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Speaker 1: Deep in the back of your mind. You've always had

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Speaker 1: the feeling that there's something strange about reality. There is

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Speaker 1: super annoyed death, much nanopartic, mechanical messiah, fistic punch evolution.

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Speaker 1: On our award winning science podcast Stuffable your Mind, we

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Speaker 1: examine neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and our trans

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Speaker 1: human future. New episodes come out Tuesdays and Thursdays on iTunes,

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Speaker 1: Google Play, Spotify, and anywhere you get your podcast. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to House to Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren foc Obama,

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Speaker 1: a researcher and writer. Here at House to Works. Every week,

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

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

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Speaker 1: This week, seventy six out of seventy seven scientists have

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Speaker 1: agreed that the fringe theories about chem trails are basically

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Speaker 1: nonsense and in unrelated geochemistry. Venus may have been habitable

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Speaker 1: to life as we know it for two billion years

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Speaker 1: of its history. But First Senior writer Robert Lamb reports

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Speaker 1: on a new study out of our Atlanta neighbor Emery University. Hey, y'all,

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Speaker 1: The study looks into a bit of dog psychology. What

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Speaker 1: kind of reward do our pups prefer? Praise from us

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Speaker 1: or tasty processed meat goo. Pavlov's dog casts a long

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Speaker 1: shadow over human dog interaction. Your bond with Scruffy might

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Speaker 1: be tender, it might be the defining relationship of your life.

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Speaker 1: But when you watch him hoover up dog show, or,

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Speaker 1: let's face it, worse things, it's easy to see him

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Speaker 1: as a little more than a Pavlovian beast, his entire

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Speaker 1: nature wrapped around the acquisition and consumption of food. Well,

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Speaker 1: neuroscientist Gregory Burns and his Emory Dog Project team decided

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Speaker 1: to look inside the dog brain for answers, which is

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Speaker 1: to say, they took thirteen f m r I trained

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Speaker 1: dogs and taught them to associate three different objects with

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Speaker 1: three different outcomes. A pink truck that's a food reward buddy,

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Speaker 1: a blue toy night, verbal praise from your owner, and

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Speaker 1: airbrush sorry, that doesn't get you anything. The researchers tested

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Speaker 1: all three objects on the dogs in an fMRI I

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Speaker 1: for close to one trials. Then they set back and

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Speaker 1: observed the neural fireworks. To no one's surprise, the reward

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Speaker 1: stimuli the truck and the night resulted in stronger neural

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Speaker 1: activation than the hair brush. Four of the dogs preferred

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Speaker 1: the praise stimuli object to prefer the food stimuli object,

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Speaker 1: and the other nine showed similar activation for both. They

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Speaker 1: followed this up with a Y shaped maze experiment, one

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Speaker 1: branch of the maze leading to food, the other to

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Speaker 1: the dog's owner. The dog's behavioral choice at the crossroads

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Speaker 1: matched up closely with their observed neural activity. Most of

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Speaker 1: the dogs were willing to go either way, but the

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Speaker 1: praise centric dogs from the first experiment went to their

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Speaker 1: owners of the time. Though the degree of preference can

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Speaker 1: be highly variable on a dog to dog basis, future

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Speaker 1: studies may reveal how breed, rearing and genetic profile play

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Speaker 1: into the situation, as well as further illuminate the evolution

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Speaker 1: of the domestic dog. Next up, senior writer Johnthan Strickland

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Speaker 1: brings this story of near total scientific consensus. Point seven

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Speaker 1: percent of specialists in geochemistry and atmosphere chemistry have agreed

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Speaker 1: that fringe theories about chemtrails just don't hold water, or

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Speaker 1: rather they hold nothing but water. They're not chemicals, They're

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Speaker 1: just water. Vapor. Have you ever seen long trails left

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Speaker 1: behind by jet aircraft flying high in the sky. Those

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Speaker 1: trails are called contrails, which is short for condensation trails.

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Speaker 1: They form from the water vapor in aircraft exhaust. This

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Speaker 1: is similar to wind clouds form from your breath on

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Speaker 1: a cold day. The air from your lungs is warm

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Speaker 1: and damp. The water vapor in your breath condenses as

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Speaker 1: it hits the cold air. But these breath clouds evaporate quickly.

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Speaker 1: Contrails can last for hours. What gives the length of

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Speaker 1: time a contrail holds it shape depends upon the humidity

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Speaker 1: in the atmosphere. A contrail in humid air will hold

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Speaker 1: it shape longer than one in drier air. If the

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Speaker 1: air is particularly dry, no contrail will form at all.

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Speaker 1: But people have proposed that those trails are actually evidence

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Speaker 1: of a secret wide area high altitude spraying program. Some

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Speaker 1: pose it that the culprit is a government agency, and

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Speaker 1: others say it's a corporation or other private group. Typically

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Speaker 1: the claim is that the chem trails are meant to

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Speaker 1: subjugate the population in some way through public health, crops

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Speaker 1: or weather control, and frequently they try to make a

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Speaker 1: connection between chemicals found in soil and the trails in

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Speaker 1: the sky. But according to a recent study published in

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Speaker 1: Environmental Research Letters, that's just not the case. The study

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Speaker 1: involves seventy seven scientists specializing in either atmospheric chemistry or geochemistry.

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Speaker 1: The experts evaluated information that supporters of the Kim trail

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Speaker 1: theory cite as evidence of a conspiracy. Seventy six of

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Speaker 1: those science just said that there was no evidence supporting

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Speaker 1: Kim treill claims. They said that the data could more

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Speaker 1: easily be explained by our understanding of condensation and the

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Speaker 1: natural processes that deposit material on the Earth's surface. So

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Speaker 1: can we put this fringe theory to bed? Even the

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Speaker 1: researchers who organized the study think that's too ambitious, as

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Speaker 1: they said in their report. Our goal is not to

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Speaker 1: sway those already convinced that there is a secret large

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Speaker 1: scale spraying program, who often reject counter evidence as further

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Speaker 1: proof of their theories, but rather to establish a source

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Speaker 1: of objective science that can inform public discourse. So think

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Speaker 1: of this study as a preventive measure for people convinced

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Speaker 1: that something hinky is going on. The study will serve

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Speaker 1: as more proof of a cover up, but for those

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Speaker 1: still forming an opinion, it could shed a little light

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Speaker 1: on the subject. Finally, this week, I've got some breaking

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Speaker 1: news about ancient Venus. Climate modeling research indicates that the

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Speaker 1: planet could be a lovely place to visit with a

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Speaker 1: time machine. Earth and Venus are each about four and

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Speaker 1: a half billion years old. Although Venus is a veritable

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Speaker 1: hellscape today, it's good to keep in mind that Earth

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Speaker 1: was probably equally uninhabitable for about a billion years. It

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Speaker 1: got better, and according to a new study out of

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Speaker 1: NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Venus has changed to

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Speaker 1: it may have been habitable to life as we know

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Speaker 1: it for up to two billion years of its history.

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Speaker 1: Venus today is exactly the kind of place that humans

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Speaker 1: don't want to hang out. There's practically no water because

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Speaker 1: the surface temperature can reach four hundred and sixty two

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Speaker 1: degrees celsius. That's eight hundred and sixty four degrees fahrenheit,

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Speaker 1: which is the perfect temperature to cook at Crispinopolitan pizza

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Speaker 1: and more than hot enough to melt aluminum. The atmospheric

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Speaker 1: pressure on its surface is ninety times that of Earth's,

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Speaker 1: meaning the very air would crush you, and by air

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Speaker 1: I mean mostly carbon dioxide. Researchers so think Venus's thick

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Speaker 1: clouds discharge more lightning than we see on Earth, and

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Speaker 1: those clouds are made of sulfuric acid. But as recently

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Speaker 1: as seven d and fifteen million years ago, Venus may

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Speaker 1: have had shallow oceans and an atmosphere comparable to Earth today,

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Speaker 1: with mean temperatures a few degrees cooler than ours. Even

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Speaker 1: the team from NASA adapted the climate modeling tools used

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Speaker 1: here on Earth to create a three D climate simulation

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Speaker 1: for ancient Venus. They built the model based on data

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Speaker 1: and hypotheses from NASA's Pioneer and Magellan space probes and

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Speaker 1: the E s AS Venus Express orbiter. They found that

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Speaker 1: even though its distance from the Sun means that ancient

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Speaker 1: Venus would have received about forty more sunlight than Earth

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Speaker 1: does today, Venus's global temperatures were likely mitigated by its

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Speaker 1: incredibly slow rotation rate. A day on Venus lasts about

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Speaker 1: a hundred and seventeen Earth days. It's day side receives

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Speaker 1: sun exposure for about two Earth months at a time.

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Speaker 1: In the simulation that produced thick rain clouds that shielded

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Speaker 1: the surface and kept the planet temperate. These results are

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Speaker 1: depending on Venus's topography and rotation rate not changing much

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Speaker 1: over the past few billion years, which is actually likely,

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Speaker 1: but it's still in question. So the team played around

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Speaker 1: with the model to see whether feasible topographical or rotational

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Speaker 1: adjustments could have changed their results. Increasing the steepness of

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Speaker 1: the mountains and ocean basins to Earth type levels raised

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Speaker 1: the temperatures in the model, but they did stay within

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Speaker 1: a life friendly range. Speeding the rotational rate only made

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Speaker 1: the model too hot for life when they made Venus's

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Speaker 1: days seven times shorter, a mere sixteen Earth days per

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Speaker 1: single Venus day as opposed to a hundred and seventeen.

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Speaker 1: The research is thought provoking on its own. Ancient Earth

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Speaker 1: sponges and algae may have had neighbors in our Solar system,

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Speaker 1: but it's really part of NASA's push to identify exoplanets

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Speaker 1: capable of harboring life as we know it. We previously

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Speaker 1: thought planets as close two stars Venus may have always

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Speaker 1: been too hot to support life, but now we can

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Speaker 1: expand our search. That's our show for this week. Thank

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Speaker 1: you so much for tuning in. Subscribe now for more

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Speaker 1: of the latest and strangest science news, and send us

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Speaker 1: links to anything you'd like to hear us cover. Plus,

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Speaker 1: what do you think about all this? Does Robert's report

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Speaker 1: match up with your human dog relationships? Are you convinced

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Speaker 1: the chemtrail theories are bunk? Do you think we might

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Speaker 1: someday find signs of ancient life on Venus? We want

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Speaker 1: to know, and if you tell us, I might share

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Speaker 1: your experience on air. Shoot us an email at now

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Speaker 1: podcast at house to works dot com, and to access

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Speaker 1: thousands of other stories like these, check out our home

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Speaker 1: Planet Now dot house to works dot com