The Science Pawdcast

Season 6 Episode 32: Maternal Care, Canine Generosity, and How Earth Came To Life with Ferris Jabr

• Jason Zackowski • Season 6 • Episode 32

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This week, we unravel the indispensable role doulas play in maternal health, highlighting fresh findings from the American Journal of Public Health. Learn how these incredible individuals provide vital support, helping mothers navigate the pivotal phases of pregnancy and postpartum with better health outcomes and stronger family bonds.

Next, we turn our attention to the world of canine generosity—ever wondered if your furry friend has a giving nature? Join us as we examine a fascinating study on how dogs engage in pro-social behavior, and their tendency to share food rewards with familiar companions.

We wrap up with a thrilling exploration of science writing and the career of our guest, Ferris Jabr. From traversing the Amazon rainforest to uncovering Earth's oxygen-rich history, Ferris shares an inspiring journey from a double major at Tufts to a celebrated science communicator. His anecdotes paint a vivid picture of the adventures and challenges faced while crafting compelling narratives that bridge the gap between science and the public. Whether scaling towers or diving into ancient plankton, these stories offer a captivating glimpse into the wonders of our planet.

Thanks for coming back week after week!

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Speaker 1:

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there.

Speaker 1:

This is episode 32 of season six. Oh man, it snowed and Bernoulli got his first taste of snow. It was a tiny skiff and it's all gone now, but he got the cold weather boost that Bunsen gets when there's snow in the air. It was really adorable. Of course, we want it not to snow right away, but we were waiting to see what Bernoulli would do, because he's a Bernese Mountain Dog and if he's anything like Bunsen, snow is going to be his jam. So that's just a little cute story to start the show.

Speaker 1:

And in science news, chris and I are going to break down a new study that showed just how important doulas are in mother health after a baby's born. In pet science we look at an adorable study that tested if dogs were generous. It's really cute, and our guest in Ask an Expert is author Phyllis Jaber, who talks to us about his book about the beginning of life on Earth and our planet. It's a really mind-bending interview. All right, the bad joke. What does a joke have in common with a pregnancy? Well, they both need a good delivery. Okay, all right, let's get on with the show. There's no time like science time. This week in science news, chris and I are going to talk about a new study from the American Journal of Public Health about doulas. I've never heard the term doula until about two years ago three years ago, when Melissa, our niece, started talking about maybe becoming one. Are you familiar with doulas, chris?

Speaker 2:

I am only because Melissa did choose to use a doula for Raffi's birth and prior to that I think she was interested in the whole process of becoming a doula and Rafi's four. So maybe because it was so successful she was looking into it as a potential career.

Speaker 1:

I know for our two kids we did not use a doula.

Speaker 2:

No, we did go to birthing classes, like Lamaze, to learn some breathing and what to expect. Other than that, we just went in with what the doctor said and what that class said and we had babies.

Speaker 1:

I don't think I helped very much in that process, like it was great that I was there for support, but the whole actually having the baby that was 100% on your shoulders and you did a great job, chris.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, thank you, and of course it's. You were very supportive when you were there. Now, we were there for a little while, so you might have been a little bit sleepy at parts, but when it counted, when the rubber hit the road, you were there, you were available and you were on point.

Speaker 1:

Okay, chris, you know a little bit more about doulas than me. So before we get to the study what's going on? What does a doula do?

Speaker 2:

So before we get to the study what's going on? What does a doula do? Plus, depending on where you are, but I think this is just a general term. They offer non-medical support, which can include physical and emotional and informational assistance during the pregnancy and child, also with postpartum care.

Speaker 1:

That's a big one that I think there's starting to be more of an awareness about is like, after baby there's postpartum, like depression that some women have and also just getting through that time period. I know, like before, like even like Adam of course. Adam's what? 19? We had Adam 19 years ago. I never knew anything about that Like that. I don't think they talked about postpartum depression or anything like that in our classes, so that's something that's relatively new on the radar of the average person.

Speaker 2:

And you're right, we haven't had babies in a very long time, but we should say that we are Canadian and so we went through Alberta Health. We live in the province of Alberta and after babies are born, our public health nurses come into our homes to check up on us. So they check to see I don't want to get too graphic, but they feel around your stomach and making sure that you're not getting blood clots and they actually do ask some questions to see how you are doing and how you are coping.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's get into the study. The study, as I mentioned, comes from the American Journal of Public Health. So for all of our Canadian, European and listeners in Australia and other parts of the world, this is American data and other parts of the world. This is American data and the data comes from Elevance Health in Washington DC. They analyzed Medicaid data from nine US states and they compared the health outcomes of individuals who used doulas versus those who did not, and it was a relatively large study where they had an even number of 722 people who used a doula and 722 people who did not.

Speaker 2:

So the key outcomes of the study indicate that the doula users had a 47% lower risk of having a C-section compared to non-doula users and, interestingly, doula users also had a 29% lower risk of preterm birth. And lastly, doula users were 46% more likely to attend a postpartum checkup, and this could be because of the relationship that's built between the doula and the new family built between the doula and the new family.

Speaker 1:

That 46% seems like pretty high. Why is it so important to attend those checkups? Like that's after baby, right, Chris?

Speaker 2:

So after childbirth, new parents need to adjust to having life with a newborn and sometimes that adjustment takes some time. And it's okay to reach out for help if it's not going as well as you expected, because at that time I can speak for myself. There are a lot of hormones going back, shifting and going back to, I guess, a baseline normal for yourself, but it's out of whack there for a little bit. And again, this study comes from the United States but much of maternal morbidity and mortality occurs in the weeks following birth, making postpartum checkups critical.

Speaker 1:

So in the States, doula care that is covered by Medicaid has expanded significantly. So I guess it's like state by state. 10 years ago, only two states offered Medicaid coverage for doulas and as of 2023, 17 states did. I'd have to double check what happens in Canada, Chris, if Alberta Health or Health Canada covers you getting a doula, but it looks like it's expanding in the United States.

Speaker 2:

Right, I did speak with Melissa about that and she said it's not covered at the time that she had Rafi and the going rate was between 700 and 1400 Canadian dollars.

Speaker 1:

So that's expensive, and if you were in a state where it's not covered then it's probably less likely people would use that. So as we get closer to the study, I think there's some questions that perhaps people who use the doula are more better off like they're in a higher socioeconomic standing, and that of course, also translate with better health of baby and mom.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and while doulas cannot address all aspects of maternal mortality, they do provide that vital advocacy and decision-making support which potentially improves maternal health outcomes in the United States.

Speaker 1:

If you've never heard of a doula before, or you heard from a friend or you know somebody who is pregnant and they've got a doula before, or you heard from a friend or you know somebody who is pregnant and they've got a doula, here is a little bit of current research that shows just maybe how important they are. Having a baby is a big deal, Chris. I think moms need all the help they can get 100%.

Speaker 1:

That's science news for this week. This week in pet science we are going to look at a very wholesome study that seemed to show that dogs have generosity to other dogs. Now, chris, you have a really fun story from our life with our own dogs about generosity.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was super cute. We had just recently brought Bernoulli home and he was getting used to everybody in the house and there was some growing pains with having the new puppy and maybe Beaker was a little bit sad that there was a new puppy and Bunsen was like wow, there's this bitey thing. Oh, no, repeat of Beaker, like Beaker 2.0. And we didn't realize that Bunsen had been sick. So there was a lot of things going on in our household and what we do is if we're cracking eggs, the dogs come running over and we've normally sometimes given them half an eggshell each, and now we had this Bernoulli puppy. But Bunsen and Beaker still wanted to come over for the cracked eggs, like when we were making waffles or whatever, and I gave the dogs an eggshell and Bunsen took his and gave it to Bernoulli.

Speaker 1:

I know that was so sweet. I'm wondering if a bit that Bunsen just didn't want it and he was like I'll give it to the little guy, or if he was actually being generous. We'll never know.

Speaker 2:

I'd like to believe that he was being generous.

Speaker 1:

Speaking of generosity, when you look historically at studies that have been done, it's generally been a human trait, but in animals such as chimpanzees and rats, generosity has also been exhibited. There's been some previous research done where they've shown that dogs share food rewards with familiar dogs by pulling a bar, but we're going to talk about a brand new study with a much more complicated setup. Chris, what's the new setup for this study?

Speaker 2:

The new setup required dogs to recognize objects or tokens and by recognizing the objects that would deliver food rewards. In this new setup, dogs were trained to touch a token for a personal food reward and I know Bunsen would be like, oh yeah, kool-aid man if he could be trained on that and then the dogs were. Then, after they recognized the personal food reward, they were taught to distinguish between two additional tokens one which delivered food to a partner dog and one that did not. And the experiment aimed to test if dogs still exhibited pro-social behavior prosocial behavior with the complex task. They also looked at if familiarity with the partner, the dog, the other dog, influenced their choices.

Speaker 1:

Pretty wholesome. So the experiment had two enclosures, one for the test dog and one for the receiving dog. In three different tests the researchers varied whether the receiving dog was visible just there, present or absent from the testing room, and the results were pretty stark. It showed that dogs were more likely to deliver food rewards when a familiar dog was present, with a preference for being able to see the dog visual contact, although they were also motivated when only another dog was present in the room I bet they could smell them probably because dogs can smell so far away and so probably like, hey, I smell, I smell my friend continuing.

Speaker 1:

The wholesome conclusion is that the very presence of another dog, even without visual contact, increased the test dog's likelihood to share food. Even without visual contact increased the test dog's likelihood to share food, so that complex task they would the token that represented sharing the food they were they're more likely to touch that even if they couldn't see the other dog. This phenomenon is called social facilitation and it suggests that animals perform tasks more readily when in the company of others.

Speaker 2:

So in the end, the conclusion, or the study, revealed that social facilitation plays a greater role in complex tasks, with familiar dogs receiving more rewards than unfamiliar ones, and so maybe that ties into their pack mentality and taking care of their own.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because I think of a dog like why would a dog decide to share a treat if it didn't know another dog was there? But if a dog's in the room they're like, oh, that dog maybe wants a treat too. And you're right, it could hearken back to their time in the wild or something deep within their DNA that it's in the best interests of everyone if everybody gets food, rather than just me.

Speaker 2:

And Bernoulli was so happy with the little eggshell that Bunsen shared with him.

Speaker 1:

But do you think that was a complex task? Would Bunsen figure out a token so Bernoulli could get a little treat? I think he would actually.

Speaker 2:

I do. I think after he Kool-Aid manned all his treats, he would be like, okay, I've had enough treats, I'm going to share now.

Speaker 1:

He'd look out for number one first, though.

Speaker 2:

I believe. So I think all dogs look out for number one first.

Speaker 1:

That's true. If I'm really hungry I'm, and I'm at a buffet I'm probably feeding myself first before I'm helping anybody else.

Speaker 2:

I'm not at that buffet because I've seen kids sneeze in the food.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, or stick their fingers in the food and lick it. I guess having little kids at a buffet is like bringing dogs to a buffet. You got to be careful.

Speaker 2:

You do have to be careful for all those counter surfers.

Speaker 1:

I guess the moral is that if you have enough for yourself, maybe share some with others, because dogs will too. That's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. In our show notes. Sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen Stuffy, the Beaker Stuffy and now the Ginger Stuffy. That's right, ginger the science cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show.

Speaker 1:

Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have author Ferris Jaber with me today. Ferris, how are you doing? I'm great. How are you? I'm so good. I'm really excited to talk to you specifically about your book Becoming Earth how Our Planet Came to Life. But before we get into that, where are you calling into the show from? Where are you in the world? I am in Portland, oregon. Oh, oregon's beautiful. I've been there a couple times in my life.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I have really fallen in love with the Pacific Northwest since I've lived here. I've been here for almost eight years now and just the sheer diversity of natural places you can reach with relative ease and accessibility is just so wonderful. So I really appreciate those resources here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're a little further east in Canada, alberta, but BC lower mainland is similar, I think, to Oregon and it's, yeah, like it's. The Pacific Northwest is just the coolest place to explore so many fun areas to hike in the biodiversity, you're right, it's pretty spectacular. Where did you live before that? If you don't mind me asking place to explore so many fun areas to hike and the biodiversity, you're right, is pretty spectacular. Where did you?

Speaker 4:

live before that, if you don't mind me asking so I grew up in the bay area in california and then I spent something like a decade on the east coast in the boston and new york city areas. That was for college and then grad school and then work and I knew I wanted to come back west eventually and I've always been a West coaster at heart and I think growing up on the West coast you get pampered and spoiled with the weather and the nature and everything.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's very cool. You lived on both coasts of the United States. That's not something everybody can say for sure. You mentioned you were on the East coast for your like education. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about your training in both science and writing, which is unique.

Speaker 4:

So I went to Tufts for undergrad and I was straddling the sciences and humanities. I thought I was going to go into some sort of research science. So I was taking a lot of psychology and biology and neuroscience, but then I was also taking a lot of English literature and writing. So I ended up with a double major in psychology and English literature. And I think I took enough bio courses to have a minor in biology. But they wouldn't actually grant you a minor if you already had two majors. But I remember there was this advanced seminar in animal behavior that I really wanted to take but you had to take all these prerequisites to get it there. So I was taking a bunch of bio classes for fun but also to get to this really advanced level seminar. And then I stumbled into the world of science communication because the PBS show Nova was filmed at a.

Speaker 4:

TV station yeah, not far from where I went to college and that sort of opened my eyes to this world of people that they communicate science, they learn about science, they talk about science, but they're not actually engaged in the day-to-day work of a scientist.

Speaker 1:

Were you a science kid growing up? Were you a stereotypical kid that loved science as a young person?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and specifically nature and wildlife. We went on a lot of field trips to natural spaces, like going to natural bridges in the Santa Cruz area, which is one of the stopovers for the monarch butterflies on their migration route Like that made a big impression on me seeing them hanging in the thousands at the time in these clusters on the eucalyptus leaves as they were resting and similar things like that, poking around tide pools and just even in my own backyard or even like in really close green spaces.

Speaker 4:

There was a lot of wildlife to see and interact with and I was very much a sort of bug collector kid but also really into books, like I was also the kind of kid that would read those programs, or like you would read a certain number of books.

Speaker 1:

And if you hit that number, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:

And then they basically your reward would be another book, Right? So I was really into that kind of thing too.

Speaker 1:

We had those. My, my, sorry I'm stuttering a bit, I'm. I was a pretty avid reader growing up and they had that at a library and I, I remember I like read so many books the first week there was no end. I like got to the end of the challenge and they're like, okay, you just, you just win, you win every day. Right, you'll get another book. I love me some tide pools, I tell you so I feel you there. They're magical for a grown man like myself to explore.

Speaker 1:

So for a kid they're twice as, three times as magical, right, yeah? So from there, looking at your bio, you've done some writing all over the place in different publications.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, done some writing all over the place in different publications. Yeah, I, after college, I went to a journalism program at New York University that you specialized in science and environmental reporting and that took about 16 months and as part of it, I did some internships with real science magazines like Scientific American. And then, after graduating, I had my first reporting job as an entry level reporter with New Scientist magazine, which is basically the UK's version of Scientific American. They actually had they have a couple satellite offices in the US, so I was working for one of those. And then Scientific American had an opening, so I was able to go back there and have a junior editor position there, and I worked there for a number of years.

Speaker 4:

But I really wanted to focus full time on writing and I wanted to work my way up to writing longer pieces and eventually, books, and there are very few full time staff writer positions in the world there's very few of those and so the great majority of writers are freelancers. So I eventually made the decision to go freelance, leave behind the staff jobs and go freelance full time so I could really focus on writing, and that's what I've been doing since, I think, about 2014. And as a freelancer, I have ranged widely throughout, from writing for many different publications and I think in about 2018, I became a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and that's where I've done a lot of my big magazine work since then, and then the book's been the most recent development.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I would imagine it was a bit terrifying taking that leap. Hey, you get to do something that maybe you enjoy, but you're a mercenary.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I really. It took me a while to build up the confidence to make that leap to freelancing. Just feel like I knew enough people in the science journalism world that I had enough editors that I could pitch in case one of them didn't want the idea, maybe another would. And in the very beginning, like when I was first graduating, I was so anxious about how am I going to make a living doing this Because growing up I didn't know a single professional writer and as much as I loved reading and writing, it seemed like a very bonkers thing to try to actually make a living as a writer.

Speaker 1:

And I just needed a lot of you.

Speaker 4:

Holy cow, I'm getting goosebumps thinking about that in my own career, doing something like that Very brave, yeah, and I just needed a lot of time and experience to build up that confidence and learn how to do it, how to actually make a living as a freelancer.

Speaker 4:

And it is, it's feasible, but it is very challenging, especially in the writing world, and I think there's there are freelance creative professionals in all kinds of professions and I think a lot of us share the same challenges and you give up. It's a huge trade off right, because you don't get the guaranteed income or the benefits that come with a sort of typical waged nine to five job. But you do get this immense, a much greater degree of freedom and control over your time and your life. So your hours are your own, your workload is your own, you get your vacation time is your own, it's under your control. But that means it's also entirely your responsibility to make sure that you are earning enough year by year and that you are figuring out either a way to pay for, paying out of pocket for healthcare and especially with the American system and all that. So that's like the kid on the high dive right.

Speaker 1:

It takes a bit of courage to jump. You might need to be up there a while. So this kind of brings us towards your book Becoming Earth how Our Planet Came to Life, and I think what's so cool about this book is that you've got the chops as a writer, but also with some pretty serious science training, to bring it together and for folks. I know you're an author and you don't want to give away everything about your book, but I was wondering if you could talk to us like some of the main themes of the book.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, absolutely. For a really long time, western science has characterized Earth as basically this giant rock that happens to have some life on it because it was in the right place in the cosmos. And science has really segregated geology from biology, the animate from the animate, and we're now starting to see a huge shift within science where all of that is really changing quite dramatically. Scientists now recognize that Earth and life continually co-evolve, they change each other, that we shouldn't look at the evolution of life and then the changes the planet has undergone as separate processes, but rather as a single intertwined, integrated evolutionary process.

Speaker 4:

And this idea yeah, it really is mind-blowing when you really get into it and this idea that we can think of planet Earth as a single, self-regulating living system, that there is such a thing as a living planet versus a dead planet, that concept, which was once really harshly criticized and ridiculed within science, is now really gaining a lot more acceptance and a lot of scientists are really starting to think about planets within this paradigm, that that they are, planets can come to life, not just that life happens on them, but that the planet as a whole is coming to life.

Speaker 4:

So that's really what the book explores and it chronicles how life of all kinds microbes, animals, plants and fungi have radically altered the planet over the past several billion years and have really made Earth into the planet we know today. And many of the defining features of the planet come from life or were influenced by life. So our blue sky, our breathable atmosphere, wildfires, mineral diversity, ocean chemistry, perhaps even the continents these are all products of life to some extent. So if it weren't for life, earth would be utterly unrecognizable to us.

Speaker 1:

The geography of Earth, the abiotic factors, the non-living factors would be completely different, exactly.

Speaker 4:

So life has so fundamentally altered the basic geology and chemistry and structure of the planet that it would simply not be recognizable to us without those transformations wrought by life. If we went back 4 billion years or so, Earth probably had this hazy orange atmosphere with no oxygen, and it was a vast ocean planet that was dotted by volcanic islands but had no substantial landmasses. And life was really integral to the transformations that made it into the blue-green marble, the cosmic oasis that we inhabit today.

Speaker 1:

Huh, and this is in your book. You highlight this as Earth system science, like a new way of thinking about biology, geology, intertwining.

Speaker 4:

Exactly so. Earth system science is this relatively new field that kind of got going in the 80s and 90s and took a while to really find its footholds and establish itself formally. And it explicitly takes a holistic perspective. So it's explicitly studying the inanimate and the animate components of the planet as a single integrated system. It's really interested in the interconnections between everything and not just trying to separate things out or taking that more reductionist approach.

Speaker 1:

I am so intrigued by this. I know you gave us kind of some broad examples. Would you mind giving us, like a specific example of an organism and the geology, the abiotic factors that it affected? Yeah, absolutely, thank you.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I think one. Probably the single most profound transformation that our planet went through would be the oxygenation of the ocean and atmosphere. Some three to four billion years ago there was essentially no free oxygen, no O2 molecules, in the atmosphere, whereas today we have 21% oxygen in the atmosphere. And that change has a lot to do with cyanobacteria, these ancient photosynthetic microbes that they're the ones that evolved the photosynthesis we are all familiar with today, the kind of photosynthesis that takes in super common resources sunlight, water, carbon dioxide and puts out oxygen as a byproduct. So over billions of years it was the collective actions of cyanobacteria, and then later other photosynthetic life like algae and land plates, that raised the level of oxygen in the atmosphere from essentially zero to 21 percent. And when they did that, they changed everything else about the planet, because once you have gone from a essentially no oxygen atmosphere to a high oxygen atmosphere, you've revolutionized the chemistry of the whole planet and that starts to change right, yeah, you're right?

Speaker 1:

yeah'm so sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. No, it's fine. I'm a chemist myself. I teach high school chemistry. I just dawned on me that you need oxygen for so many chemical reactions. I'm so sorry, Ferris, keep going.

Speaker 4:

No, that's exactly right, and it is really fascinating to think of Earth as this ongoing, bubbling chemical experiment. And that was a massive, massive change. And so, like you're saying, there's so many things that cannot happen chemically or minerally or geologically without the presence of oxygen and sufficient quantities of oxygen. You cannot have fire if you do not have oxygen in the atmosphere and also something to burn. And before life oxygenated the atmosphere, and before land plants came onto the continents and spread over them, fire was not possible. There was nothing to burn and there wasn't enough oxygen for fire to happen.

Speaker 4:

And then Earth has something like 6,000 mineral species, which is vastly more than Mars, mercury and the moon combined. So we have a much more diverse and rich mineral repertoire than any other planetary body. More than half of those mineral species require a high oxygen environment to exist. So most of the minerals, including many of the ones that we really love and depend on, need that oxygen-rich environment. And then think about what that means for evolutionary history. What would human evolutionary history have been without fire? Right, it would have been completely different. We would not be talking to each other through computers right now.

Speaker 1:

We would have had a left go.

Speaker 4:

Definitely and in fact, high oxygen itself may have spurred or helped in some way the evolution of multicellular life, Because when you are able to use oxygen as a multicellular organism, you can. It's much more energy efficient. Basically, you can do things that you can't do with no oxygen, and so that allows you to evolve and more energy hungry cells, more complex organelles, much more complex overall biological forms. And the rise in oxygen coincides with the emergence of multicellular life and then the evolution of much greater biological complexity. Life itself is having a profound effect on the planet's structure and chemistry, and then it is then going on to influence the future evolution of life.

Speaker 1:

So it's really it's these incredible feedback loops that are continually evolving the planet, which is a very different way from the older, more classical thinking, which is that life just responds to the changes in the planet, not that it's profoundly changing the planet itself volcanoes that you mentioned and I'm sure there are cartoons I've seen where, when they blurp out the lava, it creates fires and I'm just realizing now from talking to you that that's a bunch of BS, because there wasn't things to burn and there wasn't oxygen back then.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it's so true. In ancient Earth there was absolutely intense volcanic activity. There were lots of asteroid strikes. There were undoubtedly there were super hot things. There were sparks, but there was nothing that could create a lasting wildfire or a fire as we understand it, because there wasn't oxygen. There wasn't really anything that was dry and combustible on land. That's right.

Speaker 1:

It would give off radiant heat, it would have its own energy, but not from fire. That's yeah, that is so wild. Uh, I do explain that to my day job. I'm a chemistry teacher and sometimes when we talk about other the different. There's a moon titan and it's like it's a hydrocarbon moon. Kids are always like what would happen if you lit a match on titan? Would the whole moon explode? And I'm like nope, there's no oxygen, not gonna happen right happen, Then the wheels start going right.

Speaker 4:

So basically on early Earth.

Speaker 1:

That's wild. I didn't make the connection.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and that's also another crazy thing about the history of oxygen is in the Carboniferous, like 300 million years ago, oxygen was something like 30 to 35% of the atmosphere, so significantly higher than today, and back then we had dragonflies that were as big as pigeons and we had millipedes that were the size of surfboards, and the thinking is that these arthropods and insects, they were enjoying this oxygen rich environment, which actually made it easier for them to fly and easier for them to breathe through their skin, because that's how they breathe is they just absorb gases through their exoskeletons. And we also had massive raging wildfires that were fueled by these super high oxygen levels, much bigger and much vaster and more destructive than anything you know we see today, so that that has fluctuated throughout earth history we got so many wildfires problems right now, like we had a horrible one in alberta a week, two weeks ago, three weeks ago the in jasper it's like a tourist place, I know it's horrifying california's got fires too.

Speaker 1:

It's horrifying to think it would have been way worse.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, during the time yeah, and that's what another one of my chapters is about is the the role of fire in the earth system and the ecology of fire, and how that relates to the current wildfire crisis that you're describing, because, especially within the Western United States, so much of that is due to eradicating indigenous cultures and traditions, because indigenous peoples really understood how to use fire and beneficial ways to shape the landscapes, and also to this legacy of fire suppression in the West, where we put out every single little wildfire as soon as we detected it, whereas fire has co-evolved with photosynthetic life for hundreds of millions of years and is meant to be a part of these ecosystems.

Speaker 4:

And so we ended up creating these highly congested forests, these tinderboxes that just go up in flames. The second that it's too dry or that somebody throws a cigarette butt or a power line fails or somebody lights a firework in the wrong place or something like that. It's fascinating to think about fire as a beneficial force, and then we come in and ruin all of that and, in partly at least, create the crisis that we're dealing with now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, stupid humans building giant cities and forests. That didn't happen back then, right, no, um. And also we got rid of beavers. That was a big.

Speaker 4:

That was another big problem.

Speaker 1:

Yes, love beavers. We've got a beaver that lives in our creek. The internet is just obsessed with um. His name is norbert. Oh, yeah, he lives on and yeah, we've learned a lot about beaver from having him around or her, we don't know.

Speaker 4:

So yeah, oh, wow, have you? Have you had my friend ben goldfarb on the show? No, is he a beaver person? Yeah, he wrote this amazing book called eager. It's all about the science and history of beavers. You should definitely.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I would love to have a beaver scientist because, like our beaver, is like a big thing on social media right now. Oh yeah, he'd be perfect for that. Okay, all right, I'll cut this, but if you could if you have time, of course send me some contact information oh yeah definitely.

Speaker 1:

Oh thanks, ferris, you've spoken. My mind is like reeling from everything that you've talked so far. Is any of this shocking to you? Did you hit something in your research where you're like, oh my God, I didn't know this. Is there anything like that you could share with us without spoiling your book?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, absolutely so. The seed for my book was learning that the Amazon rainforest does not just passively receive the rain on which it depends and for which it is named. It actually generates about half of the rain that falls on its canopy each year, and the way this happens is so fascinating and so cool, because it goes way beyond trees and plants. Pulling water from the soil and then releasing what they don't need to the atmosphere. That's a big part of it. Forests are saturating the atmosphere of their canopies with water, but at the same time, the Amazon is spewing these invisible plumes of what scientists call bioaerosols. They're tiny biological particles, things like pollen, grains, fungal spores, microbes, even fragments of insect shells and bits and pieces of leaves and bark. And the wind sweeps all these tiny bioaerosols into the atmosphere, and they are what provides something for all of that water vapor to condense onto, and that is how clouds form.

Speaker 1:

They're the nucleation point. They're the nucleation point right.

Speaker 4:

Exactly yeah, they're cloud condensation nuclei.

Speaker 1:

No way.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. So the Amazon is like this big cloud factory, as scientists have described it no way effective ice nucleators on its cell surface that we have ever discovered. These are proteins on its cell surface that can arrange free-floating water molecules into a solid ice crystal. So when these bacteria get swept up into the atmosphere, they encourage cloud water to freeze into ice. That makes clouds heavier and larger and more likely to burst and then fall as precipitation. And in fact, most rain that falls on land begins as ice crystals and larger and more likely to burst and then fall as precipitation. And in fact, most rain that falls on land begins as ice crystals and clouds and then melts on the way down. And that's even true in hot tropical regions. So these bioaerosols and these microbes, they're hugely important for the water cycle. And in places with really dense vegetation and dense life, like the Amazon, life itself is essentially summoning rain. It is creating weather, it is conjuring the very kind of rain it needs to thrive in that region that is insane.

Speaker 1:

We get stretches in where we live where it is so incredibly cold. I do that throw the boiling water in the air thing and it turns to snow. You've probably I don't know if you've seen that before yeah and that's what I explained to kids is like there's dust in the air there's little things in the air that the, the water grabs hold of, and it's a nucleation point. That's so wild that the forest makes that, or bacteria, the bacteria from the forest.

Speaker 3:

So I guess, did you know?

Speaker 1:

that before you wrote the book or as you were researching, you were like what?

Speaker 4:

I learned that at least 10 years ago or so, and that was the seed that for me.

Speaker 4:

That's when I started to really change the way I think about the relationship between earth and life, because that was not the biology or ecology that I had learned in high school or even in college. That was very new for me at the time and I was like, if that is true for the Amazon, where else is that true? How else is that true? How else is life dramatically changing its environment on a planetary scale? Right, because the Amazon spans a continent and so it's affecting weather not just above its canopy but around the world as well, and affecting global climate. Indeed, that's when I started searching for these other examples, and over time I realized that there was enough here to substantiate a book and that all of these examples, interconnected, really did constitute this major shift, this major conceptual shift, and it seemed to me as a science writer that this was not something that was familiar to the general public, that it hadn't really had its selfish gene moment or its microbiome moment. So through the book, I want to help bring these insights to greater awareness.

Speaker 1:

I love that and, speaking of the Pacific Northwest, something that my question to you maybe we don't have the answer Is that something that the forests to the west of us and where you live do? I have been wondering this.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I've been wondering the same thing. So the Amazon is by far the best studied example of this phenomenon, and I think it is helped by the fact that it is a tropical forest. At the equator you already have such an intense presence of sunlight, intense humidity evaporation is really sped up. In fact, the equator seems to be where some of our longest lived ecosystems are. The Amazon has endured for more than 50 million years, so I think something similar is undoubtedly happening in more temperate forests, like on the Pacific Northwest. We have rainforests as well, but they're temperate rainforests, they're not tropical rainforests. I think just anywhere you have dense vegetation, you will definitely have these microbes and these bioaerosols. It's just inescapable. But maybe some of the details are different and we just haven't learned that quite yet, because this is still fairly new as far as science goes. Scientists are still actively investigating these phenomena.

Speaker 1:

Ah, I'm a scientist at heart, right? I guess maybe I'm a scientist, I don't know. I'm like the. I'm something of a scientist myself, kind of guy from Spider-Man. So yeah, that's. I'm curious about that question. Now, as we wrap up talking about your book, one of the things I love asking authors are two things. Did you hit any roadblocks? Was there a sticking point?

Speaker 4:

a frustration point, and was there a section that you had the most fun writing? Yes, and actually those two things are related. So I officially started working on this book in the summer of 2019. And then the beginning of 2020 rolled around and, because of the pandemic, and then the beginning of 2020 rolled around and because of the pandemic, so many things shut down. There were a lot of trips research trips, reporting trips that got canceled or severely delayed.

Speaker 4:

There was this particular research station in the Amazon, called the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory. It contains the tallest structure in South America, which is this research tower in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. It's 1066 feet tall and scientists from around the world visited to study gases and particles above the rainforest canopy, study their relationship to the water. Half years for that research station to reopen and to reallow visitors, but I finally made it there and that was a really exciting and fun and important trip for me. When I finally got to the base of the tower and I was staring up, I started to question if I'd made a mistake, because it is very intimidating to see the full extent of this tower, and I should explain that it's not like the Eiffel Tower or a tourist attraction where there is a safety barrier wrapping the whole thing or safety nets to prevent anybody from falling. It's a very bare bones structure. It's almost like the kind of ladder you would climb to reach a utility line or a telephone line, but just a really tall version of that.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my God.

Speaker 4:

And you are harnessed to a railing, but there are still large enough gaps that you could slip through one of the gaps and fall and break a limb or injure yourself. And they're also very worried that somebody will be paralyzed by fear halfway up and then cling and not be able to keep going, and then they have to do some complicated procedures to get that person safely back down again. So they ask you over and over again are you sure you can do this? Are you sure you're not afraid of heights? And by the 10th time they asked me, I wasn't as confident as I had been on the way over to Brazil.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, it's like that briefcase show with Howie Mandel and they kept trying to like psych the person out, kind of thing. By the end you're like I don't know if you want briefcase 42 or something kind of thing by the end you're like I don't know if you want briefcase 42 or something, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4:

Fortunately, I was with a bunch of scientists that have done this so many times that they like for them it's an old hat type thing and they're very confident.

Speaker 4:

So I took a lot of courage from them and just followed suit and I actually found it to be a very yeah, I found it to just be a very enthralling experience because you get to see the rainforest from perspectives that you never have experienced before, because when you're on the ground, you're just overwhelmed by the density and lushness of life all around you and you're like you're examining this tiny piece of moss or whatever, but at 1000 feet in the air, you see the rainforest as a living network. It stretches further than you can see with your naked eye and you can see how it is this immense, dense, interconnected network that just sprawls and sprawls across this whole continent and that really it was a wonderful sort of visual manifestation of everything that I'd been learning for the book, understanding that so much of what I was seeing the blue sky, the breathable atmosphere, the clouds, the rain that was about to happen, the soil it was all from life or influenced by life or a product of life to some extent.

Speaker 1:

What an almost spiritual experience. Hey, yeah, that's so cool. I was going to say, if you had to do it solo, because I don't know if I'd be able to do that, Just go up there by yourself. But it sounds like you had some people you went up with.

Speaker 4:

Is there a platform at the top or you just have to cling off the side of it and look out kind of like you're I don't know like a pigeon hanging on the side there is a small observation deck at the top, so once you get up there you have to briefly unhook your harness and then you reattach it to the top most railing and there's enough room to walk around and take photos and you can sit down and rest for a little bit and such, and speaking of actually of pigeons and animals, there are a lot of animals are attracted to this tower, so there's a lot of birds that will roost on it at night, so a lot of it is covered in the flaky remains of their droppings and then snakes will actually crawl up the steel die wires and then and a nest in the middle of the tower.

Speaker 4:

So yeah, there's, and there's a lot of like insects will build nests up and down the tower as well, so a lot of animal life takes advantage of it too you're halfway up and you get attacked by hornets or some kind of like rain, did they?

Speaker 1:

is that a possibility? Did they talk about? All right, like there could be a snake, so just watch out.

Speaker 4:

They did. They mentioned it. I think they've encountered them before and we did see some. It's a very small wasp nest but there was nothing like super threatening or dangerous when I was there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, cause you don't really have a lot of choice. Halfway up you go down, cause if you stick around you're going to get stung. Or you go down because if you stick around you're gonna get stung. Yeah, what? And obviously you mentioned you, did you take? A camera yourself on camera like a decent camera, yeah, pretty cool pictures? Yeah, definitely did they go on the gram hashtag best view ever, something like that, yeah I'm a relatively new.

Speaker 4:

I'm a relatively like newly active instagram user. I've had, like, just a private account for a long time. I opened it before the book came out and I tried to be tried to learn the ropes a little more and post more. But yeah, I do. I have some amazing shots of the forest and then some goofy shots of me with the harness and my hard hat on and everything up there. And, yeah, I was very lucky to be able to do some really incredible reporting trips for this book.

Speaker 4:

And the inverse one to this experience was going a mile close to a mile beneath the surface of the planet in this former gold mine in South Dakota where biologists hunt for these really weird microbes that inhabit the planet's deep crust. So that was just a actually just a 10 minute elevator ride gets you to the bottom, the most, the lowest level that's accessible of this mine, and then you're down there almost a mile beneath the surface and there's about three Empire State buildings worth of rock above you. But you're restricted to these really dark, narrow tunnels and you have to travel in these really tiny little rail cars along these old rail lines and stuff. So it's a very unusual experience, but I got this descending into the earth experience and then climbing way up high experience.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's cool. Was it deep enough that it got hot? Because I've seen documentaries about like deep mines and you're obviously getting, you're punching through the crust, you're getting close to the gooeyness, temperatures will go up.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it was really interesting because there were very extreme and variable environments down there. So there was one area that was ridiculously hot and stifling and humid. It was like 99% humidity, extremely hot, whereas the surface world at the time this was December or January it was below freezing and snowing up there and you could only remain in that chamber for a few minutes at a time before you had to back away. And then there were other alcoves that were much larger and better ventilated and wind and air were continually sweeping through them, so they were actually quite cool. So there was quite a discrepancy, yeah, oh, that's so neat.

Speaker 1:

What cool experiences to take and then add to the writing within the book. That's wild. You know, as we move to our standard questions, your book can be found where like people who are listening to this, I'm sure like, oh man, I need to get me this book. Where can people grab it?

Speaker 4:

It should be available just about anywhere books are sold. It's a lot of local indie bookstores have it in stock right now. It's certainly on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and the really big booksellers, and there's also places like. I believe bookshoporg will let you choose a local bookstore that you want to support if you order from them. So yeah, if you just punch in the title and my name online, it should come up somewhere.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. So we'll have a link to Becoming Earth, how Our Planet Came to Life in the show notes. I'll pick a couple of places. Amazon is usually one of them that I put in the show notes and obviously, if you've got a bookstore close to you, check it out. Maybe it's there. We have some standard questions we ask all our guests about on the science podcast. One is for our guests to share a pet story from their life, either current or previous. We would love to hear what's going on. Could you do that for us, ferris?

Speaker 4:

Sure, yeah. So my partner Ryan and I currently have a eight and a half year old Brittany Spaniel named Jack, and he is a very true to his breed. He's a very rambunctious, high energy individual. We go on walks at least three to four times a day. He needs a lot of exercise and he has also over the years really developed a fondness for opening packages and parcels and presents. He loves to tear through wrapping paper and boxes and such, but he understands that he's not supposed to do that whenever he wants that there are certain packages are for him and certain ones are not. If we give him one to open, then it's okay.

Speaker 4:

One Christmas a few years ago I got him this plush beach ball toy and I went into my room and I wrapped it in secret and I put it under the tree and it was just supposed to stay there until Christmas morning. And then one day before Christmas morning I woke up to this soft whining outside my bedroom door and I went into the hallway and Jack was sitting there with the beach ball plushie in his mouth and this huge grin on his face, just this mixture of extreme delight and guilt. And it was just making his little pleasurable whining sounds and I went downstairs and sure enough, he had singled out the one present that was for him and ripped open that present alone and then brought. He did not see me bring that present home or wrap that present or anything like that, and it was just another wrapped object under the tree, and yet he went straight for that one specifically.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. What a fun story Now. Were you a little upset? Are you more bemused rather than what a fun story. Now were you a little upset. Or are you more bemused rather than annoyed with the little guy?

Speaker 4:

I was mostly amused. It was genuinely hilarious that he had done this and then he had come to us. He had come to us to show us what he had done, knowing that he wasn't really supposed to do that. So Christmas came a little early for him that year and that's okay. I was really just. I was impressed at the same time that he had managed to identify that present that was for him specifically.

Speaker 1:

That's a cool story. I love it. Britney Spaniels are neat dogs. They are. They're pretty cool.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, they're wonderful. I was not actually familiar with the breed before, so Ryan got Jack as a puppy just shortly before we met, and a lot of people here in Oregon have told us that they had Britneys growing up, especially in more rural areas and on farms, and they're really known, as they were bred, to be hunting birding dogs, but they're also known as very affectionate family dogs. They're really great with kids. Jack loves meeting people. He loves to. He'll run up to people's doorsteps sometimes on walks, even if we don't know them, or the house, just to see what's going on and explore.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the best way they've been described to me is a cross between a border collie and a golden retriever. So they have very high needs for work and exercise, but they're also a little more affable and friendly than the average border collie. So yeah, cool, thanks for sharing your pet story.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

As we close our talk, I challenge all of our guests to share a super fact with us. It's something that they know, that when they tell people it blows their mind a bit, and if you've been listening, your mind has already probably been blown a bunch by what Ferris has been talking about. But do you have one in the tank for us to close?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, there is something else that was genuinely mind-blowing to me when I learned it. So if you go to the White Cliffs of Dover in the UK, which is this massive chalky cliff formation on the coast of England, and if you chip off a tiny piece of the chalk and you look at it under a really powerful microscope, like an electron microscope, you will see these tiny bone-like pegs that are sandwiched together almost like the stones in a stone archway. And that's because what you are looking at are the remains of ancient single-celled plankton that lived in the ocean more than 60 million years ago and encased themselves in these really intricate chalky skeletons. So these plankton are known as coccolithophores and they're single-celled, they're photosynthetic and they build for themselves these chalky skeletons of calcium carbonate. They look like petrified doilies to me. They're like aetic and they build for themselves these chalky skeletons of calcium carbonate. They look like petrified doilies to me. They're like a bunch of petrified doilies that are stuck together in a dragon egg scaly type way surrounding the shell's cloak and when they die they sink to the seafloor and they gather in the countless numbers and they form these deep sea sediments that over time they're compacted and subjected to such pressure that they actually petrify and turn to stone and then, as sea level changes, some of these sediments can be exposed.

Speaker 4:

And that is what the White Cliffs of Dover are.

Speaker 4:

They are exposed massive fossil bed of ancient single-celled plankton.

Speaker 4:

And in fact that is true for the most of the chalk and limestone formations on our planet, including vast areas of the Alps, which means that anything we have built from limestone is itself made of ancient plankton. So the Washington Monument, the Colosseum, Notre Dame, the Great Pyramid of Giza that used to be coated with limestone All of these fabulous historical monuments are secretly monuments to ancient ocean life and they are made of these tiny, incredible, overlooked, little known ocean creatures. And that is also true for some of the most important stone materials in human evolutionary history. So our ancestors, when they were learning to make stone tools, they worked in particular with flint and chert, because these stones are very nappable and you can make sharp edges with them a lot easier than you can with other stones. And flint and chert are also made of the remains of ancient plankton, such as diatoms and radiolarians. Plankton become stone over time and they've been very important for human history and they're secretly embedded in a bunch of building materials, even though most of us have no idea that they're there.

Speaker 1:

That is wild. I had no idea, but you're probably not recommending knocking off a chunk of the Washington Monument and looking at that in your microscope. Knocking off a?

Speaker 4:

chunk of the Washington Monument and looking at that in her microscope? No, probably not. Yeah, there's amazing photos online. Molesky has these incredible photos of these ancient planktonic structures in real chalk. And then, yeah, if you can find an exposed chalk bed somewhere in the world and then somehow persuade a scientist friend to let you borrow their electron microscope, you can see them yourself.

Speaker 1:

So it won't work on the microscopes I have at my school.

Speaker 4:

You're saying Unfortunately, no, I think it has to be really powerful. Yeah, dang it.

Speaker 1:

It's not in our budget. Sorry, ferris. That is a super fact. That is a very cool super fact. I have to thank you so much for saying yes to being our guest. This was enlightening, inspiring and entertaining. I so appreciate you giving up your time to talk to us, ferris, about your book and just the wonderful insight that went into it.

Speaker 4:

Oh, it's my pleasure. This was so much fun.

Speaker 1:

And one more time. Ferris's book is called Becoming Earth how Our Planet Came to Life. You'll find a link in our show notes. And you mentioned you're on Instagram. Can people follow you there? Are you anywhere else? People can check you out.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I'm on pretty much everything and it's all the same username. It's just at my name, so it's Ferris Jaber. I'm on Instagram and threads and Facebook and Twitter and all the rest.

Speaker 5:

Okay, it is time for story time with me, Adam. If you don't know what story time is, story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. Dad, do you have a story?

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, we've had a busy couple weeks and we haven't had a lot to chat about and I honestly forget what kind of stories we've said on the Science Podcast. Beaker's had minor eye surgery, so I think I'll just mention that really fast. A fast growing bump had been getting bigger on her lower eyelid since I don't know the start of September and it got to be you know about the size of my, the tip of my baby finger like big enough that it was easily seen and I think it was bugging her. She was rubbing her face on the ground and it was getting all red and I think it was bugging her. She was rubbing her face on the ground and it was getting all red and inflamed and sometimes it would bleed. So kind of gross. And we took her to the vet and the vet said you know it's, it's not cancerous, highly unlikely that it's cancerous. So that's great. But and she said, the worry is that it keeps growing, growing, growing and then it gets big enough it starts rubbing on her eye.

Speaker 1:

So about a week ago, on Thursday, um Beaker went in for surgery. Chris took Beaker in for surgery and they just cut it off of her eyelid and she has like some stitches and she's been in a cone so definitely. That first night Beaker was so, so sad, and not herself at all, and everybody felt so bad for her, um, but the next day she was back to her happy, smiley self self. I'm sure she wouldn't like the cone on um, but her cone and her stitches get to come out. Her cone and her stitches get to come off on Halloween, yeah, so October 31st, and the prognosis is very good for healing. It actually looks really, really good now, aside from the stitches and her shaved fur. So I think I'll just end it there with my story and we'll see what everybody else has to say. Mom, do you have a story?

Speaker 2:

I sure do. Today I went for an appointment and I took Bernoulli with me and the person where I went to their house has a little Pomeranian named Barry and it was super cute. Bernoulli sat at the door and then I opened the door and Barry was at the door not expecting to see Bernoulli, but he said, oh hi, I've met you before. And Bernoulli went in the house and little Barry was doing little dances around Bernoulli and they hung out and it was super cute. They had a great day or a great evening together and you know what? That's kind of a short story that I have, because the rest of the week has been super busy with other shenanigans that we're doing. But all in all it was a great day today and that's my story.

Speaker 5:

I have a story. I didn't really know what story because it's been so long. I'm kind of out of the groove of telling stories, but I have a story now that I thought of. My story is about some of my friends came over the other day. My friends who live in Edmonton which we don't live there, but they came to see me. We played laser tag and then they came over to say hi to the animals and we went over to my grandpa's house to show them the cats and then we came back here and I okay.

Speaker 5:

So Bunsen, whenever he meets new people, is very squidgy. He's like he's he's very, he's very suspicious of people in his house because he's trying to keep his people safe and he like looks at people. But Bunsen, bernoulli, bernoulli and Beaker are both the exact opposite. They're both so nice and they come up and say hi. So I feel like if Bunsen wasn't in our house, our house would be very break-in-able because the the intruders would come in and then Beaker and Bernoulli would just assume that that's, those are nice people and and say hi to them. But Bunsen is very squidgy when it comes to new people. But he got, he got very nice at the end. He. He sat on my friend's feet and then said hi, because that's what burners do when they like you. They sit on your feet and then they look up at you and it's cute.

Speaker 5:

I think I have stories about the cats at the farm and Bernoulli's gotten so big. He's gotten big, he grew overnight. He's so much bigger now. But that's that's something. Um, we also have a special guest. We have a special guest on the podcast.

Speaker 3:

Uh, amidst the other special guests that dad has already introduced, we have Annalise and she's here to tell a story so my story was yesterday I was playing my video game and Adam's papa, you know, calls me out of the blue and I was kind of worried because, like, usually it's fine, but like I don't know, I was just a little on edge and he calls me and like I thought he was on like the side of the road, like having a heart attack or something, and so like I'm like, okay, okay, I'm coming, I'm coming down right now. And then I'm like, what did he even want? Like I don't know where to go. And so I, um, I call him again and I'm like, so what, what's exactly the problem? And he's like, oh, pranuli got out.

Speaker 3:

And I was like, oh, okay, that that's a little better than what I was thinking. So I went over and we're both looking for him and we thought he went down in the creek, but thankfully that wasn't the case, because I did like searching for like two more seconds and then we found he was chasing the chickens, and so we just kind of cornered him, took him and we got him inside. But yeah, that's my story. He's a silly little guy, but we love Bernoulli and yeah.

Speaker 5:

Bernoulli is such a funny guy. He's I don't know, I think he's just so goofy because his brain is made of shrimp, but he's a goofy, funny guy and I really like how funny he is. But yeah, that's it for story time. Thank you so much for listening to my section of the podcast, sticking it through to to where I talk, and I hope to see you on the next podcast episode. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1:

That's it for this week show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the science podcast. Special thanks to our guest Phyllis Jaber Make sure you check our show notes for a link to his book. And a special thanks to all of our top tier supporters on our paid community, the Pop Hack Chris. Let's hear their names.

Speaker 2:

Bianca Hyde, mary Ryder, tracy Domingue, susan Wagner, andrew Lin, helen Chin, Tracy Halberg, amy C, jennifer Smathers, laura Stephenson, holly Burge. Jennifer Smathers, Laura Steffensen, holly Burge, brenda Clark, anne Uchida, peggy McKeel, terry Adam, debbie Anderson, sandy Breimer, Tracy Leinbaugh, marianne McNally Fun, lisa, shelley Smith, julie Smith, diane Allen, brianne Haas, Linda Sherry, carol McDonald, catherine Jordan, courtney Proven.

Speaker 1:

For science, empathy and cuteness.

Speaker 3:

Let's go adventure in the deep blue sea.