The Deadly Threat Waiting in Our Forests2

we talked about climate change? Solve that. So we're good there, that's all been solving. We locked that down, right, Yeah, you get. We got the we got the eels fed. That was the problem. Oh yeah, yeah, there's like a car comb it's electric. We're good. We're nailing it. So I get. We had you on the show once before to talk about how the forest is bad. Uh yeah, um, still bad. Still a lot of problems in the forest, as the people who are watching their forests burn can

probably uh say. Although there's other problems than that, as we talked about in your episode. Didn't mean an email a while back. It took a bit for me to get my ship together to have you back on. But it was a frightening email about a disease sweeping through the country that could have massive effects on the lives of everybody listening to this. Um, And it's not one

of the diseases that you're all thinking about. I know, there's a couple of things that meet that decision that that like, there's a couple of different diseases running a check throughout the United States at the moment and the world. Um, we are not talking about either of the ones that are big in the news right now. We're gonna talk

about chronic wasting disease calviny. You want to kind of introduce that concept to the people, because this was not something I really I had heard of it, but I didn't. It was just kind of like, you know, animals have weird diseases, right, cats get you know, lymphoma or whatever. I never thought about it much as a as a thing that was a problem other than a problem for some deer. But it is. It is quite an issue. Yeah, yeah, it's if it stays in dear, I will be happy.

Let's put it like that. So, um, we're gonna actually like do a little throwback to the past year. Watch watch out, anyone whole lot. So we're gonna go back to the nineties. All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna get my shoulder pads on, I'm gonna get my X Files poster stuck up on the wall. I'm gonna vote for a serial sexual abuser. Well that's that's every decade. Um, okay, sorry, So, so chronic wasting diseases a pry and the reason we're

going back to is a prian disease. And the reason we're going back to the nineties is to to look at the the most the biggest like reason anyone would have heard of a prion disease outside of like you know some like you know, brain scientists and stuff, and that's you know, bov line bovine sponge form, its appalopathy, or more commonly known as mad cow disease. So you know, Robert, I'm not sure how much you are aware of mad cow.

It popped up in the US in the two thousand's, but it killed a bunch of people in England in the nineties. Yeah, isn't there like there's still restrictions on like blood donation and stuff if you lived in England at a certain period, right, Like there's some weird ship like that. Yeah, you can't donate blood for that. Um, that's a very good reason. We're going too that in a second. Actually always in England not too long ago, and I did not eat beef there because I've read

too much about prions to mess around with that stuff. Yeah, I mean, thankfully here in America we have health food standards, unlike those filthy Brits. But yeah, yeah we had a scare. Um Canada head a scare and we'll talk about the repercussions of that later. But so the reason we're going back is we're gonna look at the most recent time prians have become mainstream. So what happened there? So l well, let me just unfold this a little bit. That's a joke,

y'all all understand it three minutes hopefully. So a prion, it's a protein in your brain. Now, UM, I'm not a neurologist. I am a wildlife biologist. Force sorry, So, um, I'm not gonna be the answer I question out there about brains and proteins and stuff like that. Um, but what what the prion protein in your brain does is it moves copper around, which is important for cell stuff.

I personally think that mankind should have never looked through a microscope and everything at the celler level is just heresy. We shouldn't look at it at all. Now, I'm i'm, I'm, I'm completely on board with you. There. There's certain things we never should have studied, and anything that involves a microscope is one of them. Oh yeah, you lost me there. HandLens I'm good for you can like see like small stuff,

but microscopes out. Okay. So, so in your brain you're moving around copper and stuff and it's important for like cell stuff. So, um, we're gonna go back to high school biology. For most folks. You know, proteins building block of life important. So your protein structure is dictated by the elements in it and how they're like arranged, you know, like stacked on top of each other. So that's that's basic,

you know, high school biology. But then you know, as you get a little bit further in biology, you find out there's it's a little bit more complex. So proteins, like all things in our real world, are unfortunately not like in the textbook, and these are three D and so they have like shapes and folds. Now, when folded correctly. It just priam protein operates normally and just moves copper around. Um. Unfortunately doesn't always you know, sometimes it doesn't fold correctly.

And when that happens, it doesn't move copper, and so brains have a little bit of an issue because they don't get copper. Yeah, and this is why all those trucks stops sell those copper bands that you can put on your wrist to solve diseases. Right, it's to deal with that. Yeah, you just keep that copper band on your rest solve that problem. Yeah. So so what what happens when that happens is you get a prion disease.

There are some that evolve in that just like they don't evolve because they're not living um that just pop up in nature. So like a spongef bovine spongef form and sepalopathy mad cow rappings a little bit Earli talking about in a second scrapey uh, feline sponge form and sepalopathy which comes from cats that eight meat that was infected with mad cow um. And then there's kuru. I think, yeah, that's the one cannibals get, right, Like this is famously

why cannibals quote unquote go crazy. Actually a lot of cannibals. We're well aware that you don't eat meat from certain areas, but it is a thing. If you're going to eat people, be really careful about the spine. Don't eat brains and spines yet. That's that's exactly. Yeah. Um, there's um and in humans it's called um the spongeforms ceplopathy. I'm gonna explain the big word in one second. It's called Cromhelds

Yakops disease. It was yeah, two Germans, really neat stuff. Yeah, it's one of my favorite disease names because you just know you're in for some like horrifying shit when you when you see the that spelled out, you're like, well, that's got to be something bad. Yeah. Well, luckily, like you know, for two German guys like alive in the thirties, yeah, died good stuff. Like they two German doctors who weren't

Nazis in that period. Yeah, it seems like one of them died right before things like that, you know, things went out there. And then yeah yeah, okay, so so I've been throwing around this word spongeform at sepalopathy UM and then like you know, I change like the you know, bovine, feline, whatever. So it a sponge off form means something looks like a sponge. And then it's tepalopathy means brain So your

brain turns into a sponge. And that's because you're not getting copper and so cell cells are falling apart, and it's your brain just doesn't work, to be real simple, it's kind of like Alzheimer's. That's how like presenting humans, which is why it's really hard to figure out. Right. And then when you want to determine that something has spongeform and sepalopathy, you've got to cut the brain open, look at it under a microscope. UM. And as you

can imagine, that doesn't usually happen in people. You don't usually cut the brains open, and also in a lot of animals you don't usually cut the brain open, look at it under microscope. Well it's bad for them, right, that's not. Yeah, it's always lethal, always a lethal sample. So like that's the basics of what a prion disease is. UM. And then when we saw it in in England, what

had what had happened was got into cows. Cows got it from eating other cows that were fed back to them, and then it got into humans because we ate what we the Brits in the third inties in the nineties eight cows that were infected with bovine spongef form's eplopapy, and you had to eat a good amount of it for it to build up in your brain. And what I mean by that is we're Americans, right right, So not a problem for Americans. I just want to kind

of like lay a foundation so we all understand what's going. Um. And so what I mean I build up in your brain is like you know, you get like one two proteins in there, You're fine, It's okay. Proteins misfold at the time, it takes you know, brains are big, especially in humans, so it takes a while for this to

be going problem. But what happens is over time is one is, once you build up enough, you're get exposed to enough prions that are misfolded, like the prions in the brains start misfolding, and then slowly your brain just starts stops functioning correctly. Yeah, it's you know, it's it's like a chain, like a slow chain reaction. UM. So that's the basics of of um prying diseases and a

spongeform and cephalopathies. Now we're talking about chronic wasting disease UM, which can be easily described as the dear equivalent of mad cow disease. And like when you see a lot of stuff about it, people just it's like called like zombie deer because like deer get weird when they are like dying from chronic wasting disease. Like the name chronic wasting disease comes from because they like wasting away. They're like drooling and also drinking a lot. They act weird,

they look dumb. Um, they just do weird stuff, and so people call it zombie like dear, but they're not um. They're just infected with a prime disease and their brightness falling apart. It's like it's like a person getting Alzheimer's, Like you know, they do weird stuff. My grandma has Alzheimer's is terrible, don't get it? Yeah, yeah, my grandma had um, the same thing that Robin Williams got the

Loue body dimension. It's it's pretty much the same thing, right, Like you can just see somebody kind of falling apart piece by piece, but that probably does make the deer easier to hunt, yes, and it also makes it really easy to identify when it's it's advanced stages in dear, So we've got kind of an understanding of about it. But like, you know, why do we care? We are people? We are not, dear, right, Robert, are you a deer? Uh? Not right now? I mean I have been to a

furry convention, but but I didn't commit. So we all got our things. Well, Um, so I I hunt, dear Robert, I think you hunt. I don't know. I'm getting I'm getting ready for for hunting season as we as we speak. Yeah, so so, um, lots of people hunt deer and they eat deer, which is which is cool, and it's fine and it's important to do in you know, certain ecosystems.

I mean in most of the US, like, deer have been hunted by various you know humans for yes, as long as people have in here, so you know, it's it's a natural thing to do. It's very normal for people to hunt deer, and it's very normal. And also there are areas where we killed everything else that hunts deer. Yeah, so there's there's anyway whatever. We don't need to defend deer hunting here. I I've done hours of webinars on the points of deer management. It's it's a real fun

subject to you. But we do care about that. We're talking about chronic waste disease, fun stuff, so so we care about that. We care about chronic wasting disease because it impacts all members of the servant family or deer. So that's you know, elk moose. I just learned the Europeans called moose European elk, wild arrogant. Yeah, look at a moose. Look at an elk. Super different. It's wildly different animals. Like they're both very big, but they're also

different sizes. It's like the difference between like an armored car and a tank. Like a fucking moose is like it's basically an elephant in terms of its footprints. Like they're so cool to see but so enormous. Yeah. Yeah, the impact it can get in all servants that we know, it's um and you know, people like you know, people like to see servants, they like to hunt servants. We'd like to do it, you know in different countries. They're delicious,

they have the best meat. Yes, absolutely, so much better than fucking beef, so much better than pork in my opinion, like fucking love venicel Oh, yeah, moose. I don't know if you had moose. I've had once. Oh it's yeah, moose and elk wonderful meats. That's actually a big thing Joe Rogan and I talk about when we're hanging out is elk meat. He's a big elk meat guy. That's good. I've I've never I've never hunted an elk. I've put in for the lottery every year. But it's hard to

get hard to get elk tags in Pennsylvania. I know. It's a real surprise. Yeah, you know what, I'll go ahead and reach out now. It's easy to get the tags here, but it is hard unless you have a friend with land that elks are on to actually hunt them as as much as Yeah. Anyway, if you've got land in Oregon and you want me to hunt elk

on it, hit hit us up. Yeah. So so you know, as we can see, this is a clear demand for servants and serfarent products and so in like the fifties and sixties, people started, you know, they're like, well, you know sometimes you're not always good at hunting, and not everyone wants the hunt, so they started trying to domesticate and farm them, right, um servants famously like running away, I've seen a lot of deer tails, Robert, you hunt,

I'm sure you have. Yeah, and a lot of like tracks that you can tell and like with ship or something near them that like, oh, man, I fucking missed that son of a bit by like thirty seconds. Yeah. Yeah, and if if, even if you drive around, you'll see just they're like, oh car, I'm out in five thousand. That don't need to be here. Sometimes they go across the road and hit him. That's the story, yea some states. Yeah, you know, sometimes it's Bruce to heck. But that is

how I get to eat some moose. Someone hit it with a car. Hell yeah. Um but um. So they don't like being in captivity at all. Not a fan, not a fan, and so they're very they're very stressed in captivity. And then like in the sixties in Colorado, um at on the Colorado University of Colorado, on their deer farm, they noticed like the deer were getting skinny and weird. And that's how that's where chronic wasting disease was discovered because we tried to fucking farm an animal

that's not okay, awesome, I love it. Yeah, yeah, there there are some folks who think that it's a natural thing, but it doesn't look like it doesn't look like it. Uh, no reports of it being around from before the sixties. And as we laid out, lots of people ate a lot of deer and saw a lot of deer before the sixties, so probably came from farming servants. So then since then, um, there's the deer. Farming is not really regulated. And also deer are not really easy to keep in captivity.

They like to jump and like when fences, fences blow down, and so they'll get out of captivity. And like also other deer they like come up to you know, captive deer and they're like, yo, what's up with you though you're in a cage, huh, And so you can actually see them. They'll interact through the fence. Um, and that's probably how it got out of containment, is through interactions

and you know, servants being spread around the country. And so now chronic waste disease is found in thirty states I think four Canadian provinces, UH, Scandinavia and Korea, So I think it's four or five countries. So so it's out there. It's out there. Um, and it's it's infecting certain populations across the US and across the across Canada, the world. Um, it's real bad. It's real bad. So it seems like a problem. Yeah. Yeah, So if you're a deer, what happens is you either interact with to

pick up chronic wasting disease. We'll go through the deer kind of the progression and dear to pick it up. Do you either interact with the deers that has chronic wasting disease? You go up and smell them, you look them a little bit, deer groom each other, you know, the the animals. Um, you eat plant that another deer pooped on, now doesn't have to have pooped on that plant. So like this is a deal. It's effective with chronic

chronic waste disease. Can poop in the soil and the plant will pick up the prayon from the soil and then yeah, and then another deer can come in it can just spread. Yeah cool, that's that's some real scary yeah. Yeah, And it can also you can also pick it up from water, but it has spreading in water is really tough. So um, those are your main vectors is you know,

deer to deer and environment to deer um. And that's why it's pretty tough to control once it gets into a state, because to destroy it you have to dig up the soil and you have to burn it a thousand degrees for an hour, or you have to expose exposure to bleach for an hour to destroy the prion because it's not a living thing, it's a protein. Yeah, I mean, and there are a couple of towns that I would be okay doing that too, but on a

wide scale that seems difficult to pull off. Yeah. I can think of a state that starts with an O in an age that I wouldn't mind losing, you know, if we just were like, why not give it a shot? Yeah, it's just Ohio, come on, it's not it's not a real state. So in Deer, we we're gonna just we're gonna stay just in the deer where we're not gonna

get scary yet. So in in Dear, this slowly builds up throughout the population and you get worst case scenarios like in south western Wisconsin where like the deer harvested h bucks harvested a year are positive for chronic wasting disease, and because it's an always fatal you know, brain disease, you're looking at population collapse in extinction. Yeah, because it remains in the soil too, Like it's it's around for at least two probably more years. But the studies we've

done our only two years. Because um, these are not fun things to study. People have died studying these diseases from prions like and they when they've done work on like BSc laptech actually pricked herself with the tool uh and got um c j c j D and died from it. So yeah, they're not fun to study really, you know that's this is like we're talking like Martians suit style study stuff. It's not fun. So yeah, the

stand level ship yeah yeah, yeah exactly. Yeah. So so like you know it without you know, when chronic waste disease is not addressed into your populations, like in southeastern or southwestern Wisconsin, you're looking at extinction level stuff because all of the deer that are out there are most you know se them have chronic waste disease or at some point in getting chronic waste disease, which means that they're putting more and more of in the environment and

they're more like, if you're a non infected deer, you're you know, three cores. Your buddies are infected, so you're gonna get chronic wasting disease and be dead within two or three years. So you're looking at extinction of all servants in that area for some amount of time until it comes out of the soil. That's bad. That is a problem, yes, yeah, yeah, as we have established, neither

of us are dear, So why do we care? I mean outside of like the fact that deer are pretty important to the ecology of local areas and that that collapses bad? Yeah, why what is what is the problem? Like, what is the risks to human beings beyond that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, we we we put in college all aside all the time, like this is the world. We don't really care about that. Yeah, I ideal with what happened that you pretty college aside,

so I'm super used to that that being done. So the risk is if it jumps into humans because all of a sudden, you have a disease that's really hard to detect that can live in the environment, that can be transferred from not just spinal fluid, but like if you eat a lot of infected meat from deer. You know, if you eat um, some of the organs you can get at a high risk. So so you know, all of a sudden, you have a large portion of the

population that could be exposed through direct consumption. But the other thing is is prians are really hard to kill. I said, they live in soil. They also live on steel, services, glass surfaces, every like surface that they've tested like trying to kill prions, like you know, putting prions on seeing

how long they live there hang out there. There was some surgical equipment that was infected with the prion gave someone chronic wasting not crying c j D three years after using it out someone who had um c j D G. Yeah, and that's like you know, surgical great stainless steel stuff so like not supposed to hold things gets like cleaned, but not like super like not prian level cleaning because they didn't know about at the time.

So so there's there's the risk is is is it could potentially develop into a human something that impacts human's like right now, it hasn't. We do have eight different variations of it out there in the landscape. And as more and more do you are exposed to it, what happens, We get more and more variations of it because that's just what happens in nature, as we're all becoming familiar with with COVID. Yeah, it keeps changing because it's nothing

has been done to stop it from spreading. Yeah, and like the only thing you can do to stop it is just like reduced deer numbers. You can't really eliminate out of the landscape because it's in the soil. Yeah, and you can't you can't test live dear for it. You gotta kill him to do it. There's they are developed. There are some tests being developed to determine if animals are infected UM that are faster, but you know, it's still it's still in progress. So that's called art quick.

It's a protein test that's that's much faster than current testing, but it's still in progress. So the thing that really scares me is the other, well, the other thing about that makes chronic wasting to is different from you know bs mad cow diseases. Mad cow was in cows that we're in you know, captive spaces and you know know where the cows are. Yeah, it's a problem, but it's a problem that you can, like with enough fire and or other tools eradicate. Yeah. Yeah, And it didn't it

didn't seem to be you know, very president soil. And it was like you had defeat dead cows to dead cow to live cows to get them infected. Chronic waste disease is a different beast. Um. So the real scary potential here is that it's in soil, so you can get into plants. And we know that plants get transmit chronic waste disease other deer, so it could you know, transmitted to other animals like things that eat plants. You know, for example, you and I eat plants. If you're an American,

you eat corn and a couple of different forms. Um, dear love hanging out in corn fields. Oh yeah, So there is an exposure vector right there, and it's you know, when you're doing when you're processing corn in corncer Let's say, um, you take a bunch of corn from a bunch of the places, uh sposh it up grind it up. You know, you do a bunch of stuff to it in on steel surfaces, and you don't need to a thousand degrees

for an hour. So all of a sudden you have like a case of soda that could be infected with chronic wasting disease. There's the potential, the big potential damage if this ship jumps to people, which it hasn't yet. I want to be really clear about that, so we're not causing to. But if it does, the containment thing is like even in order of magnitude beyond fucking COVID ship right Like, it's because it's spread through the soil.

It gets into the fucking basic ingredients of food, and we we simply the way that we process that stuff isn't set up in a way that will eliminate it. Right now, Yeah, and I would tell you you really can't on a large scale, like process anything that's then make it safe from you know, like chronic wasting disease, because you have to, like you know, if you if you like cut up like let's let's let's go back to like assuming like you know, it's just in you

you're handling an affected deer. If you cut that deer up. You use your knife, you gotta put it in bleach for an hour and then you can come back to it just really corrosive, so eventually destroy your knife. There's there's your end thing there. But you can also be through your hands, you know, touching it, you can get it. Um. Yeah, so there's there's a scary part there. I mean, like you like as you pointed out, and I started, I really totally failed on my part to mention it hasn't

jumped to humans. Yes, not, we are not saying you are going to get the disease tomorrow. That is not the but it also like isn't it like there's nothing that says it can't jump to humans? Right right right exactly? So, Um, there have been a number of like three or four. There are two studies I know, I I there's a third one I've heard about. UM looking at if you know, human like animals can get chronic waste and disease. So

that's macaques, which are a kind of monkey. UM. And when they have been fed chronic you know, meat and infected with chronic waste disease UM, and they were exposed to blood, they were fed it, they were exposed to blood and so it was just injective right into the back of their brain stem. Um monkey's got chronic wasting disease,

so it looks like it's possible. Um. And then also hamsters, which are also used as a human standing, have also been fed meat infected with chronic wasting disease and they were able to get it, and they really get it from a number of different sources. Um. There are some really like fun and by fun, I mean scary papers out there about like all the ways like chronic wasting disease moves around and survives. Uh. And the studies about like using human standings are not always fun to read.

And this is this is definitely one of those things where it's like, yeah, what is the other option other than yeah, you have to try it on ship. That's yeah, that's that's very unsettling, but like, yeah, what else are you gonna do? Like this is something you do have to know, Yeah, yeah, and UM. The other problem with prions is detection when it comes to like, you know, different species ease because it presents like Alzheimer's and so the only way you know that something got up pry

On disease is if you cut their head. If you cut its head open, you look at its brain, so um when and in humans, it can take a long time for these symptoms to present. I think, like if you look it up on Wikipedia, it's is like the average like age detection is sixty years and then we're

good fine. Yeah. Yeah, the researchers that I've spoken to say it takes like forty years for enough prance to build up in your brain for it to like, you know, start to show symptoms, so it you know, if it is to jump, if it jumps the species bearer, the first time we detected will probably not be the first time anyone has been infected. Yeah, it will already have spread quite widely, and then people will hopefully not but yeah, so so that that's the scary part. That that's the

human side scary part. But you know, we don't always have to keep human side scary. Sometimes. You know, things work in you know, monkeys and hamsters that don't work in humans. And we've cured cancer, you know, hundreds of times in mice, right, yeah, and in humans it's a lot harder to do because we're not mice, we're not monkeys, we're humans. So it doesn't always work like that. But the the other scary part is when it comes to agriculture and the impact on agriculture. So pigs can pick

up chronic wasting disease. There what's called a prian amplifier, so they can pick it up. They can like you know, hangs out in them, just find it doesn't kill pigs at all. They can people. That's true. That's the truth right there, that's the truth. Yeah. So so you know, if if it you know, as people, you know, government's become more aware of it and more concerned about it.

There there's the real possibility of you know, agricultural exports getting hammered on, you know, exporting it because you know other countries you know, are concerned about spreading it. So right now, you know it's pretty hard to well, it's getting increasingly the harder to export. Live dear is probably should be Probably farming servants is not a great idea for their health and ours. But um, you know, also

there's the concern about spread. So if if chronic wasting disease is you know, crosses from humans to cows like we've seen you know, like if you know BSc just pops up in some cows you know that might be from chronic wasting disease, and the impact of that is

going to be huge. I mean Canada, they were shut out of the Japanese market for fourteen years, Japanese beef market for fourteen years following a case of mad cow disease and two thousand and six they got let back in two years ago and the studies and that was like a couple of billion dollars in damage to the Canadian beef market. So you know, and that was BSc, which does not do it doesn't transfer via plant, So imagine it's the US you know, agricultural export market market

got shut down for plants that like economic damage is incalculable. Yeah, so let's just get a part about chronic wasting. This These those are all the scarinesses. That's what keeps me up at night. This is frightening and important for people to be aware of because it's a serious threat. Are there things that can be done at the moment? Like, is there is there inactionable You're not just like not

on a what can our audience do? But like, is there a thing that could potentially be done by you know, states or the federal government never that would help this, Like, is there actually do we do it? Do we have any fucking idea of like what could be done to make it less likely for the kind of nightmare scenarios

that we've alluded to to occur here. Yeah, So the best kit, you know, the best things we can do are to you know, hunt deer, reduced der population, so that way you're you know, taking deer out that might be infected. And when you hunt deer in most areas that infected you there's a you test them for free with your state or various authorities, and so then those carcasses are destroyed so you can remove you know, disease

off the landscape that way. Um. And then by also just hunting deer, you reduce population levels and so you make it you make the disease loading in the landscape lower and it less likely to spread, you know, both to other deers and then potentially vector to other animals exposed to other animals. Um, excuse me. New York is a great example of this. They had a case of chronic waste and disease pop up, took it out really,

you know, hunted that area hard. I think that they even brought in professionals and did some real serious deer reduction and they haven't had a case since. So you know, in areas where it pops up, you can just hammer it with you know, lethal removal of animals, harvesting whatever, and um, you can prevent spread um, and you cannot. You can really not get back the other thing we got to do. We need to be very serious about. We need to take the captive servant industry. So I've

used the word serve a couple of times. They never defined it. My apologies. Servants are members of the deer family, so elk moose, Yeah, seek a deer, all those guys red deer fatility or what a bunch of them. Um. We need to make sure that we're very closely regulating that industry because of the potential spread. There was a farmer in Wisconsin that sent like almost four hundred different infected deer to like a hundred nineties seven different farms

um over the course of like four years. So you know, it's regulation is incredibly important. UM. And it's it's rarely you know, it's not really enough on most farms my home state here we have UM. You know, if you make less than ten thousand dollars from your servant farm. You don't have to report it, you don't have to track it or anything. That's a real problem because we are experiencing expanding chronic waste disease. So regulation, you know,

that's fun. Maybe we just shouldn't be farming servants. Maybe that's bad. Yeah, I don't disagree with you at all there. Yeah, not not a fan. Yeah. From the ethical standpoint too, there's there's many I raise a several different raise bunnies and chickens and goats, and I help raise sheep for for meat. Uh, there's plenty of different things that you can raise for meat that are used to it because we've been raising them for meat for like tens of

thousands of fucking years. Like the sheep. I have orangoras, which I didn't go back like two years, Like they're they're they're they're meant for it. We have changed them into animals that are supposed to be raised for meat. Don't take new animals and try to farm them like

that because it seems like it causes problems. Yeah, Well, there's a really neat there's a really neat work out there about the about domestications stress and like you know, domestic kid sheep don't care about being domesticated, whereas like they've compared like domesticated cheap to wildcheep. Wild cheep die really quick when you put in domestication from the stress.

But yeah, like you said, uh, maybe maybe we don't maybe we don't play around with some of these animals to try to force them to do human what we humans want them to do. You know, it's okay for animals to just be animals. Not wrong with that. Um. Yeah. So the other thing, there was a large amount of money set aside, and I can't remember which legislative packager was they got defeated a while back that put money

towards chronic wasting disease research. So you know, legislators and states can be you know, legislatures and government can be taken seriously putting money towards it. Right now, it's there's not a lot of money going towards it because it's like, yeah, it's a zombie deer thing who cares. Yeah, well, you could get into this is not just a problem for

deer hunters. This could be a real issue for everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So yeah, I mean, I mean it's kind of like a larger symptomatic thing to we don't really take environmental problems that seriously. Um yeah, yeah, I mean the Yeah, the scary thing about this is we don't treat the environmental problem seriously. When everyone's saying, like, hey, the consequences that like all of Florida will be uninhabitable, right, Like, we don't take that seriously. So when you're saying, this

is much wonkier, which is definitely a barrier to effective action. Yeah. I did a legislative test money about chronic wasting disease a couple of months back, and no one was paying attention, but you know, it made me feel good. I was doing something. Oh he was a fun thing about Florida and chronic wasting disease. So Florida, you know, full of invasive species. Obviously it has chronic waste disease. Like, yeah, it's a Florida obviously, gotta pick up a new disease.

You know what else is in Florida? Colonies of maccaques. There's like two colonies of I was unaware of that. Yeah. Was it because people were an ill advisedly keeping pets? I think one of them started that way, and I think one of them was like some monkeys that have

been like kept for testing or zoo stuff escaped. But there are at least like two colonies of like maccaques in Florida, which also has chronic waste disease, So you know, there's I don't think the chronic they're like near the Everglades. I don't think chronic waste disease made that far south

of Florida. So there's a there's a fun possibility of the lab experiments under highly control conditions getting um, you know, performed in in the wild setting, and we could see if if mccax can pick up chronic waste disease in the wild. Um, there's a there's a fun research project for someone who uh, you know is able to handle dark sides of things. Yeah, thank you Florida, Um, but

more importantly, thank you flow right uh. And a lot of people are unaware of this was just a couple of years ago in the Eurovision Song Awards representing San Marino. So you know, twenty two overall not bad. Yeah, that's pretty good, better than I could do. Good day. And also, you are not technically a citizen of the Republic of San Marino. No, but yet they offered me citizenship. I would consider it absolutely. Who wouldn't want to be a citizen of the most serene Republic of San Marino. Yeah.

I I've looked at Andorra, so you know, it would be a really we're looking at European micro nations. I mean if and Dora came knock in versus San Marino, obviously San Maria is getting kicked to the curb of that like dual like government between the President of France and like the Pope of or not the Bishopah, it's like a bishop of like somewhere in Italy. Yeah, it's very funny. Um. Yeah, you gotta love those weird little micro republics. Yeah. Um so okay, well this has been great. Yeah,

I'm glad this is happening. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool and fun. Yeah. I'm not usually fun to hang out with my talk about work stuff, I know. But it's like it's again, people need to be aware of this, Like this is one of those just in the same way that like people were talking about for years prior to COVID. Hey, we we actually really need to be aware, like a coronavirus could break out and it will spread really quickly due to the way that global travel and transit and

stuff works, and it'll be almost impossible to control. Um, you know, we should we should build structures into our societies to make it easier for us to deal with a coronavirus, which we didn't do, but maybe we'll do it this time. Yeah, well, what makes it really fun? I'm just gonna I'm gonna build off you for a second. You've fallen into my trap. Here. The same people who were writing about like mers and predicted you know, I can't remember from which game first Merser Stars. I can't

rember which one. The same people who predicted that and then who are also predicting um COVID are also talking about chronic wasting disease. So it's like, you know, I really hope you don't get to be right on this one. You know, I just want you to lose one of these times here, Bud. You're a nice guy, real smart guy, But can you be wrong occasionally, just for just for like you know, old time's sake, Just be nice to me. Yeah, well, there we go. Um, that's been a fun episode. Everybody

have a good time. Um, thank you, Calvin, do you have anything you want to like plug before we roll out here. Yeah, I would like to plug. Trees' is real neat try that we are supported by trees. Um, not the plant, but a club in Dallas that I took ecstasy at once. That's a primary sponsors, physically supported by trees. My computers on wood so oh excellent? Yeah? Is that also good? Yeah, trees like to plug. Also getting outside, that's good for you. Do that consolutely, get

outside for sure. Yeah. Uh. Tweet tweets from from birds, I don't do the twitters, not from Twitter, Yes, definitely. Yeah, those are things that I'd like to plug. Yeah. Replacing the tweets from Twitter that you encounter with tweets from birds is probably among the best things you can do for your mental health, unless it's this one bird that lived outside of my apartment in Los Angeles. But anyway, um well, Calvin, thank you for coming on. I appreciate

your expertise, even though it's always deeply unsettling. Um, that's gonna do it for all of us here today, And it could happen here, by which I mean you and me. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool zone media dot com

slash sources. Thanks for listening.