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- [00:06]
Joseph Cox
Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404 Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404 Media co. I am your host, Joseph and with me are 404 Media co founders Sam Cole.
- [00:36]
Sam Cole
Hey.
- [00:37]
Joseph Cox
Emmanuel Mayberg.
- [00:38]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Hello.
- [00:39]
Joseph Cox
And Jason Kebler.
- [00:42]
Jason Kebler
Hello. Hello.
- [00:43]
Joseph Cox
We will have a special guest in the second segment of the show as well, but first we're going to talk about a story, but we haven't actually published it yet. It will be published at basically the exact same time as this podcast goes up. And it's one I've written. It's a collaboration with some other journalists as well. And it's called Inside the US Government bought tool that can track Phones at Abortion Clinics. Let me just paint sort of the scene. So imagine a computer screen and there's sort of a map interface and it shows the movements of smartphones all around the world. The person then, using this tool, zooms in to an abortion clinic in the south of the US and it shows something like 700 tiny little red dots over that clinic. Each of these represent phone and I would argue by extension, a person. Right. There's obviously going to be an owner of that phone. This tool is called LocateX, from a company called Babel Street. The user then narrows down to a particular phone in that data set. And what LocateX allows the person to do is follow that phone to, to and from the abortion clinic. So in this case, it started at a residence in Alabama in mid June. It then went by a Lowe's home improvement store. It went along a highway, past a gas station, stopped by a church, and then it crossed over into Florida, which is where the abortion clinic is, the phone. And presumably the person stays there for a couple of hours and then heads back over into Alabama. So that's a long way of saying this tool has watched somebody leave Alabama where abortion is illegal after the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade over to an abortion clinic in a neighboring state and they've gone back. We don't know. Was that person seeking an abortion? Were they helping somebody get one? Were they, I don't know, a janitor who works there and happens to live in Alabama? I mean, obviously that seem less likely. But the reason we're talking about this is because some privacy advocates from a company called Atlas Privacy gained access to a free trial of this tool. They filmed themselves using it. They look up on the abortion clinic and other places as well. And then they provided those videos to me. 404 media notice, which is a outlet where my friend and colleague Byron Tao, who's done a ton of stuff on location data practices, works as well. Krebs on security harassment Israel and the New York Times has also seen the videos as well.
- [03:56]
Jason Kebler
Joseph, this is a pretty astounding story. I think it's something that you've reported on Babel street and locate X and cell phone location data a lot over the years. But I feel like, I feel like this is not surprising necessarily, because we know all of this stuff exists because of your previous reporting. But this is an example of what the tool actually looks like and how it works. So I guess what is the tool and who has bought it over the course of time? Like what entities have access to it?
- [04:30]
Joseph Cox
Yeah, and you're right, it's the first time we're seeing it. And that's why this one feels especially big. It was almost not properly theoretical, but it was a little bit more abstract before. Now we have screenshots and we see what it is. So the tool, as I said, locate X and it tracks smartphone locations around the world or around the country. And it's been bought by a ton of different people. You can have the military side. And I reported that I think it was Special Operations Command bought access to LocateX back when I reported that in maybe 2018 when we were at Vice. You then have law enforcement agencies, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a tech outlook called protocol reported that way back when I got a Secret Service contract that shows that as well. I've also reported that a drone sort of unit or base, a military unit that conducts drone strikes, also brought access to the tool. And I think most importantly for this abortion story is that the Florida sort of prison system previously bought it as well. And that's important because of course that's a state agency, not a federal one.
- [05:53]
Jason Kebler
Well, I think those are the entities that we know have purchased it. And then there is a sort of federal database that makes it a little bit easier to find out who has purchased something at a federal level. Whereas, like at the state and local level, you kind of have to just like guess and file a bunch of public records requests and things like that. So, I mean, this is speculative. Of course, we don't know, but the fact that one State agency has bought it probably means they're not the only entity in the entire country that has access to it. So tell me more about who had, like how you did this reporting, who the privacy advocates were, and sort of like how they got access to it. You mentioned that it was a free trial. Do you know if there were any like restrictions on that trial or sort of like, what's the, what's the deal?
- [06:47]
Joseph Cox
I mean, I think that's one of the wild things about this story is that there didn't appear to be any restrictions on this free trial. So the people who got access, they're a company called Atlas Privacy. They're one of these many sort of data deletion companies. What I would say how Atlas is a little bit different is that they're using a pretty interesting law, I think, called Daniel's Law in New Jersey and that is supposed to protect the sort of address and the contact information of judges, police officers, prosecutors, those sorts of people. So Atlas is doing all of these lawsuits against data brokers to have that data removed if it hasn't been possible, all of that sort of thing. Sort of auxiliary to that. What Atlas does is they'll have internal or external investigators who will basically buy access to these data brokers like anybody else, to verify whether the deletion requests have actually been processed or not. And the way it was described to me was that they were buying or looking into a tool from Babel street that would have just addresses of people in New Jersey as part of that work. And then the sales representative said, hey, we have this other tool called LocateX. Do you want to see that? We only offer it to people who are working with the government. And this investigator said, truthfully, I'll clarify as well that, hey, I'm not working with the government right now, but I might in the future. And according to Atlas, the salesperson at Babel street, that's fine. They don't really check. Anyway. Here's a free trial to locate X. And for something like a week they were able to log in and just query essentially anything they wanted. So to do the abortion one, they drew a geofence, which is sort of just a polygon around a particular area. They drew that around the abortion clinic, saw those 700 red dots, and then selected one to follow. It was really that easy. And maybe there are legal restrictions. It's hard to say. I haven't seen the full up to date terms of service of Babel street when it comes to LocateX product. And Babel street hasn't responded to multiple requests for comment, but technically and practically speaking, we didn't see any restrictions.
- [09:16]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, I think just to sort of highlight why this is so important. I mean, one, you'll talk a little bit more about other locations they looked at, but you've done a lot of stories in the past just about how sensitive location data is, how it can be used to sort of, like, plot out someone's life and infer, you know, what they've been doing. And I think that this is so. I mean, it's so important, hopefully, for obvious reasons, but also because specific states that have banned abortion since the end of Roe v. Wade have like, there's politicians in those states that have proposed trying to criminalize traveling to other states for abortions, and they've tried to, like, twist themselves into pretzels, figuring out how to legally do this. Some of them have what are known as, like, abortion trafficking bills, where it can be illegal, or they. They propose to make it illegal to drive a minor across state lines. There have been, like, two cities in Texas tried to make it illegal to use city roads to travel to get an abortion somewhere else. And it's just like this sort of information could theoretically be used to, you know, create a situation where you can't necessarily travel freely within the United States, which courts have ruled is, like. I added this story, so did a lot of research while editing it to just sort of see what the current state of play is. There's, like, a constitutionally protected right to interstate travel, but there's also lots of legal theories for how you would try to restrict that theoretically. And there are various, like, lawmakers in multiple states that have tried. Have tried to do this. And so it's really important, especially a few weeks before an election, that where abortion is one of the most important issues. But they also did a bunch of other lookups, and I think you sort of rightfully focused on abortion center or abortion clinic data for most of the story. But this also applies to literally any place, not just in the U.S. i believe, like, in the world. Right?
- [11:43]
Joseph Cox
Yeah. And there's a way to demonstrate that as well, apart from just zooming out on the map. So atlas privacy. They did mostly look at U.S. locations. One was there was a mosque. They looked up, and then it showed all the phones that had been there. They then zoomed out and they were able to see the. Oh, well, some went to other locations in the US Some went to Canada. Some then went to Lebanon or Iraq or Jordan as well. So it shows that you could monitor one location and then see absolutely where Elsa's people have appeared, sort of irrespective of where they are in the world. They also did basically the same thing to a synagogue as well. And then they also drilled down to specific people with their consent. So in the synagogue, in the mosque and the abortion clinic, we don't know who those individual people are. And I should have said this up top, but let me clarify. Law enforcement absolutely could, and it would be incredibly trivial for them to do it. This tool does not require a warrant to use. You literally log in and start clicking and you get the data. Lawmakers have tried to put more regulations and more friction here. Santa Ron Wyden had the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale act, that would have put protections against this sort of data and blocked its use without a warrant. That legislation, as far as I know, is dead. It got some early traction and then the current administration opposed it. But you can just log in and start doing whatever you want. So when it comes to, I don't know any of the examples listed or as you say, other locations, law enforcement could just follow where that phone goes and then they could see it at home or of course, I mean, they're the police. They could then go use any of their legal powers. This is just basically a crazy powerful engine or tool for getting really, really powerful tips. Yeah.
- [14:02]
Jason Kebler
So do we know how they're getting this data?
- [14:07]
Joseph Cox
We don't 100% know where Babel street is getting it, but it broadly comes from two sources. At least that's how it's worked in location data industry that I and others have covered for a long time. The first is ordinary apps installed on your smartphone. So this could be a weather app, a game, I don't know, a maps GPS app or whatever. It's those apps that sort of have. They request your location and you don't really know why they're asking for it. In many cases, location data is being harvested by those apps. It then goes into a very complicated business and ecosystem and eventually ends up in tools like this. I've previously identified specific apps that relate to some of these tools and some of these programs and Google or Apple or whoever have taken action against those. The other one is a process called real time bidding, which I won't go super in depth into. But basically when an online ad is about to be placed in the background, there's this near instantaneous bidding process going on where each company is trying to get their ad in front of you to target particular demographics. A side product of that is that you can just sit there and you can listen almost to this bidding process and exfiltrate data that way. And surveillance companies do that and they siphon location information that way and then feed it into tools like this. That being said, again, we don't have full confirmation on how exactly Babel street is getting its data. It previously got it from a company called Ventel, which did get it from apps, but we don't know 100% if that's what's happening in 2024.
- [16:03]
Jason Kebler
Yeah. So in the article you write a little bit about maids, which are the. I believe it stands for Mobile Advertising Identification, which is. I mean, it's not a Mac address for a phone, but it's basically like an identifier for your phone. And these are like, nominally not. It's like. It's not. You can't like, look at it and say, hey, that's Joseph, but you could look at it and then compare it to other information and de identify it. Isn't that correct? They have been de anonymized, like, pretty regularly.
- [16:41]
Joseph Cox
Yeah, yeah. There's a few different things. It's like it's the glue that the location data is stuck to in a way. Like, rather than saying phone one went here, it says phone 1234 ABCD went here. And that's sort of the anonymous identifier that tracks the location data. And those maids are in locatex as well. And crucially, that is a direct product and consequence of the mobile advertising ecosystem. If I'm in the ad advertising business and I want to target ads at somebody, I may not be interested in who that specific person is, but I need to know that, oh, that maid 1234 is interested in sports and lives in New Mexico and goes to these various places and goes to these websites or whatever. In that context, advertisers or people in that industry aren't really bothered about who's behind the maid. In a tool like this, law enforcement customers might be, and we've reported on this before back at Motherboard, but I actually posed as a customer to a company that advertised the ability to unmask maids. You would give them a bunch of maids in return. They would give you the name, the phone number, the address and the physical address of that of the real person behind that maze. So I just think it completely shatters the idea that these are anonymous identifiers. And this isn't actually in the article because I'm probably going to continue to cover it. But when I spoke to Google, they said it was a pseudonymous Identifier, which is like, huh, I haven't heard Google say that before because the general consensus is that it's anonymous. And I just think that's, I mean that's bullshit.
- [18:41]
Jason Kebler
Yeah. It's possible to opt out of this ecosystem more or less on both Android and Apple somehow. I'm still not sure how.
- [18:55]
Joseph Cox
Yeah, and it was your suggestion and I think we'll try to get to it. But maybe we do a short piece just telling people explicitly how to do it. But there are some links in the article as well. There are two things which people who care about this may wish to opt out of. The first is sharing their maid on Apple. This is very easy. You go to the ask apps not to track feature and you turn it off. You can either do that globally or you can do it per app. And that's a very prominent pop up on your iPhone or iOS device. For Google, you have to go into the settings. It's something like settings privacy ads. And then you have to delete or change the made. It is buried compared to the Apple settings. So that's how you deal with the made stuff. And that will stop advertising companies and then potentially companies like Babel street getting that unique identifier. Of course, the other part is location data itself and I think people will be familiar with this where an app requests location data and you tell it no. And if you're not able to, you just don't install the app and you can opt out of that sort of thing in your settings as well. So it's the made and it's the location data that you may. Those settings you may want to change on your own device. If this is something that concerns you.
- [20:14]
Jason Kebler
I want to go back to something that I just remembered as we were talking about this, which is, well, one you wrote about sort of like heat map type data to Planned Parenthood being sold through data brokers, which you can talk about in a second. But Sam has also written about like period tracking data that was available in the immediate aftermath of the end of Roe v. Wade. And I think like this is just another part of a surveillance system that is designed to track people who are seeking abortions. Sam, can you tell us a little bit about that earlier reporting that you did?
- [20:56]
Sam Cole
Yeah, I was just thinking about this because just talking about things you can do to protect yourself from this kind of tracking and it just seems like that the window of things that you can do to protect yourself from being tracked in this specific way is narrower and narrower and it's like the powers that be especially Republicans in power are trying very hard to make it that way. Increasingly so. Yeah, I mean, the story that I did in it was in 2022 and that was right after the fall of Roe. It was just hitting up a bunch of different period trackers and saying, hey, do you give your user data to. Basically I asked how they, how they plan to protect user data and how they want to handle law enforcement requests because it seemed like those were going to start happening more. Law enforcement was going to try to track people's period data to determine whether they were getting abortions, which is just so fucked. Every single one that I emailed and called, I don't know, it was like a half a dozen, maybe eight or nine, but only one of them out of all of them was like, we would rather burn our own company to the ground than give our user data to the cops. Which I was like, hell yeah. But yeah, it's just, I mean, this is something that's like, it's, it keeps coming up.
- [22:25]
Becky Ferreira
It's.
- [22:26]
Sam Cole
I start to kind of feel like, okay, there is like nothing left to do at some point to try to protect yourself from this kind of tracking other than just like throw all of your devices away. Which in my, like most, I don't know, like depressed moments about technology. That's kind of how I feel. And I know you guys probably share that. I was just reading, just speaking of tracking, I was reading the other day this report about how a handful of Republican attorneys general in a couple states are trying to restrict abortion drug access through the mail, which is a revival of a Comstock act clause because mailing like, quote, unquote, obscene things was part of that act. And that act is not fully repealed, which is fun. And that's kind of what we're facing. I mean, that's, that's what we're, that's what you know, especially like J.D. vance has talked a lot about this, about how he wants to restrict access in this way to abortion and also to IVF and to fertility treatment. So, yeah, I don't know, it's like this is. The story seems so timely and so it's not theoretical. It's so real and horrifying. I mean, I just, I don't know, it's like, it's scary for everyone to be tracked in this way, but because this is what's on the table, I think it's how things shake out. November, I think is going to be really interesting and possibly terrifying to see how these kind of trackers get used by the government, who's very interested in buying them, obviously.
- [24:09]
Joseph Cox
Yeah. And I mean, I think that was at least my main purpose of the piece, which is, as we've said, I focused on abortion because that is a massive issue for people at the moment. It's concrete, it's tangible, people can understand it, people care about it. But as I said, there's also the mosque in there, there's a synagogue as well. And the point is that even if you, for whatever reason don't personally care about it right now, this tool exists and the political context around it can shift. It can absolutely flip on a dime. And I think that's what we're seeing and why we wanted to publish this specifically. I do recommend that people go, obviously read the full article. It's like 3,500 words. It's a long one and I know we publish a lot of long articles, but this took me a while. So there's that. But there's also images in there of the actual tool itself. And I think people would be very, very interested in seeing, hey, this is what a tool the US Government and other governments I believe have bought access to actually looks like. And I think that's pretty interesting. All right, we will leave that there when we come back. We have a very special guest. We will be right back after this.
- [25:36]
Jason Kebler
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- [29:53]
Joseph Cox
All right, and we are back and we have a rarity special guest. Becky. Hi. Do you want to introduce yourself briefly?
- [30:04]
Becky Ferreira
Sure. Hey, I'm Becky Ferreira. I'm a science reporter and worked with all you lovely folks for years at Motherboard. And now I'm contributing to 404, which I'm very excited about.
- [30:16]
Joseph Cox
Yeah, you've been writing the Abstract, which is a column that we email out every Saturday. You've done an amazing job with that. It is very pleasant to not be publishing horrible news all the time, which is basically what we do, unfortunately. But, Emmanuel, you've been editing Becky, I think more than anybody. How have you been finding it?
- [30:43]
Emmanuel Mayberg
An absolute joy, as it always has been a joy here and then also a joy for many years at Vice where we all worked. And I thought we could start out for our audience, but also from my own curiosity, because despite working with Becky for many years and admiring her work, I don't actually know the Becky origin story. And I was wondering if you could tell us how you got on this, like, very in the weeds science beat.
- [31:14]
Becky Ferreira
Yeah, absolutely. I've always really been interested in science and, you know, really loved, like, Carl Sagan's work and stuff like that from being a kid and a teenager and got into a lot of reading science fiction and stuff like that. And then I wanted to do science in college, but, like, differential calculus was. I just, I hated it. So I ended up just getting going a lot more into journalism and writing direction and realizing that it would be really fun to actually just be this person who could parachute into different fields of science and kind of vicariously experience them without having to do massive amounts of data entry or calculus or anything like that. So. And then it was. I really think, though, I was kind of doing any kind of reporting for a while there, you know, 15 years back when I first started writing. And it was really Motherboard. That was like the proving ground for starting reporting in science. I think I started there only a couple years after the site was founded and just it was such a great team. Obviously over the years we published so much stuff and that was really where I felt like I could get a voice where it was. I could express, like the enthusiasm and have a little bit more of voice driven character, fun work that was meant to draw people in a little bit more about these interesting scientific topics. So that's sort of where it came from.
- [32:52]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Yeah, Ultimately, so many of us are in this field because we couldn't do the hard math. So I definitely relate to you on that. And also, I mean, something that anyone who will read the column will notice that anyone who read your work at Motherboard will know. It's like, always a great sense of humor, which I appreciate because the studies are very interesting but are very dry. So that always, I think, humanizes and makes them relatable. But that kind of steps on what I want you to talk about next, which is what is like, generally your approach to the abstract. How would you describe it? What do you think we're trying to accomplish with this column?
- [33:34]
Becky Ferreira
So I'm definitely still working it out. And I have to say, it is a dream gig. Like, it's exactly the kind of stuff that I haven't really been able to do over the last year. Getting into the weekly news. Well, the weekly research studies, really. And so what I really, when we talked about it right at the beginning, I think a lot of these studies get put into the PR press release kind of version of things, and the kind of magic of what's in the actual study gets lost a bit. And I really want to be every quote that's in the abstract is from the original study. And I really wanted to find the kind of most plain language parts of the studies that are often quite lyrical, often quite exciting. Sometimes even the ones that are, like, require a little bit of explanation still. The phrases that come out are really, like, special. And you don't often get that coming through from a press release because they're just so focused on kind of getting the general audience summary out. So I'm really trying to show how scientists talk to each other and show and encourage, I think, people to actually look at the original studies, even if they, you know, you're not going to read through all of, you know, when it gets into their percentages and whatever, but just to see how these studies look and the components of them and the depth of research that goes into each one. And I think also this has been a great opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for years, which is just bring together all of these kind of niche studies and make giant feed, which I'm still building for this project, which is like the most fun thing I'm doing right now, but just like trying to get a mix of the big mainline studies that you'll probably see in any science site each week, but also have a couple that are not going to be covered anywhere that are from Much smaller journals about much more niche topics. And I wish I could include all of them. It's like, very hard to win down the list each week. But so far that's sort of what I'm focusing on. But it's been really, really exciting to be able to do it, for sure.
- [35:59]
Jason Kebler
Becky, you just mentioned something like, really important, I think, which is that the press release dynamic, I think that's something useful for our listeners to know, is that, you know, many press releases are good, but often press releases that are put out by the universities where this science is done, like, often they get things wrong or they sensationalize things and then it becomes the narrative in the media is something that the original paper, like, never said. And I'm wondering if you can just like, elaborate on that because I feel like a lot of people never look at a scientific study, including journalists. They often just like, write, write based off of the press releases.
- [36:42]
Becky Ferreira
It's like literally that if people come asking me for advice on how to start in science journal, it's like literally the first thing read the actual study. Because it's, you know, a lot of people, the press release has a purpose. It's purposes to, you know, do PR for the, for the institution that did this research, first and foremost, and then also tell like an entertaining science story. So they're often written by science reporters who work for, work as PIOs and stuff like that. And like any, you know, anything else you can get into an embellishment or like, often I notice that these press releases will have like a particular term that's kind of snazzy but that I can't tell you how many times like the scientist has actually been like, it's actually not like this. Like, you know, I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but just something where it's like the metaphor is not actually how the scientists would describe it themselves. So, yeah, the press releases are great, they definitely serve a purpose, but they aren't the whole story. And I think it's much more interesting much of the time, even if a lot of the language is too really dense jargon and things like that. And most science studies, I don't understand the really, really technical parts. If I have questions about that, then I'll ask the researcher. But I think it's just important to see how they put their study together, read the materials and methods. And also most science studies will have a section on limitations of their study, which you'll never see in a press release, really. I mean, this is what we can't know. And I think that that's a really useful exercise as well, to see that part of it.
- [38:27]
Emmanuel Mayberg
So the format of the abstract at the moment. And like Becky said, we're figuring it out, and we reserve the right to change it however we want at any moment. But right now, every week, there is one story at the top that we go deep on one study, and then a bunch of other studies that we go into a little bit with just a few paragraphs. And those that actually have been some of my favorites. And I wanted to highlight a couple of them from last week. I was out last week, so Jason edited the piece. Usually I edit Becky, but I was out, so Jason did it. So I had the pleasure of just reading it like an average reader. And I was scrolling through. And then there's one study here. The name of the study is Animal Life in the Shallow Subsea Floor Crust at Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents. And, I mean, that's a pretty dry title. Luckily, there's a video, so I clicked play in the video, and the video starts. And it's all these scientists. They're sitting in some sort of control room, and they're watching a video of this undersea robot flipping over a rock at the bottom of the ocean. And they are so emotional. They're, like, crying with joy. And I was wondering, Becky, if you could explain, like, why are these scientists, like, crying with joy over this little robot turning over a little rock at the bottom of the ocean? What is that showing them? Why is that such a culmination of their work?
- [40:00]
Becky Ferreira
Yeah. No, I loved it. I'm so glad they included the video. It reminded me of, like, those mission control videos. When, like, a robot lands on Mars, they're like, oh, my God. They were interested in kind of finding out how animal life around these hydrothermal vents are dispersing. Like, they had this kind of hypothesis that maybe they're going into the subsea floor and that they're in these light cavities underneath the vents. But nobody's ever seen animals there before, and indeed, like, nobody. This is not an environment that is commonly studied. It's very hard to get to. That particular sample site was, like, 1.5 miles beneath the ocean. It's just expensive and hard to do those dives. So they were just excited because they saw immediately that there was a ton of animal life in there. There was snails and tube worms and, like, regular worms. And it was the first time that those. That animal life had been seen in the subsea environment underneath the vent. System. So it was just like we knew that there are microbes down there, different types of bacteria and things like that. But to see that there is an underworld in these vent systems and that likely the larvae and things like that, the germinal phase of these animals are traveling through the subfloor, traveling through these little vent systems underneath just kind of really exposes how much bigger those ecosystems actually are. I mean, these systems have been so interesting to people for many decades, and they are very important for, like, studying the origin of life, constraining odds of life elsewhere. And so the fact that they're more massive and appear to be more kind of more stable than expected is just this kind of revelation that's interesting on its own merits, just for understanding sea life. And I'm sure they're just excited because they made this discovery that animals are under there and they literally just needed to have a robot arm take the rock off. And they were like. It was like, you know, the way that you would take a rock and show a kid, like, a bunch of things scuttling under it when you take it off, like. But. But I think it also just. It just really shows that these ecosystems are really complex a lot more than meets the eye. They even say in the study, like, we don't know how far deep into the seafloor these things are going. Like, they could be much deeper than that. And that just shows that if other worlds have hydrothermal vents like Europa, it could be that you have similar kind of ecosystems emerging that have stability and resilience.
- [42:45]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Yeah, I assume that's where you were going with it and why you included it. Like, not just origin of life on this planet that the vents help us understand. But, like, in theory, should vents like this exist on Europa, which is. It's a moon, Right? Europa's a moon.
- [43:04]
Jason Kebler
Is it time to talk about her favorite celestial body once and for all?
- [43:08]
Becky Ferreira
Yeah.
- [43:09]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Yeah.
- [43:09]
Jason Kebler
Go ahead, Becky. To put you on the spot, precast listeners, move.
- [43:15]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Jason and I argued about which one is your favorite. I thought it was the sun, and Jason thought it was Europa, which is a moon. Again, the moon of Jupiter popped my head. I'm sorry, Jupiter. Yeah.
- [43:27]
Jason Kebler
Enceladus is also a high contender, which is a moon of Saturn.
- [43:32]
Becky Ferreira
Also possibly has a big one for you. Right, Jason? I remember.
- [43:35]
Jason Kebler
Yeah. Big fan of that one.
- [43:37]
Becky Ferreira
Big fan of Enceladus. Yeah, yeah. It is the sun. You can't really beat the sun. I'm sorry, Jason. I do love Europa, too, but the sun is literally defines everything we do. And even A picture of Europa is also a picture of the sun because that's what's illuminating any solar system object. You see. It's also a picture of the sun. It just is the best. You gotta love our star. But I was interested, actually.
- [44:05]
Jason Kebler
I used to love it until I lost this bet, and now I'm into it.
- [44:09]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Yeah.
- [44:09]
Jason Kebler
Now is your end, not into it.
- [44:10]
Becky Ferreira
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think. Well, I think it's a worthy opponent. I did want to say, though, it was. Joe had said that Earth was his favorite and that kind of raised the question to me of whether we consider Earth a celestial body because he kind of had a cosmic view.
- [44:28]
Joseph Cox
Right, right, right.
- [44:30]
Becky Ferreira
But so I thought that was. You have a very cosmic view of things, Jo, not an anthro centric one.
- [44:37]
Joseph Cox
Uh, sure, I'll take that. Yeah.
- [44:39]
Jason Kebler
Earth is definitely in space. If you have. If you've ever thought about it, if you've ever been high and thought about it, we are a rock in space. Just like.
- [44:48]
Becky Ferreira
Yeah.
- [44:49]
Jason Kebler
You know, which is part of why we're doing abstract. Right. Is like, whoa, dude, science like, things to ponder over the weekend.
- [44:57]
Becky Ferreira
Yeah. It made me think, though, is celestial a synonym of extraterrestrial, in which case it by definition can't be Earth. I don't know, it was just an interesting thought experiment for how you view things. But yeah, Europa is wonderful. No shade on Europa. Just. I mean, it's really no shade on the sun. So there is like. That's just the best. Yeah.
- [45:20]
Emmanuel Mayberg
So the other study I wanted to mention, also from this most recent edition, is about this. The Marland mole rat. And I've never heard of this. You seem familiar with it and a fan. And I wondered if you could explain what is special about this mole rat and what the study shows.
- [45:41]
Becky Ferreira
Yeah. So. And this is sort of like where the experimental phase. And I just, I just felt that this would not be a study that would be appearing many in many other outlets because it's just kind of this niche idea for. And because I love mole rats. And they're these. They're the only animal, the only mammal that is eusocial. Meaning that they have a society that is like an ant or a bee. They have a breeding female queen and workers that support the colony. Very similar to an ant or a bee colony. It's just like very strange for like, it's crazy. A rodent to do that.
- [46:20]
Emmanuel Mayberg
I didn't know that structure exists in like.
- [46:23]
Becky Ferreira
Yeah.
- [46:24]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Mammals.
- [46:24]
Becky Ferreira
Lots of interesting research, unfortunately, I feel. I mean, I liked this one because it was just it was a study that was basically like, these Damaraland mole rats. There are two kinds, the naked mole rat and the Tomorrowland. And the naked mole rat is naked. That's the only real big difference. But it doesn't have any fur. But they tend to be pretty. They don't disperse much because they have this colony structure. So a lot of other mammals, they'll go out and they'll find a breeding pair from a. From a more genetically distinct population. They'll find their mate to try to, like, enhance the genetic diversity of the. Of the population. But these, they're. They're, you know, they're pretty close to home. They don't disperse. So this team was like, how are they figuring out how to not get inbred, basically? And so they bred a bunch of these Demarlan mole rats in the lab and raised some together, raised them apart. And we're trying to basically test, like, what's their. How can they sense that, whether something's closely related, whether a mate is closely related. And they found that they basically, they mate by association. The less familiar the mole rat is, that is what determines whether they mate. Even if that mole rat is genetically similar. So it just. They're not sensing any kind of genetic message or anything like that. They're just like, that's a stranger. I should mate with that one instead of mating with this mole rat I was raised with. So it's just. It's just a really interesting study about, like, how this population that is so strange avoids, like, something that really does. Is a devastating problem for a lot of different mammals. You know, we had, like, the first week of the Abstract, there was a study that was basically like, did the Neanderthals go extinct because they were so inbred, because they didn't want to socialize with other human species and stuff like that. So it is a real problem for. To have a strategy where you don't disperse and you don't have methods of getting gene flow into your population. But it was mostly just an excuse for me to look at them and consider how weird they are. And. Yeah, and I just thought it was.
- [48:41]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Interesting, like, that intuitively they're, like, attracted to whatever looks the least like them, right? Like, yeah.
- [48:51]
Becky Ferreira
And I believe the study said that they both were more likely to mate if they were less familiar with the mate. And they also had better reproductive success. They had better babies. So it's just. Yeah, I mean, it just. Those are the type of studies I really like that don't get reported on much. But it's just an incremental, kind of interesting thing to do. And now, you know, because they are such an interesting, different kind of social animal.
- [49:20]
Joseph Cox
I think the last question I wanted to ask, just to round it up, is that you touched on sort of how you go about this. Obviously you said the most basic thing is you go beyond the press release and you actually go read the study and you pull out parts that you want to highlight to readers. My question is just, can you just tell us what you think is sort of the importance of science communication and science reporting? A lot of these studies could just be ignored by the ordinary reader if you, or if a journalist weren't surfacing the studies to them. What do you think is the importance of that?
- [50:00]
Becky Ferreira
I think it's, you know, the fact that I don't think a lot of people get to hear about how science is done. You get the top line discoveries, you get, you know, jwst found this ancient galaxy, blah, blah, blah. But you don't really get like the context of that is a years long project. They had to fight for telescope time to get it. You know, all this kind of background stuff that goes on with science, which is I think really important to highlight. It's not just an interesting story, but like when you have people questioning scientific results, which is, which is fair, I just, I just think that they should also see the context of like the actual process that goes into that. And especially with something, you know, using the example the mole rat study, this is just a question that they were interested in answering and that they got funding to answer it. You know, and these kinds of things, you never know if they're going to be the building block to the next big discovery. You know, mole rats are like studied a lot because they don't get cancer and stuff like that. So like there's interesting things like that where any kind of little piece of information is, could be useful in all kinds of interdisciplinary contexts. So I just, I really, I've been wanting for years to try to find a better way to show how science is done. So hopefully this is like a small part of that.
- [51:18]
Emmanuel Mayberg
And if I could just add to that. It's like the studies that make the front page of the New York Times or whatever, they're like these big eureka moments and those are great. Obviously it's like we need those. But so much of science is very incremental and like years and years of people building on each other's work in like these very small ways. And that is to me seems like the majority of science and finding a way to celebrate that and show people that I think is really important because that's like, that's really like the work of, I don't know, civilization. Right. It's just like somebody studying these mole rats and then somebody else adding another discovery on top of that. And that's how like we get the biggest, the big discoveries that push society forward and so on. It just like, I just really admire like the diligent, quiet work that these scientists do. And Becky's really good at highlighting it and celebrating it.
- [52:17]
Joseph Cox
Yeah, absolutely. Man, I feel pumped now. This is great. I'm in the, like, I feel I'm in a better mood now because what.
- [52:25]
Emmanuel Mayberg
Do we always say? What do we always say? I fucking love science.
- [52:28]
Joseph Cox
Yeah, exactly.
- [52:28]
Becky Ferreira
Yeah, absolutely. It's really. Yeah. And I, and I do think it's just like for some of these scientists who've just been like, they've, they've studied this one subject their whole life, they're very interesting to just talk to they encyclopedia about this tiny like part of nature. And I just, just think it's cool.
- [52:47]
Joseph Cox
Yeah, absolutely. Well, if you, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably already signed up to our newsletter, but if you're not, you go to the site, you enter your email and then every Saturday you will get a copy of the Abstract arriving in your inbox as of course the most reliable way to get it. If you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I will now play us out. But if you are a paying 404 media subscriber, we're going to talk about how an Elon Musk funded PAC is targeting Muslims and Jewish people with different ads on Snapchat in different areas and how Jason discovered that it's all very fascinating purely from a data sort of perspective. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media co. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really helps us out. This has been 404 Media. We'll see you again next week.