Season 6 Episode 19: Earth's Core, Camel Culture, and Navigating Outrage

Ever wondered if the Earth's core could change its direction?

This fascinating theory is backed by decades of earthquake data and challenges long-held beliefs in geophysics.

We're taking a trip to the Middle East to highlight the unique impact of camel ownership on the Omani Bedouin culture.

The bond between the Bedouin youth and their camels offers emotional, social, and cognitive gains that are both intriguing and heartwarming.

Shifting gears, we're joined by David Beckmeyer, host of the "Outrage Overload" podcast, to dissect the complex nature of outrage culture.

Learn how social media algorithms and partisan news media are fueling societal tensions and the toll it takes on our mental health. David shares actionable advice on managing media consumption and engaging in meaningful conversations with those who have differing viewpoints.

We wrap up with some lighter moments from the farm, featuring tales of our beloved pets and their amusing antics. This episode offers a perfect balance of science, culture, and heartfelt stories—don't miss it!

Outrage Overload Podcast!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there.

Speaker 1: 0:38

I am recording this on Chris and mine's first day of the summer. We are officially done. Teaching Feels pretty good. We took today to do, you know, some cleaning around the house. I organized a bunch of texts from Bunsen stuff we're going to be writing a third book this summer and relaxed with the dogs. So a great start to the summer, if I don't say so myself. Okay, well, what's happening on the science podcast? This week In science news, chris and I are going to break down a study that seems to corroborate a very, very sensational study that initially people were skeptical of about the Earth's core. In pet science, we're going to the Middle East to look at a different type of pet and how this pet may impact child development.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Our guest in Ask an Expert is a little bit different than the normal guests that we have. His name is David Beckmeyer and he is a podcast host himself of Outrage Overload, which looks to break down the science of just getting outraged at everything all the time. We do try to keep it as non-political as possible and bring in a lot of science, so if you're worried there, don't worry, we've got you back. It's a great interview. Okay, I got a geology bad joke for you. What did the crust say to the mantle? Don't worry, man, I've got you covered. Mantle. Don't worry, man, I've got you covered. That's a really good joke, because man is short for mantle. All right, on with the show, because there's no time like science time. This week in science news, chris and I are going to be talking about something that's changing deep within our earth, and I guess before we talk about that, we should talk about something like the sun, just to show that huge things out in space can have massive changes.

Speaker 3: 2:33

Are you talking about the sun's magnetic poles undergoing the solar cycle?

Speaker 1: 2:39

Yeah, that's what I'm alluding to, because we've been the beneficiary of this increased amount of solar energy from the sun as it's gone through its cycle. In fact, we had some of the most spectacular Northern Lights I've ever seen in my life not too long ago.

Speaker 3: 2:56

We were very blessed with the Northern Lights and I guess the laser light show that the solar cycle and the solar maximum high activity allowed us to have. It was so amazing to hang out with you and Adam and just enjoy it a lot.

Speaker 1: 3:14

The last time it was that spectacular. I don't think Adam was even a thing. I don't think he was born, because I was a very young teacher at that time. So our sun goes through a cycle that lasts about 11 years. And let's bring this back to home, because if the sun can go through a cycle where the poles, the magnetic poles, undergo a shift, could something similar happen on earth?

Speaker 3: 3:41

I'm wondering how they determined that information similar happen on Earth.

Speaker 1: 3:46

I'm wondering how they determined that information. It's a bit controversial because previous years some scientists have cooked up the idea that the inner core might have reversed its rotation relative to the mantle. To answer your question, chris, they were using decades of earthquake data to show that the core has been slower. Its rotation has been slowing since around 2010.

Speaker 3: 4:09

And why is it controversial?

Speaker 1: 4:12

Well, it's bizarre that the inner core would slow and then reverse direction. It seems like it's too huge of a thing to do that, and as well. Usually, when you have a little bit of momentum, you want to continue in that direction, and so that has to do. You have a little bit of momentum, you want to continue in that direction.

Speaker 3: 4:25

And so that has to do with the frame of reference right. The geophysicist that was involved in the study, john Vidal of the University of California, said an interesting statement. He said it's going back more slowly than it was coming forward. When I taught science nine and space, I talked about frames of reference to talk about how motion appears different depending on if you are a viewer or if you are moving as well. So if the truck decelerates and the bus moves forward, it moves ahead. The truck seems to be moving backward from the bus's perspective.

Speaker 1: 5:06

And the weirdest thing is if you're in a car and you're looking at a bus and somebody on the bus is walking to the back of the bus and you are moving at the same speed, but the person is moving backwards. That's trippy too. That, actually. That messes with your mind the more you think of it.

Speaker 3: 5:20

It really does, and when you talk about it with kids they're like what is happening?

Speaker 1: 5:26

But the whole thing relates to. That's why people on Earth just assumed that the sun was going around the Earth, because they couldn't actually feel the Earth spinning or rotating, orbiting or anything. So the idea I believe the analogy is that if a person was standing on Earth's surface and they could look down to the inner core, based on this data, it would look like it's turning in the opposite direction compared to a couple of decades ago, using the frame of reference of you standing on the surface of the Earth. In order to get data to make this conclusion, the geologist and his colleagues examined repeating earthquakes from 1991 to 2023 in the South Sandwich Islands near Antarctica. Really, they're called the South sandwich islands near Antarctica. Really, they're called the South sandwich islands.

Speaker 3: 6:08

I think that's a cool name.

Speaker 1: 6:11

Is there like?

Speaker 3: 6:11

me hungry for lunch.

Speaker 1: 6:12

What is there like the Northern pizza islands and like the East, the Eastern calzone archipelago? I don't know that. I would like to go have a sandwich in the South sandwich islands.

Speaker 3: 6:24

Maybe they're like a bunch of small islands sandwiched together.

Speaker 1: 6:29

That makes me sad, because then that's not really about food. Anyways, the geologists use seismic waves from quakes that travel through the Earth's interior and some of them, of course, goes through the Earth's core. That's another trippy thing when I teach geology. To tell kids is if you hit the Earth really hard with a super hard hammer, the waves from that they're going to go right through the Earth and they're going to pick up speed when they're going through solid rock as opposed to like molten rock, and they'll pop out the other side. That's why when an earthquake happens on one side of the earth, the waves go straight through the earth. To people taking seismic readings on the other side of the earth, anyways, they were looking at these waveforms from seismic waves in Alaska.

Speaker 3: 7:15

What they thought is, if the inner core rotates independently from earth's other layers, waves from those repeating quakes should cross different parts of it, producing distinct waveform. If the inner core had reversed its rotation, some identical waveforms from before and after the turnaround should exist. So that would indicate the inner core had resumed an old track. And the team found 25 matches out of 200 waveform comparisons. So what does that data suggest?

Speaker 1: 7:50

The data seems to suggest that the inner core flipped its rotation relative to the mantle. The mantle is like the biggest part of the earth, that's, we're on the mantle Around 2008 and then rotated less than half as fast in that new direction around 2008, and then rotated less than half as fast in that new direction. This backtracking may indicate that the inner core is being deformed by the big gravitational pull of the mantle, and the mantle is 70% of the Earth's mass. The mantle is like the crust and then like right below the crust, you have the gooey, plasticky rock and then below that there's like huge amounts of radioactive material and other rock. All of that makes up the mantle.

Speaker 3: 8:31

But more data is needed to find the ultimate truth about the intercourse behavior.

Speaker 1: 8:37

So this is a second study that seems to agree with a study that came out last year that the intercourse is oscillating on a roughly 70-year cycle that spins one way, then it spins the other, and, of course, when that 2023 study came out, it was very controversial. This one we're talking about today seems to back it up. Now, one thing that you don't have to worry about is this is going to be starting to create a whole bunch of new earthquakes. What happens? That deep, deep under the earth appears to not have a lot of impact on us on the crust. Earthquakes on the crust, where we live, are usually the result of tectonic plates, massive, huge slabs of rock bumping into each other, grinding into each other or snapping apart from each other. Canada has one out on the West Coast. You remember what it's called, chris? It's a fault.

Speaker 3: 9:28

The West Coast Trail.

Speaker 1: 9:29

The Juan de Fuca.

Speaker 3: 9:31

Ah yeah, but you talking all about this crust makes me hungry for a sandwich.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Oh, call back. Very good, that's science news for this week. This week in pet science, we're going to look at a slightly different kind of pet in a very different part of the world to where you and I are, chris. Now, we've talked before about how kids from other cultures come to Canada and dogs are not seen as a pet. Did you teach any kids like that, chris, that whenever you mentioned Bunsen and Beaker, and now Bernoulli, they're not necessarily into it.

Speaker 3: 10:09

Yes, one girl actually. When Bunsen was there she said, oh no, he's too big, I don't want to see him, but I'll see Beaker.

Speaker 1: 10:20

She said the big one scares me.

Speaker 1: 10:23

Yeah, bunsen has scared a couple kids at my school. I had one girl. I was walking with him through the school and she saw there was some. I didn't teach this kid and I felt terrible. She saw Bunsen screamed and ran screaming away. So I think in like in other parts of the world we've mentioned this that dogs are not seen as pets. They can be feral and quite dangerous. Now where we're going with this lead is this really interesting study that was posted in Anthrozoos about the Omani Bedouin culture and how they have a very unique sense of pet ownership. Like where is the Bedouin culture from, chris?

Speaker 3: 11:03

From Oman, the Bedouin culture, from Chris, from Oman, and Oman is east of the United Arab Emirates and south of Dubai. It's right on the Gulf of Oman, near Qatar.

Speaker 1: 11:17

It's on. It touches the Arabian Sea. I've got a Google map up right now. I don't teach social studies. I always have to Google these places because I'm very bad at it. What animal are we talking about, Chris?

Speaker 3: 11:29

we're gonna talk about camels you know, I love camels aren't I used?

Speaker 1: 11:35

to, aren't they so cool?

Speaker 3: 11:38

I love camels and I love giraffes are they similar?

Speaker 1: 11:41

I don't know if they're from the same family.

Speaker 3: 11:44

I don't know, but I love them both.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Alice, the camel had two humps, I hear.

Speaker 3: 11:49

Alice, the camel does have two humps, and then when she has no humps, then she's a horse.

Speaker 1: 11:56

Did you believe the myth when you were young that the this is what I thought for the longest time that the bumps on a camel the camel's humps like are full of water?

Speaker 3: 12:05

Store water. That's not true.

Speaker 1: 12:08

No, they're fat, so in a way they store water. But I thought they were just bags of water Me too and I was like, how does the animal drink it from themselves? And when you're a kid you just don't question those things sometimes. And then I think I watched some National Geographic thing where it was talking about how they're not actually full water, it's just fat which helps them store water inadvertently in a different way.

Speaker 3: 12:32

The study focused on the development of adolescent humans through their interaction and attachment with pets, specifically examining the Omani Bedouin culture, which is deeply connected to camel culture. So the Omani Bedouin culture emphasizes the nurturing relationships between camels and their cameleers. Did you know that camel handlers were called cameleers?

Speaker 1: 13:00

No, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1: 13:02

I love that In the research for the study there's a whole bunch of cool things. Now one thing I'll just give away a little bit about the study. It is so similar to some of the studies that I've done broke down numerous times that looked at child development based on pet ownership. But dogs Like what happens to a kid when they have a dog in the family, because there's not a lot of dogs considered pets in this part of the world and camels are. It's flipped. They're looking at the development of children if there's camel contact in the children's life. What did they find, chris?

Speaker 3: 13:42

They found three areas that I'm going to talk about. They found emotional development, social development and cognitive development. Child cameleers experience emotional benefits from their attachment to camels, and those children show better social interaction or better social integration and community engagement. And lastly, contact with camels is linked to higher levels of cognitive maturity.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Now, all of this data was based on conversations collected over a year with a bunch of Bedouin children and their parents, and all of these narratives demonstrate a pretty positive impact of camel contact on child development.

Speaker 3: 14:26

Parents reported that children with camels demonstrate greater cognitive and emotional maturity and they socialize more easily, compared to siblings without camels.

Speaker 1: 14:38

I love that they have a camel. Isn't that so? Wild Adam has a cat and these kids have a camel? They're that so wild Adam has a cat and these kids have a camel. They're quite a bit different in size.

Speaker 3: 14:50

And I'm like, where would you store the camel? Probably in a barn.

Speaker 1: 14:55

Yeah, I don't know. Do they have barns for camels or they're deserty? They probably just roam about in a pen or something. I don't think I know a single farmer who has a camel, Chris? I don't think I know a single farmer who has a camel?

Speaker 3: 15:04

Chris, I don't either.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Like llamas and alpacas, yes, and donkeys, but not a camel At any rate. It's a very novel study and the impact of camel contact with these kids can't be understated. A bigger discussion point with this is that perhaps it's not that it's a dog that helps kids with development. It's the fact that it's a mammal that you can make a bond with. I've seen people make really strong bonds with horses and donkeys, like growing up in rural Alberta. Didn't you do your master's with a lady that used horses for therapy for kids Like I swear that was a thing that this person did their masters on.

Speaker 3: 15:50

A hundred percent, and so she is from rural Alberta and she was able to bring the kids to her horse and then also her horse to the classroom and it's equine therapy and the positive impact of having the horse as as a therapy animal now I do want to say that camels are not part of the horse family.

Speaker 1: 16:15

They're part of the camelids and there's. Do you want to know some of the other camelid species, can you?

Speaker 3: 16:21

get a giraffe one of them, or am I totally off? Base no it. You get a giraffe One of them, or am I totally off?

Speaker 1: 16:24

base. No, it's not a giraffe, Sadly, giraffes kind of its own thing. But llamas and alpacas are in the same family as a camel which is interesting.

Speaker 3: 16:33

That is fun they got a similar face.

Speaker 1: 16:37

I'm googling camel faces. They're pretty cute actually.

Speaker 3: 16:42

Are we going to get some alpacas?

Speaker 1: 16:44

Are we going to get some alpacas? I know that's the dream, but I don't think so. Not yet. We've got a puppy to take care of.

Speaker 3: 16:50

We do. He's currently eating my shoe.

Speaker 1: 16:53

When Duncan was very small, the zoo or the circus came to town and didn't he ride a camel? Didn't we pay money for him to ride a camel?

Speaker 3: 17:02

Yeah, I believe we did.

Speaker 1: 17:04

Yeah, there was like a. They're big, like some of the camels are enormous, and there was like a little cage on the camel, like not a cage, like it was a cage where the kids would sit, and the kids sat on the camel and they went around on a loop and then you were out 20 bucks.

Speaker 3: 17:20

But the experience was worth it.

Speaker 1: 17:23

Yeah, it was pretty cool. If you're in part of the world that there's not, a lot of dogs aren't considered pets. Camels, based on this study, are a nice stand-in for our four-legged friends. That's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the Science Podcast free.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the beaker stuffy and now the ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger, the science cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have David Beckmeyer with me today, science communicator and the host of Outrage Overload. David, how are you doing?

Speaker 4: 18:41

I'm doing great. Thanks, jason. It's nice to be here. I always ask this where are you in the world? Where are you doing? I'm doing great Thanks.

Speaker 1: 18:44

Jason, it's nice to be here. I always ask this when are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show from?

Speaker 4: 18:48

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Speaker 1: 18:51

Okay, lived there, your whole life, moved around a bit, mostly here.

Speaker 4: 18:56

Spent a little time in New York. Spent a little time in LA.

Speaker 1: 18:58

The Pacific Northwest is really pretty From land really pretty from landlocked Alberta, Canada.

Speaker 4: 19:07

We like to get out to the West Coast whenever we can.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Yeah, it's nice up there. So my first question is I was wondering, if you, what's your training in science? We have science guests on and we have generalists on?

Speaker 4: 19:19

Do you have any training in science? Yeah, I like this question because I can just bring the normal me into this, because I have a little bit. I did some. I'm a physics dropout, so I have some experience from college of chemistry and physics, but then I got lured into the sort of computer science world which I don't really consider a science that much, or at least not to say in the same way. So I'm, I don't consider myself a scientist, but with my guests I'm basically a layman with some background in research.

Speaker 4: 19:45

I did some professional research and ultimately ran a corporate R&D world lab. So I have that experience with research and I do have some published papers in the computer science realm, some peer-reviewed papers there. But yeah, I consider myself a layman and I am studying journalism at Michigan State University, which, by the way, a lot of universities have online stuff classes you can take, and so I'm doing that. But yeah, so I consider myself a layman with some light background and familiar with research and science to a degree. But I'm the guy, the sort of dummy, that's not afraid to ask the dumb questions on behalf of my audience.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Oh my goodness, that's literally my job as the host of the science podcast too. Yeah, yeah I. But you are, we'll get into it. But you do have expertise in something we've never really talked about on our show before. But just one quick follow-up question Were you, were you a computer kid growing up? Did you do any programming or play games on computers, or did you fall into this before you went to the journalism thing?

Speaker 4: 20:53

Yeah, I mean, I was in tech for years as a professional, so that was many years what my career was. But yeah, so as a kid not so much. I really fell into it more at the college level. So I got exposed to that stuff more there. I did play around with a little bit of an electronics nerd in high school, but more got interested in that stuff in college and fell into it. There, fell into it pretty hard in college and that's really where it started for me. Some gaming, yes, and even did some coding. That was one of my early jobs was some of the low-level guts of video games, but then it was more commercial stuff and networking and large networks and stuff like that is where I gravitated.

Speaker 4: 21:38

The switch to journalism why that? What's going on had this. I think you saw this escalating tension with people and I was seeing this in my life, experiencing it myself, where people are getting mad at each other a lot. You're seeing people block and cut off people and not want to have conversations and exclude them not only from their online lives, but oftentimes they just from their regular life to their real world life and and all that was happening even before. And then you had COVID hit and you had lockdowns and people fighting about that, and that kind of behavior even escalated more over things like vaccines and stuff like that. And I just got to this point where what's going on here with all this and that led me down this path of maybe there's like science going on about this. What can we learn about why we're behaving like this? And that's how I got in, that's what caused me to go down this path oh, I forget, sorry.

Speaker 1: 22:29

I'm not sure if, like, we have really large social media accounts with our dogs who teach science and definitely we see people fighting, yeah, in our comments about everything, like everything. If one of our posts get big enough, there will be fights. It just happens that's one of the things that your podcast is about outrage. So I guess, like what is outrage? Culture or what is outrage?

Speaker 4: 22:58

Yeah, there's a lot of different terms for a lot of what we look at, which sometimes outrage machine, the outrage industry, these merchants of outrage. There's a lot of what we look at which sometimes outrage machine, the outrage industry, these merchants of outrage. There's a lot of different terms people use, but one of the starting points is that there really is an industry that feeds off people's outrage or just in their anger and fear as well, and outrage is a term that captures all those emotions, and so you see this in social media, which is often where it gets all the attention because the algorithms we engage with that stuff, so they give us more of it and it creates this vicious circle and then our vicious cycle and then but it's also there's many other places where this there's many other players that benefit from this the news media. They use that and go from clickbait, but beyond that, they have these very partisan kind of views and they'll really try to push an agenda or just try to push our buttons and get us upset about things. And same with the politicians themselves right, they benefit from this sort of simple black and white view of the world we're great, they're terrible, All those people are bad and they're evil and they're immoral and we start buying into those narratives.

Speaker 4: 24:05

And they're immoral, and we start buying into those narratives and then that just escalates and you find yourself in the situation we're in today where, like you said, people can fight over anything. Now you start associating all kinds of things with our political identity. So there's all kinds of science, social identity theory and many other things that we talk about on the show, and I try to find interesting new research regarding the idea you can fight over anything. We had a researcher on who did research with like circles and there was the statement it was something like is a circle an oval, which seems like a pretty neutral thing, right? But then when you start mixing that with people's other identities, like particularly their political identity, it suddenly becomes a political thing and you fight over circles. It suddenly becomes a political thing and you fight over circles.

Speaker 1: 24:46

It's crazy, right? What is it? The sneetches who had circles on their tummies, kind of thing? Anything people can get upset about.

Speaker 4: 24:54

Yeah, and we will. So it's really become this. It's really dangerous. Now that we're putting so much into this, it becomes so important to us, these political positions and this political identity.

Speaker 1: 25:09

So, like you've looked at this and you've talked to folks and you've done shows on this item I'm assuming on your podcast Is there an impact to all of this people being upset? Does that affect everybody in our daily life?

Speaker 4: 25:25

It affects anybody that sort of participates in this, so it does trickle out to a lot of people. It certainly affects a lot of people and there's two of the biggest impacts. One is our personal mental health right, where, if you engage with a lot of this stuff and you tend to be more active in political conversations and in political news media and online, this is very detrimental to our mental health. We are at a boiling temperature all the time, we're not sleeping well, we're angry and we don't know it. And there's also just a simple we are addicted to it, right, so we say we don't like it, but we keep going back to it because it does bring us a morally. It makes us feel morally superior to see when the other side, when someone shows us how the other side did something awful or what we think is awful, so we're outraged about it and we're also feeling more morally superior and we actually get all the neurotransmitter juice out of that.

Speaker 4: 26:16

And there's all kinds of research about all those things how all of that has a lot of detrimental effects to us personally, our own mental wellness of that has a lot of detrimental effects to us personally, our own mental wellness. But then also it takes us as in the bigger picture, these consequences are this kind of political polarization that we have. There's a term, there's some other names for it too, but there's a term called affective polarization, where it's about our sort of emotional polarization. So it's not about we disagree with the issues, but we just disagree. We find the other side, people on the other side or shouldn't exist almost right. Their views are not valid and at some point it becomes they as people are not valid, and it moves into morality and so they're immoral, they're evil, and this is just not a way to live in the world with people that have differing views than you, dr Justin Marchegiani.

Speaker 1: 27:06

Yeah, you know what? I love your explanation there Because, if you talk, a good example I can think of is that, if you, I've had a flat tire before and somebody a guy he came and helped me on the side of the road and never once did I think about who this person politically would vote for in that situation. We were just two human beings, one trying to help the other person out, but I think online if he found out or if I found out that we were so perhaps we are so different, maybe that's the case I think that interaction would have been soured quite a bit and I yeah, and one of the yeah and one of the downsides of online is it's relatively easy to see those signals right.

Speaker 4: 27:52

You can sort of scroll through a few of their posts and for some people it depends on what kind of thing people post, but in some cases it's relatively easy and we do this anyway. And I will say I do want to make the point that it does carry over into real life too for a lot of people that we start to do that, even subconsciously. We don't know we're doing it, where a person says one thing and we imply from that one thing really quickly, within seconds, all these other things about them. Particularly often this is political things and many times we're wrong. But once we've made that mind change we kind of stick with it.

Speaker 1: 28:26

It's not easy to change our position at that point I can definitely see the effect of mental health for sure. I actually talked about it on my podcast a couple weeks ago. Normally I delete comments that from our social media like I just delete them, that are inappropriate, are looking to fight or trying to get a rise out of me as the poster just totally posts you wouldn't think people would be upset about. People are upset about and occasionally it gets a rise out of me enough that I start to have a back and forth and I always lose. I may win in the end because of my expertise on social media I might win the exchange wittily, but I always lose in the end. I always leave it feeling gross that I should never have engaged in that kind of like back and forth.

Speaker 4: 29:18

Even winning, you lose yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:21

Yeah, Um, from talking to experts in yourself and studying it. What can people do about this? How do we cope with these feelings? What should we do?

Speaker 4: 29:31

What can people do about this? How do we cope with these feelings? What should we do? Yeah, this is something that I really was very careful to incorporate in the show is not just being another show about outrage. You could easily be a show of outrage about outrage, right, you could probably make a show about that and get a listenership and I really wanted to focus on solutions and things. We could do so anytime I can. I'm looking for that Now. I have to say some of the scientists have a diagnosis and not much of a cure, so that does happen, but we always try to talk about that and I do bring on a lot of practitioners and others in this.

Speaker 4: 29:59

What people are calling the bridge building space, and so a few things we can do are one of the first things you can do if you're finding yourself with those kinds of feelings getting angry. Or I really want to. I need to reply to. This person is wrong. Or I saw this news story and it was really annoying me, and I'm it's. I'm so mad now at so-and-so's and the such and such is over there that are doing these things.

Speaker 4: 30:21

The first question is to ask yourself am I getting the full picture here? Are they? Maybe there's more to this story and maybe it's not quite as bad as they're telling me, or maybe there's a little bit more to that story. That's one of the first things is, you're most likely not getting the whole story Again. Coming back to this outrage engine, this outrage machine, this outrage economy that we have, you're probably not getting the whole picture because they want you to be outraged like that in many cases. So that's one of the first things we can do and, of course, this is some of the last advice anybody wants that you have to look inwardly, right, and that we have to actually look at ourselves. But that's the first place to start is am I getting the full picture? That's a big piece. And then you can also literally do. There's a lot of research about this and it can be hard, but you can literally disconnect. If social media seems to be one of those triggers, you can literally disconnect. If social media seems to be one of those triggers, you can literally disconnect, really turn the phone off, maybe set times, be intentional about how you're going to go on and use it and not do as much doom scrolling and just not doing as much passive consumption, because that's one place that can really be more of a danger. Another thing is just getting good sleep, so don't use your device at bedtime. Find yourself a nice go-to-bed ritual where somehow you use the do not disturb modes or the wake modes or the sleep modes of the phone and things like that, so you turn off notifications and the phone goes dark and stuff like that, and try to work that into your sleep ritual, because getting enough sleep is another huge factor.

Speaker 4: 31:54

And some of these sound cliche or they're just platitudes, but these are real things. There's science behind this that says these things matter, and I want to say that outrage is not always bad. Right, it seems to be something that from our evolutionary biology that is used to enforce norms. It's a part of our success. If you're always turned up to 11, it doesn't really work for that. It doesn't. It can't serve that purpose. A piece of it is when you ask that question about am I getting the full story? Is this something I should be outraged about? Because there probably are things that I should be outraged about.

Speaker 1: 32:27

Yeah, like legit horrific events that any moral person probably would say that's awful, yeah, and even with those, but yeah, exactly. So then you can pick your battles. Even with that, do you have the full story?

Speaker 4: 32:41

And even with that do you have the full story? And also sometimes, even if it is like a legitimate thing, and I should be out like I'm just maxed out, like I have none left right now and so it's okay to not be outraged today, it's okay to take a break from it, even if it's a totally legitimate thing to be outraged about. But yeah, those are some of the other ones, and another big thing you can do is focus more locally. One thing about the outrage industry and we've gotten away from a lot of local journalism so we don't have the kind of local journalism we used to. So national journalism, national news, those kinds of things. They're focusing on us, on national issues, because that way they don't have to serve 200 different communities or 5,000 different communities or whatever. They have one message and it goes out about all these national issues. So we get totally over. We put way too much emphasis on these national issues. So another thing if you're worried about what's going on in your community, look at that. Go to a town hall meeting. What are they talking about at the school board? What other ways can you participate in your community? And I think, another thing on that regard in terms of like your real life interaction is go to a firehouse meeting or something like meet your neighbor, spend more time with real people.

Speaker 4: 33:46

Because we're being given this image both online and in other media as well. You know that there's this prototype. You know there's this caricature of the other side that you, that we all think has all these attributes and they're all this way and they're immoral and all these sort of things. And when you talk to your actual neighbors, you'll find, most of the time, nobody fits those caricatures right, and probably you don't either, right. You might have some issues you're concerned about here. You might have some issues you're concerned about there that don't necessarily align perfectly with these political elites that have this one bucket of you. Better be on this side of all these issues or on that side of all these issues? And most of us aren't like that in real life, and most of the people you meet aren't like that in real life too. And most of us aren't like that in real life, and most of the people you meet aren't like that in real life too.

Speaker 4: 34:34

And we get a skewed picture both online, particularly online, because those loud voices are what get the attention, so that to show because they want you riled up, they want us riled up. That's how they, you know, get advertisers. That's how they get people to come back and listen and talk about it and reshare it to social media and all that kind of stuff. So they want to bring on these loud voices that get our attention, and so we don't see the sort of calmer voices, more reasoned folks, because they're just not. They've stepped out of the conversation to a degree too.

Speaker 4: 35:15

There's a lot of self-selecting where people have opted out, because every time they try to join a conversation, they just get blasted by people that might ostensibly be quote unquote on their side, as well as people on the other side, because maybe you're not taking a harsh enough stance against the other side and you take heat for that. So I I think that's part of that also my getting the full story, like when we're seeing this, a misperception that the other side is. We're given this caricature of the other side.

Speaker 1: 35:38

That's not very accurate have you talked to folks or looked at some of the research on like strategies to have discourse with people we disagree with?

Speaker 4: 35:57

That's what I would be curious at, because that's solutions-based right. Yeah, absolutely. That's another area where I think I mentioned I talked to some of these practitioners in what is called this bridge-building space. There's three or four different terms people use for that kind of thing as well. But yeah and I will say that you want to be a little careful to jump into these conversations having not spent a lot of time either practicing or participating in some of these organizations, because just throwing people in a room isn't always the best way- yeah, if you don't have the skills and there's no structure to it and things like that yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:28

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 4: 36:28

But I will say that said, one of the hardest things going to be is you've got Uncle Ray or something like that and you think he's just got some crazy ideas and you want to straighten him out. That's not the greatest intention to go into that conversation with, right. So change your intention a little bit to actually listen, and maybe Uncle Ray will change your mind, or at least you'll begin to have Uncle Ray feel like you're hearing him. And so that's the first thing I would say If you want to have a conversation, you take the burden on you to be the listener first. Maybe for a few conversations, maybe more than one At least, especially in the very beginning, set the intention to listen, to not argue, to not push back, and maybe even if something like you say I don't agree with you, but I'm glad you told me that Something like that Don't necessarily imply that you agree all the time, because that might leave you feeling like you didn't stand for your principle or something like that.

Speaker 4: 37:26

So we don't maybe want to do that. But it's okay to just listen and say I'm just going to take everything in now and I'd like to hear your position on things and start there, because that will change both their perception of you, which is one of the big things, but it'll also change your perception too, believe it or not. Like you may learn so few things in that conversation Now, some of those things might scare you like wow, I didn't know Uncle Ray was that crazy.

Speaker 4: 37:51

It might get worse before it gets better, but at least you've understood and it's helped. And now you can say now I can pick my battles a little bit and say, wow, there was this one thing, uncle Ray, that we could really agree on. There's this other thing, uncle Ray, that I'm really surprised you believe that. So how'd you come to believe that? And those kinds of conversations will help. Also. It is better, if you can do it, go outside and have this conversation on a walk. You'll get physical move while you're doing it. It sounds dumb, but there's a lot of science on this as well that move while you have these conversations and they're less likely to turn crazy, to turn wild and walk and talk. Yeah. And the other thing is there's also a lot of organizations and you may or may not have heard of Braver Angels, but that's one you can get involved with and they are conducting these conversations and before the pandemic they were doing these and I think they're still going to try to pick it up and do and it's organized and they don't.

Speaker 4: 38:42

And one thing about these conversations for a lot of these groups they don't have an agenda to necessarily be persuasive. It's about understanding each other and hearing each other. And there's other organizations have some other agenda, but that's a common one, is that. So Braver Angels is one. There's another one called Crossing Party Lines and they do online conversations as well, and those kinds of groups will give you practice with that listening side and also expose you to some views and you're gonna say, wow, there's a lot of views out there. What do I think about that? We're gonna make you have to rethink a little bit.

Speaker 4: 39:21

So there's a couple of examples and there are some others like that, but the bravery angels or crossing party lines are probably a couple of the big ones.

Speaker 4: 39:28

There's another organization out there called starts with us.

Speaker 4: 39:32

That doesn't do conversations per se like that, but they they kind of work with brave angels, but they have a whole bunch of tools online about this kind of thing how to have these dialogues, what it might look like, that kind of things.

Speaker 4: 39:44

Those are a couple of that's a couple of ways to get more experience with it. But if you do it on your own, I would say the biggest thing is start in listen mode and really be intentional about that. Like you're going to have to force yourself to do that and it's going to feel like a one-sided you're bringing a knife to a gunfight a little bit. At the same time, if you really listen, you'll find the other person will start to go you're not fighting me on this and you'll start to see them open up even more and change their position, because they're not going to be defending their position as much, they're going to be describing their position and their view on things, and so you'll. It'll be a different kind of conversation, but it will feel a little bit like you bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Speaker 1: 40:20

I love that. Those are all great pieces of advice for everybody. Right now those of us who are in North America our show never gets political like at all, like we're just science-based right. We never talk about what's going on with politics, but if you're listening to the show, both in Canada and the United States, there are some pretty major elections coming up soon and all of that's ramping up. We see online. So good advice for everybody around us is to maybe just listen a bit more to each other. It's hard to hear each other when we're yelling right, and it's without setting that intention.

Speaker 4: 40:57

it's hard to not find yourself triggered pretty early in a conversation, right? So setting that intention is important and I'll say, you know, regarding the political thing, I mean, my show is the same way, like we're met a meta politics. So we talk about sort of the science of the politics. Not necessarily, we don't try to, we're not preaching issues or saying somebody should vote a certain way. We're talking about the meta aspect of the science around some of this, and not it's not all just about politics, but around a lot of this.

Speaker 1: 41:23

Well, it is a big part of our life. Right, like you can't say it's not part of my life. No, it is. It is a part of your life, whether you like it or not. Good advice A really smart person suggested I don't know, maybe I'm going to pose this to you is like always, asking questions is better than like asking questions about somebody's point of view is a good way to listen if you're not agreeing with what they're saying. How did you come to that? What makes you think that? Would you agree, or does that invite further argument?

Speaker 4: 42:00

No, I didn't want to go down that path too much because there's another sort of rhetorical tools you can use if you're into the, if you're more sort of thinking about the persuasion side of it, which I don't think is always the right way to approach these things, and certainly you should first try to listen and understand people's views before you begin the persuasion part. But yeah, so if you talk about it, yeah, and those kinds of questions are always great because you definitely will learn more and it's good to know how they did come to learn these things. You'll learn something about that. So if you're doing that with good intentions and you aren't trying to manipulate, yeah, that's always a good way to go. But if you are thinking about on the persuasion side, I will say that that rhetorical idea you don't change anyone's mind. We never change anyone's mind. People change their own minds.

Speaker 1: 42:48

Yeah, exactly, yep.

Speaker 4: 42:49

So. So the only way to change minds is to create space for that person to change their mind. And one way you do that is through that, that rhetorical idea of causing them to go to the second and third order, thinking about the, their position and and with those kinds of questions that you suggested, right. So like, how did you come to learn about that? How did you come to believe that way? That kind of thing. And there's some devices there you can use, like asking them how strongly they feel about that and making them put a number on it. That will activate another part of the brain.

Speaker 4: 43:23

So if I ask you something like what do you think of that movie? That's one thing, right, that's an open-ended question. But movie, that's one thing, right, that's an open-ended question. But if I say to you, on a scale of one to 10, where one is it's the worst movie you ever saw, and 10 is the best movie you ever saw, what number would you give it? That actually activates a different part of your brain. Okay, and then you can go from there and then walk through that a little bit and again, all you're doing is creating space for that person to potentially change their own mind. But that's a little bit different than just the listening thing.

Speaker 1: 43:54

Yeah, I like that and would one piece of advice being like not engaging with that if you're not up to it, like you have to be up to this to decide that, to listen to somebody who maybe is going to be saying things you disagree with.

Speaker 4: 44:10

For sure. Yeah, it's going to take some energy, and so it's like do I love this person enough that I'm going to put in the effort for this conversation? Because, yeah, it's going to be taxing, it's going to be difficult, and so that's the question you have to ask. And so this is the kind of thing that you would only really do this with people you care about, and why do this with someone you don't care about? This is the problem with social media, right, we're having these conversations with people we don't care about yeah, like, for example, the person I got into a back and forth with I don't like.

Speaker 1: 44:40

After it, I'm like why do I care what this person said about our video? Like it was a cute video of our golden retriever wearing snow pants. We got her doggy snow pants because it got to be like minus 40 in alberta, canada, for a bit minus 40 degrees celsius and it was too cold for her feet. And a whole bunch of people were like not super thrilled that we put snow pants on a dog and they're like it's not that. First off, they didn't believe it got that cold and second off, they didn't think the dogs need snow pants.

Speaker 1: 45:13

And just one of those most of them were overwhelmingly positive. Of course, you don't see those when the one gets to you, the 90, 95% positive comments there's. This one picked at me and I started to fight with this guy and after I'm like why do I even care what this guy says? I could have just ignored his comment or deleted it. So it didn't cause a fight on our, our post. And that was a harsh lesson to myself, cause normally that's what I do and everything you said I was doing I was staying up at night.

Speaker 1: 45:45

I had my phone in my bed Like I wasn't logging off. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:51

I was outraged.

Speaker 1: 45:52

I was outraged about this. I couldn't believe this one guy didn't believe my dog needed snow pads, like just so silly it's funny because we talk about a lot of different, a lot of different scientific phenomena.

Speaker 4: 46:03

Come up on the show and what you were saying about you, you could, you all those positive comments you got. It's that one negative one, right?

Speaker 4: 46:11

That's a phenomenon I know, so dumb. That's a phenomenon called negativity bias and for some reason it's built in our brain and they think it relates to our evolution. Right, like you needed to think about the negative thing, because that's the one that might kill you, so you put so much more emphasis on that. So it's like the classic if you get a job review and there's 10 positive number fives best ever and you get that one that says two, you only get two on this one, which one's the one you're going to be thinking about for three yeah, you're going to obsess about the fact that everything is good and somebody said has trouble spelling or something like that.

Speaker 1: 46:40

You're like, oh my god yeah whatever, david, this has been a really interesting conversation for me. I've never I've never talked with another person about out like this, ever on our podcast or, I think, even in real life. So thank you for having this conversation with us, and maybe me too. It's making me feel better and giving me some advice as we're chatting. The last question I have before we move on is do you feel that media in general makes all of this worse? They need this, some of them to get us to do things. Is that true?

Speaker 4: 47:22

Yeah, for sure, that's a big driver for all this, because they're incentivized by, like I said, our outrage has become a commodity, right? So they buy and sell it, to literally buy and sell it to advertisers. You have the social media networks and their algorithms that do it. And then you have the offline or what do we want to say? Tv and newspapers and print journalism, and online on New York Times and things like that that are reading it where we're reading it online.

Speaker 4: 47:49

All of that is still incentivized by our attention, right, and they know that our attention can be driven by these emotions, right? So anger and moral indignation, which ultimately drives you towards outrage, or I kind of use outrage as a blanket term for all that are some of these big drivers that get us to watch, get us to click, get us to interact, get us to stay online, get us to come back, and that's why it just puts us in this cycle. So anytime you're participating, watching something on TV, doing it online, again, come back to that. I set an intention when I'm going to watch TV, if I'm going to watch the news because I don't necessarily recommend you should always tune out, but tuning out sometimes is what you have to do. But if you're feeling like you're being left out by tuning out and you're going to tune in, set an intention to say I'm going to watch this with an eye towards, with a lens that they're going to try to make me mad at some point.

Speaker 4: 48:43

And it'll really soften it because when they do it you can go oh, they're doing it right there, even if it's a program that is feeding your bubble, feeding your side of the story. Let's say so, go in with that lens that says, I bet they're going to try to make me mad here and again. And when they do that, okay, they're doing it there. And I wonder if in that they're telling me the whole story. So that is another way that we can mitigate some of this effect. But absolutely the media. And I don't want to sit here and say it's a whodunit and it was the media in the living room with the candlestick, because there's a lot of players. We're part of the problem. There's a lot of other things going on, but the media is a big factor to this yeah, I know I've done some things on social media, like twitter, for example, or x.

Speaker 1: 49:28

You can just like mute certain words, so I picked like the top 10 words within posts that make me feel gross and then I just don't see those. So I curate my own feed by getting rid of the things I know that would trigger me to feel mad about being online.

Speaker 4: 49:45

Okay, that's a good idea.

Speaker 1: 49:51

I don't know, Maybe by doing that I'm making myself ignorant of some things, but I also did that to protect my sanity because I am on social media a lot for our dog accounts. So it's just stuff I don't have the capacity to deal with.

Speaker 4: 50:02

Yeah, you have to do those kinds of things. It's worth it to preserve your sanity for sure.

Speaker 1: 50:08

Awesome, David, and just real quick. Your podcast is called what and where. Can people check it out before we move to the next couple of questions.

Speaker 4: 50:17

So it's outrage overload like an overloaded truck. So it's outrage overload and it's available on all the platforms. But you can also go to our website at outrageoverloadnet and you can find all my contact infos on there, all my socials, all that stuff. If you want to reach out to me, you have any questions directly, I'm happy to talk. I love talking directly with anybody about the show, about content, about ideas, anything, feedback and all that stuff. So feel free to anybody reach out to me. So all that contact info is there at outrageoverloadnet.

Speaker 1: 50:49

Awesome. We'll make sure there's a hyperlink or two in our show notes as well. We have a couple standard questions on the show that we ask all of our guests, and the first one is, as we mix topical science news with animal science, for our guests to share a pet story. Do you have a pet story you could share with us?

Speaker 4: 51:07

yeah, we have. I have a ton of pet stories. I think I'll just pick one. Yeah, we just got a. We lost our, our last dogs, like 10 years ago, and we weren't. We were done. We're getting any more dogs, but now we got this little girl sitting at my feet right now.

Speaker 4: 51:19

So that's just how that that's how that life goes yeah, but one of our dogs that we had. He was a rescue and he was just super hyper when he was young and he was an escape artist and so it was frustrating and he would get out sometime. And you figure, how did he get out this time? Like we thought we had everything and he was an escape artist, he would find a way. And so one time he escaped and we were really worried about it because he had been gone for a couple days and we didn't know what was going on. I would check the pound and I didn't find him, because a couple other times they had found him and brought him home, brought him back to the pound. I'm like, okay, but no one had found him. And then finally I forget exactly how they finally got the tag and they contacted us that he was miles and miles away. And he was.

Speaker 4: 52:12

And it was this two, it was this couple that they were both lawyers, and we're thinking, oh great, this dog, what did he do? What kind of trouble is he in? But they go, oh, we love him, we want to bring him back. He's sitting here by the fireplace right now. We're like what? And this lawyer's like up? They lived up on a hill where it was like a richer part of town and more more elite part of town, more exclusive, and so we're thinking, oh my gosh, what's this going to be? So they bring Pete back and and they go, oh yeah, he loves lamb and rice, so they're making them. They're homemade and making them lamb and rice. And then we go did he do it? Did he chew anything or anything? Oh, or anything. Oh, just a couple pair of shoes. And we're like, oh, that he wrecked a couple of 1300 lawyer shoes, right, some prada, some high heel prada or something like that right yeah, so then they'd give him, they'd give him back to us.

Speaker 4: 52:54

Oh, we just loved him. Anytime we need to take care of anything. So that dog. After all that, when they drove off, he whined out the door looking for him. Oh, what a fun story. So then we had to feed him. We had to cook him lamb and rice.

Speaker 1: 53:07

From then on, you got an acquired taste of the good life.

Speaker 1: 53:10

Hey, yep so you ate better than we did probably when we got bunsen, our bernice mountain dog, when he was a puppy. He came from the Swiss family and they cooked the puppies like fresh eggs every day for breakfast. So when Bunsen came to us, we're like boy, he really doesn't like our food. And then we talked to the family where he came from and she, in a really thick Swiss accent, she just couldn't believe we weren't cooking them fresh eggs for breakfast. Needless to say, we had to wean our dog too off the good life as well. It's a great pet story. The other standard question that we ask our guests is to share a super fact with us. It's something that in conversation it blows people away. Do you have a super fact for us?

Speaker 4: 53:56

I hope this works out. I wouldn't be surprised, since you have a science show, that somebody else hasn't already talked about this a little bit. But if we've been talking however long maybe under an hour, but let's say we talked, let's say it was roughly an hour we, during that time we moved over 400,000 miles.

Speaker 1: 54:14

Oh cool, oh cool, I like that yeah.

Speaker 4: 54:18

Because we moved around. We spun around the axis of the earth, of course, and that was about a thousand miles, so that's about a thousand miles an hour, right? So the axis of the earth, of course, and that was about a thousand miles, so that's about a thousand miles an hour, right? So that was like a thousand miles. But then the solar system, or the sun and the earth, are spinning around the Milky Way at, yeah, 400 and something thousand miles an hour. So that's how far we moved while we've been chatting, so sometimes by doing nothing you can do a lot.

Speaker 1: 54:39

Yeah, cosmically you're doing lots, but on the couch you're doing nothing. Yeah, cosmically you're doing lots, but on the couch you're doing nothing. Right, that's a great super fact, david. We're at the end of our chat. Thank you so much for being our guest today. This was a therapeutic conversation for me. I really appreciate you being on our show One more time. Where can people connect with you?

Speaker 4: 55:02

You can find all my contact info at outrageoverloadnet.

Speaker 1: 55:07

Awesome. Take care of yourself. And I guess if we ever get too much outrage, we can just pet dogs. They seem to also help with rage.

Speaker 4: 55:16

That's actually a great idea, Jason. So I just want to say I've really enjoyed talking with you and this was a lot of fun okay, it is time for story time with me, adam.

Speaker 2: 55:28

If you don't know what story time is, story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. Uh, dad, do you have a story?

Speaker 1: 55:36

I do. Um, it has a good ending, but it it was kind of scary and it's not something that we've talked about really up until now, like I did make a post about it on social media. Um, about the time we got brunelli a month ago, we noticed that bunsen's uh, right side of his face was kind of bony, like it was. It felt different than his left side and and as we investigated further, it was like he had lost a whole bunch of muscle on that side and that was concerning. And then once I noticed that Chris was actually taking Bernoulli in for his first shots and Bunsen tagged along to get checked out by the vet and yeah, the vet's like that's probably not normal and she had some ideas about what it could be. The problem is, is that all of the things that it could be required for their diagnostic tests she's like, well, you know, watch him, see how he's chewing, it could be a tooth issue. There's all of these nerves in the dog's face that, well, the scariest thing was one of them. It could be cancer on his brain or on that nerve in his brain and that's not great, obviously, or something like an autoimmune disease went ahead with the first kind of battery of tests which was a CT scan and, uh, we got in fairly quick that that happened a couple days ago.

Speaker 1: 57:05

I got all emotional in the little room with Bunsen Chris had Grad actually, so Chris was busy, so I had him and they of course have to knock him out to scan his face and his brain with the CT scan. So I was just like, oh my God, I just love this dog so much. I hope whatever comes back is good. And I picked him up at much I, I hope whatever comes back is good. And, um, I picked them up at five, 30 and the the vet did this, you know, amazing job showed me the CT scan and, first off, there's no cancer, um, and they also sent the CT scan to a major city to have a second opinion of it and that the second opinion was that, no, no, there's no cancer on the scan.

Speaker 1: 57:45

So that's great, um, and they did find that perhaps he has, uh like dental disease on a couple teeth, which which chris has lamented because we do take really good care of his teeth. He goes in for dental cleanings, um, and the vets, like you know, they could just be touching just perfectly that. It's giving him an intense pain and he's just avoided eating on that side of his face, um, that side of his head, and that's what's caused all the muscle atrophy. Um, while he was knocked out the, they took some of his blood and that's sent to a lab in another major city and we'll get results back from that in about a week and that'll let us know if there's anything like a typical, like some kind of autoimmune disease, of attacking the muscles in his face or the muscles on that side. And luckily there's steroids or drugs that can treat that. About as good news as you can possibly get right, and that's my story for this week. Good news for Bunsen was something that was really scary for us.

Speaker 2: 58:46

I have a story. My story is about the cats at the farm. So I haven't been up to the farm in a while. It's really hot up there, and I haven't been up to hang out in a while just because of how hot it is. I hate it when it's super hot and dad also hates it when it's super hot. Mom is fine with it because she just sleeps right through it, but dad and I can't stand it. So we got AC installed in our house, but Papa's house, the one with the cats, doesn't have AC. So you're stuck being crazy hot there and I haven't seen the cats in a while and I missed them. And so I came, I went over to hang out and all the cats wanted to come and sleep and lay with me, and they wanted to sleep on me. Um, there's four cats there and three of the four came up on me, and the only reason why the fourth one didn't is because he's too big. He's a. He's a big cat, his name is finn. He's massive, he's very big.

Speaker 1: 59:47

He's so big I've been up there.

Speaker 2: 59:49

He looked yeah, but he's not like finn, isn't like fat, is the thing? He's not like a fat cat, he's built. No, he's just built cat I don't know what he does.

Speaker 2: 59:58

He doesn't, he just sits. It sits and sleeps all day. He doesn't do anything, um. But I, all the cats came on me, and even the cat that's like doesn't like anything. But all the cats came on me and even the cat that doesn't like to go on people, aside from Papa, went on me. His name is Mouse. Mouse is a little stupid, but that's okay. He came up on me and he was purring really loud. He doesn't usually purr, he's not a purring cat, but he usually only hangs out with Papa because Papa is his person. But he said hello to me, um, but yeah, that's my story is I miss the cats and the cats missed me too, which is surprising to see, because usually they don't care. They're like oh hi, how are you? Can you give me food please? Um, but yeah, that's my story. Mom, do you have a story?

Speaker 3: 1:00:40

I sure do. Every day I am reminded about how different Bernoulli is from Bunsen. And today I had the dogs on the deck and I was thinking rewind to when Bunsen was a puppy, or even when Bunsen is now. I had set up a little bit of a block because I didn't want him to go into a certain area of the deck.

Speaker 1: 1:01:08

I know where this is going, okay, sorry yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:01:12

So I was like I'll just block this off. This would have worked with Bunsen. I had changed, I had flipped over one of the deck chairs on its side and then I had a pail and a couple ice cream crates or milk crates, I guess, set up all in a row. This does not deter Bernoulli at all. He's like nope, challenge accepted, and he figured out a way to weasel his way to the other side, where I didn't want him to be. I'm like what, Bernoulli? This is not what Bunsen would do, but it's interesting because Bernoulli is living up to Bernoulli the brave and also Bernoulli the mischievous, Also Bernoulli the problem solver and of course Bernoulli the biter. And of course Bernoulli the biter. That's what Adam just said.

Speaker 1: 1:02:09

He's kind of a troglodyte sometimes.

Speaker 3: 1:02:12

Anyway. So I set it up again because Jason's like it's fine. I said well, no, I really don't want him back there. He's like well, what's back there? Well, the broom. He's now chewed the broom and I guess the bristles of the broom they're fair game, and the end of the broom it's fair game too. Anyway. So I reset it up and I'm like he can't get through. No, he looked at the pail and he looked at the milk crate pail, milk crate. And then he went and he pushed his way through.

Speaker 1: 1:02:52

I'm like what, what? He just pushed his way through. That's funny.

Speaker 3: 1:02:55

He just pushed his way through. Like Bunsen would be like nope, I guess I can't go. Like you've all seen the video where Jason puts up a piece of tape and bunsen's like no, can't do it, can't jump, can't go, I'll just be here. I'm sure if we set up tape and when bernoulli is old enough to jump, where his uh, where his growth plates are grown, uh, he's gonna be jumping them all.

Speaker 1: 1:03:18

He's gonna jump as high as ginger I think he'll just kool-aid man through, through all of them.

Speaker 3: 1:03:24

Yes, he will Kool-Aid man through.

Speaker 1: 1:03:25

Oh yeah, He'll just skim through the tape, but that's my story.

Speaker 2: 1:03:30

All throughout Mom telling her story. I've been playing with Bernoulli and he's being very bitey right now. Anyway, that's it for story time. Thank you so much for listening to my section of the podcast and sticking to the end. I hope to see you all on the next podcast episode. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1: 1:03:48

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. We'd like to give a special shout out to the Paw Pack. The Paw Pack is our Patreon-like community on Circle. It's the greatest way that you can support what we do and keep the science podcast free. If you'd like to join as a member, check out the link in our show notes and the top tiers get their name, shouted out Cress, take it away.

Speaker 3: 1:04:20

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