1
00:00:07,960 --> 00:00:11,280
Speaker 1: From the lung of a snake. The tongue worm steals

2
00:00:11,280 --> 00:00:15,040
Speaker 1: a blood meal? Has it been so for millions of years?

3
00:00:15,480 --> 00:00:19,959
Speaker 1: What do fossils reveal? They just keep getting.

4
00:00:19,720 --> 00:00:22,280
Speaker 2: Longer and more Shakespearean?

5
00:00:22,400 --> 00:00:25,160
Speaker 1: I noticed, Yeah, I'm trying very nice.

6
00:00:25,760 --> 00:00:29,040
Speaker 2: We nail down light and let the meter chase time.

7
00:00:29,680 --> 00:00:33,560
Speaker 2: Now rulers run late, but the clocks are sublime.

8
00:00:35,640 --> 00:00:39,479
Speaker 1: Kelly, pray, tell what are parasites three that you find

9
00:00:39,600 --> 00:00:42,040
Speaker 1: the most creepy?

10
00:00:44,360 --> 00:00:47,600
Speaker 2: Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's

11
00:00:47,680 --> 00:00:50,240
Speaker 2: Shakespearean answers will set it all right.

12
00:00:51,200 --> 00:00:54,800
Speaker 1: Isn't Shakespearean in like iambic pentameter? Not whatever the heck

13
00:00:55,240 --> 00:00:57,560
Speaker 1: you call what we're doing.

14
00:00:57,840 --> 00:01:01,640
Speaker 2: My criticisms of your poetry may not be entirely accurate.

15
00:01:01,680 --> 00:01:07,080
Speaker 1: I admit, okay, Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary universe,

16
00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:13,680
Speaker 1: not Daniel and Kelly's literate universe. This is listener questions

17
00:01:13,959 --> 00:01:26,440
Speaker 1: number thirty three.

18
00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:30,679
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm I'm a particle physicist, and I'm not a

19
00:01:30,720 --> 00:01:31,800
Speaker 2: professor of English.

20
00:01:32,520 --> 00:01:36,520
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Kelly Wiener Smith. I study parasites and space,

21
00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:39,240
Speaker 1: And when I was at a literature festival, I actually

22
00:01:39,319 --> 00:01:43,600
Speaker 1: asked a scotsman. Well, Robert Burns is dead, right, and

23
00:01:44,080 --> 00:01:47,240
Speaker 1: uh he died about one hundred and fifty years ago.

24
00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:52,160
Speaker 1: So the answer is yes. I married a man with

25
00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:56,040
Speaker 1: a degree in literature, and I embarrass him regularly.

26
00:01:56,640 --> 00:01:59,000
Speaker 2: And I've heard that he's not a fan of our poetry.

27
00:01:59,360 --> 00:02:03,680
Speaker 1: He skips past. Oh oh, yeah, the start of our

28
00:02:03,760 --> 00:02:05,160
Speaker 1: listener questions episodes.

29
00:02:05,920 --> 00:02:08,600
Speaker 2: All right, but today we are not talking in tongues,

30
00:02:08,760 --> 00:02:12,520
Speaker 2: but we are talking about tongues. I've noticed that you've

31
00:02:12,720 --> 00:02:14,400
Speaker 2: licked some very interesting topics for.

32
00:02:14,480 --> 00:02:19,280
Speaker 1: Today, Kelly, that's right, and our first question is by Jacob,

33
00:02:19,320 --> 00:02:22,640
Speaker 1: who wants to know about tongue worms. So let's go

34
00:02:22,720 --> 00:02:24,360
Speaker 1: ahead and hear his question.

35
00:02:24,840 --> 00:02:28,200
Speaker 3: I'd love an episode or chapter on tongue worms. An

36
00:02:28,240 --> 00:02:31,160
Speaker 3: approximately four hundred and fifty five million year old lineage

37
00:02:31,480 --> 00:02:35,160
Speaker 3: is mind bending. I keep wondering what impacts something that

38
00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:38,720
Speaker 3: ancient has had on the evolution of vertebrates. My naive

39
00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:42,120
Speaker 3: intuition is that if a host parasite relationship lasts that long,

40
00:02:42,320 --> 00:02:45,160
Speaker 3: natural selection must have pushed both sides towards some kind

41
00:02:45,200 --> 00:02:48,360
Speaker 3: of stable arrangement, almost like an evolutionary game that has

42
00:02:48,360 --> 00:02:51,799
Speaker 3: found a robust equilibrium with strategies on both sides that

43
00:02:51,880 --> 00:02:53,000
Speaker 3: keep getting re selected.

44
00:02:53,520 --> 00:02:57,519
Speaker 2: Wow, who wouldn't love an episode on tongue worms. That's

45
00:02:57,639 --> 00:02:58,959
Speaker 2: nightmare fuel for sure.

46
00:02:59,320 --> 00:03:02,120
Speaker 1: He was really excited about tongue worms. We had a

47
00:03:02,280 --> 00:03:05,720
Speaker 1: very enthusiastic conversation about whether or not we meant the

48
00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:11,760
Speaker 1: pentastomid tongue worms or the isopods that eat the tongues

49
00:03:11,760 --> 00:03:14,919
Speaker 1: of fish. Maybe those were the tongue worms that Jacob meant,

50
00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:20,120
Speaker 1: but anyway, no, he meant the linguadolids the tongue the

51
00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:22,480
Speaker 1: kinds of parasites that you often find in snakes.

52
00:03:22,760 --> 00:03:26,600
Speaker 2: Oh fascinating. Yeah, all right, so tell us what are

53
00:03:26,680 --> 00:03:29,320
Speaker 2: these things and why have they been around for four

54
00:03:29,440 --> 00:03:31,880
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million years?

55
00:03:32,160 --> 00:03:35,000
Speaker 1: All right, so here we go. All right, so pentastoma

56
00:03:35,240 --> 00:03:38,440
Speaker 1: that means five mouths, but you know what, fun fact,

57
00:03:38,640 --> 00:03:42,000
Speaker 1: they only have one mouth. They've got like five hangy

58
00:03:42,080 --> 00:03:45,360
Speaker 1: things on their head side. But actually only one of

59
00:03:45,360 --> 00:03:47,200
Speaker 1: those things is a mouth, and the other five are

60
00:03:47,240 --> 00:03:50,360
Speaker 1: like hooks. I think we weren't quite so good at

61
00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:53,240
Speaker 1: figuring out what the hangy things were initially, So we

62
00:03:53,320 --> 00:03:55,640
Speaker 1: said five mouths, but only one of them is a mouth.

63
00:03:55,720 --> 00:03:57,480
Speaker 2: All right, but give me a mental picture of this thing.

64
00:03:57,560 --> 00:03:59,720
Speaker 2: How big is it? Is it long? And thin? Is

65
00:03:59,760 --> 00:04:02,960
Speaker 2: it little blob? Is it gooey? It's gooey, isn't it?

66
00:04:03,560 --> 00:04:06,320
Speaker 1: I mean probably kind of gooey. I mean it depends

67
00:04:06,440 --> 00:04:08,800
Speaker 1: depends on what stage you're talking about. So they can

68
00:04:08,880 --> 00:04:12,160
Speaker 1: be as long as like fifteen centimeters. Whoa pretty long.

69
00:04:12,320 --> 00:04:17,480
Speaker 1: They're wormy. They're probably related to crustaceans, and so crustaceans

70
00:04:17,480 --> 00:04:23,000
Speaker 1: we're talking about like crayfish, shrimp, crabs, stuff like that, right,

71
00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:26,359
Speaker 1: But they are like sort of very differently shaped. They're long,

72
00:04:26,760 --> 00:04:29,480
Speaker 1: they're wormy. They've got like a head projection that has

73
00:04:29,520 --> 00:04:32,719
Speaker 1: like hooks on either sides that they can like hold

74
00:04:32,800 --> 00:04:36,360
Speaker 1: on to the inside of the lungs of like snakes.

75
00:04:36,839 --> 00:04:38,440
Speaker 1: And then they've got like a little mouth thing in

76
00:04:38,480 --> 00:04:41,599
Speaker 1: the inside so that they can like suck on blood.

77
00:04:42,640 --> 00:04:45,560
Speaker 2: And so they're basically snake shaped, so like a snake

78
00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:47,760
Speaker 2: might have a snake parasite in it that looks like

79
00:04:47,800 --> 00:04:50,640
Speaker 2: a snake. And then does that just continue, Is there

80
00:04:50,640 --> 00:04:52,680
Speaker 2: a parasite inside that one, a parasite inside that one,

81
00:04:52,760 --> 00:04:55,680
Speaker 2: until you get down to like quark length snake parasites

82
00:04:56,160 --> 00:05:00,719
Speaker 2: add infinitum. Yes, it's snake parasites all the way down,

83
00:05:01,320 --> 00:05:03,440
Speaker 2: all right. So you got a snake with a snake

84
00:05:03,480 --> 00:05:06,320
Speaker 2: parasite in it, and it's got these grabby things on

85
00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:09,160
Speaker 2: its mouth so that it can hook into the lungs

86
00:05:09,160 --> 00:05:11,000
Speaker 2: of the snake. I thought we were talking about tongues.

87
00:05:11,600 --> 00:05:15,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they they don't have that much to do

88
00:05:15,360 --> 00:05:18,120
Speaker 1: with tongues really, but they still get called tongue worms.

89
00:05:18,160 --> 00:05:20,279
Speaker 1: And so they tend to be found in like the

90
00:05:20,440 --> 00:05:23,520
Speaker 1: naso pharyngeal region, so they can be like up in

91
00:05:23,560 --> 00:05:26,000
Speaker 1: the nose, they can be in like the trachea, they

92
00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:28,640
Speaker 1: can be in the lung sort of region. You tend

93
00:05:28,640 --> 00:05:33,920
Speaker 1: to find them in like lizards, turtles, snakes, crocodiles, like herps.

94
00:05:34,440 --> 00:05:36,640
Speaker 1: And essentially what they do is like they use those

95
00:05:36,640 --> 00:05:38,760
Speaker 1: hooks they hold on and then they bite into the

96
00:05:38,839 --> 00:05:41,120
Speaker 1: lungs and they suck out a bunch of blood.

97
00:05:41,360 --> 00:05:44,400
Speaker 2: Wow. So if a snake like has a big sneeze,

98
00:05:44,520 --> 00:05:47,120
Speaker 2: it could like chew out one of these guys.

99
00:05:47,320 --> 00:05:49,680
Speaker 1: Ah. So here's the fun thing. So they're probably not

100
00:05:49,720 --> 00:05:53,040
Speaker 1: gonna hut you out the parasite, but they might be

101
00:05:53,200 --> 00:05:55,200
Speaker 1: hutcheing out the parasite's eggs.

102
00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:56,560
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh.

103
00:05:57,640 --> 00:06:02,720
Speaker 1: So the parasite breeds inside and it produces eggs, and

104
00:06:02,839 --> 00:06:05,240
Speaker 1: sometimes the host will like cough up the eggs and

105
00:06:05,320 --> 00:06:07,839
Speaker 1: swallow the eggs, and then the eggs will get out

106
00:06:07,880 --> 00:06:10,400
Speaker 1: of the body through like the feces of the host.

107
00:06:10,640 --> 00:06:12,600
Speaker 2: I'm gonna think about that every time I cough from

108
00:06:12,640 --> 00:06:14,160
Speaker 2: now on, Kelly, Thank you very much.

109
00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:17,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're welcome. There's some other parasites that do that too,

110
00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:18,920
Speaker 1: and they infect humans.

111
00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:19,800
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yay.

112
00:06:20,240 --> 00:06:22,440
Speaker 1: Well, but sometimes the parasites will get into the environment

113
00:06:22,520 --> 00:06:25,240
Speaker 1: directly because the animal will just like cough them right

114
00:06:25,240 --> 00:06:29,400
Speaker 1: out into the environment. Super gross. The way these parasites

115
00:06:29,640 --> 00:06:33,280
Speaker 1: harm their host, it doesn't seem like they cause anemia,

116
00:06:33,320 --> 00:06:35,200
Speaker 1: which is to say, it's not like they're drinking so

117
00:06:35,400 --> 00:06:39,080
Speaker 1: much blood that that's how the host dies. But as

118
00:06:39,080 --> 00:06:42,800
Speaker 1: you can imagine having an animal with hooks hooking into

119
00:06:42,839 --> 00:06:46,080
Speaker 1: your lungs and then nibbling into your lungs, that causes

120
00:06:46,080 --> 00:06:49,320
Speaker 1: a bunch of like gaping wounds in your lungs. Yeah,

121
00:06:49,320 --> 00:06:53,320
Speaker 1: and those gaping wounds then get infected by bacteria or fungus,

122
00:06:53,320 --> 00:06:56,720
Speaker 1: and so animals can die from like pneumonia or some

123
00:06:56,760 --> 00:06:59,560
Speaker 1: of these parasites. As I mentioned can get to be

124
00:06:59,600 --> 00:07:03,559
Speaker 1: like many centimeters long, and they literally like can choke

125
00:07:03,760 --> 00:07:06,359
Speaker 1: the animal to death by just like taking up a

126
00:07:06,360 --> 00:07:08,120
Speaker 1: bunch of their lungs or a bunch of their trachea.

127
00:07:08,600 --> 00:07:09,920
Speaker 1: So not cool.

128
00:07:10,120 --> 00:07:10,560
Speaker 4: Wow.

129
00:07:10,680 --> 00:07:13,640
Speaker 1: Sometimes the parasites have an intermediate host in the life

130
00:07:13,680 --> 00:07:18,280
Speaker 1: cycle where they'll like live inside of an insect, and

131
00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:20,080
Speaker 1: so they'll have like a stage where they don't do

132
00:07:20,120 --> 00:07:22,040
Speaker 1: any reproduction. They're just kind of hanging out in the

133
00:07:22,080 --> 00:07:24,080
Speaker 1: insect waiting for the insect to get eaten by like

134
00:07:24,120 --> 00:07:27,240
Speaker 1: a snake or something. And once the snake eats it,

135
00:07:27,240 --> 00:07:30,000
Speaker 1: it will hatch out of the insect, migrate out of

136
00:07:30,040 --> 00:07:32,600
Speaker 1: the snake's gut until it finds the lungs, and that

137
00:07:32,640 --> 00:07:35,640
Speaker 1: migration can cause some damage, and then it becomes an

138
00:07:35,680 --> 00:07:38,280
Speaker 1: adult and does the chewing on the lung thing again.

139
00:07:38,400 --> 00:07:41,080
Speaker 2: All right, so this thing is pretty gross, but you know,

140
00:07:41,120 --> 00:07:44,680
Speaker 2: it's up there in the pantheon of parasites doing its thing, right,

141
00:07:44,720 --> 00:07:47,960
Speaker 2: We're not judge here. But Jacob wanted to know about

142
00:07:47,960 --> 00:07:49,240
Speaker 2: their evolution.

143
00:07:49,040 --> 00:07:51,400
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and so this is where it gets a

144
00:07:51,440 --> 00:07:54,480
Speaker 1: little bit complicated. So Jacob was super excited because this

145
00:07:54,640 --> 00:07:57,840
Speaker 1: is a very old parasite. So one of the papers

146
00:07:57,880 --> 00:08:00,760
Speaker 1: that I was reading said that it is the oldest

147
00:08:01,080 --> 00:08:05,360
Speaker 1: metazoan parasite that we know about, and so metazoin means multicellular,

148
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:07,560
Speaker 1: and you're yawning, And I don't know how you can

149
00:08:07,640 --> 00:08:11,480
Speaker 1: yawn when I am bringing the most exciting facts in

150
00:08:11,520 --> 00:08:15,400
Speaker 1: the world. Dan the oldest multicellular parasite.

151
00:08:14,800 --> 00:08:19,080
Speaker 2: We know No, oh my god, no jet lag.

152
00:08:19,560 --> 00:08:22,840
Speaker 1: No, I totally understand. And so anyway, we have found

153
00:08:23,400 --> 00:08:27,720
Speaker 1: pentastomid larva. So this is like, you know, a juvenile

154
00:08:27,720 --> 00:08:31,920
Speaker 1: stage of the parasite. They were found at the Cambrian

155
00:08:32,440 --> 00:08:36,680
Speaker 1: Ordo Vsian boundary layer. Maybe I said that right, maybe

156
00:08:36,760 --> 00:08:39,760
Speaker 1: I didn't. But this is about like four hundred and

157
00:08:39,800 --> 00:08:43,040
Speaker 1: eighty five million years ago, and the fossils that they

158
00:08:43,080 --> 00:08:48,680
Speaker 1: found weren't associated with any host, and so what does

159
00:08:48,720 --> 00:08:51,719
Speaker 1: that mean. Maybe that means that this stage was just

160
00:08:51,800 --> 00:08:53,959
Speaker 1: kind of hanging out in the environment waiting for a

161
00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:56,160
Speaker 1: host to come by and then it was gonna like

162
00:08:56,559 --> 00:09:00,600
Speaker 1: swim up and grab the host. Or maybe it means

163
00:09:00,600 --> 00:09:03,240
Speaker 1: that actually, a really long time ago they were free

164
00:09:03,280 --> 00:09:07,480
Speaker 1: living and later they became parasitic. But it's hard for

165
00:09:07,559 --> 00:09:10,680
Speaker 1: us to tell because the fossil wasn't connected to a host.

166
00:09:10,800 --> 00:09:13,920
Speaker 2: All right, So we have fossils of the same critter

167
00:09:14,400 --> 00:09:16,839
Speaker 2: from four hundred and something million years ago. How certain

168
00:09:16,880 --> 00:09:19,240
Speaker 2: can we be it's the same critter? I mean, fossils

169
00:09:19,280 --> 00:09:23,040
Speaker 2: don't give you like details often. How sure are we?

170
00:09:23,400 --> 00:09:27,240
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I have looked at fossils of parasites before

171
00:09:27,400 --> 00:09:30,760
Speaker 1: and thought to myself, you really need to like squint

172
00:09:31,720 --> 00:09:35,760
Speaker 1: and believe to think that that is a fossil of

173
00:09:35,800 --> 00:09:38,319
Speaker 1: the thing you think that it is, or other thing

174
00:09:38,320 --> 00:09:40,520
Speaker 1: you're saying it is. So I opened up the paper

175
00:09:40,520 --> 00:09:42,440
Speaker 1: and I looked at it, and I was like, that's

176
00:09:42,480 --> 00:09:45,200
Speaker 1: a pretty good fossil, okay, Like wow, And so this,

177
00:09:45,320 --> 00:09:49,720
Speaker 1: I mean, like this really looks like a pentostomid larva.

178
00:09:50,080 --> 00:09:51,480
Speaker 1: So it's like it's pretty good.

179
00:09:51,679 --> 00:09:55,480
Speaker 2: Okay. But it wasn't munching on snake lungs, So we

180
00:09:55,520 --> 00:09:57,640
Speaker 2: don't know if that's what it was doing. Yet. It

181
00:09:57,640 --> 00:09:59,920
Speaker 2: could be that it was just hanging out, not being

182
00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:02,360
Speaker 2: being a parasite, and then later figured out a new

183
00:10:02,360 --> 00:10:02,840
Speaker 2: life plan.

184
00:10:03,080 --> 00:10:06,360
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so here's the thing. It couldn't have been

185
00:10:06,400 --> 00:10:11,280
Speaker 1: hanging out chewing on snake lungs because tetrapods like lizards

186
00:10:11,920 --> 00:10:15,320
Speaker 1: weren't even going to be existing for another one hundred

187
00:10:15,320 --> 00:10:19,800
Speaker 1: million years. Oh, so tetrapods weren't an option, but maybe

188
00:10:19,840 --> 00:10:24,040
Speaker 1: it could have been parasitizing something else. Oh and so

189
00:10:24,240 --> 00:10:27,560
Speaker 1: then we find a four hundred and twenty five million

190
00:10:27,640 --> 00:10:32,160
Speaker 1: year old specimen that's an ostracod. And so this is

191
00:10:32,320 --> 00:10:36,720
Speaker 1: an aquatic crustacean and it's got like a kind of

192
00:10:36,800 --> 00:10:41,560
Speaker 1: hard outer shell, and this time the pentistomid was like

193
00:10:41,640 --> 00:10:46,960
Speaker 1: attached to that. And so maybe it was infecting this

194
00:10:47,160 --> 00:10:50,560
Speaker 1: aquatic crustacean that would be like different than what we

195
00:10:50,600 --> 00:10:53,360
Speaker 1: see today. But maybe it was a parasite of something

196
00:10:53,400 --> 00:10:57,120
Speaker 1: totally different a really long time ago. And so our

197
00:10:57,200 --> 00:11:00,360
Speaker 1: best guess is that maybe what happened is they were

198
00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:05,880
Speaker 1: infecting something totally different and then primitive fish came along

199
00:11:06,640 --> 00:11:09,079
Speaker 1: and they started eating these ostra CODs.

200
00:11:09,480 --> 00:11:09,880
Speaker 2: I see.

201
00:11:10,120 --> 00:11:12,880
Speaker 1: And this is where we are doing some evolutionary storytelling.

202
00:11:13,360 --> 00:11:16,400
Speaker 1: This is our best guess at the moment. We're speculating. Yeah,

203
00:11:16,440 --> 00:11:18,680
Speaker 1: just to be clear, this is speculation. So we think

204
00:11:18,720 --> 00:11:21,760
Speaker 1: that you get these early fish they start eating the

205
00:11:21,800 --> 00:11:24,560
Speaker 1: ostracods and the pentostome It is like you know this

206
00:11:24,679 --> 00:11:27,000
Speaker 1: thing where I get eaten, where my host gets eaten

207
00:11:27,120 --> 00:11:29,679
Speaker 1: is kind of the pits, and so I'm going to

208
00:11:29,720 --> 00:11:31,559
Speaker 1: start infecting the fish instead.

209
00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:39,360
Speaker 2: Oh I see, flip. The scriptrisite is actually a victim here, right, yes, yeah, okay,

210
00:11:39,440 --> 00:11:41,320
Speaker 2: what else can you expect it to do. It's being

211
00:11:41,360 --> 00:11:42,840
Speaker 2: munched on. It's going to fight back.

212
00:11:42,960 --> 00:11:46,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, that's right, And so it takes power

213
00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:52,320
Speaker 1: over the situation and it starts infecting this early vertebrate instead.

214
00:11:52,960 --> 00:11:55,920
Speaker 1: And then over evolutionary time, you know, you start to

215
00:11:55,960 --> 00:11:59,440
Speaker 1: get vertebrates that are moving on to land. And now

216
00:11:59,520 --> 00:12:02,600
Speaker 1: you've got some pentistomids that are infecting some of the

217
00:12:02,880 --> 00:12:06,000
Speaker 1: early vertebrates that are moving to land. So you get

218
00:12:06,040 --> 00:12:10,400
Speaker 1: pentistomids in amphibians, which and we find those in amphibians today.

219
00:12:10,880 --> 00:12:14,120
Speaker 1: Then the pentastomids are infecting the lizards and it just

220
00:12:14,160 --> 00:12:18,160
Speaker 1: sort of like radiates with its hosts as they move

221
00:12:18,200 --> 00:12:20,240
Speaker 1: on to land. Does that make sense?

222
00:12:20,400 --> 00:12:24,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Something in the water was munching on tasty

223
00:12:24,120 --> 00:12:27,679
Speaker 2: bits hundreds of millions of years ago, not realizing that

224
00:12:27,720 --> 00:12:31,040
Speaker 2: they were dooming all of their land based ancestors to

225
00:12:31,440 --> 00:12:34,480
Speaker 2: coughing up that bit's eggs hundreds of millions of years later.

226
00:12:34,520 --> 00:12:39,360
Speaker 1: It's incredible yeah, incredible, But again a story, right.

227
00:12:39,240 --> 00:12:41,600
Speaker 2: It's a story. It might be the case, right, Is

228
00:12:41,640 --> 00:12:44,000
Speaker 2: this the kind of thing we could ever know for sure? Like,

229
00:12:44,400 --> 00:12:46,520
Speaker 2: what kind of thing could tell you more about this?

230
00:12:47,040 --> 00:12:49,559
Speaker 2: Is it finding a fossil of one thing inside another thing?

231
00:12:49,600 --> 00:12:50,280
Speaker 2: Do we ever do that?

232
00:12:50,760 --> 00:12:55,880
Speaker 1: Ummm? Yeah? I mean we get lucky in that sometimes

233
00:12:55,920 --> 00:13:00,160
Speaker 1: we will find copper lights and the coprolites will have

234
00:13:00,440 --> 00:13:05,040
Speaker 1: cop right yep, sorry, fossilized poop, and the fossilized poop

235
00:13:05,120 --> 00:13:09,280
Speaker 1: will have identifiable eggs. And so, for example, we get

236
00:13:09,320 --> 00:13:12,920
Speaker 1: pretty lucky because some kinds of tapeworms have very hard

237
00:13:13,200 --> 00:13:16,720
Speaker 1: hooks that they use to hang on to their hosts,

238
00:13:17,120 --> 00:13:19,400
Speaker 1: and inside of the eggs you can sometimes see these

239
00:13:19,480 --> 00:13:23,120
Speaker 1: very characteristic hooks, and so like, you know, an ancient

240
00:13:23,200 --> 00:13:26,400
Speaker 1: shark might poop and you find the ancient shark poop

241
00:13:26,440 --> 00:13:28,480
Speaker 1: and you see these eggs with hooks, and you're like, oh,

242
00:13:28,520 --> 00:13:31,320
Speaker 1: that ancient shark had this certain kind of tapeworm what

243
00:13:32,400 --> 00:13:34,080
Speaker 1: And then you throw a party because it's.

244
00:13:33,960 --> 00:13:39,000
Speaker 2: Awesome and ancient parasite Poopay.

245
00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:41,439
Speaker 1: That's right, that's what my people get excited about, as

246
00:13:41,480 --> 00:13:44,040
Speaker 1: you know. So maybe you could find some similar evidence

247
00:13:44,120 --> 00:13:47,480
Speaker 1: with pentastomids, but it is a little hard because they

248
00:13:47,520 --> 00:13:50,080
Speaker 1: tend to be internal parasites. I don't know how much

249
00:13:50,160 --> 00:13:54,960
Speaker 1: their hard structures fossilize in poop, like their eggs fossilized

250
00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:57,400
Speaker 1: and poop. Maybe, but at the moment we don't have

251
00:13:57,440 --> 00:14:00,680
Speaker 1: all of those connecting bits. But then jake question in

252
00:14:00,720 --> 00:14:04,920
Speaker 1: particular was about coevolution between the vertebrate hosts and so, so,

253
00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:07,040
Speaker 1: first of all, I'd like to note that, like Jacob

254
00:14:07,080 --> 00:14:09,960
Speaker 1: was excited because these are super old parasites that have

255
00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:12,840
Speaker 1: been around for like over four hundred million years, but

256
00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:16,040
Speaker 1: the hosts haven't been around for that long, so coevolution

257
00:14:16,160 --> 00:14:18,800
Speaker 1: has been happening for less long. So, for example, lots

258
00:14:18,840 --> 00:14:22,240
Speaker 1: of folks are excited about these worms in snakes, but

259
00:14:22,320 --> 00:14:24,760
Speaker 1: snakes have been around for like, you know, more than

260
00:14:24,760 --> 00:14:28,280
Speaker 1: one hundred million years, but like around there, which is

261
00:14:28,280 --> 00:14:30,680
Speaker 1: way less than the four hundred plus million years that

262
00:14:30,720 --> 00:14:33,880
Speaker 1: we've had tongue worms around. So that's like a longer

263
00:14:33,880 --> 00:14:36,480
Speaker 1: period for co evolution. But to be honest, so I

264
00:14:36,480 --> 00:14:41,400
Speaker 1: started looking for papers on like coevolution pentastomid and host

265
00:14:41,760 --> 00:14:44,200
Speaker 1: and I didn't find like a lot of reviews that

266
00:14:44,280 --> 00:14:47,000
Speaker 1: had like looked at a bunch of you know, relationship

267
00:14:47,040 --> 00:14:51,120
Speaker 1: between pentastomids and their hosts, and looked at what traits

268
00:14:51,120 --> 00:14:53,720
Speaker 1: were changing. And to be honest, when I was taking

269
00:14:54,200 --> 00:14:58,480
Speaker 1: parasitology or when I go to parasite conferences, I don't

270
00:14:58,480 --> 00:15:02,120
Speaker 1: remember hearing about these paris much. So, like, first, thank

271
00:15:02,160 --> 00:15:03,960
Speaker 1: you to Jacob for asking this question so that I

272
00:15:03,960 --> 00:15:06,960
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to read about this stuff. But honestly,

273
00:15:07,040 --> 00:15:10,440
Speaker 1: I think because these parasites tend to not be a

274
00:15:10,480 --> 00:15:12,800
Speaker 1: big problem for our livestock, at least not in the

275
00:15:12,920 --> 00:15:15,680
Speaker 1: United States. They tend to not be a problem for

276
00:15:15,720 --> 00:15:17,840
Speaker 1: our pets, at least not in the United States. Although

277
00:15:17,840 --> 00:15:20,960
Speaker 1: some dogs can sometimes get these parasites, they tend to

278
00:15:20,960 --> 00:15:23,640
Speaker 1: not be a huge health problem for people again in

279
00:15:23,680 --> 00:15:26,200
Speaker 1: the United States. In some areas where people eat snakes,

280
00:15:26,240 --> 00:15:29,280
Speaker 1: they are a health problem. There in the US, we

281
00:15:29,280 --> 00:15:30,960
Speaker 1: don't tend to spend a lot of money on them,

282
00:15:31,160 --> 00:15:33,400
Speaker 1: and so I think there's not a bunch of money

283
00:15:33,400 --> 00:15:36,480
Speaker 1: spent answering these kinds of questions, And so maybe I

284
00:15:36,520 --> 00:15:38,640
Speaker 1: missed it, but I didn't find the kinds of studies

285
00:15:38,640 --> 00:15:41,520
Speaker 1: that would need to be done to give Jacob the

286
00:15:41,640 --> 00:15:44,800
Speaker 1: kind of answer that he was looking for. What I

287
00:15:44,800 --> 00:15:47,880
Speaker 1: can say is that people have been releasing Burmese pythons

288
00:15:47,920 --> 00:15:51,280
Speaker 1: in Florida, and there's a pentostom parasite from Asia that

289
00:15:51,400 --> 00:15:55,720
Speaker 1: is spreading into our native snakes and is also spreading

290
00:15:55,800 --> 00:15:59,640
Speaker 1: into our non native frogs that have come here from

291
00:15:59,680 --> 00:16:04,560
Speaker 1: like and they have been hitching rides on cars because

292
00:16:04,600 --> 00:16:06,760
Speaker 1: these are tree frogs that kind of stick to stuff.

293
00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:10,200
Speaker 1: And it has been spreading out of Florida and it's

294
00:16:10,240 --> 00:16:13,640
Speaker 1: spreading around the United States, and that's not great. And

295
00:16:13,720 --> 00:16:15,760
Speaker 1: so I don't know, maybe we're going to be caring

296
00:16:15,800 --> 00:16:18,080
Speaker 1: a lot more about this parasite and in your future

297
00:16:18,160 --> 00:16:21,600
Speaker 1: as it decimates our native cryptofauna.

298
00:16:21,800 --> 00:16:23,800
Speaker 2: Do you think there's not a lot of study of

299
00:16:23,840 --> 00:16:27,480
Speaker 2: this topic because it's impossible and the data is just

300
00:16:27,560 --> 00:16:30,960
Speaker 2: so rare, or because people aren't curious about it, or

301
00:16:31,120 --> 00:16:33,520
Speaker 2: just speculator for me about why you think this hasn't

302
00:16:33,520 --> 00:16:34,160
Speaker 2: been explored.

303
00:16:34,400 --> 00:16:38,880
Speaker 1: I think it's because it's in species that are not

304
00:16:38,880 --> 00:16:41,400
Speaker 1: not our pets, are livestock or us. They're just in

305
00:16:41,600 --> 00:16:46,880
Speaker 1: like species that are financially not super important to us.

306
00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:49,920
Speaker 1: I guess I mean, like, I love snakes, I love lizards,

307
00:16:49,920 --> 00:16:52,800
Speaker 1: I love turtles, there's not loads of money in them,

308
00:16:52,920 --> 00:16:53,520
Speaker 1: not until.

309
00:16:53,320 --> 00:16:55,280
Speaker 2: We get some sort of snake lovers in congress.

310
00:16:55,680 --> 00:16:58,880
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, like, I yeah, yeah, something like that.

311
00:16:59,280 --> 00:17:00,880
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's a lot of money to

312
00:17:00,920 --> 00:17:04,080
Speaker 1: study avian malaria or malaria in lizards in the hope

313
00:17:04,119 --> 00:17:07,760
Speaker 1: that understanding it there might help us understand malaria in people. Yeah,

314
00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:12,040
Speaker 1: but this is, you know, not a huge global health

315
00:17:12,320 --> 00:17:14,960
Speaker 1: problem like something like malaria is, and so I think

316
00:17:15,000 --> 00:17:17,679
Speaker 1: that there's less money to study it, unfortunately, But I

317
00:17:17,680 --> 00:17:19,479
Speaker 1: hope we learn more about it because it's very interesting

318
00:17:19,520 --> 00:17:20,480
Speaker 1: and very gross.

319
00:17:21,960 --> 00:17:25,120
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's hear if that answer scratched Jacob's itch.

320
00:17:25,200 --> 00:17:27,480
Speaker 1: Oh you don't you set us up for a series

321
00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:29,719
Speaker 1: of lick jokes earlier. You haven't come up with a

322
00:17:29,840 --> 00:17:34,320
Speaker 1: lick joke to a because I tried, and I couldn't

323
00:17:34,359 --> 00:17:37,160
Speaker 1: come up with anything that was appropriate and involves licking.

324
00:17:37,480 --> 00:17:40,240
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I'm disappointed that that didn't involve as

325
00:17:40,280 --> 00:17:44,119
Speaker 2: many tongues as I was expecting. But let's hear if

326
00:17:44,119 --> 00:17:46,040
Speaker 2: it licks Jacob in all the right places.

327
00:17:46,200 --> 00:17:49,960
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, I'm sorry I couldn't answer

328
00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:52,679
Speaker 1: your question, Jacob, I was licked? Is that?

329
00:17:53,480 --> 00:17:54,000
Speaker 2: Here we go?

330
00:17:54,080 --> 00:17:54,680
Speaker 1: There we go.

331
00:17:55,400 --> 00:17:58,720
Speaker 3: All right, gosh, that's kind of gross and yet so

332
00:17:58,840 --> 00:18:01,560
Speaker 3: extremely neat. I think I was hoping to find some

333
00:18:01,600 --> 00:18:05,639
Speaker 3: deeper deeming quality there in parasites, but instead I found

334
00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:09,840
Speaker 3: my favorite thing in the universe, curiosity and a question

335
00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:13,600
Speaker 3: rarely asked. I'll definitely be developing a toy model. Who knows,

336
00:18:14,240 --> 00:18:16,880
Speaker 3: maybe we've just inspired a listener out there to worm

337
00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:17,439
Speaker 3: their way in.

338
00:18:17,560 --> 00:18:40,040
Speaker 2: Also, all right, we're back, and our next question is

339
00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:43,840
Speaker 2: about physics, and it comes from Alka. Alka didn't want

340
00:18:43,880 --> 00:18:46,520
Speaker 2: to read it themselves, and so I asked Hazel to

341
00:18:46,600 --> 00:18:47,720
Speaker 2: read the question for us.

342
00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:50,800
Speaker 5: I recently read about the redefinition of L units in

343
00:18:50,840 --> 00:18:54,080
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen. For the public, a visible kilogram, a visible

344
00:18:54,160 --> 00:18:56,800
Speaker 5: meter was something everybody could relate to. That is not

345
00:18:56,880 --> 00:19:00,639
Speaker 5: the case with the new improved SI. Now the distance

346
00:19:00,720 --> 00:19:03,399
Speaker 5: light travel is in a vacuum in the time it

347
00:19:03,440 --> 00:19:05,680
Speaker 5: takes the season one thirty three autum to change its

348
00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:09,040
Speaker 5: transition frequency. And where the original idea was to have

349
00:19:09,080 --> 00:19:11,320
Speaker 5: a meter be the circumference of the Earth divided by

350
00:19:11,320 --> 00:19:14,679
Speaker 5: forty million within this calculated a bit, why not do

351
00:19:14,680 --> 00:19:18,120
Speaker 5: it correctly now? And how arbitrary is this anyway? What's

352
00:19:18,160 --> 00:19:21,000
Speaker 5: going on here? Is this an academic exercise for physicists

353
00:19:21,040 --> 00:19:23,120
Speaker 5: with too much time on their hands and not enough

354
00:19:23,119 --> 00:19:26,840
Speaker 5: funding for their worthwhile endeavors, or with a previous standard

355
00:19:26,960 --> 00:19:30,200
Speaker 5: so hap hazard that we've had to redo every calculation

356
00:19:30,400 --> 00:19:31,879
Speaker 5: and measurement that was done before.

357
00:19:32,359 --> 00:19:34,800
Speaker 1: Oh this is fun. I am so glad that there

358
00:19:34,840 --> 00:19:38,280
Speaker 1: are people on this planet who get super excited about

359
00:19:38,320 --> 00:19:41,359
Speaker 1: making sure that we have good standards for weights and

360
00:19:41,440 --> 00:19:46,399
Speaker 1: other measurements. I couldn't be that person, but we need

361
00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:48,639
Speaker 1: those people because.

362
00:19:48,280 --> 00:19:51,280
Speaker 2: You're not organized in precise enough or what's the issue?

363
00:19:51,400 --> 00:19:55,520
Speaker 1: I would get bored. I'd be like, we are close enough,

364
00:19:55,840 --> 00:19:58,480
Speaker 1: and that is not I'm not the right kind of person.

365
00:19:58,600 --> 00:19:59,639
Speaker 1: I'm not the right kind of person.

366
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:01,800
Speaker 2: There is definitely a kind of person who works at

367
00:20:01,840 --> 00:20:05,119
Speaker 2: like the National Institute's for Standards and Technology. They have

368
00:20:05,160 --> 00:20:07,439
Speaker 2: all the standards there. They even have Katrina tells me

369
00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:10,520
Speaker 2: a standard peanut butter what you could buy is like

370
00:20:10,640 --> 00:20:13,680
Speaker 2: an example, this is the definition of peanut butter.

371
00:20:14,520 --> 00:20:19,119
Speaker 1: Okay, is that like the astronaut ice cream that has

372
00:20:19,160 --> 00:20:22,159
Speaker 1: actually never been to space? Is it just a plot

373
00:20:22,280 --> 00:20:24,199
Speaker 1: to get money from parents?

374
00:20:24,600 --> 00:20:24,679
Speaker 3: No?

375
00:20:24,840 --> 00:20:26,760
Speaker 2: I think you know, there's like a definition of things

376
00:20:26,800 --> 00:20:28,520
Speaker 2: like you can only call it chocolate if it's got

377
00:20:28,520 --> 00:20:32,760
Speaker 2: a minimum amount of cocoa. And so probably they produce, example,

378
00:20:32,880 --> 00:20:36,800
Speaker 2: chocolate that people can use in their like chocolate detectors

379
00:20:36,920 --> 00:20:39,119
Speaker 2: or something. And I'm sure there's rules about what you

380
00:20:39,119 --> 00:20:41,760
Speaker 2: can call peanut butter and what it's called peanut cream

381
00:20:41,960 --> 00:20:44,879
Speaker 2: or whatever, and so they have to produce something that

382
00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:47,800
Speaker 2: they can, you know, put into their measuring devices. Anyway,

383
00:20:48,240 --> 00:20:50,240
Speaker 2: that's how this ends up making peanut butter.

384
00:20:50,520 --> 00:20:53,199
Speaker 1: All right, All right, peanut butter is delicious and I

385
00:20:53,240 --> 00:20:55,600
Speaker 1: love it. But let's get back to the matter at hands.

386
00:20:56,200 --> 00:20:59,280
Speaker 2: So Alca is asking about how we measure things, which

387
00:20:59,359 --> 00:21:02,679
Speaker 2: is super fun because there's really interesting history here, but

388
00:21:02,840 --> 00:21:06,800
Speaker 2: also there's deep physics and philosophy about how we measure things,

389
00:21:06,840 --> 00:21:09,280
Speaker 2: what we measure, and what we define and what that

390
00:21:09,359 --> 00:21:11,439
Speaker 2: all means. We're going to dig into all of that,

391
00:21:12,080 --> 00:21:14,320
Speaker 2: and what they're referring to in their question is that

392
00:21:14,320 --> 00:21:17,720
Speaker 2: we've changed these definitions we used to define a second.

393
00:21:17,720 --> 00:21:21,040
Speaker 2: For example, it's one eighty six four hundredths of a

394
00:21:21,119 --> 00:21:23,879
Speaker 2: rotation of the Earth, and you're like, well, that's a

395
00:21:23,880 --> 00:21:27,520
Speaker 2: weird number. Where does that come from? That's twenty four hours, time,

396
00:21:27,680 --> 00:21:31,439
Speaker 2: sixty minutes, time sixty seconds. That's literally the number of

397
00:21:31,480 --> 00:21:34,280
Speaker 2: seconds in a day. So we were defining a second

398
00:21:34,280 --> 00:21:38,040
Speaker 2: to be in terms of the Earth's rotation, right, So

399
00:21:38,040 --> 00:21:40,240
Speaker 2: how long does it take the Earth to spend? Call

400
00:21:40,280 --> 00:21:43,400
Speaker 2: that twenty four hours, and then divide those up into

401
00:21:43,440 --> 00:21:46,359
Speaker 2: little bitty slices which we call seconds. So that's an

402
00:21:46,400 --> 00:21:49,159
Speaker 2: example of how we used to do things. Or the

403
00:21:49,280 --> 00:21:52,040
Speaker 2: kilogram used to be like a rod of metal in Paris,

404
00:21:52,080 --> 00:21:54,240
Speaker 2: and we would say this is a kilogram, and everything

405
00:21:54,280 --> 00:21:55,879
Speaker 2: is measured in relation to that.

406
00:21:56,320 --> 00:21:58,480
Speaker 1: I think the rod in Paris makes sense to me.

407
00:21:58,560 --> 00:22:02,200
Speaker 1: That's like a physical thing, although it probably changes over time,

408
00:22:02,560 --> 00:22:05,720
Speaker 1: But like the rotation of the Earth, that's like not

409
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:09,600
Speaker 1: something that most of us could measure, and that's probably

410
00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:12,800
Speaker 1: something that most of us can't measure. That seems like

411
00:22:12,840 --> 00:22:15,919
Speaker 1: a hard way to measure a second.

412
00:22:16,080 --> 00:22:18,760
Speaker 2: Well, even the original meter, the rod, it's a reference,

413
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:21,240
Speaker 2: but it's supposed to come from a measurement of the Earth.

414
00:22:21,560 --> 00:22:24,880
Speaker 2: It's like one ten millionth of the shortest distance from

415
00:22:24,920 --> 00:22:28,160
Speaker 2: the north pole to the equator passing through Paris.

416
00:22:28,400 --> 00:22:31,560
Speaker 1: Oh, Paris is very important in standard measurements.

417
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:34,879
Speaker 2: Well, you know, French used to be the language of science,

418
00:22:34,880 --> 00:22:36,960
Speaker 2: and a lot of this stuff was done in Paris

419
00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:40,199
Speaker 2: by people speaking French. So these things are defined in

420
00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:43,000
Speaker 2: terms of earth based measurements here, and then you create

421
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:45,720
Speaker 2: like a rod as an example, and then that becomes

422
00:22:45,760 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 2: the reference. And the issue is that, like, this method

423
00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:52,080
Speaker 2: is not super robust. You know, physical objects are not

424
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:55,239
Speaker 2: great at being perfect references because they're not perfect. They

425
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:58,400
Speaker 2: don't stay the same way. They're not eternal, right, They

426
00:22:58,400 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 2: wear down, they get contaminated, they shrink, they grow, they

427
00:23:01,359 --> 00:23:02,800
Speaker 2: lose atoms, they gain atoms.

428
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:04,680
Speaker 1: I feel personally attacked right now.

429
00:23:07,119 --> 00:23:10,119
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about you. You are the prototypical Kelly.

430
00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:13,000
Speaker 2: You will always be. If you gain or lose atoms,

431
00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:14,040
Speaker 2: you're still one Kelly.

432
00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:14,920
Speaker 1: Okay, all right?

433
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:19,040
Speaker 2: Does that make you feel better? I'm not sure why.

434
00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:25,040
Speaker 6: But whereas, for example, we used to have an international

435
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 6: prototype kilogram, which was the cylinder of platinum and I

436
00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:30,120
Speaker 6: ridium that was stored in your Paris.

437
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:34,800
Speaker 2: But over a century it drifted in mass by fifty micrograms.

438
00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:37,480
Speaker 2: Maybe it gained some, maybe it lost some. We don't

439
00:23:37,520 --> 00:23:41,959
Speaker 2: actually know because it's the reference, right, And so you know,

440
00:23:42,119 --> 00:23:43,800
Speaker 2: we have a bunch of these around the world, and

441
00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:45,720
Speaker 2: then sometimes you bring them back together and you measure them,

442
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:49,000
Speaker 2: you realize, oh, they're different from each other. Well, what

443
00:23:49,040 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 2: does that mean? Which one is a kilogram? Well, this one.

444
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:54,919
Speaker 2: We've defined the kilogram to be this one, and so

445
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 2: it's always a kilogram, even if the number of atoms

446
00:23:57,520 --> 00:24:00,520
Speaker 2: in it changes. And so it's just not a great system.

447
00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:03,040
Speaker 2: It's okay when you're getting started and you're like, look,

448
00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:05,400
Speaker 2: let's just write down when this is and start from there.

449
00:24:05,800 --> 00:24:09,199
Speaker 2: But in an era of like high precision measurements, do

450
00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:11,960
Speaker 2: you want your fundamental units to have that much fuzziness

451
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:15,919
Speaker 2: in them? It limits your ability to measure the universe itself. Like,

452
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:17,960
Speaker 2: if you don't know the speed of light to better

453
00:24:18,040 --> 00:24:21,120
Speaker 2: than one part in six, you can't measure anything that

454
00:24:21,160 --> 00:24:23,680
Speaker 2: the speed of light is connected to better than that.

455
00:24:23,760 --> 00:24:27,439
Speaker 2: There's an inherent fuzziness in everything. And so people realize

456
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:29,600
Speaker 2: this and said, all right, let's upgrade it. Let's try

457
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:31,720
Speaker 2: to come up with a new system where the units

458
00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:34,960
Speaker 2: are defined by properties of nature, things that we think

459
00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:38,159
Speaker 2: are really not changing, or that you know, define the

460
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:41,760
Speaker 2: context of the universe itself, not just like, hey, some

461
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:44,399
Speaker 2: guy named Gerard cut a piece of metal this long,

462
00:24:44,640 --> 00:24:45,800
Speaker 2: and now that's the length.

463
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, but I'm guessing the new methods are

464
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:51,439
Speaker 1: going to be harder to understand by the general public,

465
00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:53,360
Speaker 1: which is kind of the point of the question, right,

466
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 1: But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go ahead. What

467
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:56,880
Speaker 1: did we come up with?

468
00:24:57,040 --> 00:25:00,440
Speaker 2: The new methods are more precise, which makes them less accessible. Yes,

469
00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:02,840
Speaker 2: but they are the foundation of physics, which is why

470
00:25:02,920 --> 00:25:04,960
Speaker 2: you get like cool iPhones.

471
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 1: And stuff, which is inherently inaccessible. Is that your point, No.

472
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:13,360
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that the public benefits from physicists doing

473
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:16,359
Speaker 2: their job better, right, Okay, yeah, yeah, all right. So

474
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty three we transition from this old system

475
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:23,760
Speaker 2: of like physical objects to this new strategy of defining

476
00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 2: units in terms of invariant properties of nature. So the

477
00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:30,640
Speaker 2: second actually got an upgrade before then. The second used

478
00:25:30,640 --> 00:25:33,120
Speaker 2: to be is like slice of a rotation of the Earth.

479
00:25:33,160 --> 00:25:35,760
Speaker 2: But of course the rotation of the Earth is changing, right,

480
00:25:35,840 --> 00:25:39,160
Speaker 2: every year the Earth's rotation slows down. But a second

481
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:41,679
Speaker 2: is still a second, right, But today's second is not

482
00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 2: the same as last year's second. You can see already

483
00:25:44,240 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 2: this is a headache. And when we meet the aliens

484
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:50,200
Speaker 2: it'll be embarrassing to have like a second defined by like, oh,

485
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:52,640
Speaker 2: this planet we used to live on a long time ago,

486
00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 2: Like it just doesn't make any sense.

487
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 1: And this kind of stuff really concerns Daniel.

488
00:25:56,080 --> 00:26:00,119
Speaker 2: Yes, it's important. And so in nineteen sixty seven and

489
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:03,920
Speaker 2: they redefined the second and they used something they thought

490
00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 2: was really really precise, which is the caesium one thirty

491
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 2: three atom. And this is basically what goes into atomic clocks.

492
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:13,960
Speaker 2: It has this oscillation where the electron switches between two

493
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 2: energy levels called the hyperfine transition, because the difference between

494
00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 2: them is really really small, and so it just oscillates

495
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 2: between these two things extraordinarily regularly. Right, This is basically

496
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 2: a clock of the universe. And in about nine point

497
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:32,639
Speaker 2: one nine billion oscillations is what we used to call

498
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,760
Speaker 2: a second. So then they redefined the second to be

499
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:38,760
Speaker 2: nine billion, one hundred and ninety two million, six hundred

500
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:41,919
Speaker 2: and thirty one thousand, seven hundred and seventy oscillations of

501
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 2: the electron between these states in a caesium one thirty

502
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 2: three atom. Wow, that's what a second is.

503
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 1: And it is there like a sessium one thirty three

504
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:56,600
Speaker 1: atom doing its transition somewhere that it's being counted, and

505
00:26:56,640 --> 00:26:59,399
Speaker 1: the second start counting according to that is and is

506
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:01,119
Speaker 1: it in Paris beyond?

507
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:01,960
Speaker 2: Madam?

508
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,199
Speaker 1: I don't speak French. I don't know what that was.

509
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:06,359
Speaker 2: Oh, but you do accents.

510
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 1: That was good in Paris.

511
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 2: No, all caesium atoms do this, and they do the

512
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:16,439
Speaker 2: same because all caesium atoms are the same, and so

513
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:20,080
Speaker 2: you don't need a prototypical French version in a cafe somewhere.

514
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:23,000
Speaker 2: Anybody can capture caesium one thirty three and use it

515
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 2: as a clock because it's a property of the universe.

516
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:27,960
Speaker 2: That's sort of the idea. So that was the upgrade

517
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 2: for the second I happened nineteen sixty seven. The meter

518
00:27:30,800 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 2: has more hilarious history. The first one was seventeen ninety nine.

519
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:38,160
Speaker 2: They made the prototype meter in Paris. According to that definition,

520
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 2: one ten millionth of the distance between the equator and

521
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 2: the North pole if you go through Paris. But in

522
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:46,600
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty nine they realized that they hadn't done a

523
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 2: great job and they upgraded it. So number one, they

524
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:53,119
Speaker 2: realized it was a little too short, and like again

525
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 2: you have to ask, like too short compared to what

526
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 2: it is The definition of the meter. But they had

527
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:00,320
Speaker 2: another way to measure this distance between the pole and

528
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 2: the equator, and they realized it was a little bit

529
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:05,719
Speaker 2: longer than the basis for the previous measurement, so they

530
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:08,960
Speaker 2: needed an upgrade. So the eighteen eighty nine up grade

531
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:11,360
Speaker 2: was supposed to be an exact copy, but instead they

532
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:14,600
Speaker 2: made it a little bit longer. They also changed its

533
00:28:14,600 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 2: shape a little bit. Instead of just being like a

534
00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 2: flat rectangle, they made it an X shape, which was

535
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 2: supposed to like reduce the flexing during measurements and increase

536
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:27,040
Speaker 2: its rigidity, you know, rather than just being a blob.

537
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 2: And they changed it from just being platinum to being

538
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 2: a platinum iridium alloy to try to make it more durable.

539
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 2: And you could see already they're struggling against the fundamental

540
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 2: failure of this system, which is you have a blob

541
00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:42,760
Speaker 2: of metal and you're using it as your reference. And

542
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 2: it's absurd because it's still getting it longer and shorter.

543
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 2: You know, it warms up in Paris, the rod gets longer.

544
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 2: Does the meter change according to this system? Yes, that's insane, right.

545
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:56,000
Speaker 2: The speed of light goes down when it's warmer in Paris.

546
00:28:56,920 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 2: Does that really make sense to anybody.

547
00:28:58,880 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 6: No.

548
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:01,960
Speaker 2: Eighteen sixty, they tried to get away from this, and

549
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:05,160
Speaker 2: they redefined it to be the certain number of wavelengths

550
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaker 2: of krypton eighty six emission. So remember, atoms have energy levels,

551
00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:11,479
Speaker 2: and electrons can go up and down, and when they

552
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 2: go down, the emit light, and that light reflects the

553
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 2: energy level, and so like, that's a pretty basic thing

554
00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 2: in the universe, that gap between those energy levels and

555
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 2: therefore the wavelength of light that's emitted. So they redefined

556
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:26,240
Speaker 2: the meter in terms of these wavelengths, and that's cool.

557
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:29,240
Speaker 2: But then they had another issue, which was that now

558
00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 2: we have a definition of time in terms of ccum atoms,

559
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 2: and we have a definition of distance in terms of

560
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 2: krypton eighty six emissions. Fine, and they both seem pretty basic,

561
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 2: but now we have to measure the speed of light. Right,

562
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 2: because we have a definition of meter and we have

563
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 2: a definition of time, now we have to measure how

564
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:50,840
Speaker 2: fast light is. But light is a fundamental constant, it's

565
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:52,640
Speaker 2: part of the universe. It's not something we should have

566
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:55,920
Speaker 2: to measure. And we're pretty good at measuring time, but

567
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 2: measuring length is hard, you know, being really really peri

568
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:01,560
Speaker 2: I like, down to one part in ten to the

569
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 2: eight or ten out of ten in length measurements is tough,

570
00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:07,680
Speaker 2: and so that fuzziness in the length of a meter

571
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 2: gets translated into fuzziness in the speed of light itself. Right,

572
00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:15,560
Speaker 2: And so now the speed of light is like something

573
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 2: we're measuring we're not sure about, but we know that

574
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 2: it's fixed. Right. The physics tells us it has to

575
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 2: be fixed. So we have a system of units, which

576
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 2: is a little bit at odds with a system of

577
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 2: physics which treats the speed of light not as like

578
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 2: some number we have to measure, but like a conversion

579
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:36,040
Speaker 2: between time and distance. Right. It's really deeply ingrained in

580
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:39,200
Speaker 2: our understanding of relativity. So then they had another idea.

581
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 2: They were like, look, we're good at measuring time, we're

582
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:44,760
Speaker 2: not so good at measuring length. Why don't we just

583
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:47,560
Speaker 2: define the second and then we can use the speed

584
00:30:47,560 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 2: of light itself to define the meter. Okay, So they said, okay,

585
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:55,440
Speaker 2: take a second, and now a meter is how far

586
00:30:55,600 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 2: light travels one two hundred and ninety seven hundred ninety two,

587
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty eighths of a second, naturally naturally right,

588
00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 2: because we define the speed of light to be two

589
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 2: hundred ninety nine seven hundred ninety four hundred and fifty

590
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:12,760
Speaker 2: eight meters per second. Right, And so you can define

591
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 2: two of these things and then measure the third one.

592
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:18,280
Speaker 2: And so we decided let's define time because we're good

593
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 2: at measuring that, and let's define the speed of light,

594
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 2: and then we'll measure the meter in terms of that. Right,

595
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 2: So the meter is not something we define anymore, it's

596
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 2: something we measure. Instead of measuring the speed of light,

597
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:32,280
Speaker 2: we're measuring the meter, and that way, the speed of

598
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 2: light can remain perfect and absolute and invariant. And when

599
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 2: we measure, like the mass of the top core can

600
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 2: try to get that precision down. We're not carrying along

601
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 2: in that measurement somebody's fuzziness of the measurement of the

602
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 2: length of a meter, which got propagated into the measurement

603
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 2: of the speed of light, which now pollutes everything in

604
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 2: our system.

605
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:51,280
Speaker 1: Awesome.

606
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 2: So you know, one way to think about it is

607
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 2: like you can either paint tick marks on a physical

608
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:58,000
Speaker 2: ruler and hope that it never changes, or you can

609
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,040
Speaker 2: define distance in terms of how long something takes to

610
00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 2: travel at a fixed speed and we chose that second option,

611
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:07,240
Speaker 2: and we use the most invariant speed in the universe.

612
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 2: And so what al could referring to is a recent

613
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 2: change in twenty nineteen. In twenty nineteen, they slightly redefine

614
00:32:16,080 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 2: the length of a meter to include the definition of

615
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 2: a second. Before that, they referred to a second, but

616
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 2: they didn't expressly say what a second was than another

617
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:27,200
Speaker 2: definition of a second, so they just updated it a

618
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:29,440
Speaker 2: little bit to make it like more complete. It's no

619
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:31,720
Speaker 2: real change in twenty nineteen.

620
00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: Okay, so it wasn't an academic exercise for physicists with

621
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:36,880
Speaker 1: too much time on their hands and not enough funding

622
00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:38,200
Speaker 1: for their worstwhile endeavors.

623
00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 2: No, it was an important exercise for physicists who are

624
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:45,600
Speaker 2: doing important work and don't have enough time for other

625
00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 2: worthwhile endeavors. But took some time out to do this anyway.

626
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:50,400
Speaker 1: And could use more money.

627
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:55,240
Speaker 2: And could use more funding exactly. But it goes to

628
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:57,600
Speaker 2: show you how important it is to think clearly and

629
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 2: crisply about these really foundational questions. You know, what is

630
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 2: a meter? What is a second? You might blow these

631
00:33:03,360 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 2: off as like silly philosophical endeavors, but if you don't

632
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 2: do it right, then you're spreading fuzziness through all of

633
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 2: your physics, and that has real consequences. You know, how

634
00:33:12,120 --> 00:33:14,360
Speaker 2: are we going to make chips in your iPhones if

635
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 2: we can't measure things down to the nanometer? Right, Like,

636
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 2: it's important that we get these things right.

637
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 1: That's right, all right, So let's see what our listener

638
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:24,920
Speaker 1: had to say. Are they still disappointed in physicists or

639
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 1: are they convinced by your argument?

640
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 2: Oh wait, I didn't get to make my Bob Dylan joke.

641
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 2: The times they are a changing? Oh good, that's the

642
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:40,600
Speaker 2: only reaction. All right. Well, in this case, both the

643
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 2: length and the times have a changed. But I think

644
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 2: we have a good system now. All right, Well, let's

645
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:48,080
Speaker 2: send this off to Alca and see if Alca is

646
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 2: satisfied with our answer. I heard back from Alca. He

647
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:58,600
Speaker 2: didn't want to record his own voice, but here's his response. Hi, Daniel,

648
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 2: thank you for your effort. I decided a year and

649
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 2: a half ago that I wanted to know more about physics,

650
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:06,280
Speaker 2: and then I found your podcast. I don't think I

651
00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:09,560
Speaker 2: will ever have an understanding of biology. It's just one

652
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:13,320
Speaker 2: weird fact after another gross fact. But I have learned

653
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:17,319
Speaker 2: so much about physics during this time. Therefore, I love

654
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:23,919
Speaker 2: the answer, Thank you very much. It completely measures up well.

655
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Alka. Really glad you're enjoying the podcast.

656
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:51,000
Speaker 1: Last question of the day is a super fun one

657
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 1: from Mark from the greatest of our fifty states.

658
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:59,280
Speaker 2: Asking again about parasites and tongues.

659
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: You have a question.

660
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:04,360
Speaker 4: Hi, Daniel and Kelly, This is Mark from Virginia. I

661
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 4: recently read about a parasite that attaches itself to a

662
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 4: fish's tongue, consumes the tongue, and then becomes the fish's

663
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 4: new tongue. And I thought to myself, Oh my gosh,

664
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 4: how horrible for that poor fish. But it got me

665
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 4: to wondering, as a parasitologist, what do you think are

666
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:29,879
Speaker 4: the three most nightmare inducing parasites that are out there?

667
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 4: I mean, the things that really make your skin crawl,

668
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:38,120
Speaker 4: you know, perhaps literally. I look forward to being repulsed

669
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:38,880
Speaker 4: by your answer.

670
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 1: Oh man, all right, Kelly gets to be creepy today,

671
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: so I should say that the answer to this question

672
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:49,360
Speaker 1: kind of varies depending on the day that you're talking

673
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 1: to me. And we've already talked on the show about

674
00:35:51,680 --> 00:35:55,400
Speaker 1: screw worms, which totally creep me. Out. We've already talked

675
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: on the show about Askris lumbricoid's also known as round worms.

676
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:03,200
Speaker 1: We talked about them in dirt Worms episode. Those really

677
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:06,400
Speaker 1: are very high up on my list of nightmare inducing parasites.

678
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 1: So I'm going to talk about three other parasites that

679
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:13,719
Speaker 1: creep me out. And I don't mean to glorify these parasites.

680
00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 1: Some of these are like really horrible for people. But

681
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:19,000
Speaker 1: these are parasites that, like, when I hear about them,

682
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:22,280
Speaker 1: they make my skin crawl and they make me feel uncomfortable.

683
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 2: Does that mean that you don't root for them? You know,

684
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 2: it's the classic like Cheetah Versus Antelope Woods documentary? Are

685
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:31,360
Speaker 2: you watching who you're rooting for? Are you? Do you

686
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:33,920
Speaker 2: find yourself incapable of rooting for these parasites.

687
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 1: When the parasites that I'm talking about are not in humans,

688
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:39,279
Speaker 1: I am able to root for them. But I am

689
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 1: a big fan of the humans, and so when they're

690
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:45,360
Speaker 1: in humans, I am not rooting for them.

691
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:47,880
Speaker 2: Well, even though Kelly doesn't seem to care, I feel

692
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 2: bad for all the other hosts that have to suffer

693
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 2: through these parasites. All right, So what's the first nightmare

694
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 2: topping parasite.

695
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:59,839
Speaker 1: Loa loa, which is a kind of beautiful sounding name,

696
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:05,280
Speaker 1: but it is the African eyeworm. I think loa means worm,

697
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: so it's actually wormworm and you find this in Central

698
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 1: and West Africa. This is a neglected tropical disease. It

699
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 1: is a nematode that gets injected into you when you

700
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:20,200
Speaker 1: are bitten by a certain kind of fly. The adults

701
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 1: migrate through your body and they have babies that end

702
00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 1: up They're like tiny little worms that you know, move

703
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:28,840
Speaker 1: through your blood and they get sucked up by flies

704
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: when they take a blood meal. But the adults are

705
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 1: what causes the symptom that really kind of makes me

706
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable, which is that they can migrate, including they

707
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:43,440
Speaker 1: can migrate through your eye. Oh and so sometimes people

708
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: will be able to see a worm moving around the

709
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: outer part of your eye, like.

710
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 2: You can see it from the inside, like it's part

711
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:53,840
Speaker 2: of your vision. Is this like worm like swimming across

712
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:54,799
Speaker 2: your field to vision?

713
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:56,879
Speaker 1: I don't think it's moving across the part where you

714
00:37:57,120 --> 00:38:00,080
Speaker 1: detect things, but like people can see it in a

715
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:01,400
Speaker 1: white part of your eye.

716
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:04,319
Speaker 2: Wow, imagine a worm though, like looking back at you

717
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:05,520
Speaker 2: from inside your eye.

718
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:08,439
Speaker 1: Not cool. It's not cool at all.

719
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 2: And so wait, I have a question first about the

720
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 2: earlier part of the life cycle, because this is something

721
00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:15,919
Speaker 2: I never understand. A fly bite to you and it's

722
00:38:15,960 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 2: previously taken some blood that has these worms in it,

723
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 2: and now it's biting you and the worms get into you.

724
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:23,480
Speaker 2: So number one of the worms says to be really

725
00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 2: really small because they're going through a fly bite.

726
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:25,839
Speaker 4: Yep.

727
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:29,239
Speaker 2: And how did the worms go from the fly to you?

728
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 2: Like the fly is drinking the blood? Is it backwashing

729
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 2: into you? Like, how does that happen?

730
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when the fly takes a bite from somebody

731
00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 1: who's infected, the parasites go into the gut of the

732
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:43,319
Speaker 1: fly and then they like infect the fly and they

733
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 1: go through like multiple different stages inside of the fly.

734
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in what happens inside of the fly.

735
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:51,960
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in what I'm about to say either,

736
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:53,360
Speaker 1: but I know a little bit more about it. But

737
00:38:54,160 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 1: like when malaria gets into a mosquito, it also goes

738
00:38:57,239 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 1: through multiple stages and then it moves into the salivary

739
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:02,799
Speaker 1: gland of the mosquito. And so when the mosquito goes

740
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:04,799
Speaker 1: and takes a blood meal and injects a bunch of

741
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:08,560
Speaker 1: like chemicals into someone so that you maybe don't feel

742
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 1: the bite. So like mosquitoes inject like anesthetics and stuff

743
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:13,359
Speaker 1: in there so that you're less likely to feel it,

744
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:17,359
Speaker 1: you get the parasite injected in. Also, I don't think

745
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 1: that when flies bite it's exactly the same, but it

746
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:22,960
Speaker 1: could just be that, like some of it gets left behind,

747
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 1: or you know, some saliva gets left behind, and then

748
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:28,439
Speaker 1: the parasite sort of move their way in. We talked

749
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:32,239
Speaker 1: about how with kissing bugs, they just kind of like

750
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:35,400
Speaker 1: poop and then you scratch it in. So there's a

751
00:39:35,480 --> 00:39:38,600
Speaker 1: variety of different ways for insects to make it into

752
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: your body after a blood meal has been taken.

753
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:43,400
Speaker 2: Okay, so it gets inside your body, and then what

754
00:39:43,440 --> 00:39:44,720
Speaker 2: does it do when it's in there.

755
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 1: If you get two adults, they find each other, they mate,

756
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:55,320
Speaker 1: they produce these tiny little offspring called microfilaria, and they

757
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:59,359
Speaker 1: start moving through your bloodstream. And they are small enough

758
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 1: that if a fly I bites you, they can get

759
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 1: picked up by the fly and the cycle starts again.

760
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, the adults are sort of moving

761
00:40:06,080 --> 00:40:10,279
Speaker 1: around your body, including sometimes into your eye.

762
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:12,080
Speaker 2: And is that the thing that freaks you out? Is

763
00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 2: that the part that makes the nightmare is the eyeball part.

764
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: The eyeball part is what freaks me out. Yeah. I

765
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:20,120
Speaker 1: mean imagine looking in the mirror and seeing a nematode

766
00:40:20,160 --> 00:40:21,360
Speaker 1: moving around in your eye.

767
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:24,280
Speaker 2: And does that mean that they have to like pull

768
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 2: the worm out of your eye, like eyeball surgery to

769
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 2: remove worms.

770
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:33,399
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So actually it's like moderately good news if

771
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 1: you see it in your eye, because now somebody can

772
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: get it.

773
00:40:37,160 --> 00:40:39,799
Speaker 2: Now, somebody can put a knife on your eyeball yay.

774
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: And extract the parasite. So now it's not in your

775
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 1: body anymore, and so it can be removed surgically. So wow,

776
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:52,760
Speaker 1: that is uh, that's parasite number one that Kelly finds creepy.

777
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:55,839
Speaker 2: All right, So we wake up screaming from that one.

778
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:57,719
Speaker 2: We get ourselves somehow back to sleep, and then we

779
00:40:57,719 --> 00:41:00,200
Speaker 2: have in that mirror about parasite number two. What's a

780
00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 2: nightmare number two today, Kelly.

781
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:04,200
Speaker 1: Nightmare number two we can enjoy a little bit more

782
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:07,759
Speaker 1: because it's not infecting people. This is a copa pod,

783
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 1: So this is another crustacean so another thing that you

784
00:41:09,880 --> 00:41:12,080
Speaker 1: can think of is being kind of related to like

785
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:15,279
Speaker 1: crabs and crayfish and stuff like that. It has a

786
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:22,799
Speaker 1: name that I will absolutely butcher Learneoh, Sarah Brancialis.

787
00:41:23,080 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is with biologists and Latin names,

788
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:27,879
Speaker 2: Like why do you guys have to share Latin names?

789
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:30,600
Speaker 2: They mean nothing to anybody. Nobody can pronounce them. They

790
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:34,360
Speaker 2: don't help anybody understand, Like, seriously, why are we carrying

791
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 2: all this baggage?

792
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 1: Okay, some of them have common names. There's a system

793
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: for this. I actually went through all of the paperwork

794
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 1: once to register a common name for a species so

795
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't have to bother saying the Latin name.

796
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 1: It has an official common name now, But anyway, this

797
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:50,320
Speaker 1: one doesn't have an official common name. It has a

798
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 1: Latin name. We are gonna call it the uh what

799
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:56,680
Speaker 1: are we gonna call it? Blood sucking copa pod?

800
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:56,960
Speaker 5: Oh?

801
00:41:57,160 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 1: A lot of them are bloodsucking copa pods. But anyway, here,

802
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna move war moving on. It's a

803
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:06,919
Speaker 1: marine copapod that infects a bunch of different kinds of fish,

804
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:09,279
Speaker 1: including Atlantic cod. Part of why we know a lot

805
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 1: about it is because people eat Atlantic cod, and so

806
00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:16,120
Speaker 1: it's a you know, fish of importance. We're gonna skip

807
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 1: a lot of the life cycle. It has like a

808
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 1: free living stage, it has a stage where it lives

809
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: on a different kind of fish. But what you need

810
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: to know is that at some point males and females

811
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: mate and then the females go off in search of

812
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: a final fish to parasitize. And when the females go

813
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 1: off in search of that final fish, she finds and

814
00:42:37,719 --> 00:42:40,399
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly how she finds the host. Other

815
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: and other copopods we've looked and it has to do

816
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 1: with like chemical cues stuff like that, but we don't

817
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:48,840
Speaker 1: know in this case. But she finds the gills and

818
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:51,959
Speaker 1: so in fish, the gills are you know, the way

819
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:55,840
Speaker 1: that fish extract oxygen from the water. But she finds

820
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:58,799
Speaker 1: the gills and she attaches to part of what's called

821
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:01,360
Speaker 1: a gill art. So the gills kind of uh, you know,

822
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:04,319
Speaker 1: they have this like arch shape. She finds a part

823
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:07,880
Speaker 1: of the gill arch where there is an artery that

824
00:43:08,040 --> 00:43:11,880
Speaker 1: goes from the gill arch to the heart. Oh, and

825
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 1: she has this appendage that she sticks into the artery.

826
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:17,760
Speaker 2: No, she doesn't.

827
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:22,879
Speaker 1: Yes, she does, Yes, she does, and she doesn't.

828
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:27,279
Speaker 7: And it grows into the artery until it ends up

829
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 7: in the hearts and she starts drinking the fish's blood

830
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:34,320
Speaker 7: from its.

831
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:37,359
Speaker 1: Heart, straight from the heart. And so she's got like

832
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 1: she's got like a mouth in the heart and she's

833
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 1: drinking blood from the heart. And then she's got like

834
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 1: her back end sort of sometimes outside the fish's mouth,

835
00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:47,800
Speaker 1: but like the back end has a bunch of eggs,

836
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 1: and like every two weeks she produces a clutch of

837
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: eggs that then she like you know, she's able to

838
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,160
Speaker 1: produce because she's drinking all of this fish's blood and

839
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:59,880
Speaker 1: then she releases these eggs to produce more of her babies.

840
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:02,160
Speaker 1: And she can do this like almost every two weeks.

841
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:05,880
Speaker 1: And so anyway, she gets her energy from the fish's

842
00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 1: heart directly.

843
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:10,240
Speaker 2: And what do you think it feels like for the fish?

844
00:44:10,920 --> 00:44:11,080
Speaker 4: Oh?

845
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 1: Awful? So like, uh, these fish, I know, it's so

846
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:17,959
Speaker 1: so they you know, they have anemia, which which means

847
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: they're like low on blood, which is not surprising. They

848
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:25,600
Speaker 1: lose weight, they have sores, they have like fewer babies.

849
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:27,919
Speaker 1: A lot of them die. If you're a smaller fish

850
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:31,280
Speaker 1: when this happens, you're even more likely to die. Sometimes

851
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 1: the fish can't close their mouths because the like the

852
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:36,759
Speaker 1: you know, the moms are so big that they're like,

853
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:39,200
Speaker 1: you know, their back ends are like making it harden

854
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: to close their mouths, so their mouths will become kind

855
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: of like deformed. This parasite is like really gnarly and

856
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:50,479
Speaker 1: creepy and wow. Yeah, so that's number two.

857
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:54,319
Speaker 2: Oh boy, he made me feel bad for fishies. Yeah right,

858
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 2: so that's number two. And then we're gonna shake that off

859
00:44:57,160 --> 00:44:59,960
Speaker 2: and ready to get freaked out about the next one.

860
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 2: What's the next one?

861
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:01,040
Speaker 4: All right?

862
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:03,960
Speaker 1: The next one is raccoon roundworm, And I know how

863
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 1: you feel about me saying Latin names, so for your

864
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:11,080
Speaker 1: sake and mine, I won't bother. So this is a nematod.

865
00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 1: It reproduces sexually in the guts of raccoons.

866
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,759
Speaker 2: What a romantic place to hang out. Wow, I know, man,

867
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:22,320
Speaker 2: Friday night and the gut of raccoon. That sounds great.

868
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: I know, if only we were nematodes.

869
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:24,920
Speaker 5: You know.

870
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:29,520
Speaker 1: So, raccoons tend to poop in places called latrines, which

871
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: essentially what you need to know is that they poop

872
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:34,399
Speaker 1: in like the same place, and often groups of them

873
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:36,279
Speaker 1: will poop in the same place over and over and

874
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:36,720
Speaker 1: over again.

875
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:37,759
Speaker 2: They're so organized.

876
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 1: Well they're they're like sort of clean. Yeah, you know,

877
00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:41,560
Speaker 1: like I appreciate that.

878
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:43,720
Speaker 2: These are the animals that like wash their food, right.

879
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:46,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And I think they're super cute. I like

880
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:47,160
Speaker 1: racord cute.

881
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:49,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, but never take them as a pet.

882
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:52,440
Speaker 1: And we are going to get back to that at

883
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:55,400
Speaker 1: the end of this discussion. So they poop in the

884
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:59,680
Speaker 1: same spot, but the eggs produced by the nematodes are

885
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: depart in that poop, and if a squirrel or like

886
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:08,160
Speaker 1: a rabbit consumes that poop accidentally, like you know, maybe

887
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:11,000
Speaker 1: a nut falls by the latrine and a squirrel picks

888
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 1: up the nut, and when it eats the nut, it

889
00:46:12,680 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 1: accidentally consumes some of the eggs. Those eggs will hatch.

890
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 2: Pro tip. If your nut falls by the latrine, let.

891
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:23,600
Speaker 1: It go, man, let it go, mane gone, find another nut.

892
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:27,520
Speaker 1: There's another nut out. That's right, that's right. But it

893
00:46:27,600 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 1: hatches and it starts migrating, and it can migrate through

894
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:34,320
Speaker 1: the eye, it can migrate through organs, it can migrate

895
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:37,799
Speaker 1: through the brain, and it starts causing like tremors and

896
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: like just sort of nervous system symptoms. And it could

897
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:45,319
Speaker 1: be that that makes the squirrels more likely to die

898
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:48,919
Speaker 1: so that they get scavenged by the raccoons. But that's

899
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 1: what it does. But unfortunately, every.

900
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 2: Raccoons will eat dead like infected squirrels.

901
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:55,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot.

902
00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 2: Of bad decisions going on here. I'm feeling less and

903
00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:01,720
Speaker 2: less sorry for these hosts. Yeah, well, you eating poopy

904
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:05,240
Speaker 2: nuts eating dead squirrels, Like, what do you expect to happen?

905
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: And Daniel, I think you shouldn't learn any more about

906
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:11,799
Speaker 1: nature because you're gonna stop being sympathetic about anything, and

907
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 1: maybe you should know less about nature. But every once

908
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: in a while, unfortunately a human will get infected because sometimes,

909
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:26,480
Speaker 1: for example, the raccoons will set up their latrine in

910
00:47:26,520 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: a kid's sandbox and a kid will play in the

911
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:33,600
Speaker 1: sand and then stick their hands in their mouth and

912
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: the parasite will migrate through their eyes or through their

913
00:47:37,239 --> 00:47:41,479
Speaker 1: organs or through their brain. And I know and cause there.

914
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:43,120
Speaker 2: Was no bad decisions there. That's just a kid in

915
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:43,799
Speaker 2: the sandbox.

916
00:47:43,840 --> 00:47:45,759
Speaker 1: That's just a kid in a sandbox, right, And so

917
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:50,080
Speaker 1: that is very upsetting to me. And I learned about

918
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 1: this parasite like a few years before I had kids,

919
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 1: but it really stuck with me. And so anytime my

920
00:47:54,800 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 1: kid wanted to play in a sandbox, I would like

921
00:47:57,480 --> 00:47:59,960
Speaker 1: first dig through with my hands and look for anything

922
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:03,359
Speaker 1: that looked like poop. And my kid was like, I

923
00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:06,640
Speaker 1: am I know. My daughter was like, Mom, you're embarrassing me.

924
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:09,279
Speaker 1: And I was like, I won't be embarrassing you if

925
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 1: you've got parasites migrating through your brain. And she's like,

926
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:15,120
Speaker 1: you are absolutely embarrassing me. But uh oh wow, And

927
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:18,400
Speaker 1: to be okay, So just before people start like absolutely

928
00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:21,400
Speaker 1: freaking out, there have been fewer of twenty five cases

929
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:25,160
Speaker 1: according to the CDC of this disease documented in the

930
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:26,239
Speaker 1: United States.

931
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:29,600
Speaker 2: Only because moms have been cautious and careful, like you were. Congratulations,

932
00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:30,000
Speaker 2: thank you.

933
00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: Yes, some cases might have gone undiagnosed, you know, probably

934
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 1: not a lot of cases. Good news is that eggs

935
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:39,600
Speaker 1: take two to four weeks before they become infectious, So

936
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: like if you see a raccoon latrine being like formed

937
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:46,640
Speaker 1: in your sandbox or in your attic or something like that,

938
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:49,200
Speaker 1: you've got time to do something about it before it

939
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 1: becomes infectious. The CDC has instructions for how to deal

940
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: with this safely. The instructions include using a propane flame gun.

941
00:48:57,920 --> 00:48:59,240
Speaker 1: So it could be fun.

942
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,280
Speaker 2: That's definitely more fun than getting raccoon roundworm.

943
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:05,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have way more fun, way more fun. But again,

944
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 1: do that safely or call in a professional.

945
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:09,160
Speaker 2: Make good choices.

946
00:49:09,200 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: People make good choices. And if it's a latrine in

947
00:49:11,520 --> 00:49:14,800
Speaker 1: your attic, probably you shouldn't use the propane flame gun. Again,

948
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:19,520
Speaker 1: make good choices. But another thing that was kind of

949
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:23,920
Speaker 1: well funny but not funny, morbidly funny. The CDC website

950
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:28,800
Speaker 1: said you can get raccoon roundworm when you consume infectious eggs,

951
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 1: usually accidentally. And I was like, usually, CDC, usually who

952
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:38,040
Speaker 1: are the people who are consuming these eggs not accidentally,

953
00:49:38,360 --> 00:49:38,920
Speaker 1: but not.

954
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 2: People making good choices, that's for.

955
00:49:40,600 --> 00:49:41,759
Speaker 1: Sure, that's right, that's right.

956
00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:42,160
Speaker 4: Yeah.

957
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:45,640
Speaker 1: But anyway, bottom line here, I see a lot of

958
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:49,320
Speaker 1: Instagram videos of people who are like feeding twenty raccoons

959
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:51,880
Speaker 1: in their backyard with like cat food every night, and

960
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:55,320
Speaker 1: they're like, look at all my cute raccoons, and dudes,

961
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 1: raccoons are super cute, but if you're bringing them to

962
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:02,520
Speaker 1: your backyard, they're going to be pooping near your house. Yeah,

963
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:07,360
Speaker 1: you really like wildlife should be respected at a distance,

964
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:11,640
Speaker 1: And I get it, because I really love wildlife. Raccoons

965
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:15,560
Speaker 1: are super cute, but you need you need to keep

966
00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:16,160
Speaker 1: your distance.

967
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:19,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you really want a nightmare, you should

968
00:50:19,160 --> 00:50:23,960
Speaker 2: google raccoon eats baby's face. And yeah, that maybe already

969
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:26,520
Speaker 2: tells you everything you need to know. Don't let raccoons

970
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 2: into your house.

971
00:50:27,239 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 1: What the heck? Daniel, that's horrible? What a horrible note

972
00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:34,200
Speaker 1: to end on? Well Mark. I think what I had

973
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:36,040
Speaker 1: to say was pretty creepy, but what Daniel had to

974
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:38,360
Speaker 1: say was even creepier. Let's see what you have to

975
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:40,399
Speaker 1: say about all of the creepiness that we just brought

976
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 1: your way.

977
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 2: I hope that was the nightmare you were looking for.

978
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:45,080
Speaker 1: How could it not be?

979
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:49,680
Speaker 4: Hi, Kelly, thanks for that truly terrifying answer. Every time

980
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 4: I look in the mirror now, I will be checking

981
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 4: to make sure there are no worms wriggling through my eyeballs.

982
00:50:56,000 --> 00:51:00,040
Speaker 4: I will not be googling raccoon eats baby's face. And

983
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:03,759
Speaker 4: I'm kind of excited about taking a flamethrower to any

984
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 4: raccoon latrines I come upon to make sure I don't

985
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:11,160
Speaker 4: accidentally eat the poop and get nematodes in my brain.

986
00:51:12,120 --> 00:51:15,319
Speaker 4: As always, thanks for making such a truly awesome show.

987
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:17,000
Speaker 2: All right, thank you very much to all of our

988
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 2: questioners and everybody who writes in. We love, love love

989
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:22,759
Speaker 2: hearing from you. We are like parasites, and we suck

990
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:24,640
Speaker 2: energy out of your curiosity.

991
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 1: Okay, that's not the energy that I thought you were

992
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 1: going to go for, but let's lean in. Thank you

993
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:41,840
Speaker 1: everyone for sharing your questions. You don't suck. Daniel and

994
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:45,879
Speaker 1: Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love

995
00:51:45,920 --> 00:51:46,760
Speaker 1: to hear from you.

996
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:49,759
Speaker 2: We really would. We want to know what questions you

997
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:52,600
Speaker 2: have about this Extraordinary Universe.

998
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:55,640
Speaker 1: We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions

999
00:51:55,640 --> 00:51:58,640
Speaker 1: for future shows. If you contact us, we will get

1000
00:51:58,680 --> 00:51:59,280
Speaker 1: back to you.

1001
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:02,879
Speaker 2: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

1002
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:06,120
Speaker 2: at questions at Danielankelly.

1003
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:07,239
Speaker 1: Dot org, or you can find us on social media.

1004
00:52:07,360 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 1: We have accounts on x, Instagram, Blue Sky and on

1005
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 1: all of those platforms. You can find us at D

1006
00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 1: and K Universe.

1007
00:52:15,400 --> 00:52:16,880
Speaker 2: Don't be shy write to us