From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Alexis code name Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. It's the top of the week, which means it's time for some more strange news. We have a cavalcade of weird stuff, and I think all air we we tried to have at least one semi optimistic story that off air we decided to save for the end and full confession fellow conspiracy realists, Matt old Doc, I'm cheating just a little bit with my story today because it's an opportunity to talk about one of my favorite kinds of animals in the world. Octopuses you're thinking no but close, and also bachers you're thinking no but close, Yeah, arguably closer. Definitely Ferrets. Oh gosh, well, now I'm now I feel like we should just do an animal show, because those are all great suggestions, But today I wanted to talk a little bit about Corvitt's about crows. Uh, these amazing creatures have often been lauded more and more of late for their intelligence, which for a long time did not make sense to ornithologists scientologists, I mean scientists, well maybe scientologists too, and and you know, neuroscientists around the world, because crows have a very very small brain, but they do things that ordinarily we only think of other animals being capable of doing, namely mammals. So crows can teach their young and the other members of their murder across generations to remember the faces of those who have wronged them and the faces of those who have helped them. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy stuff. And just to be clear, they aren't teaching murder, they teach the other crows around them. They do. They do also teach murder as well. Yeah, yes, way to So what's happening here is that scientists may have finally figured out why crows, which have such a small small brain comparatively, are so incredibly intelligent, why they can do things that humans and elephants and some octopuses. Again, that is the correct plural. Well, octopis acceptable to but whatever, not a hill to die on. Uh? They found out why these birds can think at such a high level. We found out recently through some research unveiled earlier this month in September, that crows are capable of medical cognition. This is like a holy grail of philosophy. Meta cognition is just the fancy word for being able to think about thinking. So when you know, when you are having your renee to car moment and you say I think, therefore I am, and you're thinking about your thinking. It turns out these birds can do that too. Why how this shouldn't be able to at least that was our thought. Now we can explain it because it seems that, based on two papers that were studying that were recently released, it seems that crows have a very high density of neurons in their very small brains. So it's um, It's like, imagine, how, uh, something like popcorn or celery has maybe relatively low caloric content, and the same amount of peanut butter would have more caloric content. Their brains are peanut butter. That sounds like an insult, but I know, I know, what you mean by that? Yeah, it's like the new app and if this isn't a sponsorship, but they help you lose weight by pushing the less calorically dense things like you can eat like your weight and lettuce and it's like two calories. But if you eat just that's you know, tablespoon of peanut butter mayo, it's like, you know the equivalent of eating a whole bag of cabbage or something like that. Very interesting, ben So what does this mean for like the way they behave or at least what scientists understand about the intention? Are you bind the way they behave? Yeah? Yeah, great questions. So cruise brain has about one point five billion neurons. This puts them as as members of the TV show community would say, streets ahead in comparison to other aviens. They did a test where like, how do you prove how do you prove something so deep as the concept of crows thinking about thinking? Right? Do you just smoke a lot of weeds so you convince yourself that's not a crazy question? Do you write? Maybe they do, but then they do some science. So they wanted to test whether crows can both be aware of and analyze the contents of their literal bird brains. A neurobiologist named Andreas Nighter from the University of Cubanjin in Germany trained two crows to peck at a red or a blue target on a panel, depending on whether they saw a faint light. And this neurobiologist kept varying the rules of the game, so the crows would be told which color, what meant what after the flash, Like they would see a flash, and sometimes they would have to peck the red target to say that to acknowledge they had seen it, but then other times they have to peck the blue target. That's important because it means the crows have to take a second or two to figure out what they had seen earlier and then exhibit that behavior to the neurobiologists. And while they were doing this, they're tracking these crows uh neurological activity. And they found that sensory neurons were active when a crow saw the flash, and these neurons indicated the crow's brain basically saying yeah, I saw that uh. And if they did not see this flash, those sensory neurons were silent and the crow it's a peck, No, I didn't see anything. And this means that the birds are aware of what they subjectively perceive and they're correctly reporting what their neurons will tell them. That sounds a bit in the weeds. I get it. There's a little bit of jargon, but the main takeaway is this they have behavioral flexibility. That's probably one of the best definitions of intelligence that our species has. We have mostly terrible definitions of intelligence. And this means crows are able to do something that only two other animals can do, human beings and McCall monkeys. I know that last one's kind of a plot twist, but so now it's the three of us. Uh. I'm mainly using this story, by the way, uh it is amazing science. By mainly using this to tell you about the other interesting thing I learned you guys about crow intelligence. Crows are in an unending war with certain types of owls. Okay, what like like does go back generations to some you know period where an owl wrong to crow and they've just generationally you carried on this beef of like a hat field in McCoy type situation or is it something biological? This is incredible. It seems to be both genetically imprinted. You can take a crow raised in captivity and it'll have never encountered an owl and it'll just freak out smash on site. And owls are the same way, especially the great horned owl. Owls are like Okay, so I was thinking of the good and a good analogy here, So picture crows and owls in their in their unending existential war. Crews are kind of like the humans, and owls are kind of like the vampires or the monsters that go bump in the night. Owls are unparalleled nocturnal predators in the world of crows. Uh, and owls are a lot like great horrid Owls especially are a lot like serial killers when it comes to rows. If they find um a roost of crows, then they will kill them, even if they don't need to eat anything. There's one great report from Capeing Islands that shows a great horned owl had basically done a breaking an entering operation on a roost of nine crows, and their bodies were untouched except for their heads which were partially removed, and their brains were eaten. Yeah, was sick amazing. Um. It reminds me of the time when I lived in Athens, that a bunch of frat boys stole a great horned owl from the outdoor zoo. Wait, it's nothing like that at all, but it's unclear. But but did you hear about owls? Um? There was a story I heard an NPR a couple of years ago about a woman who was walking late at night and something kind of swooped down and like then she felt blood running down her face and apparently it was an owl that can they can fly soundlessly in the night, and they must have mistook or the owl must have mistook this woman's hair for like a vole or some small, you know, delicious rodents. I don't know that we have an epidemic of owls attacking humans or corvid's attacking humans, because that would be my hell on Earth, by the way, just write that out there. Yeah. Owls also are capable of successfully predating on cats, Like they can snatch up grown cats. Uh. I don't think. I think they're one of the things. Owls can't swallow a whole. But but when we think of this, we we know that because of their intelligence, then crews are in some cases functioning like vampire hunters. They're saying, let's like they have to attack and mass, right, they have to attack in numbers and do what's called mobbying the owl. And so they'll assemble like a crew of Corvid's and say, you know, we have to attack it dawn when the monster is vulnerable because it owns the night. And given their intergenerational learning, given their great intelligence, given their communicative ability. The coolest thing about this, at least to me, is this means that's somewhere out there right now, there's like a crow version of van Helsing and it's hunting, uh, you know, like it's hunting a great horned owl dracula that is just out to kill crows. Yeah, man, okay, I would I would read that comic. Uh. One of the most interesting things here when you're talking about the Corvid response to the owl threat, is that mobbing behavior. I guess they're on that same Cape and Islands article you were mentioning there been. It's speaking about how this person who's writing at the author has seen a barn owl that got flushed out, uh, just from where it would normally be staying in daylight hours and like a vampire caught out in the daylight. Not not like that, because he would just dissolve into ash. But some Corvid's saw it and they did the mobbing thing and they ended up they like, they essentially attacked it until it had to or it had to escape, and it jumped over a cliff I guess, and went down into the water into the ocean, rather than being able to fly or anything. Just really kind of sad for the owl would like rather than be taken alive by the gang of Corvid's that were after it. Well, I don't know, I guess. I mean, it's just an attempt to escape, I suppose, but they drove it into the sea. Yeah, that is cold blooded. You guys remember that movie The Secret of nim that really dark cartoon movie from the late eighties. I guess. There was Jeremy the Crow, who was kind of a goofy, fun character. But then there was the Great Owl, which if I've ever seen a depiction of an owl in vampire kind of like tones, that's it. That is one of the creepiest. It wasn't even a villain. It actually ended up giving some good info. But I believe Jeremy refused to go and for because of the fear bias against the owls. I may be making that up. That would be cool if they did think about that biology in the character development. So it's one thing it's amazing here is the more we learn about intelligence, the more we learn that it is nowhere near unique to humans. And even like, think about how familiar these animals are. Everybody listening to today's show has probably seen her crow right there, ubiquitous in many parts of the world, but their intelligence itself is still so alien, not as alien as that of an octopus. But I feel like the more we learn about these things, the more we're going to learn about their cognitive abilities. They hunt serial killers. I mean to them, these owls are serial killers if you think about it. So that's this is just h kind of a hobby horse. I you probably remember back in the Buckhead days, there were a couple of crows in the nearby Buckhead mall and I try to go talk to them in the parking lot. Uh, they didn't care. By the way, it's I want to murder of crows that I can befriend, and I know people have done it. I just I don't know. Man, City crows are stuck up. You communed with the crow both at the old Buckheat office, like you're saying. And also I think one trip to l A, I I saw you out on the porch, uh talking to a corvette or at least you know, in engaging with it in some way. I've all, you've always been fascinated by these creatures. But you're so smart just to put this out there for a little bit of context for everybody. Um, the one that we called Ben, the one that goes by Ben, he back in that day run that time when we were in that office, Ben had a specific outfit that he would wear. And I noticed this Ben, you didn't wasn't lost on me. There was a specific outfit that was very crow like. Then I would sometimes see you where when I would happened to glance you venturing out to speak with the corvids. I saw what you were doing. He got me because like we could, the four of us now, Doc, you, Matt, you know, and myself, we could go out and if we if we treated or a population of crows very well, and we came back and we were wearing the same clothes, we didn't make a bunch of changes to our facial hair or our our haircuts, then the crows would remember and then they would start giving us weird crow stuff. Like we talked about this earlier today. We actually they'll they'll give you what they think of as human stuff. But if you wrong them, their children will remember. Do you think they tell their buddies about you? And then hey, this guy's okay. And then the next thing, you know, like the corvids, like nesting in telephone poles as you're taking your walk down the street, you know, like waiting on you to do their bidding. I want to see you like night kings styal raise your arms up and then like more of it's just come flocking towards you, and like a cloud of black you know, crows surrounding Ben. I want to I mean, it's terrifying. I'm not gonna lie, but I would. I would never make you sit through that. Man. I'm actually your friends, So I appreciate that. But this, uh, I would get popcorn if that happened. Yeah, still love popcorn. Come for you would come, They would come for your They would come, they come for your corn. I would offer it as a sacrifice to croking. You can. The last thing about pro intelligence and cooperation in the wild is um Yeah, it goes even further than we think. We don't know the full extent. If you are a hunter and crows are as you guys have familiar with you. You've been in these woods before and you've left some kind of offering to them while you're hunting. They will help you find animals to hunt, like. They will fly up and they're not trained to do this. They'll teach themselves. They'll point out the deer or the elk or what have you to the hunter. And they do it because they know that when the hunter kills that animal, it'll leave something for them. It's very very strange. Um. Anyway, let us know your corvid adventures. Uh, please do not wrong them, and please remember they are wild animals. They're just very very intelligent. We don't know how smart they are yet, but this God, I can't wait. I hope somebody has a pet crow. Well you said the word familiar, you know, and it made me think of like, you know, you see crows often as uh which or warlock familiar is it's the term they use and I think that's really appropriate. Did anybody a Harry Potter universe have a crow? As I know Harry had a freaking owl. Weird but it was a cute owls fluffy and it didn't look like a demon or anything. But surely they were crow familiars in the Potter verse. Yeah, I feel like you can't write a fantasy of that sort and not have a crew or maybe a raven or something. Yeah, ravens are a little spookier. Well, I don't know, it's up for debate. They're bigger, but yep, that's right. And you see him in California a lot like because and they look like almost like little hawks or something that they're just pitch black and very very ominous creatures. You guys know where I stand on this. I love this for you, Ben. I'm really glad that you've got some corvid related uh science news to brighten your day. And and thanks for sharing. Oh yeah, of course, man, this is this is great, Ben. I just uh, I want to take it back to that study just quickly. Um. I'm just having a little bit of trouble understanding it fully, and it has nothing to do with the way you explained it. I think it's just the way the articles refer to a lot of the things, because I know there's several things happening. The stimulus occurs to where the crows either see a faint light or not. Then the crow has to decide which of the two buttons it has to hit. When I don't understand is when the rules get changed by you know, the observers, the scientists, because it seems like the the big thing here is that the rules get changed after the stimulus comes in. Then the crow has to decide which one to hit depending on that new rule. Is that correct? Yeah? That seems to be about the size of it. The important thing there is that they're exhibiting the ability to adapt their behavior. So they're not learning a route process. They're not learning something all like always hit blue, always get treat. What they're learning is, uh, sometimes I have to switch the rules up to get the results I want because the communication of these weird human scientists is changing. Is it because there dicks? I guess so. But they run the treats game, so I'll play ball. And then the big the big thing there is that they're thinking about They're like jumping thoughts essentially, rather than just a to B. It's more about what's going on behind the scenes. And I mean they don't know maybe they don't know that there's a science experiment being run on them, but they understand that it's more than just like object, you know, impermanence that children have, you know where It's like they can actually think bigger. They can think about the framework of the scenario. They find themselves in um and and essence, see the experiment for what it is, as opposed to just behaving like a less intelligent creature that would do like you said, then red red light equals treat and then no light, no whatever. You know what I mean, I don't know, Like, I think that's a really good explanation. You're you're on the money there, because the I think we should move on on this before we end up accidentally making an entire crow podcast. But the big takeaway is that before this month that would have been considered physically impossible, crows do not have the equipment that we have laid out. In the same way, crows do not have a um the cerebral cortex. They they have something called a pallium and that's kind of doing the heavy lifting the cerebral cortex would do. So. Yet again, the big thing that makes this important for other studies of non human intelligence, and perhaps that of alien life in the future is that we're learning our brains set up, our brains load out, or whatever is just is probably just one of many many options. We don't know what else is out there, but we do know the world is still the world. It's luckily still has UH, still has wild animals, and the problem is due to COVID in at least one case, we might have far fewer UH in the ocean very soon. M M. That's right, And we'll get to that story after a quick sponsor break and we're back. Okay, So we lead with with bend Corvid story. I keep wanting to say COVID that that's not what that is at all, but it's obviously top of mind for a lot of people. And we have a COVID related story that also involves animals and the idea of scarcity UM, specifically in the shark community. And you guys, I didn't know this at all, but it turns out that there's a substance in sharks livers UH called squaling. Squaling I'm gonna go with squaling um that is used to essentially make vaccines and different medications somehow more effective. UM. I'm not a scientist, I couldn't tell you exactly how that works, but it apparently does, and it's something that is used in medications the world over. But let's think about an event like what we're dealing with as far as COVID is concerned, where if we get a vaccine, it's gonna be something millions and millions of people want. Are at the very least, we're going to need to make enough doses so every one can have one if they want it, right, Like I know, we've aside from many you know, COVID truthers or folks that don't believe it's real, or folks that are anti vaccination or what have you, I think it'll probably be hopefully a drop in the bucket, you know, compared to how many people will be running out their door to get that vaccine as soon as they possibly can. And according to a post from a shark advocacy group um called Shark Allies, they believe that around two hundred and fifty thousand sharks will need to be slaughtered for that sweet, sweet squally squealing in their livers. And that is only if each person on the planet wants one dose or needs one dose. There are some potential situations where folks might need to So in that case, I would double the number to half a million sharks um for the slaughter in order to make these vaccines. Um. And you know, this Shark advocacy group actually published a petition on change dot org where they talk about how using sharks for this COVID nineteen vaccination is shortsighted. It's gonna cause a big problem balancing out, you know, the ecosystems of the oceans the world over, and it could have unpredictable outcomes. Um. It's something I hadn't really considered. You know. We think I think of like a vaccine being something entirely generated in a lab without needing any raw materials. There's just science is magic. He just put together some you know, droppers and make the thing with a little piece of the virus, and that's all. That's all you gotta do. But obviously, as we know, based on the fact that you can't just make a vaccine for the thing instantly, there's a lot of research and development and trial and error and all of this stuff that goes into and apparently sharks are part of the equation. Yeah. Yeah, I was reading about falling because I I I've never heard of this to be completely transparent. Yeah, it looks like our human livers produce it too, but we're not quite at the point as a species yet where we say slaughter x amount of people to give why amount of people of vaccine. It looks like it works by enhancing the immune response, So it kind of ups the octane or the efficacy of a vaccine because because you're going to get more, your body is going to respond to it more and you're going to create more. What is the anti um antibodies? Antibodies? Is that the idea? I think so. Um. Again, I haven't delved deep into the science, but everything that I've read, and this is a very new story. The petition, by the way, has I think something in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand signatures, but it just got posted today, um, and that today being Monday, September. So this is relatively new and developing story at least in terms of the the outcry. And this is obviously something people in shark circles would be more intimately familiar with in their whole issue is that we've never had the quote they refer to it as supply chain tested in this way at this scale, and it's something that you know, on regular on a regular day, maybe there's you know, some impact to the shark communities. But sharks are also you know, so many species of them are on the decline, and there's obviously a finite number of them in the wild. Um, and this is something that could potentially have, according to this group, have critical effects on sustaining them as a species. You know, it's one of these things too where if you're talking to the politician or maybe even the scientists, Um, what's a few sharks if it means saving mankind? You know, at the end of the day, if we eliminate all sharks in in an effort to save humanity, is that a worthwhile balance? Shark people might say no, or at the very least safe figure out a better way. But I don't know, It's it's a it's an interesting conversation for sure, Yeah, because there's um from what I understand, sharks are not the only source of this. They're just the cheapest and easiest source we can get squaling from olive oil or olives rather and it just it costs more and it also takes I think like seventy hours to make it as opposed to ten. But you know, your point, Noll is the same as something we've seen come up in arguments about conservation, where someone says, look, are we going to prevent the progress of mankind into this uh sensitive Martian environment because of tree frogs? Are we gonna say that we're putting tree frogs over the livelihood of human beings. We'll have other people who say, look, there are almost eight billion human beings on the planet. They're like a few hundred thousands of you know, insert species here. It is a difficult argument, but it's also it's also strange because there is an alternative. It's just someone would have to pay more. So I think it's misleading to say it's humans or sharks, you know, other than the time. Absolutely, and it's interesting too. I mean, already three apparently three million sharks are killed each year for the substance, and they're even hunted for it. Um predators that are you know, deep sea dwellers um have more of this compound or this liver oil, I guess. And it's because it helps them float, and as we know about sharks, they have to keep moving. That's obviously important. Interesting how this this. You know, certain species adapt to have more of a particular chemical in their bodies, you know, to help make sure they are able to do the things that they are best suited for. I'm literally describing evolution and adaptation, but as it always blows my mind when you see it in practice, uh in in the real world, in the wild like this for sure. I'm just looking about where squaling is being used all over the place, and it looks like, at least according to ducda Go, that there is squaling in all kinds of skin and hair products all over the place. One of the more popular ones I'm looking at, and this is not an ad, is a plant drived one that is coming up everywhere. I won't name it, but it's like it's the olive oil or other plant based squaling. And it seems like if we can make that much where there's that much of a supply of it for all of these products, maybe some of these companies could step up and say, well, hey, if we need um, if we need extra squaling, we've got a version of it here that Yeah, that's a great idea. We'll see if what happens. Yeah, I'm not gonna hold my breath and it keep swimming because if I stop swimming, I will die. I'm not gonna hold your shark for that one, right. Yeah, it's like three thousand sharks to make one ton of this substance. I mean. Also, the shark population, the maritime population of most animals is as we alluded to earlier, collapsing, you know what I mean. It's not as if it's going to be easy for these sharks to come back after a coal of something like this, of of this magnitude. And you know, there are people will say, well, screw sharks, I don't like them, But that's what does shark ever do for me? Right? But that's not a valid argument. And sharks already get such a terrible time in the human press because shark attacks are pretty infrequent. Sharks are not usually out to eat you. When they bite people, as a matter of fact, it's it can be fatal. It's very dangerous. They are. They are just like evolved killing to basically. But but what they're doing when they bite people, they're doing a taste test. It's rare for them to fight someone and keep biting. They think we taste gross, and they're probably right. It's that Damn Steven Spielberg. You know, if it wasn't for him, sharks would be up there with puppies and kittens. Maybe not, but I think the problem is when they do, even if it's a taste test, take a little bite. Uh, it's terrifying. Let's see you lose an arm or a hand at the very least. I always always laugh when I've been like, have you guys been closed to a shark in the wild. No, we've definitely seen one of aquariums and stuff right there. They're terrified that I was in a boat and I was still you know, I still have the Jaws music playing in the background in my head. I could easily see someone thinking the ocean would be better without them. Although I do think it's shortsighted. I understand the immediacy when you're in the moment, but it makes me, it makes you wonder, um, how ridiculous it is when you see those uh survival videos where there's how to insert here and they're like, oh, you're getting an attacked by a shark. Just remember to pop it on the nose. That's all you need to do. Just give it a bop. Yeah, Well, we'll be you know, we think about this too in terms of hunting seasons, right like, Uh, you know, it's important to maintain the balance of predators and and pray and you know, black bears, for example, are certain species that aren't allowed to be hunted or what have you. There's usually a reason because it's about conservation, not only about the species themselves, but about maintaining that balance, you know, in the wild. And I'm sure if sharks didn't need to be around, they would have died out by now. I mean again, I'm not a scientist, but that seems to be what happens with creatures that don't make an impact in the ecosystem or or have some reason for existing. The oldest living animal right now is a shark. It's a greenland shark. The poor guy looks the worse for wear, but he is uh. He was estimated to be around uh three. The two oldest were estimated to be around three hundred thirty five and three d ninety two years old. Uh. We are very small in the scheme of things. But if you look at the picture of the green greenland shark, it's just I I don't know the biological sex of this creature, but it's like the it's front teeth are missing, it's got all these scars. Uh, it's not five twelve years old, as was falsely reported. Well, but speaking of like the oldest animals are, you know, sharks in general, I've been around since the Carboniferous period, which was around three hundred and fifty nine million years ago, and it's actually known as the Golden Age of sharks because there was an extinction event that killed off a massive amount of underwater species and different lineages of fish. There's a great article in National History Museums uh the UK and National History Museum website about us about the Golden Age of sharks. And this allowed sharks to flourish and kind of dominate and um evolve more quickly. I guess there. It sort of gave rise to a lot of different varieties of sharks because they were able to flourish. So it's a long time for a thing to be around. Yeah, I'm looking at here. There is a five seven year old clam apparently called ming. Yeah, it's an invertebrate. I just wanted to get up again in started that. I'm glad you mentioned that, Matt, because we always get letters where we talk about the oldest living thing, no matter how a caveat it. Let's call this the oldest living large vertebrate marine creature. People are going to point out the functionally immortal hydra right or to atopsis as well, and then I'm sure we'll get a letter about the quaking aspen and so on, and the tar degrades and the tar degrades grades. There are a lot of uh, there's so many caveats with this. But thanks for in this up, Noll, because I had never I was not aware of the critical role that deep sea sharks we should say it's specifically deep sea sharks, right. I wasn't were the critical role they played in the world of vaccines, and I guess in the world of cosmetics too. I feel like a bad person everybody out there who's thinking, Hey, you guys want us to get the vaccines for this thing. I we know how many how many rumors and theories are rolling around out there about a potential vaccine. Um we've been doing reading on it, where we've been thinking on it. UM just a signal that we're paying attention and we're trying to get the best information we can possibly get before we bring anything to you. Um, but yeah, we're we're aware. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's says a lot, you know, especially especially when you hear stories about the idea of forcing one through or rushing it, you know that that whole thing. It really freaks me out. The idea of maybe somehow jettison ng other you know, f D A type safe. I don't know that they would be able to do that, but what does that mean to you? Guys? When you hear the idea of like certain reports say I will have one by the end of the year, and then another scientists saying like whoa, whoa, whoa, No, and that's gonna be That's that's very optimistic scist. Agree, agreed. But at the end of the day, isn't it the government or the administration that if it's like a political boon to try to force something through, wouldn't that be a thing that could potentially make happen? I wonder. The scary thing for me is when you've got medical professionals on some kind of platform saying things that don't appear to match up with the science that we're researching. That Let's say I'm researching um, but there are there are a medical professional and they have a lot of experience in the field, and it's that thing where your brain says, well, I should trust them. They're a doctor and they deal with vaccines all the time. But it's not squaring with what I'm reading from the CDC or the w h O. So then do we trust those organizations? And it just becomes well, I guess I'm just trying to signals it. There's a lot of complexity out there and we're trying to wade through a lot of that. As many of you have been signaling to us in your writings to us, UM, I want to point out for anyone who's looking for something UM pretty good to watch. It's a great idea. There's a fictional show called Utopia that came out on Amazon recently that deals with it. Without spoiling too much. The deals with the conspiracy to spread something via desperately needed vaccine. And I don't know if the producers planned it to publish when it did, but it was. It was good timing, which almost makes up for some of my problems with the writing. I'm sorry this is a fiction show over I misheard you. I thought it was a documentary. Second, Okay, got it, got it. But that's a conspiracy theory that's been around forever that somehow a vaccination where the vaccinations are a way to do something terrible to humanity as a whole, right, right, And there have been cases where there's pretty compelling evidence that, at least in ice lead cases, there was some truth to some of this. You know, um often it must be said via incompetence or um pursuing profit over people's lives. But I do want to say, while we're on the subject of vaccines, Uh, President Vladimir Putin has said that he's going to take the spot NICK five covid vat coronavirus vaccine. He just hasn't said win. So a lot of people would be listening if they support that government or that regime, they're listening to us and they're like, you guys are being dunderheads. The vaccine is already here, they just won't let us have it. Do you think he'll do it like that one guy we talked about who died in a float tank who like vaccinated himself on a Facebook live stream. Forget the guy's name, but there was like foul play potentially and he had like drugs in the system, but he he was all into like these hacks and doing like untested you know, medications. I can't remember what it was for. It was maybe for herpes. He gave himself like what purported to be a cure for herpes, and he did it live on a Facebook stream, and then he turned up dead. I wonder if Putin will put his money where his mouth is and and get shot up with this magical Russian vaccine so we can all see it. I would watch, I would watch. I would watch it, but I highly doubt that. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's tough. It's tough to guess because that's one of the most well protected people alive today. So I would say, if it's not just propaganda, and if if Putin does in fact take the vaccine, it will be after several other people have taken it and survived, you know what I mean. He's clearly fond of Facebook. So we'll see, We'll see what happens. I I think I just want to reach out across the video screen and the microphone to everybody listening, just to say, you know, this is a really scary time. No matter what you believe. And I just got back from a trip where the overall consensus in the small town that I was in appeared to be, at least according to the signs that were on a lot of the small businesses, that coronavirus was a scam with it, that it was fake, it was a ruse, and we're all being played and this is a lose a larger number of people living in this small town that I had to visit. And I just wonder how many people out there listening have that viewpoint? And and if you do, why, Like what what are you reading that I'm not reading? Or like the what what? Um? What feels credible to you? That maybe I'm just missing or in my bubble about I just want to I would love to hear from somebody out there who feels that way, that has a good explanation for why they believe it. Yeah, well said man. I've been receiving some correspondence from folks. Always grateful to hear from you, uh in in this regard, But yeah, i'd I'd also love to hear, um what what you feel has informed your choices in this regard? We did, we did have some episodes that probably still tangentially apply to the current question. Now. Uh, but you know we're not We're not here to attack people, but we are here to learn from you, which is the most important thing we can do in times like these. But okay, so there we go. End of sharks. Maybe under the species crows and owls are in a genocidal war with one another. I don't know about you all, but this feels like a great time for dose of something a little more optimistic. What are you talking It just sounds like a time to escape the whole planet. All right, Well six and one end, I would say, So we'll tell you what we're talking about. A little bit of a red tinge light at the end of the tunnel after a word from our sponsor. Not a crow light, it's a it's a different reference. And we're back. Yes, that's right. Things may seem like they're going really bad down here on Earth. Um, we've talked about it before. This is the only planet we've got thus far. But we are looking at other potential destinations and other places we can make feel like home at least, and in that pursuit, in the next few decades, several countries and international organizations are looking to travel to the Moon again. Surprise, surprise, first Moon. Yeah. Uh. There's also some fun controversy about and I used that word so sarcastic, we uh, controversy about China and there their desire to build an international space station of their own outside of the International Space Station. Yea, the Ghostbusters and the real Ghostbusters or the National Championships in the World Championships, it's very much like that, uh, to see who will control space all of it apparently, or just near Earth orbit um. But again in the Moon of course that we mentioned. And then the you know, the third one is Mars. That's one of the big destinations. Once we are going to shoot some people off towards Mars at least and hopefully it's going to be successful and they'll land, and once they're there, they're gonna need to have enough stuff to build things so that they can actually survive there. And you can't take We've talked about it with Marshall Brain on an episode. You can't just loads so much cargo up into a ship that is going to get you to Mars because of you know, problems with propulsion and all these other things. There's a there's a multitude of reasons here that you need to be able to build things once you get to a destination, and you need to be able to use it, use materials that you either find there or combine materials that you find at your destination with something you've brought right, Yes, So this all comes back to an article in Wired that was put out fairly recently here on the September, and it is speaking about well, it's ah the concept of using kitan, which is something we're gonna explain it in a second. Using kitan to build habitats, to create tools, and hopefully some really sick armor for all the people who will be traveling to Mars. Yeah on the phom er um. Yeah, well we'll get into that. We'll get into a second. So kitan what is kitan? Before we just do any other learning here? Biology wise, uh describes kayton as a naturally occurring by bio polymer um and it is found in many, many, many creatures on Earth. If you think about a beatle, you've probably seen a beatle before or touched one, maybe as a kid, or let one crawl on you, or maybe yesterday as an adult. My favorite is Paul. Oh, Paul, yeah, oh, very much. Okay, I don't know how much kitan Paul's got going on, but you know, let us know if you have other information. But a beat the beat Paul McCartney, it was, yeah, you know, I get it, I get it, I get it. But a beatle, no whether how large or small, has an outer shell that is very very strong here to the very soft insides of that beetle, and that outside is made I'm sorry. Oh yeah, that's a whole other thing. We're gonna have to get to you you with this um. But that beetles very has that outer shell, right, It's like a carapace that it has around it. That stuff is kitan and a couple other things combined together to create that hardened that hardened shell. The concept here is to use that mix it with that stuff that's in like a beetle shell and a bunch of other animal shells, with the dirt and other stuff you're gonna find on Mars, just the soil. That's not soil, it's just the stony. I don't know all the all the chemicals and substances that make up the surface of Mars. Put those things together and you essentially have a brick of some sort that you can use or a m a three D printing substance that you can make a whole little village out of. Basically to protect yourself. I mean, that would be incredible if you could do it. But Matt, wait a minute, this isn't another sad animal story. Is It doesn't mean they're gonna have to grind up like all the Beatles on planet Earth to to make space bricks, does it? No? But kind of in a way in a smaller scale. By the way, this is all a proposal that was published in Plos one. It's titled Martian bioleth bio Inspired Regular Composite for Closed Loop Extraterrestrial Manufacturing WHO And in that per reviewed article from Plos one, they describe essentially away to have the food source on one of these missions that's going out to let's say Mars, be primarily plants that are created there or grown on you know when once they land and as well as as they're traveling, and proteins that are based on insects. Right, So the insects that would be eaten essentially, or at least would would proteins extracted from them, would have leftover carapaces which aren't really good for human consumption anyway. They don't do much for you. The kitan that's inside those carapaces, there's some there's some small medical benefits that we can talk about, but really, if you wanted to, you could essentially separate the protein rich stuff from the insects and the kitan, and you take that kitan then after eating all those delicious insects and then which aren't bad construction. Yeah, I'm not yucking yums. That's that's great. He's kind of season them properly. It's kind of season them properly. You can fry anything. And the United Nations has wanted people to avoid mass starvation by eating insects on Earth like a decade. So it's it's true. It's not a crazy idea. And Martians will probably have to do it. Yeah, yeah, they will, and it's a smart thing to do because again, what you're doing is giving yourself a thing that can create. They can create uh, any structures, any thing to the within this article. They actually did some experiments where they were able to create tools out of this kitan substance um and they used they didn't they didn't have any access to Martian You know, regular e thor rocks and things like that, but they were able to use mineral equivalence of what that would be. They combined the kitan with that and they could make like, um, essentially a hatchet, uh, a wrench. They're all these things that they conceptualized being able to make, and then they actually made a wrench that they could turn and fix things. Matt, aren't you burying the lead here a little bit? But don't they also wouldn't they be able to use their urine uh and and extract some material in their urine kind of make the bonding agent? Does that deal? Yeah? So so there are several parts, but some of the main ones are Martian stuff, kitan and urea from from people's pet great stuff. And you'd live in the whatever structure you built out of that. I built this house from my own rusty Martian P and I will not be I will not be disrespected by you. Kid. This is a parent talcular Martian. Kid. You gotta be a P constructor like your father and your Space father before him. Uh. It makes me think of like the Dousers from Fraggle Rock or something. Or also it makes me think of like is the moon gonna just look like Minecraft, Like is everything gonna be like, you know, geometrically shaped or like made of these bricks. But no, no, no, yeah, please go on about the how you can shape this stuff. That's that's fascinating to me. Well. Yeah, in the three D printing stage of this, in the testing that was publishing this article, they made these kind of cone shaped structures, or at least models of these cone shaped structures that they're proposing could be the dwelling places in larger buildings on Mars. It looks like maybe something an ant constructed or an insect constructed, um, just just because it looks to be built out of the soil itself or the ground itself, and it just becomes a shape that is hardened. Right, And just looking through this article and seeing all the proposals here, it makes me feel like we humans are going to arrive on Mars and other places if we do these things and create essentially xenomorph hives. If you guys remember the Aliens series, like essentially taking what exists on that planet and then they this is a completely fictional thing, but they would use their acidic saliva to bond essentially or to break down substances that existed and then formed the hive. That's that's the height of the height of technology that we're discovering now, and in the applied material science field, a lot of it is us learning to mimic things that other animals have been doing or natural processes that occurred. Like if you're too good for space, Urine, I'm gonna say you don't belong on Mars. Other people want to take the trip, like what's interesting to me here to matt is one thing I wish the study you talked about a little bit more. I wish they had talked about, um, the the Martian elephant in the room, which is that this is a one way trip for a lot of people, no matter how they describe it. The most feasible way for this kind of exploration to work is for the ships themselves to be dismantled upon landing and become you know, kind of the bedrock there. So you could keep three D printing machines, you would keep uh, the life support systems you needed, but then you would ultimately yeah, I mean maybe I'm wrong here, but you would ultimately end up disassembling a lot of that stuff. Does it take to get to Mars. I think it's it's like maybe margin of error to two years round trip, because it's a nine month travel time depending on your speed obviously, and then you know you're not stopping to pee because you've got to save that from Mars. Actually, they're probably cycling urine doing that trip to make puotable water like in water World. Yeah, I feel like we we're focusing too much on the urine part here. Yeah, but again, like we would be doing the same thing on on the Moon. I guess historically we've always had images of moon bases that are so technologically advanced, that are just full of metal and beeping sounds and new lights and things like shuttles that go up and down all these crazy things. What if in reality, when we begin creating moon bases and Mars bases and all these other bases, they really do resemble ant hills or aunt colonies of some yeah, with humans just being in them. How But but it's because if that is happening and that actually comes to fruition, simultaneously, we will be the creatures that are doing that. We're also the creatures that are edging closer and closer towards the singularity where we were becoming technological beings. And you know, if we become technological beings or almost fully technological beings, we probably won't need air and all, you know, sustenance and insects for eating anymore. We would need biofuel of some sort probably, But that and then also having these strange structures and I don't know, it's it doesn't seem to square, I guess, so yeah, like a retro retrofuturistic neo primitivism. Almost right, someone who has not plugged into whatever invisible uh species wide net we have would just see a bunch of really spaced outlooking folks wandering from human sized termite mound, the human sized termite mound. But there's something else interesting here met um. And I love that you bring up the singularity, because my question would be, all right, so on the like, just what is it right of September is so weird today? Before we recorded, discovery just got reported in Nature Astronomy about the discovery of what appeared to be multiple underground liquid water lakes in Mars. Uh So that that's a total game changer for us. Uh So we may have also a subterranean species of some sort, because in evitably, you know, these things will begin to speciate. You can only live so far away from Earth before you start to change, and Earthlings will be changing as well as we approach, as he said, a singularity. So I am wondering how long a population on Mars, whatever it becomes, could feasibly say that it's governed by a population on Earth. I think it's. Uh, it's it's a much shorter runway than we believe. You know, if if you like send, if the U N or that will probably it's we're moving away from states and toward corporations. Right, So if the corporation is saying, you know, SpaceX is like, okay, this is the SpaceX colony. Uh, and then this Martian colony is able to become self sufficient, then they won't need SpaceX and they won't care about SpaceX. So I would not be surprised, and this is speculative, this is conspiratorial. I would not be surprised if the people who are planning these trips are baking in reliance on the Martian side, like the same way that the mercantile or mecantilism based economies would bake in reliance on the colonial side, Like, make no mistake, you don't want these people, whatever they become, to be independent, because why would they bother with you. It's a good point, Ben, Dude, dude, this is this is a weird thing to me. I don't know if it's stuff they don't want you to know, but it's definitely just odd to think about our future. And if they don't want you to know, what it could be that, Ben, that SpaceX will make you reliant on them or no, not not to call you off. Space actually doing great work, I'm sure, but whoever, whoever, whatever corporation get you to ours may really need you to be on the hook. That's how I see it in all the sci fi though. That's how it is in the alien movies. That's how it is. And oh gosh, there was a movie with Robert Patt sit in it recently where there is a space colony. Um lighthouse. Now not another weird, weird, real weird one by a French filmmaker, a woman whose name I'm totally forgetting. If Casey Peger was here, he would know. Um it's called high life. That's what you were very close. But in this one, like he's sort of the loan survivor on this thing, and he keeps sending home messages to the home plan under the corporation or whatever, and I don't like, you couldn't rely on them too much. Would they send shuttles with the stuff for you or you would have to grow? That would be the plan. But yeah, because it too So I mean, why Mars versus the Moon? And maybe this has been discussed a bunch, I'm sure, but it's quicker to get to the moon, right, why not go for Moon basis instead of Mars basis? If it takes two years to get to Mars, well, a lot of those lunar places, correctly, if we're wronger, a lot of those lunar propositions are meant to be like beachheads. And from there we expanned to Europa, to Mars and so on, uh and eventually to uh because because we had to mention it, eventually to Uranus just for a fly by, just check up the moon. Check up. The moon is just a launching pad to Uranus. And it's already it's already crowded, you know. And also Mars may have what Okay, so one salient real argument for Mars over the Moon is that Mars may possess resources that are conducive to ultimately self sustaining human life or again, Martian life, whatever it becomes. May right, Yeah, well at least way more than the lunar surface, at least for our studies of it. But but but again, I mean, is it is it a cost benefit analysis? Like I mean, you know, even if the moon, you know, you had to make more runs to the Moon. It's what, how does it take to get to the Moon. It's only like three days? I think. Yeah, Well, part of the argument there is to you, uh, that's three days if if we have the optimal uh orbital conditions, right, Like that's why you'll see people saying you could make Mars. You can make the Mars trip in in a very short number of months, like as little as four or five if you go at the right time, which occurs every maybe two years. And then you're at the then there were still earth lings, so we're at the mercy of earth weather, right, and there's a lot less atmosphere to worry about. We're launching from the Moon, so once you get there, it's easier to build stuff. Maybe if you have the stuff. I don't know. Also, this is just me guessing, but what if they're what if they're brainstorming which which rock to land on next, and then someone in marketing comes out and they go, well, you know the thing about Mars is it's red. It really pops. You know, it looks better on a logo because there because like we can. And then they're like, all right, somebody run up cost benefit over painting the moon versus going to Mars with a much better color scheme. So maybe it's something like that. We're not in those rooms. Uh, and god, it would probably be terrifying place to be um Man, I guess optimistic. Yeah, space bricks out of insect kitan more and more than that. That's oversimplifying, but you can make it into all kinds of shapes. And why can't we use this on the on earth to make building materials for like you know, developments and stuff like that. That's why I want to talk to you about this. This is why it's so actually exciting, even though it doesn't sound so appetizing with with all the insects and you know, the slightly strange kitan curious curious is and Kitan left pauldrons and Kitan grieves that we'd be. You know, I don't know any of those words are It's fine. The A R is pretty good on some of those. It's a light armor. Um oh, I see, it's it's pretty good. You can get You can get like Tilvanni cephalopod helm if you too, I mean you could really you could three D print any of these things out of all that stuff. Um. The the Kitan throwing stars were particularly interesting. There was an addition that I didn't expect, like defense on mars Um. But I forget where I was going already. Guys. Oh. The whole concept here is that if this could be achieved, it would be at least as close as you can get to a closed loop zero waste solution for building materials on you know, on another planet, and that that would be incredible to use their right, But you could also take that and translate it to Earth, like why not if we if we were as gross as it sounds, if you had a group of people or a large corporation that was manufacturing let's say, um, some type of plant and fruit and vegetable they were all edible, right, and then aside beside that and as part of that them, they're also growing flies and a couple other types of insects that grow alongside the fruit while or and you know, other food that's been created, and that those two things are being created that feed the humans. Right, and then the waste products from liquids as well as from the the extra parts of the insects, it's all being used to then fuel all the building materials and all the things that builds the stuff that you need to keep the thing going, and then it just continues cycling through. They've got great diagrams of exactly how that would function on that plos One article that I mentioned earlier, you can actually see how they're proposing it would function. And I think there's a massive opportunity if this technology becomes viable, which unfortunately means both scalable and affordable. If this technology becomes viable, there's a massive opportunity for relief housing for disaster survivors. Or think about the millions of people who are trapped in refugee camps, sometimes intergenerationally, which essentially function as open air prisons. Those people could have privacy that they haven't had for decades, right, Uh, they could also have a little bit more safety than they would have ordinarily from both the elements and from bad actors on the human side. Like I agree. I think sometimes we as a species we get our priorities mixed up, you know what I mean, Like have you We're we're collectively saying, instead of fixing the planet we already have, let's go out to eat on another planet. It's like, it's like that, why don't you say home and cook. You've got food, you know what I mean, clean your kitchen while you're at it is a very imperfect comparison to make, but you make such an excellent point here, matt Uh. My last question for you is would you live in one of these? I mean, if I had to fear, I'd figar how to make it work. As long as I can get the kitan to display Morrow Wind, then I'll be fine. But surely there's things you could add to make it aesthetically pleasing. It doesn't all have to be like gun metal gray, right, I mean, there's probably some variations you could get to have some patterns and you know, make something a little more appealing to the eye. I would I would just say, watch Raised by Wolves. It's available right now on HBO Max. That is true. You can also you can also learn more about populations in the modern day who dwell in caves and now for a long time. I think that could inform some of uh, your interior decorating inspirations for your life on Mars or your life here on Earth. So we've gone a little long on this one, but we absolutely hope you enjoy it. You can tell that we are fascinated by all three of these ideas crows versus owls, sharks versus humans in a way, and Mars versus the move versus Earth, and insects and insects of course, yes, so let us know what you think of these. Uh, listen when you think of these ideas, right to us, with your with your personal calculations behind befriending crows or Corvid's right to us, with your understanding of sharks versus humans, and vaccines in general, your reasons for or against the proposed COVID vaccines or vaccines just overall, we cannot wait to hear from you, and we try to make it easy to find us. That's right. You can find us in all the usual Internet channels, the social media's or conspiracy Stuff Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can join our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy, easiest thing in the world. Just go in there Facebook search it up and tell us why you like the show or who any of us are, name us by name, or just make Ben laugh or just say anything that. Let's just know that you're aware only of what the thing is that you're trying to get into, and then you're in. That's right. If you don't want to do that, you can give us a phone call what those things can call people new. 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