Petri Dish

Extremophiles!

Our animal episodes seem popular, so episode 9 is a return to silly beasties -- in this case Sean and Nathan are talking about organisms that like to live in EXTREME environments, organisms called extremophiles.

Sean and Nathan discuss the plural of octopus, with Sean starting out wrong with octopi (wrong!), Nathan offering octopussies (hmm) then switching to octopuses (best accepted answer). Sean tosses in octopodes, which is the correct plural form based on the etymology, but pretty much no one says it.

Sean mentions at one point that at some depths amphipods would normally have their exoskeletons dissolve, but H. gigas is an amphipod that secretes an aluminum hydroxide gel over their exoskeleton to protect it. Which is metal.

 

References:

https://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4461

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967063716300656?via%3Dihub

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206710

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/these-intrepid-crickets-hawaii-s-lava-home-sweet-home

https://www.nature.com/articles/310225a0.pdf

https://www.pnas.org/content/104/36/14401.short

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4187170/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/space-station-mold-survives-200-times-radiation-dose-would-kill-human

The Origin of Life

This week Nathan and Sean discuss the origin of life on Earth! Every cell in your body came, ultimately, from the zygote that was made when your dad’s sperm wiggled its way into your mom’s egg. And those little dudes came from another cell, and another, leading all the way back in time - a physical chain of cell divisions leading back to that very first cell. But what existed in the moments before that? Where did that cell come from?

Error Thingy: Nathan asked Sean for a timeline on the origin of life, and Sean low-balled it at 3 billion years ago, which is a little short of the current scientific estimates, which place the first cellular life as emerging as recently at 3.5 billion years ago and as far back as 4.2 billion years ago. Given that the Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, that could mean that life got going pretty quickly. We’ll see how those estimates hold up as our scientific knowledge expands!

Contact us on twitter @dishpodcast or via email petridishpod at gmail.com! Sign up for our patreon www.patreon.com/petridish and rate us on your podcast app! 

 

Some References:

https://www.pnas.org/content/114/43/11327.full

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/5/1/294/htm

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215006818

Climate, It Is (Still) A-Changin' Part 2 Redux

Woah woah, we got the end of our first little microseries -- this time wrapping up CLIMATE CHANGE. In this episode, Sean tries to convince Nathan that doomsday scenarios are not cool, they're serious business. The dudes walk through the different potential climate scenarios, and some of the potential ways we can mitigate and reverse climate change. If you thought the first episode was dismal, this one really kind of turns it around near the end, sorta. Yeah!

Errors n stuff: Nathan loves asking Sean what metric stuff is in USA-units, and Sean got one wrong -- he said 1.5C was 'a little under 4 degrees F', which is dum dum talk because every degree Celsius is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, so 1.5C is 2.7F. But whatever man, like, sometimes numbers are hard for some people.

If you want to hit us up, email us at petridishpod at gmail.com or tweeters at us @dishpodcast because we do that now. Sign up for our Patreon at www.patreon.com/petridish to help validate our existence! Thanks for listening, everyone!

 

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27794122

https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/

http://www.srmgi.org/what-is-srm/

http://lsce-datavisgroup.github.io/CO2emissions/

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76

Climate, It Is A-Changin'

This week is part one of our two-part series on CLIMATE CHANGE. For part one, Sean and Nathan talk about what is causing climate change and how humans are involved in all of that. Part two (coming next Monday!) covers the different scenarios for what the world could look like in the year 2100, and what we can do to combat climate change! Stay tuned!

In the episode, Sean praises China for building a lot of renewable energy, but he didn't know how aggressively India has been expanding their renewable energy capacity (https://reut.rs/2SmotAv). Also, in the episode Sean and Nathan discuss electrification of rural areas, an important variable in the emissions-reduction equation. India has made big strides in electrifying rural areas in the past few years, and nearly all households now have electricity for part of the day. The challenge now is getting them electricity for more of the day, ~50% of rural households have electricity for about half the day. That's better than nothing! But it suggests the grid may be stressed when they need it most, like to help with cooling during heat waves (or to help avoid food spoilage, preservation of drugs/vaccines and stuff, etc).

This episode also features listener responses to episode 4 on acupuncture!

Podcasts are an audio format, but sometimes visual learning is way more convincing, so check out some beautiful graphics here: https://visme.co/blog/climate-change-facts/

Email us at petridishpod -at- gmail.com! Tweet at us @dishpodcast! Sign up on patreon: patreon.com/petridish !

Ads for this episode: Rickrods - the sexy rickshaw service | Kruger - auto-edits podcasts to make them sleep-friendly 

References:

This time around, pretty much everything was pulled from IPCC reports (they are super long and comprehensive, check them out!)

https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/

I recommend the more recent report on keeping things to 1.5 C (https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/), though for background info the AR5 report is nice (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/)

Elephants: TREE KILLERS!

Episode 5 of PETRI DISH! This episode is a prequel of sorts to our upcoming 2 part series on CLIMATE CHANGE (oh no!). In this episode, Sean tries to discuss ECOSYSTEM ENGINEERS with Nathan, who keeps calling these critters Environmental Engineers, which is 50% right. He seriously did it multiple times, just couldn't say ecological.

Anyway, what's up with these engineer guys? They're animals (including humans!) that shape, maintain, and even destroy ecosystems on a big enough scale to impact the world around them -- changing the landscape, the plants, and the kinds/number of species that live around them. Listen as we talk about megaherbivores like the Elephant, smaller dudes like beavers, even smaller dudes like termites, and then wrap it up with some navel gazing about humans!

Email us questions or comments about episodes at petridishpod -at- gmail.com. Hit us up on Patreon at patreon.com/petridish, where $1 a month earns you the patron gift of surprising the shit out of Sean, Nathan, and Stacey.

 

References! Does anyone ever look at these? Some of them could be fun...

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/D44E0079BFF2661218B93083F070B562/S0266467498000364a.pdf/moundbuilding_termite_macrotermes_michaelseni_as_an_ecosystem_engineer.pdf

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/fwb.12487

https://www.pnas.org/content/113/23/6388.full

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10682-016-9821-z

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781118858615

https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/article/98/3/603/3855617

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2018.00003/full#B74

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169555X1100314X

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/285824

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep32807

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10021-007-9109-9

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.0030-1299.2004.13139.x

https://bioone.org/journals/Southeastern-Naturalist/volume-3/issue-4/1528-7092(2004)003[0583:CONAAA]2.0.CO;2/Characterization-of-Natural-and-Artificial-Alligator-Holes/10.1656/1528-7092(2004)003[0583:CONAAA]2.0.CO;2.full

Stick It To Me

Sean and Nathan wrestle with their doubts over acupuncture in the face of its glorious and undeniable efficacy! Learn about what the current science is on whether acupuncture does anything, what it could be physically doing (if anything at all), and a bit about the history of acupuncture as Nathan demonstrates his historian chops.

 

Check out our patreon page!

patreon.com/petridish

 

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192271/

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep16776#discussion

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep30675#discussion

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3467968/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0266435603002420?via%3Dihub

https://bioone.org/journals/Freshwater-Reviews/volume-4/issue-1/FRJ-4.1.417/Medicinal-Leeches-Historical-use-Ecology-Genetics-and-Conservation/10.1608/FRJ-4.1.417.full

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1016/j.otohns.2004.07.005

 

This episode was fake-sponsored by RESTAURANTS -- just generally, like, restaurants that you can go out and eat at. 

This episode was also fake-sponsored by RAGEQUIT -- your one-stop app for acrimonious divorce!

Strange Animals and How To Make Them

What do the duck-billed platypus, antarctic toothfish, and sleepy lizard have in common? They exist, they're weird, and it is evolution's fault. In this episode, Sean and Nathan take a very very small survey of weird wildlife and some of the evolutionary forces behind their oddness.

Check out our patreon page! www.patreon.com/petridish

Contact us about corrections and/or questions at petridishpod at gmail.com

Rate us on iTunes (we're up on iTunes now!), and/or check us out on Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or whatever dude.

 

References:

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/10/e1601329

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(08)00665-9

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dvdy.23887

https://www.pnas.org/content/94/8/3485

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1562/2006-02-24-IR-813

https://jeb.biologists.org/content/213/12/2048

Petri Beef

Learn more about the future of meat on the second episode of PETRI DISH. Sean and Nathan discuss lab-grown meat, the not-yet-in-stores futuristic food option that involves growing animal cells in a lab and grinding them up for dinner! 

Korean Human LCD GIF: https://i.imgur.com/Cnd9rMs.gifv

Small Error Note! At 12:55 Sean says 'cellulose' but he was being dumb -- he meant 'collagen'.

References for readin'

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780081007228000127

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780081005934000175

Baby Got Gut

Hi Everyone! Welcome to the inaugural episode of PETRI DISH. In this episode, Sean and Nathan discuss what is living inside you -- the wonderful and ever-expanding world of the gut microbiome. The microbiome seems to affect things ranging from obesity and diabetes of Alzheimer's and allergies, and we do our best to dip our toes into the big scientific ideas involved in this microscopic world.

We'll be trying to use these episode notes to include some reading, if people are feeling scientifically inclined!

 

*The Hologenome Concept: Human, Animal and Plant Microbiota

Rosenberg, Eugene; Zilber-Rosenberg, Ilana

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319042404

 

*Abnormal gut microbiota composition contributes to cognitive dysfunction in SAMP8 mice

Zhan, Gaofeng et al

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6046237/