that on to words. But at this point, the use of radio in radio activity came from the Latin radius, meaning ray. Oh, yeah. And so it came more from the idea of a ray of light, a beam of. light and the emission property of it to get into that, like the radiantness of it, as opposed to the straight rod in the middle of a circle. It's a little bit frustrating to me that light is radiation.

Now, I know that that's ridiculous, but it does seem like we got this word that turned bad. You know, at first it was like, this is interesting. And then it was like, this is cool. And then this is good. We should shine it into our eyeballs. And then I was like, actually, it's terrible. We should be terrified of it. And that has lasted a long time.

And now people sort of like radiation is synonymous with ionizing, dangerous cancer-causing radiation. Whereas it's sort of important to realize we also get to, like, people use that word for visible light. It was going to be a Halloween topic, but then I moved it up a little bit. Because it's scary. Yeah, you can definitely make a Hulk with it. A giant ant, a giant mantis, giant octopus. Really take your pick. Giant spider.

It's got to be time to go into the quiz portion of our show. We're going to be playing radioactivity this or that. So our bodies are constantly interacting with radiation. That's coming from space, from materials found on Earth, from things that we make. And the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements estimates the average person in the U.S. experiences around 6.2 milliseconds per year. So about half of that is from natural background radiation, and the other half is from man-made things like medical stuff, industrial sources. Fortunately, this amount of radiation does not seem to do us very much harm. Researchers have measured the radiation doses we experience from a variety of sources.

So today, we're going to be playing this or that, radioactive edition. where I will present to you two things, and you will have to guess which one is more radioactive. Radioactive. Whoa. Whoa. So first we're going to start out with medicine. Which one of the following things requires a larger dose of radiation,

an x-ray of your chest or a CT scan of your chest? Couldn't tell you what a CT scan is exactly. A cat scan. Yeah, it's a cat scan. Okay. Now I know at least what the word is. I'm not really sure what that does. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's understandable.

You're not old enough to need to know all the medical things that happen. Your boss hasn't broken down yet. Yeah, I just read a biography of Antoine Lavoisier, the guy who basically sort of invented the modern concepts of how chemistry works. And as he was in his little cell getting ready to be put to death during the French Revolution, he wrote a letter to his cousin. and it said something to the effect of, at least I have been spared the indignities of old age. That's nice. He was putting a good spin on it.

Yeah. He was like, getting old kind of sounds like it's awful hard. Anyway, I don't want to have to learn with a CT scan. All right. I guess it's probably CT scan because X-ray, I feel like it's like this is the trick question. That's what I think, too. I think it's a CT scan because I think it takes longer. I feel like an x-ray, you just go, you get x-rays at the dentist, even in your chest.

You could probably do it pretty fast. Well, you are correct, and all the people who know about medicine were screaming the answer to you because CT scans are actually just a bunch of x-rays. Oh, yeah. So you take x-ray images from a lot of different angles, and that requires, obviously, a larger radiation dose than a single x-ray would. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, so they both produce ionizing radiation.

that involves high-energy wavelengths that allow the particles to penetrate the tissue, and a chest x-ray has an average radioactive dose of 0.1 milosea-sevarts, a CT scan of the chest, has an average radiation dose of 7 milliseconds. And we get six per year normally? Is that what you said? We got 6.2 a year, that's right. Okay. So, yeah, you only get a CT scan if you need one. Okay.

That's for sure. It's like 70 little chest x-rays going, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. The radiation that doesn't get absorbed in these things, that's the stuff that makes it through and produces the final image and the doctors use these effective dose values to understand the risk that the procedures might pose to the body overall and to balance that with the potential benefits of using these scans. Round number two, we've moved to medicine to travel. Which of the following exposes airline passengers and crew to more radiation, a flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco or a flight from Hong Kong to Hartford? Hong Kong to Hartford Gosh Frankfurt to San Francisco

I feel like the polls have something to maybe like I don't know You're going over the top or something I'm going to guess Hong Kong to San Francisco Because You can't You gotta guess Hong Kong to Hartford

I'm going to guess Hong Kong to Hartford I'm going to guess Hong Kong to Hartford Because just to I can't logic through it This is beyond what I can do So the best I can do is guess. So as you have correctly surmised, space is a source of radiation.

There's x-rays, there's high-energy particles, there's gamma rays. And they also react with our atmosphere and create secondary radiation that can reach us. And while you fly, you are at a higher altitude, and that means you're less shielded from all that radiation. There are other factors that impact the amount of radiation that flyers experience as well, like the duration of their flight, of course. And also the distance from the equator, which makes a difference because of how early. magnetic field pushes radiation towards the poles. Good job, Sam. You were right, but you still got the wrong answer.

Well, I wasn't sure where any of those places were exactly, so that was a problem. So in 2016, researchers used models of solar activity and its effect on the energy of particles impacting the Earth to estimate the average radiation doses that different passengers would experience on different flight routes. And with their model, they calculated that on average a passenger from Frankfurt to San Francisco experiences an average dose of 70.7 microceverts, not milliseconds, even smaller, while a passenger from Hong Kong to Hartford experiences 93.2 microceverts. And in general, they found that the highest dosage flights were ultra-long-haul flights between U.S. and Asia, a lot of those, and above the

halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. I'm surprised that you could go from Hong Kong to Hartford. It's Hartford. Yeah. No offense to Hartford. The Hartford International layer for it, you know? Yeah. Can you really do that? We can't, we can go to like four places from Missoula. They can go to Hong Kong. That doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem fair at all. And our last section of this or that. It's, it's the food edition. Which one of the following has more radiation? One kilogram of beer or one kilogram of bananas? Beer, bananas. Beer, I don't know. We talked about like whiskey barrels having the nuclear bomb radiation in them or whatever. So I'll just go with beer. Do you put beer in barrels? I don't know. Some even must. I feel like I watch

a Popeye cartoon where beer was in a barrel. With a with XX whatever on it and glugs it out of the barrel. Or isn't that what, isn't that what, isn't that what dumpo is drinking out of barrels or something like that? Well, what do you think? I think it's bananas because of the potassium, but I don't know what else is in beer. Beer is like a lot of carbs and water and I don't think that's very radioactive. Sari's right. Damn. It's just a lot of carbs and water.

But all of our foods, to some degree, has some radioactivity, in part because of carbon isotopes, and there's going to be carbon in anything you eat. But there is also other elements, like potassium 40 or radium 26. The units used to report these values are in picocuris per kilogram, where a picoiris describes the amount of ionizing radiation released when an element goes through radioactive decay and emits energy. So in the case of bananas versus beer, bananas have around 3,520 pico-curies per kilogram, and beer has 390. Luckily, the amount of radiation from a banana doesn't really add up to very much when we eat them. However, the radioactivity of bananas has inspired an unofficial

radioactivity scale called the banana equivalent dose to describe the radiation exposure in terms of bananas, where one BED equals 0.1 microceiver. Scientists left having fun. That's right. All right, Sam, you have one point in Sari. Has three going into the break. Next, we're going to take a short break. Then it'll be time for the fact off.

Welcome back, everybody. It's time for the fact off. Annalists have all brought science facts to present in an attempt to blow my mind, and after they have presented their facts, I will judge and award them. Hank Bucks, anyway, I see fit. To decide who goes first, I have a trivia question. The fungus cladosporium spherospermum seems to thrive in the presence of radiation. So naturally, research sent a sample to space, monitoring it for 30 days aboard the International Space Station.

Their experiments demonstrated that a 1.7 millimeter thick bed of fungus could lower radiation levels in the area. by 2.17% compared to an area that wasn't shielded by the fungi. Based on their results, the researchers estimated how thick of a layer of cladosporium they would need to create earth-like conditions on Mars. How thick would this fungus blockade need to be? What units do you want? Let's do feet. Oh, feet.

Oh, sorry. Maybe I gave something away. That's big. Yeah, I was going to get it wrong. by. Also, meters would be fine. Okay. I'm imagining swaddling myself in a blanket of fungus. What would make me feel safe on Mars? I think 20 feet.

Oh, that's a lot. Okay, I'm going to say two meters. It's just dang mushrooms. Sarah says two meters. It's 2.3 meters. Wow. My mental, my mind palace did me well.

Just picturing being enveloped by two meters of fungus on every side. Yeah, and do I feel safe now? Yes. I feel safe now. That's the only way to feel safe. Just as long as you have a snorkel. Yeah, yes, a straw. Breathe out. So that means you get to decide who goes first. Sam, you can go first. Oh, no. I'm taking the cowards way out. I wasn't prepared for this. The Boy Scouts of America, just for those of you out there who don't know, is a youth organization devoted to teaching kids, junk like tying knots,

catching fish, identifying plants, whittling, good forest-based activities that all blue-blooded American children ought to know. When you get good enough with these things and pass some tests, you get a little badge to put on your sash, and those with many badges are most esteemed among Boy Scouts. But in addition to your more traditionally outdoorsy array of badges, there are some weird-ass badges like dentistry or fingerprinting, or one that indirectly led to a Michigan Scout's backyard being declared a Superfund site, Atomic Energy.

David Hahn, a Boy Scout, was awarded the Merit Badge and Atomic Energy in 1991 after completing some rudimentary tests and projects like building a model of a nuclear reactor with cans and straws and household items. But David Hahn was also a naturally born scientist and had been studying chemistry since he was tin inspired by the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, which was given to him by his grandpa. and he had spent the intervening four years doing things like learning how to make nitroglycerin and blowing up his bedroom numerous times to the point where he had been exiled to his backyard as kind of like his little laboratory where he was doing his chemistry experiments.

So David, at this point, was a bit drunk off the power of chemistry and decided that he didn't just need to leave his exploration of nuclear power at a mere model. So he started sending out letters to various nuclear energy organizations including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, posing as a high school teacher and asking for educational material

to use in his classes, like where in the natural and man-made world one could find radioactive materials. And they say him all kinds of info back, enough that he eventually figured out that he could create purified thorium out of parts of gas lanterns combined with lithium from $1,000 worth of batteries.

So he just poured lithium on this. Then he put a Geiger counter on his car's dashboard and drove around town, finding all of the radium he could from old watch faces and instrument panels, and use that to irradiate his thorium, which he then combined with

Amerisium, Ameri-eim. Amaricium. Oh, shoot. I wasn't even close. Which is what's in smoke detectors that makes them detect smoke. It's radioactive as well. And he built a breeder reactor, which I don't entirely understand what a breeder reactor is or how it works,

but it's a reactor that can somehow make more fissile material than it uses and they were a major source of interest of nuclear scientists in the 50s but a couple of the major experimental breeder reactors ended in near meltdown so they lost popularity but David made one and it worked but it started working too well

so well that radiation was becoming detectable up and down his block so he took the reactor apart and hid it in his car trunk but in a case of weird mistaken identity a cop ended up searching his trunk for something not even related to him basically and ran across a reactor and started messing with it.

And David said, I wouldn't do that. That's radioactive. Then a few days later, flash forward a few days later, the FBI, the EPA, and the NRC are in David's backyard, detecting background radiation 50 times higher than normal background radiation. And ultimately, his shed was declared a super fun site, dismantled, sealed in barrels, and buried in the Utah desert, alongside material for nuclear bomb testing. And all of this after he had already gotten his merit badge.

So the lesson is, as story editor Alex Billow put it, when I sent him this story, there is such thing as trying too hard. Oh, don't I know it? That's amazing. I'm not sure what my favorite part is. The part where he drove around with a Geiger counter on his dashboard so he could find radium watch faces?

And apparently that worked? That seemed like it was a bit of ostentatious. move on his part but it actually accidentally did end up working out because he passed an antique store and it like went crazy and then he found an old clock and inside of the old clock he found a vial of radium that had been left so you could like touch up the clock face oh wow and that was what he used mostly to to shoot his thorium with but i think probably the best best part is that they buried his shed in the desert i think that's my favorite part too they put it in barrels and took it away and put it in the desert. I like the email or the sending letters to the government pretending to be a teacher.

That is also very good. All right, Sary, what do you have to compete with a nuclear boy? So certain radioactive isotopes of elements have an ominous nickname. They're bone seekers. They tend to accumulate in our bones if they get into the human body somehow. So for example, strontium 90 is in the same periodic table group as calcium, so one of the columns, and acts chemically similar to it. This radioactive form has 38 protons, like a stable strontium atom, but what makes it an isotope is its whopping 52 neutrons. And in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as nuclear testing was ramping up, and isotopes like strontium 90 were getting released into the environment as waste products, there was a lot of curiosity about how much people were getting

affected by them. What's happening here? So the physician, Luis Rice, along with her husband and some other scientists, mostly environmental scientists, led a project where she was basically the tooth fairy, but in a scientific way. Oh, that's a great, I was like, are they going to, are they going to grave rob? No. Are they going to grave rob? It's much cuter than grave robbing. And by that I mean, her team collected and analyzed thousands of baby teeth from kids in the

St. Louis, Missouri area in the U.S. for their Strontium 90 content. Why not? They're around. There's plenty of teeth. We're not doing anything with all these teeth. Uh-huh. Yeah, why keep them? That's creepy.

It's so much easier than grave robbing surgically taking up. Get in touch with the tooth fairy and be like, here's a grant. And so in a massive public outreach effort, Rice's team visited schools and other community centers and explained to families how Strontium-90 from nuclear tests could make its way into human bones by being sprinkled into water or dairy products and then making its way into food and that the kids are eating. And then it seeks your bones. Yeah, seeks your bones and gets in there and just makes a little home. Swaddling itself up in the rest of the bone, like me and the fungus.

They talked to caregivers for consent and spread scientific literacy, which is honestly very exciting to be able to say about an old science experiment. Drilling. Seems ethically sound. And families that wanted to participate sent in geographic information about where they've lived, their kids' baby teeth, and in return. got a fun little button that said, I gave my tooth to science,

which in my nerdy opinion is much more fun than a couple of quarters. Well, get both, ideally. After the first two years of analysis on over 65,000 teeth, Rice published a paper on November 24, 1961, in the journal Science,

and reported that they did find elevated levels of strontium 90, and therefore the stuff getting into the environment from nuclear tests was also getting into humans through children, but also adults. presumably. And this paper, along with some testimony from her husband in front of the Senate,

helped influence the U.S. government to sign on to the partial nuclear test ban treaty in 1963. But there was still plenty of tooth research to do. This team kept collecting baby teeth from St. Louis kids through 1970 and ended up with around 325,000 teeth in total. And further analysis led to findings like children born in 1963, had around 50 times as much strontium-90 as children born in 1950, which was before many, but not all nuclear tests. And so there was a pretty big difference. And the whole using teeth to study radioactivity thing stuck around, as later studies showed that strong-hium-90 in baby teeth decreased by around half in kids born in 1968 after the treaty

had been put into effect. And so we had this like peak around peak nuclear testing. And then the governmental policies, environmental policies, really did help people be less radioactive. And even nowadays, the baby tooth survey inspires other initiatives to detect various kinds of pollution that can end up in bones and impact human health. And it's very cool to me that this weird, wonderful collaboration between scientists and the public and a scary amount of teeth existed, and people were excited about it. That's wild. Hundreds of thousands of teeth is a significant haul if you get them to the

tooth film. And it makes me wonder, like, Is that part of the deal? Like, somebody's got to be funding the research. Is it the tooth fairy? Big tooth. Could be. Tooth fairy is very interested in this niche field of research. I like the idea that there's a bunch of tooth fairies and a lot of them are like independent, like operators.

They have small businesses. But then there's like one that's like sort of rolled them all up. It's like a corporate bit called big tooth. Gosh, I thought, I thought Sam had it in the bag. Yeah, this one's pretty good though. And she got three points. So, let's just say that Sam got 100 points in the first section, and Sarah got 300 points in the first section. Okay.

I just feel like I need more definite places to work with you. And for these facts, I think that Saris was probably like a 500 point fact, and Sam's is like a 450 point fact, which are still both are very high. But I got more than Sam. Most of that leads me to believe that Sarah is the winner of the episode. Oh, wow. They ground up hundreds of thousands of teeth. I also have never really reckoned with just how many teeth are out there. Like, this was their 12 years of actively collecting with people's consent.

Yeah, it's not, it's by far not anywhere near the majority of the teeth. No. It's a tiny fraction of the teeth. We're fighting about sand tooth as a renewable resource. We keep making babies. we keep making teeth. Someone needs to start communicating with a tooth fairy

about these grants about the research we can do. Tooth sand, is all you're suggesting? Yeah, we're going to make concrete with it. Yeah. Look, if this is your first episode at Saito Tangents, this is it. Congratulations.

Thank you so much. And if you're wondering which episode to send to a friend and you're like, well, I'd like more people to know, this is the one. This is the one. This is the one that put you over the edge.

You're like, it's got a, imagine, song in it. The first part's all about vampire diaries for some reason. Both of the fact-off facts were just totally unhinged and amazing human endeavors. And you're not even done yet because now it's time to ask the science couch where we ask a listener question to our finally honed virtual couch of scientific minds. James on Discord asks, how did we determine fatal dosages of radiation other than error? I'm hoping nobody trialed that. Most of it is from people who have died from radiation exposure.

So it's not, like, intentional trials in as much as, like, war is an intentional trial. But, like, one of the biggest research institutes for it is the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, the RERF, which is a collaboration between Japan and the United States. and a lot of what we know about lethal doses and cancer frequencies and stuff is by studying long-term health records of the survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So that, at least in English language, is where most of what we know comes from, as far as, like, risk to cancer, exposure to different amounts of radiation, LD-50. We study, with radiation, it's specifically LD50 slash 30, is the figure I found more than once, I don't know, which is the dose of radiation expected to cause death to 50% of an exposed population within 30 days because radiation sickness has to set in. It's not like an immediate vaporization at the amounts that we have on Earth.

That makes sense, and the ability of people to take the opportunity to continue to learn is pretty, that, it seems like the right thing, especially because, like, it's not like we are done with radiation on the planet. So, and also, like, it's a super important thing when it comes to space travel. Like, it's just, I guess you could swaddle yourself in fungus, but we don't have solutions to all of those problems yet. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week, or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on Discord. Thank you to Buns on Discord at Boy With Headache and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. Did you laugh at the way I said buns? No, I just laughed because of Buns.

I laughed both at the way you said it and the name Buns. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's super easy to do that. First, you can go to Patreon.com slash science. show tangents to become a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our silly little bonus episodes. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show. And also, it helps other people learn about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShowTangins, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sarah Riley. And I've been Sam Shultz. SciShow Tangens is created by all of us and

produced by Sam Shultz. Our editor is Seth Glickman. Our story editor is Alex Bilow. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz Bezio. Our editorial assistant is Duboki Charpervardi. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna Mettish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hofmeister and me, Hank Green. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon, of course. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. The Hanford site in the U.S.

churned out radioactive plutonium during the 1940s, during the Manhattan Project, and is now a huge government cleanup project. Ongoing efforts involve searching for radioactivity with detectors mounted on helicopters so they can monitor for any unexpected leaks and waste can be disposed of safely. Now, rabbits or other small wildlife can burrow into contaminated areas without realizing it and lick up the radioactive salts. And because what goes in must come out, they leave radioactive poop piles across eastern Washington. And that poop is radioactive enough to get picked up by these detectors and become one more thing that needs to be cleaned up. Although it is apparently not a top priority.

Just looking for the big spills and then it's a little rat, ah, man, Jim, it's another rabbit poop. freaking rap.