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Speaker 1: Welcome to hostaff Works. Now, I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,

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Speaker 1: a researcher and writer. Here at hostuff Works. Every week

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Speaker 1: I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the

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Speaker 1: weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture.

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Speaker 1: This week, a college kid turned a standard Honda Civic

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Speaker 1: into a self driving vehicle for seven hundred bucks. And unrelated,

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Speaker 1: picky eating in adults is now a diagnosable disorder. But

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Speaker 1: first staff editor Eves jeff Coat and our freelance writer

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Speaker 1: Dave Rouse explore topical political question who does the United

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Speaker 1: States Secret Service protect and why? For how long and

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Speaker 1: at what cost. Between January and the end of February,

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump Jr. And his brother Eric visited Uruguay, the

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Speaker 1: Dominican Republic Dubai in Canada to celebrate the opening of

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Speaker 1: Nude Trump Brandy hotels and golf courses, anti tech, on

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Speaker 1: other Trump organization projects and potential investments. Secret Service officers

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Speaker 1: trailed the brothers on these trips, with the U S

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Speaker 1: taxpayers covering the bodyguards, airfare, hotel rooms, and meals. The

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Speaker 1: Secret Service won't release its travel expenses, but the hotel

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Speaker 1: tap in Uruguay alone was estimated at nearly one hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars, according to the Washington Post. According to federal law,

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Speaker 1: the Secret Service is authorized to protect the sitting US

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Speaker 1: President and vice president or the next in line for

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Speaker 1: the presidency, their immediate families, and all former U S

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Speaker 1: presidents and their spouses, as well as their children under

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Speaker 1: age sixteen while in office. Neither the president nor the

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Speaker 1: vice president can decline Secret Service protection, but their spouses

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Speaker 1: and adult children can. Almost all presidential families have accepted

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Speaker 1: full Secret Service protection for as long as the law allows.

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Speaker 1: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush even asked for extensions

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Speaker 1: to cover their college age children for a period after

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Speaker 1: they left office. The few exceptions are Ronald Reagan's youngest son,

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Speaker 1: ron who declined Secret Service protection during his father's second term,

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Speaker 1: and Richard and Pat Nixon, who cancel their lifetime protection

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Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five to save the government money they

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Speaker 1: hired their own security detail. In Congress limited protection of

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Speaker 1: future presidents to just ten years after leaving office to

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Speaker 1: cut costs, but inten it reinstated lifetime protection studying concerns

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Speaker 1: over terrorism. Not every congress person wasn't favored, though some

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Speaker 1: thought former presidents should pay for the long term security themselves.

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Speaker 1: Despite the cost, the Trump family is doing nothing unusual

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Speaker 1: by accepting Secret Service protection at home and while traveling abroad.

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Speaker 1: In fact, there is a legitimate reason for extending that protection.

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Speaker 1: If anything were to happen to a family member, it

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Speaker 1: would have a huge psychological impact on the president. However,

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Speaker 1: never in the history of the American presidency has the

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Speaker 1: commander in chief been an for national business mogul, and

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Speaker 1: never has a multibillion dollar global brand been so closely

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Speaker 1: tied to an American president, So there is an ethical

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Speaker 1: concern when the family appears to use public money to

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Speaker 1: fund private interests. When Donald Junior and Eric Trump traveled

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Speaker 1: to make international business deals flanked by serious looking dudes

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Speaker 1: with earpieces and lapel pins, it sends a message that

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Speaker 1: the presidency and the Trump organization are intertwined. The overall

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Speaker 1: cost of Secret Service protection for the Trump family will

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Speaker 1: likely be millions more than it was for Obama's family

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Speaker 1: over four years. In addition to the son's trips abroad,

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Speaker 1: Trump spends almost every weekend in Palm Beach and Melania.

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Speaker 1: Trump lives full time in New York at least for

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Speaker 1: the rest of their sun Baron school year. Some people

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Speaker 1: think Donald Junr And Eric Trump should pay for their

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Speaker 1: own security detail to lessen the financial burden to US

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Speaker 1: taxpayers and to signal a deeper commitment to separating business

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Speaker 1: from politics, but that's not likely to happen, and eagally

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Speaker 1: it doesn't happen. Next up, staff editor Christopher Hassiotis and

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Speaker 1: our freelance writer Jescelyn Shields dig into the psychology behind

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Speaker 1: picky eating and what some doctors are trying to do

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Speaker 1: about it. Many of us know at least one picky eater,

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Speaker 1: that person who only eats French fries, cheese, pizza, chicken nuggets,

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Speaker 1: or cereal, and for many of us, this person is

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Speaker 1: also five years old. But it's very possible for adults

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Speaker 1: to be especially picky as well. These highly selected food

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Speaker 1: preferences among adults might have begun in childhood, but while

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Speaker 1: friends went on to learn to enjoy sushi and kale salads,

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Speaker 1: some found it tough to move beyond the basics among

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Speaker 1: adult subjects. Picky eating, also given the abbreviation PE, is

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Speaker 1: a relatively new area of research for psychologists, and at

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Speaker 1: this point, there's no way to say with any certainty

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Speaker 1: where it comes from, or even if it's worth worrying about.

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Speaker 1: In many adult picky eaters, their pickiness is fairly benign.

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Speaker 1: They eat only from a limited range of foods, with

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Speaker 1: no physical health or psychosocial problems. But as with all things,

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Speaker 1: when a habit starts to negatively affect the quality of

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Speaker 1: life for an individual or those around them, well that's

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Speaker 1: when things get trickier. For some picky eaters, both adults

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Speaker 1: and children alike. Behaviors can include neophobia or not wanting

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Speaker 1: to try new foods. They can also involve not being

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Speaker 1: able to tolerate different foods, touching on a plate, or

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Speaker 1: being super specific only eating French fries from a certain restaurant,

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Speaker 1: for instance. These habits can turn into a diagnosable eating disorder,

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Speaker 1: like avoidant restrictive food intake disorder also known as aar FID,

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Speaker 1: which is generally accompanied by nutritional deficiency and weight loss,

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Speaker 1: or in children, the inability to gain weight. Ar FID

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Speaker 1: can even develop into another eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia,

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Speaker 1: and the condition can also emerge from problems with low

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Speaker 1: appetite and low food enjoyment, or from fears of negative

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Speaker 1: consequences associated with eating, like choking or having to go

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Speaker 1: to the bathroom. Because the study of picky eating adults

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Speaker 1: is relatively new, it's hard to say how common it is,

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Speaker 1: at what point it becomes a problem, how to diagnose it,

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Speaker 1: and how to treat it if it needs treating at all.

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Speaker 1: But it's gotten to a point where a support group

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Speaker 1: called Picky Eating Adult Support exists for those with different tastes.

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Speaker 1: According to the organization's motto, However, picky eating doesn't usually

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Speaker 1: just sneak up on somebody one day. Studies show that

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Speaker 1: most adult picky eaters report experiencing pet in childhood. Take

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Speaker 1: fifty seven year old real estate broker Marla Lopez, who

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Speaker 1: also goes by the name French Fry Lady. According to

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Speaker 1: her blog focusing on a lifelong pe condition, she has

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Speaker 1: only ever tasted a handful of foods, most of them

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Speaker 1: the color white. She has never even tasted a vegetable

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Speaker 1: other than a potato, and after cooking scrambled eggs for

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Speaker 1: her son for twenty years, she finally became inured to

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Speaker 1: the smell of them to the point of being able

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Speaker 1: to try them. In two thousand and twelve. These days,

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Speaker 1: she will occasionally eat scrambled eggs, but only if they're

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Speaker 1: cooked very, very well done. Now, Lopez is an outspoken

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Speaker 1: adult picky eater, but the condition can be difficult to

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Speaker 1: diagnose because not everybody is vocal about their habits like

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Speaker 1: she is, and there doesn't yet exist an objective and

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Speaker 1: reliable way to measure pickiness or to parse preference from affliction.

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Speaker 1: So how would someone get diagnosed with PE to begin with?

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Speaker 1: Jordan Ellis, a doctoral student in clinical health psychology at

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Speaker 1: East Carolina University, studies PE and has co written a

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Speaker 1: study that does propose a way to measure these behaviors.

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Speaker 1: According to Ellis, most past research has relied on simply

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Speaker 1: asking an individual whether or not they consider themselves to

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Speaker 1: be a picky eater. The new measurement tool Ellis developed,

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Speaker 1: called the Adult Picky Eating Questionnaire or APEC, looks at

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Speaker 1: multiple aspects of picky eating behavior, including rigid food preferences,

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Speaker 1: lack of food variety, meal disengagement and avoidance, and aversion

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Speaker 1: to bitter and sour tastes. Says Ellis, we hope to

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Speaker 1: start to understand which of these aspects are most related

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Speaker 1: to problems and which could best be targeted through treatment.

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Speaker 1: Although treatment might not be necessary for all picky eaters

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Speaker 1: on the severe end of the PE spectrum, they're eating

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Speaker 1: habits can cause real psychosocial distress. Diagnosed picky eaters can

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Speaker 1: experience anxiety around eating situations, they get depressed, experienced obsessive

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Speaker 1: compulsive symptoms, or just a general lower quality of life.

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Speaker 1: At this point, researchers can't say for sure whether it's

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Speaker 1: the embarrassment around their limited eating habits that causes psychosocial

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Speaker 1: distress in PE adults or the other way around, but

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Speaker 1: it's possible it goes both ways regardless. No recommended treatment

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Speaker 1: for severe PE or our fit in adults currently exists,

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Speaker 1: although some researchers are having some success using cognitive behavior

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Speaker 1: therapy and exposure therapy techniques with more extreme PE and

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Speaker 1: our fit adults in their clinics. However, no large clinical

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Speaker 1: trials have yet been conducted. Jordan Ellis tells How Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works that there's a real lack of research in PE adults.

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Speaker 1: But we know not all PE behaviors path logical, not

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Speaker 1: even close. We would really like to learn more about

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Speaker 1: people who truly struggle with these eating difficulties, he says,

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Speaker 1: and learn how to help improve their psycho social functioning. Finally,

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Speaker 1: this week, senior writer and tech Stuff host Jonathan Strickland,

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Speaker 1: along with our freelance writer Alia Hoyt, explains how the

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Speaker 1: incredible future of self driving cars maybe a little bit

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Speaker 1: closer than we thought. How's this for a d I

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Speaker 1: Y project? Brevin Jorgenson, a student at the University of Nebraska,

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Speaker 1: used some software and a few pieces of gear to

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Speaker 1: turn his normal Honda Civic into a semi autonomous vehicle. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a do it yourself driverless car. Jorgenson used software

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Speaker 1: developed by a startup company called Comma dot Ai, which

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Speaker 1: offers a software kit as a free download. There are

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Speaker 1: exactly two types of cars that are compatible with this software,

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Speaker 1: the two thousand sixteen Acura I l X and the

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Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen Honda Civic. Jorgenson has a Civic. In

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Speaker 1: addition to the software, the enterprising hacker needed a couple

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Speaker 1: of pieces of technology to kick the AI into gear.

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Speaker 1: One of those is a computer device. In this case,

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Speaker 1: it's a smartphone, the Android one plus three smartphones. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: Comma suggests this hardware for its relatively low price and

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Speaker 1: high performance processors to connect the smartphone to the vehicle.

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Speaker 1: Jorgenson also needed a CAN interface. CAN stands for Controller

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Speaker 1: Area Network. It's what lets a computer communicate with the

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Speaker 1: cars on board systems, including stuff like the brakes, steering,

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Speaker 1: and acceleration. This wouldn't work with classic cars, which relied

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Speaker 1: less on computerized subsystems in a vehicle. Jorgenson setup also

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Speaker 1: included a three D printed case to keep everything neat

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Speaker 1: and tidy, and cables to connect every thing together. Now

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Speaker 1: this isn't your typical plug in play technology, so he

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Speaker 1: also needed a soldering iron to make connections. Once he

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Speaker 1: finished the alterations, he took his car for a test drive,

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Speaker 1: or I guess you could say it took him for one.

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Speaker 1: The system isn't completely self dependent. In fact, every few

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Speaker 1: minutes it requires a driver to take hold of the

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Speaker 1: steering wheel or it will shut the vehicle down. It

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Speaker 1: also records video to document any possible problems that may arise.

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Speaker 1: But it did allow Jorgenson's car to steer itself, to

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Speaker 1: accelerate to a specific speed, and to break on its own.

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Speaker 1: It's another example of how the world is moving towards

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Speaker 1: a system of autonomous vehicles. We're probably at least a

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Speaker 1: decade away from it becoming the norm, but stories like

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Speaker 1: this indicate we're on a road because self driving cars.

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Speaker 1: That's a show for this week. Thank you so much

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Speaker 1: for tuning in. Further thanks to our audio producer Dylan

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Speaker 1: Figin and our entorial legas on Alison louder Knock. Subscribe

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Speaker 1: to now now for more of a lated science news

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Speaker 1: and send us links to anything you'd like to hear

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Speaker 1: his cover, plus, would you install a self driving kit

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Speaker 1: in your car? Let us know? As always, you can

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Speaker 1: send us an email at now podcast at how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com, and for lots more stories like these,

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Speaker 1: head on over to our home planet now dot how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com