Justin: Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer!
Ten years ago, a crack commando unit was sent to the basement of a community radio station for a crime they didn’t commit. These people promptly formed the Science News Radio Show for the Davis underground.
And while the views and opinions in the following hour of programming do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California, Davis, KDVS or its sponsors, today still wanted by the government the survivor soldiers of science, do you have a question?
If no one else can answer it and if you can find them, maybe you can listen to This Week In Science, coming up next.
Good morning Kirsten.
Kirsten: Good morning Justin. Hey! This microphone is slightly off kilter. We’ve got to move it around.
Justin: As is our planet.
Kirsten: As is – as what?
Justin: Yeah, it’s slightly on a…
Kirsten: It is slightly off.
Justin: Slightly off kilter.
Kirsten: Slightly off kilter. There we go. We got the microphone in a symmetrical orientation.
Justin: Good morning again. What’s going on? Hey!
Kirsten: Good morning. This is This Week In Science, everybody. We are going to be here for the next hour talking all sorts of science news and interviewing Carl Zimmer, science writer. He writes often for the New York Times. He has a blog called The Loom.
He usually writes about evolutionary topics, evolutionary biology. He has written a book all about E. coli called Microcosm.
Justin: Our friend, the E. coli.
Kirsten: Mm hmm. Our good friend, the E. coli. And so, we will be talking with him in about half an hour. But in the meantime, it’s into the science news.
Justin: Feathery fashion found to foster fertility function for fowl.
Kirsten: Fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa.
Justin: This story has found – it’s a Maggie Fox / Will Dunham of writers, put this together. Fascinating story of dying the red breast feathers of Barn Swallows not only won the birds more mates, it made their testosterone level shoot up!
The dye itself did not of course change the biology of the bird, but it did change the way other birds reacted to the fashionably enhanced feathered male.
Kirsten: Right. So the male is painted to look like a more dominant male. And so, because it looks that way, other birds are going to be like…
Justin: The ladies were like, “Oh!”
Kirsten: Hey, what’s up?
Justin: You’re looking pretty good there.
Kirsten: Hey.
Justin: Yeah. And suddenly, yeah…
Kirsten: What’s going on?
Justin: …life is good. And the…
Kirsten: Life is good but you got to make it look like it. You got to act like it, right?
Justin: Well, here’s what ends up happening. This is kind of interesting.
Kirsten: Respond appropriately.
Justin: The testosterone levels rise, apparently I guess from the attention from the female birds but also because they end up getting in a lot more aggressive stand offs to the other male birds. So maybe, you know…
Kirsten: Yeah, right. They got to puff up their chest feathers (unintelligible)…
Justin: It’s starting to get in to all these conflicts.
Kirsten: …step off.
Justin: They found that the birds actually had more offspring than they…
Kirsten: Than they would otherwise.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: Interesting.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: That’s really interesting.
Justin: This is just – it’s like – yeah, they basically took these birds, painted them up, sent them back out there and found that this really worked. Similar signals – that there are similar situation can be seen among deer with big antlers or birds with the flashy tail feathers that they also get higher testosterone, sex hormones going through this.
Hey, Kirsten?
Kirsten: Yes.
Justin: Do we have any room that TWIS budget for some new threads? Because I’m like…
Kirsten: You want to look the part, you got to…
Justin: I’m thinking, maybe it’s all I really needed to get moving in life, this new wardrobe.
Kirsten: It’s all about how you look, right.
Justin: I guess.
Kirsten: How people perceive you and then, if you fake it, you act the part.
Justin: Boy, this is – I really…
Kirsten: Isn’t it psychologically supposed to be true that if you tell yourself it’s true enough or, just smile.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: And everything will be okay.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: You’ll work it out.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: Possibly.
Justin: Are you becoming one of these people that’s always smiling while stuff is crashing down around them? It is always that.
Kirsten: Laughter makes the world a much better place. Smile and you’re happy even in times of sadness.
Justin: I will believe you.
Kirsten: Oh, some really interesting news sent in by Ed Dyer. Cuttlefish embryos were found. This article is published in animal behavior, the Journal but this article came out the BBC news website.
Cuttlefish, they’re a little squid-like water aquatic organism. Their young when their eyes begin developing. Even before their brain is completely developed, they’re able to see out of their little translucent egg sacs into the water around them and pick up on other organisms in order to determine whether or not they’re good prey and then later – and learn from that so that later when they are hatched and start looking for prey, they identify those organisms that they saw in the egg.
Justin: Wow!
Kirsten: Yeah.
Justin: It’s sort of like watching TV before you’re born.
Kirsten: Right.
Kirsten: You kind of get a glimpse of what’s going to be out there.
Justin: A little glimpse.
Kirsten: These researchers, they put these cuttlefish embryos into a tank, placed next to a tank that contained crabs. And crabs and little shrimp are some of the cuttlefish preferred food as they get older.
They didn’t actually put the crabs in the tank with them. But just next to them through a clear glass or flexi glass divider, the cuttlefish could see the crabs, they couldn’t hear them and they couldn’t smell them. So they knew that they were only being…
Justin: Visual.
Kirsten: …it’s only visual information that’s getting to the cuttlefish.
Then when the cuttlefish were about to hatch or they hatched, they took them out and they isolated them for seven days to give them a chance to grow and get to a point where they actually might head out and start attacking prey on their own.
Seven days later, they put them in back into a tank containing crab and other organism shrimp that they had not which isn’t a cuttlefish delicacy but which they had not seen…
Justin: Mm hmm.
Kirsten: …while they were in the embryo.
Justin: So then the question becomes…
Kirsten: And then preferentially went after the crabs.
Justin: Yeah, Mm hmm.
Kirsten: Yeah.
Justin: Brilliant.
Kirsten: And cuttlefish embryos that were not exposed to crabs preferred to hunt shrimp once they were born. So the clearer the view of the crabs that they had, the more they preferred crabs. It’s just it’s fascinating that there was such a just a preference based on this very early exposure.
There’s other evidence. I was working for a researcher here at UC Davis, Gaby Nevitt who works with olfaction and there’s evidence that young, I think it’s petrels, bird that raises its young down in the Antarctic.
These little birds are reared in little caves, little hollows underneath
Justin: Burrows.
Kirsten: Burrows underneath the surface of the earth. They don’t have any exposure to anything outside of the burrow aside from, the scents, the food and the scent of food that the parents bring in from their travels out over the ocean looking for krill to then come back and regurgitate for these little babies.
And she has actually shows that it is – and one of her graduate students, Greg Cunningham, they’re actually – they’ve been able to show that these birds have very, very just precise sense of smell. They’re able to differentiate between odor and instead or like in the femto like -0.15 zeros.
Justin: I guess if you’re, you know…
Kirsten: Femto molar concentrations.
Justin: …in very active stages of growing and learning, in that very early, if you’ve got bunch of the senses basically blocked out…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Justin: …there’s not a whole lot of use for the vision in the burrow.
Kirsten: Right.
Justin: But you’ve got like blind person smelling.
Kirsten: Yeah. That where all they end and when they are out of the burrow, they use – it’s not vision that helps them out very much when they’re out searching over the ocean landscape for food. It’s odor, it’s the scent of the patch of krill that actually comes up from the surface of the water.
It’s been shown that there’s very specific odor that actually will emanate from the water when there’s a large patch of either fish or krill or whatever the food source is that’s under the surface. And these birds are able to smell it.
Justin: I have never thought of birds as big smellers but I guess…
Kirsten: Well, yeah, that’s one – that’s something that’s been thought for a very long time. And maybe some species of birds…
Justin: Because they don’t have a nose.
Kirsten: They don’t have a nose. They do have little mares.
Justin: They got nostril…
Kirsten: They have a little nostril holes.
Justin: …got holes in their beaks.
Kirsten: Yeah.
Justin: But I just got – I’ve never heard about a bird’s sense of smell before.
Kirsten: Well, for the longest time, it wasn’t even really considered for that reason and because like it was thought that they didn’t even really have much of an olfactory bulb. So the part of the brain that processes the information coming in from the nose is the olfactory bulb.
And what happens when you take the bird brain out of the skull is the olfactory bulb usually just separates from the brain. And so, it’s lost. And for a long time, people just were like, “Oh, they don’t have an olfactory bulb.” And then people went and decided looking at different species and taking a very much more careful look and they realized, “Oh”.
Justin: Oh, being more delicate removing brain brains.
Kirsten: Yeah and a little bit more delicate, exactly. And they are like, “Oh, they do have an olfactory bulb. Right.”
Justin: Yey, science.
Kirsten: Yey, science.
Justin: Well here’s some other early selection that takes place. You are what you eat, so they say. I don’t know who they are but they definitely say that that you are what you eat. New study finds…
Kirsten: I always do that.
Justin: …you may just be as much, if not more so, a product of what your mother ate before you were ever conceived. Maternal diet in sheep has been found…
Kirsten: Thanks a lot, mom.
Justin: Maternal diet in sheep has been found to influence the chances of having male or female offspring. Female sheep given a diet enriched with polyunsaturated fats for one or more months prior to conception had a significantly higher percent chance of having male offspring.
Research was carried out by team of researchers from Davidson Animal Sciences at the University of Missouri led by R. Michael Roberts. Roberts explained that the diet-time conception is the most important factor when it comes to influencing the sex of the offspring.
So what they did is they went through and they ruled out body condition, weight, previous birds, the time of the breathing and they got this very good control group. They separated them up and they gave them these very different diets, one that had omega 3 and omega 6 fats substantially increased.
As well as they did this kind of – this is the one sort of strange pieces they put this bacteria around the omega 6 fats that allowed it to be absorbed through intestines easier which already my little suspicious brains are going to be like “Well, maybe it’s the bacteria making them…” but, you know.
Maybe it’s the bacteria that’s helping more – I mean no, no, no. This is something that they’ve – this is, illustrated previously but this is the first time they had really good confirmation that fats can have this effect.
And I think why it is. An animal groups where there’s small number of dominant males, there’s very large number of females for the male to mate with.
Don’t we live in an animal social group?
Kirsten: Us?
Justin: Yeah. Aren’t we an animal social group?
Kirsten: Yeah.
Justin: How come there’s like the same amount?
Kirsten: It’s an interesting. It’s like…
Justin: That’s so unfair.
Kirsten: It’s a good question. In a very slightly more females than some males; very, very, very slightly but it is pretty much even in humans.
Justin: But haven’t their guys- that having the offspring would be genetic advantage to a very healthy eating group.
Kirsten: Right.
Justin: So that if you’ve got more males because you’ve got all the food around and you can have more babies, I guess where you think you’ve got more women.
Kirsten: Yeah. The hypo…
Justin: I don’t know. That doesn’t really make sense.
Kirsten: The hypothesis goes that it’s very energy intensive to have a male and that males are usually only had or only come out of times of bounty. So when there’s very low stress, the mothers under relatively little stress, there’s lots of food around, then it’s good time to have a boy.
Justin: I guess, I would think it would be opposite. I would think that if you had plenty of food, that’s time to have more population and then you would want more females because then you could reproduce quicker.
It just the logic they seems backwards to me. That’s why I was kind of…
Kirsten: It’s…
Justin: It’s just – I don’t know…
Kirsten: That’s a good point.
Justin: It’s just logic. I mean it makes sense if you say logic one way. But then if you say logic the other way, sometimes it makes more sense.
Kirsten: It can make sense the other way too.
Justin: You never know. It’s the logic we’re thinking about.
Kirsten: That’s really funny.
Justin: We got to go fast. There’s so many stories here.
Kirsten: So many stories. Antarctica has ICE quakes.
Justin: Wow!
Kirsten: Some researchers have been analyzing these tremblers that have been occurring down in Antarctica. A researcher has been – he noticed — he’s from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He’s been hanging out down in Antarctica. He noticed that there were ice quakes about three years ago and started analyzing data from seismic centers that were placed across the continent.
And he was looking for fault lines but he’s learning more about how these glaciers move and how the — what they’re trying to figure out is if we can learn a little bit about the seismic properties of the ice sheets on top of Antarctica, Greenland, et cetera.
Maybe we can figure out how climate change and warming periods, hastens the movement of the glaciers, maybe how colder periods, maybe how they bulk up a little bit; when do they start melting; when do they keep going.
It’ll just help us understand a lot more about the movement of these glaciers and improve our current models of what is actually going on that’s published in nature.
Justin: Mm hmm. I know.
Kirsten: Yeah.
Justin: We are one step closer to understand the logic in complexity – logic behind the complexity of the human brain…
Kirsten: Yey!
Justin: …says Professor Seth Grant, Head of Genes Cognition Program, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the leader of project that delved deep into the origin of the human brain.
So the reason it’s just kind of interesting, it’s suggesting that it’s not just the size that gives us the more brain power but that during evolution, it was the increasingly sophisticated molecular processing of nerve impulses that allowed development of animals with more complex behaviors.
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Justin: And so, he’s kind of going against what is the previous and still current thinking that suggest that the protein components of nerve conjunctions are similar in most animals.
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Justin: And from the worms to humans and that it’s the increased number of synapses, increased number of these nerve connections in large animals that allows for the more sophisticated thought. Bigger brain, more synapses, smarter life forms. Right?
He’s saying – his research is saying maybe not so. Maybe there’s something else at work. Our simple view, blah, blah, blah, that more nerve is sufficient to claim more brain power is simply not supported by her study. Although many studies have looked at a number of neurons, none has looked at the molecular composition of neuron connections.
We found dramatic differences in a number of proteins in the neuron connections between different species.
Kirsten: So even though they might be the same proteins, there’s different quantities or maybe different…
Justin: Different proteins.
Kirsten: Well, not…
Justin: Yeah, I think this is the part with the numbers.
Kirsten: I’m thinking that they aren’t going to be like completely new and crazy proteins. It’s like maybe there’s this protein is showing up in this neuron where it doesn’t show up in another species.
Justin: Here comes the numbers part on this piece of paper.
Kirsten: All right.
Justin: We studied around 600 proteins that are found in mammalian synapses. And they’re – well, you’re right, between other mammals it’s going to be, right?
Kirsten: Right, okay.
Justin: We studied around 600 proteins that are found in mammalian synapses and we’re surprised to find that only 50% of these are also found in vertebrate synapses. And about 25% are in single cell animals which don’t have brains but still have the, you know…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Justin: …something like it. So remarkably, this study shows that some of the proteins involved in synapse signaling and learning and memory are found in yeast.
Kirsten: Right. So there is a very consistent evolutionary lineage with some proteins.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: Yeah.
Justin: That’s wild. I mean that’s means…
Kirsten: Some proteins are very important to cellular functioning.
Justin: Oh, yeah.
Kirsten: Yeah.
Justin: Well, this is also – but yeast also have used synapse as a sort of memory where they can – yeah, where they act. They can respond to signals from their environment and stresses that, you know…
Kirsten: Yeah.
Justin: It’s not – they’re not, you know…
Kirsten: Yeast are single celled organisms.
Justin: …can it take my spot on the show.
Kirsten: Right.
Justin: But they have – because the synapse are sort of like gosh, what whatever you did like what’s an analogy for that in electronic. It was like – is that like a capacitor? It can store like electricity in a way and then fire it off later. It’s sort of memory. It’s the basic, basic, basic, what you would call a neuron – synapse (from).
Kirsten: Yeah. That’s the idea is that there are molecular components in the synapse on one side over the other either the pre-synaptic or post-synaptic side that build up after certain situations have taken place to allow particular conductances to occur more easily.
So if you have, a really frightening experience and it’s dangerous, you have a very sharp memory of it because these particular molecules have kind of tied themselves and locked themselves into particular synapses in particular neurons.
Yeah, I don’t know. I think in yeast its very basic. I’m sure they have a particular response pattern that, if they release a certain signal into their environment then other yeast in the nearby area can sense what has been released and respond to it appropriately. “Get out of here. Run away!”
Justin: I believe you. This is…
Kirsten: Yeah. And it’s a very basic – the very, very basic. It’s like in yeast, it’s like okay, maybe put the signal out into the general environment which is this big area around them. But in a neuron, it’s a very isolated specific release and it goes into a specific location in which only particular number of other cells can respond.
Justin: Yeah. This is actually – I completely read that wrong. Yeah. Remarkably, study shows that the same proteins involved in synapsing and learning and memory are found in yeast and not that learning memory are found in the yeast.
Kirsten: Not learning and memory per se. But they are – last week, there was another…
Justin: But it is interesting that proteins that formed our, our neurons, our synapses are still floating on out there and like one of the most primitive species that didn’t involve it into the brain. They’re not taking my job on the show.
Kirsten: No, they’re not. But there’s…
Justin: They’re not. Can have the yeast…
Kirsten: There is across the board there is a benefit to having some at least even simple form of being able to respond appropriately to signals in the environment. And to learn from them.
And so, very simple organisms, the Aplasia is one that is used in neuroscience all the time, you know. It can respond to retract itself away from dangerous stimuli like a shock.
And there are other very simple organisms that people are beginning to study and we’re finding very similar patterns across the board.
Justin: Mm hmm.
Kirsten: Across the board.
Justin: Self preservation.
Kirsten: Self preservation is important.
Justin: Right down to the single cell organisms. They know how important that is.
Kirsten: That’s right. So next time you’re going out for a business lunch, make sure and feed the person you’re trying to get to sign the deal…
Justin: Oh, yeah?
Kirsten: …something that’s going to build up their serotonin. They’ll be much more likely to sign the deal. Yeah.
Study that has come out of University of Cambridge and UCLA has been published in the Journal Science suggests that levels of serotonin are extremely important in a way that people perceive fairness.
They took 20 subjects, 14 of them female and they presented them with fair monetary offers giving them a certain amount of money out — oops, sorry. Too much gesticulation — giving them a certain amount of money, that’s a proportion of, “I’ll give you a $5 out of $10.”
Justin: That’s 50/50. That’s not bad.
Kirsten: Yeah, I’ll give you 50% of this, yeah. Or an unfair offer which was like $3 out of $25.
Justin: Hey, whoa! What’s up with that?
Kirsten: Exactly. “I’m giving you nothing here! You’re giving me nothing!”
And so they gave them these deals and checked to see how the people responded. “So do you take the deal? Do you not take the deal?” And then afterwards, they gave them a drink that reduced serotonin levels, so something that caused serotonin to mop up in the brain and not to be released.
Justin: What would that be, you know? Because that will be like important not to like…
Kirsten: Not to give, yeah. Not to give that to people.
Justin: Because if they’re drinking whatever that drink is, you need to know that too.
Kirsten: Again, they gave them the offers over again. And people pretty much – it’s just a higher percent. When their levels were reduced, 82% of the time, they rejected the unfair offers. Whereas when everybody was, pretty even keeled they rejected about 67%. So we have an increase in the amount of rejection with the decrease in the amount of serotonin in their systems.
And it’s taught that this ties in to social situations people who naturally have low serotonin are maybe less happy; they’re more apt to respond negatively to things that they think or they perceive or unfair; maybe they’re more likely to perceive things as unfair more often.
And it’s been shown that when people are treated fairly, it stimulates the reward circuitry of the brain so that you’re – it makes you feel great. You’re like, “Oh, someone’s treating me right.” it’s like just the same thing as gambling or, eating food or taking drugs, it makes you feel good and so, you want to do it again.
Justin: Yeah, but that – well, but it’s very…
Kirsten: And so, it stimulates that reward circuitry and if the serotonin’s low the reward circuitry is less apt to get firing.
Justin: But it’s also – but it also has to do then too with setting the expectation.
Kirsten: Yeah. You got to set the expectations. But if you know…
Justin: Like $3 out of $25 and the “That guy’s only getting $3 out of $25. I’m going to let you have $4 out of $25. Because I think you’re pretty special.” They might feel great. “Really? Yeah I got $4 out of $25.”
Kirsten: There we go.
Justin: It’s all about – you got to, so just regardless of what they’re eating or drinking at this meeting, just line them up right. You know…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Justin: …get the expectation set like…
Kirsten: Well, that makes you a good salesman.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: However this study, I believe it puts a precedent behind the business lunch.
Justin: But I’d so want to know what that drink is so that it’s never allowed on the table.
Kirsten: That’s right. Never bring this.
Justin: Yeah. But what does work nice, I found over the years, whisky. Whisky loosens people up nice. Especially the…
Kirsten: Loosens people up and decreases their inhibitions. There you go.
Justin: The larger amount of money you’re dealing with, the more whisky that should be involved.
It’s a deal maker.
Kirsten: That’s right. It’s pretty interesting. If you have a magic way of determining people’s serotonin levels, you might do better in making deals, making things work out.
Justin: I wonder if popcorn increases the serotonin. Because there’s like all car dealerships have popcorn.
Kirsten: I’m totally…
Justin: So it’s such a weird place to have popcorn, I always thought but…
Kirsten: Yeah. I’m totally blanking on what increases serotonin. I know that…
Justin: Hopefully it’s not something complicated.
Kirsten: …I think carbohydrates – (unintelligible). I’m totally blanking on it. Give me a story.
Justin: Give you a story.
Kirsten: I’m not going to be helpful here. I’m just going to be like, “But I don’t know.”
Justin: Don’t let your babies overheat because they can’t self regulate. It’s one of the sudden infant death syndrome causes that they’re zeroing in on is just straight up thermal overheating in newborns. They don’t sweat; they don’t have a way of getting rid of that body heat.
So if you’ve got them head to toe in one of those snug little cozy warm things…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Justin: …in the night if it’s, and they’re sleeping on their belly and maybe they even got a blanket on them. Next thing you know there’s…
Kirsten: Their thermal regulation is not doing so hot.
Justin: Yeah. It just keeps going up and up and up and that maybe one of the causes.
Kirsten: There’s another…
Justin: This was a new study out of University of Calgary. I can’t find the actual study…
Kirsten: There was a study that was mentioned in Ars Technica online…
Justin: This is fun.
Kirsten: Yeah. They tracked; they used people’s cell phones to…
Justin: Isn’t it National Geographic that did this?
Kirsten: Maybe, yeah.
Justin: I think it’s National Geographic that did this story.
Kirsten: I think so. But they tracked human’s movements from place to place. And they found that…
Justin: Which they do it to animals all the time and then at some point, somebody is like, “Hey, no. I know where we’ve got like several million tagged animals that haven’t been studied.”
It’s like “What? What are you talking about?” It’s like, “It’s a…” Yeah, any given city in America…
Kirsten: That’s right. But they studied England. This is I guess it was easier.
Justin: They went to England?
Kirsten: Yeah. They were – this was a study in England which…
Justin: International Geographic?
Kirsten: I’d love to see, how it works here in the US. But in England, it turns out that people are very predictable. People move from home to work to home to work to home to work. They have very predictable movements. Occasionally, there are jumps out but they always come back to the same pattern. People are predictable in their movements.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: Let’s – that’s what it comes down to.
Justin: I’m here like every Tuesdays just about…clockwork
Kirsten: Mm hmm. And I looked – I took a look at the study and I was like, “Oh, I am totally predictable. I have – I get up in the morning; I go to the same café; I drive to Davis; I go home.” But then I’m totally not predictable because I can go from place to place to place to place. Some days I’m predictable, some days I’m not.
Justin: And again, in my ever and ever willful attempts to change the future, I sometimes when I’m supposed to be going one place from one to another, I take an alternate route just so I’m messing with destiny.
Kirsten: Do it. I’ve also heard that in case you’re worried about people following you, you should alter your movements on a regular basis.
Justin: Mm hmm.
Kirsten: Take different routes.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: you can come at it from a destiny perspective.
Justin: Have a couple of drop cars.
Kirsten: Or you can go at it from a hey-someone-might-be-following-me perspective.
Justin: Park one car halfway between your destination where you’re leaving from. Park the first car next to that car then drive off preferably under an overpass in cases there’s helicopters watching you.
Kirsten: That’s right. We’ll be back…
Justin: We will.
Kirsten: …after this break.
Justin: Carl Zimmer.
Kirsten: Stay tuned for Carl Zimmer.
Justin: And we’re almost – no, we are back on This Week in Science.
Kirsten: We are back. This is This Week in Science. On the phone is…
Justin: Carl Zimmer.
Kirsten: …Carl Zimmer. The New York Times has called him “As fine a Science essayist as we have.”
Justin: Wow!
Kirsten: He is a frequent guest on many radio programs where they should be…
Justin: Wait, who call him that?
Kirsten: called (old, hat) The New York Times.
Justin: Isn’t that who he writes for?
Kirsten: That’s who he writes for.
Justin: Well of course, they’re going to say it.
Kirsten: They like him.
Justin: Well, let’s find out for ourselves. Let’s bring him on the air.
Kirsten: Let’s bring him on the air.
Justin: Good morning, Carl.
Carl: Good morning, how’s it going?
Kirsten: Great.
Justin: We’re doing great.
Kirsten: Thank you for joining us this morning. We were just commenting on how nice it was for the New York Times book review to call you “As fine a Science essayist as we have.”
Carl: That was very nice of them.
Kirsten: It was very nice of them.
Justin: Now, do you know who wrote that?
Carl: Mmm?
Justin: It’s not like a buddy of yours that wrote that, come on complain.
Carl: No money was exchanged.
Justin: No, no, no, just maybe dinner.
Kirsten: So you have written a book called “Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life.” I think E. coli has been around for quite a while, how is the E. coli the new Science of life and biology?
Carl: Well, it’s ironic actually that the whole Science of molecular biology really got kicked off in the mid-1900s with scientists studying the E. coli and yet they have just gone on studying it even until today.
So now, we live in an age where scientists are sequencing genomes left and right. And with all these new tools, they’re turning back to E. coli and kind of probing even deeper into it.
So now, there’s so much that they know about E. coli that they can start to see some really amazing things like what it’s like when thousands of genes are working together in a single system.
They know so much about E. coli now thanks to having work on it for decades that they can get that kind of big picture that they just can’t get it with other species.
Kirsten: Yeah, like humans.
Carl: Exactly. We’re just a total mystery.
Kirsten: A little bit bigger and a little bit more complex. What was it that made you focus on E. coli specifically? I know your past books have been a little bit broader like Parasite Rex. It was much more a general overview of all sorts of different cool parasites. Why do you focus so much on E. coli this time?
Carl: Well, the book is really a book about life and what it means to be alive. And that was sort of the initial idea I had for working on the next book. And I realized that if was going to return or write something about life in general, I’d be still writing that book. I’d probably die before I finished it.
So I wanted to find a way that I could focus it in an elegant way without sacrificing all the cool stuff that I’ve been learning about. And it occurred to me that E. coli was that way to focus it because in everything that I’ve been reading about these new ways of understanding life generally involve E. coli in one way or another.
Kirsten: Well, what’s one of the just really interesting ways that E. coli like fits into life and maybe human life specifically that we just wouldn’t even think of normally?
Carl: Well, for one thing E. coli has a really busy social life. We think of bacteria as being these loners that just sit around and feed and grow…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Carl: …and divide and grow and divide. But actually, E. coli are talking to each other. They’re making molecules and sending them to one another. And they’re coordinating what they do in response. So together, they’ll cooperate and build these intricate microbial cities on the inside of your gut…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Carl: …that helps them all survive together. There are even cases in which some of them will kill themselves basically to protect the other members of their colony.
Justin: The altruistic E. coli.
Carl: Absolutely.
Justin: Yeah.
Carl: Well, sort of a nasty kind of altruism. What they do is they – a few of them will swell up with toxins and make thousands of toxin molecules and then they’ll explode and the toxins spread all over the place. They don’t kill the members of their own colony because each E. coli may have a gene for toxin and a gene for the antidote to that toxin.
Justin: Wow!
Carl: But…
Kirsten: It’s nice.
Carl: …from colony to colony it’s a different toxin.
Justin: I’m glad they’re not bigger.
Carl: So, the colony next door will get killed…
Justin: Yeah.
Carl: …and then their own colony gets to thrive on the food that’s left on.
Kirsten: Yeah. You never really considered the fact that there would be this microbial battleground between different strains of like E. coli but just a little bit different or even other kinds of bacteria that would, you know…
Justin: Different politically minded E. coli that didn’t get the other one’s talking points so that…
Carl: But the fact is that, I’ve talked to scientists who will switch between studying altruism in humans and our kind of cooperation and altruism in E. coli or some other bacteria. There’s a whole new branch of Science they called Socio-microbiology.
Justin: Yeah. It’s amazing.
Carl: And it’s, it’s obviously that it’s not identical to humans but there are some really profound similarities.
Justin: Yeah, because, I mean you look at all the things that we do on a large scale that seems so humanly and removed from even the animal world…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Justin: …let alone the microbial. It comes down to like these altruistic, competitive organization themes that were really – and I didn’t realize that E. coli would combat other forms of E. coli.
So, that makes them even more, a good representation of what we’re just sort of expanding on. We’re just sort of doing it on a larger scale.
Carl: That’s right. We got a bigger palate.
Justin: Everything we learned, we learned in E. coli garden.
Carl: Well, you think about it, I mean what it probably means is at three and half billion years ago the world is a very complicated social place, back when all life was like E. coli.
Justin: But does this mean we really haven’t changed very much?
Carl: From E. coli’s point of view no, I mean the world is dominated by microbes and E. coli is much more typical of what your standard earthling is like than we are.
Justin: That’s right.
Kirsten: Right. It’s a really interesting point also that microbes, the bacterial world is actually just huge. There are so many more of them than there are of any other life form on the planet.
And the question has comes up to me before, well, if evolution is supposed to lead to complexity, how come we’re not doing better than the microbes?
Carl: Well, you’d have to think seriously about whether evolution really does favor complexity in some simple way, I mean…
Kirsten: Yeah.
Carl: …it may in some lineages, but it may not in others, I mean we tend to sort of think that the way we are must be the way that evolution is directed to…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Carl: …that we’re sort of the ultimate product of evolution but, there’s no reason to think that in advance but…
Justin: Well, I actually have a theory that could explain this. If in some way bacteria contributed to the idea of – got together and said, “We could build a much larger organism…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Justin: …that we could sort of sit in a belly of. It could take us anywhere. We can go and find different resources anywhere. We could go well beyond the – like the surface under this rock that we’re in. No, we can’t go out and it ended into the Earth space like that.
But it is like maybe we’re just all host because most of our DNA is bacteria and microorganism anyway.
Carl: Yeah, absolutely, I mean we are carrying around thousands of species of microbes that are forming this complicated ecosystem inside of us. And so, E. coli is in space now because, we…
Kirsten: We took it there.
Carl: …built space station with people in it. So, E. coli is up there as well.
Justin: Mm hmm.
Carl: So wherever we go, E. coli goes.
Justin: They are pretty advanced.
Kirsten: Wherever I go, E goes. I’m just picturing my buddy from where that old…
Justin: Mmm?
Kirsten: …that doll – never mind.
Justin: Your body.
Kirsten: Sorry, old advertising coming to the forefront of my brain. No, it’s interesting to think also just of the impact that such a small organism can have on our life. We carry it all over the place. It’s, you know. It’s on surfaces. It’s on us. It’s in us. It’s on the food we eat.
And in the last couple of years, we’ve had issues with E. coli epidemics in the spinach epidemic of last year. What do we need to do to be able to coexist more peacefully with our E. coli friends?
Carl: Well, we just have to understand their ecology and our ecology and how they fit together. So, you have to, I mean the E. coli for example that makes us sick…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Carl: …we really don’t understand it very well at all; I mean it’s very weird. It lives peacefully inside of cows and pigs and when it gets inside of us, it makes us hideously sick.
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Carl: And yet, there are lots of other strains of E. coli that live inside of us from a few days after we’re born until the day we die.
And so, scientists are trying to figure out what the difference is. And maybe by understanding those differences, that will sort of help in terms of reducing these outbreaks.
At the same time, we also have to understand that E. coli is really good at evolving and so are other bacteria. So, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to invent some single magic bullet for the bacteria that make us sick because…
Kirsten: Right.
Carl: …they’re going to evolve resistance to it, I mean the more we just use one particular kind of antibiotic the more opportunity they’re going to have to evolve really fast to become resistant to it. So, we have to think of new kinds of strategies, maybe one that other bacteria use.
Kirsten: Well, what’s it like as a Science writer delving into a world that, maybe you haven’t studied specifically before, I mean, tell us a little bit about your experience researching this book and maybe previous books.
Carl: I really like being able to dive into something that I am sort of familiar with but I want to get to know a lot better. So, I was feeling like it has high time to get at this question of what is life, not to maybe answer it once in for all but only to…
Kirsten: Right.
Carl: …understand how scientists study it and what are the things they’re doing now.
And so, scientists are just so generous with their time that it’s just a great job. And, so I’ll just call somebody up or pay them a visit and I’ll just watch them doing their experiments and they’ll just through these things step by step.
And I can come back and say, “Look, did I get this right? Here’s what I’ve written. Does this look in the ballpark?” And generally, there are a lot of mistakes but, they help me through the whole process though.
It’s hard but it’s a huge privilege.
Justin: Yeah. And you’re also doing it. And it’s not just that you got the personal interest which you do into Science but then you’ve got the double task of then translating all of that information to the public, which is that’s probably the more daunting part because you can, I think we can all learn things to a level of our satisfaction. But then being able to explain it to a larger audience is the really – that’s like the frightening part.
Carl: Well, yeah. That is the big challenge. Part of it I think is deciding exactly what it is that you’re going to try to explain because, you can’t just do a giant data dump and just leave everything in a big mess on the page.
Kirsten: Right.
Carl: You have to say what is it that I want to get across, what’s like the one or two things that I want to people to come away from this thinking about.
Justin: Have you ever backed away from a story because there was just too much information that had to have other information before it and behind it to fit in to a decent story?
Carl: I’ve read papers and I said, well that’s interesting but it’s probably just interesting to me because I’m in way too behind the subject.
Kirsten: Right.
Justin: Yeah.
Carl: And so, again, in terms of kind of bringing people into an area that they might not be familiar with to open them up to this new area of Science it might not be that useful because I just end up in the kind of this blind alley of a lot of esoteric details.
Kirsten: Mm hmm. Tell me a little about your blog, The Loom, and what kind of focus you have there and how writing for your blog is maybe different from focusing on a book or focusing on an article for The New York Times?
Carl: A few years ago I was just killing time on the web and I noticed that there were people who were sort of regularly updating websites almost as if they were publishing their own little personal magazine. I thought this is very cool and it turned out to be this thing we now call the blog.
And so, I started and went out myself. And basically, it was a place where I could experiment, I could write about things that I had a sense that maybe an editor at the Times or the magazine might not be so interested in but, it’s just my thing. I can do what I want.
And then, you know…
Kirsten: Yeah.
Carl: …then I just – then it also becomes a sort of almost like a kind of a playground. You can combine images with what you’re writing and movies and all sorts of things. And then there’s also the comments that come back, which are just for the most part really great. And…
Justin: Instant gratification.
Kirsten: Yeah.
Justin: It’s…
Carl: Well, they- again, it’s a sort of a kind of a universal or a large scale fact checking, you know. So, I will explain something and then it turns out that, I got part of it wrong and someone will explain why, someone who is maybe expert an expert in this area.
And that’s great because I might not have known that otherwise. But you have to kind of change the way you approach writing. You can’t be sort of looking at this as just as kind of a one-way direction of…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Carl: …information. You’ve got to think of it more as a conversation.
Kirsten: Yeah. And I think that – historically, Science writing and all sorts of writing has been just you write an article or you write a book and you put it out there and people buy it they read it and maybe you get a letter back, but I hasn’t been as much of a conversation as it is now on the internet.
Do you think that because of the way that communication is – this writing process is becoming a two-way conversation between the audience and the writer? Do you think that’s really changing the way that writers in general are looking at how they put information out and how they write about things?
Carl: Yeah, definitely, I mean you just need to say look at The New York Times, I mean the blog on The New York Times take up a huge amount of real estate there. And you’ve got not just bloggers who were kind of roped in to doing this but you’ve got seasoned journalists who have been like given blogs to do in addition to their writing more conventional articles. It’s just part of the way that this is all done now.
Some people are adapting better than others to this new format, I mean you can’t be high handed. If you’re going to make a claim, you’ve got to back it up; you got a link to your evidence.
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Carl: You can’t just say, “Just trust me. I know better than you.” That’s just not going to work anymore. And it’s also good in – it’s changing things in terms of the speed with which reporting in these kinds of discussions take place. So, if I might write something and then, I say like I write about evolution and some creationist try to attack me somewhere…
Kirsten: Mm hmm.
Carl: …and I can immediately, put up a post saying, “Here are all the reasons why this is wrong.” And if you’ve got the time to do it, this can happen in the space of an hour.
Justin: Mm hmm.
Kirsten: Right, yeah. And it just can happen very quickly as opposed to having to wait for some publishing period to occur.
Carl: Yeah, I mean it’s hard enough for me to think of the old days when the only way that I will get feedback is that I would write and article and months would pass editing and designing and layout and printing.
The magazine would go and then maybe someone would bother to sit down with a paper and pen and write me a letter. And then it would go, be delivered to me by hand and someone would say, “Hey! The article stink” – or “it was great!” That didn’t happen very often, but now it’s just this regular stream of feedback.
Kirsten: What’s your favorite thing about being a Science writer?
Carl: My favorite thing about being a Science writer? My favorite thing about a being a Science writer is that I’m writing something new like every week whether it’s a news paper article or blog post or part of a book or something, I mean there’s some new subject I’m working on. So I’m working on a couple of things today.
But the fact is that every week there’s far more really interesting stuff to write about than I could ever manage.
Kirsten: Right.
Carl: There’s always this embarrassment of riches and I guess that just have to do with the kind of scientific age we’re in. There’s just a lot of really great Science going on.
Justin: I feel sorry for the sports reporters. I really do because even when I get to go and talk to a human being and I’m just running down stats, they’re like getting buzz words…
Carl: Yeah.
Justin: …the same ones over and over again, it seems like it would be horribly depressing.
Carl: Right. Or like, political writers, I mean it’s important that there’s news, some politics obviously but, I mean if you go back and look at the political news from like three years it just all seems kind of inconsequential, I mean…
Justin: Mm hmm.
Carl: … a lot of it is just a lot of hot air that people were just writing down essentially whereas if you recognized the advances in Science that are happening right now that are really important, if you go back to them five years from now you’ll say, “Yeah, that was the first step in this really profound advance in Science.”
These were the first, the first statement; I mean I remember writing about genomes for the first time. It wasn’t that long ago. It’s just, few years ago that people were regularly talking about genomes and sort of felt funny at first like well, this is a weird word.
Kirsten: Right.
Carl: And people probably don’t even know what I’m talking about. But when you look back and you think like yeah, that was the start of a new age.
Kirsten: Yeah, it’s amazing. You feel lucky to be a part of it. And yes that’s – we’re running out of time unfortunately. It’s really been fun talking with you. Your book “Microcosm” is available now. And are you working on any other books, you’re taking a breather for a while and just working on, articles and reporting on all sorts of different stories?
Carl: Yeah, the short format for now.
Kirsten: All right. Well, thank you very much for joining us.
Justin: Yes, thank you so much.
Carl: Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Kirsten: Is there a website where people can find more information about you, blog and other things like that?
Carl: Yeah, just go to CarlZimmer.com.
Kirsten: Excellent. Thank you very much. Have a great day and good luck with your book.
Carl: All right. Thanks a lot.
Kirsten: Thanks! Bye!
Justin: The person who I actually most respect in like the news stations and news papers is the weatherman because like everybody else is reporting on stuff that’s already happened and a lot of that stuff they’re reporting on has been written by other people. So, the writers are very – at least they’re writing their own material. The anchors, they’re reading stuff that was written by other people about stuff that’s already happened.
Kirsten: Right. Yet, the weatherman?
Justin: Weatherman is the only one that attempts to predict the future. I think this, and maybe the sports guy does that, right? The sports guys doesn’t even give you like the line on who is probably going to win this game or what the score is going to be. The weatherman like gives you a number. He’s like it’s going to be this number of degrees. It’s going to rain here, here, but there’s no chance it’s going to rain over here.
Kirsten: And now they’re even pushing it out the ten-day weather forecast.
Justin: Yeah.
Kirsten: They’re getting gutsy.
Justin: That’s a bold profession.
Kirsten: That’s right. Well if you’re not going to be a Science writer maybe be the weatherman.
Justin: That’s the one I think is the toughest.
Kirsten: Yeah. That’s it for today. This is This Week in Science. Next week we have Dr. Michael Stebbins. What did I want? I wanted to thank (Weaver Cooper) for writing in, (Eric Robertson), (Emilio Delise).
We got some things to talk about next week. Let’s bring it into Dr. Stebbins address your comments.
Justin: Mmm?
Kirsten: (James Marshall) had made some comments about the comments we made last week related to…
Justin: Comments to the comments on the comments?
Kirsten: Science of policy, yes.
Justin: Oh, yeah.
Kirsten: Yeah, (Weaver Cooper) wrote out this great, great story, “Hello Kirsten and Justin. I’m just a mom and a fan in Pennsylvania and I know that you’ll get this week’s podcast up as soon as possible.” Yeah, it was delayed last week.
“Still I thought I’d let you peek into our household to let you see just how popular TWIS is around here. The cast, my partner and I – ordinary grown ups, our son, (Tommy) , aged 17, our daughter (Danica), aged 15. Both kids attend to Cyber High School so their classes are online…
Justin: Great.
Kirsten: …but they meet in virtual classrooms with classmates and teachers. Monday night. (Danica), ‘Mom, the new TWIS comes out tomorrow. You’ll set it to download, right? Me, ‘Of course, I don’t have anything to do. I will be there once it’s posted and I’ll tell you when we have it, okay?’
Tuesday morning, 7:15 am, Eastern Time. (Tommy), ‘Doesn’t TWIS play at 7:30? I think that’s the right time. Can we stream it?’ Me, ‘(Tommy), where is TWI based?’ (Tommy), ‘California.’ ‘Oh, it’s like 4:15 in the morning there, right?’
Tuesday morning, 10:15 Eastern Time. (Danica), ‘Didn’t you say we could stream TWIS?’ Me, ‘No, I didn’t. I don’t even know if there’s a live stream available. I’m not looking. You have a class in a few minutes and I’m guessing neither Justin or Kirsten want to encourage their minions to ditch class to listen to TWIS a few hours early.’
Justin: Never.
Kirsten: (Danica), ‘But mom, it’s educational.’
Justin: This is a good point.
Kirsten: Really, it’s a point.
Justin: This is a good point.
Kirsten: Tuesday, around noon Eastern Time. (Danica), ‘Did you get TWIS? Can we listen to it at lunch?’ Tuesday around 2:45 pm Eastern Time. (Tommy), ‘I’ve finished my work for today. Now, we can listen to TWIS, right?’ Repeat the same basic question about 50 times before bedtime on Tuesday. Wednesday, about 7 o’clock am Eastern Time, still no TWIS. No TWIS at lunch time. No TWIS as after school work is done. No TWIS after chores are finished. No TWIS when supper is over.’”
Oh, well.
Justin: Oh, no.
Kirsten: “Wednesday about 7 o’clock pm Eastern Time. One mom, me, wondering exactly why she ever played TWIS for her kids in the first place decides to email you to let you in on the whole eager awaiting thing going on in Pennsylvania. I’m guessing that you might like to know just devoted your fans are out here.”
Justin: That is so awesome.
Kirsten: Totally, totally wonderful. Thank you (Weaver) for this great radio drama that was enacted here on This Week in Science. Hopefully, I will get TWIS out on time so there is no (wait)…