Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie. Um,
Speaker 1: let's look in the future again. Why why don't we
Speaker 1: closing mine? All right? Engaging third eye? Al Right, did
Speaker 1: you get to the firestorms and the pyramids of bones?
Speaker 1: You've gone too far? Okay, so back up a little bit. Um,
Speaker 1: well what are you more to the point, what are
Speaker 1: you seeing in terms of healthcare in the next um
Speaker 1: century or two? Where are we going? I am seeing
Speaker 1: the sort of healthcare where I can just basically, um like,
Speaker 1: just take my finger and swipe it on some sort
Speaker 1: of metal thing and it will tell me everything about
Speaker 1: me I ever wanted to know. And how much calcium
Speaker 1: I haven't vibed, I don't know potassium whatever. What do
Speaker 1: you see? That's not very exciting one? Let me see
Speaker 1: all right, Um, I'm seeing a day where instead of
Speaker 1: taking um, like a multi vitamin vitamin every day, I
Speaker 1: take one smart multi vitamin that that stays in my
Speaker 1: system and administers for a year. Yeah, for administers like
Speaker 1: a year. So it's like a tiny doctor that lives
Speaker 1: inside me and uh and administers medication as needed. That yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and and actually that doesn't that's not too far off right,
Speaker 1: right we are? I mean, the technology is coming together
Speaker 1: now the and it basically comes down to and to
Speaker 1: something that's kind of a can be kind of a
Speaker 1: scary word for for people who are are not already
Speaker 1: like me, deep in the field, and that is is
Speaker 1: nanotechnology materials and ultimately a concept we're talking about called
Speaker 1: nano manufacturing. Now. For me, anyway, I just finished writing
Speaker 1: an article called ten ways nano Manufacturing will alter Industry.
Speaker 1: So and I hadn't I had not really researcher written
Speaker 1: much about nanotechnology. So it was kind of a deep
Speaker 1: die for me where I had to sort of like
Speaker 1: a lot of these topics that kind of have to
Speaker 1: start from scratch and be like, all right, what the
Speaker 1: heck is this? And then and what does it mean?
Speaker 1: And then how like what does it really mean? Not
Speaker 1: just what are the words on the page um in
Speaker 1: this right up or or this one. But I think
Speaker 1: nanotechnology can be a little confusing because we tend to
Speaker 1: get this fantastic voyage idea in our mind, by which
Speaker 1: I mean the the Asimov novel in the movie and
Speaker 1: not the Coulio video, but the idea of you know,
Speaker 1: like a little miniature ship, like a little miniature submarine
Speaker 1: has been shrunk down and it's doing things inside the
Speaker 1: body or building things, um at this minuscule scale, like
Speaker 1: the nano scale, just to everyone know exactly how small
Speaker 1: we're talking about? What what? What does technology or nanotechnology?
Speaker 1: All right? Like the at the nano scale of things, UM,
Speaker 1: where we have like we have like a single wall
Speaker 1: old carbon nanitude um is scarcely one nanometer thick, all right,
Speaker 1: So in relatable terms, you'd have to line up a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand of those side by side in order to
Speaker 1: equal the one hundred micrometer diameter of a single strand
Speaker 1: of hair. Yes, okay, so that's that's how tiny it is,
Speaker 1: but it's still it's by by comparing it to the hair,
Speaker 1: it definitely puts it within like the grasp of human understanding,
Speaker 1: but it's still very very tiny. Um. So nano nano materials,
Speaker 1: nano nano technology, it involves dealing with matter at that scale,
Speaker 1: which and you wouldn't think this is uh, it turns
Speaker 1: out that when you are dealing with such small particles,
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier to manipulate them, right, you can,
Speaker 1: you can, you can. You have a lot more control
Speaker 1: over the over the various characteristics of materials of of
Speaker 1: well basically materials. And then but if you're altering you're
Speaker 1: altering the material els in things such as medications uh
Speaker 1: at times, or something as gigantic as uh like a
Speaker 1: meta material that you plan to build a space elevator
Speaker 1: out of. It's the analogy that I ended up using
Speaker 1: the article was was like building blocks. It seems like
Speaker 1: you start off with kind of big building blocks as
Speaker 1: a kid, and then as you get a little older,
Speaker 1: you start dealing with smaller blocks and the models that
Speaker 1: you can build. Like so you wanted to build an
Speaker 1: airplane out of alphabet blocks, you're gonna build something that
Speaker 1: vaguely resembles an airplane, you know, assuming you assuming you
Speaker 1: built it at a reasonable scale, like it had to
Speaker 1: fit on a table. You can only build so detailed
Speaker 1: an airplane, and you might have to use a little
Speaker 1: uh um creativity uh to to see that it is
Speaker 1: supposed to be an airplane. Legos are much smaller, there's
Speaker 1: a lot more detail, there's a lot more room to
Speaker 1: to create detail in the model, and you could build
Speaker 1: a pretty amazing airplane model. Uh. That's the size of
Speaker 1: the table if you build it out of legos. The
Speaker 1: smaller the building blocks the the the greater the power
Speaker 1: over what you're building. And that's exactly how it ends
Speaker 1: up with with nanotechnology. It's the idea that we're going
Speaker 1: to build things at the scale that nature builds things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but particles behave differently at that scale. UM.
Speaker 1: And so that's why quantum physicists are really interested in
Speaker 1: this obviously. UM. From the article how nanotechnology works, there's
Speaker 1: a good example that says, you know, we can't teleport
Speaker 1: ourselves to the other side of the wall, but at
Speaker 1: the nano scale, and the electron can. And this is
Speaker 1: actually called electron tunneling. So you know, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you do see this really cool. Um, these these sort
Speaker 1: of things happening, and we can apply them in a
Speaker 1: really meaningful, you know, concrete way. Hence nano manufacturing. Right,
Speaker 1: you get down to a small enough scale, solid things
Speaker 1: aren't really solid anymore. You can manipulate, uh, materials and
Speaker 1: buy materials. You can manipulate everything from steel to um
Speaker 1: medication and make it behave a little more like you
Speaker 1: wanted to. And and again it's it's when when nature
Speaker 1: builts something. When nature builds a coral reef, it builds
Speaker 1: it from the uh. And I'm sorry to personify nature here,
Speaker 1: but but when nature builds a coral reef, it builds
Speaker 1: it from the bottom up, from the smallest particles up.
Speaker 1: And and this is about building things from the bottom up.
Speaker 1: And that's why the I say, throw out the whole
Speaker 1: sort of fantastic voyage image of it, or the idea
Speaker 1: of tiny little robots that are essentially big robots shrunk down,
Speaker 1: because that is a that's more of like um, top
Speaker 1: down thinking. Uh and uh and and nanotechnology is generally
Speaker 1: more about building things at the smallest scale. And it
Speaker 1: has like huge implications for our healthcare. And we're not
Speaker 1: talking this is not sci fi stuff. They mean this
Speaker 1: is stuff that is in the works and around the corner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these these are real applications of nanotechnology that that definitely
Speaker 1: make a difference. Not not just like oh, I bet
Speaker 1: you can make a super strong sword or a tower
Speaker 1: that's is tall that's taller than the atmosphere. The type
Speaker 1: of thing UM and and also before we get into
Speaker 1: some of the healthcare um things that we'll be talking about,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to mention too that right now there
Speaker 1: are more than eight hundred commercial products that usually talk
Speaker 1: about in the article too, like this is this is
Speaker 1: something that's being used on in a widespread way. And
Speaker 1: in fact, Adidas uses nanotechnology for their cleats because nanocarbon
Speaker 1: tubes are actually like a hundred times stronger than steel
Speaker 1: and it's a lot lighter. Yeah, And when we use
Speaker 1: the term nano manufacturing, the point is that I think
Speaker 1: of it in terms of say a weapon, like a
Speaker 1: like a gun, a musket. There's a time where to
Speaker 1: create a musket you would have to have an artisan
Speaker 1: basically that would make it and make it one by one.
Speaker 1: But uh, and there's only so much you can do
Speaker 1: with that. It takes a lot more effort, a lot
Speaker 1: more cost, and a lot more time to say outfit
Speaker 1: in army that way. But if you can, if you
Speaker 1: can mass produce the weapon, then it's a lot easier
Speaker 1: to get that technology out there and actually make a
Speaker 1: difference with that technology, you know. And uh, And so
Speaker 1: the idea with nano manufacturing is that nano fact manufacturing
Speaker 1: involves getting the nanotechnology to the point to where we
Speaker 1: can mass produce its effects and make a real impact
Speaker 1: with the with the technology right, right, because as you
Speaker 1: point out in the article, none of it really matters
Speaker 1: unless it's you can produce it on a scale in
Speaker 1: which everybody has access to it. But that's that seems
Speaker 1: to be the way that it's going. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the iPhone, right, Like the the whole idea of the
Speaker 1: The amazing thing about the iPhone was that not only
Speaker 1: is the technology great, but they're able to mass produce it.
Speaker 1: The point of the point that everyone could have one
Speaker 1: if it took a lot of effort and only Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs could have one, what's the point that doesn't make
Speaker 1: any money, right, that doesn't change lives. And by the way,
Speaker 1: they use nanotechnology too. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, nano
Speaker 1: manufacturing is already uh, already out there, and it's just
Speaker 1: going to increase as time goes on, and we're going
Speaker 1: to see nanotechnology trickling down to various aspects of our life,
Speaker 1: especially healthcare. Yes, and let's talk about what that's gonna
Speaker 1: look like, because I'm very excited by this. Something called
Speaker 1: lab on a chip yes, Uh, do you want to
Speaker 1: mention the uh the article with all the other day
Speaker 1: Oh right, right, well, actually, yeah, before I talk about chlamydia,
Speaker 1: because you know, we always like to do a public
Speaker 1: service announcements about chlamydia. Um, they actually did use this
Speaker 1: in some of their tests for this lab on a chip.
Speaker 1: But before I talk about that, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about how what what we're talking about here? What does
Speaker 1: it look like? We're talking about transportable diagnostics via nano devices.
Speaker 1: So a USB stick sized throwaway device called lab on
Speaker 1: a chip. Right. Well, because if if anyone anyone out
Speaker 1: there who's ever had like a blood sample taken, you
Speaker 1: know the deal. They take the sample, but then they
Speaker 1: have to send it off somewhere or take it into
Speaker 1: the back room, and that involves, uh, it involves a
Speaker 1: laboratory that is staffed, that is air conditioned. The expense
Speaker 1: in the time really adds up. And that's assuming that
Speaker 1: the facilities are there, uh where you can reach them.
Speaker 1: If you travel out into the middle of nowhere, suddenly
Speaker 1: the you know, the labs farther away, it becomes a
Speaker 1: more a pain or even an impossibility to rely on
Speaker 1: the modern lab technology that we have. Uh, certainly in
Speaker 1: the developing world to it becomes a huge issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is so convenient. You basically take a
Speaker 1: droplet of fluid and you put it in the chip
Speaker 1: and micro pumps inside it send the fluid to internal
Speaker 1: vessels containing re agents that extract target disease biomarker molecules,
Speaker 1: and then that whole device can be sent to a
Speaker 1: lab for analysis. But but here's here's UM actually a
Speaker 1: little one up on this. There's a diagnostic app for
Speaker 1: smartphones that's been developed UM in which you could essentially
Speaker 1: do the same thing. You have a tiny droplet of
Speaker 1: a sample and you press it against the phone's touch
Speaker 1: screen for analysis, where the app would work out whether
Speaker 1: you have food poisoning, strepp road or flu um. And
Speaker 1: how does it work. I mean, the touch screens are
Speaker 1: are highly sensitive, right, and so they can they can
Speaker 1: store electric charges known as capacitance. Okay, and because the
Speaker 1: screens are so sensitive, they can detect very small capacitance
Speaker 1: changes and could could be these sort of platforms that
Speaker 1: could actually identify disease markers. But okay, this is the
Speaker 1: interesting part or or I mean, this is all interesting,
Speaker 1: but here comes to the chlamydia. Right, okay, so watch
Speaker 1: out here it comes. Young Yo Park and Beyng Yon
Speaker 1: Juan at the Korea Advance Institute for Science and Technology
Speaker 1: took three solutions containing differing concentrations of DNA from the
Speaker 1: bacteria that causes chlamydia. Okay, they're originally going to going
Speaker 1: to use crabs, but they were told they would get
Speaker 1: laughs if they did that, they would get laughs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's nice. Anyway, So they they apply these droplets from
Speaker 1: each to an iPhone size multi touch display, and they
Speaker 1: found that the output from the screens array of crisscrossed
Speaker 1: touch sensing electrodes could distinguish between the capacitances caused by
Speaker 1: each concentration using droplets of only ten micro leaders micro leaders,
Speaker 1: which is one thousands of amlilate leader by the way.
Speaker 1: Um so, but they're not able to differentiate between pathogens yet.
Speaker 1: But differentiating between concentrations is really a first step. So
Speaker 1: another problem is who wants their touch screen to be
Speaker 1: bathed in the chlamidia? Really? Yeah? It especially changes the
Speaker 1: whole You know, you're at the train station and some
Speaker 1: some dudes down on his luck and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I kind of borrow your phone for a second,
Speaker 1: because it's weird enough if he's about to make a
Speaker 1: you know, a personal call, but if he's going to
Speaker 1: check for chlamydia with your cell phone, it's it's a
Speaker 1: little weird, right right, And then you don't know, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you've got, you know, chlamydia placed up
Speaker 1: against your skin. You got chlamydia cheek really, But the
Speaker 1: technology could be applied in in a to a kind
Speaker 1: of star trek Um spit scanning device that would have
Speaker 1: have huge potential, And like I said, not only that
Speaker 1: in developing world, but pretty much in the field in general.
Speaker 1: Like anytime someone who is out in the field wanting
Speaker 1: to test somebody or anybody, you could have it geared
Speaker 1: to particular ailments or or or maybe a little more broad,
Speaker 1: but you could you who diagnose people in real time
Speaker 1: in the field. Yeah, exactly. And they are trying to
Speaker 1: come up with some removable stickers to put over the
Speaker 1: phones that you don't you're not you know, transmitting a
Speaker 1: little bio samples of chlamydia for instance. Well there you go.
Speaker 1: I mean they already has even the Steve Jobs didn't
Speaker 1: like them, told when I tried to buy one once. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they were Like Steve Jobs doesn't like those because
Speaker 1: they imply that the screen is not solid and and
Speaker 1: and can be easily scratched. And he's right. In my experience,
Speaker 1: they're kind of a con you know, you end up
Speaker 1: placing the stupid trastic thing over the over the screen,
Speaker 1: and then all that does is just caused dust to
Speaker 1: build up underneath there. I mean, I've never managed to,
Speaker 1: you know, knock on wood to scratch your mess up
Speaker 1: my screens. Yeah, but I mean what we're talking about
Speaker 1: here is if if you are going to use yourself
Speaker 1: have yeah or something akin to that. Um. But okay,
Speaker 1: So that's that's one instance. We also have better, longer
Speaker 1: lasting drugs, which you sort of inferred about the vitamins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're There are a few different ways to look at
Speaker 1: this stuff. One way is, of course, you you change
Speaker 1: the way that the drug interacts with the human body.
Speaker 1: Just consider, for instance, the botulism toxin in botox treatments.
Speaker 1: Of course, bochualism toxin is a toxin but bacteria that's
Speaker 1: generally bad for the human body unless it is administered
Speaker 1: in small doses. For generally, it's like for muscle ailments
Speaker 1: or for just merely cosmetic retulism in and of itself
Speaker 1: is not necessarily something you want to cross. So uh,
Speaker 1: doctors have actually generally inject botox because into a target
Speaker 1: tusue because it can't pass through skin, right okay. Researchers
Speaker 1: at the University of Massachusetts Allow Nano Manufacturing Center, however,
Speaker 1: are working on creating a topical botox cream. Their secret
Speaker 1: is they attached the toxin to a nanoparticle that allows
Speaker 1: it to hitch a ride through the skin. And so
Speaker 1: you you basically have a nanoparticle, this manipulated particle at
Speaker 1: the nanoscale that is capable of passing through the skin
Speaker 1: as as a lot of materials, uh and in substances
Speaker 1: are capable of doing. And it ends up changing the
Speaker 1: way that the boschel m toxin reacts with the body.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it is a right, So suddenly something
Speaker 1: that could not transfer through the skin can be rubbed
Speaker 1: on in a cream form. I wonder if Nicole kid
Speaker 1: Kidvin knows about this. I hate to say that. You
Speaker 1: know what creeps me out about this is that we
Speaker 1: have the blood brain barrier, right right, Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: thing there. Our skin is generally that the whole. Some
Speaker 1: things can pass through and some can't. Like it generally
Speaker 1: works in our favor. Um, if you don't want just
Speaker 1: anything to come in, it's like a it's a private
Speaker 1: party inside and not everything is invited, right, And so
Speaker 1: so all of a sudden you've got you know, botulism
Speaker 1: or the toxin at least in this concentration being absorbed
Speaker 1: by your skin getting into your bloodstream. Right. And so
Speaker 1: the blood brain barrier is a membrane that protects the
Speaker 1: brain from potentially harmful chemicals in the bloodstream, right, from
Speaker 1: making sure that doesn't cross into your brain. So that
Speaker 1: this is something that keeps coming up. What is the
Speaker 1: ability of nanomaterials to cross that barrier? And I don't
Speaker 1: think that we have a good understanding of this yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you end up this is one of the fears
Speaker 1: of nanotechnology in generally you end up creating these particles
Speaker 1: that end up just passing right into our brain, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, do you wanna do you want
Speaker 1: to bow talk to your brain? No? Probably not right,
Speaker 1: Uh So that's that's a little bit creepy, but it
Speaker 1: is you know, it's very interesting in terms of the delivery,
Speaker 1: right and a lot of these drugs have really cool
Speaker 1: delivery systems. Yeah, and also real quick like basic delivery
Speaker 1: UM physics if you will include things like solutability, like
Speaker 1: the ability of a drug to become a part of
Speaker 1: your blood, to break down, to break down, you know,
Speaker 1: in the body. UM nanotechnology will allow us to you
Speaker 1: create drug particles at the nanoscale, so the the absorption
Speaker 1: rate increases and dosage levels decrease because you end up
Speaker 1: having to to put in less of a of a
Speaker 1: particular medication because the particles are so much smaller, it
Speaker 1: ends up being more potent being well it uh, you
Speaker 1: absorb it faster and more completely. So it's it's it
Speaker 1: allows you to to make a smarter version of a
Speaker 1: particular medication. Okay. And this is also where the length
Speaker 1: of time comes into right, Like you could take something
Speaker 1: and it could last for I don't know, two weeks,
Speaker 1: two months, no matter, you know, depending on what it
Speaker 1: is being administered, right. Yeah. Researchers at Northwestern University are
Speaker 1: actually developing drug devices made from nanodiamonds which prevent medicine
Speaker 1: from releasing too swiftly into the body. UM. So the
Speaker 1: idea this is again coming back to what I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the idea that you could implant month's worth of medication
Speaker 1: directly into the affected tissue area. Like, think of it
Speaker 1: this way. You're going out of town for the weekend.
Speaker 1: What do you do if you have a dog? Defeed?
Speaker 1: Do you just open six cans of alpo and leave
Speaker 1: them there on the table for the dog? No, you
Speaker 1: have somebody come and open one can um you know,
Speaker 1: of two cans a day for the dog. Because the
Speaker 1: dog doesn't know any better, it will eat all the
Speaker 1: cans of alpo and make itself sick. You need somebody
Speaker 1: to administer it. So this is the idea instead of
Speaker 1: instead of having to administer you know, all the the
Speaker 1: alpo one bit of a time, it could self administer.
Speaker 1: You know. It's interesting too because I was just thinking
Speaker 1: about birth control and how this is going to affect
Speaker 1: that because you have birth control pills, like I think,
Speaker 1: like a season all or maybe that's a subcutaneous um
Speaker 1: birth control that they implant. But in any case, they've
Speaker 1: got different kinds of birth control pills that you have
Speaker 1: to take only like you know, every four months or
Speaker 1: some one and so forth, and um, I mean, essentially
Speaker 1: you could do the same thing with birth control. You
Speaker 1: could you could have it release over your period and
Speaker 1: just take one pill, right and and the other really
Speaker 1: exciting area is is of course, like I said, being
Speaker 1: able to target the area of the body, like uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the big thing about cells, right, the
Speaker 1: particular cells, a particular particular organs. Even um. Chemotherapy tends
Speaker 1: to be um such an ordeal because you're generally having
Speaker 1: to treat the whole body to treat the area that
Speaker 1: you want, you know, instead of going after the you're
Speaker 1: you're treating the population to get to the criminal. So
Speaker 1: if if we could, if we could, we could apply
Speaker 1: it to just a particular area of the body through
Speaker 1: through these these nano delivery devices, you could have a
Speaker 1: situation where you could treat you could use the chemotherapy
Speaker 1: therapy to target the specific cells and not end up
Speaker 1: you know, making the individual rul sick, which is great
Speaker 1: because then you're not wiping out a bunch of healthy
Speaker 1: cells exactly. Yeah, And that is a chief complain about chemotherapy,
Speaker 1: that um that comes up over and over again. And
Speaker 1: then you have something called super pain killers. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: this and this sounds crazy just because of these substances
Speaker 1: involved in it. But University of Kentucky College of Medicine,
Speaker 1: they came up with this concept of taking a morphine molecule,
Speaker 1: which of course is the heavy pain killer UM and
Speaker 1: uh the th HC molecule th HC being the intoxicating
Speaker 1: part of marijuana, and joining them together with a single
Speaker 1: nanoparticle and then once so once in they travel into
Speaker 1: the body. But once in the body, the linking bit
Speaker 1: breaks free and releases the morphine and the th HC
Speaker 1: in equal targeted doses. See that's that's insane, right, because
Speaker 1: you wonder, I mean, obviously that would be really helpful
Speaker 1: for surgical procedures and you know, trying to heal from
Speaker 1: certain things and trying to avoid pain in general. But wow,
Speaker 1: doesn't that make an interesting cocktail of a of a drug. Yeah?
Speaker 1: And it also I can't help but think of like
Speaker 1: drug companies in their various patents on substances, you know,
Speaker 1: because the idea is like you you take a you
Speaker 1: take two patent medications, and when the patents running out,
Speaker 1: you just sort of combine them together and then you
Speaker 1: have a new patent. So if you could, I wonder
Speaker 1: to what extent um nano manufacturing allow just minor tweaks
Speaker 1: in medications to make sure they continue to keep the
Speaker 1: pattern well. And also does this make us rethink legalization
Speaker 1: of marijuana at least here in the United States? Probably not,
Speaker 1: because you know, again, this is this is a medical use, right,
Speaker 1: this is which we have medically used. We are one
Speaker 1: in some places. But still, I mean, now that you're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna use it in this context, it sort
Speaker 1: of makes the whole uh cannabis are the against cannabis
Speaker 1: argument a little bit silly. Well, and then let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break here from our sponsor, and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're gonna get into a topic that we've
Speaker 1: enjoyed talking about in the past, that being grow your
Speaker 1: own organs in bath and your sparing. This podcast is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and
Speaker 1: the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the
Speaker 1: spark which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com
Speaker 1: and explore the answers to life's questions. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: so we uh we. In the past, we've vote, we've
Speaker 1: discussed the idea of doing yourself organs or or more
Speaker 1: specifically the idea that we can print organs, that we
Speaker 1: can grow them um through the use of stem cells.
Speaker 1: And we can, and we can. We've we've done this,
Speaker 1: We've people are walking around with them, um and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing, um. But how does how does nanotechnology
Speaker 1: affect this? Right? How can it play a role? Well,
Speaker 1: let's just think about what we've done so far. I
Speaker 1: mean we were basically we've used patient's own stem cells.
Speaker 1: And we know from a previous podcast that fat stem
Speaker 1: cells are really easy for us because most of them
Speaker 1: can adapt to a particular type of organ And we've
Speaker 1: successfully grown human bladders and even hearts by coaxing stem
Speaker 1: cells to grow over an organ shaped scaffold. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like one of these is the ideas here as you
Speaker 1: take a use a ghost heart, So you take at
Speaker 1: an existing human heart, like a donor heart, and then
Speaker 1: you you strip it down with chemicals to like just
Speaker 1: the collagen, and then you set the stem cells on
Speaker 1: there to grow over this scalp foldings. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the idea of let's strip the building down
Speaker 1: to just the beams and then build a new exactly
Speaker 1: the way we need it. And the scaffolding is really important, right,
Speaker 1: because you have to be able to achieve this shape.
Speaker 1: That's where nanotechnology can You can't obviously, you can't just
Speaker 1: grow a You don't just want to grow a bowl
Speaker 1: of heart tissue. You need to grow that amount of
Speaker 1: heart tissue in the shape, in the complex, specific shape
Speaker 1: of a human heart. Right. So it turns out that
Speaker 1: researchers at Rice University and MD Anderson Cancer Center in
Speaker 1: Houston have developed an organ sculpting technique that uses metal
Speaker 1: nano particles suspended in a magnetic field. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: Basically they woke up one day and they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of growing your own heart um with stem
Speaker 1: cells is not quite mind blowing enough for us. I
Speaker 1: wonder if we can somehow up the antie and a
Speaker 1: loan of the whole. They do, because they their concept
Speaker 1: here as you take these these magnetic hether they're metal
Speaker 1: land on particles and they're in a magnetic field, and
Speaker 1: by manipulating the magnetic field, you arrange these particles into
Speaker 1: a like a floating scaffolding. I know this such dug
Speaker 1: henning nanotechnology. I mean, seriously, get really excited by this
Speaker 1: because I just think Yeah, it's like suspending jello. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like magic. The idea that not to mystify the technology,
Speaker 1: but seriously, imagine walking into a room and they're floating
Speaker 1: in the middle of it is this pullful flesh that's
Speaker 1: growing into the shape of a donor heart. And again
Speaker 1: you've got the nanoparts particles suspended in a magnetic field.
Speaker 1: You have these matching up with this three D model
Speaker 1: of what it should be. Yeah, I mean you have
Speaker 1: these these particles behaving in a very different way than
Speaker 1: in this in the at the scale. So that's so cool. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also reconstructive surgery. Severe burn patients have little viable
Speaker 1: skin leftograft onto um the rest of their body, and
Speaker 1: so you can you can grow new skin using polymeric material,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it takes too long and the patient it
Speaker 1: can get really bad infections. And so when the newest
Speaker 1: theories in the field of cell growing is at the
Speaker 1: smallest ructure, the wider the possibility to manipulate the cells. Again. Uh,
Speaker 1: So they have a new laser based technology called e
Speaker 1: u V Extreme Ultraviolet that you that creates uh, nanostructured
Speaker 1: polymer surfaces which really allows you to rapidly grow these
Speaker 1: new skin for someone and then there's also no scar.
Speaker 1: Plastic surgery. Scientists in Japan have developed a biodegradable thin
Speaker 1: film of only about twenty nanometers thick that could replace
Speaker 1: surgical stitches, which is really amazing. If you look at
Speaker 1: the pictures, uh, you can already see, like um, that
Speaker 1: the organism is beginning to heal itself really rapidly, as
Speaker 1: opposed to sort of the big franken science stitches that
Speaker 1: exist on it. So all of this makes me think
Speaker 1: of another episode that we did a while back, that
Speaker 1: being The nine Birthday Candles, which if you haven't heard
Speaker 1: it or we're confused by the title, it deals with
Speaker 1: the the science and the emerging science of living to
Speaker 1: be nine years old, and that specifically what Aubrey de
Speaker 1: Gray has to say about a lot of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Abrey de Gray being the great bearded one, he does
Speaker 1: look like a wonderful sort of gnome like man, gnome
Speaker 1: like because of the beard, wizard like imagined him and
Speaker 1: Alan Moore and Gandalf hanging out together. You can tell
Speaker 1: my you can tell my crush is lessened because yeah,
Speaker 1: now I'm calling him a gnome um. But no, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be cute. So but he he is uh, he's
Speaker 1: sort of a rock star in the bio geriatric field,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people at first were sort of like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? This is impossible, But he
Speaker 1: has made a very good argument that the human body
Speaker 1: is much like a classic car and if you can
Speaker 1: get in there and you can do this sort of
Speaker 1: maintenance before huge diseases and take over, then you can
Speaker 1: actually extend the life. And he is saying that right
Speaker 1: now that there is someone who is going to live
Speaker 1: to be at least five hundred years old because of
Speaker 1: the new technology, like what we're talking about today, and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's probably David Bowie, that's my guess. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's he's he's funding some of this and
Speaker 1: he and Nicole Kidman. But I mean, we are talking
Speaker 1: about self maintenance. And this is from UH an article
Speaker 1: from HS Plus magazine. It's UH Nanotechnology and surgery surgeon's perspective.
Speaker 1: The surgeon says this trend is already apparent in plastic surgery,
Speaker 1: talking about all the sorts of nano technology that aims
Speaker 1: at appearance enhancement. Expect this trend to appear in other
Speaker 1: surgical specialties like orthopedics for enhanced athletes, transplantation of organs
Speaker 1: from bioprinting or stem cells, new ordinary arteries delivered with
Speaker 1: angioplastic balloons, enhancement drugs with DNA modifications, and many many others.
Speaker 1: It seems that surgery will be the vector of our
Speaker 1: first steps towards transcendence, gradually moving towards less and less
Speaker 1: invasive procedures until surgery becomes almost obsolete. So that's what
Speaker 1: that's what he's talking about. And he's basically, you know,
Speaker 1: this idea that Aubrey de Gray has that we can
Speaker 1: continue to use technology to to uh fix ourselves and
Speaker 1: we you know, surgery may become very obsolete. And you
Speaker 1: know when this happens, are we are we still human? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. I mean, if we
Speaker 1: enhanced ourselves beyond uh you know, at least calling ourselves
Speaker 1: homo sapiens, or are we homo sapiens Homo sapien plus?
Speaker 1: I think maybe that's I like that, Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: plus because you don't have to keep updating it with like,
Speaker 1: you know, one point two point. So there you go.
Speaker 1: That's nano manufacturing at least as it relates to healthcare.
Speaker 1: We uh, we may come back and explore the topic
Speaker 1: a little more and look at the ways nano manufacturer
Speaker 1: is going to change other aspects like architecture. Architecture is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Um, but if you can't wait for that,
Speaker 1: by all means, you can check out tin waves and
Speaker 1: manufacturing will alter industry. It's actually hosted on the Curiosity website,
Speaker 1: which how stuff works. Theres a lot of content for that.
Speaker 1: We all right, uh if you're amount of content for
Speaker 1: that that property which is owned by Discovery Channel, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and our employers, yes, our employers, And it's a part
Speaker 1: of that the awesome TV show, the Curiosity Project show.
Speaker 1: So uh, let's call over the robot uh and see
Speaker 1: if it has any mail for us. Come on, Arnie,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's uh, let's grab some of this mail,
Speaker 1: all right, Luke writes in. Luke says, hey, Robert, I've
Speaker 1: heard you talk about doing several times on the podcast,
Speaker 1: that being the novel by Frank Herbert, and so I
Speaker 1: finally read it, and he was to say it was amazing,
Speaker 1: But now I want your opinion on the sequel. So
Speaker 1: I find myself wanting to find out what happens next
Speaker 1: to get more closure. But I'm also a slow reader
Speaker 1: and feel somewhat exhausted after done. I've seen your reviews
Speaker 1: and I've sort of gathered what happens in doing Messiah?
Speaker 1: Is it a good read? Regardless of that, should I
Speaker 1: read it? Even though I know I kind of know
Speaker 1: what will happen. Like you talked about in the podcast
Speaker 1: about too many choices decisions, tig, I'm looking for someone
Speaker 1: whose opinion I trust to make the decisions for me.
Speaker 1: Thanks and happy Thanksgiving. Yeah, yeah, no, that's interesting. I
Speaker 1: remember in Decision the Decision Fatigue podcast, you said it's
Speaker 1: great to have someone who can bet things for you.
Speaker 1: So you're betting this for him? Yeah? If I will go,
Speaker 1: just go and say, if you were looking for closure
Speaker 1: and the things you read, proceeding with the Dunes here
Speaker 1: is is probably not your best bet, um, because and
Speaker 1: then a Frank Herbert dies before he can finish it. Uh,
Speaker 1: And in my opinion, the books become less and less
Speaker 1: solid as even if they progress in his writing of them. Uh,
Speaker 1: they become less about characters and more about ideas. And
Speaker 1: then even the idea is kind of fall flat after
Speaker 1: a while again in my opinion, and then his son
Speaker 1: ends up finishing the series, but their various voices back
Speaker 1: and forth about to what degree he was able to
Speaker 1: um to accomplish his father's vision. So for the most part,
Speaker 1: I advise people to um to stick with June unless
Speaker 1: you really really can't help yourself, and then, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: don a side is pretty fun, but they gets less
Speaker 1: fun as you go, So that would be my advice.
Speaker 1: There are so many I suffer from this myself sometimes
Speaker 1: with books, Like I found an author that I like, uh,
Speaker 1: and I will just keep reading them until I'm not
Speaker 1: reading the things that they may do. We're good anymore,
Speaker 1: because not everybody's like that, where everything that they wrote
Speaker 1: is great, or every or every album that they came
Speaker 1: up with this amazing, or or every film they ever
Speaker 1: directed or start in as a masterpiece. So um. But
Speaker 1: but I often end up doing that, like I find
Speaker 1: some an artist that I like, and I keep exploring
Speaker 1: their work, uh, when I really should be finding new
Speaker 1: artists who discover Actually I think that that's a better
Speaker 1: appreciation of how they've evolved as an artist. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: then there's there's something to be said, like what do
Speaker 1: I at the end of at the end of the life.
Speaker 1: What what do I want? Do I want to say
Speaker 1: I have a really good appreciation for how um Frank
Speaker 1: Herbert evolved or he evolved as a as a writer.
Speaker 1: Or do I want to be able to say I
Speaker 1: read some really good books that had some really amazing ideas.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I don't know, but I see
Speaker 1: I see some sort of college level of course coming
Speaker 1: on a festa. Thanks where that's where you could apply it.
Speaker 1: Let me see if I have one more This is
Speaker 1: maybe a little more science. Oh, I know, this one's fun.
Speaker 1: Let's go at this. Uh Nathan writes in it says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie, I love your podcast, and I only
Speaker 1: have two things to say. Firstly, I read simply listen
Speaker 1: to your podcast on doppelgangers and wondered if you have
Speaker 1: heard of the Elvis impersonator theory. The theory is that
Speaker 1: there are so many Elvis impersonators out there, but only
Speaker 1: about fifty of them actually look like him. So there
Speaker 1: are fifty people out there that look exactly like you
Speaker 1: right now. I just thought that you might find it interesting.
Speaker 1: My second splirt of information is that I think you
Speaker 1: guys should definitely do a podcast on cinesesthasia. I have
Speaker 1: graphine color synesthesia and would love to hear your opinion
Speaker 1: on the matter. Very cool. Yeah, a couple of things. One,
Speaker 1: now I imagine myself as an Elvis personator like fifty
Speaker 1: of us, all with a Cape song to splurt love it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and uh and three we have heard from a lot
Speaker 1: of people who talk about sinensaia and having different experiences
Speaker 1: with it. So that's that's definitely one that we could
Speaker 1: dive deeper into. Yeah, it's weird how sometimes the really
Speaker 1: obvious ones like I feel like sinesasia has been on
Speaker 1: when we first started doing stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: that's stuff to blow your mind, were Mando this enormous
Speaker 1: list of possible topics, and and some of them were
Speaker 1: no brainess like Seneslatia. We gotta do that. That's great
Speaker 1: mind blowing topic. Um. And some of those those no
Speaker 1: brainers are still on the list. Uh. And when we
Speaker 1: ended up sort of going into into weirder areas here
Speaker 1: and yeah, our attention gets diverted. Yeah, we're easily distracted
Speaker 1: by science. So there you have it. Um, if you
Speaker 1: have something you would like to share with us. Be
Speaker 1: it science related, be it sci fi related, be it
Speaker 1: just about anything that's interesting and mind stimulating. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook as stuff to Blow the Mind,
Speaker 1: and you can also find find us on Twitter, where
Speaker 1: our Twitter handles blow the Mind one word, and you
Speaker 1: can also send us a line at blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at house to work dot com. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
Speaker 1: how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.