Listener Mail: Machine

eats and poops. That's right, you know. Inspired by recent episode we did about the idea of creating machines that can consume and then defecate, it made sense to update Melos so that he can do this as well. And now he does. It's not perfect, if you you know, if you analyze the various bits of robots scat that he's leaving around the studio here, you know, you'll you'll notice it looks rather different from what you might find

in the wild. It's a little um uh, you know, the formation is a little suspect, a little more radioactive than normal. Yeah, a little a little too cubicle in nature. Not to say that cubicle poop is not found in nature, because it is. But but still we're working on it. We feel like we're still working out some of the kinks in his mechanical intestines. Yes, mailists, do not take this critique harshly. You you have noble ichor and we

believe in you, alright. So I think we should start off by reading some mail we got in response to our episode on the ancient weapon technology the oddle Addell. Now you remember this was the episode we did. I think it was right after our last listener mail episode about the the ancient hunting and weapons technology of this lever that would be used to accelerate dart throws and

has been found all over world. We actually heard from one very experienced and knowledgeable listener and that this was some exciting feedback. So let's jump right into it. Uh, this is from our listener, Angelo, Angelo says, Dear Robert and Joe, my name is Angelo Robledo. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. And I am on the board of directors of the World Auto Lattle Association. I run their social media accounts and host autolatal tournaments in Southern Nevada.

I'm an experimental archaeology researcher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and have been making and throwing auto ladles for ten years. First off, thank you for taking the time to do such a thorough podcast episode on the auto ladle. It's rare that this artifact gets any attention at all, let alone to the level of a popular podcast. Your research incitations were great. It's impossible to go wrong

by researching. Dr John Whittaker and autolatdal research legend and fellow board member at the w a A. I was hoping to clarify a few things regarding banner stones. Remember those were some artifacts that are these sort of weights or stones that are associated with autolattal findings in archaeology. Uh and he continues, also flexible auto attles and flexible darts. Based on what you did and didn't discuss in your episode.

Banner stones have been a point of contention in the auto lettle community for decades, but some important distinctions need to be made. There are some rocks slash weights attached to auto addles that are not banner stones and are not contested. These stones are generally flat on one side and no wider than the width of the autolattle itself, unlike banner stones, which are definitionally wider than an auto

lattle protruding from the sides. These regular weights, or boat stones as I call them based on their canoe like appearance, have a well understood and largely uncontested purpose. They're very prevalent in the American Southwest and used prominently on basket maker style addleaddles, though they can be found elsewhere. These stones serve as a counterweight offsetting the length and weight

of the dart. With an average six foot dart and two foot auto ladle, there's quite a bit of darts sticking out in front of the hand, causing strain on the wrist and causing the tip to dip when aiming for long periods of time. The stone balances this weight by adding mass to the rear of the auto laddle, nullifying wrist strain. This stone also helps smooth out the throw by adding more mass near the spur, in the same way that swinging a wooden baseball bat can feel

smoother than a foam one. Okay, that makes sense to me. I can picture this, and also it totally makes sense about balancing it on the wrist. When we heard we're going to read messages or summarize messages from several other listeners who talked about their experience with auto laddles, and one thing several of them said was that that actually maybe the hardest part of it when they were learning to use an auto laddle was just like holding the

dart in place while they were trying to aim their throw. Yeah, you know, it reminds them. On one hand, it reminds me of things I've read about the the use of the longbow um in medieval times and how just the sheer physical demands of that, and that's something that can is easy to overlook and discussing ancient and inventions that are more that require more physicality on the part of the user. Is that is that that they are, you know,

highly physical devices in many cases. And I can't remember if I mentioned this in in the Lattle episode that we recorded, but uh, just my own experience of using sort of at Lattle esque ball throwing devices like just like the throw tennis ball dog, yeah, or in this case like throws some sort of a nerf you know, whizzing football type, uh projectile. Just playing around with that with with my son, I was I was noticing, like, wow, I'm straining new things in my arm that I was

not aware of you know. Uh so, yeah, I think the physical demands of the invention are definitely worth worth mentioning. But so this comes back to the idea of the banner stones, which we mentioned. There was some archaeological controversy about because it's not entirely known what these stones were for. Were they decorative or did they actually serve a purpose? And Angelo here gets into that. He says the contention is in banner stones, which are often too large and

awkward to serve the same purpose as boat stones. Some say they still function as regular weights, Others say they're simply status symbols hence the banner and we're not functional. Still other state other uses for such stones, such as arrows straighteners. Archaeologists themselves cause more troubled and intended by improperly labeling banner stones from regular addolddle weights or failing to differentiate what they're talking about. This brings us to

flexible addoladdles. While some studies have shown there to be a benefit to flexible auto addles, this often requires the aid of high speed footage to properly calibrate, and the results are often negligible. Other studies show no benefit to having a flexible audol addle. The biggest argument against flexible addoltdeles being an intentional innovation is the fact that an overwhelming majority of autoladdles found or documented are not flexible.

In fact, in my ten years of auto lattel ng and attendance of dozens of events, I have yet to see a flexible auto lattle in use or make one myself. I also cannot recall a flexible autolattle in the dozens of autolattle artifacts I've seen or studied. Finally, onto flexible darts, the fact that the dart flexes is arguably the single most important part of the entire auto lettle system. I was disappointed to not hear you discuss how vital this is.

The flexibility of darts is what differentiates them from hand thrown spears. Autolttle darts are propelled from the rear behind the dart center of gravity, meaning the force is transferred to one percent of the dart. A spear, however, is thrown from the midpoint, a much more inefficient force transfer.

There is a trade off, however, the weight of the dart tip wishes to stay in place according to Newton's laws and the throwing motion generates a great deal of force in the split second before the dart disin gages from the autolatzle that force and needs to go somewhere. If the dart is stiff, then that force immediately causes the tip to raise as the audi latti flicks the rear end of the dart underneath it. The stiffer the dart,

the greater the effect. The effect would be so great on a perfectly stiff dart that the dart would fish tail in the air and fail to be accurate or even reach the target. A flexible dart, however, allows the excess force to be stored in the dart as it flexes. The tip remains frozen in space as the dart flexes, and at the last moment, the stored energy releases, allowing

the dart to disengage from the odd laddle. The dart flexes in a specific way during flight, however, the front third of the dart is stiffer than the rear two thirds, meaning the rear of the dart continues to flex around the tip, which remains on target during the entire flight. In essence, a flexible dart is one percent necessary for an accurate throw. The engineering of the dart is much

more important than the add lattle. At two by four with an ale in it confunction as a a a laddle, but without a perfectly formed flexible dart, the entire system won't work. Arrows shot from a bow are flexible in the same way for the exact same reason. It just happens on a smaller and faster scale. Arrows are also propelled from the rear, just like a ladle darts. In fact, many modern projectile weapons used the same principles found in

a ladles. The final thing I wanted to mention was a clarification on the range and accuracy of auto ladles when compared to bows or spears. You alluded to but did not explicitly mentioned the short effective range of a

hand thrown spear. Most credible studies of prehistoric, historic, and modern hand thrown spears put their maximum effective range, or the range where thrower could reliably meaning seventy five greater chance hit a target with a flat trajectory and enough force for a fatal injury to be five to seven meters. That's fifteen to twenty two ft, so that's obviously not

very far. The minimum distance that standard at Lattle tournaments is fifteen meters or about forty eight feet, with a maximum effective range of twenty five meters or about eighty feet from the top throwers in the world, around thirty meters or a hundred feet hit percentage starts dropping drastically. More often than not, spears were for thrusting, and auto ladles were used for throwing, despite what Hollywood would lead

you to believe. As I previously mentioned, overall, YouTube provided more in depth analysis on the auto ladle than any other non autolodolists I've ever seen, and Angelo wraps up here. Thanks us again for the episode. Uh says uh. I just wanted to clarify a few things. Mentions that their Instagram pages at World Auto Lottal Association if you want to check that out and see some high speed footage and uh and dart flex Uh So, Yeah, that was

really informative. Thank you very much, Angelo for getting in touch and for sharing your expertise with us. As soon as I was reading this, yeah, I was picturing the importance of the flexing of the dart the way like when you release it, sort of the tape ill. Especially when you see this high speed footage. The Tale of the Dark kind of wobbles around while the front of the Dark just stays dead on target. Yeah, it's definitely noticeable in the in the a lot of the footage

that you see online. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from David. David says, I love your show and and I can't say enough good things about it. Keep doing more shows. I'm catching up on stuff to blow your mind and listen to End of the World and Two Shifts at work. But I really love it when it's time for a new episode of Invention. I work at a mindless warehouse facility, and listening to

your podcast keeps my brain from atrophy. Although I think my wife is tired of me knowing everything, as I have been catching myself interrupting a lot with actually, did you know? Oh no, it's a nasty habit I picked up from fact Overlord. Overload from fact Overlord. Yeah, now he's fact Overlord, David, fact Overlord. Don't get that Overlord David. Anyway. At Alttle, I worked as a wilderness guy for two years and became very interested in primitive tools and weapons.

I never used any to actually hunt, but mostly target practice. I just wanted to elaborate on a point you briefly made comparing the outlawdle to the two of the bow. I've used bows all made from high tech material and a factory quite easily and without much practice, and pretty good. I've also made attempts to design and make my own bow from collected wood, not professionally commercial grade. That would

be cheating. The result is always very poor. Again coming back to our our our commentary on Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator or or what was what was the MST three K movie that uh we referenced where the individual makes a bow and that the riff is yeah, it barely works. I don't remember, but at anyway, you see that a lot or a fair amount in in in films where someone makes their own bow and suddenly it's deadly efficient.

Predator being the key um suspect here. Anyway, David continues, even after reading some instructions and using modern tools, the bows don't come out much better. Uh, they're even harder to use. In my experience, the quality of shot is only as good as the bow, which is very difficult to make without a lot of practice. But I made three or four bad models and one hell of an aladdle in one afternoon, and I feel confident I could make a great a autoladdle and under an hour with

only a knife. With only a few hours of practice, I could hit a one ft diameter tree from thirty ft away with tremendous force, many times getting really poorly made spears to stick in a tree. Without a lot of time and a large learning curve, I don't think I could make a quality enough bow from scratch to do that. Further, I believe at distances under fifty feet the aladdle gives you much more force but equal accuracy

of a bow. If I wanted to bring an animal down in one shot quickly, I truly feel the aladdle is going to cause much more damage than the bow. This also depends on the size of your spear. Any times, while living in the wilderness, I would come across animals less than fifty feet away, and at least twice a week I would find myself accidentally less than twenty ft away.

It was very common for me to open my eyes from a morning meditation and be in the presence of potential food and don't forget at Alato can be used for fish too in a hurry, if you have a clear stream. In conclusion, if someone made an excellent bow, I'd prefer the bow. If I had to figure out my own weapon, I choose the addoladdle. All the love,

David from Greenville. All right, well, this sort of ends up with what we were saying, right, Uh, the idea that one of the great advantages of the auto ladle is its simplicity and the fact that, uh, you know, as we were talking about with some of the survivalists, we were reading that you can pretty easily make one in the field that works not not bad at all. Yeah, and again coming back to the fact that Dutch should have made an Aunt Lattle in Predator instead of that

ridiculous bow. You really hung up on this. I am no, I just think it would have been a better It would have made the movie better. It would have made that Sea Winn's better, and it would be it would have been cooler and what's what's it would have been perfect more unfamiliar to modern audiences too. Yeah. Well, we

actually had one listener to get in touch with us. Well, we don't have time to read the email in full, but mentioned an episode of Star Trek the original series where in the in the TV episode that they had to make primitive weapons on a planet because they were stranded didn't have their phasers and all that sort made bows. But but the listener writing and mentioned that in the novel adaptation of the episode, they make out ladles instead. I love that. I love it when when someone doing

the novelization decides to fix something. Yeah, who's that movie novelization writer that you really like? Who did that? Was the Halloween three adaptation? Oh? I don't. I don't remember his name off hand, but you know, they're they're There are various tales of of movie novelization victories. I mean, I think one of the greatest, of course, is Isaac Asimov for Fantastic Voyage. I'm not even aware of this. Yeah, yeah, agreed to uh, you know, to work on the book

version that came out with the film. But part of the consideration was that he got to fix some of the science in the book. And it's a fabulous book, you know. I don't even movie's fun too. But I finally remember reading Isaac Asimov's fan a Fantastic Voyage. I've never even heard of that before I got to check

that out now. Well. So we got a lot of great listener mail about the add a laddle, way too much to read in full, but since we asked for people's experiences, I did want to just summarize a few more of the messages we received, but don't have time to read. We got a message from an Ethan who says that when he was in college he got to try out and ad a ladle in one of his classes and he found he could aim pretty well after just a few throws, and this was a commonly reported

thing from listeners. They said that it was surprisingly easy to get the hang of aiming with it. Another David wrote in and said a similar thing. I says he does historical re enactments and has attended an ad a ladle siminar. In his opinion, it was much easier than he would have expected to throw, and he became fairly

accurate after just a few practice throws. Um Our listener Bradley says that when he was a kid, he learned about the addleladdle in a class at school, and then he and a friend made an addle laddle in a dart later that summer, when after a day of practicing they could sometimes hit a milk jug full of water, though he doesn't say what distance, and he also says it was surprisingly easy to make an audle ladle in

a dart just out of branches that they found. You know, I hope it goes without saying, but I do want to just advise everyone here that if you are inspired by this and decided to make your own add a ladle, that you will exercise common sense. Oh yeah, and and and follow follow directions and advice from some of these organizations that we've mentioned, because that's that's one of the potential pitfalls of being able to make a fairly efficient deadly weapon from just sticks that you obtain in your

natural habitat right, look up safety precautions. Obviously, don't do anything with a living thing down range unless you're actually hunting. And then I guess you got to wait till a little season. Right, what's the what's the hunting season for using not not a lottle? Oh? I think we talked about this, but I've forgotten about. I mean, generally the trend is the more sort of old fashioned the weapon, the earlier you get in, right, I think that might

be true. I do remember reading something about in in some places the regulations are different for the bare handed deer hunting that like that starts super early. Uh So. Speaking of hunting, we also heard from our listener Matt regarding how close you can get to deer without noticing.

Matt says that he's an avid hunter in Ontario and had a few observations about approaching wildlife, because that was one of the things we talked about in the episode, was like the distance that you can get from pray if you're hunting, Like, how close can you normally get to a deer? Normally you know they'll bolt before you

get pretty close. But I talked about one experience I had just this year where I kind of walked up on one without it apparently noticing me, and I did notice it, And how did that make you feel like a regular Jason Vorhees uh So, Matt says outside the realm of hunting, he says that on the farm, it's easiest to get close to deer during the harvest. Quote. They like to eat and take cover within the corn rows and won't run if they're unsure what direction you're

coming from. With a couple of pieces of machinery running in different areas. I imagine this can be somewhat disorienting to them, thus making it possible to get pretty close if you know where they are once. He's a lot of wildlife during the harvest season eagles, owls, rabbits, coyotes, etcetera. And a nice close up of an area's deer is

always a pleasant treat. And then with regards to hunting, Matt says quote when it comes to hunting, I'm continually amazed how well deer can blend into their environment, as well as how patient they are. Many times I have not literally, but approximately so nearly walked on top of one or a group of deer. They have an intuition for knowing they've been spot whether they've been spotted or not, and whether the same forbet is to run or stay put. Then they make their escape once the hunter me is

a safe distance past. This is the thing I think, if we haven't talked about it on our other podcast to stuff to blow your mind, I would like to come back and visit sometime. The sense for having been seen, Like there's debate about to what extent you know animals and stuff have a kind of sense for that, Like how do they detect whether or not they are detectable

or have been detected. I think about this with my catalot, when when she's like stalking me in the house, and it doesn't seem to make a difference to her if I've seen her or not, Like she's still going to continue stalking me and hunting me for prey. That's recreational stalking. Yeah, that's true, and she I guess she's she's acting in full predator mode when she's doing that. But of course, the thing about the common house cat is that it is.

And one of the reasons that they are ultimately so insane is that besides the fact that we've we've we've sort of domesticated them and we're keeping them inside of our how in many cases, uh, they are also in this area that they're you know, they're clearly both both mega predator, but also they are prey. H They're small enough to be a prey animal to a number of creatures of the wild. It's a strange niche to occupy. All right, should we take a break before we move

on to our next messages. Let's do it. We'll be right back, all right, We're back, all right, So we also heard from someone about our museum's episode. Where does the invention of the museum come from? What does the what does it mean? And how are we continuing to wrestle with the idea in modern times? So Diane writes in and says, first, Robert and Joe, your podcasts are the very bust out there. I love listening and learning

while I work. Especially timely was the museum podcast. I'm a fiber artist, and just last week learned that a Peace of Mind is going to be in an exhibit at the Ladelphia Museum of Art Off the Wall American Art to Wear, which opens November nine, and that the piece has been presented to them for their permanent collection. The Philadelphia area is my home base. I went to more College in Philadelphia. I am so excited, to say

the least, congratulations. Yeah, you're becoming a part of history. Yeah. Your podcast made me think about what it means to actually have my work in a museum, which I never thought would happen, and how future generations would view it and the time, materials, et cetera involved in making it it was. It will be surreal to stand there and say to someone, hey, I made that anyway, thanks again

for the hours of interesting and thoughtful podcasts Diane. Well, thanks so much for getting in touch, Diane, and congratulations on having your piece included. So hey, if you are out there in the Philadelphia area and you're around uh after November nine, you should go check out this exhibit. Yeah, see Diane's work. All right, here we've got a short one,

but but one with a very good reference. So this is in regards to our gastro Automaton episode about the like the Canard de Gira Tour, the duck that the mechanical duck that eats and poops. This is from Dan, Dan rights, Hi, Robert, and Joe. I was listening to your dreams of a gastro Automaton episode when you mentioned

machines playing musical instruments. Now, this is a thing that the same guy who created the pooping duck, you know, the Canard Deira Tour, also made these automata that we're human like figures that would actually play musical instruments like a flute by blowing into them and doing the fingerings right. Was the key one, uh and so uh here Dan picks up and says, I immediately thought of compressor head who compressor Head. Compressor Head are an all robot heavy

metal band. No pun intended that looked like something out of the out of the nineteen nineties sci fi horror film Hardware. At first, I've never seen it. I don't think. Yeah, if I'm remembering the correct film um Hardware, Yeah, I remember them pretty good. They could also be a cross between like Short Circuit and Chopping Mall, I think, but Dan goes on. I first discovered them late last year after falling through a YouTube rabbit hole, and it is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on

the web. I've provided a link down below to a live video of them playing the Eternal Motorhead classic Ace of Spades. They're far more entertaining and better than most flesh based cover bands I've seen. I have seen the future of rock and roll and its robots. Love everything you do. Keep up the good work, Dan. I went and watched this. It's great. It's fantastic, like it is if rocks. Well, it's interesting that you mentioned motor Had because Limmy is actually in uh the film Hardware these

referencing no way, Yeah, Yeah, Lemmy is in it. Iggy Pop is in it. Uh, it was a Richard Stanley film. Uh. And yeah, it's quite interesting, worth worth picking out if you want out, like a nice slice of like of year nineteen nineties horror, sci fi, rampaging robot, that sort of thing. What does let me do in it? I think he's a taxi driver, if I remember correctly. Um, yeah, that's that's what I remember. Yeah. I think he's driving like a weird like semi post apocalyptic taxi, which which

was appropriate. I think. Oh man, if you like motor Head or you like metal, yeah, look up compressor Head asub Spades. It is brutal. It is so good. All right, here's another one. This one comes to us from James. James says, hello, Robert and Joe, longtime listeners since the stuff from the Science Lab days. Okay that that was the original title of our other show, Stuff to Blow your Mind, back when I hosted it with Alison louder Milk. Anyway, it continues, and this is my first time writing in

We took you long enough. It's been almost ten years. Uh. In the Motion Picture Part three episode, you guys mentioned how you wanted to hear more musicians synchronized music to a trip to the Moon. Well, my there. Trevor plays guitar in a contemporary chamber group for which the composer writes modern pieces to a company Silent Films. They have performed a number of shows in and around the Detroit area,

chief among them being at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. They're called the Andrew Alden Ensemble and by the way, you want to look that up, andrew Alden Ensemble dot band camp dot com is the place to find them. Uh. And they've not only done a modern take on a Trip to the Moon, but also Nonsferatu, which they've performed on Halloween for the last few years, as well as

a few other movies. I'll include a link to their band camp page which I just shared, so you can check out the music if you find yourself in the Detroit area or her happened to catch them on tour. They're a great treat anyway. Sorry for rambling, but I love both of your shows. Keep doing what you're doing well, Thanks, James. I feel like everybody's getting in touch with great art now. Yeah, this is really art heavy episode. Museum worthy fiber arts

come presser head. Uh. Because soundtracks to Silent films. This is this is my jam. All right. Well, let's go to the next bit of listener mail, because this is going to bring us back more into the science realm of things. All right, This one comes to us from Morrigan. Morgan says, Hi, guys love the podcast. I'm an avid listener of all things Joe and Robert. I'm a research assistant in the end Tunes Lab at the University of North Texas bio Discovery Department, and we work within the

realm of synthetic biology concerning plant genes. Our aim is to create plants with genes that will move us toward a sustainable future like crop production, oil up regulation for livestock, feed, cloth fibers, and more. When we create specific genes we want to insert into plants, we have to first insert the genes into bacteria, and then the bacteria can in turn transfect the plants. The DNA transfer that comes from the bacteria to the plant is what alters the plants geno.

When we insert genes into bacteria and grow them on an agar plate, we want to select for just those bacteria. We eliminate the possibility of growing other bacteria by also adding antibiotic resistance to the bacterial genome in addition to our genes of interest or g o I. We can then grow up bacteria carrying our g o I on an agar plate that contains antibiotics in it, and the bacteria will grow due to the resistance gene we've placed in it, while all other bacterial strains will die. Therefore,

we only grow the exact bacterial strain we want. I've personally inserted genes into a grow bacterium that have as many as four different antibiotic resistances, and I know scientists who have gotten up to five. I thought this might be an interesting addition to the podcast. As I said, love your podcast, so keep them coming, best regards, Morgan. Oh that's interesting, Morgan. So this sort of seems in line with when you go way back to Alexander Fleming,

who first discovered these effects of penicillin. Fleming did say originally the penicillin might be useful in uh for medical purposes, but remember they had trouble initially producing enough penicillin to

be medically useful. Um, so some of the original uses he was talking about for it, we're not in medicine, but we're just in research, right and I imagine he probably would have had some kind of obviously not genetic engineering because they didn't know about genetic engineering at that point, but would have had some kinds of research of this type in mind, right, that you could separate out penicillin

vulnerable bacteria from penicillin. Uh, you know, non vulnerable bacteria. Yeah, this is an interesting bit of insight from someone with with lab experience and uh. And it's not the only bit of of of such a research oriented penicillin feedback that we received. No. Also, in response to our penicillin episode, we got an epic monster email from our listener Daniel, which is really good. It's long, so we might split it up and sort of take turns reading here. So Daniel, right,

it's hi, Robert and Joe. I enjoy both of your guys podcasts very much. But I'm writing today in reference to the Invention episode on penicillin. I'm a research associate in a lab that studies tuberculosis and I've never felt the need to write to a podcast before, but two ideas came to mind following this episode, the one about penicillin. First, when you were talking about what the world might look like if penicillin, and antibiotics weren't discovered, or at least

not for a few decades. I thought about one ramification that pretty much no one outside the molecular biology world would think of, and that's the idea of DNA transformation. It's sort of the basis for all genetic studies, and the entire thing revolves around antibiotics, both the fact that they effectively kill bacteria and that there exists specific proteins or versions of proteins that confer resistance to the antibiotics. As an example, imagine you wanted to add a gene

into E. Coli to see what it does. Usually this is done on a circular piece of DNA called a plasmid. So you add billions of copies of this DNA plasmid into a tube containing billions of E. Coli bacteria, and you force them to uptake the plasmid, either through electricity or their natural heat stress response. But even this is rather inefficient. So how do you make sure that the E. Coal I have taken up the plasmid. You don't want to study a population of bacteria where only ten percent

got the plasmid you're interested in studying. You need a pure population, and the way we do this is by including an antibiotic resistance gene on that plasmid. So after you induce the E. Coli to take up the plasmid, you can select for the plasmid positive bacteria by culturing

them in the presence of that antibiotic. All the bugs that did not get the plasmid will die, while those that did will express the resistance protein and survive and eventually divide, and the daughter cells will also have that plasmid as well. This is the basis for practically all genetic experiments where you need to select for a population that received your specific DNA of interest, and it's hard to imagine what would take the place of an antibiotic

in that selection process. Hopefully I've described this well enough. I think you did, Robert. Do you want to take over for a minute here, Yeah, I'll jump in here. Number two. The other thing I wanted to tell you about is related to a novel class of antibiotics. Our lab doesn't really work on antibiotic resistance that much, but of course TB is an important global pathogen and is naturally hard to treat. I think Joe mentioned how long a treatment it is usually six months of a cocktail

of multiple drugs, and it's also rapidly. It's also rapidly developing resistance. But we did have a side project in the lab studying a class of antibiotics cultur agenns. One thing you guys probably didn't have time to get into is how bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics. I guess there are three main ways. The two that are very simple are increasing the amount of a flux pumps and a limb in the amount of import pumps. If a chemical is causing damage to the cell, just get it out

or don't bring it in. Bacteria have some promiscuous pump system and these work pretty well, but these are more like increasing tolerance and might just mean more drug is needed to kill them, as opposed to developing real resistance, which comes from the third way, muta genesis. If you're antibiotic, chemical works by inhibiting a certain specific protein. The bacteria can just change the protein in such a way that it still performs its cellular function, but the antibiotic no

longer recognizes it. It's quite amazing that bacteria are able to do this at all. As far as we know, there seems to be no chemical that works against bacteria. Uh, that that they haven't found a way to develop a resistance to through mutagenesis. Some types of resistance are so well characterized that we know the exact base pay change that needs to occur for that specific drug to no longer be effective. However, this is an incredibly inefficient process

because mutagenesis happens randomly throughout the genome. But that's where bacteria is power to replicate comes into play. If a base paira mutations happens once every thousand generations, and there are one billion base pairs, it seems like thin odds, but it's really only a matter of time before the bacteria get lucky, and just like the transformation of plasmid, these resistant mutants will be able to survive and replicate, and,

since the resistance is heritable, eventually overtake the population. This is often mitigated by using multiple drugs with different targets, because two mutations occurring in different genes at the same time is even more unlikely. Alright, I'm gonna tag out Joe. Okay, Okay, So Daniel continues, UH, referring back to this class of new antibiotics. You mentioned anyway, the new class I mentioned seragenans are based around being a structural mimic to a

human microbial peptide called L L thirty seven. As you discussed, most antibiotics like penicillin, tetracycline, et cetera, come from microbes. But L L thirty seven is a peptide a string of meaning a string of amino acids that human cells produce themselves, which has been shown to have broad anti microbial activity. Hah. So this is a weird into what would be the god of the humans to compete with jubiles and zugdimoy. Oh I don't know that the humans

have a lot of gods, induges and dragons. I mean sometimes they'll upen worship zugdimoy if they had, you know, if they have good reason to. Oh, okay, I guess we can come back to this one. But Daniel continues, as you can imagine, there would be quite a lot of issues getting pharmacological amounts of substance that is produced by human cells. Also, interestingly, synthesizing strings of amino acids is not an easy process. Cells make it look so easy.

So even x vivo production of L thirty seven wouldn't really be feasible, So people have created these seragenans as chemical mimics to the L L thirty seven peptide. So what is their mechanism? The way people think they were work is by disrupting the plasma membranes of bacterial cells.

All bacteria have plasma membranes, and while most antibiotics work on a bacterial protein like tetracycline, inhibiting the ribosome and ampicill and inhibiting proteins that helped synthesize the cell wall, the seragen ins seem to attack the membrane by disrupting the lipids themselves and forming holes between them, causing the cells to LCE and that's L Y S E I mean. I think that means basically break down or break apart.

This is important because there is no real way to mutate the plasma membrane to develop resistance since lipids are not encoded genetically. They're metabolized by genetically encoded enzymes, but the species of lipid themselves are not. Possibly there could be a way for them to alter the composition which flavor of lipid makes meaning which flavor of lipid makes up the majority of the membrane, but as much less likely as it would probably require large changes to the

genome as opposed to single based mutations. One question you may ask is why don't these compounds attack the mammalian membranes we have plasma membranes, And the answer, unfortunately, is that they probably do. He continues. What makes antibiotics special is not just that they kill microbes, but that they don't kill us. Right. Most of the classic compounds act on cellular machinery that humans don't have, like cell walls

and bacterial ribosomes. Sulfuric acid is a great antibiotic. Unfortunately, it's also a great anti human. Right. The same would be true of heat. So when you put these sagenans, as well as l L thirty seven on mammalion cells at high concentrations, they kill the cells. What might be happening to make l L thirty seven not kill the

mammalian cells is in our bodies that produce it. Is that they are packaged in a careful way and local concentration is controlled such that the bacteria encounter a high enough molarity to kill them, but not the mammalian cells. Maybe even so highly specialized as to take advantage of different surface area of volume ratios. So maybe synthesizing a mimic of l L thirty seven that is much more potent might not even be what is desired if it

will kill too many mammalian cells. Adding to this complication is that it seems l L thirty seven has some immuno modulating effects on mammalion cells, being implicated in inflammation signaling, which may play a big role in how it's used in the body to fight infection. So long story short,

too late. The new class of seranogens might not be as groundbreaking as the initial wave of antibiotics, but perhaps if we get a better understanding of l L thirty seven's exact mechanism, we can try to improve on it in the lab. But it is hard to imagine scientists beating natural selection if l L thirty seven is in

some sort of Goldilocks region of cell ldic activity. Although the suragenans are currently used as topical antibiotics because it does it matter so much if you kill skin cells, and they appear to work really well against biofilms, which are notoriously hard to treat. Apologies for the long emails you your guys, podcasts are always so well researched and

broken down perfectly. It's really difficult to describe things in a simple enough way that it is understandable for those who know nothing about the subject, while also detailed enough that people who are familiar don't consider it incorrect. Keep up the good work, best, Daniel. Well, thank you so much, Daniel, and thank you for illuminating with your expertise on this subject. I didn't know anything about this, uh the suragyan in class. Yeah yeah, and which I have to say every time

we we we said it. I was imagining like a Monty Python esque night Surender Sagnans writing into battle. That's the pathogens the knights who license Yeah there you uh no, but that is really interesting thinking about the methods that these different uh antibiotics work, Like the anti microbials have some kind of mechanism that they work by, and generally the mechanism is something that the bacterial cells can overcome

if it's some kind of chemical poison or whatever. So the trick is finding something that hurts their cells in a way that they can't just get a mutation to overcome, but that doesn't hurt our selves also, uh, and this and this apparently does hurt ourselves also, but you know it's got these modulating effects. All right, on that note, we're gonna take a quick break, but don't worry. When we come back, we will we will listen to some

listener males concerning needles. All right, we're back. So it looks like we've got a couple of listeners writing in about hypodermic needles. We just recently had an episode on the hypodermic syringe. So we do this one from Nicola first. Okay. Nicola writes in says, hey, guys, I love your show. Just wanted to throw in my two cents about needles. I'm a twenty two year old university student studying mechanical engineering. Ever since I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease about seven

years ago, I've had many more encounters with needles. Over the years, I became used to injections and blood draws to the point where now is actually comforting and pleasant. Oh, Robert, you were asking about this in the episode. I was interesting to know like regular needle users, Uh you know what, how how you how that changes your relationship with the technology. Right, So Nicholas says, I know that sounds awfully strange and foreign, but I enjoy the feeling of cold liquid entering my

veins and warm blood rushing out. Now you might be thinking that sounds reasonable, but there's no way you like the actual injection itself. But you would be wrong. It brings me to a state of relaxation. Forces me to relax. The sharp pension the needle has actually become a feeling that brings fondness to my life. Knowing that I'm going to get the medication I need to be healthy allows me to look past the pain and discomfort to see

the big picture. My appreciation for modern medicine and medical uh and engineering accomplishments allows me to appreciate the process and take it as it is a modern miracle. I'd like to thank you guys for the amazing content you provide. I love how you're able to integrate many fields of study and history into a comprehensive piece of culture and science. There's so much I've learned from your show, and I

wait patiently each week for the next episode. Oh And Nicola also suggests in the future that we cover some technology behind behind factories and mass produced items. Oh, yes,

I very much want to. Yeah, I've been doing a little reading on this, just looking at you the way factories have evolved over the decades, and like where we are now with with the manual with manufacturing and also just beyond just simply manufacturing things within a within a factory, but also moving those products around, like dealing with the the overall supply chain and logistics. It's it's it's it's far more fascinating than I expected. I mean, it causes

you to rethink what your idea of technology is. Is the technology just one p physical infrastructure that's all touching itself or I mean, can you think about supply chains and stuff being technologies on their own, even if consists of like multiple different uh things at all different points that are not necessarily touching or even interactive. Well, it

brings me back to our discussions of the toilet. You know, it's one thing to invent the toilet, but if you do not have and they certainly did not have this when upon its initial invention of the flush toilet in in in England, if you do not have a sewer system that can facilitate that toilet, then you really don't have a modern toilet, you have you have an incomplete

link in an overall chain. Uh. And and that can be said for a lot of things concerning the supply chain and manufacturing is that, you know, it's great, you have this one robot that's fabulous, but it's it's not going to do everything itself. It needs it needs that, it needs to have a place in this overall system. And then other aspects of the system need to be brought online, uh, you know, to where it can keep

up with it. Uh. You know, the same can be said of other things like additive technology, additive manufacturing, and so forth. So yeah, I think that would be a wonderful thing to discuss. We could probably be a multi uh episode series, you know, because essentially you're dealing with some of the major movements in the industrial revolution. Totally. All right, here comes another one. This one is from Carissa. Hey, guys,

I really like the podcast. As someone who works in a clinic that has a whole room dedicated to shots. Hooray for allergies allergy shots, it was quite interesting. I think the secret to not being afraid of needles is just exposure therapy. Most people don't get many needles in their lives, and the ones they do get are far and few between. But in the clinic I work in, we see adults and pediatric patients for allergy shots. In the room where those are administered is probably the quietest

room in the whole clinic. You don't even hear children crying in that room when they get their shots, probably because they start out coming in multiple times week and then gradually get fewer as time goes on, until there at once a month maintenance dose. I used to be freaked out by needles, but now they fascinate me. I had a couple of days in the hospital a few years ago for some gallbladder related issues. Had to have

a couple of surgeries while I was there. Plus they had to stick me at least twenty times, not even exaggerating there to get an i V in me because I was so dehydrated because I literally couldn't eat for a week. After that, I was no longer phased by needles. It's a good thing too, because now I'm on an injectable medication and give myself a shot once every other week. When I tell people this, they get squeamish and ask how I can make myself give myself a shot, but

it really doesn't even bother me. So long story short, if you want to get over your fear and discomfort around needles without a major health crisis, just donate blood as often as you can. Thanks for an interesting listen, Carissa, And uh, yeah, she's definitely right on that, because one of the things about giving blood, of course, is that

it's not just a quick jab. It's you know, the insertain needle, and then the needle stays in there, so you have you have a little time to think about it, and in front not to think about it, you know, like, if you're like me, you're not really wanting to look at it. Generally, they you know, they do cover it up a little piece of gauze, so you're not actually

looking at the injection. But but yeah, every time I go, I do feel a certain amount of like that exposure therapy taking place where at first I'm like, yeah, I don't really want to look at this needle and then this growing bag of blood this underneath my chair. But after you've been there a little bit and you've had time to sort of get bored with the whole thing, you're you know, you're kind of over the fear when

do I get my twinkie. Yeah, it's kind of a similar experience I've had on really like irritating plane flights in the past, where if I'm initially dealing with some level of flying anxiety, if the people around me are annoying enough, then I can I can push through that fear of death and um, you know, and almost crave it because I'm so tired of other humans. Well, I'd say actually, the same thing that has being described here

with needles has happened to me with flying. I used to be much more afraid of flying until I just had to do it more for work and just having to get on a plane several times a year without it really being up to me or not. You know, I just got to go there, you know. Uh that that just basically I'm over it now. It's kind of like the more like the more primitive layers of your your brain architecture begin to get the message that Okay, yeah,

I think this is gonna be okay. Granted that's not every brain, but but still, I think there's an interesting insight on just regular exposure to needles versus the reality that yeah, most of us when we're getting a shot, it's what one shot a year, maybe two shots a year, that sort of thing, as opposed to regular, like weekly shots. But I would say in both of these cases, these messages from Nicola and Carissa both sound like a sort of cognitive victories over the instinct. Right, we've got this

weird instinctual fears of needles. But it seems like in both cases they were able to think their way through it. All Right, here's one about vending machines. Yeah, this one comes from Stefan hi 'all. I was driving to a coffee shop to do some late night at coding when I accidentally ran across two people talking about vending machines on AM nine ten in the San Francisco Bay area this evening. Were are we on San Francisco radio? I didn't know that. Yeah you knew this, Joe, Yeah, We're

the podcast is showing up in all sorts of places. Well, I didn't know that we were specific radio stations. Hopefully guess pumps soon. I'm hoping for that. Oh, we're going to be the thing that yells at you while you're bumping your gas. Wouldn't wouldn't it be great? Though? If, if, if we were playing an episode of Invention about about gas pump history, I would actually love to do a gas pump episode because you look at some of the older models of gas pumps and they, you know, they

look like they're from a science fiction movie. It's it's it's pretty fascinating. Oh, we've actually got on the upcoming Ledger. We're definitely going to do one on leaded Gassle for for an exploration of inventions gone wrong. Excellent. All right, Well, anyway, Stefan continues, I ended up trapped in my car because I found the conversation really interesting and intelligent. I also did not want to get out of my car because I wanted to know what program this was, so I

needed to wait and I did. This is one of the issues I guess of doing a podcast versus that has been transformed into an AM radio podcast, is that, of course it's standard in radio to continually remind the listener what you're listening to, station identification and stuff. Speaking of if you're just joining us on AM radio, you're listening to the podcast Invention with Robert and Joe. Anyway, Stefan continues, So I needed to wait, and I did. Eventually it ended and I it was announced that it

was related to invention pod dot com. All I can say is this was a great program and I look forward to hearing the first half hour when the episode is put on the website. It's already on there. Yeah, you just sometimes you have to, I think, dig for some of the older episodes, but yeah, they all should be available at invention pot dot com. All I can say is that it was a great material, thought provoking

and discussed in a really intelligent way. A really nice change from the a M band that tends to shout about polarized issues these days. This was a really nice change from that. By the way, automats automats, of course, are the establishment you would go into that we discussed. We have all the little glass windows, little dowars that you open up, put money in, and you open it up and you remove a plate of food. As we mentioned, these are prominently featured in various bits of media and fiction,

including the film Dark City. Um but Stefan says automatsa we're automats were still very much in evidence in Amsterdam in the nineties seventies, and I recall enjoying quite a few meals from the automat there. Quite possibly this automat has gone today, but it was very much in use then and quite popular in Holland back then. Regards Stefan, Well, I'm pretty sure this is our very first uh listener from radio that we've heard from though it Yeah, it

is happening if you're not aware out there. So the company that now owns our podcast network is I Heart Radio, and they've got radio stations. So somewhere out there are podcasts are playing on the radio. Maybe you're listening on the radio right now. Yeah, I have to say so. I sometimes do this too if I'm if I'm out driving. I used to do it more when I was having

to drive at night more. But listening to like various AM radio stations, just seeing like what is out there and encountering like weird parts of conversations, sometimes sometimes very extreme conversations, but sometimes you know, refreshingly mundane and then but then not necessarily knowing who's talking or uh, it's it's it's fun, it's it's it's an it's an exploration. So it is kind of neat to think that we might be uh the gym that someone ins is they're

driving around in the middle of the night. You find us when you're tuning between different people screaming from bunkers. All right, here we got an international one from our listener. To Mossmas says, hello from Sweden. I have now listened to you for about a year. I have no idea how I found you, but enjoy listening to you. Your mix of science, myths and popular culture is what makes the shows enjoyable. I guess you can't put every movie reference in your episodes. We'll we'll give it a shot.

To Moss, we try, but he says, there are two that I feel you should have picked up on. The first one is from your series on the motion Picture. You talked about Edward my Bridge and his multiple image camera that captured the movement of a horse. I immediately thought of the groundbreaking visual effects of the matrix that used a similar set up, taking movie making full circle. I think he means the multi camera set up, yeah,

that was used. The bullet time effect, as it's called, allows the audience to view an actor suspended in space and time while the camera moves around the actor. It's made possible by synchronizing fifty DSLR cameras around the actor. It was developed by the film's visual effects supervisor John Gaeta. Yeah, I kind of you don't one of the sames. I kind of forget about this despite having seen some behind

the scene. I think everybody saw some behind the scenes stuff about how they shot that sequence back in the day. But it's also was just so well done. I almost don't think about it as a special effect. You know, but tons. There were tons of copycats, like cheap copycats in the movies that came afterwards. Well, and also just obvious parodies is exactly well. The parodies are one thing, but I love the early two thousands movies. There was there was an Uva Bowl movie that did the House

of the Dead. I've not seen any of his filmography. I have to say House of the Dead is extremely bad, but it's full of like I'd say, half the run time of the movie is bullet time shots. Hey watch it. Are you gonna wind up in a boxing match? Uh? Thomas continues the next references regarding the episode Gastro Automaton. When talking about making androids human by letting them eat, you failed to mention one of your favorite movies Robocopsy, Thomaston,

that was us. That's in the movie. They show a machine that produces something similar to baby food that RoboCop eats disapplay nutrients to his organic body parts. One of the technicians finds it really tasty. Looking forward to hearing more of your interesting podcast kind regards Thomas. You know, this does drive home that we need to do a stuff to blow your mind episode that focuses on RoboCop, because certainly RoboCop comes up a lot. Have we not

already basically done the whole movie. Well, I thought about that, but then I'm reminded of the baby food, and I'm reminding of some other scenes too that like, for instance, there's the toxic waste sequence, which traumatized me at an early age. But I kind of wanna, like, you know, face the trauma and take that scene apart and discuss like what's actually happening in the scene and how that

matches up with reality. And I'm sure there's other I haven't actually sat down and watched it, uh beginning to end in quite a long time, so I'm sure there's other stuff in there that we could, you know, squeeze out a proper movie episode we try and do one episode of stuff to blow your mind a month roughly, in which we we use them. We just focus around

a particular movie. We talk a little bit about the movies history and you know, some of them curious facts about it, but mostly we use bits of the film as a springboard to discuss topics that either wouldn't come up otherwise on the show, wouldn't you know, necessitate an entire episode, or you know, something where it puts a new spin on an old topic. I like how this one listener can tell that RoboCop is one of our

favorite movies just from listening to the show. And I don't even know when we ever said that, but it's true. It's true. It comes up a lot. I think at one point you also told listeners that have they wanted their listener mail read that they should put RoboCop in the in the title, which is which is not required. We we we did. We pretty much read everything. We

don't have time to share it all. We don't have time to read it all on on listener mail episodes of either show, but we will read your listener mail even if it does not say RoboCop uh in the header? All right, we're gonna have to call it there because we're out of time. We had some more little listener mail bits we wanted to read, but you know, we had some some wonderful suggestions people asking for say, more

health related topics in the future, that sort of thing. Uh, and yeah, I think in in the future we do want to continue to just try and and hit all the sweet spots, you know, more medical technology, more ancient inventions, more recent inventions, more RoboCop, more more more RoboCop for stuff to blow your mind. But for Invention. Uh, you know, we're gonna you know, we're gonna try and just keep cast the net wide as we have thus far. Thank you so much to all these people who got in touch.

And again, if we didn't have a chance to read your email on the episode today, please don't take that as an insult. We really really love and appreciate all the email we get, so thank you so much. In the meantime, if you want to check out more episodes of this podcast, Invention, head on over to invention pod dot com. That's where you'll find all the episodes that

have come out. Uh, there are no secret episodes of Invention, They're all right there, and if you want to support our show, one of the best things you can do is if you're listening to this in podcast form wherever you got that podcast, make sure you have subscribed to us, and make sure that you rate and review wherever you have the power to do so. Oh and also if you are a reverse order listener. We imagine most of the people who listen to Invention listen to Stuff to

Blow your Mind, our other podcast first. But if you're the other way around, if you came to Invention first, you should go subscribe to Stuff to Blow your Mind. If you haven't already, Yeah, go check it out. Yeah, we've been doing it for almost ten years. And uh, you know, as always, I say start with the more recent episodes because the science is just going to be fresher and hopefully you know, our you know, will be a little better in the more recent episodes. But but

check those out. Yeah, you'll find those at stuff to Bow your Mind dot com. Huge things to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode, or to just a topic for the future, or just to say hello, any of that You can email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production

of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.