Loading summary
Transcript176 lines
- [00:02]
A
Hello, and welcome to the Rest is Science. I am Michael Stevens.
- [00:05]
B
And I'm Hannah Fry.
- [00:07]
A
And today on this episode of Field Notes. I have no idea what's going to happen because it's Hannah's turn to report back from her expeditions in life. What have you got?
- [00:17]
B
Do you know what? Expeditions is exactly the right word for today's episode, because I've just got back from the Arctic, and I sort of don't want to. I've changed my camera position around here because all of my sort of. My thermal wear is laid out across the floor behind me. I sort of want to kind of hide it also.
- [00:40]
A
You're trying to hide your floor.
- [00:41]
C
I'm just.
- [00:42]
B
I'm hiding my floor. It may. It may peek into view at certain points during the course of this episode. But I brought you back. I brought you back something pretty exciting from the Arctic, Michael, which is. Which is today's subject of conversation, which is a little bottle of water from the North Pol. Oh, wow. Isn't that cool?
- [01:02]
A
Okay, so what's the North Pole like right now? Was there liquid water there or was it an ice sheet?
- [01:07]
B
No, I didn't actually get to go to the North Pole.
- [01:09]
A
How high did you go?
- [01:10]
B
I went. Let me see. I went seven.
- [01:13]
A
Hold on. I need to stop using this Northern hemisphere centric language. How far north did you go?
- [01:20]
B
Yes. Not how far up? Let's not be biased here. Okay. So I was on an icebreaker that was setting off for an expedition to the North Pole, and I met up with them in Svalbard, and they left as I was there. I sort of waved them off from the dock. So this was their previous. Previous expedition. It's the. It's the Norwegian Polar Institute. Because the thing is, right when you. I mean, I was going to film this program that I'm. That I'm doing.
- [01:50]
C
Right.
- [01:51]
B
And they've got their own stories. Yeah. But when you go to, like, these unbelievable places, you find out so much more stuff than you can possibly ever fit into a TV program. Right. And so what I thought I would tell you about today is this, like, wild thing that I discovered that I had absolutely no idea about while I was off in the Arctic. Because if you drank this little bottle of water that had been collected from underneath the ice sheet at the North Pole, what do you think it would taste like? That's my question for you.
- [02:22]
A
Good question. So my first thought is salty.
- [02:25]
B
Mm. Wrong. Really wrong.
- [02:28]
A
Is it fresh water? Because of what. Cause it's melted ice.
- [02:33]
B
Okay. Yes. And. Yes. And there's so much more to it than this. And I had no idea about this at all until I sort of went up there to go and see. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk.
- [02:51]
A
Do you remember when we discussed why feet are so weird? Well, one particular foot bone holds an even stranger surprise. It's helping shape our understanding of cancer timelines.
- [03:02]
B
And for that we're gonna need to go all the way back before Neanderthals even existed to a 1.7 million year old footbone. Researchers have identified a tumor in it in the oldest known example of cancer
- [03:16]
A
in people, which really shows that cancer is far from a modern disease. This beating a disease so deeply rooted in our biology won't happen overnight.
- [03:26]
B
But today, Cancer Research UK scientists are discovering incredible ways to turn our biology against cancer.
- [03:34]
A
In fact, Cancer Research UK has helped double UK cancer survival over the past 50 years. And their world class research is driving even more discoveries to tackle over 200 types of cancer.
- [03:47]
B
For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org Restoscience for adults
- [03:58]
C
with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremphya offers self injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremphya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self inject Tremphya, proper training is required. Tremphya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur before treatment. Get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, fluoride, flu like symptoms or need a vaccine, explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremphaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit tremphyaradio.com hey parents, how do you make smarter choices for your kids? College today. That's where Sally can help with Sally. You can find scholarships, funding options, tools and guidance all all in one place. And if you need a loan, Sally has options for different families and different situations. College is only worth it if you do it right. So don't just help your kid, go help them. Go smarter. Sally.com GoParents.
- [05:33]
B
So okay, fine. When rain comes down, you know it's fresh water when it freezes as snow, you know, that's fresh water too.
- [05:40]
A
Fine.
- [05:40]
B
But here's the thing. When sea water gets really cold, cold enough to freeze when it's about minus 1.8 degrees C, the water molecules, they start locking into this, this rigid crystal lattice. But this geometric structure doesn't have any space for the salt ions, so it just kicks them out. It kind of just kicks them out further and further and further. And then what you end up with is like the ice that is floating on top of the sea is. Is like fresh. You can take a chunk of old ice and drink it. And there is one company that I came across that is now actually selling this as though it were sort of wine. It's unbelievably expensive, the prices that they're selling this for.
- [06:25]
A
Svalbardi, the water, polar iceberg water.
- [06:29]
B
What they're saying here is this is pristine ice. It's been locked up for millennia, sometimes fresh as the day it fell, as snow. So they gather it, they melt it, and then they sell it for. Hang on, let's just get up the live prices right now for a single bottle. Right? 750 milliliter bottle of water. Michael. €100.
- [06:53]
A
I've got a few questions. They are melting icebergs to make this water?
- [06:59]
B
Yes.
- [06:59]
A
Okay, so the water maybe has been in that iceberg for a long time. Because my first thought is, well, look, I'm going to flush the toilet after this podcast. Eventually some of those molecules will be at the North Pole. Like it's a whole water cycle, guys. It's not special water up there. It's. Every molecule gets its turn, every drop gets its turn up there. But if it's trapped in ice, then it can spend a lot longer somewhere. Or not somewhere. So this is water that they say on the website that they're collecting it just before it melts away forever.
- [07:34]
B
Right.
- [07:35]
A
It's pristine ice, locked up for millennia and fresh as the day it fell as snow. Now it's, It's. I wouldn't say it's fresh. I think the process of turning into glacial ice takes long enough that there's going to be some dust, there's going to be some bacteria cell walls in there.
- [07:54]
B
But anyway, a little mammoth hair every now and then.
- [07:57]
A
Oh, a mammoth hair would be really cool. So you don't have one of these, but you do have an even more rare kind of water which was collected by the Norwegian. What?
- [08:04]
B
It's the. The Norwegian Polar Institute, but this is actually from the North Pole. Like for real, for real, for real.
- [08:09]
A
The north pole, not just 78 degrees north, but 90.
- [08:13]
B
Exactly. Anyway, so here's the thing about this fresh water, okay? So for thousands of years the Inuit people have known, the indigenous people of the Arctic, they've known that you can eat sea ice and it's fine, right? It will hydrate you properly, but it all depends on what it looks like, right? So if it's first year ice, if the ice is really flat and it's little bit gray and it's got these sharp and jagged edges, then don't. But if the ice is thick, if it's sort of multi year ice, if it's more rounded at the edges also if it glows slightly blue, then you're fine. Because by that point the salt within it will have been squeezed out by this process of sort of melting and then refreezing or slightly melting around the edges and then refreezing in summer and winter. What was really funny about this though, because when, when Europeans started like pushing up in the north in the Arctic in the 16th century, especially when they were looking for the Northwest Passage, the way to connect Europe to the Americas, what they were doing, they, they had no idea that they, they knew you could eat snow fine, because that's fallen as precipitation, but they did not know that sea ice would, would be fresh water as well. And so there are all these stories of people, you know, from 1500s or whatever it might, running dangerously low on water and they're, they're literally about to die of thirst. You know, they're all about to just literally wither away. And then there's one particular story of Martin Frobisher, 1578. This is, and they were in desperation, they hauled a chunk of sea ice on board the ship, melted it, and then to their, to their absolute amazement, it was fresh. They just, I mean, they just couldn't believe it because it sort of logically doesn't make sense. If you take a load of salt water, why on Earth when you freeze it, would it end up removing the salt from it?
- [10:08]
A
I got a question. The vial of water that you have, was that originally collected as ice and then it was melted or was it collected as liquid water?
- [10:17]
B
You are too smart. Okay, so this was actually collected from the bottom of the ocean in the North Pole. So it says on it, it says that it was collected. Here we go, 4,302 meters underneath the ice sheet.
- [10:34]
A
Wow.
- [10:35]
B
So this is your, you know, you're extremely smart here because actually I think if you tasted this, it would end up being salty. But it turns out that this stratification, as it's known, essentially what happens, this unfrozen water absorbs all of the rejected salt. It becomes really, really salty. Freezing cold liquid.
- [10:57]
A
Okay, so I thought this was liquid water collected, so I assumed it would be salty. But you're saying, I feel like frozen water ice would not be salty because the salt would lower the freezing point of the water so it just wouldn't freeze.
- [11:15]
B
If you go cross minus 2 degrees centigrade, it will freeze.
- [11:18]
A
Okay, how many vials do you have? Just that one.
- [11:21]
B
I just have the one, Hannah.
- [11:22]
A
You gotta get two so you can drink one and keep the other.
- [11:26]
B
What you really want is one from the top and one from the bottom and then a little sip from each.
- [11:29]
A
You want one from every, like, 10ft of. Of depth so that you can have, like a little. You'd pair one with a steak and one with your ice cream as you go along.
- [11:39]
B
As you go along. Can I tell you a little bit more about this freshwater, like, massive lake? And it's massive, by the way, that is hiding underneath the sheet ice in the North Pole, because it turns out it's, like, responsible for almost all of the dynamics of our entire planet. Like, it's wild. And I had no idea that this thing existed.
- [11:58]
A
I didn't either. But you call it a freshwater lake, but really it's a giant parcel of water surrounded by water.
- [12:05]
B
Right. It's a lake sitting on top of an ocean. Right. But the thing is, is that I'm not talking about a small amount of fresh water here, Right? I am talking about gargantuan amounts, more than all of the Great Lakes. Because in the summer when all of the snow, all of the glaciers melt from Siberia, from Greenland, from Canada, from Svalbard, all of them empty into this great big basin that appears at the North Pole. So if you looked at the ground, the sort of the. The terrain under the ocean beneath the North Pole, it is this little bowl. It's like this. It's a perfectly shaped little bowl. And with the coriolis effect of the Earth spinning, it's sort of this spinning little. Little blob. I mean, it's not little, this spinning gigantic blob of fresh water that is sitting on top of a very salty part underneath. The other thing about this, okay, so this. This fresh water blob that is sitting there under the ice sheet, the really amazing thing about it is that it is protecting the ice from melting because that warm water that is coming up from The Atlantic. There is easily enough energy in the warm waters of the Atlantic to melt the entire ice sheets of the North Pole, right? Gone like.
- [13:25]
C
Sure.
- [13:26]
B
The only reason why it doesn't and hasn't is because this cold water blob is stopping it from getting there. Because. Because the salt water, even though it's warm, sinks to the bottom beneath the much lighter, cold fresh water so it can't get to the ice sheet. It's like, it's insulated, it's perfect insulation.
- [13:46]
A
Right.
- [13:46]
B
So you're like, oh great. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Blob of cold water. I really appreciate this for not getting rid of the ice sheet. The Arctic can survive all of the creatures that that freshwater lake to just live. And all of the creatures on top that sort of feed from it are extremely grateful as a result. However, here's the big problem. The big problem is that the ice sheet is still melting from the top. You know, the sun is still beating down on it. There's still more heat in the atmosphere than there was before. Which means that this blob of water is getting bigger and bigger as time goes on. And the real fear is, is that there'll be a tipping point where the blob gets so big that it shuts off the flow. Coming up from the Atlantic, where you've got this giant like evacuating lake of fresh water that spreads out into the Atlantic, stops the warm water from coming up, at which point it's bye bye, mild winters for Europe.
- [14:49]
A
Right. It becomes very cold, as it should be, based on latitude alone.
- [14:54]
B
Based on latitude alone.
- [14:55]
A
Oh, my God.
- [14:56]
B
Okay, well, maybe this isn't that big of a deal, you know, like they can live within Moscow, they can live within Canada. No big deal. Except that every single bit of infrastructure in Britain is built, as we have learned this summer. Right. Is built for a very narrow range of temperatures. Really? Brits are happy between plus 5 and plus 25. That's it. That's all. That's all we're happy with. You know, if it gets over 25, we break down. If it gets under 5 degrees, it's game over for us.
- [15:26]
A
Yeah. Things will need to dramatically change infrastructure wise.
- [15:29]
B
And up until now, this big question of this, this blob of water that protects the ice sheet but threatens the, the temperature of Europe. What is it going to do? Is it going to stay there? Is it going to stabilize? Is it going to grow? Is it going to shrink? Which way is it going to go? And for a really long time, people were like, no, no, no, no. There was a group of people who were like, no, no, no. This is protecting the ice sheet. Actually. We're in a state of stability. This is not a problem. But in the last couple of years, things have started turning for the worse. And now the models are saying that it is genuinely possible that by 2070 or so, this conveyor belt of warm water from the Atlantic moving up towards the North Pole will start slowing down enough that it's really gonna be bad, bad in our lifetimes, basically.
- [16:20]
A
Michael, has anyone named this freshwater Lake Blob?
- [16:25]
B
Yes, the Lake Blob. Yes, they have. It is called Beaufort Geyer.
- [16:30]
A
Oh, wow. Beaufort Geyer is a fantastic name.
- [16:35]
B
I didn't even know it was there. I had no idea it was there.
- [16:38]
A
No, I just assumed it was regular ocean water everywhere. But apparently there' structure of, like, floating sea ice. Then you've got this Beaufort Gyre of fresh water. And then below that, you've got the salty. Even probably maybe more salty than regular ocean water.
- [16:56]
B
Shall I open it and to have a little sip?
- [16:58]
A
Well, yeah, of course. I wasn't gonna ask you to because it'd be awkward, but you. You should.
- [17:03]
B
This feels like that moment when you lick the rock, you know, I know
- [17:06]
A
there are risks here I am. You're doing this under your own free will.
- [17:13]
B
It's salty. Oh, my God. That is the saltiest thing I've ever tasted.
- [17:16]
A
Okay, so it's from, what, 4,000ft or meters?
- [17:20]
B
How deep? Meters.
- [17:21]
A
Wow. Okay, so you did it for the gram. You took the sip and it was really salty. So saltier than regular sea water.
- [17:30]
B
I think. That's salty than regular sea water.
- [17:32]
A
Yeah. Well, it makes sense.
- [17:33]
B
I don't make it a habit of drinking seawater from little vials, but. But in my experience, that is extremely salty.
- [17:42]
A
Wow. And aren't you glad that you've tried it now?
- [17:45]
B
Yes, I am. Maybe I'll. Maybe I'll sprinkle a little bit on my dinner later and say, what do you know? I think is so amazing to imagine, though, is that, like, this little bit of water that was literally at the bottom of the North Pole, four, you know, nearly four and a half kilometers at the bottom of the North Pole. Think of everything that swam above it, you know, like, think of everything that has been seen in that area. But we just have. It's so uncharted. We just. We just have so, so much to learn about. About our oceans. And, you know, the Arctic in particular. It's like. It's wild to me. It's wild to me just what that could have seen or, you know, I bet if I did some DNA analysis of. Of all of the different creatures whose, you know, floating little fragments of DNA have wafted through this, I bet there would be so much to learn from this little vial.
- [18:38]
A
There'd be so much DNA. We didn't even recognize species we have not seen yet.
- [18:44]
B
And now. And now I've assimilated it into my own body.
- [18:47]
A
You've consumed them. Yeah. You're one with the Arctic. Next step is to brine some chicken with that. I bet it would be too salty.
- [19:00]
B
Too salty. Let's call it my narwhal smoothie. Okay.
- [19:04]
A
Yeah, that's what it is.
- [19:06]
B
There you go. That was my little addition for this week. Hope you enjoyed. They're not always gonna be that good. I think that was a particularly good one.
- [19:12]
A
That's really cool.
- [19:13]
B
Yeah.
- [19:13]
A
It's not always gonna be the case that you've just come back from the Arctic, but you have these adventures and you just show up on the podcast and go, oh, look, I just got back from the moon. Sorry, my floor's a mess. And I'm like, ah, yeah, I know what that's like.
- [19:28]
B
You go to the moon of your mind, though, Michael. Also, I haven't been to the moon.
- [19:31]
A
Oh, that's right, the moon. The moon in my mind. And you know what? We're going to visit these cognitive lunar landscapes after the break when we answer some questions from you all. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research uk.
- [19:58]
B
When we talk about beating cancer, we often focus a lot on survival. And that can mean overlooking impacts that. That last long after treatment ends.
- [20:08]
A
Yeah. For example, take cancers in children and young people. The treatments themselves can be incredibly harsh. They can cause lifelong side effects like infertility or hearing loss.
- [20:19]
B
And Cancer Research UK is working to change that. Because young people, they should be able to grow up hearing the voices of the people that they love and living their lives to the fullest.
- [20:27]
A
That's right. And one clinical trial led by Cancer Research UK showed that giving another drug alongside chemotherapy nearly halved the number of children losing their hearing. And today, the treatment combination is being used by doctors across the world. For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research and breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org restiscience Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car. I'll be moving in. Let's get started.
- [21:00]
C
Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.
- [21:04]
A
You what?
- [21:04]
C
Yeah Great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no, no, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice.
- [21:13]
A
I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it.
- [21:17]
C
Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy at Carvana.com.
- [21:31]
B
All right, we're back. We have got your questions. The first one is from Reddit. We, we've been, we've been hanging out on the subreddit. We haven't posted. I haven't posted yet. Have you posted yet, Michael?
- [21:42]
A
Well, no, I can't post. As I said before, I can't use my Reddit account. I can look at things but I cannot upvote. I can't comment because I have to change my password, but I can only do that if I have access to my old@google.com email address. So I'm stuck. I'll need to just make a whole brand new account. But it's sad because I like my username. Just Michael Underscore Stevens. It's a good one. It's the one I've been using. Anyway, I have been lurking on our subreddit, not able to engage. And I loved this one. It starts, this is, this is what it's called. It was written by Fosse. Fossey says, I think this podcast spreads misinformation about science and the moon is flat. Just kidding. My real question is, why are people more likely to correct someone online with a detailed explanation when they post something wrong, but are much less likely to give the same kind of thoughtful answer when someone genuinely asks a question? I loved that because first of all, it proves how significant this phenomenon is. Like, I immediately click on this one because I'm like, oh, someone's being mean and wrong on the Internet. Time for me to engage. And I come in and then I see that that's exactly what their question is about. This is a famous part of the Internet. Like, the fastest way to get help online is to be wrong. If you want to know what kind of wrench to use on your 2022 Kia, don't ask. Say, hey, here I am. I'm about to use a hammer to undo this fastener. And then everyone's going to go, don't do that. And they'll tell you what to do. Why is that? And as it turns out, one, it hasn't been studied online nearly as much as I expected it to have been studied, but it falls within the purview of the psychological study of the difference between helping and fixing. Those are two very different behaviors that sometimes look the same when you're far away, but are very different things. And I think the first place to start is to recognize that when someone posts online or even in real life asks a question, that's a very open ended challenge. You know, what's the best way to cook ribs? Well, there's a lot of different opinions, there's a lot to cover. There's the tools, there's the time, there's the temperature, there's what kind of ribs, what kind of cut is it? Spare ribs, St. Louis style. It's a lot, it's a lot of cognitive effort. But if someone shows that they're going to be microwaving ribs, boom, you've got one thing to pick on, which is don't do it that way. Or I don't know, maybe, maybe you can microwave ribs, I don't know. But the point is just on the surface, they are very different things. If someone's wrong, they're specifically wrong, but if they're just curious, they are open endedly curious.
- [24:27]
B
I mean, that brings us back to that episode that we did about curiosity, right? Which is where people are most engaged. When it feels like a missing tooth, where you know exactly the size and shape of the piece of information that needs to fit in it. Um, and that's when you sort of get people's attention the most.
- [24:43]
A
That's right. So someone wrong on the Internet is like a weird gap in your teeth that you just can't stop sticking your tongue through, that you need to be
- [24:53]
B
like, I know what goes there, I know what goes there.
- [24:56]
A
Yet you know what goes there, you know what to say. And the whole phenomenon, or rather the whole feeling behind someone being wrong on the Internet feels more urgent because again, it's a specific thing and it can spread. Whereas someone not knowing something is not as urgent. Okay, Someone will fill them in. Someone with more time than me. You can sort of do what's called social loafing, where because so many people are looking at this question, you'll let someone else answer it. But if someone's wrong, then that is a thing that has legs, it's more real and it can spread and others can get that information and they can do something wrong, break their microwave, ruin their dinner, hurt themselves. So you've got to act. But then at an even, like more general level, fixing is easier because it's much more egotistical. It is about easing your own discomfort. Someone was wrong online and that Makes you annoyed. And so to make yourself feel better, you come in and correct them. It's also like a judgment thing. You're judging the person's action and their theory and that's fast for us to do. We are, we evolved to make judgments very quickly. Good, bad, retreat, approach, those are fast things. But helping requires listening, it requires reasoning, it requires figuring out what the person already knows and what kind of knowledge base they have. And it requires sharing someone else's perspective. It isn't just about reducing how your, your discomfort, it's about sharing someone else's discomfort and working through it with them. So it's a lot harder in like three ways. Correcting someone, piece of cake. We do it instinctively, but helping someone in an open ended way, that's a commitment.
- [26:50]
B
So you know, there is this trick. I possibly shouldn't admit to this here because then maybe I'll weaken the value of the trick in future. But sometimes when I make my TV documentaries, I get to interview scientists a lot of the time. And sometimes scientists who are so amazing in their own field really struggle to understand what the best possible way to describe it to somebody outside of their field essentially. I think it's just really difficult to find the words that capture the joy or the gloriousness of the thing that they're studying. And so sometimes you sort of have to help the scientist along right. In describing their own stuff for what, you know, the audience needs. So anyway, if I'm with a scientist and they're being too technical, they're sort of, they're kind of in their own head a little bit, they're just being a bit too nervous, whatever it might be. The trick that I do and it works, I would say 98% of the time is I will come up with an explanation and present it to them. Something incredibly simple, something that I know the audience would like, but deliberately get one little detail wrong and then what will happen is that the scientists will be like, no, no, no, no, it's like this. And then they'll repeat my exact same explanation but change the thing to be right and then often add a little extra detail on, on the end. And like nine times out of 10, that is the clip that I'll, that I'll, that will actually use when it comes to the edit. Um, I don't necessarily know that that's what I'm doing, but it honestly it works so well.
- [28:22]
A
I bet it does. It's brilliant because you're giving them something much easier to hold, which is a specific incorrect thing rather than an open ended, like, so what are you researching? Oh, brother. They're gonna immediately talk as though they were talking to a colleague. But if you say, oh, okay, so like rocks have been here since the big Bang, they go, no, no, no, no, no, no. Here's how rocks form and cause you've given them a thing to push against. Exactly.
- [28:52]
B
Right. Yeah.
- [28:53]
A
You're reminding me also of that XKCD comic. So in the comic, these two scientists are talking to one another and the first one says, silicate chemistry is second nature to us geochemists. So it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars. And then the other scientist goes, oh, well, and of quartz, of course. And they go, oh, yes, of course. So that's how it is. Talking to experts. Often they think that you have at worst, like a graduate level, like entry to graduate program knowledge. And really you're still thinking, is quartz
- [29:31]
B
a rock or a mineral? Or like, what is it? Is that the thing that they put in watches? What are we talking about here? Right, Totally agree. I also think that sometimes scientists, I do feel bit bad for them. I think that they are playing in their head to the audience of their peers. Everybody is nervous about how they come across every single human on Earth. And if they're not, then I don't trust them. And so I think sometimes people are like, they want to say the thing that makes them sound smart because their audience will hear it. But actually it's the audience at home who are more important to listen to.
- [30:07]
A
Well, yeah, and there's a really big difference between explaining to a general audience a field versus talking about the specific thing in the field you've spent 10 years working on, which is like just the way a certain granule size of quartz moves through a riverbed in the northern hemisphere. And so that's where your mind is. And it's hard for you to go back and say, okay, so water flows downhill, like, let's start here. And I think that, yeah, what you just described is a brilliant way to get them to give them handles to hold onto back here so that they can, you know, take us the rest of the way.
- [30:44]
B
Isn't there something about how on naval inspections they would always deliberately leave a rope. I'm sort of half remembering something. You would always deliberately leave a little bit of rope that was like unfurled and not right. And then just to. Because. Because I think when people do inspections, they always want to pick up on something so that you deliberately leave something really obvious that they pick up on that and then they don't, they don't sort of, they feel like they've done their job properly.
- [31:10]
A
Ah, yeah.
- [31:11]
B
Well, I think you can be quite snaky about using this against people.
- [31:16]
A
Yeah, no, this is. I feel like I've heard jokes like this before where. Oh, yeah, if you want to lie about something, your cover up should be. Should include something embarrassing or also kind of illegal, but not as bad. Because then people think, well, why would you, you know, how would that not be true? You know, it took a lot for you to admit that and it harmed you to admit that. So it's more believable than if you just said, I'm innocent here.
- [31:46]
B
Wish you told me that before I went into traitors. Michael. Um, okay, shall we? Shall we? That's gonna only make sense for the British audience, but there we go. Okay, should we go on to the next question?
- [31:57]
A
This segment is brought to you by Cancer Research uk. Now, in the laboratory, a lot of things can kill cancer. But as it turns out, killing cancer in the body is a much bigger challenge.
- [32:10]
B
Yeah, of course. And that is because cancer cells are our own cells that have gone wrong. You know, they're literally part of us, which is going to make killing them much more complicated.
- [32:20]
A
Exactly. And also our bodies are these incredibly complex mazes. They're labyrinths. And so for a drug to launch its attack, it has to navigate all of these twists and turns to reach just the right spot.
- [32:34]
B
So today we are asking, could a bath time essential steer us in the right direction?
- [32:39]
A
Obviously, that's where we were going with this.
- [32:41]
B
Obviously the lead up was there. Okay. The science behind this is absolutely amazing though, because if you think about chemotherapy, chemotherapy is extremely effective at killing cancer cells. But the reason why you get sometimes such, such serious side effects is because it can also kill your own cells. Right. It's really difficult to distinguish between what's you and what's the cancer. So what you would like to do ideally is to target the chemotherapy right at the point where the tumour exists and bypass all the rest of your tissue. The question is, how do you do that? How do you navigate the complex maze of your body to get it there? So Cancer Research UK scientists, they have developed these tiny little drug laden bubbles that can float through your body and then burst inside tumors. I can hear you thinking, why bubbles? And the reason is because they are part gas, part liquid, but at the same time they're solid enough that you can manipulate them so you can you can sort of create them, move them around, wobble them, as you like. The other thing about bubbles is that you can pack the inside of them with the drug that you need. You seal the chemotherapy inside those, those micro bubbles. And we're talking really tiny here, right? One to ten micrometers in diameter, smaller than the width of the human hair, over 30 times smaller than a grain of table salt. Really, really, really minuscule doses of extremely potent drugs. But to get them to the right part of the body, you need some sort of guidance system. So you inject them in and then these micro bubbles will find their way to the cancer, either because they are attached with loads of antibodies to them. So it sort of uses the same technique as your immune system does to hunt down an infection, but instead it's these bubbles that are hunting down a tumor, you know, at which point it has the chemotherapy inside. Or sometimes what you can do, right, you can, you can attach these tiny magnetic nanoparticles to the bubbles and then physically pull the bubbles through the body with a giant external magnet. How wild is that? And I mean insane.
- [34:51]
A
I want to be the drug driver with the magnet who's just like, Ann, I'm going to put that here, I'm going to put that there.
- [34:57]
B
So when you get them to the right part, when you as the drug driver get there, then all you do is you beam ultrasound waves at the tumor. So the bubbles end up vibrating so much that they burst, and then the drug gets released at exactly the site of the cancer cells. This is like hyper targeted drug delivery, keeping your healthy cells safe so that you end up with less side effects. And by the way, we're at the stage now where this successfully treats some cancers in the lab, and they're now preparing to launch this in clinical trials.
- [35:27]
A
It's very exciting. But there's one other big challenge. Okay, so you can drive these drugs. Want them? That doesn't mean they can get through the gates that have been erected. Because although these bubbles are tiny, I mean, a fraction of a, of a grain of salt, guess what? Some things in our body are protected against Even things that small, like the brain. Okay. Brain tumors are a huge challenge for drugs because our brains are surrounded by this. It's basically this tight, locked cellular bodyguard chain. It's called the blood brain barrier. And it stops a lot of drugs from getting in. Even if they're in a bubble, they're still too big. So to give you a sense of how tight this blood brain barrier is, you can only fit something that is smaller than 7 molecules of salt. Okay. Not a little like piece of a piece of a salt. No, seven molecules of sodium chloride. That's it.
- [36:25]
B
And how many are there in a grain of salt? I mean, it's a lot more than seven molecules.
- [36:29]
A
A single grain of salt contains about a quintillion molecules. That's not a billion. That's a billion billion. And we can only get seven of them through. So what do you do? Well, Cancer Research UK scientists have a new idea, a solution here bubbling up in their minds and their work. So the drugs are often too big to get in. No problem. Let's use bubbles, not to transport them in, but to open up that blood brain barrier. So you take microbubbles, just empty microbubbles, send them up to that blood brain barrier, and then blast them with a beam of ultrasound, which is sound that's just too high for us to hear. And that causes the bubbles to wiggle around. It causes them to expand and contract. And that expansion and contraction can actually open up a larger opening in the blood brain barrier for the chemotherapy drugs to get into the brain where they're needed. You know what it's like? It's like, it's like a heist movie. Okay. But like too small to see. It's breaking into the.
- [37:29]
B
Breaking in through the wall.
- [37:31]
A
Yeah, but it's breaking into the vault. You're too big. Not. Not if you dance.
- [37:37]
B
Okay.
- [37:37]
A
Not if you have scientists with ultrasound. Exactly. Formulated to wiggle you, stretching you and
- [37:43]
B
squeezing you exactly the right way.
- [37:45]
A
Cancer Research UK is launching clinical trials to test microbubble delivery of chemotherapy to brain tumors in children and young people right now. And this could offer a vital treatment for young patients who lack options. And this gives children and young people more moments with their loved ones. So the point is though, that by backing bold ideas from the laboratory to the clinic, Cancer Research UK is helping develop better, more tailored treatments.
- [38:12]
B
Right? And that means that they work for more people, for people with more types of cancer with. With fewer side effects. Crucially, in fact, Cancer Research UK's work has played a role in more than half of the world's essential cancer drugs.
- [38:25]
A
That's right. Cancer research that's happening today will change the future of cancer medicine, including for hard to treat cancers. And by tackling the biggest challenges, more people can live longer, better lives.
- [38:39]
B
For more information about Cancer Research uk, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org RestoreScience Trevor emailed
- [38:49]
A
us asking, how often do coincidences occur? What is the weirdest coincidence in history? How often do we mistake coincidence for fact? And are they always mathematically explainable?
- [39:02]
B
Trevor, that's like seven questions in one. And I like it a lot. I'm here for the layering of questions. Okay, I've got what I think is. Is a really good submission for the weirdest coincidence. So a friend of mine, David Spiegelhater, who is a Cambridge mathematician, one of my colleagues, he did this whole entire project on coincidences where he got people to submit their coincidences. Because I think that when you, you know, if you talk to the mathematicians or the statisticians, they will say that actually there's a few simple laws behind this. One is the law of truly large numbers, that if you. If you try something enough times, even if it has a very small chance of coming true, that actually it becomes a statistical inevitability. So a different Cambridge mathematician, Littlewood, he was around about 100 years ago, really amazing mathematician Littlewood was, but he was like, okay, well, suppose a miracle event is. Is happens one in a million. It's a one in a million event, which sounds impossibly rare, but if you're awake for eight hours a day, like, looking for. You're out and about for eight hours a day, and you experience, you know, one distinct event every second, Little Wood's life was apparently more interesting and exciting than mine. But you'll rack up a million events every 35 days, you know, and even if you sort of halve that or quarter it, you're talking about one in a million events that will happen a couple of times a year, you know, and I think that in a lot of ways that you. That is the way to think of things is that you. You are essentially rolling the dice every moment of your life. You are allowing the possibility for a coincidence to happen every moment of your life. All the same, some of them are incredible. So. So David Spiegelhater in this project asked loads of people to submit their. Their greatest coincidences. And my favorite one, by long stretch, is about Ron Biederman's trousers. He tells this much better than I do, by the way. But essentially, somebody wrote in with this coincidence, and they verified it and fact checked it, and it's absolutely true. There was a backpacker called Doug. He was the one who wrote in, and he was working in Miami when all of his possessions were stolen during this. This Greyhound bus trip. And he literally had nothing apart from what he was wearing. And so when he went back to his hostel, there was this New Yorker called Ron Biederman, who was very kind, took pity on him, had some spare clothes, and then gave him this pair. This. This shirt. Sorry, this. This shirt that had, like, these very. These kind of very broad, red, dull stripes. This is Ron Biederman shirt. Anyway, Doug, he eventually returns to the UK he stores the shirt in this box in his attic. He doesn't think of it at all. Two years later, Doug is heading to London, and he needed some temporary clothes to. To. To wear. So he gets this shirt out of his attic, he puts the shirt on, and he's. He's at this backpacker's hostel in Earl's Court, and he goes down for dinner, and he starts talking to this girl who was sitting opposite him, and she said that she just got back from. From a hostel in Israel. And then Doug, who was making conversation, was like, oh, I knew this guy from New York who spent a lot of times in hostels and had been in Israel as well. And. And, you know, I think he. Like, he'd been around that area. And she was like, oh, my gosh, I know him. Do you mean Ron Biederman? She was like. And he's like, yeah, I do. I do mean Ron Biederman. So they had this, like, strange connection, and the girl was really stunned. And then Doug says, oh, I always remembered Ron Biederman because he gave me the shirt that I'm wearing right now. And then she is like, you are kidding me. Because I. He gave me a pair of trousers that I am currently wearing. And she stands up, and they are wearing the matching set, the matching shirt and trousers combo that Ron Biederman gave. Both of them in completely different countries. One in Miami, one in Israel. They met in London. That's good. That one. That's good.
- [43:02]
A
I'm kind of not that amazed by it, Hannah. I guess maybe I'm thinking about it too much, and I'm like, these people are clearly backpacking around and staying at hostels all the time. They're running into a lot of people, and the kind of person who's going to lend you their shirt or give you their shirt is a very social person who's going to be remembered and give a lot of gifts around. Like you're talking about two years later. There's a lot of. A lot of time for you to run into someone else who knows the same backpacker you did and was also a recipient of their largesse.
- [43:34]
B
Well, there's also. There's also. How many backpackers are there in the world? How many opportunities are there in the world. This sort of a survivorship bias to these stories because the ones that are really extraordinary end up being the ones that are told over and over and over again.
- [43:49]
A
Oh, for sure.
- [43:50]
C
Yeah.
- [43:50]
A
Here, here's a. Here's a coincidence. Just if you don't mind me telling you, a little quick one, please. Our neighbors, one of our neighbors, we hadn't really met for like a year. We just never saw them. And just like last week, my wife saw a woman outside the house and was like, oh, hey, how's it going? What's your name? And the neighbor said that her name was Marty. And my wife is like, oh, that's so similar to my name. My wife's name is Marnie, like the Hitchcock film M A R N I E. Marnie. So Marnie and Marty, turns out they both have husbands named Michael. So we've got Marnie and Michael and Marty and Michael.
- [44:29]
B
That's amazing. That's amazing. That's one type of coincidence that you could have discovered with your neighbor. But maybe it could be that you both went outside and you were both wearing the same pair of shoes, or it could be that your, your daughters have the same name or that your daughters were born on the same day, you know?
- [44:45]
A
Right, right.
- [44:46]
B
A number of different possibilities that you would accept as a strange. As a strange coincidence is gigantic. Super gigantic. The thing I like to think about is of all of the times that I've met my, you know, my neighbor when I was in Kenya, right. And I saw them in Kenya, was like, wow, this is weird. For all of those times, I like to think about the much greater number of times that I must have just missed somebody. I'm just like a near miss coincidence.
- [45:16]
A
Yeah.
- [45:17]
B
And if you could only calculate those, those I think would really blow you away.
- [45:21]
A
Yeah. I've had this idea for a while, ever since I saw signs, you know, that like, alien movie. But coincidences can be scary. And I think that movie must involve some coincidences or something because I thought there should be a horror film where what's scary is that a bunch of coincidence incidences start happening. No one gets hurt. It's just like, wait, why is everything working out? Why is everything related? What is going on? That. That could be really unsettling.
- [45:49]
B
I need to watch it. I haven't seen it.
- [45:51]
A
I haven't seen it in so long. But I remember being inspired to do like a whole horror film about coincidences because in signs, coincidences are part of the story. Guys, let us know in the comments. Leave us a comment. Leave us a lot of comments.
- [46:05]
B
Please do tell us your coincidences. I would like to. I genuinely would like to see them.
- [46:09]
A
I would love to hear those.
- [46:10]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Yes, thank you. That would be great.
- [46:14]
A
All.
- [46:14]
B
All. However many hundreds of thousands of you that watch this, please tell us your coincidences.
- [46:19]
A
There'll be coincidences between them.
- [46:21]
B
You know what I mean? Like if everyone's got.
- [46:23]
C
Anyway.
- [46:23]
A
So, yeah, leave them in the comments below and continue emailing us questions. We love these. And one of these days I will be able to interact with you on Reddit.
- [46:32]
B
So.
- [46:32]
A
So join us there at R Slash. The rest is science.
- [46:36]
B
What I'm going to do to all of the people who've written coincidences in the bottom is I'm just going to go through and everyone and comment. Yeah. Law of large numbers. Yeah, Law of large numbers. Yeah, Law of large numbers over and over and over again.
- [46:46]
A
We will explain every single one of them. Well, Hannah will. I don't. I don't promise to.
- [46:51]
B
If there's any that I can't explain, then we'll definitely include them. I'm happy to be proved wrong. I'm happy to be proved wrong. As ever, as always, please do send us in your questions, your coincidences. Hey, why not to therestoscience gohanger.com and we will see you next week.
- [47:05]
A
See you later.
- [47:21]
C
You know those tiny back to school emergencies that somehow become your problem? That's why I love Ubereats. You can order school supplies, snacks and lunchbox essentials for $5 or less. So when your kid casually drops, I don't like peanut butter anymore. Or I need five green highlighters for a project due tomorrow, Uber Eats has you covered. Get everything you need for back to school today from your favorite brands like Aldi and Staples and Uber eats. Order now. Ends 97, $5 or less before taxes and fees. Select items only. Availability varies. See app for details. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
- [48:07]
B
And breathe.
- [48:08]
C
Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
- [48:19]
B
1-800-contacts. I want to date with Rawls Carty says Rawls Rocker asks.
- [48:26]
C
This is the love story of real
- [48:28]
B
hinge couple Carty and Rocca. Written and read by me, Nicola Dinan. Listen to the free audiobook now.