G'day science lovers! Buckle up, because today we're diving into everything from bottom-end evolution to deliberately poisoning yourself and your child with a deadly jellyfish (yes, really). Here’s a recap of our recent escapade through intriguing science headlines.
The Great Posterior Evolution (Yes, We're Talking About Bums)
Let's start with something cheeky - the evolution of the anus. This seemingly basic body part has quite the plot twist: it might have started as a sperm release system before getting a complete career change. Talk about a dramatic job transition. Nature really said, "Work with what you've got," and honestly, we're all better off for it.
When AI Goes Rogue: Digital Pranks Gone Wrong
Speaking of plot twists, AI is now basically that mate who can't stop making stuff up at parties. These "AI hallucinations" aren't just amusing - they're becoming the new favourite toy of cybercriminals. Imagine getting scammed by a computer's imagination. It's like getting catfished, but instead of a fake profile pic, it's fake... well, everything.
Tiny Terrors: The Jellyfish Edition
Moving from digital dangers to actual ones, let's chat about our mate the Irukandji jellyfish. This tiny troublemaker from Far North Queensland is like the ninja of the ocean - you can't see it, but boy, will you know when it's there. We’re wondering why someone would deliberately poison themselves and their 9 year old son…and also someone from the audience. Then promptly try and drive themselves to the hospital while they’re writhing in pain. It doesn’t sound like a smart idea and we’re not entirely sure what they learned from the experience either.
Brain Music: Not Your Average Spotify Playlist
Now, here's something properly wild - scientists are using lab-grown mini-brains to make music and sound. It seems as if they can also hear. The future of music might be more cerebral than we thought.
Space Algae: The Cosmic Underdogs
Finally, let's zoom out to planet K2-18b, where scientists have found hints of what might be space algae. Not quite the little green men we were expecting, eh? But before you get disappointed, remember: if we find alien life and it turns out to be cosmic pond scum, that's still pretty amazing. Sometimes the universe's biggest revelations come in the smallest packages.
From evolutionary hand-me-downs to jellyfish on holiday, brain-powered symphonies to space algae, science keeps proving that reality is wilder than anything we could make up. Next time someone tells you science is boring, show them this article - or better yet, tell them about the anus evolution. That'll get the conversation flowing.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Welcome to A Little Bit Of Science
00:39 The Evolution of the Anus
01:30 Scientific Theories and Genetic Studies
02:54 Early Animal Anatomy
10:59 Cybercrime and AI
17:50 Tech Bro Tales
28:04 Tough Scientists and Dangerous Beaches
30:58 Introduction to the Jellyfish Story
31:07 The Painful Effects of the Jellyfish Sting
31:48 Historical Accounts and Investigations
33:31 Jack Barnes' Quest for Answers
36:45 The Discovery of the Tiny Jellyfish
38:00 The Experiment with the Jellyfish
44:42 Modern Implications and Climate Change
47:19 Art and Science: The Revivification Installation
54:17 Potential Signs of Life on K2-18b
SOURCES:
https://www.sify.com/ai-analytics/the-hilarious-and-horrifying-hallucinations-of-ai/
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1964.tb114424.x
https://futurism.com/neoscope/musician-resurrected-brain-new-music
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Rod: Look, it's something I've thought about many times and I'm sure you people out there have thought about it too. The anus is a wildly successful innovation, but how did it evolve?
Will: Welcome to a little bit of science. I'm will Grant, associate Professor of Science communication at the Australian National University.
Rod: I'm Rod Lambert, a 30 year science communication veteran with the brain of a teenage boy.
Will: And today we're gonna explore the evolution of the anus,
Rod: obviously cybercrime.
Um, we're gonna have a little, oh, no tech bro. Oh, no.
Will: I'm gonna tell you about the manliest bad manliest scientist, bad man.
Rod: Bad manliest.
Will: Bad man list. I don't know, maybe, [00:01:00] maybe he's, he's a good guy. He's roll
Rod: out with a, and we'll end it off with a little bit of a, or nearly ended it off with a little bit of a, what I call ethics sch
Will: and a tiny bit, yeah, a tiny bit of space news.
Rod: But space is big.
Will: So how long have you been pondering the evolution of the anus and should I get you help?
Rod: I think about these things. I think about many things. I'm a thinker and this one I've been thinking about for at least since I saw an article, a new scientist a month ago.
Okay. And that sentence, the onus is a wildly successful innovation. But how did it evolve? I'm like innovation for starters. Look,
Will: look, I can imagine there was a time when, uh, bacteria. Or some later organism, and you, you'll tell me, you know, was getting a bit clogged up and there was, there was nowhere for it to go
Rod: up bacterium
Will: innovative, innovative thinkers of the time said, what about,
Rod: let's rip a hole down there.
Will: an escape hatch.
Rod: Exactly. [00:02:00] Pop the seal. Look allegedly,
Will: this is my Ted Talk. Look, this is what we all need.
Rod: How do you know personal experience, so allegedly among folks who study such matters, this has been a longstanding question. How the hell did the
Will: beautiful
Rod: evolve?
Will: When he says butyl, it's butthole. But if
Rod: don't be so savage,
Will: I'm just, I'm just so that listeners are like butyl, like what does he mean?
Like
Rod: out the letters.
Will: I know,
Rod: BUTT.
Will: I know. I'm just helping the listen. They might think it's some sort of, you know, I don't know where your people come from that you call it the butyl.
Rod: That's a suburb in Canberra. I'm not disparaging the tribes of, of the same name. Anyway, this the question might have been solved by genetic studies. They're looking about, in particular animals to sort of try and use genetic [00:03:00] developments in associations with parts of the body. Mm-hmm. To work out how this wildly successful innovation came apart came about.
So it came apart oopsie. So there was a analysis that suggested, probably began as an opening, used to release sperm.
Will: Really? I, I,
Rod: See, I I, I know, really
Will: Really
Rod: see we three sentences in and you're going I
Will: well, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have guessed that first. No. Um,
Rod: Me neither. It's got all my favorite pants things. Yeah. And so they,
Will: they,
Rod: they reckon that the, basically it was an opening, probably used to release sperm, but then the opening later fused with the gut.
Okay.
Will: Okay.
Rod: Which is an example of evolution. Re repurposing structures. Do
Will: have an idea of the animal or plant? Okay. That's not evolution.
Rod: the tree turned into a dog. That's a hell of an
Will: It was a tree that was releasing sperm through its brand new butt hole. Obvious. What animal, what, what are we talking [00:04:00] here?
Rod: prob, we're probably in the realms of sort of your jellyfish worm type creatures, that level.
Will: Okay. Yeah.
Rod: Um, and so I love this. Yeah. This example of the, uh, the, the sperm opening thing that may been the precursor to the annuus later fused with the gut and evolutionary repurposing or as, as one of the main resurgence in this story.
Put it once a hole is there, you can use it for other things. This, this is a quote from new scientists of a researcher at the ULA University,
Will: would
Rod: Andreas.
Will: hedge. Anyway,
Rod: Anyway, so scientists generally thought animals evolved a mouth and gut before the anus,
Will: What
Rod: mouth and a gut and no date.
Will: date.
And so are they, are they putting through their mouth? Yeah. Oh,
Rod: So the jellyfish, they say, and there's some like this still, this is why they have, they suspect an evolutionary link that have to, as they put it, expel the remains of their last meal out of their mouth before they can eat again, which [00:05:00] would make eating out in a restaurant give it a different sort of vibe and flavor. Are you hungry? I will be. Um, so based on this idea, someone what an early or this fact, an early idea about how animals involved are noes, is that their mouth split in two?
Will: and then gradually walk to the other end of
Rod: Exactly, that's, that's, I'm like, so right next to the mouth, maybe it's better just to have the one hole Lester clean,
Will: Oh,
Rod: but I, yeah, I assume, as you say, it gradually meandered its way down the body. But then, so in 2008, Heno our, you can use holes for everything, guy, he, he showed that genes controlling development of the mouth region are quite different to those of the hind gut. So, you know the muscular region as it's not ever called. So he reckons it must be an independent origin to the anus.
Will: Oh.
Rod: I mean obviously, obviously. So he started tooling around with a worm-like creature, which you find [00:06:00] on the floor of the sea called a, uh, X Bella bki. You know the one? Mm, they're worm-like,
they have a mouth and gut, but no anus. Okay.
Will: Okay. All right.
Rod: You know, evolutionary throwbacks present, uh, uh, possibly. So he said, look, it could be a living representative of this ancient group that was intermediate between ancestors of jellyfish and the first animals with a date. So these creatures, in the creatures that we're talking about, these worms, boy worms, have a separate hole for releasing sperm. And they call that a male gona port or gona port. I dunno why. Apparently the impression I have is women or lady worms have them, but they, theirs don't have ones to release eggs.
Their eggs come outta their mouth. So the dudes have a special sperm hole, but the, the, the ladies are left popping the eggs outta their mouth. Okay,
Will: Okay, well,
Rod: sexism is everywhere,
Will: Mm-hmm.
Rod: including in the floor of the ocean worm species. [00:07:00] So apparently a bunch of genes of controlled development in the hind gut in animals with an anus also control the development of the oppo, the sperm release hole.
Will: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rod: In animals like these worms, they say that suggests some kind of evolutionary link.
Will: that's what we did first,
Rod: Allegedly. So the
Will: So, so let's, let's go back. Yeah. Back when, back when we had just, just, we, I mean this is, this is our ancestors had just the mouth. Yeah. Um, yeah. And God, and, and, and we had to, we had to poo through our mouth before, but the sperm or the eggs came outta the mouth. So everything was that,
Rod: seems like it was like
Will: general exit hole and our general entry
Rod: This is my impression, your, your top of body multipurpose cloaker. Yeah.
Will: like a bag, like it's, it's the, it's the,
Rod: a bag with a port a balloon. Really
Will: Well, yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's just got one hole at the top. Like it's, it's, it's a sack.
Rod: This is the impression I got. It's fair to say from this article, I did not go and delve into the biological literature to unpack the rest of the detail. 'cause I'm not smart
Will: Mm-hmm.
Rod: But [00:08:00] yeah, the, the, this seems to be what they're trying to get to. I mean, then there's creatures that sort of have a, a mouth.
Then to sort of a direct flow through to potentially an anus as well. This is a different story. So, um, our, our quote, quote of the, uh, year guy says, what happens is likely, it's likely that the hole existed and the digestive system was close by, and then they fused to form a common opening, but a different fella.
So he's a, another researcher. This guy is at University College London, guy called Telford. He says, the data are beautiful and very convincing. Beautiful, very Trump-like. But he's not convinced.
Will: he said he was convinced.
Rod: He said the data are convincing. Not that he was convinced.
Will: I thought you said that.
Rod: you said that he's a scientist.
He's precise
Will: I thought You literally said, and it's very convincing.
Rod: said, he said, the data are beautiful and very convincing, but I reckon there was a sarcastic tone.
Will: You can't read sarcastic tone in the scientific report.
Rod: No, this is in an interview and new scientists, it's different. Semi science. So it turns out there's a bit of a, [00:09:00] okay, where did bums come from
debate got raging among the sciences. So Telford, this second guy says he reckons animals, a group of animals the worms belong to once had an anus with a connected spoof hole. Then they lost the date.
Will: I don't think, I don't think international listeners can
Rod: sperm release aperture spoof his sperm in certain Australian regions,
Will: Christ
Rod: So yeah, he reckons maybe the worm once had both an anus and it was connected to the, the releasing aperture for sperm. And then the, and then the anus went away.
Will: We could be on an evolutionary pathway for more holes.
Like if, if we, if we've gone from like a, a sack that has one entry exit pathway for everything and
Rod: now we've got like
Will: and then we've got split them up and we, 4,
Rod: 6, 7,
Will: Yeah. I feel like we could have more, like you
Rod: the eyes? Is that a hole?
Will: Only for light and for tears.
Rod: Oh.
Will: I, I guess they're a hole.
Rod: So we've got like nine or more holes. Oh, and those are the ones we can see. Yeah. I don't mean right now. Obviously people who are listening, we we're wearing clothes,
Will: [00:10:00] probably you could, you could split, you know, if you wanted, if you wanted to do some splits here
Rod: and you do
Will: the sperm hole and the wee hole Yes.
Amongst the gentleman like that, that evolution would probably do that. Maybe. Is it gonna do it? Is that gonna happen? Who, who's it gonna happen to?
Rod: you? Like, you're gonna wake up one morning, go, which one do I use? What,
Will: what?
Rod: what? I think I want a wee wee. what I'm wondering is what's the advantage?
Will: Well,
Rod: Why would it be better?
Will: Well,
Rod: no, I like, I'm spit balling here. What do you think? Why would it be better to split the wee wee from the woo Woo-hoo.
Will: I don't, I don't, you know, listen to, this is obviously what you came here for.
Rod: big questions. So, according to the second guy, he reckons the group that, that appeared, the group we're talking about, the worms appeared only after the evolution of the anus rather than before it, he reckons it flipped around the, the anus came after, not before.
So basically we're left with the question, the eternal question, which came first, the anus or the gona port. Unanswered, but the battle continues.
Will: I know [00:11:00] you love a bit of, uh, cyber crime. Uh, you love, uh,
Rod: how do you think I bought my first house?
Will: No, no. You love, you love thinking about it. You love defending yourself from a little bit of cyber crime. But, uh, well, I wanted to update you. on some new cyber crime that has developed, and I'm really happy about this cyber crime.
Rod: Is this a new thing for me to tar, be terrified of? Uh,
Will: of, uh, probably not. You, uh, I think you are, you are not the, the victim category, but it could affect you. Look, it's a mashup of cybercrime. Yeah. And ai. Okay.
Rod: to me they're indistinguishable. You. I mean, if you're gonna do good cyber crime, you need a little ai or I saw an interview with the American, she's the head of, uh, the education department in the US right now.
she was saying in this interview, oh, see what's gonna be great about it is, you know, a one has always been, you know, taught at higher levels, but soon we're gonna have a one down into primary schools and
Will: is a one?
Rod: Ai, she read it as a one through the whole conversation. She's calling it a one
Will: look. Look, I always thought that, um, Yosemite and Yosemite were two different national parks. So, and, and the pterodactyl. And the pterodactyl were [00:12:00] definitely different. Uh, dinosaurs.
Rod: And what were you? Five? Yeah. Yeah.
Will: So
Rod: she's like
Will: Maybe she's just a reader and she never watches the news. Never listens to anything. We
Rod: has heard anyone speak before? Anyway, sorry. Ai. Just 'cause John Oliver's playing this clip and I'm listening to it going, what the fuck is she talking about? Like, what is a one this some American thing. And then finally he holds up the, she meant AI
Will: She means ai. That is so good. That is so good.
Rod: Head of the education department. That's probably why they're gonna shut it down.
Will: All right. We're all aware of the problem of AI hallucination. This is where AI comes up with a plausible word that's based on probability, but it, it is not even close to truth.
Like there's, there's, there's no truth in that. Like some of the famous ones are, um, you know, people asking how many rocks, uh, should humans eat per day? And AI going, oh, you know, two to three or something like that. Oh, I saw this great one. What is, what is the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot?
Um,
Rod: And it gives you a number Of
Will: you a number of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He gave a literal number. It was, uh, 14 hours [00:13:00] and 51 minutes, , on August four. Yeah. And he, he gave a name, A name by Christophe. Uh, RO. Yeah, he gave it, just made it all up.
Rod: That's good.
Will: , it did say crossing the English channel entirely on foot is mostly done by a combination of walking and, and swimming.
So's
Rod: oh, well that's good to
Will: it's, it's close to something. Uh,
Rod: But
Will: but you know, air hallucination certainly happens all the time. Now, mostly for us it's either, it's either funny or if you are a user of ai. Mm-hmm. Uh, there have been stories of people, um, hallucinating, uh, law reports and stuff like, like legal precedent, you know, go the judge, Hey, in the, in the
Rod: I think you're fine.
And,
Will: think you're fine.
And, and AI just hallucinating. So, you know, don't use it in that way.
Rod: The real question is how many judges spot that,
Will: but also presents a vulnerability.
Mm-hmm.
So a lot of coders these days are using AI for coding. So, Hey, hey, chat, GGPT, deep lama, whatever you want. Um, do me up a, a bit of code that we'll do this [00:14:00] kind of thing.
Now there is just like other things, a chance for hallucination there. Yeah. And some studies have shown it's, it can be up to like 25% of the time. , there'll be hallucinations in there. . It's quite a lot.
Rod: yet another example of them being more like us.
Will: but the cool thing is, , they can hallucinate package names, package, like little bits of software package.
they can just sort of make up, oh, there should be a software package that sounds like, uh, you know, underscore hugging face CLI or something
Rod: like
that. So I'll say there
Will: is, yeah,
exactly. Okay. Uh, so it just invents this, but a bunch of these malware people have realized that it can sometimes be quite predictable in what it hallucinates.
Mm-hmm. Like, it feels like there should be something there. And so what these people have done is they sit on those, um, those packages mm-hmm. Like that they put malware into the packages that AI is, is, um, hallucinating the names of, and then that's a pathway for this malware to get into, um, people's code for whatever,
Rod: whatever.
Wait, wait. So they're hallucinating the name of a [00:15:00] package, but the package exists. It
Will: exactly. So this is the thing. So the, the, the cyber criminals have gone, okay, AI is hallucinating this word, you know, uh, dash
Rod: slap 0.40. Yeah.
Will: and it's regularly doing that. So like, um, there's a thing in, in websites typo, squatting.
You know, if you, if you buy Google with an extra e or, or not enough O'S or something, it's worth quite a lot because people make a typo and do it. It's a version of that, but it's AI generated. So they're finding these keywords and then jumping in there with a malware package and you know what they're doing.
Ah, obviously it's crypto, so you know, these people are using this chance to get into other people's code, sneak it in there.
Rod: melt the machine down.
Will: I'm just like, oh, this is makes me so happy. It makes me so happy that yet again, AI is incompetent, but lazy people are getting exploited by cyber criminals.
So, I dunno who side on this. Uh, I
Rod: yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also, I mean, look, what I can say is cyber criminals and, and equivalent scammers and stuff.
[00:16:00] Damn. They're creative.
Will: Oh, it's, it's, it's
Rod: and amazing readers of humans how humans think and, and behave like it, it's very clever. I'll, I'll give them
Will: that.
So, um, this, they've published a, uh, this user called underscore Ian.
Um, a dark web player, uh,
has published a, who's Ian? Called? Ian.
Rod: I'm Ian. I'm the dark whip. You're not Ian. Go to bed.
Your mom's calling
Will: Ian's fine. Like, you know, you're on the dark web. It's just Ian, you don't go by something more
Rod: I'm sorry. The name Ian always makes me think we we're in, um, some Italian restaurant in Italy, speaking Italian badly. Yeah. And there's this older, very clearly English couple and the waiter comes up and goes, you know, good eye, what would you want, mate?
That's perfect. Accent
Will: I'm not sure. Yeah.
Rod: ish. And the guy never says a word. And, and the, the, the wife of the couple says, I'll have the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Ian will have the halibut. And, and I just thought, it's just so adorable the way she refers to her husband in the first person to this way, who has no idea who he is.
And Ian just sits there [00:17:00] quietly going, waiting to see what he's gonna be fortunate enough to get. And I can't hear the name Ian now without, and Ian will have the halibut, whatever the hell it was. Anyway, underscore Ian from the Dark Web.
Will: he's, uh, he's made up a whole, video of how to do this.
he's automated the creation of thousands of, packages that squat on these regular
Rod: Yeah, yeah.
Will: Yeah. using chat GBT obviously to generate all of the plausible sounding variants of the names at scale. And so
Rod: clever
Will: in,
Rod: that's clever, clever,
Will: clever in. And I did like this article that was, so a lot of this came from the register, , and it ended with this, this argument.
This is a long way, long-winded way of rephrasing Microsoft's AI boilerplate text, which warns not to use AI for anything important. You gonna tell me about some tech, bro?
Rod: Yeah, it's a slightly longer tail. It's, you know, it's not a thousand pages long, but it's a longer tail. Joseph Fage or Firm Firme. I dunno how he pronounce his name [00:18:00] actually. Have you heard his name? You've
Will: You could have pro, you could have practiced this earlier.
Rod: I did Fage, Fage. Free,
Will: or you could just skip through and, and, uh, not get distracted on that.
Rod: Joseph Firme Fag or Gio. Oh my God.
Will: oh my god. Firm. Oh my God. Listen, you should do a podcast with this guy.
Rod: Good luck. It's hard enough to get me to do this one. I'm terrible. So he is a great grandson of a Mormon apostle.
Will: that
Rod: some sources that suggest he was related to Brigham Young, you know, of the Brigham Young Mormon University fame, and the son of a, uh, quote, well connected military man.
So he is raised Mormon.
Will: What era are we talking? Who is this guy?
Rod: We're talking, uh, the seventies.
Will: Ah,
Rod: Ray Mormon grew up hearing stories about, you know, otherworldly humans who led Joseph Smith to see golden plates delivered by a salamander. And that turned into the Book of Mormon. You know, he's, he, so he is raised on these stories.
Fine. In the nineties, he was living the tech pioneered dream. He's like the early version tech bro. So he founded Serious Corporation in Salt Lake City. He was 17. He [00:19:00] sold computer programming tools. Novell bought the company in 93 for about 24 million 93, 20 4 million tech bro. So it's
Will: yep,
Rod: pretty impressive.
At 23, he became an executive at nol. The company was credited with making, basically creating local area networks and making, or rather making them scalable, make rolling 'em out and make 'em functional. And you can't underestimate how important that was when
Will: Sure, no, I get it.
Rod: the web began, so that's, uh, 93, 95.
He and some buddies left Nova and they co-founded a, a company called Uswe, which apparently was honking along, doing great. Forbes Magazine went on and said FEMA is one of the masters of the new universe, which is pretty cool. So he is basically one of the people who laid the foundations for the internet.
Pretty sweet. Then 1998, a few years into his tenure as the CEO of Uswe, he was asked to resign and people at this time were starting to call him the Fox Mulder of [00:20:00] Silicon Valley. Few you, eight to 12-year-old listeners out there, that's from a show called the X-Files and Fox Mulder, you know, was very interested in all kinds of particularly alien stuff.
Will: Thanks for the explanation.
Rod: Well, some of the 12 year olds don't know. I know you know you're in Aficianado. So why was he asked to resign? Basically about the time the Forbes magazine proclaimed him Master of the New Universe, he started telling anyone and everyone who had listened about the visit he had by an alien. Here's how the visit ran.
Will: all right,
Rod: He was in bed, probably awake now, a beard. A gentleman with dark brown hair
Will: that's
an alien
Rod: above him, manifested,
Will: Uhhuh,
Rod: why have you called me here? The guy says. Clearly irritated. I wanna travel into space. Says the quote, astonished for Marj who spoke without a moment's deliberation. Apparently he just took this in his
Will: straight away. He woke up. There's a, there's a floating beard
Rod: You're [00:21:00] saying, why did you call me here? I'm a bit peeved. And he goes, well, I want to, I wanna travel into space.
Will: Did he know that was on the cards? Like, is that an option here?
Rod: I don't know. That's just, he just sort of took it in stride apparently. So the dude apparently was still like, I don't give a shit.
So he says, why? Why should I grant you this opportunity? And he says, forma says, because I'm willing to die for it.
Will: afterwards. Hopefully
Rod: it's the wrong thing. Like, well, if I kill you, I can't,
Will: Well, I take your body.
Rod: take your soul. So then the man apparently produced a severe, which was an electric blue ball about the size of a rock melon.
Mm-hmm. The sphere entered FEMA's body, took command of his muscles and produced unimaginable waves of, um, uber orgasmic ecstasy. The quote, the most unimaginable ecstasy I've ever experienced. A pleasure vastly beyond orgasm.
Will: Oh, vastly beyond,
Rod: which
Will: sounds good. Sounds good. I mean, if anyone, if you are, you know, you down for a bit of sex and someone pops out the blue orb, [00:22:00] now's the time.
Like Sure.
Rod: But he wanted to go into space. So I, I didn't ask for climaxes, I asked for space travel. So apparently he just kept talking about this encounter over and over and over and over again to anyone who had listened in business meetings everywhere,
Will: Business meetings, business meeting.
Rod: business meetings.
Will: It's a great way to add to your credibility.
Rod: you imagine? Yeah. Yeah. You should buy this server, farm, et cetera, et cetera. But this dude put a blue ball in me and I came my bum off.
Will: I feel like, I feel like it's like when you do the, um, you know, you go around the meeting, at the beginning of the meeting, it's like, hi, I'm Gary from accounts, I'm, I'm, I'm Linda from, you know, logistics and I'm from Mar
Rod: and from the mega
Will: had the blue
Orgasm Ball.
Rod: Yeah. I had an experience from an
Will: listener. If you ever get a chance, um, introduce yourself at a work meeting like that and, uh, let us know how it goes.
Rod: And if you record it, we'll send you five Australian dollars.
Will: Sure cash.
Sure
Rod: cash. That's either gonna be worth by the time you hear this a lot or nothing. So, his obsession, apparently, he, [00:23:00] he's obsessed with aliens and it filtered into his work. So basically he got to a point where he said, I'm gonna design an anti-gravity propulsion system.
Will: Sure.
Rod: 'cause this is the obvious next step
Will: because the orgasm board told him to, or
Rod: not clear?
Not clear. Just I think basically he started to get into aliens. Then of course, beard Boy came along and made him come hard and he's like, oh, aliens are awesome. Anti-gravity propulsion device.
Okay, I'll build one.
Will: As, as many people have done
Rod: this is logic progression. I mean, everyone's, you, you've heard these steps of reasoning before.
It happens all the time. So he, um. Starts trying to get into that, or at least talking about it a lot. So by the beginning of the 21st century, he's surrounded by true believers, people who are like, this dude's got shit going on. And he's got this bold vision for clean and limitless energy and an anti-gravity propulsion system. So he did this smart thing and you know, he's a tech bro. He goes, I'm gonna monetize this. And he basically creates a Ponzi scheme on this non-existent anti-gravity prop propulsion system. So he's genius. Okay. Fricking genius. And [00:24:00] apparently, uh, the story runs the strength of his obsession. But I'd say also straight up lying attracted, let's call 'em optimistic investors. So some people were handing over like a hundred thousand dollars lumps to the guy. Um, and other times even, or with other people or the same people, he'd say, I also might need 200 bucks for one article says various doodads and repairs.
Yeah, of course.
So nickel and dimes, as well as getting these lump sums.
And he, he promises investors. There's a major military investment coming in the anti-gravity device. It's imminent. It's, it's, it's happening. It's happening now. And he did what all Ponzi type people do. They really get the hype going and there's always a reason. And it's always next week, it's always
Will: what, what is the Ponzi like as in,
Rod: because he got more and more people involved and basically you can spend the money that other people give you with the promise that the next people who come in will
Will: you. And we all get anti-gravity machines.
Rod: It, it's, it's a bit blurry. Okay. It's a bit blurry,
Will: so it's dodgy is what we're saying here.
Rod: Mm-hmm.
Look, it's not as upright as you might hope. So investors started to [00:25:00] think there's gonna be this huge imminent payoff, it's gonna go crazy. There wasn't shocking, right?
Shocking. Okay.
So by the early 2020s, people are getting a bit skittish and apparently around this time he also tried to mount a presidential bid, which I don't remember, but I wish I did.
I don't have to tell the details, but I'm guessing he was very confident and totally bing
Will: he would've come second. He must have come second. 2022.
Rod: even the 16 election.
Will: No, there's no presidential election in 2022 like that, that that's not how they work
Rod: in 2020 comma as well, I
Will: Oh, as well,
Rod: Yeah. Like the fact that it wasn't 2016 when it wasn't a proper Trump election.
It was a pseudo Trump election. So this is, this, this didn't go well. But anyway, by 2023, investors started saying, dude, come on in middle of that year, he says, one day, don't worry, it's all great. Um, payments and grants outbound are expected to commence this evening.
Will: Okay.
Rod: They didn't,
Will: oh,
Rod: so it started to get a little ugly.
Legal actions [00:26:00] began. So finally he's arrested for elder abuse, obviously.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: So it turns out he'd been living with his late father's 80-year-old girlfriend, and it was alleged that he physically and financially abused her. To be clear, the, the physical abuse wasn't weird. He just cut her off from the family and, you know, basic necessities like food and water. So cool. I think money was, yeah, he was basically channeling money. So he was arrested, he was held in jail and they didn't release him. Last I read, he hadn't been con, convict, uh, charged, convicted properly, but he was being held because they said if we let him out, he's just gonna keep being an abusive shithead, which is a bit gray area here.
But anyway, there was an article in October last year in which, uh, Bloomberg people were talking to him and they said, look, tell us about your situation. Tell, tell us about what's going on. And he said, look, this, this is the pinnacle of it all. He insisted he could not admit to a [00:27:00] financial crime because I didn't commit one, and that he was in jail because he had been.
This is a quote, gang raped by an AI equipped Jamaican financial crime syndicate.
Will: What is going on here?
Rod: I don't know, and I'm thinking that was Al Capone's excuse as well when he got done. He is like, it's not my fault. I was gang raved by an AI equipped Jamaican financial crime syndicate. So I'm, I'm looking for updates on this story.
This is live, this is current. Why,
Will: why are you looking for updates on this
Rod: Because I wanna know, I liked
Will: when he was the blue orgasm ball man.
Rod: did I, it very quickly turned
into know why you would, I know why you would stick onto that story. I mean, we'd all be looking for the giant blue orgasm ball.
I, I, I don't know what to look for.
As I was reading through this, I'm like, I don't know what I wanna know about more anymore. I mean, the, the saddest, the saddest thing I can say is, is probably like deeply mentally ill that doesn't excuse him for causing a lot of harm to people. But I, I do want to know more. I, I really wanna know more. So if I do see more, I [00:28:00] will update you.
Okay. I will update you.
Will: Hey, so I don't know if you know about this, this about me, but I'm a native of FNQ, which doesn't stand for fucking Queensland. It's far north Queensland, you
Rod: I
thought it was fucking far north
Will: Yeah, I know. It's, it's a place where, it's warm.
It's, but I always, I always thought, you know, there's, there's, there's a tough breed of people up there. I was, I was always proud that my hometown was in the Guinness Book of Records for having, , the world's toughest feet, from a farmer in my town. Uh, like it's, it's a very hobbit thing to have the world's toughest feet.
And,
Rod: and next to 'em is a picture of the world's most attractive feat. And they're quite different.
Will: They probably are. They probably are. But I, I like the concept that, yeah, that's, that's where the world's toughest feet are, are this guy,
Rod: that, that is actually pretty
Will: that they, I, I think it must have been like a couple of inches of like, of foot leather underneath.
Um, he was, he was bitten on the foot by like one of the most deadly snakes in the world many, many, many times. And he didn't feel any of it. And it's only when the, he started feeling [00:29:00] sick and went to the hospital and they're like, dude, you have so many holes in your feet from snake bites. And he is like, I don't feel anything
Rod: you around any taipans at all?
Will: So I've got a story for you about, um,
Rod: how tough you are.
Will: Uh, well, a a, you know, a, a scientist, a tough scientist, a tough scientist makes some, making some odd choices. A tough scientist, a tough,
Rod: you don't hear that very
Will: But, but the other thing about finals Queensland where I grew up is that, um, while we, we had a bunch of places to swim, the beaches weren't great.
Rod: No
Will: two reasons. Two, well, three reasons
Rod: I I really only have one, but carry
on.
Will: What is, what is yours?
Rod: All the murderous
Will: creatures.
All the, okay. I was, uh, and when I said three reasons, I was splitting the murderous creatures into multiple times. No, actually, actually, I will say first, the beaches aren't great there because of the barrier reef.
Like they, the, the barrier reef slows down the wave, so you don't get surf on these
Rod: But the upside, we're getting rid of [00:30:00] that so soon they will be
Will: Ah, I dunno about that. Dunno about that. Dunno about that. but yes, there are murderous creatures and I remember there was a, there was a time we went to the beach, my friends and I grade, uh, like grade 12 or, or something like that.
And the, that night on the evening news, there was a story about a croc swimming at the beach where we are. And, and, and we were like, oh, we didn't see the crock. So
Rod: what, crock.
Will: Yeah. Come on. Exactly. But, but the thing, um, about far north Queensland that makes the beaches less good is there's, there's these big nets that go out into the, into the water where everyone swims.
You know, the rest of Australia, you swim between the flags. Far north Queensland, you swim within the
Rod: Inside the net.
Will: Inside the net. Inside the net. It's not glorious. It's not
Rod: Would that be jellyfish related?
Will: It would be jellyfish related.
Rod: Fuck. Are we gonna talk about the evolution of their carry on?
Will: No, we're not talking about the evolution of their, um, of their fundamental, of their fundamental or, or their holes, but we're talking about the discovery of this jellyfish.
So I'll tell you.
Rod: Can I, I I can act it out for you. Ah, [00:31:00] club Glob. Ggl was that
Will: only literally, so. Oh, Jesus. So, so at least I
Rod: at least I
Will: found
something. Look, the reason, the reason I've been wondering about this story is, is that, um, the, the worst jellyfish are in far north Queensland, and there is a fear that they're coming south. And that's where I'm going next week. And I'm like, I don't want to have any of those, I'll tell you about that in a second.
But one of the jellyfish, it's called the JI, or it's now called the ji. ,
Rod: quite a cool name,
Will: but. Before they knew anything about it, they knew that it fucking hurt. Like, like they, they had, they had no idea what it was, but they knew that something was making people hurt. Like,
Rod: oh, by, no, I mean, by no idea.
You mean they were literally swimming around suddenly. I'm really in a lot of
Will: Literally, literally. Settler white European Australians, they've got stories going back into the twenties, um, possibly earlier of people swimming or just bathing in the water. You know, often, often it's young kids that are sort of [00:32:00] playing in the, in the shallows or something like that, and they might get what feels like a bit of a pinprick, maybe it feels as bad as a wasp sting.
And then they're like, oh, okay. Okay. And then like 20 minutes later it hurts. Like, all fuck, like it
Rod: all pain
Will: possible,
all pain possible. Like, like every story you read, like, so, uh, there, there's a whole, there's this nice quote, like, so the pain, you know, starts, , in your extremities and it's, and it's going through all your joints.
Incredible pain. You know, they, they talk about, you know, difficulty breathing and things like that. Then you get severe abdominal pain where, um, your gut spasms and crank, cramps up and you can't bend. You're like flat as a board and,
and, and you're spasming like that. And then you're trying to vomit and, and you, you can't, you can't do it very well.
'cause you're stiff as a board. You've gone completely
Rod: What a shithead poison. But,
Will: But my favorite bit is, you get some sort of psychological symptoms. Some, some say you've really restless, like you've gotta keep moving around [00:33:00] and stuff like that. Um, you're sweating and things and anxiety to the point where you have a sense of impending doom.
And I, I just love that there is
Rod: a
before that you didn't?
Will: No, but I think what they're saying is, , it's not, , because you're in pain, but part of it, it has some psychological mechanism.
Rod: just hits the emotion buttons and go, which one are we gonna hit? Not, not the blue fire of orgasm, just impending
Will: impending dom, impending doom.
So
Rod: uh, that's Fendi. I like that. I
Will: So the good folk of Cairns knew that this thing happened, but they had no idea what it was.
Rod: So they had an annual competition to see who could take the most pain. No.
Will: Yeah. Well, not, not quite. Not quite, not quite, but not far off.
Rod: look you gave me was a combination of delight and how the fuck did you work that out?
And
Will: so, so it, it had been, it had been happening at certain beaches around Cairns. Kids are kids go swimming particularly over summer. , and they're like, what is causing it? [00:34:00] And what they decided, , originally a guy named Harold Fletcher, who, uh, he did a lot of, he, he was described as, , dogged in his pursuit of, of whatever was causing this JI syndrome.
They gave it the name based on the, the local
Rod: the area. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Will: uh, that lived in the area, the indigenous people that lived in the area. And they said, well, it's, it's based around here, let's call it Ji. But they had no animal, no, no thing associated. He was dogged in his belief to find it until, oh, he died.
And then the mantle was handed on
to,
Rod: he's not his child.
Will: to Jack Barnes. So Jack
Rod: Barny.
Will: Yeah. Uh, like his obituaries described him as a no, no, no. He does much later on, but he described him as, as, as an affectionate man. But I also saw him described as an ex-com commando and could be quite taciturn.
Rod: if someone said to me, come and meet Barny,
and what's
he like?
He's an affectionate ex-com commander who can be quite taciturn. I'm like, I, I'm, I'm [00:35:00] already intimidated,
Will: So the, but
Rod: this
is, what form does the affection
Will: This is, this is my idea of, of a scientist in far north Queensland in, in the sixties, fifties, sixties,
Rod: seventies. Oh, I
didn't hear scientists in there.
Will: Well, he's, he's,
he's as well as well, but he's an ex-com commando and, um, and he's quite gruff.
And, and he goes on like this, this pretty big detective investigation, trying to find out
Rod: oh, and he's a detective.
Will: like, like as in like a scientist detective. He's
Rod: what isn't this guy?
Will: guy, he's going, what could it be that the I, Angie,
Rod: be, is he also an excellent dancer?
Uh, and he makes pots
Will: Well, you, no, he does spasm at some point. Uh, okay,
Rod: Okay, well that's a, that's a form of movement.
Will: Look at, look at this photo of him. This is him in later life.
Rod: Oh, damn. He's got the Ry out of their mouth. Look, anyone who smokes and doesn't care, I've gotta say I wildly respect.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: Um, I
wish I didn't care.
'cause smoking's awesome. This is not a formal health announcement.
Will: Jack Barnes said, alright, what we've gotta do is, first of all, whenever there's, whenever there's a stinging reported, [00:36:00] so, you know, so, so someone has this syndrome at the beach. Um, we've gotta get there quickly and
Rod: What era are we, how, how long ago are we
Will: talking?
Um, so, so Jack Barnes is doing this work in the fifties and sixties, um, but, uh, the 1950s and sixties. And, but they had been collecting records back into the thirties. They're like, okay, what is,
Rod: what
is, but so when, when it's reported. So like he listens to ambulance radios or health
Will: Lifesavers. So, so, so it's the lifesaver, lifesavers and ambulances. 'cause a lot of these people are getting treatment. Yeah. 'cause they've, they've been stung and they're in a lot of pain and they're like, okay, tell us any stories about this. And I will come up to that beach and, and sample and, and document it and try and get an idea of what it is.
But they go out there and they'd look around and there's, there's, there's nothing there. There's, there's
Rod: nothing It's the water.
Will: Well, eventually, eventually, they heard there'd been a bunch of stinging at Palm Cove Beach, which, was the place where I saw the crocodile. Well, I didn't see the crocodile.
That's where the crocodile was swimming at the same time. Right? Yeah. And after there'd been some stinging, a crowd had formed. Yeah. And they're like, okay, maybe, [00:37:00] maybe there's something in the water. So he goes into
Rod: it was like a vigilante mob. We'll catch
Will: it.
Well, it is a little bit vigilante. Vigilante mob.
Yeah. , and he goes into the water. He's got a glass casserole dish. Uh, that one story, I think he's got a sieve as well. But he's, and he's looking for things that are weird and, uh, and he spots like it's, it's, they describe it at some point as hard water.
Rod: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Will: the eventual jellyfish that they find is about as big as the tip of your thumb
Rod: Serious. It's tiny,
Will: then it's, uh, but it's completely translucent and clear. You can't see it. You can only see it when it's sort of reflecting
Rod: on Yeah, yeah,
Will: the light
Rod: Yeah. Hard water. Makes
Will: sense.
but it's got these, these long tentacles, , that are about a meter long. and it can move at like two knots, which is not terribly slow.
Like that's a,
Rod: 3.2 kilometers,
Will: Something like that. That's
Rod: I think a knot is 1.6 kilometers an hour.
Will: Yeah. There you go. There you go. So you can, it can move. So anyway,
Rod: in American 500,000 [00:38:00] miles. So
Will: early in 1960s, uh, Jack Barnes and his son, Nick Barnes, went to Palm Cove Beach. Uh, there'd been some recent stinging with a glass casserole dish.
He and a volunteer life goat guard scooped up something about the size of a tip of a man's thumb. Mm-hmm. Translucent with four long tentacles. Now, as was the common practice. What they needed to do at this stage was eat it. No is is rub it on your skin to see if it gives you the IgE syndrome. Now,
he has spent he has spent the last 10 years grabbing things out of the ocean and rubbing them on himself to see
Rod: and he's the only person to be disappointed that doesn't end up with an impending sense of doom and stomach
Will: spas. Yeah. Every time. It doesn't give him
Rod: bummer.
Will: Angie syndrome, but he's like, well, uh, ladies and gentlemen, there's a crowd form They're watching, they're watching the scientist at work. , I will be rubbing this on my skin, but I will need a volunteer from the crowd
to hold No. To also put it on their skin, which I'm not sure why, because he's, he's like, I, I need, I need like a control condition or it's not even a control.
Rod: [00:39:00] No. I just
wanna make sure it's not an idiosyncratic
Will: reaction,
actually. No, he did, he did spend a lot of time in his paper. I read his paper trying to rule out could it be an idiosyncratic reaction of a normal jellyfish to someone with a, um, hyper, hyper allergy or something
Rod: hyper barn syndrome.
And did the crowd, everyone starts looking at their feet and going, no.
Literally,
Will: No, literally, there's one story. His son tells the story much later.
Rod: They
Will: They search for like, like the, the crowd? No, the crowd was all, was all, uh, a little bit, um, a little bit shy. No one was keen, and I think he might've called them, he might've called them puny at some point, like this commando scientist yelling at them all.
And then
young Nick Barnes, his son, who is uh, nine years old and looks a lot like this guy, like this is a photo of him from when he's nine. Like he looks like a fresh faced little baby
Rod: clean cut, fifties child. And
he's,
Will: I was jumping up and down saying, sting me. Sting me. Uh, Jack Barnes told off the crowd for, oh, here we go for only having a puny little boy to sting.
So the lifeguard volunteered as well. But the boy isn't off the hook at this [00:40:00] point.
Rod: Of course not.
Sorry. Because we're having only effects adults.
Will: , this is from the paper. The first specimen was applied to the, to an adult JB
Rod: Mm.
Will: Jack Barnes, and to a boy aged nine, uh, nine years. NB so rubbed it on, rubbed it on his son's arm.
Uh, a robust young lifesaver volunteered to test the second specimen. The jellyfish was placed in contact with the inner surface of the upper arm of each volunteer. The effects were not long incoming. Oh. Just like, dude, dude, this is your 9-year-old
Rod: wouldn't, wouldn't you? He, he, look, I, I get the idea, but I, if, if my, my 9-year-old boy's there and I wanna know if it's gonna work first I'd rub it on me and wait, did it make me explode?
I'm not putting it on the kid, putting kid.
Will: There's, so the effects were not long incoming. And so he describes in, in long detail the spasms, the vomiting, , the going board, uh, rigid as a board. But I did like, there was one bit where he says, you kind of double over and you kind of squeeze, not unlike an infant with a full nappy, which,
Rod: so you [00:41:00] make bog
Will: position.
Yeah. Yeah. You like, you're like stuck there.
Rod: you hunker on down and ready for business.
Will: So three of them are spasming and they all get into the car to drive to Cairns Base Hospital, which is
20, 20 minutes
Rod: drives 'cause he's a tough man.
Will: Oh, that's what I'm, there is no one else in the car according to this. I think Nick Barnes, the boy
Rod: the 9-year-old, drives
Will: is stretched out across the backseat and
Rod: old school like Holden, um, station wagon where you wind down the back window with a handle and he's like, ah, that's great.
Will: During the 20 minute drive to Cairns, JB drove the victims were in considerable distress, heightened it seemed, by the necessity to remain seated. I think he means you're in a car, but they, they,
Rod: and if you're flat as a board because of the spasming sitting in a car, eh,
Will: I do like the idea of
Rod: he drives
Will: trying to drive,
Rod: Be, know it's a three on the tree automat. At least he doesn't have to worry about
Will: I am hoping he's got a diary out the side of his mouth and he's, and he is just looking cool. Calming nerves, all had abdominal pain and back pain. Pain in the anterior chest wall with some difficulty breathing and diffuse aches and muscles and [00:42:00] joints. B, remember this is 9-year-old son, felt very cold and was shivering violently.
I'm like,
Rod: I would've paid attention to him, but I was busy trying to remember whether I was turning left or right.
Will: 40 minutes after the stinging, the abdominal musculature of the three subjects was in unrelenting spasm. So rigid as to warrant the fully the term board. Like undoubtedly, the advent of coughing and retching made the peak of misery for the two adults.
Rod: Did I, I should have asked this earlier. Were were people known to have died from this situation?
Will: Uh, interesting
Rod: ear earlier. I mean,
Will: before
this No, no. Uh, so horrific, but not so, so there are stories. So I will, I'll tell you, people have died, from I Anji, uh, more, more recently in, uh, 2002. , and one of the stories that Jack Barnes relates, which is, you know, yet again, a lesson in all Western science is when they went and asked indigenous people, uh, actually this is up in New Guinea, but they're asking people in New Guinea.
Oh,
Rod: oh, wait, why don't we ask people who live here?
Will: here? yeah, [00:43:00] yeah.
Rod: Oh. they're like,
Will: like, oh yeah, here it is. Like, uh, here's, here's the cause of this. And he describes him as a witch doctor, but let's just call him
Rod: uh,
Will: sure. A, a, a well, a person with knowledge.
Rod: uh, said that librarian,
Will: you were, if you were stung when you were a long way out in diving, then you'd have a lot of trouble getting back.
Right? Like, like that might be the most likely way
Rod: So it's not the poison itself.
Will: So I think the 2002 deaths, uh, may be associated, like, there might have been a heart attack or something like that. So not necessarily the poison itself,
Rod: I'm guessing also perhaps car accidents
Will: if you're driving yourself to the hospital, , they all got, um, a Hyde injection.
Oh. And, and
Rod: God, Pettine is good, bad.
Will: And this is what he's like, like someone just took these bricks
Rod: off
Will: They were all like, just straight away. They were just like, oh, that's awesome. Young Nick Barnes, eventually fell asleep and woke up around dinnertime feeling quite functional. I was, this is, this is, this is the story that Nick Barnes told, uh, a, b, C like, , 50 years later.
[00:44:00] I was not allowed to skip school the next
Rod: day. Oh my
Will: God.
Rod: PE have you ever had Pettine?
Will: No. Oh, maybe, I don't know. I can't
Rod: remember
Pettine. I, I've had a lot of painkillers for different surgeries and stuff. Pettine
is amazing.
It's terrible 'cause you forget everything and, and apparently it's a bit truth serum.
Like an i I apparently got a bit truth serum me after one event. I, I, I have zero memory and it never came back, but I was told I was, you know, very truth,
Will: good truth, bad truth,
Rod: apparently not great.
Will: great, great
Rod: Oh, fine for me, but not for the people about whom I was telling the
Will: truth.
and you and yeah. Young Nick Barnes is telling his dad
Rod: Yeah, that's what I mean.
But, but the, the pain relief was amazing and instantaneous, like phenomenal.
Will: He, he did say that INE worked really well, but, um, but not always.
So look, the reason, the reason I was looking into this is that I'm, I I've, I've heard so many stories of irikanji as, as a horrific thing in far North Queensland. You know, it's apparently costs the Australian government like $3 billion in, in, in tourism losses.
'cause, 'cause a bunch of people are like, no, I'm not [00:45:00] gonna go there 'cause I don't wanna get stung by the, the killer
Rod: speculative loss.
Will: Yeah. But I think it's plausible. There, there is, it is definitely understood that people choose not to come to Australia or come to far north Queensland because you're gonna get jellyfish.
Um,
Rod: go to a different part of
Australia.
There's a fair bit of
Will: But, but, but, but, well, and, but, but people in, in Southeast Queensland, it's one of the, it's one of the climate change stories where they go, but we don't want beaches like cans, like story cans. But your beaches suck. And if, if JI comes south, then they're quite worried.
And there have been, have been, there have been, um, Ji spotted on the Sunshine Coast, which is, is coming seriously, coming further south. So I thought, okay, so what, what is, what is going on here? And is it likely to do this? Um, there's a lot of
Rod: um, there's a lot
Will: are tracking this, tracking ji using, looking the stings or looking at, there's not as many stings these days for
Rod: See what you need is bigger casserole dishes and sieves to be sure they
Will: Literally there's, there's lifeguards doing the cing, but they're also doing great work using EDNA, [00:46:00] which is looking at the stuff that animals leave by, like poo usually, but other things like that. Um, environmental, DNA, they can see, okay, we can track animals and they're looking at JI there, but I just wanted to, I just wanted to leave you with some good news that, um,
Rod: thanks.
Will: like Jack Barnes, um, for, for geographically, uh, thinking listeners, Jack Barnes told in his 1964 paper stories of Ji, uh, south of Brisbane
Rod: Oh.
Will: and the, the idea is that since previous to that time, there has been occasionally rji coming all the way that far south, but also.
Whilst ocean, sorry. Climate change will make oceans warmer and it might be that JI can survive further south. The other part of climate change is ocean acidification, and that might mean that they can't come further south. So fuck yeah. You don't need to worry so much. We solved it in advance by making another thing bad as well.
So there you go. There you go. People say,
Rod: you go. People say, we don't fix things, we just [00:47:00] break them. They're wrong. So I've called this one, you know, under, I put it under the title of Ethics, sch Ethics. But it could also be art and science come together, but should they, or it could also be called, Ooh. Oh wow.
Will: You just call it what you want. I'll
Rod: call it what I want. So there's a new art installation, or at least recently in Australia and it's called Revivification
Will: Revivification.
We are reviving something.
Rod: Yeah. Reen Livening, perhaps, or, mm-hmm.
It's pretty straightforward. So it, it revolves around, or it's centered on an American experimental composer called Alvin Lucio, who died in 2021. Okay.
Will: Okay.
Rod: so the installation, the artwork, there's a plinth. Mm-hmm. Which, as I was reading this and rereading this, the word plinth lost all meaning.
And it's, it's a very funny word. Plinth.
Will: Oh, no, totally.
Rod: plinth.
Will: I would not call my child Plinth. Plinth.
Rod: Well,
Will: Plinth. Come here. [00:48:00] Plinth, plinth, naughty plinth. I mean, you could do, you could do it for a dog. Call your dog
Rod: You could, but you shouldn't. What, what are you calling for short?
Will: or plu?
Rod: there's a
plinth on the plinth, an in vitro brain.
Will: Mm-hmm.
Rod: What is the brain? This is not theoretical,
Will: for, just for the, um,
in vitro, me
Rod: in, in a bottle.
Will: Yeah. Uh,
Rod: at the Harvard Medical School got stem cells from the, um, artist Alvin's, um, white blood cells extracted stem cells. The project team, which is three artists and one neuroscientist, program the stem cells to grow cerebral organoids, AKA, they, they resemble cells of a developing human brain.
Will: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Rod: So this is going well. The brain was grown, or the brain esque thing was grown on top of an electrode mesh that connects it to 20 large brass plates around the exhibition room.
Will: and
Rod: And visitors can listen as the brain [00:49:00] fires off electrical pulses that trigger a transducer and a mallet behind each plate.
It strikes them pro to produce different kinds of sounds. So the brain bits,
Will: ish bits Brain. Yeah. Baby, baby brain ish bits that are related to Alvin. The, the former composer
Rod: are firing off electrical impulses that link via magic.
Will: So, so, but where, so the, we've got, we've got the brain organelles connected to the, the musical Instagram. I get that. That's, that's fine.
What, what is making the brain bits fire off? Like,
Rod: It it is,
Will: it, it, it,
Rod: it is
it,
it is, it is firing. These things have,
Will: don't we need to give
Rod: function. They're doing stuff. So it, it's, uh, the quote, it's creating a sort of brain that continuously composes music on the fly with its errant electrical signals. Now I think that's a, that's a nice way of wording something that could be absolutely fucking horrifying.
Um, but [00:50:00] that's just me. I'm no neuroscientist. So it, it,
Will: it, I, I dunno what's so horrifying about it. It sounds great.
Rod: Yeah. I mean, what could possibly be any implication? Um, let's add it, it not only generates sound, the, the cerebral organoids can also receive sound picked up by microphones in the g in the gallery. So. It's, I suppose you could say it's, can sort of hear as well.
Will: Um,
Rod: Um, but don't worry, apparently it is not conscious.
Will: Okay.
Rod: To which I reply. How do you know?
Will: But how big are these organ? They're like, they're like, like one neuron or two
Rod: Oh, they're a meter across.
Will: No, but when it's not like a super
Rod: it's like huge.
Will: it's just like a tiny bit of
Rod: a lump of brain related go goo bits,
Will: but multiple cells.
Rod: Multiple cells, okay. Like multiple cells. So they, they, they are very clear to say, oh no, it's, it's, no, no. It's, it's not, it's not
Will: Imagine, imagine if you died. I mean, you know, when you're, when you're [00:51:00] 106, I
Rod: in such a good
Will: Um, no, and, and, um, and they get your brain go and they hook it up to a computer that continue that allows you to type emails after you,
Rod: thank God, as long as I'm only responding to forms,
Will: I feel, I feel like at least music is like, he got pleasure out of this. That sounds nice. But, but
Rod: Yeah. Like, yeah, you can, you hooked up
Will: I think, I think being hooked up to your job after you're debt is a little bit unfair.
Rod: I don't know, like, I just, I'm conflicted because I dunno what the experience like at first I was like, okay, it's just some, you know, functional elements that fire some
Will: some
Rod: functions. I dunno. But then they had, oh, it can also, they didn't say here, but that's the gist, right? It can also respond to noises from the outside world.
And I'm like, huh, what else
Will: How, no, let's go back on respond. It's, it's, it's getting inputs from there.
Rod: Yeah. Fair call. So, but it can get inputs. That's, that's a fair point. It can get
Will: So, so they've plugged in a [00:52:00] microphone. I mean, squeezing a microphone into a pile of goo does not mean it's getting inputs.
Rod: No, it doesn't
Will: necessarily,
So what's the music sound like?
Rod: like? I could not find any examples. May maybe you have to go to the exhibition. I, I assume it's a bunch of clanking and banging. It doesn't really like it. It would depend what it's hooked up to is my bet. I don't know. That's the thing. Nothing I could find said, whether it was, you know, beautifully orchestrally related and, and you know, tonal or
Will: out, if it came out beautifully orchestrally
Rod: that'd be more disturbing.
Will: I'd be like, what the hell? Like, but I think the, the tortured clanging of a soul that's been mangled into a brain
organoid, trapped, banging on
things again, not great or
Rod: or
Will: Well, isn't that what you listen to anyway, let's, let's, that's your Nor Norwegian death metal
Rod: dare you. I don't listen to that very
Will: don't understand very often.
Like, doesn't Hans recommend many of those things?
Rod: Yes, a good friend of the podcast does, but he has a broad eclectic taste. Um,
Will: so
Rod: one of the, uh, the, the main artist and the creator of the project, so the head artist, he says, this is a couple of quotes. When you [00:53:00] look down into that central plinth, you are crossing a threshold. You are peering down into the abyss and you're looking at something that's alive, just not in the same way as you.
Will: Oh God.
Rod: Okay
mate. A central question people wanna ask is, could there be a filament of memory that persists through this biological transformation? Can Lucia's creative essence persist beyond his death? God, I hope not, because that would be a person trapped in a glass jar in a gallery. Go. I dunno. Maybe he'd love it. Maybe he'd love it because this, this is the bit I loved. Uh, one of the interviewers in one of the articles about it says, uh, when I told Lucia's daughter about the project, she laughed and said, this is just so dad, just before he died, he arranged for himself to play forever.
He can't, he, he can't leave. He just needs to keep on playing. So she, she k herself about it. And I hope that's the true part. So I'm so conflicted on this one. I'm like, it's [00:54:00] fascinating. I'd love to hear it, but I couldn't find it. Maybe I can find where this exhibition is on and go see it, but, uh,
Will: I got a little tiny one. This, uh, unfortunately
Rod: don't, dude, it's totally
Will: normalized.
no, no, no. no. This is, uh, this is, this is quick, but um, it's an update. and something that you might be, uh, very interested. Have you heard of the planet K two dash 18 B?
Rod: oh, it's my favorite of the B series
Will: Mm. Yeah.
Well, it's, it's a sub Neptune sized planet, which means it's smaller than Neptune, but Rocky, it could potentially have a hydrogen ocean. But the key thing that has just been announced is if you glimpse through its atmosphere.
Rod: mm-hmm.
Will: When you catch the rays of its
Rod: mm-hmm.
Will: mm-hmm.
Rod: Uh,
Will: it may have a bit of dimethyl sulfide Yeah.
In there. And, uh, the thing about
Rod: There's another one, there's two of them. Yeah.
Will: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, dimethyl di sulfide, I think. Uh, but, uh, the thing about this is on earth, this is a molecule [00:55:00] that is only produced by organic things.
Rod: Yep. Life fish
Will: typically here on earth. Algae. and the signal signal so far, uh, this research just published in the astrophysical journal letters, suggests that there is a bunch of this dimethyl sulfide, in the atmosphere suggesting, and, and it may be at much higher concentrations than here on
Rod: Yeah, yeah, I heard that. I heard that.
Will: heard that. So it's suggesting this could be a planet, full of marine algae.
Rod: I
Will: know. I don't know.
Rod: my response. 'cause I literally just heard about this this afternoon, just snippets, and my first response was, why is it always fucking goo? Why isn't it like creatures with hats playing wild tunes or showing us how to, where's the blue shiny ball that gives me the orgasms?
Well,
Will: in,
in the history, in the history of earth, in the history of earth, how long have we, you know, in the three big periods not had life, had life, but it's non-intelligent life. Had intelligent life. We, [00:56:00] it's, it's, it's the tiniest sliver of
Rod: but it's also, it's 124 light years away or something like
Will: this.
120. I got, but yeah.
Rod: So like, like it,
Will: it's,
Rod: it's slightly in the past. What we're seeing is slightly
Will: the
past. So, so it's 120 years in the past. That's right. If, if you're technically doing that. Yeah. So yes, they could have got to shit. They could have got to the mooz, Icely cantina by now. Yes. They could. Maybe, maybe, uh, look, we are far more likely in, in, and, and I think.
We don't have evidence either way on this. You know, one, one theory is life , is utterly unique to Earth. and we are the only example, the only, the only intelligent example. That's the only thing. And maybe it required some sort of special spark, you know, you know, God saying, here you go. or, two other components, uh, lower levels of life, you know, single celled organisms or, or non-intelligent life.
It is, is common. It's, it's a thing that has evolved many times. Yeah. Uh, and possibly you could go the third, the intelligent life might be common. There, there's a lot of people that say, look, [00:57:00] realistically over the next 20 years with the power of our space telescopes
and
Rod: we'll see more and more.
Will: we are probably like to see quite a lot of planets that have evidence of, um, single cell, single cell bacteria, or at least the hints of
Rod: No, look, look, I, I, okay, my, my, my more rational grownup brain goes. That is cool. It's all cool. And the more this hints of it is better because the idea, I, I find the idea that the theory that we could be it in, in, in a, in a, a space as large as space,
Will: We are just too far, too horrifying. We're far too shitty to be it. I would
Rod: I would hope
Will: Like, I,
Rod: like, or at least boring, like, like surely there's more interesting or other interesting
Will: I just feel like, you know, the whole, you know, if, if if God's there and they, and created, the one intelligent species in the universe in, is this in his or her image? I'm like,
Rod: really?
This is all you
got Really?
Not a very imaginative God, are you?
Will: Come on.
I mean, I mean like, couldn't you do better? Um, or at least different, I dunno. I dunno. Yeah, look and it'd be, it'd be great to, you know, have the moss [00:58:00] precisely cantina. But I think, you know, it's nice to
Rod: no, No,
no. Look, I, I, I agree. It's just this, , when a, a colleague of mine shared a, a short version of this.
I went and, and he came with a big grin on his face. It was a sarcastic grin. And I said, I look, it is cool, but
gimme.
gimme more. Where's the infinite technology that looks like magic to us? 'cause we're so primitive and it solves all our problems and, and life's great. Could we have that too? Well, you know, I don't wanna be ungrateful.
Will: There's
Tabby's star out there that could still be a, a, a Dyson sphere or something like that, that they've built up over the last little while. You
Rod: so you, people out there who are listening to this, first, thanks for sticking with us. For how long is this episode? Five hours. Remember, remember, smash the like button.
Give us, what is it, a 19 point star rating
on all
Will: listening. You could just do
Rod: Just do five. If you're feeling lazy,
Will: say something, say something nice
Rod: like, God, you sound
Will: attractive. Or,
or give us suggestions. You know, you know,
Rod: via, what is it?
Will: Cheers at a little bit of science.com [00:59:00] au.com au.
Rod: Cheers. A little bit of science.com au.
Yeah, give, give us suggestions, ask us questions. Um, talk about how attractive will's hats are. You can't see them, but they are.
Will: Thank you. Thank you. Uh, well, um,
Rod: happy Easter for those of you listening to this any time near the time we recorded
Will: Jesus a scientist?
Rod: he was
Will: the Easter Bunny a scientist? Easter? Easter Bunny was a
Rod: was scientist. ES bunny was a product of science.
Will: I think so.
