Let's Get Mental by Dustin Driver

The atoms in our bodies were forged deep within the bellies of red giant stars eons ago. And if we peer deep enough into the night sky, we can see stars just like them taking shape at the edge of the observable universe. The light from those stars is more than 13 billion years old and thanks to the expansion of the universe, it has stretched out into super-long infrared wavelengths—basically heat. To “see” that heat, you need a really big, and really complex telescope. In space.

In Star Trek the crew of the USS Enterprise zips between the stars in mere days, traveling a distance that takes light itself months or even years to cover. To do it they use a fantastic sci-fi technology called warp drive. The antimatter-powered warp drive bends spacetime for the Enterprise, making the distance between stars much, much shorter for the ship. Without it Kirk and the crew would grow old and die before they reached the outer edges of our galaxy—where a lot of the show takes place. And here on earth hundreds of years would pass. It would be a pretty depressing show.

In this off-the-cuff episode I talk about some solutions to the Fermi Paradox (where is everybody in the galaxy?), the intergalactic object ʻOumuamua, and some science fiction. Enjoy!

My current novel is about everyday people who get superpowers from amazing future technology that I totally made up. The tech simply doesn’t exist, and probably won’t in my lifetime—or ever. But I want superpowers NOW. Fortunately, there are a myriad of for-real superpower technologies out there. Sure, they’re rudimentary and rife with life-threatening side effects, but they exist. So keep reading if you want to be faster, stronger, better NOW. Most of us know what steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs do, so I’ll try to stick to little-known facts. Most of this comes from the Mayo Clinic, which has compiled a detailed list of all the drugs you can take to make you awesome at sports.

A new treatment process could make wood stronger than steel. In 1940 the de Havilland aircraft company introduced the Mosquito—a combat aircraft made almost entirely out of wood. A few years later the famously fastidious Howard Huges built the Spruce Goose out of, well, spruce (and other woods). In the ‘60s the British automotive manufacturer Marcos built its GT car using mostly plywood. Tons of other manufacturers have made aircraft, boats, and cars using wood or wood composites. But why isn’t wood construction more mainstream? Cars are steel (or aluminum). Bikes are steel (or aluminum). Skyscrapers and warehouses have bones of cold, hard steel. The stuff is simply stronger and tougher than wood. Until now.  Materials scientist Liangbing Hu at the University of Maryland has invented a method of treating wood that makes it stronger than steel, and even some titanium alloys. If their methods are proven out, we could see more cars, planes, and even skyscrapers built out of wood. It could reduce our reliance on energy-intensive steel and aluminum, giving us a low-carbon alternative.  Wait, what’s all this about carbon? I’m just going out on a limb here, but it’s becoming more and more clear that we need to actively reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Growing trees is a great way to do it. If wood can be a good alternative to steel, there’s even more incentive to grow more trees. And once that carbon is locked away in wood, it’s not going back into the atmosphere—unless you burn it. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s leave this alone for now. So how does this special treatment work? First they boil the wood in a solution of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite. This boil removes some of the lignin and hemicellulose polymers in the wood, but leaves the cellulose intact. And cellulose is the strong stuff you want to keep around. After the boil the researchers compress and heat the wood, making a much more dense version of the original thing. The cellulose fibers actually fuse together on a molecular level, creating a material that’s much stronger than the original. The stuff is three times as dense as regular wood, fifty times more resistant to compression and just about 20 times stiffer.  In simulated tests the new compressed wood actually stopped bullets. It’s not as tough as traditional kevlar armor, but it’s only about a fifth of the cost.  So what else could you do with this new compressed wood? It’s strong enough to be used in cars (just like that Marcos), buildings, airplanes, whatever. It would be cheaper and lighter than steel, and it would be totally renewable. Sure, you can melt steel down and use it again, but it’s an energy intensive process. Need more wood? Plant some trees. If you plan it right, you could grow more than enough to meet manufacturers needs. Plus, trees are a carbon sink. Remember that bit about climate change earlier? One great way to reduce carbon concentrations is by planting trees. Sure, it takes a while, but trees capture and hold on to a lot of carbon.  Hu would like to work with engineers to scale up his new process to make it commercially viable. Who knows, maybe in the future your Tesla will be made largely from wood.  I stole this story from author Sid Perkins in Scientific American. Go give it a read. Sid goes into more detail about the chemical process and explores a few other futuristic materials made out of wood—including transparent wood.

Yes, yes you should.

When you edit DNA, it’s permanent. The cell you edit will be changed forever, or at least until it dies. But what if there was a less-permanent way to edit genes?  There is, actually. It’s called RNA editing and it happens quite a bit in our own cells. RNA is the go-between in protein synthesis. DNA codes to RNA, which then codes to specific proteins. Proteins are what we’re all about, so if you alter anything in that production chain, you can potentially change the entire organism. In nature, RNA editing happens in that stage between DNA and protein synthesis. Here’s how it works: Imagine protein synthesis: DNA unravels and pairs up with messenger RNA. That RNA breaks off and goes to assemble some protein. Before it can, some sneaky enzymes jump in and make some changes to the RNA. Thanks to those changes, the RNA makes a new protein—one that isn’t coded in the DNA.  Why would this happen? Multicellular organisms like you and me are super complicated. We require lots of different kinds of proteins to function—more than our DNA actually codes for, in fact. RNA editing is a way to get more variety out of a limited amount of DNA. It gives us more adaptability. For example, we’ve found that liver and intestinal cells share the same DNA for a particular protein, yet make different versions of it. In the liver, the protein carries cholesterol in the bloodstream. In the intestine, thanks to some RNA editing magic, a shortened version of the protein absorbs lipids—like a fat sponge—before they move into the bloodstream. Same DNA, different protein. Last episode I said we’d be talking squids. Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts discovered this RNA editing in squids a few years back. An article published in Wired in May suggests that the discovery was recent, but Joshua Rosenthal and his colleagues announced their discovery in March, 2019. At any rate, they found this kind of RNA editing in squid axons—the long skinny filament-like cells that connect neurons in the brain and nervous system. It’s the first time anyone has seen so much of it. They estimate that more than 60,000 cells in the squid’s brain use RNA editing, giving them a tremendous amount of adaptability.  Is this even more evidence that cephalopods are from another planet? Or perhaps they are actually earth’s supreme species, more advanced than us talking monkeys. But probably not. They are definitely more well adapted to life in the ocean, and they may be more genetically complex, but they’re not more advanced. In fact, the term “advanced” is meaningless in evolutionary terms. There are just too many factors to measure. Are we talking smarter? Or better at adapting to the environment? If it’s smarts, we win. But bacteria win when it comes to adapting to their environments, no contest.  But I digress.  Rosenthal and his colleagues hope to figure out how RNA editing works in squids so they can do the same thing in other animals and humans. Like some kind of Island of Dr. Moreaux scenario? Not really. Many genetic diseases could be treated with RNA editing. And because you’re not changing cell DNA, your changes wouldn’t be permanent. Wait, wouldn’t you want to permanently fix a genetic disorder? We simply don’t know the long-term effects of modifying DNA directly. A DNA treatment could reverse a genetic disorder, but cause cancer down the line. We just don’t know. RNA editing, on the other hand, would be safer. If doctors encountered any issues with the treatment, they could stop right away without causing permanent damage.  “RNA editing is a hell of a lot safer than DNA editing. If you make a mistake, the RNA just turns over and goes away,” said Rosenthal in the Wired article. You can read the article by Eric Niiler at Wired.com, and you can learn a ton more about RNA editing at Chemical Engineering News. Links in the show notes.  I also found an awesome YouTube channel that delves into the nitty-gritty of RNA editing.  Shomu's Biology goes over RNA editing in a clear and concise manner, using nothing but a headset and a white board. I was definitely able to follow along, even with only half a dozen college biology courses under my belt. Go check him out if you want to nerd out about RNA editing and biology.

The doctors in Star Trek have an assortment of devices that can heal your ailments in seconds with beams of light or energy. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) uses high-powered magnets to beam energy directly into your brain. Proponents say the magnetic fields—and the electric currents they induce—can treat depression.

Prozac was a miracle cure for my depression—until it wasn't. In this episode I explore serotonin's role in depression and why people like me experience "Prozac poop-out syndrome." Featuring Dr. George Keepers, Professor of Psychiatry at the Oregon Health and Science University's School of Medicine.

The 2002 General Motors Hy-Wire was a hydrogen fuel cell car built to represent the future of GM—and automobiles in general. I got to drive the thing way back in 2002 during a press event. The Hy-Wire represented decades of research by engineers, and turned out to be a pretty good prediction of the future.

Even if we stick solar panels on every roof in the world, we’d still need a way to store energy to use when it gets dark. And a way to use that energy later to do more than just power a lightbulb—to do things like power construction equipment or move a cargo ship across the Pacific. Metal powder may be a great way to do it.

I caught the tail end of the Pandora moth outbreak on a recent visit to Bend, Oregon. I lived in Bend for almost five years without seeing a single Pandora moth. This summer I saw thousands littering the streets and parking lots, mostly dead or dying. When I asked friends about the moths, I got shrugs. Nobody really knew what they were or where they came from.  I was fascinated. Was this a foreign invader, a ravenous beast that would defoliate the state? Would its larvae overwhelm the town come spring?

In this podcast I talk to scientist and philosopher John McCone about his excellent article “Blueprint for a Solar Economy.” John outlines a way to transition from fossil fuels to solar power using some of our existing fossil fuel infrastructure and existing solar technology. He paints a pretty hopeful picture of a solar-powered society that produces almost no carbon emissions.  It’s a hopeful picture of the future, which is something we all really need right now—and I really need—especially after the last podcast on the pending global climate apocalypse.  We talk about a lot of really interesting things, including using existing gas pipelines in the solar-powered world, and jet engines that run on powdered iron. You can read John’s article on his website: Blueprint for a Solar Economy

For the first time in human history, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 415 ppm. But what does that mean? Are we doomed to suffocate under a blanket of carbon, slowly cooking to death as the planet melts away beneath us? It’s not quite that bad, but it does not bode well for humanity. Listen, and head over to NY Mag and read David Wallace Wells’ article The Uninhabitable Earth. It’s masterfully written and utterly terrifying.

Carol Danvers isn't the most powerful Captain Marvel. That honor may just go to Monica Rambeau, the second Captain Marvel. She can transform into and manipulate any form of energy in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Digital is the past—the future is analog. Crackling, hissing, buzzing, messy, full-spectrum analog. The arcane electronic contraptions put people on the moon and they could be the key to true AI, perfect biological simulations, and even room-temperature quantum computing. Featuring a 1960s Smith-Corona electric typewriter and Ahmad Jamal.

She can punch through interstellar dreadnaughts like they were tissue paper, fire photon blasts that vaporize steel, and propel herself across the galaxy. She’s the most powerful superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and the science behind her powers is nothing short of spectacular.

Dreamworlds are notoriously fickle. They exist solely in our minds, and thus aren’t grounded in any objective reality. In a very real sense, the act of observing something in a dream DOES change it because the dream and observer are one in the same. But what if the universe behaves in the same way? What if our mercurial dreams are really trying to reveal the deep, unsettling truth of reality? Do our observations create reality itself? Episode art by Nemi Fadda. Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nemimakeit_designs/

Holding a miniature sun in a magnetic bottle isn't easy. But that's how you make a fusion reactor. In this episode I chat with plasma physicist John McCone about the challenges of building a functional fusion reactor. We talk about plasma blowtorches, neutron bombardment, lumpy magnetic fields, and ways to make a nuclear bomb.  

In 2015, the world's second largest car maker got caught cheating on emissions tests. It was bad. Really, really bad. VW diesel cars were cranking out toxic levels of nitrous oxides—and not the happy laughing gas kind. The deadly kind. Here's how it all went down.

Many of us never got to experience it, but the air quality in LA in the ‘40s  ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s was deadly. Smog hung in the air like a thick fog and many residents actually said that it hurt to breathe. Sources: https://www.kcet.org/history-society/how-los-angeles-began-to-put-its-smoggy-days-behind https://earther.gizmodo.com/environmental-regulation-has-helped-cut-deaths-from-air-1829875441 https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hcc/2007/09/After-Burner/1509192.html   https://www.marketplace.org/2014/07/14/sustainability/we-used-be-china/la-smog-battle-against-air-pollution https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/spaceballs-becomes-reality-canadian-company-is-selling-bottled-air-to-the-chinese-1642442/ https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/15/canadians-are-selling-cans-of-fresh-air-to-china.html http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170515-the-entrepreneurs-making-money-out-of-thin-air https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/08/world/fresh-air-britain-china-bottles/index.html https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/about/history

This summer a lot of science news bubbled up out of the quantum foam, but the one thing that really caught my attention was booze. And not Oregon’s world-famous craft beers. A study landed that allegedly found that any amount of alcohol—any—is bad for you. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't drink. Sources:https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2/fulltexthttps://science.howstuffworks.com/alcohol.htmhttps://lifehacker.com/5684996/what-alcohol-actually-does-to-your-brain-and-bodyhttps://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-4/255-261.htmhttps://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statisticshttps://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.htmhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4065474/http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/07/what_is_dopamine_love_lust_sex_addiction_gambling_motivation_reward.htmlhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/07/18/alcohol-related-liver-deaths-have-increased-sharply/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.23550826155dhttps://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321731.php  

That’s the bone-chilling shriek of America’s favorite pest, the trash panda. Or Raccoon. And while they may sound like demons shredding the flesh from helpless babes, there’s something even more terrifying about them: Their poop.

Psychologist and author David P. Barash recently wrote an article for Nautilus Magazine arguing that now is the time to make a humanzee. I wrote a story about an experiment gone horribly wrong. How are they related? Listen to find out!https://dustindriver.com/simple-procedure.html http://nautil.us/issue/58/self/its-time-to-make-human_chimp-hybrids

No fancy sci-fi introduction is needed this time, folks, because today we have world-renown CRISPR expert Sam Sternberg. Sam worked with biochemist, author, and science celebrity Jennifer Doudna to refine CRISPR gene editing technology at UC Berkeley. The two wrote best-selling book A Crack in Creation about the discovery and what it could mean for humanity. Today Sam is working on CRISPR at Columbia University in New York. Sam was kind enough to take an hour or so out of his busy schedule to chat about CRISPR and how it’s being used to revolutionize science and medicine.

In this episode I had the opportunity to chat with the head of the Common Voice project, Kelly Davis. Kelly is a trained physicist who studied string theory before getting hooked on artificial intelligence in the late ‘90s. We talk about AI art collectives, his fascination with creating an intelligent agent, project Common Voice, and a little about the future of humanity.

Nuclear fusion technology could herald a golden age of energy that will make the fossil fuel age look like the stone age! That’s right, limitless carbon-free energy for everyone, all thanks to the hard work of genius nuclear physicists and engineers! MIT recently announced that their fusion reactor project is only about 15 years away. http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-newly-formed-company-launch-novel-approach-fusion-power-0309

Are we headed for nuclear apocalypse? Everybody’s favorite crony capitalist and democratically elected dictator Vladimir Putin just announced an all-new nuclear-powered cruise missile that can hit any target on earth. The missile can, according to Putin, fly under any existing US missile defense systems undetected. It’s a bizarre announcement, because Russia already has more than 1,900 nuclear missiles on standby that most experts agree could bypass any missile defense systems anywhere. The announcement comes just weeks after the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock to two minutes till midnight. If you don’t know, the Doomsday Clock represents expert global opinion of how close the world is to nuclear apocalypse. Midnight means the party’s over, and experts believe the planet is closer to total nuclear destruction than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was really really damn close. Well, and in 1953, just after the United states tested a hydrogen bomb.

Barbra Streisand cloned her favorite dog and things didn’t turn out as expected. Why? And How? And, most importantly, Whuuuuuuuut? First, Streisand revealed in a recent interview with Variety Magazine that she had her recently deceased dog Samantha cloned—twice. Well, she had two clones made. According to the world-renown singer, the dogs have different personalities than Samantha and aren’t exactly identical to her, either. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/barbra-streisand-clone-pet-dogs-explained-spd/

In science fiction they call it gray goo - nanobots that replicate without limits until eventually everything on the planet is a featureless gray goo. It’s the first thing that came to mind when I read a recent article in the NY Times about a new species of crayfish that clones itself and is taking over Europe. The species emerged just 25 years ago as a mutation. Normally, animals have two chromosomes, one from each parent. This female crayfish ended up with three, meaning that she could produce her own fertilized eggs without mating. And every egg is a perfect clone of the original crayfish. Oh, and crayfish lay hundreds of eggs at a time. More from the German Cancer Research Institute: https://www.dkfz.de/en/presse/pressemitteilungen/2018/dkfz-pm-18-07-A-clonal-crayfish-from-nature-as-a-model-for-tumors.php

That’s right, naked mole rats may be the true underlords of this planet, shriveled immortals lurking beneath our feet, sewing discontent throughout society until humanity is on the verge of collapse. Explains the current state of the world quite well, I’d say. But unfortunately we can’t pin humanity’s failings on the machinations of mole rats. We may, however, learn how to extend our misery indefinitely by studying their apparent agelessness. https://elifesciences.org/articles/31157

Detroit’s hottest dubstep DJs Spectre and Meltdown live at the Music Institute Thursday, January 4th 2018. Get your tickets today at ticketmeister.org. Spectre and Meltdown are actually two serious security vulnerabilities discovered in nearly every computer processor made since 1995. So what does it mean? Is this the end of computing? Should we throw our computers on the campfire and live among mother nature? I wanted to find out, so I talked to security expert Wu-chang Feng at Portland State University. The verdict? You might just want to break out the abacus, because we’re all in big trouble. Spectre takes advantage of something called speculative execution. Processors make educated guesses about what’s going to happen next, then run through those steps to save time. It makes modern processors much faster, but it turns out that malicious code can sneak in during this speculation and reveal whatever’s floating around in memory—usernames and passwords, for instance. Meltdown breaks the barrier between applications and system memory, again letting malware take a peek at system memory. The vulnerabilities were found by university researchers and the security team Google Project Zero. As far as anyone knows, no hackers have taken advantage of either vulnerability, but Microsoft, Apple, and Linux distributors have released patches for meltdown and are working on ways to counteract Spectre. For more information on Spectre and Meltdown, I recommend http://meltdownattack.com by Graz University of Technology in Austria. The site has a breakdown of both vulnerabilities for laypersons and technical documents for computer scientists.

This is a podcast about science, technology, and society. We’ll discuss some of the biggest questions facing humanity today, and ponder the future. In this, the very first podcast, I chat with Amy Koski at the Oregon Health and Science University about CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing. Amy is the lab manager at the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at OHSU. The lab made headlines in August 2017 when they successfully repaired heart disease genes in human embryonic cells using CRISPR/Cas9.