Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science,
Speaker 1: pop culture, and a healthy dosa friendship. This week, we
Speaker 1: have a special episode that was recorded live at the
Speaker 1: Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We had so much
Speaker 1: fun during this live show because we talked about the
Speaker 1: science of all things winter and what better place to
Speaker 1: talk about the science of cold and all things winter
Speaker 1: than the coldest place that I have ever been to
Speaker 1: in these United States of America.
Speaker 2: And we got a lot of flak tt on Instagram.
Speaker 2: People were saying, why didn't you tell us you were
Speaker 2: having a live show?
Speaker 1: Well, y'all are spicy spicy in the comments, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and tell people.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: We have a live show on April fourteenth at seven
Speaker 2: pm at the Boston Museum of Science. So if you're
Speaker 2: in the greater Boston area, come out and join us.
Speaker 3: Tickets are free.
Speaker 2: All you have to do is register and you can
Speaker 2: get this same energy on April fourteenth. Yes, there will
Speaker 2: be a link in our show notes for you to
Speaker 2: register and come again. Those tickets are zero dollars and
Speaker 2: zero cents. So we want to see you.
Speaker 3: All right, Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: Here's our conversation, recorded live from the Great Northern Festival.
Speaker 4: M I came out too hot, too hot too. You
Speaker 4: threw your micro my mic back flew off.
Speaker 3: How are y'all feeling?
Speaker 4: Thank you all so much for being here? It is cold.
Speaker 4: I was like I wouldn't come.
Speaker 3: But we're glad that you be very glad.
Speaker 2: All right, so we like to have a little you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know anybody here. Has anybody heard Dope Labs before?
Speaker 3: Some people?
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, so.
Speaker 3: Y'all in the lab, all right, all.
Speaker 2: Right, ok so you already know it's gonna be some
Speaker 2: cackling in here. We're going to be laughing a lot tonight.
Speaker 2: For those of you that don't know us. I'm Tt
Speaker 2: and I'm Zachiah, and we both host Dope Labs, which
Speaker 2: is our podcast that's for people who like science and
Speaker 2: for people who are just like I'm not going okay,
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure. So we want to have a
Speaker 2: little bit of fun with y'all. For just a little backstory.
Speaker 2: Our podcast is built on like our experience as grad students.
Speaker 2: So I'm a molecular biologist slash geneticist.
Speaker 3: You know, I've done a little bit.
Speaker 2: Of biochemistry, all of that, right, And when I was
Speaker 2: in grad school, I met TT.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I was starting grad school and I was
Speaker 1: I'm in material science and engineering, mechanical engineering, a little
Speaker 1: bit of chemistry, a little bit of bio materials.
Speaker 4: But not really. I'm not going to pretend like I
Speaker 4: know any biology.
Speaker 2: And so we liked for our podcast to feel like
Speaker 2: what we think our experience was, which was friendship and science,
Speaker 2: but not like.
Speaker 3: Dry eyed science, right, a little bit of exciting science.
Speaker 2: And so we graduated, and this is maybe twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, getting on up into the twenty sixteen and seventeen.
Speaker 2: Anytime we told a joke, we said something that everybody
Speaker 2: else was saying.
Speaker 3: We should have a podcast, right, if you left.
Speaker 4: A joke, Yeah, isn't that what everybody's doing. Isn't that
Speaker 4: how it goes?
Speaker 2: So that's kind of where we started, and we just
Speaker 2: wanted to bring this, you know, care for each other,
Speaker 2: this passion for science and a passion for explaining science.
Speaker 2: So I like to say, well, TT says it most
Speaker 2: of the time that I never meet a stranger, Okay, never,
Speaker 2: I'm Southern. That's how it works. And you know, we
Speaker 2: would go out and talk.
Speaker 4: To people and we said she was or most of
Speaker 4: the talking.
Speaker 1: I was just doing the listening and like, hey, this
Speaker 1: person may kill us.
Speaker 3: No needs a fear. I'm good in hand to hand combat.
Speaker 2: But if people found out that we were scientists, they
Speaker 2: would ask questions like, you know, uh, I never figured
Speaker 2: I never understood, like why is the sky blued? People
Speaker 2: say it's something you know that's really simple, but can
Speaker 2: you explain it?
Speaker 1: Or they would ask, I don't understand about buoyancy? How
Speaker 1: do ships stay afloat? Or they would ask things that
Speaker 1: were more biological, biological in its background, where Zekiir would
Speaker 1: really be able to chime in and I would just
Speaker 1: be listening and you know, sipping my tea.
Speaker 2: But I think what we found is this is where
Speaker 2: we really loved science, at that intersection of excitement and
Speaker 2: question asking and accessibility. And so that's what we try
Speaker 2: to do with Dope Labs, and that's what we're gonna
Speaker 2: try to do with y'all tonight.
Speaker 3: Okay, also, buckle up, buckleloup, buckle up. All right.
Speaker 2: So when we were saying, like okay, first of all,
Speaker 2: girl is gonna be cold.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be cold, not ready. Those are the two
Speaker 1: things that we knew. It's gonna be cold and we're
Speaker 1: not ready.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell one of t T secrets since she's
Speaker 2: gonna be upset. Maybe she wanted to wear a snowsuit
Speaker 2: for this.
Speaker 4: It was for fashion's sake.
Speaker 1: I thought you a would really appreciate it. You understand
Speaker 1: you and say, listen, I see you, I know what
Speaker 1: you're doing.
Speaker 4: It didn't come in time.
Speaker 2: But you know, I said, hmm, that could be a
Speaker 2: good end. You know, when we're talking about science, there's
Speaker 2: just so much we could start with. When we think
Speaker 2: about pop culture and what's happening, I said, what will
Speaker 2: people want to hear from us? Maybe we could talk
Speaker 2: about the lunar New Year that's happening.
Speaker 4: Maybe yeah.
Speaker 2: And then I said, maybe we could be spicy and
Speaker 2: talk about Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe.
Speaker 2: But then I said, we should really talk about what's
Speaker 2: really happening today, and the people aren't really I haven't
Speaker 2: seen too much on Twitter Instagram about it, but it's
Speaker 2: groundhouse back.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, I grew up in Maryland, so that's just south
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania and punks and tiny phil This isn't him
Speaker 1: I know him when I see him. Every Groundhog Day,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, at least in Pennsylvania, it's a holiday,
Speaker 1: and everybody's waiting to see if the groundhog sees it shadow,
Speaker 1: and we're keeping our fingers crossed that he doesn't so
Speaker 1: that we don't have to experience anymore cold winters. But
Speaker 1: it turns out this morning he did. I think you
Speaker 1: guys didn't really care because but I've read on the
Speaker 1: East coast is not very happy about it.
Speaker 2: And so when we started thinking about, you know, groundhogs, now,
Speaker 2: TT has way more experience than I do with the groundhog,
Speaker 2: like go way back. Yeah, not so much in North Carolina,
Speaker 2: we don't really check in with that. But I was like,
Speaker 2: is there a science to it? Not really, I feel
Speaker 2: like this is just, you know, people are just having
Speaker 2: a good time, having a good time. But then we
Speaker 2: did start thinking, like, how do we know about what's
Speaker 2: going to happen severe weather events and change in climate.
Speaker 2: I think that's a big theme of the Great Northern
Speaker 2: And so, you know, we have been We've had a
Speaker 2: couple of episodes some of you may have heard them.
Speaker 2: We've talked about some of the fires that we've seen
Speaker 2: on the West Coast that we've seen in Australia, and
Speaker 2: just you know, I think trying to get that sweet
Speaker 2: balance when we're talking to folks about the difference between
Speaker 2: weather day to day, like today supposed to feel like
Speaker 2: minus fifteen okay, and people, you know, if I share
Speaker 2: that on Instagram, people are gonna say, like, oh, that
Speaker 2: just shows you climate change. It's not really that warm.
Speaker 2: Look how cold it is. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: We're talking about climate that's over a long period of time, right,
Speaker 2: And so we're seeing all of these severe weather events
Speaker 2: tied to increasing temperatures, ocean acidification, seeing melting of snow,
Speaker 2: and so we're seeing a lot more things that feel
Speaker 2: like heat waves, seeing way more heat waves. We're seeing
Speaker 2: you know, hurricanes, way more hurricane activity than I ever remember,
Speaker 2: now I have to have many years of record.
Speaker 3: I don't have many years of record.
Speaker 2: But we're seeing way more of this stuff, and that
Speaker 2: still feels like it's related to winter. You know, it's
Speaker 2: still related to all these things are kind of tied together.
Speaker 3: And so I think.
Speaker 2: We're starting to see a change of people coming around
Speaker 2: the corner for kind of seeing that we all are
Speaker 2: tied together, like these borders of what's Minnesota, what's Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: What's I.
Speaker 3: Don't even know if those are right beside each other.
Speaker 4: Don't We didn't say we need geography?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's a science, but it's
Speaker 3: not mine.
Speaker 2: And you know, and so you know that's that's really
Speaker 2: like fake kind of I mean, it's artificial, right, because
Speaker 2: what's happening on the East Coast, what's happening in the Midwest,
Speaker 2: all of that is all tied together. What's happening in
Speaker 2: the North Pole, in Antarctica, in the Pacific Ocean. You know,
Speaker 2: we just saw a volcano eruption there. All of those
Speaker 2: things are tied together. And that's because this is.
Speaker 3: All the water that we have.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't know what y'all learned in elementary school,
Speaker 2: maybe about the water cycle. Anybody have a water cycle
Speaker 2: song that they know? No? Oh, I see somebody saying,
Speaker 2: maybe it's a spotlight you're saying no, now, no, I
Speaker 2: promise you. I mean I thought we were having a
Speaker 2: good time, and so I had a water cycle song
Speaker 2: and it was like condensation, evaporation, precipitation on my mind.
Speaker 3: Anybody heard that.
Speaker 4: I've never heard that that's hurtful.
Speaker 2: Well, it's all part of the water cycle and it
Speaker 2: happens all the time.
Speaker 3: That was that second verse. But when we think about that,
Speaker 3: this is all the water that we have.
Speaker 2: So what's happening in Australia run off on the roads
Speaker 2: and into the rivers and into greater bodies of water,
Speaker 2: you know, into different basins. That's the same water from
Speaker 2: that's ancestral water, right, Like that's water that evaporates your grandma's,
Speaker 2: mama's water, you know. And when you really think about that,
Speaker 2: that water has a record, like that water has a memory,
Speaker 2: and we have to take care of it. One of
Speaker 2: the things we've been seeing is over time, right when
Speaker 2: we look at when we think about climate and we
Speaker 2: think about changes on a really large scale over time,
Speaker 2: we're seeing some warming oceans.
Speaker 3: And you know, it may feel good for a vacation.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh it's warm.
Speaker 2: Out here, you know, Oh give my you know, get
Speaker 2: my selfie, get my pictures off, right, But that's not
Speaker 2: the only thing that's happening with these oceans. What we're
Speaker 2: also getting is what I like to call spicier oceans. Okay, Now,
Speaker 2: anybody suffer from like acid reflux or heartburn. Y'all don't
Speaker 2: have that either. So y'all didn't know the water cycle
Speaker 2: and you don't have heartburn. Okay, I'm just keeping I'm kidding, Store,
Speaker 2: it's just me. It's well if i'm if I'm trying
Speaker 2: to have a good time, I'm definitely having a roll, lads. Okay,
Speaker 2: the ocean is is acidifying. Anybody heard of that before? Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, we got to inform crowds. So when we
Speaker 2: think about what does it mean to acidify? We know
Speaker 2: about the pH scale. Have y'all seen alkaline water? Okay,
Speaker 2: they say, like that's pH nine and above. So if
Speaker 2: you look at this scale up here over in the blues,
Speaker 2: that's your alkaline. What else is in the blue bleach
Speaker 2: is alkaline? I'm trying to think soap is alkaline? The
Speaker 2: ocean should be neutral. We wanted to be around seven.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: When you start to get over into the acidic areas,
Speaker 2: you get into like lemon juice and tomatoes and coffee.
Speaker 2: Those are the things that bother me. And then stomach acid,
Speaker 2: which is around like pH two. Now our oceans are
Speaker 2: because of the activity that we're having here as inhabitants
Speaker 2: of planet Earth. Our oceans are starting to capture a
Speaker 2: little bit more carbon dioxide, and we're getting this intricate process.
Speaker 2: I won't take you through the chemistry, but if you
Speaker 2: ask me later, I will. And we're getting some ocean asidification.
Speaker 2: And people are like, oh, don't be so alarmed. The
Speaker 2: pH is only changing, Like we're looking at steps of
Speaker 2: one here on this scale behind us, But the pH
Speaker 2: is only changing by zero point like point one, So
Speaker 2: that's only a little bit. And I said, my friends, okay,
Speaker 2: you're missing the point. It's a log scale. And so
Speaker 2: if you guys have seen you know, not to take
Speaker 2: us back to the past few years and what's happening.
Speaker 3: But we've seen log scale before.
Speaker 2: And so that zero point one percent change or zero
Speaker 2: point one step change is about a thirty percent change
Speaker 2: in acidification. So we're getting way more acidic. I don't
Speaker 2: want to swim in a gin and tonic like, I
Speaker 2: don't want the ocean to feel like that.
Speaker 3: And it's not just me.
Speaker 2: If you won't do it for yourselves, if we won't
Speaker 2: change our behavior and stuff for you know, the future generations,
Speaker 2: at least do it for the delicacies that we love. Okay,
Speaker 2: So what we know with this like ocean acidification, is
Speaker 2: that we're losing basically our gems, our treats, our oysters
Speaker 2: and other organisms that create shells and exoskeletons, crustaceans, anybody
Speaker 2: like shrimp.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna stop asking.
Speaker 4: The thank you them.
Speaker 2: They don't eat anything, They don't eat anything, they don't
Speaker 2: have heartburn, and they.
Speaker 3: Don't know about the water cycles.
Speaker 4: Just us.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you guys do know some crustaceans and you
Speaker 2: care about those. And so we're thinking about, you know,
Speaker 2: when we look at the projection for what the pH
Speaker 2: of the ocean might be based on the changes that
Speaker 2: we're seeing now, we're thinking at the end of the century.
Speaker 3: So twenty one hundred.
Speaker 2: It's wild to say that when they've done scientists have
Speaker 2: done experiments and they're saying, like snails and things that
Speaker 2: create shells that are in the ocean, the shells are
Speaker 2: dissolving like within forty five minutes because of the acidification
Speaker 2: that we expect to have.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, we got to make some.
Speaker 1: Changes, absolutely absolutely, And one of the major changes that
Speaker 1: we have to also think about when it comes to
Speaker 1: these delicacies that are in the ocean. That we're thinking
Speaker 1: about is microplastics. I think all of us are aware
Speaker 1: that our ocean has a huge plastic problem. And plastic
Speaker 1: is a really interesting material. I'm a material scientist. So
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it just a little bit and we'll.
Speaker 4: Keep going plastic. There's no way for it to degrade.
Speaker 1: The plastic that you see in everything that we have
Speaker 1: in our clothes, that we have in our shoes, that
Speaker 1: we have in pretty much every.
Speaker 4: Corner of our rooms. That plastic will exist forever.
Speaker 1: It will never degrade, and it has to go somewhere,
Speaker 1: and one of the places that is going is into
Speaker 1: the ocean. Right now, they're saying that a majority of
Speaker 1: the microplastics that are found in the ocean are from textiles,
Speaker 1: so like clothing and things like that, because apparently y'all
Speaker 1: are throwing your clothesway in the trash.
Speaker 2: I didn't know people were doing that. I didn't know
Speaker 2: I had plastic clothes. Content is the fabric of my life.
Speaker 2: Car tires, Okay, I thought that was rubber material scientists,
Speaker 2: I defer.
Speaker 4: City dust exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you've been in New York, you know
Speaker 2: what city does this, you're basically chewing the air.
Speaker 4: It's nasty.
Speaker 1: And then also what's really interesting is another large part
Speaker 1: of it is road markings. Road markets are actually thermoplastic.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you've ever seen some road
Speaker 1: markings being put down, but like they'll put fire on
Speaker 1: top of it and helps it adhere to the road.
Speaker 1: So it has synthetic materials as resin, and it's not
Speaker 1: just paint. And so when it rains, when it snows
Speaker 1: and it runs into our sewers, that's where it gets
Speaker 1: incorporated into our water system and then that eventually gets
Speaker 1: out into the ocean.
Speaker 4: So there have been a lot of.
Speaker 1: Studies that have been done to figure out how much
Speaker 1: plastic is there actually in the ocean, and so you know,
Speaker 1: let's show them. So there was some research that was
Speaker 1: done with salps and they over eight years, they looked
Speaker 1: at the gut of over one hundred salps and they
Speaker 1: found microplastics in all of their stomach. So the reason
Speaker 1: why they chose this type of fish, I had never
Speaker 1: even seen this before. It looks like that, yes, is
Speaker 1: because it's a filterfish. They live in about a mile
Speaker 1: deep in the ocean and to propel themselves through the ocean.
Speaker 1: They take water in and then they push it out,
Speaker 1: and that's also how they eat. So then they became
Speaker 1: like a really great animal to look at to figure
Speaker 1: out if there's microplastics. They found microplastics in all one
Speaker 1: hundred over eight years. So they are estimating that in
Speaker 1: the ocean that there is about eight million microplastic particles
Speaker 1: per cubic meter.
Speaker 3: I thought you meant total. We're gonna say total, no.
Speaker 4: Cubic meter, eight million microplastics. So it's a problem. It's
Speaker 4: a really really big problem.
Speaker 1: And so like I was saying, when you have we
Speaker 1: have all of these ways for the microplastics to get
Speaker 1: into our water system, into our ocean, and like Zekiah
Speaker 1: was saying, this water is all that we have, and
Speaker 1: it has that closed loop, so it's really cyclical. You know,
Speaker 1: it rains, it goes into the water, evaporates, goes back
Speaker 1: into the sky.
Speaker 4: We drink it.
Speaker 1: Now they're finding microplastics in snowpack in mountains, they're taking samples.
Speaker 1: This is a paper from Europe, but they've also found
Speaker 1: it in Colorado. So we know that there's microplastics in
Speaker 1: the snow. And so then you think about the animals
Speaker 1: that live there, the people who drink water that's really fresh,
Speaker 1: that it comes from the mountains, and what does that
Speaker 1: mean for us as humans and as how we consume.
Speaker 1: So when you think about snow and microplastics in the
Speaker 1: snow and snow formation, it seems really possible that microplastic
Speaker 1: could be in the snow that's just falling down onto
Speaker 1: our streets.
Speaker 4: Because if you think of the structure of water, so
Speaker 4: h two oz.
Speaker 1: When it's frozen, it makes us really discrete hexagonal pattern,
Speaker 1: and so as a snowflake grows, it's going to expand
Speaker 1: in a way that only that fits that hexagonal pattern,
Speaker 1: which is why snowflakes are always pretty symmetric.
Speaker 4: But they also are never the same, as we all know.
Speaker 1: And the reason why they're never the same is because
Speaker 1: up in the clouds when you have the water vapor.
Speaker 1: So some people think that snowflakes start from a water droplet,
Speaker 1: that's not true.
Speaker 4: It's water vapor.
Speaker 1: That water vapor then condenses onto a piece of dust
Speaker 1: or a piece of plastic, and that's when it starts
Speaker 1: to grow. So if you go back one side, you
Speaker 1: can see that dependent on depending on the humidity. So
Speaker 1: the amount of water vapor that is in the cloud,
Speaker 1: and then the temperature at the time that dictates the
Speaker 1: size and shape of your snowflake. So the colder it is,
Speaker 1: the more it's the snowflake stays pretty flat.
Speaker 4: The warmer it gets.
Speaker 1: No, the colder it is, the more intricate that the
Speaker 1: design gets. The warm it is, the more it stays flat,
Speaker 1: the more humidities, the more water vapor. You could see
Speaker 1: that it becomes more and more and more intricate. And
Speaker 1: these snowflakes aren't the same because while they're in the
Speaker 1: their water vapor state and they're beginning to grow, they're
Speaker 1: traveling through these clouds, they're flying all over the place,
Speaker 1: and no two snowflakes take the same path.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like people.
Speaker 1: And so by the time they reach their critical mass
Speaker 1: and they start to get too heavy to stay inside
Speaker 1: of clouds, that's when they start to fall down.
Speaker 4: And so when you start to.
Speaker 1: Think about snow and microplastics, it really makes you think
Speaker 1: about how you know, when we were kids, we were
Speaker 1: outside and the snowing and you stick it hung up.
Speaker 1: Now it kind of it kind of ruins that for
Speaker 1: everybody because you don't want to do that too much.
Speaker 1: I don't think anymore, because then you might end up
Speaker 1: pooping legos.
Speaker 4: We're gonna take a quick.
Speaker 1: Break, but when we get back we'll have more from
Speaker 1: our live show at the Great Northern Festival. We're back,
Speaker 1: but before we get to today's show, just the heads
Speaker 1: up that next week we have a really great episode
Speaker 1: for you. It's all about the connection between our minds
Speaker 1: and our bodies. We're talking to doctor Suzanne O'Sullivan about
Speaker 1: psychosomatic disorders.
Speaker 2: So don't miss it. Now let's get back to the
Speaker 2: Great Northern Festivals. I'm not up for pooping legos, but
Speaker 2: I think the thing we have realized. So we've been
Speaker 2: here for a couple of days, and I think the
Speaker 2: major takeaway I've been having a good time.
Speaker 3: I've been having a great time here. Okay. I came
Speaker 3: here from Atlanta.
Speaker 2: I put on I bundled up, and I said, Wow,
Speaker 2: winter is different here, Like y'all are doing stuff.
Speaker 4: No one's staying at home, everybody's out.
Speaker 2: These winters are not created equal. Now winter for me,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, dreary, there's nothing to do. Everything's closed.
Speaker 3: Uh, there's no snow.
Speaker 2: And even the call, even the thought that there might
Speaker 2: be snow. Uh, there's way less activity than we see here.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, I just have been like, we
Speaker 2: could could learn something, We could learn something, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe we could maybe I need to be here in
Speaker 2: the winter, like to see all the things that are
Speaker 2: going on with the Great Northern I don't know if
Speaker 2: you guys have done anything else that's part of the festival.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have pond hockey. I see people doing
Speaker 2: some things. We're gonnahow you a little bit because I
Speaker 2: have some questions for y'all. You know, people doing all
Speaker 2: kinds of stuff just outside, having a good time, brewery tours.
Speaker 3: I just don't know. We don't have that, and I
Speaker 3: want it. I want it. But I was looking.
Speaker 2: When I started looking, I was like, why is you know,
Speaker 2: I'm in Google, Like, why is winter more so awful?
Speaker 2: So awful in Atlanta? It's so great here, Okay. So,
Speaker 2: and I found this different kind of winter that I
Speaker 2: hadn't heard of. So, you know, we saw a volcanic
Speaker 2: eruption a couple of weeks ago that was really devastating
Speaker 2: in the Southern Pacific Ocean in Tonga. And when I
Speaker 2: was looking at that and looking up different stuff about winter.
Speaker 2: I came across the volcanic winter. Anybody ever heard of
Speaker 2: that before? I want to see somebody says, yes, well
Speaker 2: I hadn't heard of it me either, And we're gonna
Speaker 2: talk about it real quick.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: So a volcanic winter is basically you have a volcano
Speaker 2: that erupts and it is pushing up so much ash,
Speaker 2: and you have a sulfur as well that you basically
Speaker 2: create this cloud of debris and particles in the stratosphere.
Speaker 2: Now we won't get into like what all those little
Speaker 2: things are and what's happening.
Speaker 3: I won't walk you through that.
Speaker 2: But what you basically create, or what the environment or
Speaker 2: the atmosphere creates is now want to switch to summer.
Speaker 2: You know those little reflective things you can put in
Speaker 2: your windshield so the car doesn't get too hot.
Speaker 3: It basically creates that in the.
Speaker 2: Atmosphere, right, And so any sun that's coming down gets
Speaker 2: reflected back any heat, and so what you get is
Speaker 2: effective winter. So global decrease in temperature two to three
Speaker 2: degrees globally just from a powerful volcanic eruption.
Speaker 3: And I was like, is.
Speaker 2: This for real when I first saw it, because I
Speaker 2: hadn't heard of it before. I felt like everybody did
Speaker 2: a science project with a volcano, they didn't talk about
Speaker 2: it then, No, And so I was like, wow, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure. I don't know about this. And I looked
Speaker 2: a little bit more beyond Wikipedia, and I said, oh,
Speaker 2: it looks like the last time this happened was in
Speaker 2: like nineteen twelve. But they can track this back to
Speaker 2: so many years ago. And I was like, well, what's
Speaker 2: the real like, what's the real evidence of this? And
Speaker 2: there is some they're taking full ice cores, So y'all
Speaker 2: all probably familiar with ice cores. We don't have that, okay,
Speaker 2: But they're taking these ice cores and going so deep
Speaker 2: and pulling the ice out, and they can see volcanic
Speaker 2: ash covering. So if you look at that thick gray
Speaker 2: ring here in this cylinder, evidence of a volcanic winter.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of like tree rings or the or
Speaker 1: in rock faces. How they can look back and look
Speaker 1: at like striations and things like that.
Speaker 2: Now I love this kind of science. It feels really exciting.
Speaker 2: It feels I can see it with the naked eye,
Speaker 2: compared to like molecular biology, which is what I've done.
Speaker 2: But It also feels a little unsafe, like do we
Speaker 2: know this isn't a load bearing ice core? You know,
Speaker 2: Like I just feel like we shouldn't take too many
Speaker 2: of these, you know, punch out right from the earth.
Speaker 2: I feel like somebody should be regular right the.
Speaker 4: Whole punch in the earth.
Speaker 1: Something's gonna happen, Something bad is gonna happen.
Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of movies, and that's usually how
Speaker 2: it starts. Now, this is what I want to ask
Speaker 2: you all about.
Speaker 4: Yes, we've got questions, we've.
Speaker 2: Got Now I'm interested. I'm gonna tell you I'm in
Speaker 2: thermal culture.
Speaker 4: M hm.
Speaker 2: So y'all are dipping in different hot water bests while
Speaker 2: it's cold outside. They go from hot water than cold water,
Speaker 2: then back to hot, then.
Speaker 4: Back to cold. I don't know how many cycles y'all do,
Speaker 4: but it's different.
Speaker 3: It's different.
Speaker 2: Now we don't we haven't figured out the science behind
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 3: But we're trying to.
Speaker 2: Find a way to make it an episode, okay, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna have to shout out all of y'all yeah,
Speaker 2: because you know, this is your own thing. So when
Speaker 2: we do it, we're gonna you know, on social media,
Speaker 2: we're gonna ask for a call. We're gonna say, hey,
Speaker 2: let us know what you think. If you've ever done this,
Speaker 2: I want y'all to call in and tell us. Okay,
Speaker 2: we want to hear it.
Speaker 1: And so another thing that we found that was very
Speaker 1: interesting when we were, you know, doing our googles, why
Speaker 1: is winter is so awful but seems so manageable to
Speaker 1: people in the Midwest.
Speaker 4: Apparently you are smarter. Yes, I think it's fair. Big
Speaker 4: up yourselves, Big up to y'all.
Speaker 1: There have been studies that have shown that folks that
Speaker 1: are in cooler climates are actually smarter. They make better
Speaker 1: decisions than people in warmer climates. And the studies that
Speaker 1: they were doing is that they would have so apparently
Speaker 1: a comfortable temperature is seventy two degrees. I know that
Speaker 1: probably sounds balmy to y'all, but so they put folks
Speaker 1: that were in a room colder than seventy two degrees
Speaker 1: five five degrees and then warmer, and they gave them
Speaker 1: a series of tasks. In almost one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: the time, the people who were in the cooler rooms
Speaker 1: performed way better. And it's not even that they were
Speaker 1: able to perform better. They were able to choose routes.
Speaker 4: To get to an answer that made more sense.
Speaker 1: They were more logical and they didn't stray away from
Speaker 1: complex thinking.
Speaker 4: The people in warmer in the warmer rooms.
Speaker 2: They would always just kind of take the easiest route
Speaker 2: to be able to finish whatever they were doing.
Speaker 4: So that was really really interesting to me, and I said, Wow,
Speaker 4: I guess, I guess maybe the people.
Speaker 2: In Minnesota know what they're doing and they they've got it.
Speaker 2: They've got it all figured out. They know exactly what
Speaker 2: I mean. I saw the skywalking.
Speaker 4: That seems smart, genius, smart genius. I was like, you
Speaker 4: don't even have to go outside. This is perfect.
Speaker 2: But then I was like, are they smarter because they
Speaker 2: also do things like this, and y'all seem to do
Speaker 2: it a lot and like to do it, and I
Speaker 2: don't really understand. It feels dangerous, it feels very dangerous.
Speaker 2: But luckily for y'all, I've taken a lot of physics,
Speaker 2: so I was able to I was able to understand
Speaker 2: it a little bit more so for someone like the
Speaker 2: ski jump.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've all seen it. The Winter Olympics is
Speaker 1: upon us. We are very excited about it. With the
Speaker 1: ski jump. They go down that long ramp and they
Speaker 1: launch themselves into the sky and they all make the
Speaker 1: same shape with their body, and that's intentional, of course,
Speaker 1: and it's because of physics.
Speaker 4: They're making this shape with.
Speaker 1: Their body that is one aerodynamic but also gives them
Speaker 1: the ability to fly, so it gives them lift. So
Speaker 1: it's the same thought process, the same physics that's used
Speaker 1: for airplane wings. You can see that the shape is
Speaker 1: roughly the same. Right, the air that's passing over a
Speaker 1: ski jumper is going a lot faster, and what that
Speaker 1: does is it creates a difference in pressure, so there's
Speaker 1: higher pressure beneath them, and that pushes them up into
Speaker 1: the sky. Now they don't have an engine on their backs,
Speaker 1: so they got.
Speaker 4: To come down to the ground.
Speaker 1: And that's well, that's not the only part that scares me,
Speaker 1: but they got to come down to the ground. So
Speaker 1: once they reach their peak, they start to make their
Speaker 1: way down, they change the shape of their skis and
Speaker 1: then when they hit the ground, they always make sure
Speaker 1: they have bent knees and they are able to distribute
Speaker 1: the energy that they have accumulated from going down the
Speaker 1: ramp so fast, flying through the sky and distribute that
Speaker 1: energy into the ground and not into their bones and crash.
Speaker 1: So that is something that I think you gotta be
Speaker 1: pretty smart to be able to do that.
Speaker 4: So it lines up with the science.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we gotta figure it out, Like
Speaker 2: y'all know something that we don't know yet on the
Speaker 2: East coast. Yeah, because meanwhile on the East Coast, a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago, we got a whopping four inches of snow. Okay,
Speaker 2: imagine it.
Speaker 1: Was a dark time for us.
Speaker 4: We were struggling. These people, these are real pictures.
Speaker 1: They were stranded overnight on the highway from four inches
Speaker 1: of snow.
Speaker 4: Because we don't know what we're doing.
Speaker 2: And there's a warm temperature decisions Okay, they need to
Speaker 2: lower the temperature when they decide how we're going to
Speaker 2: prepare for.
Speaker 1: The snow exactly. And I mean we've had This isn't
Speaker 1: the first time this has happen.
Speaker 2: Now, this a couple of Ooh, I don't know how
Speaker 2: long ago it was, but t T and I were
Speaker 2: in grad school.
Speaker 3: This is in Durham, North Carolina. Yes, this is a
Speaker 3: story were gonna tell often, but y'all are our.
Speaker 2: Friends now, so yeah, we're gonna tell it. We both
Speaker 2: are in the lab and I'm like, oh girl, it's
Speaker 2: gonna snow today.
Speaker 3: They always say it's.
Speaker 2: Gonna snows neverth Carolina. And I'm like, hmmm, we're gonna
Speaker 2: go out, you know. So we're gonna do our experiments,
Speaker 2: set everything up. We can go out after after our
Speaker 2: experiments are done. And then they're like, no, no, the
Speaker 2: ice is coming. It's ice and snow. Everything comes to
Speaker 2: a screeching halt. So we're at Duke at the time.
Speaker 2: We're in the labs, but Duke is a major employer
Speaker 2: in Durham, North Carolina. But also when Duke makes a decision,
Speaker 2: so does everybody else. So the whole city of Durham
Speaker 2: just says two o'clock. Everything's canceled, everything's closed.
Speaker 4: Crying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2: So we both park in the same parking garage. I
Speaker 2: was on like the top floor. It took us so
Speaker 2: long to get down out of the garage, and I said,
Speaker 2: tit grow, What do you think is happening? So we're
Speaker 2: facetiming each other okay in the car because we've been
Speaker 2: in there so long, and I said this, you know,
Speaker 2: it's been thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: That's a long time to be to.
Speaker 2: Be in the garage trying to get out, and the
Speaker 2: things I'm thinking about are like, so much exhaust?
Speaker 3: Should we all be here like this? You know, it
Speaker 3: doesn't seem right now.
Speaker 2: Normally the cars come and go, so you have time
Speaker 2: for this stuff to clear.
Speaker 3: Do I have enough gas? I waited the last minute
Speaker 3: for everything. Do I have enough gas? If we continue
Speaker 3: to wait here and idle, I.
Speaker 4: Thought we were gonna have to sleep there.
Speaker 2: I mean, just to give you a taste of the
Speaker 2: level of panic. We're in line, waiting to get still
Speaker 2: waiting to get out of the garage, and somebody comes
Speaker 2: and knocks on my window, and it is a woman
Speaker 2: from my lab. She said, can you take me home
Speaker 2: to Chapel Hill, which is about thirty minutes from here.
Speaker 2: I'm like, girl, I've been here thirty minutes. I haven't moved,
Speaker 2: but one level, I won't be able.
Speaker 3: To take you home.
Speaker 2: I said, what about your car? She said, I'll just
Speaker 2: leave it. Just take me as far as you can,
Speaker 2: as far as you can go, and then I'll get
Speaker 2: out of our walk. I mean, people were making those
Speaker 2: types of decisions at four inches of snow, and I
Speaker 2: thought that she was being wild.
Speaker 3: But when we made it out to the street, When.
Speaker 2: We made it out to the street, it was as
Speaker 2: if the apocalypse had happened. People had abandoned that abandoned
Speaker 2: their cars.
Speaker 4: That's the reason why we were stuck.
Speaker 1: People just got out their cars and left their cars there.
Speaker 3: I know that would not fly here.
Speaker 4: I know y'all wouldn't have.
Speaker 2: Had first of all, the streets would be clean, yes,
Speaker 2: And people were just leaving their cars parked at the light,
Speaker 2: and so we were waiting.
Speaker 4: Behind cars and didn't have people in them.
Speaker 1: We both lived less than five miles away from campus.
Speaker 1: It took us four hours to get home.
Speaker 3: I thought they learned something from that.
Speaker 4: They didn't.
Speaker 3: They didn't. They didn't, they didn't.
Speaker 4: We haven't learned a thing on the East Coast.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that gets really impacted on
Speaker 1: the East Coast when things like this happened.
Speaker 4: I know you saw in those pictures that there were
Speaker 4: some trucks.
Speaker 1: The trucking industry gets severely impacted every time something like
Speaker 1: this happens. Like we make jokes about it, but there
Speaker 1: are truckers that are really struggling because they are trying
Speaker 1: to get us the things that we need in our
Speaker 1: grocery stores and the things that we are adding to
Speaker 1: cart on Amazon. So one of the episodes that we
Speaker 1: did recently was about the trucker shortage, and calling it
Speaker 1: a trucker shortage kind of is misleading because there are
Speaker 1: over ten million people with a CDL, so a commercial what.
Speaker 3: Is cdo commercial drivers.
Speaker 4: Like commercial drivers?
Speaker 1: But only a third of them are trucking And there's
Speaker 1: a reason. There's the reason for that is because the
Speaker 1: trucking industry is modeling themselves after the fat food industry,
Speaker 1: and what they bank on, what they hope for is
Speaker 1: that they can get people that are really excited, dedicated
Speaker 1: to become truckers and then they burn them out and
Speaker 1: then another person will come in right behind them.
Speaker 2: That sounds a little bit like nursing science academics.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, right, it sounds like a lot of
Speaker 1: industries and you can that. I'm telling you go back
Speaker 1: and listen to this episode because you'll find that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of tactics that overlay in a lot
Speaker 1: of the industries that we work in. And so you'll
Speaker 1: start to be like, wait a minute, are you trying
Speaker 1: to what's going on here?
Speaker 4: And like all of these ways.
Speaker 1: That we're being monitored and managed and being asked to
Speaker 1: put out really really high productivity rates that seem impossible.
Speaker 1: It all goes back to the the invention of the
Speaker 1: factory in the assembly line. What they did is that
Speaker 1: they had this thing called scientific management where they would
Speaker 1: find the biggest, toughest guy in the in the whole factory,
Speaker 1: and they would say, over the next hour, I want
Speaker 1: you to make as many of these things as you can.
Speaker 1: And if he could make a hundred, they would say,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the line. Everybody needs to be making
Speaker 1: a hundred of these an hour. And so then they
Speaker 1: would dictate what your productivity or how productive you were
Speaker 1: based on that benchmark.
Speaker 2: And that's the same tactic that they use in a
Speaker 2: lot of different industries, including the trucking industry. And so
Speaker 2: when we have things like that, should we call the snowstorm.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yes, we didn't have any This is my actual grocery store.
Speaker 4: We didn't have any food.
Speaker 3: This is a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 4: This is a couple of weeks ago. I've been eaten
Speaker 4: since then. This is my first time eating. There was
Speaker 4: no there was no food.
Speaker 1: The only food that was on the shelves were things
Speaker 1: that were prepackaged, so you couldn't find any fresh vegetables.
Speaker 1: There's no meat, there was no milk, there was nothing.
Speaker 3: There was plant milk.
Speaker 4: There was plant based milk, which is just fine, but
Speaker 4: there was.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were everybody came to the grocery store.
Speaker 1: We all just stared at the empty shells, like, what
Speaker 1: is actually going on? And it's because of all this
Speaker 1: backup and there's not enough truckers that are being valued
Speaker 1: and put into a situation where they can flourish and
Speaker 1: do their jobs and do their jobs for a long time.
Speaker 1: And so that was one of the things that we
Speaker 1: found when we were researching for this episode. Lap thirty
Speaker 1: nine ad Decartes. Seventy percent of all freight is transported
Speaker 1: by trucks.
Speaker 4: The average truck driver on.
Speaker 1: The road is driving twenty one days out of the
Speaker 1: month and doing fourteen hour days.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of time.
Speaker 4: I don't do anything that much.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you sleep that long.
Speaker 4: I can sleep for a very long time, yes, but
Speaker 4: even that I can't do that for that long.
Speaker 2: I feel like we really got to give the truckers
Speaker 2: their props, right, like and you know, when I was
Speaker 2: a kid, I used to go like this when I
Speaker 2: saw it, Yes, I feel like we need to like
Speaker 2: do this, but then do a heart. Yeah, like we
Speaker 2: should do something when we see them.
Speaker 1: Honestly, they're working very very hard and they really don't
Speaker 1: get the necessary props that they should be getting. And
Speaker 1: the other thing is that they don't also don't get
Speaker 1: any money when they stop yea like when they stop driving,
Speaker 1: when they're when they're dropping their goods off, the clock stops,
Speaker 1: they stop making money. And so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: initiatives out there that's trying to get them better pay
Speaker 1: for their work, but it's just really, really tough. So
Speaker 1: that's what happens on the East Coast. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it again to go back to the if it's colder,
Speaker 1: you're smarter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we haven't quite figured.
Speaker 2: We haven't we're not cold enough, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: you really have to kind of say, like we should
Speaker 2: learn from each other. So I'm gonna try to take
Speaker 2: some tips that I see you around here. When trying
Speaker 2: to take some of that back with me to Georgia,
Speaker 2: you'll maybe take something back with you to Maryland. And
Speaker 2: I know y'all all probably I'll probably take food. She will,
Speaker 2: she will, And y'all have been rocking with us throughout this.
Speaker 2: And you may say I thought they were talking about winter.
Speaker 2: How are we talking about trucks?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: I think we just are really excited to show you
Speaker 2: were just giving you just a tiny sliver, like if
Speaker 2: we had a pie, not even a full slice of
Speaker 2: what is like between us right like this, you're in
Speaker 2: our brains, you're with us, You're with us, and so
Speaker 2: you know, although we were talking about winter, I feel
Speaker 2: like just a recap.
Speaker 3: We've talked about quite a few things.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: We talked a little bit about climate, and then we
Speaker 2: jumped into sharing all of this water, and then we said,
Speaker 2: let's do it for the bivalves, you know, so that's
Speaker 2: that's where our muscles and oysters and crustaceans too, even
Speaker 2: though I don't really rock with them.
Speaker 1: And then we talked about plastic snow, We talked about
Speaker 1: volcanic winter. My friend told us all about those cores,
Speaker 1: those load bearing cores.
Speaker 2: And I think I've really settled on winter is underrated,
Speaker 2: Like y'all are doing it right up here.
Speaker 3: Winter's underrated.
Speaker 4: It is, It definitely is.
Speaker 3: You've sold us, you've sold us.
Speaker 1: Yes, we've learned a lot about the physics of winter
Speaker 1: and how you all are able to maneuver on the
Speaker 1: ice and fly through the sky no problem.
Speaker 2: But our overall thing that we got a lot to
Speaker 2: learn from you. We have enjoyed our time with y'all,
Speaker 2: and unfortunately I think it's over, but we have enjoyed
Speaker 2: you and we hope that you will continue to check
Speaker 2: us out, share us with your friends.
Speaker 3: Yes, just as a reminder, we're only on Spotify, but.
Speaker 2: It's free, and it's every Thursday and you can get
Speaker 2: as many doses as you're like.
Speaker 3: Thank you. That's it for Lab fifty seven.
Speaker 2: Call us at two zero two five six seven seven
Speaker 2: zero two eight and tell us what you thought. Hopefully
Speaker 2: that convinced you that you need us near you live.
Speaker 2: Soon you can give us an idea for a lab
Speaker 2: we should do this semester by calling us again at
Speaker 2: two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight.
Speaker 1: And don't forget there's so much more for you to
Speaker 1: dig into. On our website. You can see a cheat
Speaker 1: sheet for all the previous labs, additional links and resources
Speaker 1: in the show notes. Plus you can sign up for
Speaker 1: our newsletter. Check it out at Dope Last podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the Great Northern Festival for having us.
Speaker 2: You can find them on Instagram at the Great Northern Festival.
Speaker 1: And you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 1: Doe Blabs podcast.
Speaker 2: TT's on Twitter and Instagram at d R Underscore t Sho.
Speaker 4: And you can find Zakia at z said So.
Speaker 1: Doe Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Owned
Speaker 1: Media Group.
Speaker 2: Our producers are Jenny Radlett, Mask and Lydia Smith of
Speaker 2: WaveRunner Studios. Our associate producer from Mega Ohmedia is Breanna Garrett.
Speaker 2: Editing in sound design by Rob Smerciak, mixing by Hannes Brown.
Speaker 2: Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex
Speaker 2: Sugier from Spotify. Executive producer Corin Gilliard and creative producer
Speaker 2: Miguel Contreras. Special thanks to Shirley Ramos, Jess Borison, yasmin Afifi, Kamu, Elolia,
Speaker 2: tillkrat Key and Brian Marquis. Executive producers from Mega Owmedia Group,
Speaker 2: r us T T Show, Dia and Zakia Watts
Speaker 4: H