Speaker 1: We love these strange stories, these strange science stories. So
Speaker 1: let's kick that off, shall we.
Speaker 2: Strange science, It's like weird science, but strange.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say this amino acid wrong, but that's what
Speaker 1: we do during strained science is mispronounced things just to
Speaker 1: get to get your anger up. B tain b taine
Speaker 1: b E t ai n E b tane a modified
Speaker 1: amino acid that plays an important role when it comes
Speaker 1: to metabolism. And btaine is a molecule that's made by
Speaker 1: your kidneys. It's also found in some foods, and they're
Speaker 1: saying it can produce a bunch of benefits just like
Speaker 1: exercise does, and can slow some signs of aging, at
Speaker 1: least when you feed it to mice. We don't know
Speaker 1: if it happens to humans, but it's worth the shot, right.
Speaker 1: There's a new study that came out in the magazine
Speaker 1: or journal Sell that shows consistent exercise does raise levels
Speaker 1: of that compound of btane, at least in young men.
Speaker 1: That study also found that feeding that betaane to the
Speaker 1: aged mice boosts their immune health and their grip strength.
Speaker 1: How do you study the grip strength of a mouse?
Speaker 1: For now, obviously there's nothing that can replicate the actual
Speaker 1: benefits to your body of just doing the exercise. Exercise
Speaker 1: itself sharpens the mind. It can smooth and sooth i
Speaker 1: should say inflammation. It can help your cells damage, repair
Speaker 1: damaged tissue, keeps some diseases at bay, or at least
Speaker 1: at the very least eases some of their symptoms. But
Speaker 1: this deep level molecular mechanism as to why it works
Speaker 1: is still not fully clear. So a group out of China,
Speaker 1: the Chinese Academy of Sciences, enlisted the aid of thirteen
Speaker 1: healthy young men to lounge about for forty five days.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to do, isn't it. Yeah, sure, it
Speaker 1: was lounge about for forty five days, limit their physical activity,
Speaker 1: and then have them run five.
Speaker 2: K's every one or two days.
Speaker 1: And the researchers would take the blood and the stool
Speaker 1: samples from these guys and they would do a bunch
Speaker 1: of measurements on them after their forty five day rest
Speaker 1: and then twenty five days into their new running routine,
Speaker 1: and they said that they found the exercises were reshaping
Speaker 1: the body at a molecular level. After twenty five days
Speaker 1: of regular running, there were changes in immune cells in
Speaker 1: lipid metabolism in the gut microbiome, et cetera, but that
Speaker 1: the biggest change was the abundance of that amino acid
Speaker 1: that btane, and following up on those results, they then
Speaker 1: started feeding btaane to mice. Old mice that drank water
Speaker 1: spiked with btain had stronger muscles, less inflammation, and more
Speaker 1: youthful skin than their counterparts who did not get the supplement. Again,
Speaker 1: still no answer as to how they were able to
Speaker 1: test the grip strength of a mouse. There's a new
Speaker 1: study also into spiders that says the female when you
Speaker 1: look at a species of spider where the female eats
Speaker 1: the male after sex, that the males are pretty picky
Speaker 1: about who it is they go. Afore, scientific studies spent
Speaker 1: an ordinate amount of time and effort to demonstrate something
Speaker 1: that is rather obvious, and in this case, they have
Speaker 1: done it again. This one specifically is looking at cooi
Speaker 1: males and seductive females in the sexually cannibalistic colonial spider
Speaker 1: Cryptophora citricola, and it's about the relationship dynamics in a
Speaker 1: group living spider cecies, a species that is where females
Speaker 1: are prone to eat the males after sex. Researchers found
Speaker 1: that the males were selective about their mates. They favored
Speaker 1: the younger ones duh, and the well fed females, maybe
Speaker 1: because the males hoped they wouldn't get eaten. We're in
Speaker 1: the middle of austrange science. We saw that lake I
Speaker 1: think they called it Ti Larry Lake here in central
Speaker 1: California where outside of Fresno, there was a lake that
Speaker 1: had kind of come back after this naturally occurring lake,
Speaker 1: after it had been dammed and irrigated, and you know,
Speaker 1: they've changed basically the water table of the central Valley
Speaker 1: when agriculture came in. They're seeing something like that out
Speaker 1: in the outback in Australia. Catty Tanda Lake Eyre is
Speaker 1: a thirty seven hundred square mile ephemeral lake and despite
Speaker 1: the fact they call it a lake, it rarely has
Speaker 1: any water in it. They get about five and a
Speaker 1: half inches of rain in that part of Australia every year,
Speaker 1: and they said it's more like a giant saltpan in
Speaker 1: the South Australian desert. In fact, like we see the
Speaker 1: Great Salt Flats here in the United States. A British
Speaker 1: speed record breaker in nineteen sixty four used the racetrack
Speaker 1: that was this just dried saltpan to record a world
Speaker 1: speed record at four hundred and three miles an hour.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy four, the lake filled to its capacity
Speaker 1: for just the third time on record. That flooding has
Speaker 1: been taken as the high water mark and they haven't
Speaker 1: seen it since then. But as of right now, this year,
Speaker 1: tropical Cyclone Alfred dumped a bunch of rain on that
Speaker 1: Queensland area, the water flowing down to this Catty Tanda
Speaker 1: Lake Eyre and they said it appears to be filling
Speaker 1: for just the fourth time in one hundred and sixty years.
Speaker 1: A huge tourist boom as people go check that out.
Speaker 1: The waterbirds that have made their way inland now are
Speaker 1: also one of the reasons why so many people are
Speaker 1: headed out that direction. If you're a fan of books
Speaker 1: on neurology, listen. I know not everybody's going to say,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, that sounds great, But Malcolm glas Well wrote
Speaker 1: a book called Blink, and in it he talked about
Speaker 1: the difference between our gut reactions. You know, something that
Speaker 1: happens immediately and we just react to something. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: we react to the way someone looks or re react
Speaker 1: to a sound.
Speaker 2: We react in a way that.
Speaker 1: Is faster than we can consciously even make a decision,
Speaker 1: which takes a lot of brain power and a lot
Speaker 1: of time. There's another book called Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow,
Speaker 1: Doctor Daniel Canneman a similar book, much more detailed in
Speaker 1: terms of the science behind all of that.
Speaker 2: But this continues to be one of.
Speaker 1: Those issues where people are fascinated by what is the
Speaker 1: difference between the flash reaction to something and an actual
Speaker 1: time spent by your brain making a decision about something.
Speaker 1: Cognitive psychologists have talked about how to distinguish insight from
Speaker 1: analytical problem solving.
Speaker 2: It's a better way to put it.
Speaker 1: And they say that the insight is kind of lives
Speaker 1: by itself.
Speaker 2: Not everyone agrees for that.
Speaker 1: With that, there's a psychologist out of Temple University and
Speaker 1: he says that insight might not be as different from
Speaker 1: analytical thinking as it seems. And he says that insight
Speaker 1: also comes from the brain gradually building on what it
Speaker 1: already knows, which incorporates new information. Each failed attempt that exists,
Speaker 1: your brain constantly learns and alters the way it's going
Speaker 1: to react. To something based on how many times you've
Speaker 1: experienced this thing. Now, that doesn't explain some of the
Speaker 1: very early experiences that we have when we're kids, When
Speaker 1: we're babies, there are things that we react to instinctively
Speaker 1: without any previous exposure to it. I mean, think about
Speaker 1: when you put a baby down in a crib and
Speaker 1: their arms kind of shoot out like they're falling. Well,
Speaker 1: they've never fallen before. How would they know to do that?
Speaker 1: What is it about that?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: This psychologist says, the main feature of insight is the
Speaker 1: emotion that someone feels after they find an answer or
Speaker 1: they create something that seems new. That's that aha moment
Speaker 1: that I was talking about, the Eureka thing, and whatever
Speaker 1: happens in your brain at that time, he says, releases
Speaker 1: the right chemical or something happens in your brain neurologically
Speaker 1: that reinforces whatever it was that you did that was correct,
Speaker 1: That you solved a problem that you hadn't been able
Speaker 1: to solve before. All that exists in this world of
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how your brain works now