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The Science Pawdcast
The Science Pawdcast breaks down the latest science happening in the human world AND the pet world.
Each episode will also bring you a guest to enthral you with their area of knowledge.
You'll learn, be captivated, and laugh along with host Jason Zackowski.
Pets and Science, it's the pawfect mix.
You'll also get episodes of PetChat which are the live shows from social audio.
PetChat is a live community gathering updates about the animals in our life, but also the animals in the wonderful community that supports us!
Heart and Hope.
Science and Shenanigans.
The Science Pawdcast
Season 8 Episode 4: Teen Sleep, Mushing Dogs, and Dr. Alex Dainis on Tasting Every Single Amino Acid
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Seventy thousand digits of pi is impressive, but the number that stuck with us is much scarier: about one in four high school students now reports sleeping five hours or less. We dig into the latest teen sleep deprivation data, what it means for learning, mental health, and emotional regulation, and why “just go to bed earlier” ignores adolescent circadian rhythm biology. When melatonin shifts later during puberty, early school start times can become a daily clash between the clock and the teen brain.
From there we head outdoors for pet science, exploring dog sledding and mushing through a surprising lens. A survey-based study from the Czech Republic frames mushing as a human-dog partnership shaped by empathy, ecology, and even spirituality. We connect those ideas to the Iditarod, its roots in the 1925 serum run, the extreme athletic demands placed on sled dogs, and the real ethical questions that come with a dangerous sport people feel deeply about.
Our Ask An Expert guest is Dr. Alex Dainis, a geneticist and science communicator who makes biochemistry unforgettable by taste testing amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. We talk sweet glycine, candy-like lysine, sulfur-packed cysteine, and why showing the process of science matters as much as the results. Alex also shares how ACS Reactions builds curiosity by running experiments where nobody knows the outcome at the start, plus her strongest argument for using honest uncertainty in science communication.
If you like science news, practical context, and a few weird facts you’ll repeat to your friends, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a fellow science lover, and leave a review telling us what topic you want us to tackle next.
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Safety Glasses And Pie Day
SPEAKER_00Hello, science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zakowski.
SPEAKER_02And I'm Chris Zakowski.
SPEAKER_00We're the pet parents of Bunsen, Beaker, Bernoulli, and Ginger.
SPEAKER_02The science animals on social media. If you love science, and you love pets, you've come to the right spot.
SPEAKER_00So put on your safety glasses.
SPEAKER_02And hold on to your tail.
SPEAKER_00This is the Science Podcast. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode four of season eight. Happy Pie Day. Happy belated pie day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so Pi Day was super fun. That was on Saturday. And of course, we're recording here on Sunday. And we got to spend some time with the lovely Marla and her friend Jason and the dog. So Chesney, the professional good girl, that's what Marla calls her. She's a service rottweiler. And then Kenji is in training. And he is a, I guess, a real bundle of chaos. But we got to spend yesterday with them. And then today we did some practice on our own out and about in the community. So that was great.
SPEAKER_00That was good. Yeah, and pie day, of course, refers to March 14th, which is the third month, the 14th day, 3.14. Um, I have a fun fact about pie, Chris.
SPEAKER_02Other than the fact that it's delicious?
SPEAKER_00Other than the fact that it's the delicious. The record for reciting the most number of decimal places of pie was achieved by Raj Vir Mina at Vitt University in India in 2015. He recited 70,000 decimal places.
SPEAKER_02What?
SPEAKER_00It took him 10 hours. That is a lot of wasted time.
SPEAKER_02It is impressive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't there's no way I could do that. That's just wild. Uh, but let's talk about what we're doing on the show this week. In Science News, a new study came out about teenage sleep habits. And of course, that's pernient to both you and I, as we both teach high school kids. And then in pet science, in pet science, an interesting study came out from the Czech Republic about mushing, which is like the sport of dog racing on sleds. It's it's a relatively short study, but I thought we could also talk about the ididerod and some of the wild stuff the dogs go through and that race.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that sounds good to me.
SPEAKER_00And our guest and ask an expert is Dr. Alex Dennis, who is a geneticist but specializes in science communication. And we get into some really fun chats. She had a series on Instagram where she taste tested every single amino acid. And that's a really fun part of our chat. Chris, do you have a favorite amino acid to taste?
SPEAKER_02No. I've never even considered tasting amino acids.
Teen Sleep Data Gets Darker
SPEAKER_00We eat them all the time, but straight up amino acids. Yeah, that's that's fine. Let's get on with the show because there's no time like Science Time. All right, this week in Science News, let's talk about the study that came out from the Journal of American Medical Association on sleep in teens. This is a recently released study using 2023 data, and it compares it against 2007 data. I looked at some other much older data to give us like a framework when we're done, Chris 2, about times before that, like I think all the way back to the 1960s, about sleep and teenagers. Now, do you find kids are sleepy in your class?
SPEAKER_02I do find kids are sleepy in my class. And I'm not necessarily seeing more of it, but I it's quite prevalent. And I always know that there is the draw of late-night surfing the internet and other things that are taking the kids' attention away from having a good sleep. Researchers that study sleep and sleep medicine groups recommend eight to ten hours of sleep per night for adolescents because it's critical for brain development and learning and memory, also being able to emotionally regulate and your physical health. It's all connected. So if there is a prevalence of insufficient sleep among United States high school students, that's a bit of a problem because you do need an adequate sleep to do all those functions of the body. So in 2023, it was a self-study. Approximately 77% of high school students reported sleeping fewer than eight hours per night. And that's a significant increase, like you said, from 2007, which was 69% that reported sleeping fewer than eight hours per night.
SPEAKER_00And the overall proportion of students with insufficient sleep, so that's seven hours or less, stayed relatively stable from 2007 to 2023, which is good. But the bad news is the proportion of very short sleepers has increased quite a bit. In 2007, it was 16% of students slept five hours or less. And in 2023, it's gone up 7% to 23% of students slept five hours or less. So that's almost one in four students, Chris, which is a lot.
SPEAKER_02And it also suggests that the most severe sleep deprivation is becoming more common, which is what we're going to see with the students in front of us in our classes who are not getting the sufficient sleep that they need.
SPEAKER_00When they looked at demographic trends, sleep deprivation increased across all groups, but there were still disparities. There were racial disparities. Insufficient sleep was larger among black students than white students, but all demographics experienced worsening sleep. And you went through a bunch of risk factors associated with really bad sleep, poor sleep, such as mental health struggles like depression, which could lead to substance abuse, and then a whole bunch of other health risk behaviors that go down that road. Even students without these risk factors showed similar or greater increases in sleep deprivation. Even if they had no previous risk factors or were not in the disadvantaged demographic, still sleep is getting worse.
SPEAKER_02So that suggests that could be systemic or environmental factors, not just an individual's lifestyle choice. The researchers set up their study, and the findings are based on the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the YRBS, and it's actually a long-running national data set of United States public and private high school students. And what that study does is tracks behaviors affecting health and well-being. Because the researchers believed that structural factors may be driving the trend of teen sleep loss. They looked at early school start times. So many high schools, they found, began classes before 8 a.m., actually often around 7:30. And those early schedules require students to wake up before their biological clock naturally allows. And there's changes in your biology during puberty as well, which is right around the age of high school. Your circadian rhythms shift to later during adolescence. And that shift can actually delay sleep onset by about two hours compared to when someone was in childhood. And that delay is actually partly caused by changes in the timing of the melatonin release in the in your body. So many teens actually cannot easily fall asleep before 11 p.m. And waking up before 8 a.m. becomes biologically difficult.
Biology Fights Early Start Times
SPEAKER_00I think I actually talked about that three or four years ago that it may not be a teenager's fault. Like they're working against their own biology to fall asleep early and wake up early. That's just not the way their biology works. Now, we've already talked about all of the different effects of sleep deprivation, right? It's not great. One really interesting thing that the study mentioned was they looked at five Minnesota high schools and they looked at delaying those start times. Can you imagine teaching kids at 7:30 in the morning? I know there's early morning sports practice and band practice, but I don't start teaching until 8:30. And I think you're about the same, right?
SPEAKER_02No, we start at 8:45.
SPEAKER_00Right. Okay. So I'm it's still close. It's like that's closer to 8:30 than 7:30.
SPEAKER_02It is, but there's other factors to consider, like busing. So some students, because they live so far away, they have to get on the bus quite early in the morning. And I'm not sure that this study took that into account, but it definitely is something that would impact. It's not like this students are rolling out of bed and rolling into school for their 8:30 start time. Their day could start a lot before 8.30 for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But anyways, back to these Minnesota schools. Two schools delayed their start times by about an hour, while three schools maintained their strict 7:30 start time. And no surprise, the schools with the later start time, kids slept longer at home, and they reported fewer depressive symptoms. And they reported fewer depressive symptoms, which allowed a greater overall, which allowed for a greater overall improved well-being. I've long said this, but I, as you've mentioned with busing, it's a nightmare to get kids to school. Um, and they all the buses have to get kids to all schools. This isn't just like high school, this is elementary and middle school. And a lot of times the kids are all riding the same bus in some places, so you have to drop kids off staggered. So you you don't want little kids just hanging around school for an hour. You basically want to drop them off and the school starts. Um, but I've always said like school should start at 9:30 for kids. Um, and then we could just go an hour later. But that would be a nightmare to organize that with busing, and parents have to get into work because they, of course, use school as a bit of a babysitter for the young kids. Yeah, I don't know what the best I don't know what the answer is, but you've mentioned it, Chris, that busing is tough.
SPEAKER_02Bussing is tough. And even with high school students, they're starting to get jobs. And so they're starting their shift potentially at 4 or 4:30. So pushing school back would definitely impact their ability to work.
SPEAKER_00Obviously, this information is good for people who may have the power to change school times. And not having kids with enough sleep is really bad, and it's really tough to teach a kid who's sleeping in your class. Um, I have a block seven chemistry 30 class this semester. And so these kids are the grade 12s, and they've been working real hard all day. These are good kids, these are good academic kids, nice kids. Not that all kids aren't nice, but these are like your top flyers, right? And their brains have been going all day, and they get to me in chemistry at the very end of the day. And some of the kids can't do it, they're so tired. And I don't know what they're learning from me because they're nodding off. And I it's not like I some lessons are boring, but I'm not, I don't think I'm a boring teacher. But even my style of teaching and doing labs and explosions and fire, you can't beat the sad the sand man. Anyway, so Chris, I also got some data from earlier in the century and then like from the 60s and 80s about when kids would go to bed and how much sleep they got. So, pre-electricity, anecdotally, the studies suggest that teenagers slept a lot more between nine to ten hours a night. Literally, that's because when it got dark, the kids went to bed. There was nothing else they could do. Also, during that time, there probably wasn't like late sports into the evening. And pre-electricity, there was no late night scrolling or playing video games. You just kind of went to sleep. And your day-to-day physical activity was probably pretty strenuous. So those kids were exhausted by the time it was time to go to bed. Once electricity came around, and especially television, that's when those sleeping hours started to slip. The 60s to the 80s, the studies seemed to show that the range dropped about an hour. So instead of nine to ten, it was more like eight to nine. And then as we marched toward the 2000s, so when you and I were in high school, teen sleep declined to seven to eight.
SPEAKER_02But the contributing factors were different in the 90s to the early 2000s. There was more homework load, extracurricular, and some electronic entertainment, maybe like your Game Boy, that sucked all those batteries.
SPEAKER_00Final Fantasy III for the Super Nintendo. I played that till three or four in the morning, and then I had to go to school. That was a huge mistake. And I was so tired that day, and I never did it again. So I guess I had some common sense not to do that. Yeah, but, anyways, so this recent rise in extreme sleep deprivation is not getting better. It's getting worse. Um, and I think a lot of child psychologists are suggesting like you should take away kids' electronics devices when it's bedtime. Like they they can't even be trusted to even have it in their room. Take it away, shut off the Wi-Fi, it's time for bed. We didn't do that with our kids, and maybe that was a disservice to them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was still new for us, our kids. Duncan actually didn't have a cell phone for a very long time.
SPEAKER_00That's right. He didn't have a cell phone until he was an adult, I think. Almost.
SPEAKER_02Or a teenager when he was driving. Right. And then Adam, I think we did wait till he was 16 when he was driving.
Mushing As Human Dog Partnership
SPEAKER_00That's science news for this week. This week in Pet Science, we're gonna talk about I don't know so much of as it's a study because it's definitely not super scientific. It's definitely a survey, but it gets into something interesting, which is the human-dog relationship that forms in mushing, which is dog sledding. You and I got to go dog sledding once.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I found a I found this opportunity. Actually, I saw it on Facebook in a community group that I'm part of, and it said, Hey, are you interested in going for a mushing ride and bring some money and blah, blah, blah, and show on up? And then I reached out and I messaged, and you and I showed up, and we went for a mushing ride and met the young gentleman, and it was just it was a really cool experience, and I'm glad we were able to go on.
SPEAKER_00And I grew up in rural Alberta, and uh I grew up around ranchers and people with horses. The Calgary Stampede has somewhat of a bad reputation with folks sometimes because animals do get hurt and horses die. Um, usually every year. It's quite lucky if there's no animal death at the Calgary Stampede. And one thing the folks who ride horses say, and you can take this with you can agree with it or not, this is just with the people that I grew up with, this I was surrounded with my whole life, who love horses and raise them, is those horses that run, that is the best part of their day, is running as fast as they can. Like they live for it. Um, so we're gonna get into a little bit of that with this study because dog sledding, especially the Ididarod, is not without risk to the dog. That's the it's one of the negative undertones. We've posted about the Iditarod before, and I don't know if you've seen it, but we do get some very angry comments of people who do not agree with dog sledding and the Ididrod. Um, I do have to say, when we went dog sledding, those dogs like could not wait to get going. Like they were just chomping at the bit to pull us. They love it. The study from the Czech Republic examined dog sledding as more than a sport. They framed it and the people who do it as a deep human-animal partnership shaped by spirituality, ecology, and empathy. And I just thought it was so cool. Like it hit me different. We've talked to, or I have, you haven't. I've talked to Blair Braverman, who is a musher, and God, she loves her dog so much. And she's talked about how deep the bond becomes with those animals that you race with. So it's a very long study that gets into it gets into a whole bunch of different um findings as to what people felt about mushing, but we'll cover a few of them, I think. The first one, I think Chris, maybe you should talk about it because you're definitely more of a spiritual person than me.
SPEAKER_02So one of the key findings was entitled Mushing as a Spiritual Journey. And many mushers described their sled dog racing and training as a spiritual experience rather than just athletic competition. So they are definitely making a connection to nature and landscapes, and they're feeling a sense of flow or harmony while traveling with their dogs through nature. And time spent on the trail becomes a reflective and transformative experience, similar to a meditation or a pilgrimage. And you can find a lot of spirituality in nature, and it's being part of the wilderness and that spiritual practice that comes with it. And with my students, I've taken them out into nature and we've just enjoyed the experience. I can definitely see the connection between mushing and spiritual and a spiritual journey as they journey through nature.
SPEAKER_00Our ancestors didn't evolve to live in steel cities. We evolved on the open road.
SPEAKER_02It is a deep engagement with nature. Mushers often reported that they framed the activity as being within nature rather than controlling it. So those experiences on the trail fostered an awareness of weather patterns, an understanding of terrain, and a sensitivity to animal behavior. And that immersed experience promoted greater ecological awareness and greater respect for the environment.
SPEAKER_00And one thing that I can talk to that the study mentioned, because it's something Blair talked about, was that the dogs, her dogs, are not tools. You know, they're not a car, they're your partner. The in the study, the mushers rejected the idea that the sled dogs are simply working animals. They are instead viewed as partners, companions, and co-agents in decision making. The mushers will describe their dogs as having preferences for how they run and where to go, how motivated or unmotivated they are, and how much leadership the dogs have. The lead dogs are special dogs. They are the ones that get the pack going in the right direction and through their body language, through tough terrain, get everybody working harder. And it's pretty inspirational listening to mushers talk about their lead dogs. And Blair, I forget actually her lead dog. I'd have to go back through my notes with her. But she talked about like just how special her lead dogs are, and they find like the best place to go through deep snow. They know when to turn, they can almost sense your emotions. And that's very cool. The mushers will often trust their dog's judgment over their own in very dangerous conditions or when they can't see the trail.
SPEAKER_02So the relationships and emotional bonding is reciprocated between mushers and dogs. Humans care for and train the dogs, of course, but then the dogs provide companionship guidance and they definitely perform on the trail. Those emotional bonds include trust and affection and mutual reliance. So many mushers reported feeling that the dogs actually teach them patience, humility, and attentiveness through that uh reciprocal relationship, which is super cool.
SPEAKER_00And the study does continue to talk about other things like spiritual ecology, which is a field exploring connections between nature and environmental ethics and spirituality. And this the mushers felt that they were part of that ecology because of their greater environmental awareness and respect for animal intelligence.
SPEAKER_02And they're partners, they're actually actual partners. So there is something to be said for mushing or human animal relationship. Relationships that are transformative. So the emotional well-being is strengthened. The human animal trans but the human-animal partnership encourages ethical treatment of animals and promotes environmental stewardship. Sled dog teams become models of cooperative coexistence between species, which sometimes we talk about that as a symbiotic relationship, but it's basically a good way to say it and good way to frame it is that cooperative coexistence between species and that connection that we have to our dogs and the trust and the bonds that we formed.
Iditarod History And Hard Truths
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's it's a really it's a really thought-provoking study because it doesn't talk about anything you can measure with science. It's more of how you feel and how your psychology has changed from working with animals and working with dogs. I thought we could close out with some facts about the ididerod because it's something maybe the average person doesn't know much about unless you follow mushers. The race commemorates the 1925 serum run to Gnome. Sled dogs delivered diphtheria medicine medicine to a remote town. So it the race is like a recreation of this race to save people with diphtheria medicine, and the only way that could get into this really remote town was by sled dog. It is a long race, it is 1,600 kilometers, that's about a thousand miles. And the dogs that run this race, they have to do some serious training. They're athletes. That's one thing that Blair has mentioned is these dogs aren't your average dog that can go for a brisk walk or maybe they go for a run with you for an hour. They burn 10,000 to 12,000 calories a day, which is five times the calories of an Olympic marathon runner. Um, they are, for all intents and purposes, ultra athletes, the dogs that do this race.
SPEAKER_02If you get a chance, though, if you're interested in the famous Serum Run, the most famous led dog from the 1925 Serum Run was named Balto, whose statue stands in Central Park in New York City. And did we see Balto when we were there? In New York, yeah. And then there's another dog, Togo, actually ran the longest and most dangerous portion of the route. And it's dangerous. They go across Alaska through frozen rivers, mountain ranges, and Arctic tundra. So it's a lot.
Meet Geneticist Alex Danis
SPEAKER_00And it's not without its risk and it's not without its controversy. Um, there are dogs that die every year. I don't think any dogs died two years ago, but I think a dog died last year. So it's uh it is a very dangerous race. And just like the Calgary Stampede, there are animals that are injured or lose their life in that race or competition. And you have to make the decision for yourself and maybe talk to people personally who do this type of racing or go for a dog sled, and maybe you'll see what kind of dog those dogs are. They are they live for running as fast as they can hauling stuff. That's pretty cool. All right, that's pet science for this week. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I'm thrilled to welcome to the show Dr. Alex Danis, who's a geneticist, biologist, a chemist, and also science communicator. How are you doing today, Doc?
SPEAKER_01I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on. I've been a big fan of your pups for a long time and their science content, so I'm excited to get to chat with you.
SPEAKER_00Aw, thank you. How which was the dog that got you following us? Was it the big Bernoulli bump on Instagram?
SPEAKER_01It was. I was there for Bunsen back in the beginning and then saw a casual observer. And then when Bernoulli came in, I was like, oh, okay, all right, now we're cooking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's teas a cutie. Yeah, he's also a bit of a wild card. Alex, I introduced you as a science comm specialist, but you have training in genetics. Is that correct? I was wondering if you could just talk to us a little bit about your science training. You'll probably do a better job than me doing research on your LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. So my PhD is in genetics, as you mentioned, but my science training really started in undergrad. I did a combined biology degree and film degree. So I majored in both uh in undergrad, which was very fun. And I was very excited that Brandeis gave me the opportunity to do that. But I started my research career there. I was actually looking at fruit flies and I was looking at their sensory perception. So we were looking specifically at taste and at gustatory perception. And I did a lot of work in the lab feeding tiny fruit flies little bits of wasabi and checking to see which of their genes were involved and whether or not they could taste these sort of noxious chemicals. So my science career really started there, looking at taste and perception and heat and fruit flies. And then when I got to grad school, I decided to specialize in genetics because for me, if I understood genetics, then I could ask truly any question I felt in biology. It really felt like something that underpinned my ability to investigate the world around me. And I worked in a lab that was looking at uh heart genetics, so cardiovascular genetics, and specifically a disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is a very long word, but just means that the left ventricle of your heart is overgrown. Your heart doesn't pump blood out to the rest of your body in quite the same way that it should. And so this is one of the leading causes of sudden death in young adults. It's often asymptomatic until a really sort of negative event happens. And so I was working twofold, one side trying to make better diagnostics, and that side worked really well. And I was looking at RNA and it was super fun. And then on the other side, trying to make therapeutics, which is very hard as a graduate student. And I learned a lot, but didn't quite come up with a solution. But throughout it, really just learned so much about human genetics and how genetics influences us and the world around us, and really was just inspired after grad school to then go out and tell everybody about what I found to be such a powerful part of science.
SPEAKER_00Oh man, fruit fruit flies bring me back to I have a degree in uh chemistry and I took a biology class, and we had to breed fruit fruit flies, and they kept waking up because I didn't use ether, and yeah, so we didn't get them to taste wasabi, though.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that was a very, very specific assay. I did though that one of them I can't I don't know if I'm gonna be able to remember exactly what the acronym stood for, but we had one protocol that we set up where we gave them two little tubes to choose from. One of them contained wasabi and the other contained caffeine, and it was the cafe assay. And I forget what the C and A stood for, but it was like something feeding experiment. And I was just like, no, we totally back engineered this acronym acronym to be CAFE because we're giving them caffeine, but I'll take it.
SPEAKER_00Very clever. When you were young, did you were you drawn to science? Were you a kid that was interested in science before the whole going to university grad school experience?
SPEAKER_01I was, but I wasn't only interested in science. My mom was an artist and my dad was an engineer, and I was a kid who I loved being outside. I loved playing in the dirt and playing with bugs and gardening and all that kind of stuff. And I did love science in school, but I also really loved writing and I loved languages and I wasn't good at art, but I liked art. And I thought for a while in high school that I might be a translator one day. I thought I might be a writer. I chose science because I did love it. I did really enjoy science in high school, but I chose it because it was the quote unquote smart path to choose for college.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But then was very delighted that my sophomore year, my university opened up the film major as a major. It had only been a minor for a long time. And so my sophomore year, they were, they announced that they could also do a major. And I was like, we could throw in a few more classes and do this thing too. So I'm I'm really glad that I didn't have to choose because even then I was majoring in film and I was majoring in biology, and then I went to work in film for a couple of years, and then I went back to school to grad school, and I really bounced back and forth for a long time, thinking I would have to choose just one, and then was delighted that by the time I was finishing up grad school, I'd started a YouTube channel just as a hobby, just as something, a way for me to talk about the things I was excited about with the rest of the world. And by the time I was finishing up grad school, a couple companies had reached out because they'd seen the work I'd done and they said, Oh, would you do this for us, freelance? And I was like, sure, I guess I've never done this before. But uh, it really opened up the idea for me that I didn't have to choose and that I could build this career where I still get to talk to scientists and think about science and read scientific papers all day, every day, but also get to do the creative film aspect of it as well.
SPEAKER_00I forget which astrophysicists I've talked to on our show. They were also in film or theater. And they went to an astronomy elective or astronomy lecture because there was free pizza. And they were only going because they were running out of money and they needed some, they needed a supper, and that changed their total trajectory, and they became an astrophysicist from that.
SPEAKER_01I love that. I love those little chance things that happen in life that really put you down a different branch that you could never have imagined.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I did see a TikTok which I thought was hilarious. It was about like you company should hire quote unquote theater kids because if you need to get something done on a deadline, they're the only they're the people that will get stuff done on a deadline. Yes, yes, and you won't know that they don't know because they will just fake it till they make it kind of thing. So you won't be stressed out. Yeah. And like some of my like I teach high school chemistry. Some of my students are theater kids and they're hilarious. So they're brilliant at chemistry, but they're also they've got the good back and forth with the teacher, which I appreciate.
SPEAKER_01I think I really do think that it is the people who manage to balance two things like that together, who have the communication skills or the theater skills, or the writing skills, plus the science interest, or the math interest, or whatever it is, or even the language interest. I think that I always am delighted to see people who can balance both. And I think that uh being able to carve out a niche for yourself by saying, Oh, I do theater and chemistry, or I do film and biology, I think just serves you well in the long run.
Amino Acids Explained By Taste
SPEAKER_00I love it. Speaking of film and genetics or film and biology, I've been trolling through your Instagram, and one of my favorite series is you are taste testing all of the amino acids or as many as you can. And it was very bingeable. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Just because we do have a lot of people with very general science knowledge. What is an amino acid? Maybe first, before we get into your videos, like what's an amino acid?
SPEAKER_01I'm so glad that you asked that because that was one of the goals that I hoped people would get out of these videos, is that amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. So you can think of them a little bit like beads on a string, where you have anywhere between 20 and 2,000 little amino acids strung one after the other in a big straight line that makes up the sort of primary structure of your protein. And then that gets folded up into something else. But every time you hear the word protein, whether it's the kind of protein that you're eating or a structural protein in your cell or a protein that's an enzyme that's going and chopping up something in your cell, they're all composed of amino acids. And I know that amino acids are now being sold in more grocery stores. People are talking about specific amino acids, people are adding amino acids to their smoothies. But I didn't know if everyone actually knew what those were. And so I was like, what could be a fun way to talk about these things that I think are popping up more and more in conversation and get people to understand what they were? And I was sitting on this idea for a while, just of, oh, this seems like a thing that's in pop culture, and maybe people don't know what it is. Maybe they don't know that it's like the little bricks that make up a protein. And then I did a video with the ACS Reactions channel, which is a YouTube channel that I help co-host, where I was making cookies that turn different colors when you mix in sunflower butter. And if you've ever made a sunflower butter cookie, people do this a lot because they're allergic to peanut butter, they'll often turn green. And it turns out that's because there's a compound in the sunflower butter that's reacting with amino acids and turning green. And so I was like, oh, that's cool. But you can get it to turn different colors. So I made these cookies with like pure tryptophan and pure lysine that I bought at the grocery store. And I was like, man, these smell funny. Like they smell weird. These are not the I was just overloading them with these amino acids. I was like, this is not a good smelling cookie. And then I was like, oh, oh, it's affecting the taste. Oh, I do know from somewhere deep in my biochemistry knowledge that they each amino acid should have its own taste based on its sort of structure. But I've never tasted them and I really want to. And the only way that I could justify to myself of buying 20 different bottles of amino acids, I was like, and I'm gonna make a video series out of it. And I had no idea if anyone was gonna be interested in watching me taste test these things. But I tried to do it in a way where I was mixing a little bit of learning in with some genuine reactions of what they tasted like and surprise or disgust or delight based on the flavor. So something everyone can relate to on that emotional level, and then trying to drop in little bits of knowledge about what are amino acids? How does our body use them? What does their structure look like? So it was just a project for me. It was not done in collaboration with any sort of client, but I was delighted that people enjoyed them and were coming along on this journey with me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love that because there's a lot of things in our life that revolve around specific amino acids. Probably you might have a different opinion. I'd say the amino acid most people would know if they are active as glutamine. That's probably the one that's in your proteins or your smoothies or your shakes. So people have probably heard that before, glutamine. But there are like disorders around other amino acids like PKU, which yeah, what your body cannot break down phenylalanine and which is not good. So it's well, it's pretty rare, but it's maybe something people have heard of before.
SPEAKER_01And listeners cannot see what I am doing at the moment, but I am at this moment drinking a can of diet soda, which is probably the place where if you've seen that word, you've seen it because on the side of it it says phenolketanex colon contains phenolalanine. And that is exactly what you're talking about. It's a warning to people who have this disorder who can't process it that hey, you should know that this amino acid is in here because it's part of what makes up aspartame, which is really just two amino acids linked together. So they're really, they're all around us. They're in sweeteners, they're in proteins, they're everywhere. But yeah, that one, the other one I think people have heard of, but they don't know it's an amino acid is tryptophan. Because everyone's heard the sort of myth about turkey makes you sleepy. Exactly. And like it's all the tryptophan. And it's not, you just ate too much food on Thanksgiving and you're it's a long day. But yeah, I don't think people recognize that all of these different words they've heard are all part of the same category. So that was part of the fun of it too, was to take these things that I think people have an awareness of, but maybe not a strong familiarity with, and give them some more context for them.
SPEAKER_00I'm very appreciative. I can nerd out with you about amino acids. I had to take, like I specialized in biochem and one of my classes we went through. We I had to memorize how to name and draw all 20 amino acids. It was a lot. Yep. And it's not something I get to teach in chemistry really ever in high school. Um excited when I something comes up and I can talk about, hey guys, what about lysine? That's need that for your eyeballs. We do.
SPEAKER_01And that's what one of the things that was so fun about this too. And I I this is gonna hurt for some of my current clients, but I didn't really love chemistry for a long time. It wasn't until I got to biochemistry where I realized, oh, like I get it now. I get why this is cool, I get how it's coming together to form life, I get where all these things are going. And so I really I felt such a deeper understanding of like organic chemistry and chemistry in general after I took biochemistry. And one of the things that I was thinking, because I too had to memorize all of the amino acids and their shape and their properties and all that. I understand why this might not be something you can do in a classroom, both because it's cost prohibitive and because you probably don't want to just give your students a bunch of random powders. I understand that. But had I learned the amino acids by tasting them, I will tell you right now, I will never in my life forget that cysteine has sulfur in it. Like that one hit me in the face with sulfur, and I was like, I'm gonna remember that structure forever. I think there is a realm, perhaps a undergrad biochem realm, maybe not a high school realm, where I would love to see a classroom safely and with care implement something like this to just make those molecules more tangible and real for the students.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Just because I'm a giant nerd. Systeine, I believe the sulfur compound that you're talking about is a thiol. Yeah. And it, I think, and if my chemistry is good, still good. I'm pretty sure thiols are also in skunk spray. That's what makes it skunky. So if you're trying to eat that, I can imagine it hitting you in the face pretty hard.
SPEAKER_01Truly, I think it is the worst flavor I've ever put in my mouth. Like my body immediately, my brain like freaked out and said, This is bad for you, don't eat it. And it's not harmful in small quantities. Those sulfur compounds, they end up in skunk smell. They end up in poop. Like they end up in things you shouldn't be eating that like evolutionarily, it's like, do not eat this thing. And my body was desperately trying to tell me to stop.
SPEAKER_00That's fun. Maybe as we wrap up the section, what was your favorite one, favorite amino acid? I forget, honestly, I'd have to go back and watch all the videos. I remember you had a couple that were pretty were not bad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so glycine was actually the one that I have now considered using to sweeten my coffee. Because now I have a giant bottle of glycine and it was very sweet. There was no weird aftertaste. That one was nice. But the one that I think intellectually was kind of the most fun was actually lysine because I could not place what it was. It tasted like a fruity candy. There was this like sweet and sour note. And I spent 10 minutes as I was tasting it trying to figure out what it was. I think now, and I have to go out and buy them to side by side taste test. I think the flavor I couldn't think of in the video was lemon-flavored pez. Oh yeah, which is just not what you would anticipate. I don't understand chemically why that is what I was getting, but I'm convinced, and I just got to go out and find some that it was pez flavored.
SPEAKER_00There you go. And for listeners at home, there is weak evidence that it is helpful with cold sore outbreaks.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I didn't know that one.
ACS Reactions And Real Experiments
SPEAKER_00Yeah, not amazing evidence, but weak, weaker evidence. That's just a fun fact about lysine. Okay, so sweeten your coffee with one amino acid, and then if you want a fruity pez lemony thing, have yourself some lysine. I love it. Hey doc, you mentioned ACS reactions, ACS reactions. What that's a YouTube channel that you are a co-host with or a partner with. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. So ACS Reactions is the much less of a mouthful way of saying the American Chemical Society reactions. So it's a YouTube channel started by the American Chemical Society about 15 years ago now. It was real early in the YouTube world, but I've been working with them for about the past five years to both write and host and film videos on the YouTube channel and now as well on places like Instagram. And it's a co production with PBS Digital Studios. But it's honestly a really fun part of my job because over The past 18 months or so, we have changed the style of videos that we're doing from traditional explainer type videos that you might find on science YouTube to now trying to do experiments where we don't know what the answer is when we start the video. It's so much fun. And so we're typically we're finding a paper or we're finding an idea and we are working with experts and we are tracing it down and we are trying to do these experiments ourselves to figure out what's going to happen. And over the past year, I have tested stable isotopes to find honey fraud in my grocery store. I have used magnets to bend a stream of water, which I did not know was possible, but I found a paper that did it and I recreated it myself. I tested a quote unquote performance enhancer that athletes use, which is drinking baking soda before something like a run or a cycling competition, which does work, but also makes your stomach very upset. And so that was not the most fun experiment I've done over the past year, but it's been a really exciting time to figure out how we can make videos that do teach and explain a little bit of chemistry to the world, but are also following the genuine process of us figuring out the answers to those and doing the experiments and diving into the research. And the bar has been set, I will say, quite high by one of my co-hosts who, George Zidane, who in doing one of these experiments legitimately discovered something new in the field of liquid marbles and is now trying to publish a paper with a scientific group around it from this YouTube video. And I was like, okay, we can't, every YouTube video can't be a scientific paper, but it is fun. That's what we're striving towards now.
SPEAKER_00That's amazing. Are you bending the water with like neodymian magnets, like very powerful magnets, or is it something different than that? So it is apologize if I haven't seen that video. So no. I'm just curious. Like I do that with my little grade nine or nine honors kids with balloons with static, and they lose their mind. They're like, oh my God.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it's very similar to that, but using magnetism instead of static electricity, which I mean at some level are actually quite related. But yeah, I'm just using a little stack of truly from the hardware store Neodynium Magnets, and I set up a burette. And so I just set the stream of water coming out of the burette to be, I don't know, medium stream of water coming out of burette. It's not all that precise. And then I just slowly move the magnets in towards the stream of water, and you can watch as the stream of water bends away from the magnets.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's fun.
SPEAKER_01It's fun. I would say too, it's a very easy setup. I would challenge your students to do it the same day you do the balloons. It's very fun.
SPEAKER_00That's fun. Yeah, we do have burettes and just gotta go down to Princess Otto here in town and get myself some neodymian magnets. Fun. Okay, cool. Yeah, so we'll have a link to ACS reactions on YouTube in the show notes to the show, so people folks can click away and check that out, and they'll see you. And I'm guessing there's other folks on the channel.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there's three of us now. There's me, there's George, and then we have added a new collaborator who people might know from other places on the internet, Kem Thug. So he's now helping write and host and produce some of our videos as well, which is really fun.
Better Science Communication In Public
SPEAKER_00Okay, cool. So I I have a question. We were talking about this before. You're you have a passion for SciCom. And I wanted your take on the importance of science communication, not only from folks like yourselves, but scientists in general. I know that's a big kind of question, but I would love your take on it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a big question, but it's something I really care about and something that I'm very passionate about. That for me, when I started doing science communication, I had never heard that phrase before. I started a YouTube channel pre-grad school. It was 2012. It was really weird to be talking about science on YouTube back in that day. It was not a thing that people really got online and talked about. But I was just really passionate about it. But as I did it over the years and learned more about science communication as a field and learned more about the idea that I used science as a lens to view the world and to make decisions. And I wanted everyone else just to be a part of that conversation and to feel welcomed into that conversation. I got more passionate about using SciCom to try and translate a lot of the stuff that I was learning out to the world in a format that was approachable and relatable and empathetic. And I think that an example that I pull on a lot is that we have historically in media seen science talked about as an end point, right? Scientists find that coffee cures cancer, or scientists find that roses cause cancer, right? Like we just see one moment in time of the scientific process. And then when something like COVID happens, where we're watching the scientific process unfold in real time and people are seeing new information come out, and so they're seeing conclusions change. I don't think that we, as a scientific field, had properly prepared people to watch the process unfold. And I think it made people feel uneasy. I think it made people feel confused. And so I've really been striving over the past few years to a myself talk a lot more about the process of science and also how we talk about science and why we talk about it the way that we do. So I got a comment on a video I made during COVID, probably either 2020 or 2021, that sent me on now a multi-year research tailspin about the fact that I was talking about a new paper that had come out, and I was using the language of uncertainty, which we use in science all the time, right? I can't tell you with 100% certainty right now that you won't get struck by lightning while you're listening to this podcast. It would be highly unlikely, but I don't know where you are, right? There's new information that could come along and change my mind. So I was using that kind of language, and this commenter said something, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but said, you're using words like likely and maybe you don't know what you're talking about. When I was in school, science had answers. And I was so thrown for a loop where I was like, oh, I'm using that language because I want to be as accurate as possible, because I want you to trust that I'm not out here saying that I know everything in the world, right? I don't. I'm leaving open the room, I'm leaving open the door that more information could come in and change our minds. But I realize that's not how we talk about science to the public. And so I've really been on this idea lately that we have to do a better job of that. We have to talk about uncertainty in science and talk about why we use that language and why it's important and why you actually shouldn't listen to the person who tells you that this new supplement will cure your cancer with 100% certainty, right? Actually, you should trust that person less because of how certain they're telling you that they are. So I've been, I've just been thinking a lot about that. And I think the other part is that I think we also, as scientists, have not done a great job in just talking to the public like humans. I think as scientists, we are rarely trained in communication. And when we are trained to talk as if we are writing a grant, right? We have to talk very technically and we must talk about how the thing we're doing is gonna change the world. And that's not how you're actually gonna describe your scientific results to a person you meet at a party or to another parent in the PTA, right? So I think it's so important. And I talked with a scientist recently who really crystallized this in a delightful way, where he said that he tries to tell people, everyone he meets, when they talk about what they do and he says, Oh, I'm a scientist, and they're like, Oh, wow, that must be hard or whatever. He just says, Yeah, it's the same as your job, right? Like, I go in, I do work, I come home. You could also do this. We are just people going to our jobs and trying to find out more about the world. There's no special like cloak of science that we all wear. We're not like doing magic or something, like we go to work, we do our job, we come home. And we're just regular humans trying to do the best that we can and trying to learn more about the world. But it works the same way, truly, as your job in finance or your job in healthcare or whatever it is. So I think that humanization that we've talked about in science is important. And I, yeah, I just I think a lot about how we can really pull people into the conversation. And it sounds so cheesy, and I have to find a better way to say this. But the past like six months, I've really been thinking about how I can move from doing science communication into doing science conversation and just really pulling people in more and talking with them about science rather than at them about science. So I I've got about a thousand SciCom soapboxes I could stand up here on about how we should do it better and what we need to do. But it's very important to me that people have access to this tool that I find so useful in navigating the world around me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that became the importance of good SciCom became very apparent during the pandemic because scientists were out talked by grifters. Yes. The grifters did such a better job than our best scientists at explaining what was going on. Uh, not saying that like you yourself didn't try, like we tried in our own little doggy way, but we just got street steamrolled by people with the skill set to talk and explain things that made sense to people, just they were working against public health and things like that.
SPEAKER_01And it shouldn't be, I think there were many of us online in the SciCon world doing that, but it shouldn't be up to us. Like it I'm glad that I was able to help and contribute to that conversation, but it was frustrating at times that I was like, why are people? I'm glad people trust me. I'm glad people are coming to me. My PhD, I did a lot of work in RNA biology and delivery of RNA to cells. Like I did actually feel like I had some expertise in the area. Yeah. But I was still just, they shouldn't be coming to me for answers, right? Like I'm I'm disappointed that there's not a clearer path for them to be getting that information that they clearly want and need.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I don't know what the best point, I don't know what the best solution is, but having folks like you talk to people like me on our platform, that helps. We try. Just getting the word out. I feel a bit of hope. Like there's a we're talking, people might listen to this podcast whenever, but it's what is it, March 10th today. Next week, a very pro-science movie is coming out called Project Hail Mary.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think it will like things like that that are very pro-science and pro-humanity and pro-hope, that can help. And then I think Artemis is launching, like hopefully a couple weeks after that. Yeah. Yeah, fingers crossed. Events like that, I think, also help with the whole pop culture zeitgeist. But it would be nice if it wasn't just Ryan Gosling in a spaceship.
SPEAKER_01I don't disagree, but I do I do think that there is so much power in storytelling and in partnering with that kind of media to really show these sort of optimistic and positive stories about science. And one of the things that I think about a lot, when I was doing all this reading and research into people's perceptions of certainty and uncertainty in science, there was a great study that looked at different scientific disciplines and they polled people about how precise they thought each discipline was. So this wasn't actually how precise the disciplines are, but how the public perceived precision in these disciplines. And on one end of the spectrum, the public feels that things like psychology and evolution and genetics, which got to me, are not very precise. But on the other end of the spectrum, they think that things like forensics are the most precise. Oh no. Oh no. I know. I know, but my theory is that's because forensics has an incredible marketing team in CSI, in NCIS. Like they have harnessed, and I don't think this was intentional, but you know, this field has been so bolstered by positive stories about its precision and accuracy. And so why can't we do that for other sciences? Why can't we show a biologist going into space and doing great things? I think was he a high school biology teacher or a chemistry teacher? I don't remember.
SPEAKER_00He was a high, he was a he became Ryland Grace became disillusioned with academia. He has a PhD in molecular biology.
SPEAKER_01Ah, okay, okay. But yeah, exactly. Yes, let's have a great story about a molecular biologist. That is what we want, right? We need that. And so I think the more that we can partner as scientists with that traditional media, I think it has actually been seen as a negative for a long time. I think scientists are worried about being in news media, misrepresented. I think they're worried about people not taking their work seriously in Hollywood type media. But I think the more that we can get those stories about science into those places, the better off we'll all be.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as you said, it starts a conversation, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's if you can get your foot in the door, that's how you wind up with the vacuum you don't need.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
Soul Dogs And A Perfect Desk Block
SPEAKER_00But in this case, we're selling science, and it's uh you don't need you're not gonna be out, you're not gonna be out your mortgage payment. No. I appreciate you talking to us about Psycom. The as we kind of wrap up our talk today, we always ask our guests if they wouldn't mind sharing a pet story with us. You mentioned you you have a dog with you. What's your dog's name?
SPEAKER_01I do. My dog's name is Quinn. She is a tiny little black and white chihuahua poodle mud mix, and she's all of eight and a half pounds. But yeah, she is sitting next to me in the sun right now. She's a cutie.
SPEAKER_00Aw. And uh would you have a story you could share with us either about your little black the black beauty with you or another pet in your life?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm actually gonna share a story about my last dog, Penny, who passed away a couple years ago. But my husband and I got in 2020 as a rescue, and who was just truly my soul dog. I don't know that I believe in soulmates for people, but I absolutely believe that Penny and I have been lost souls in different universes. No one ever got me like that dog did. But she was such a little odd duck and such a little sort of quirky pup. And one of the funniest moments, I think she was very quiet. She almost never barked. She was very chill in general. But we had some people doing some work on our balcony, and unbeknownst to us, they actually came up on a ladder. They came up outside on the balcony. So she hadn't seen these people come through the apartment. She just all of a sudden turns, and there are strange men out on the balcony of our third floor apartment, which should not be happening. And this dog, she doesn't know what to do, she doesn't bark at them. I'm on a work call. And so she runs into the other room where I am and she starts like huffing at me. And I'm like, Yeah, okay, I know, I know that there's people out there. It's fine. And I should say she had never done any of this before. Okay. She then hops up on the couch that's next to me and she starts like whining at me, looking at me. And I'm like, Yeah, okay, I know that they're there. It's fine. She then proceeds and truly had never done this before, to jump up and walk all the way onto my desk and get in between me and the laptop. And I'll have to share a picture of this somewhere afterwards. She is just like legs planted on either side of my laptop, staring at me like, hello. And I was like, okay, all right. And so I get up from my work call and I go walk into the other room, and she's just like looking at me and looking at them and looking at me. And I had to go out there and be like, hello, it's fine. See, they're okay. But it was just, I could not stop laughing at the way that she was like, I don't know what to do. I don't know if I should bark. I don't know what to do, but I'm going to literally get up on the desk in between you and what is going on to make you come and look. She was perhaps not a scary guard dog, but she did understand that something weird was happening.
SPEAKER_00That's hilarious. You that she's you're obviously not taking this as seriously as I am.
SPEAKER_01Like exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Aw. Very sweet. To agree with your sentiment about soul dogs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Our uh golden we had before Bunsen. Yeah, she was definitely my soul dog.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. They're we don't deserve them, but no, I'm I'm glad we get to spoil them rotten and give them the best lives while we have them.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. They make uh they make your life so much more positive. They're a huge part of everything that's good about life for sure. Yes. I so I so thank you for sharing your story, your pet story with us. Alex, we're at the end of our chat. Can folks find you on social medias, on the internets?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I am at Alex Danis on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram, but I also make and host videos for the ACS Reactions channel on YouTube and the Boston Museum of Science channels across all platforms.
SPEAKER_00Sweet. Okay, so folks, we'll have one, two links. We'll have some links for you to find Alex on social media there. Doc, it's been a pleasure to chat with you. Thank you so much for talking with me about amino acids. I never haven't talked about amino acids in years. So I love it. This was a treat. Best wishes in the future.
Patreon Thanks And Sign Off
SPEAKER_01Thank you. It was lovely chatting with you as well. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. And a shout out to all the top dogs. That's the top tier of our Patreon community, The Pop Pack. You can sign up in our show notes. All right, Chris, let's hear those names that are part of the top dogs.
SPEAKER_02Amelia Fettig, Re Oda, Carol Hanel, Jennifer Challenge, Linnea Janet, Karen Cronister, Vicky Otero, Christy Walker, Sarah Brown, Wendy, Diane, Mason and Luke, Helen Chin, Elizabeth Bourgeois, Marianne McNally, Katherine Jordan, Shelly Smith, Laura Stephenson, Tracy Leinbaugh, Anne Uchida, Heather Burbach, Kelly, Tracy Halbert, Ben Rather, Debbie Anderson, Sandy Brimer, Mary Rader, Bianca Hyde, Andrew Lynn, Brenda Clark, Brianne Hawes, Peggy McKeel, Holly Birch, Kathy Zirker, Susan Wagner, and Liz Button.
SPEAKER_03Take him look at the ups and down. I wanna see how the world turns around. Let's go adventure in the deep blue sea.