Cosmic Queries – Fermentation

Let it sit and watch the science happen: Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice answer Cosmic Queries about fermentation with Arielle Johnson, PhD, science officer on Good Eats, food writer, and formerly the in-house R&D scientist at Noma.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. And we've titled this one "Fermentation and Flavor Science."

• 0:24Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome Chuck.

• 0:26Chuck Nice?

  Hey man, how are you buddy?

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Always good to have you. You're, I don't know if people know, you're my co-host in StarTalk Sports Edition.

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're quite the sports weenie, I have come to learn. That's a compliment.

• 0:42Chuck Nice?

  I'm not sure, you know, when you, the word sports and weenie don't really go together well.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can be weather weenie, yeah.

• 0:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:51Chuck Nice?

  But I like, no, I like sports weenie, I'm gonna be that.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we need a, we need an alliterative thing because weather weenie alliterates.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, sports, I'll find something else for it.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, uh, this is about, this is about food and, and what role fermentation plays.

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  I am a big fan of fermentation.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of fermented food and can, I, neither of us-

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  Well, not food.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neither of us have ex-

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Recreational fermentation.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neither of us has expertise in this, but we got someone from the StarTalk Rolodex.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. Ariel Johnson. Ariel, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me back.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you were last on the show in a live, uh, StarTalk Live. I think it was in New York City Town Hall.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  I, I believe it was.

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, excellent. Well, thanks for, thanks for coming back and-

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me back.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we did a whole show on food. Let me remind people who you are if you didn't either attend or see that episode. You have a PhD in agricultural and environmental chemistry, which is-

• 1:50Speaker 02

  This is true.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. I'm glad it's true. Thank you for verifying. A crack team of researchers came up with that.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Good job.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our investigative reporters found this about you. You're Science Officer for Good Eats on the Food Network. And you're a food writer with stuff published in the Lucky Peach, I think, LA Times? And there's one here called Mold Magazine? That's a thing?

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Mold Magazine. It's a, it's a, uh- Speculational magazine about the future of food. So if you're into uh

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Food or design, it's a pretty excellent read.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quite frankly, I don't think you're speculating when you call it mold.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, I am not picking up that magazine.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Well, all food will eventually in the future become mold.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no, there's no speculation there. All food plus you will mold.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  I suppose there might be an element of the uh, the hominins of uh mold, mold being fungus and mold being molding like a verb.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there you go. Right.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Molding.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me, let me lead off with a question here. So I think in modern times where we have modern means of preservation, I think we might have lost track or lost understanding of how fermented foods ever made their way into our diet in the first place. Right? And so, you know, why do we have cheese? Well, if I, if I know my history correctly, this was a, a product of like fermented proteins in a milk or whatever, milk products that, that would last longer than the milk itself in, in the closet. So how, how, is it basically all of fermentation was just to preserve food? Is, is this a fair characterization of it all?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, most fermentation processes do preserve food, often by adding acids to them or killing off less desirable bacteria and microorganisms.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause, cause I, we, I only want the, the desirable bacteria. Right.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. The uh, the undesirable bacteria is, is not so good for you. You know, your uh norovirus, which is a virus, obviously, or your, you know, various spoilage, spoilage molds and yeasts. Not so tasty. But I mean, one, one thing I like, a way that I like to think about fermentation is that like, you know, back in, probably not far, that far back in history, but pre-refrigeration and, you know, even, even pre-agriculture. Most food would ferment pretty quickly. So if you if you milk, milk your cow or your goat or whatever sort of a ruminant animal you have hanging around your, your village or your campsite, that milk is gonna start fermenting pretty quickly.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  So vegetables likewise, if you pick them and store them for a while, will start fermenting. Same with, same with grapes or fruit, things like that.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when I think of fermentation, I think of the sugar. Like, I can't think of fermented string beans, but I can think of a fermented grape or, or fruit. So how do you ferment things that don't have sugar in them?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Well, string beans actually have sugar in them. So most, most vegetables have like anywhere between like two and even up to like 15% sugar for like-

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My mom would never told me that string beans had sugar. Otherwise, I would have eaten more of it.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Just a little bit, yeah.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  Maybe that's why my mom kept trying to give them to me as dessert.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it has sugar in it. No, well, so like one of the most, one of the most like pervasive fermentations across like Eurasia is fermented cabbage. So you see it as like sauerkraut in Germany, kimchi in Korea, swankai or pao kai across, across China's variations on kislaya kapusta across more Slavic speaking regions. So, I mean, that's a vegetable. It's a vegetable that accumulates sugar and, you know, you can harvest it pretty late and then ferment it to make it last the winter.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  Right. And then what's, what's the deal with the process? Is it just because it's pre-refrigeration and it's such an old tradition that they bury the, the, whatever it is that they fermenting?

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've heard about that. What's up with that?

• 5:51Chuck Nice?

  What is that with that?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, I, this is putting on my sort of amateur anthropologist hat more, but, you know, one, one can imagine situations, you know, hu- humans pre-agriculture and prehistory, even like pre-permanent settlements, where you, you know, forage or harvest to keep them safe and keep them away from scavengers. Once you've already, already got them, it, the, one of the best ways is to like dig a hole and, you know, line the hole with leaves or something like that and then bury it and come back to it later.

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that wasn't fundamental to the fermenting?

• 6:23Chuck Nice?

  So the process, it doesn't really do anything for the process?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Well, so burying underground does protect things from oxygen, so it excludes oxygen, which then knocks out a whole category of spoilage microbes like molds. So-

• 6:40Speaker 02

  So I mean, if we're talking about like fermented fruits or vegetables, that'll often be lactic acid bacteria and most lactic acid bacteria doesn't, doesn't need oxygen. Some of them don't like oxygen at all. So if you

• 6:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is, this is a way to tune the microbial

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  cocktail for what it is that comes out the other end.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  It's sort of like cooperative microbe farming. Nudging it in a, in a certain direction.

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Very cool. And so, but wait a minute, isn't, what's the difference then between fermented cabbage and pickled cabbage? When I think of coleslaw, I think that it's pickled, not fermented. Is that, am I wrong?

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, so coleslaw, I mean, so, so you get into here like a language thing. So like cucumber pickles are usually fermented, but you can also pickle things by adding, just adding acids to them without fermenting. So often using vinegar to pickle. I mean, vinegar is the product of another fermentation. So you're, you know, kind of either, either doing fermentation or having done fermentation and now using it for something else. But yeah, pickle, pickling, especially in America, there's a strong tradition of like vinegar pickling.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Right. So, so I can grow a grape, drink the grape juice, the grape juice I don't drink, I can ferment it and I can make wine and then I can ferment the wine and make vinegar and I can use the vinegar to ferment a cucumber and make a pickle.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  It is, it is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good. That's good. So all I need is some, is some grapes.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Some grapes and some sugar and whatever wild yeasts and bacteria are hanging out on their skins.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, why don't we, why don't we go to some Q and A here?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was going to eat up the whole, the whole show, but this is a cosmic queries after all. And Chuck, you got the questions. I've never, I haven't seen any of these questions. I don't think you have either. Is that right?

• 8:36Chuck Nice?

  Ariel has not.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're here to stump you. That's what we're trying to do.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Okay. I'll try my best.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I'll go for it, Chuck.

• 8:45Chuck Nice?

  All right. So these are all Patreon patrons and basically let's go with Kprofit32, who says, "Hey, Dr. Johnson, why doesn't fermented food make you sick?"

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  It is essentially spoiled food. Also, what is your take on kombucha? It makes me feel like garbage.

• 9:12Chuck Nice?

  Thank you for your answer. Love you, Neil.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have a nice day.

• 9:15Chuck Nice?

  Have a nice day.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Well, so.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  So if we're talking about spoilage, you know, some of that has actual, like actually to do with safety. But then some of it also has to do with just definitions that we apply somewhat subjectively. So, I mean, if you, if you smelled the smell of a like beautifully fermented Camembert cheese, if you did not know it was supposed to smell that way, you would run away from it because, you know, it's a, we had, we had a magnet up at a shop I used to work at. It said, what's that smell? It's either bad meat or good cheese. So, so context is very important for this, but also.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it is some cheeses smell like gym socks, too.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. There's a whole, a whole landscape.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's either gym socks you pick up with forceps and take to the washing machine, where it's cheese and you spread it on cracker and eat it.

• 10:08Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:10Chuck Nice?

  And the stinkier, the more expensive somehow.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, because it has to be very carefully tended to achieve that, that quality. So, yeah, so some of it is just, you know, aesthetic. But a lot of fermentation is just stuff that we've learned over thousands or millions of years to like intentionally, you know, keep in the right conditions and coax what bacteria or fungi are growing on it so that, you know, from experience, it is actually safe for us.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what you're saying is it's been trial and error historically to eat some spoiled foods and it kills you and other spoiled foods don't kill you and they, you develop a taste for it. So we have, so.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  So there's a lot of dead humans.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dead, dead.

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  Who gave their life so that we could eat some stinky cheese.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Precisely, precisely.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  I mean, think of it, think of it as a, you know, millions to billions of person hours of R and D just so we can get these.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's what it is.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Things, yeah.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so because if I put, I remember you do this experiment in elementary school. You take some slices of bread.

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some water in the bread bag and put it under the sink, right?

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And come back in a week and it's mold growing on it.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And. And I pay top dollar for Roperford moldy cheese. And I'm gonna eat the cheese, but I'm not gonna eat the mold on the bread. But could I eat the mold on the bread? I mean, would I say, hmm, this is tasty?

• 11:31Speaker 02

  I would.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sounds like a no. I'm taking that as a no.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  I don't, I can't, I'm not sure that would be actually dangerous, but I would not recommend it. Although, there are some, some Roperford producers do like intentionally bake breads that become infected or cultured with penicillium molds and then use that to sort of kickstart the, the cheese fermentation.

• 11:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, if you're, if you grow up in a household like mine and you have a great grandmother who was born at the turn of the last century. Moldy bread just means this part gets cut out. And now, and now you got some good bread to eat.

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me about kombucha.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Kombucha, yeah. Well, so kombucha is.

• 12:17Chuck Nice?

  First of all, wait, can you please, what is it?

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Yeah. So, so kombucha is, um, basically fermented tea. More technically, you start with a sweetened tea, so tea and sugar and water. And then you use a special culture of microbes called a scoby, a symbiota colony of bacteria and yeasts. So it's alcohol-producing yeasts and acetic acid-producing bacteria that all live together. Basically, what happens is that the yeasts in the, in the scoby ferment the sugars in the sweetened tea into alcohol. And then the acetic bacteria munch on that alcohol and create acid, uh, which you might also know as vinegar. And the bacteria also make, they call them exopolysaccharides. It's basically like goop.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  So everything floats together in the sort of like mushroom-looking cellulose-based raft.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. So what chemical is responsible for the hair that grows on your chest after you drink this stuff?

• 13:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and why?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm guessing testosterone.

• 13:15Chuck Nice?

  And who wants to, why? What is this for? Why?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a, it can be, when, when made correctly, tangy and fizzy and delicious.

• 13:24Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had it once, my brother served it to me once, it was like, I, you know, I, I didn't mind having it once. But twice was not happening.

• 13:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  There's, um, yeah, there's some bad renditions out there, but they're also very good, uh, renditions of it.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He paid money for it, he paid real money for his stash.

• 13:41Chuck Nice?

  So you're saying that it is for, so first of all, I heard, I, I saw a video, I didn't hear, I saw a video on YouTube, and the woman on the video was trying to show us how to make kombucha. And her first step was, well, you have to find somebody who has kombucha so that you can get their scoby.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:02Chuck Nice?

  I was like, wait a minute, you don't get to do that, that's just like, I'm gonna show you how to be a millionaire. The first thing you have to do is find somebody with a million dollars. Like, come on now?

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so Ariel, who is kombucha number one? Who is that person?

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Who is, who is the earth kombucha?

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this some Tibetan monk? There's a lot of people.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Probably northern China, although I, I'm not totally sure. But, so there's some permutations where like, it'll just happen if you, uh, if you like, store it correctly. And some, like kombucha or kefir is another, is another one where

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  some colony was established many, many, many, many years ago and, uh, worked so well that people held on to it and passed it.

• 14:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we need a kombucha map where you can choose where you get your kombucha cocktail?

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Ben Wolf at Tufts, he's a microbiologist who's pretty cool, is doing a like kombucha mapping thing. So he might be able to.

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cool.

• 15:00Chuck Nice?

  And so now, all, now, from a scientific standpoint, you as a doctor, Ariel, are all of these-

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, a doctor of agricultural and environmental chemistry, not a, not a medical doctor.

• 15:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay, well, okay, that is clear, that's, don't worry, don't worry, if somebody has a heart attack in a restaurant, I will not call you.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  I have, I have given the Heimlich maneuver in a restaurant.

• 15:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay, right on. So no, are any of the claims to these, these fantastical claims that, uh, kombucha supposedly these benefits, are any of them true? Or is it more lore?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Well, like, I'm

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, actually, we need to take a break right there. But when we come back, we will find out from Ariel if kombucha has any health benefits at all. Is that where you're going with that?

• 15:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Right when we come back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  I'm Joel Cherico, and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Chuck Nice.

• 16:34Chuck Nice?

  Hey, buddy.

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I have Dr. Ariel Johnson, who's making her second appearance on StarTalk. We went into our Rolodex because she had first appeared live with us on stage. So thanks again.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For coming back. We're Cosmic Queries, pulling questions from our Patreon members. And we left off with a question about kombucha. And I've only been offered kombucha from health, from food, health people, right? And they're making claims about it. And then I tasted it, and I say, okay, I'm not, the risk reward there is not good enough for me. Whatever is not helping me in life, the taste of that is worse. All right, so could you just comment on why people drink it? And is it for the flavor? Or are they expecting some magic healing to happen?

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so personally, like, I'm pretty skeptical of any, like, claims that any food is a panacea, you know, as, as, those are the kind of claims we get for a lot of foods now.

• 17:34Chuck Nice?

  Except kale. Kale, kale.

• 17:38Chuck Nice?

  Come on, Ariel. Kale cures all.

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you know, I'm done with kale. I'm ready for the next. I'm ready. Okay, so go on.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Oh, so to my knowledge, there's been a few, but not extensive, studies of kombucha, particularly as a probiotic. So, you know, our guts are full of bacteria. We have more bacterial cells in our body than human cells, and we use them to help us digest stuff and stay healthy. So there's some idea that, you know, bears out in data that kombucha can contribute live bacteria that is helpful to your gut.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  I think some people do drink it out of a sense of, you know, kind of an elixir of health. I'm not sure that's borne out by any pure food science, and a lot of people actually do drink it for taste.

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, if there's a lemonade in front of me and kombucha, I'm reaching for the lemonade.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  That's fair. No, that's totally fair. I mean, when I was working at Noema, a restaurant in Copenhagen, we actually did a lot of.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like one of the most famous restaurants in the world.

• 18:43Chuck Nice?

  Very, very.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I was working there as, yeah, I had, we had a fermentation lab, but we made a lot of kombuchas specifically for the menu for flavor. So we'd use things like elder flower or like heirloom apples and things like that and would, you know, transform them to become acidic and tasty for things. So it is definitely a flavor thing as well.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're basically a food chemist. That's really what you.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, my like track was food and wine chemistry, and my dissertation focused on flavor chemistry, and that's mostly what I do now. I mean, sort of publicly.

• 19:18Chuck Nice?

  Flavor chemistry.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It's my passion.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  That is the best use of science I've.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 19:26Chuck Nice?

  In a long, in a long time, in a long time. Let me just tell you right now. That is, that is stellar. Okay.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Give me another one, Chuck.

• 19:36Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. This is Matt, Matt Harefield, and Matt says, I've heard about elephants and other mammals becoming intoxicated from consuming fermented fruit. How common is fermentation in the wild? And what causes it? Are mammals the only ones who partake?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 19:54Chuck Nice?

  Good question.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:55Chuck Nice?

  By the way, let me just very quickly.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  There's a very cool alcoholic squirrel in my neighborhood.

• 20:04Chuck Nice?

  And you cannot, and we only see him at Halloween. We had to stop leaving the pumpkins out because the squirrel, you know, you leave the pumpkin out for a while. A week later, the pumpkin's still out there. Squirrel comes up, eats the pumpkin, and then you just see him kind of like wobbling around the neighborhood. He's just wobbling around the neighborhood like, yo, what's up? What's up? Hey, hey, what's up? Hey, what's up?

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Hey, can I, you got any Lucy's? Can I get a dollar for some cigarettes? Can I get a dollar for some cigarettes? So anyway, go ahead.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck lives in the zoo, the Philadelphia Zoo.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Well, so pretty much any fermentation we do intentionally now started as like an accident or just sort of like the course of of of nature and, you know, the microbiome of wild microorganisms that are outliving on things. So, yes, spontaneous spontaneous fermentation of fruits happens like all the time. You know, we're able, we're able to make wine because the yeasts that create alcohol actually live on the skins of grapes. I mean, now a lot of wine is made with inoculated yeast, but for, you know, most of the history of wine, which goes back at least 8,000 years.

• 21:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Was a, was a, a wild fermentation with this yeast that was just hanging out.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is there, is there enough? Okay, so the first fermentation is the yeast turning the grape sugars into alcohol. So if, is there enough alcohol in a fermented fruit to make mammals go shitfaced?

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, just by, yeah, I mean, you know, even, uh, even a fruit that gets to like two or 3% alcohol, all these can get much more alcoholic than that. Uh, if you're a small enough animal or you eat enough of it, can, can make you quite tipsy. I've also heard the stories about elephants. I think there was a, um, there was like a TikTok video going around of a, a pigeon that had eaten too many fermented apples and was just sort of like lying.

• 22:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Face planted on the ground.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that was Chuck's backyard. All his animals.

• 22:06Chuck Nice?

  Every, every animal in my backyard is, is absolutely plastered. Okay.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  I think, I think you might be feeding them intentionally for the comedic effect.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you don't have to be a mammal because birds aren't mammals.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  No, yeah, I, I'm speculating here. This is getting, getting sort of to the outer reaches of my specific knowledge. But, I mean, you know, ethanol, ethyl alcohol, the product of alcoholic fermentation, you know, acts on central nervous systems and many animals' central nervous systems have a lot of stuff in common. So, you know.

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially vertebrate animals, I guess.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, other molecules like nicotine from, from tobacco work on, you know, various animals' nervous systems, including like insects, actually. But they don't, they don't have.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  But yeah, so I would imagine most, most mammals can get plastered from, from fun fruit.

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay.

• 22:57Chuck Nice?

  Nice. All right.

• 22:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, give me another one.

• 22:59Chuck Nice?

  Shoot, I'm ready to go get drunk with an elephant.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Elephant.

• 23:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 23:07Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is, uh, this is, uh, Luke, uh.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wonder if the elephant starts telling jokes. Uh, where does a 900 pound human sit?

• 23:18Chuck Nice?

  It's the 900, it's the 900 pound human in the middle of the room, guys.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  I feel like they'd be very cuddly. That might be, that might be fun.

• 23:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Let me tell you something. That's the scariest thing I've heard is an elephant trying to cuddle you.

• 23:35Chuck Nice?

  Let me tell you, I, I, I just see shades of mice and men.

• 23:42Chuck Nice?

  Anyway, uh, Luke, uh, Jibiki, Luke Jibiki says this, or Gebbiki, one or the other. He says, I have a jar of pickled sausages that says it never needs refrigeration.

• 23:58Chuck Nice?

  How does that work without spoiling? Is it safe to eat? And for how long? So, that's a great question because sometimes you think that those jars say that because they are vacuum-packed.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 24:10Chuck Nice?

  And that it doesn't need refrigeration for storage, but once you open it, perhaps you do. But what is the difference?

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or I've, it, for me, I've never seen anything in vinegar that said must refrigerate. So vinegar must have some magic preservative power.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, acetic acid is quite toxic to most microorganisms.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the active acid in vinegar.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so acetic acid itself is quite toxic and the low pH also inhibits most, most microbes.

• 24:38Chuck Nice?

  So really, it really is just a natural preservative?

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, if it's a, if it's a jar, I, I don't, I can't tell from my question.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, so high acid gives you the low pH.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Yes, high acid gives you low pH, yeah.

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not high acid and low pH. That is the same thing.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Well, actually, so technically, getting into some chemistry, the acetic acid molecule, only about like one in 10,000 of them actually is acidic. The rest stays like fully together, non-dissociated and non-acidic. So the ones that give up a hydrogen ion or proton to create a low pH or acidity, that creates an inhospitable environment for spoiling to microbes. But the whole undissociated, non-acidic, acetic acid molecule itself is, is also toxic. I think it interrupts the cell membrane of.

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, interesting. But that wouldn't then trigger the, the, the litmus score for it? Even if it is preservative? I see, I see. So, okay, so the acidity is not a direct measure of how much acetic acid is in it? You need activated molecules.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, there's, there's like every, every acid has its natural balance that it will, that it will go to. Yeah.

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm. Cool. So, uh, when he says, how does that work? We just, you just said that. Is it, how long? Is it safe to eat something that is stored that way?

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, so when you're, when you're talking about especially like preserved meats and things, you're getting into a concept called water activity. So like the more, the more acid, the more salt, uh, the more sugar you have, the lower the available water is. So, I mean, that's why jam, which is just like, you know, spoilable fruits that you've added a lot of sugar to can sit in your cupboard for, you know, a year because there's just not enough free water for microbes to, to do their thing.

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  I mean, with stuff like that, there's probably a best buy.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why, that's why dried, dried, like beef jerky.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly, exactly. Beef jerky.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's lost all liquor or dried salmon or any of this.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, lots of charcuterie and salumi, you know, things like pepperoni or, uh, Capicola, either whole muscles.

• 26:51Chuck Nice?

  All right. Sorry, Ario. I'm sorry. I'm from Philadelphia. It's not Capicola.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Sorry, sorry. Gabagool.

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Just wanted to be intelligible to as many people as possible. Yes, I also, I also ascribe to the school of Gabagool.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We need, we need, we need Chuck's hood to still stand in conversation.

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or his peep, wants peeps back in the hood.

• 27:19Chuck Nice?

  It would never let me, there would, nobody would ever let me live down Capicola.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  I can't, I can't let that happen.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me invert the question. What do you know is not turned off by the high acid vinegar solution? That would still grow regardless.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to invert the question.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  There's, there's plenty of like extremophile microbes out there.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You love high acid?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, high acid or high salt, you know, for, for the most part, if you're adding a lot of salt to stuff, that excludes most, most microbes, but then like soy sauce, which usually ferment at like 12 to 20% salt, which is like super high. There's an extremophile yeast called Zygosaccharomyces ruxei that like loves that level of salt and actually contributes to the flavor.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a badass name.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me hear that again. Say it again.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Zygosaccharomyces ruxei.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 28:10Chuck Nice?

  Nice. You know what? You just sound like you casted a spell on something.

• 28:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a very Harry Potter spell.

• 28:20Chuck Nice?

  That was totally, that was a witch, that was a witch spell right there. Exactly.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Thank you, thank you.

• 28:27Chuck Nice?

  So now, when you say that, that bacteria loves it and adds to the flavor, so will it ultimately spoil the soy sauce? Or does it just enhance the soy sauce?

• 28:40Speaker 02

  That one's generally not a spoilage microbe.

• 28:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  I suppose, like, it just produces like alcohol and flavor molecules.

• 28:48Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Off the top of my head, I can't think of any really significant, like, high acid, high salt tolerant spoilage microbes. A real microbiologist might be mad at me right now for, for not identifying one, but mostly you don't have like a ton to worry about. And like what you should be looking out for, for like unrefrigerated things possibly going bad would be like off smells there or like visible mold.

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  Visible mold, yeah. That's, that should always be a sign.

• 29:20Chuck Nice?

  I don't have a degree in anything chemistry, but I'm pretty sure that's a good sign. You don't need it.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you know, up until, up until past year, that's how everyone knew that something was going bad.

• 29:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's just like, hmm, this bread is hairy.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  All right, I'm gonna pass. All right, cool.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Smart.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  All right, give me another one before we can go to break. Okay, all right. Hi Ariel, hi Neil. Often we hear of the words ferment. But they didn't say hi to you Chuck? They did not. Oh, that's cold. That is, that is cold. Okay, who is it? Who's the person? Um, you know what? Here's the thing. They don't even, oh, nope, here it is. Their, their, their name was on the previous page. It's Avinav Abraham. So. Okay. Avinav Abraham, who clearly doesn't like me, so. But you know what? Know what? I read everybody's question. It doesn't make a difference how you feel about.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, it's so sweet of you.

• 30:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a question.

• 30:19Chuck Nice?

  I'm the Joe Biden of cosmic queries.

• 30:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Hi Ariel, hi Neil. Often we hear of the words fermentation with regards to preserving food and making alcohol with the help of microorganisms. But what precautions are needed to take with respect to the fermentation process? So that the next time I'm making my homemade wine, I don't end up creating some superbug that will further harm this current scenario.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or ferment the world. Actually, we just ran out of time, but we'll come back in the third segment. We'll lead off with the answer to that question on StarTalk. Cosmic Queries, the fermentation condition.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  Hey, it's time to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Ryan Barato, Dan Snyder, and Sheila Hudson. Guys, you are the solid rocket fuel that propels us to the stars. Thank you so much for your support. We couldn't do the show without you. And for those of you who'd like your very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Cosmic Queries, food and fermentation. What does it all mean? Why do we do it? And we just blame Ariel for everything that's happening.

• 31:59Chuck Nice?

  Yay.

• 32:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ariel, again, welcome back to our StarTalk family for this show. Chuck, always good to have you here.

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so Ariel, we left off with someone asking about yeasts gone wild, I guess. You know, how to, you know, you can use it for some purpose, some contained purpose, but could they mutate? Could they become an infectious bug? There's all this fermenting going on where we think we're in control of the microbes, but maybe one day the microbes will fight back.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Rise up.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Well, for, this is well outside the scope of the time that we have. For anyone that's interested in getting into that much more like philosophically, Heather Paxton is a Science and Technology Studies scholar at MIT and has really interesting work on what she calls microbiopolitics that talks a lot about this stuff.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, that's a phrase?

• 32:53Speaker 02

  No, but getting back to the subject of the question. Well, so microorganisms are constantly mutating and evolving. I mean, you know, random mutation is what drives evolution and microbes are constantly, you know, mutating and swapping genes and trying new stuff out to like better adapt to their environments. So that's just gonna happen anyway.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  As we are, as we are currently all living as a reality right now.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Fitness for this particular environmental stressor.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I just have to clarify something because it's a common misconception. It's not that the bacteria are trying to survive by experimenting. It's that they are always experimenting.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you have a change in the environment, it kills everything that can't survive it. And so it's not like, oh, the environment changed, let me adapt. No, nothing adapts. There's always built in some variation and you live or die. And the species adapts, but the organism does not.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess that's the point I want to make.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Thank you. Yeah, no, that's a good, yeah. Random mutation is always happening. It's often bad for organisms, but occasionally it's randomly good.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, exactly.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Although some microbes do engage in horizontal gene transfer. I don't think there's any.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sounds painful.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  I don't think there's any like choosing of what's good there, but it's.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, give me some of your genes.

• 34:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm only into vertical gene transfer, okay? Just letting you know that.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Good to know your boundaries.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what could happen?

• 34:28Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I mean, so, yes, yeast will mutate, but I think probably in the course of a fermentation that you're doing at home or in a winery, probably nothing's going to mutate to become like totally crazy and outside the bounds of anything you've seen.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and escape the winery and then...

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we have maps of the zones, you know, it'd be like, you know, World War Z except for microbes.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if that were to happen in your homemade wine, it would happen on a piece of fruit out in the wild, just as easily. If that's the scenario, that would happen, we're screwed anyway. But...

• 35:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, you get her, her answer is, "Don't panic. Everything is fine, there's nothing wrong."

• 35:09Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Very cool.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  I mean, actually, with, in terms of like precautions for homemade wine, like, what's more likely to happen is that the like balance of...

• 35:20Chuck Nice?

  That is...

• 35:21Speaker 02

  ...will shift? Oh.

• 35:23Chuck Nice?

  And your wine will taste like crap. That's what's really...

• 35:26Speaker 02

  So, I mean, even if you add like one strain of yeast to something, or one strain of bacteria, the fermentation is going to involve many different species kind of forming an whole ecological system. So with wine, probably what's more likely to happen is that a wild yeast, Brettanomyces, or a bacteria will, you know, stay on for the ride and possibly make some off flavors you don't want. Or if the wine is too exposed to oxygen, that you're going to get acidic acid turning it into vinegar. Yeah. I mean, generally alcoholic fermentations aren't super high risk.

• 36:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:06Chuck Nice?

  So...

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're safe continuing to make wine in your basement?

• 36:08Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without ending the world.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  If it gets moldy, throw it out.

• 36:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. So, well, now, speaking of that, so what is mulled wine then? Is it actually...

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Mulled wine.

• 36:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, is it actual mold?

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Oh, mulled, mulled wine.

• 36:21Chuck Nice?

  Mulled wine?

• 36:22Speaker 02

  M-U-L-L-E-D.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  As in the M-O-L-D. Well, I mean, mulled wine is...

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Chuck just got the wrong word, so you don't have to answer him.

• 36:33Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Although, although.

• 36:35Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm serious.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck just got homonymed.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Although, although rice wines all start with a cultured mold, usually an Aspergillus species that has been mostly domesticated.

• 36:48Chuck Nice?

  Right on.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:49Chuck Nice?

  So what is mold wine, though?

• 36:51Speaker 02

  With a U or with an O?

• 36:52Chuck Nice?

  No, with a U.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  With a U, oh, it's a.

• 36:54Chuck Nice?

  The real wine, the real wine that they call mold wine.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Mold wine.

• 36:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  It's, it's wine that you heat up and add spices and sometimes fruit, too. So I guess that.

• 37:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so that's what makes it. Okay, I got it.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's a, you know, the heat probably, and even the, you know, spices have antimicrobial compounds, so that would probably make it even less susceptible to mold with an O than.

• 37:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just while we're on the subject of homemade microbes, tell me about sourdough bread.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, so sourdough, before the advent of commercial yeasts, most, most breads had something like a sourdough starter. Sourdough is just a mixture of, of yeast, lactic acid bacteria, and acidic bacteria, all of which can kind of live in, in wet greens. And by, you know, feeding them some flour and some, some water and letting them do their thing, they, they add some nice flavors to a dough that you make. More importantly, they create carbon dioxide as one of their waste products. So by kind of tending, being this farm of, of mixed microbes, you can cause your bread to rise in the oven, as you would with a commercial yeast, but with more, with more flavors.

• 38:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay, so a little more flavorful and complex, I guess, that's it.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but some people will say, oh, here's a sourdough from a recipe from my great, great grandmother. Um, who cares? Why does that matter?

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Well, so, I mean, like, two, one aspect of it is that.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why is that a boast?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Is that when, is it the, like, how you feed, so you start with a starter that you're constantly feeding, so kind of keeping it like an animal in, in the zoo. So you're constantly, you know, every, every day or every several days, adding, adding flour and water to it.

• 38:33Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  So, so when you, when you choose to do that, how much it has fermented from the previous batch before you add more, how much you throw out or like incorporate, and then how much water.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it purify the strain? Do this over generations and generations?

• 38:47Speaker 02

  I mean, it's always, it's like pretty dynamic. So once, uh, when you first add flour and water to a starter, there's more like, I think more yeast activity going on. And then as it gets older and more mature, it'll get more and more acidic. So, so then when you, when you feed it and then when the like number of hours that you let pass before, between feeding and actually make it into bread can have like a huge effect on flavor and rise. So, so the protocol that you follow that your grandmother figured out can actually be a pretty big deal.

• 39:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is the new title of the movie, The Sour Dough Protocol.

• 39:24Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the new Mission Impossible.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Sour Dough Protocol.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  French bakers.

• 39:35Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, give me another one.

• 39:36Chuck Nice?

  Here's, uh, Joy Pinheiro Denise, who says this, I love you guys, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Johnson, oh, and Dr. Nice. Okay. See, yeah. She's made up for, she made up for.

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the other one, yeah.

• 39:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So take that, Anivav.

• 39:54Chuck Nice?

  She goes, um, my question is, given the state of the world when it comes to land shortage for growing crops, is there a way to genetically produce an easily grown hardy crop with high yield that contains the perfect amount of vitamins and minerals, amino acids and proteins, basically a living version of what they eat in, on the Nebuchadnezzar hover ship in The Matrix?

• 40:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes. By the way, she says, I know that's Neil's favorite movie. Thank you for Southern

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Journey. So that's the scene where this, it comes out of the spigot and it looks kind of like, as they say in the movie, it looks like a pile of snot. And they're eating it. They say, no, it's got all the amino acids and vitamins that a healthy body needs. So I'm curious about

• 40:41Speaker 02

  And it tastes like tasty wheat, right?

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take that. Yes.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  I've been watching a lot of movies in, uh, in quarantine.

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Ariel, uh, well, one other point here in the movie Deep Impact, okay? Uh, I don't, won't get into the details, but there's a scene where there's someone offloading, they're getting ready for the end of the world. Someone offloading these groceries and they're full of, uh, little cans of Ensure. And so if I understand it, cans of Ensure, which are typically eaten by older people, are have all the protein and vitamins and minerals and carbohydrates you need. And and they come in a can, so they don't have to be refrigerated. So if the world is going to end, you want to fill your groceries, you know, don't leave the toilet paper alone, the other way you can wipe yourself.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my a good question is, is there some garden mixture of of foods? Let's assume you can't raise a cow. So garden mixture of vegetables where at a minimum size, one person can live off of that.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Oh, was that the so two questions? One is the one is the crop. Engineering the crop. Engineering the crops. The minimum the minimum amount of garden space. I am not really sure what the minimum amount of garden space to translate into edible calories and nutrients is. I know that, for example, like one one chestnut tree might be able to at maturity provide enough carbohydrates to keep one person fed for a year. I mean, I setting aside the apocalyptic scenarios where you would actually just have to have, you know, single cell protein tasty meat. Generally, the most like nutritious and resilient systems that you should be trying to doing to plan for the apocalypse would be like fairly biodiverse ones.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  So like growing as many plants together as possible. You know, humans, humans are pretty interesting in their ability to like get nutrition from lots of different things. You know, we're omnivores, but we're omnivores that can make our diets out of nearly anything.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we we interviewed the creator and founder of Soylent. This liquid and this is this one, you know, is your entire meal in a in a in a cup.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And.

• 42:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm counting down the seconds to see how long it would take.

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  No, I had.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, this is Soylent Blue, not Soylent Green. Just to make that clear.

• 43:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but.

• 43:06Chuck Nice?

  It's the worst part of people.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what intrigued me was, he can make the exact ingredients that you need, but he wanted it to be more, more friendly to the ecosystem and wanted to infuse it with sort of base amino acids from the, as low on the food chain as he could go. And I was very intrigued by that, as, at least as, as, as a goal.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I know, I know, there's a lot of people interested in algae.

• 43:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, for example, exactly.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  As sources of both proteins and, and fats. Cause yeah, fats are actually pretty important dietarily, especially if you're eating a lot of protein. Yeah, so there's, there's definitely a lot of research happening on that. We may be seeing a future where we, you know, have gigantic tanks of algae that we then harvest and, and eat.

• 44:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, not as nasty. Tanks of algae. Please, sir, got some more?

• 44:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  That would be the most brutal version of a food scenario.

• 44:13Chuck Nice?

  That'd just kill me, okay?

• 44:16Chuck Nice?

  I'm going on record, just kill me.

• 44:19Chuck Nice?

  That's a thin gruel I never want to have to eat.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the word, the word vat and the word algae together in the same sentence.

• 44:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so nasty. All right.

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we got time, maybe for one more question, go.

• 44:29Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's get to a chemistry question from Douglas Stern, who says, has NASA used chemistry to ferment foods that astronauts eat in order to help them maintain better health while visiting the International Space Station? Or will consuming artificial supplements just be an easier route? Live long and prosper.

• 44:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, nice, nice. So what do you know about the ISS? I can tell you what I know about it.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I know a little bit, but you probably.

• 44:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, there are enough supply ships to the ISS. They just wait for the burger to come.

• 45:01Chuck Nice?

  So by the way, they're getting cosmic Uber Eats.

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uber Eats.

• 45:06Chuck Nice?

  They're getting cosmic Uber Eats at the ISS, buddy. Okay.

• 45:13Chuck Nice?

  Space Grubhub, that's what we're talking about.

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the long-term voyages where they're really thinking about this, where you don't have a supply chain to it. You know, nine months to Mars, two months on location, coming back, you're away for three years.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so I don't know if they're leaning towards just preserved food, or, you know, salt-preserved, you know, desiccated food, or, or... The problem is liquid weighs a lot.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Relative to other things, and so if you need a big vat of your pickles that were then, and it's liquid holding them, I don't know that that would be a first choice.

• 45:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  No, I mean, on the subject, I actually was, I guess in 2017, I went to a workshop at Johnson Space Center, specifically on like...

• 45:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Houston.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Open sourcing, wait, no, Kennedy, in, the one in Florida.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Kennedy, that'd be Kennedy Space Center.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Not Johnson, yeah, Kennedy, my bad. About like, sort of, what open source could do to, to think about food in, food in space. So I know that, you know, they're, they're doing plant growth experiments at, at NASA, and they will actually like, bring up seeds and water and grow, you know, four tomatoes and one strawberry, and that will be your, I mean, obviously not a big nutritional component.

• 46:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a start.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  But it's important, it's good for morale.

• 46:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a start.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:28Chuck Nice?

  And, and it's much better than a poop potato.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Although, I don't know, after, after like, you know, however many weeks, I think those poop potatoes would start looking pretty good.

• 46:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. As Pinocchio says in the original book, hunger makes the best sauce.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 46:48Chuck Nice?

  Wow, I love that.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  So I mean, so in terms of like fermentation, I don't think NASA is doing much with fermentation, if only because they try to not send as many, any microbes up into space. They try to sterilize things to avoid contamination.

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's very, very, very important and excellent point, I would think. But we got to wrap this up. Let me end with a question. Is there, are there fermentive, is there a frontier of fermentation where you'll show up one day, here's a newly fermented thing that didn't previously exist in the food catalogs here? Is it, you and your people do those kinds of experiments, inventing foods?

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I've actually done some work. I have, I have friends at a company called Ginkgo Bio Work. They are a like synthetic biology startup. They may have surpassed startup phase. They're doing quite well. But so what they do is engineer microbes to do interesting things. And they, they had some cool strains of, of yeasts, some yeasts that were producing carotenoids, which are orange pigments in, in flowers and grass and carrots that are actually the precursors to a lot of interesting like fruity flavors. And then also yeasts that were producing flavor molecules specifically.

• 48:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Chuck, what she's saying there is that nature is insufficient for our

• 48:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's some flavors we need. There's, we're just doing, do it ourselves.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so there, I, I and their creative director, Christina Agapakis, who's pretty awesome, got together and we're making some fermented foods with these totally brand new, you know, super flavor molecule producing strains.

• 48:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if you are, don't exist, the next time we invite you, it's because it's one of those experiments.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  I will have created the, the superbug that

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, try this.

• 48:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta end it there unfortunately. But Ariel Johnson, very delighted to have you back on.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Oh, delighted to be here. Thanks for all the great questions.

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll surely find another excuse to bring you back. Chuck, I'm glad we now can pronounce words correctly as they do in Philadelphia.

• 49:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah. I still can't pronounce names correctly, but at least we know that Coca-Cola is Gobba Goo.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Gobba Goo for life.

• 49:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, this has been Cosmic Queries, the fermentation edition. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, always bidding you to keep looking up.