Listener Questions #22

Daniel and Kelly answer questions about interstellar comets, evolution of parasitoids, and the nature of scientific theories. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Daniel Whiteson?

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• 1:12Daniel Whiteson?

  There's a new comet approaching from deep space. Could we get sick if its dust gets in our face?

• 1:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  The jewel wasp parasitoid feels around its host's brain. How did evolution come up with this? It's totally insane.

• 1:27Daniel Whiteson?

  Scientific theory, model, hypothesis, or law? Do these words really mean anything, or nah?

• 1:34Kelly Weinersmith?

  Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's answers will make it right.

• 1:39Daniel Whiteson?

  Welcome to another Listener Questions episode on Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary universe.

• 1:45Kelly Weinersmith?

  We've done 22 of these.

• 2:00Kelly Weinersmith?

  Hello, I'm Kelly Weiner-Smith. I study parasites and space. And all of these questions today have a bit of biology in them, so I'm pretty excited about it.

• 2:08Daniel Whiteson?

  Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'll admit, there's a bit of biology in everything we do.

• 2:14Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, yeah. But there's not physics in everything we do, so that's good news.

• 2:18Daniel Whiteson?

  Yes, there is.

• 2:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, no, of course there is.

• 2:20Daniel Whiteson?

  Physics is everything.

• 2:21Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, I guess I should have gone with chemistry, and then we could have bonded, even though we knew we were wrong.

• 2:26Daniel Whiteson?

  Exactly. Then we could confirm each other's biases.

• 2:29Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep, yep. Anyway, I blew it. That's all right, moving on.

• 2:31Daniel Whiteson?

  But today, we're not here to talk about my biases, or about your biases. We're here to answer questions from you, from people out there wondering how the universe works, trying to make sense of it, and scratching their heads a little bit.

• 2:43Kelly Weinersmith?

  And we try to help you scratch your heads for a slightly shorter amount of time. And so if you have a question that is keeping you up at night, send it to us at questions at danielandkelly.org. It might take a few months for the answers to come back to you and go online, but we answer every question, at least by email, and some of them even make it on the show.

• 3:04Daniel Whiteson?

  Because we believe in the value of human curiosity. I'm interested in particles, Kelly's interested in parasitoids, but everybody's curious about something. And my favorite thing about science is that we're all curious about different things, which is why we get to learn about so many different amazing things in the universe, even chemistry.

• 3:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  And all of the questions that we get, I feel like, are super fascinating and make me think about things in different ways. So feel free to help expand our minds by getting us to think about a new question.

• 3:33Daniel Whiteson?

  That's right. And because this podcast is not just about what we're curious about, it's about what everybody's curious about. So join the conversation. Send us your questions to [email protected].

• 3:45Kelly Weinersmith?

  And our first question today comes from Tim, who lives in the greatest of these United States, which is, of course, Virginia.

• 3:53Daniel Whiteson?

  What did we say about confirming our biases today?

• 3:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  That it's great. That's probably what we said.

• 4:00Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. Let's hear from Tim, who unfortunately lives in Virginia.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  Hey, Daniel and Kelly. It's Tim from Virginia. I was watching YouTube and watching videos about our newest interstellar visitor, Atlas, and Oumuamua. And what was the other one called? Not Benu, the other one. So anyway, this is Atlas is the third interstellar visitor that we've had in our solar system. And they were talking about how it doesn't pose a threat to Earth. But I was wondering if it leaves a debris field in its wake, what are the chances that it has some sort of unknown virus or bacteria, or like maybe even like their version

• 4:49Speaker 04

  of tardigrades, which can survive in space, that they just deposit in our solar system that could possibly, if a planet goes through its trail, could get scooped up by a planet and cause problems? Thought it might be a fun question for both of you to answer. Thanks for what you do. Bye.

• 5:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, this is a fun question. So not that long ago, you and I talked about Oumuamua? No.

• 5:16Daniel Whiteson?

  Oumuamua.

• 5:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oumuamua.

• 5:19Daniel Whiteson?

  Oumuamua.

• 5:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oumuamua. Recently, you and I talked about Oumuamua and Avi Loeb's hypothesis that it was an interstellar visitor. And if anybody wants more information, they can go pull that up.

• 5:29Daniel Whiteson?

  Hypothesis is being very generous to Avi.

• 5:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes. Idea while smoking banana peels might be better.

• 5:38Daniel Whiteson?

  Sensationalist nonsense cooked up to sell his book.

• 5:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. We are not pulling any punches today. And so, Daniel, remind us, what do we know about these interstellar visitors?

• 5:50Daniel Whiteson?

  So most of the comets we see come from inside our solar system. They either come from the Kuiper Belt, which is a big chunk of rocky icy stuff out there, deep in the solar system. Or long period comets come even further out from like the Oort Cloud, a hypothetical, never yet observed bunch of icy rocky blobs way, way, way out past Pluto. And so most of the comets, Halley's Comet and the other stuff that we see, come from inside our solar system. But you know, our solar system is not alone in the galaxy. And every once in a while, an icy rocky chunk from another solar system will drift over and enter our backyard. And until this year, we'd only ever seen two of those.

• 6:33Daniel Whiteson?

  Oumuamua famous because it was the first and sort of surprised everybody. We saw it pretty quickly after we turned on a telescope capable of finding these things, which is always awesome because we didn't know how often we would see these. And when you see one immediately, you're like, ooh, wow, maybe these aren't so rare.

• 6:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. And I gotta say, one of my favorite facts that I've learned while working with you is that the Oort Cloud is a maybe. It's a thing that we think exists, but haven't actually confirmed. And that I think was something that you discussed in response to a listener's question. And so anyway, love what I'm learning. Keep going.

• 7:07Daniel Whiteson?

  So 2017, we saw Oumuamua. It was pretty weird. It was like a bare object that was either long and thin or very flat. And it was rotating weirdly. And so the reflections were strange, lots of speculation about it. In the end, it looks like it was mostly the nucleus of a comet that had already lost all of its stuff and outgassed a little bit on the way out of the solar system, giving it a little bit of acceleration. Then in 2019, we saw the second one, Borisov. This is a bigger object, more like a standard comet, had a coma. It was outgassing. Still very cool to see these things from deep in space. And you know, this is awesome because as you say, a lot of our knowledge about the rest of the galaxy is hypothetical.

• 7:49Daniel Whiteson?

  It comes either from just observation or from speculation and from models. So to see something come and visit us, we get to study in much more detail and learn a lot about the rest of the galaxy. And so in 2025, we're very excited to see the third one, which is called Atlas.

• 8:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, and you must have been very excited because you are really into aliens and Oumuamua was sent by aliens. It was an interstellar ship, right? That's what I heard.

• 8:18Daniel Whiteson?

  You know, there's a lot of really interesting stuff about Oumuamua, and it's totally reasonable to ask, like, does this look like a natural object? Or is it weird? And could it be artificial? That's totally legitimate. And we should be excited and open minded about what we could see. And of all the people out there excited to have aliens come visit, I'm definitely near the top of the list. But we also should be skeptical about it. And those claims require a lot of evidence. And there's a lot of push by the chair of the Harvard Physics Department to call this thing aliens. And he wrote a whole book about it. And we did a whole episode about it. And there's lots of videos describing in detail how this was not an effort sort of primed by scientific integrity, unfortunately.

• 9:01Daniel Whiteson?

  So we're very sure that Oumuamua is a comet. And it's weird and it's interesting in sort of planetary physics sort of ways, but it's not an alien object.

• 9:09Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay, got it. Thanks for clearing that up for me. And so tell me more about the 2025 interstellar visitor.

• 9:16Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, so this is pretty fresh and new. And it's still approaching us, right? It hasn't reached the closest point to the sun than it's going to reach yet. It's coming into the solar system still, which is exciting. When we found Oumuamua, it was already on its way out and moving really fast. So every day it got more distant and smaller and harder to image. But this is coming closer. And so we're getting better and better and crisper and crisper photographs of it. So the first images we had got of it, you can look at these things up online. These come from the 2 meter twin telescope. These are ground based telescopes. And they show it like a big fuzzy blob. And from those pictures, we couldn't really tell what it was or how big it was. We could tell it's something around 25 to 40 kilometers across.

• 10:00Daniel Whiteson?

  But we didn't know how much of that was like the actual thing and how much of it was like a dusty coma or gas being boiled off of the surface by the sun. So those were our first measurements about it. And we knew where it was and how fast it was going. So we could tell it was coming from outside the solar system, but we didn't yet know what it was.

• 10:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  Is a coma just the like dust and stuff that trails behind a comet?

• 10:22Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, exactly. And most of that comes from the sun, right? Solar radiation. The particles, the photons, the electrons, the protons that come from the sun will impact the comet and boil some of that stuff off. And we'll dig into that in a minute. But that's where the comet's tail comes from. And the tail should grow as it gets closer and closer to the sun. And so right now, it's still pretty far from the sun and the coma is sort of small. But we expect that as it gets closer and closer and it heats up and the sun fries it more, it's going to get a longer and longer tail. Yeah.

• 10:51Kelly Weinersmith?

  Can we tell the difference between the like junk that's getting kicked off because of the sun and the center of it? Is it clear enough to differentiate?

• 10:59Daniel Whiteson?

  We can, in fact. And so we have also space-based imaging. So we have Hubble, we have Sphere X, which is a deep infrared telescope, and we have James Webb Space Telescope. But before those space telescopes were able to take a picture of it, there was a lot of discussion about what is this thing? It turns out it's coming in sort of close to the planet ecliptic, which is the planet that all the planets are on. And so our friend Avi Loeb made a big deal about this. And he suggested that this was evidence that it was an alien visitor sent intentionally to visit our solar system.

• 11:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  So he's still on the same kick?

• 11:31Daniel Whiteson?

  He is still on the same kick.

• 11:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay.

• 11:33Daniel Whiteson?

  And he saw the fuzz around the object and he misinterpreted that to be like motion smears. Like if you're taking a slow picture of a fast-moving object, it will smear. Because he didn't understand that astronomers already know about that effect and build it into their telescopes with tracking to avoid motion smearing. So he was arguing that it wasn't a comet, that it was a bare object, maybe metallic, and the fuzz was from motion smearing. Astronomers told him how he was wrong. He mostly ignored them. Again, it's not a discussion that's inspired by scientific integrity. He's just trying to sell his books. But then we got space-based telescopes to take a clear picture of it. And you can see in those pictures, a very bright core and a fuzzier coma. So you can tell the difference

• 12:15Daniel Whiteson?

  from the coma and from the core. And then Sphere X can do some really cool stuff where they see the spectrum of light that comes off of it. So the core of it is like two to four kilometers and the rest of it is a fuzzy coma. And what's really fascinating is that that fuzzy coma is mostly carbon dioxide. So these things that are from deep space, they have rocky cores. But there's a lot of ice on them. And there's carbon monoxide ice, carbon dioxide ice, and then water ice. And these things evaporate at different temperatures. Carbon monoxide evaporates at a pretty low temperature, like 40 Kelvin. Doesn't take a lot of solar rays to fry off all the carbon monoxide. Carbon dioxide at about 100 Kelvin and water at hundreds of Kelvin.

• 12:59Daniel Whiteson?

  But we don't see any carbon monoxide in the coma. So this thing is probably a combination of CO2, carbon dioxide and water. And since it's still far out in the solar system, it's mostly outgassing the CO2, which sublimates on the surface. And when it gets closer, we'll probably see some water, some water ice turn into steam.

• 13:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  Is there rock in there too? And that's just not getting kicked out into the coma?

• 13:22Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, exactly. Probably there's also rock out there. And you know, Avi responds to this and saying he thinks actually the thing glows on its own. And it's not just reflecting light, which astronomers pointed out was just him misreading a plot in a paper. Maybe intentionally, maybe not, who knows? Anyway, you should mostly ignore all of his nonsense and pay attention to the astronomers who actually know what they're talking about. So it's a fascinating object. We're going to learn something about deep space and you know, what things are made out of. This thing is probably a chunk of ice and rock from somebody else's Oort cloud, right? Some other star has Oort clouds and we snagged a piece of it because they lost it. It's going to be really interesting. It's not going to come close to the earth. So if you're worried about this thing, because it's a big chunk of ice and rock,

• 14:06Daniel Whiteson?

  it's about the same size as the one that ended the dinosaurs. But it's not going to hit the earth. In fact, when it makes its closest approach to the sun, we're going to be on the other side of the sun.

• 14:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's reassuring. I like that.

• 14:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  Although I'm sure it would, we'll see it less well and that's a bummer, but trade offs.

• 14:23Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. So that's the setup. Tim has a really fun question. He's wondering like, what if this thing really does come from aliens? What if it's like loaded with their viruses or alien tardigrades? And those things boil off and they sort of make a path through the solar system. And some of them come to earth. Are we in danger?

• 14:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  What do you think?

• 14:42Daniel Whiteson?

  Awesome question.

• 14:43Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 14:44Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, we're not going to pass through any sort of dense part of its tail. Like, we're going to be the other side of the sun when it turns around and it's going to exit the solar system. So it's not like it's going to leave a long wake that we're going to fly right through. But, you know, it is leaving particles and bits of itself in our solar system. And so who knows? If this thing actually is from aliens and like seeded with all sorts of weird microbes, maybe they designed this thing to like explode when it comes close to the sun and spray all of its stuff everywhere through the solar system. In which case, some of them will come to Earth and could potentially, you know, come through the atmosphere and land on the surface and infect people's brains and convince them to live in Virginia rather than California. I mean, we're talking deep tragedies here.

• 15:27Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, give me a break, man.

• 15:29Daniel Whiteson?

  That's where he was going, right? They might even convince them to study chemistry. I mean, those aliens, whoo, they're up to no good.

• 15:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  I mean, that, that would be a nefarious plot. Absolutely. So, but do you think, so, okay, so when we were doing our tardigrade episode, which we did a little while back, we showed that, yes, tardigrades are like resistant to tons of things, but when you expose them to the radiation in space, they do kick the dust.

• 15:52Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 15:52Kelly Weinersmith?

  They can't survive that indefinitely. And I would have to imagine there's not a lot that could survive an interstellar voyage, but I guess we can't rule it out. What do you think?

• 16:02Daniel Whiteson?

  It depends. I mean, you could survive an interstellar voyage if you're the core of one of these objects, right? If you're shielded by a lot of ice and rock, then yeah, you could survive the radiation. You know, whether you could survive being frozen that long and your metabolism could restart, you know, I think that's a biological question, but I think we've seen that in lots of critters here on Earth. So I think it's plausible for things to be frozen at the core and survive the interstellar trip and even the solar wind. But then, you know, once it disperses in our solar system, you know, then it's vulnerable again. And I think that's the most dangerous point.

• 16:36Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, when it gets kicked out of the coma or kicked into the coma.

• 16:39Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. Unless, of course, they come out in, you know, tiny little microscopic alien ships and so they have their own shielding. I mean, if we're going to speculate here, like, let's go all in, right?

• 16:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  Let's go lobe style.

• 16:52Daniel Whiteson?

  Let's pretend we're the chair of the Harvard Physics Department.

• 16:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  That would be pretty solid.

• 16:58Daniel Whiteson?

  Exactly. So Tim, this is a really exciting event. It's super fascinating. There's no evidence that it's aliens. Like, the astronomers want to believe that it's aliens, but so far, there's nothing that points in that direction. But of course, you don't know. And it could be that it comes deeper into the solar system and we learn new stuff, in which case, we're all very happy to believe that this is aliens, if the data points that way. And in that scenario, it's not going to directly leave a wake for us to fly through, but it could disperse stuff which eventually will come to Earth. I mean, there's a lot of cosmic dust that falls to Earth every day. So it could contribute to that. We could all be breathing in bits of an alien package one day.

• 17:37Kelly Weinersmith?

  Could we have all already breathed in Oumuamua bits?

• 17:42Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 17:43Kelly Weinersmith?

  Nice. Exciting. We are connected through space and time. All right, let's see what Tim thinks of our answer. Is he gonna sleep well tonight or not? Let's find out.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Hey, Daniel and Kelly. Thank you for answering all of my questions. I can rest assured now, knowing that Earth won't go through an alien comet's tail and gain a whole bunch of microbes that will convert us to alien life forms. Keep up the good work. Thank you.

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• 20:49Daniel Whiteson?

  All right, we are back and we're answering questions from listeners, questions we get every email and also questions on our Discord. If you love thinking about the universe and hearing us chat about it, you might want to chat with us. We are very active on our Discord. If you want to join, it's for everybody who's curious about the universe. Go to our website, www.danielandkelly.org, where you'll find the link to join the Discord. So many fun, nice people talking about the universe and asking questions. Kelly, tell us about this question.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Well, first I'd like to just note that we also have the best moderators. So, you know, another good reason to come join us. All right, so Marco from Discord had this question about parasite manipulation of host behavior.

• 21:30Daniel Whiteson?

  And Marco's not just another Kelly Sock Puppet account?

• 21:34Kelly Weinersmith?

  I mean, you'll never know. You'll never know.

• 21:38Speaker 05

  Hi, Daniel and Kelly. I have a question about the jewel wasp discussed in Ed Young's book, An Immense World. Horrified is an understatement, as is the sentence, I had a nightmare about this. In the book, Young describes how the jewel wasp feels around for the cockroach's brain with its stinger. And I keep wondering about the evolutionary mechanisms at play here. The wasp doesn't know what a brain is, obviously, but how on earth could it have evolved the precision to accomplish this? Unwelt aside, this strongly implies that the wasp has not only absurd command of its own body, but the body of the cockroach as well. There's a ton of evolutionary time to miss the sweet spots in the cockroach's back and head and not be successful. There's a neat series I've

• 22:21Speaker 05

  been watching on octopuses, and it discusses how these intelligent creatures learn everything on their own without parental support. Wasps aren't teaching their young where to sting. So how does this amazing ability emerge from this tiny little wasp brain? Just realized I've been listening to the podcast long enough to realize the answer is, we don't know. Thanks for everything. Love the show. Can't wait to hear the answer.

• 22:45Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. So first of all, I love that Marco clearly has been paying attention and suspects that there's a high probability the answer is going to be, I don't know.

• 22:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  Good job, Marco.

• 22:55Daniel Whiteson?

  Welcome to the forefront of science, everyone.

• 22:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right. That's right. And so, yes, the answer at the very end for a lot of these questions is going to be, we don't know. But let's talk about some of the things that we do know first, because I love this system. And I'm going to use it as an excuse to tell you all about it.

• 23:11Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. So tell us about the jewel wasp and what it does to poor cockroaches. Are we going to feel sympathy for cockroaches at the end of this?

• 23:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, maybe. And then I got to talk about the parasitoids that manipulate web building behavior in spiders and actually makes you feel sympathy for spiders? That's another day. I love those systems. Their videos are just like nuts. Anyway, all right.

• 23:31Daniel Whiteson?

  Today, we are pro cockroach. Tell us why.

• 23:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  Okay. Well, I'm gonna, I'm actually gonna end up on team jewel wasp. But anyway, so, all right. So jewel wasps, they're beautiful. They're kind of iridescent. They need to lay their Eggs somewhere and provide their babies with a meal. And so essentially what they're going to do is paralyze a cockroach, hide it in a really great spot, lay an egg on it. That egg is going to hatch, eat the cockroach from the inside, and then leave its carcass when it's done. That's the big overview.

• 23:58Daniel Whiteson?

  And the cockroach is alive while these things are growing inside of it?

• 24:02Kelly Weinersmith?

  The egg is attached to the outside of its body, but then the baby does eat its way in.

• 24:07Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, boy.

• 24:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, it's it's pretty gruesome.

• 24:10Daniel Whiteson?

  And why does the cockroach have to be alive? Is that so that it stays fresh and tasty? The way we like, put like, living lobsters into pots?

• 24:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, yeah, I I don't feel comfortable about that. Don't do it myself. But anyway, so this would be like, you wouldn't want to leave the pureed spinach for your baby out on the counter for like, a week. You know, you want your cockroach and your spinach to be fresh.

• 24:31Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right, so here's here's how the process goes down. So the jewel wasp and the cockroach get in a tussle. Because the cockroach knows that the jewel wasp is bad news. So the first thing that the jewel wasp does, if it gets lucky enough and can get the angle right, is it stings the cockroach in the thorax. So like, the chest kind of region. And this will paralyze the cockroach's front legs for up to five minutes. And so this makes it so the cockroach can't fight back quite as well. And the jewel wasp will deliver its second sting. The second sting is in the head. So it goes through the neck, kind of moves through the tissues until it finds the brain. It's got this like, ova positer that delivers the sting. So it's almost like a needle at the end. And so it puts this needle up into the brain, and it delivers another sting.

• 25:15Daniel Whiteson?

  Yikes.

• 25:15Kelly Weinersmith?

  And this sting, I know, it's nasty. This sting, but I love it. This sting does a couple of different things.

• 25:21Daniel Whiteson?

  It's nasty in just the way Kelly loves. We're learning a lot about you today.

• 25:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, well, nature's horrible, but fascinating. And so now the cockroach starts grooming itself furiously. And I think we're not totally sure why that is happening. Maybe it's because they want the meal to be like, super fresh. No like, bacteria infecting your meal. And so the cockroach cleans its stuff up a lot. And then another interesting thing is that the cockroach technically is capable of moving.

• 25:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  But its desire to initiate its own movement pretty much goes away. So it can move, but it doesn't.

• 25:56Daniel Whiteson?

  It's desire. We're talking about what it's like to be a cockroach. Like we're in the mind of the cockroach, thinking about what it wants.

• 26:03Kelly Weinersmith?

  So, all right, you, I'm being a bit anthropomorphic about it. It, the cockro, I don't know what the cockroach is thinking. But whereas usually cockroaches in an area where they know that there's like something dangerous.

• 26:14Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Kelly Weinersmith?

  Would initiate movement and would get out of there. This cockroach just kind of stands around. But it's still capable of moving because the parasitoid will like find a good nesting spot. And then come back and grab the cockroach's antenna and lead it to a nesting spot. And the cockroach will follow.

• 26:33Daniel Whiteson?

  It's like, it's like driving it. Let's go this way, let's go that way.

• 26:38Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, the, the way it's usually talked about is like, it's like walking a dog on a leash or something like that. It just follows. And so then it gets moved into this little like nook where everything can be hidden. So that nothing will eat the cockroach and also eat the baby. Uh, cause the cockroach can't fight back really anymore. And it will, the mom will put the cockroach in the nest, lay the egg somewhere on the cockroach. I think like near its leg and then seal up this little nest site with, you know, leaves and rocks and stuff like that. And then the rest of the process takes about eight days. The egg hatches, eats the inside of the cockroach, pupates inside. So it goes through a couple developmental stages in the body of the cockroach.

• 27:15Daniel Whiteson?

  So it's basically laid the egg along with some food. It's sort of like a chicken egg. It's the embryo with the food, but the chicken provides it instead of stealing it from a cockroach. All right.

• 27:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, that's exactly right. And, and a lot of parasitoids do this. There are parasitoids, you know, just the other day I saw a parasitoid dragging a giant spider. It had paralyzed and it was dragging it to its nest so that it could then lay eggs on it and keep its meal fresh.

• 27:39Daniel Whiteson?

  Oh, boy.

• 27:39Kelly Weinersmith?

  And so what's spe, special about this system, not from the perspective of the cockroach, of course, but, uh, is that a lot of parasitoids will paralyze food and then lay their eggs in or on it as a like meal for when they hatch. But you've got this extra layer where the parasitoid is also able to like direct the cockroach. To go to a particular location rather than needing to like physically drag it there, which a bunch of others have to do.

• 28:04Daniel Whiteson?

  Wow, amazing.

• 28:05Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes, amazing.

• 28:06Daniel Whiteson?

  So the cockroach like participates in its own demise?

• 28:08Kelly Weinersmith?

  It does. It does.

• 28:10Daniel Whiteson?

  It's complicit. That's gross.

• 28:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  Complicit, I don't know that I, that's, that word has too much human baggage. Let's, it unwillingly unwittingly does, does the wasp's bidding. Okay, so Marco was interested in the fact that when that second sting happens, and the sting is happening in the brain, the wasp that is stinging the brain, its mom isn't there to like teach it how to do that. So how does it just know where to sting in a brain?

• 28:40Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  And at the end of the day, the answer is going to be, we don't really know. But I'm going to give you a little bit more detail about what is actually happening when it stings the brain. So we talked about how it puts its little like hypodermic needle-esque butt into the neck of the wasp and it starts going up to the brain. And there have been some experiments trying to figure out what happens inside the cockroach's brain.

• 29:01Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Kelly Weinersmith?

  So one thing they did was they injected carbon 14 radio labeled amino acids into the stinger, and then they looked to see where it ended up in the cockroach. And it does end up in this area called the subesophageal ganglion. So it's like kind of the bottom part of a cockroach's brain.

• 29:19Daniel Whiteson?

  So injecting carbon 14 labeled amino acids, this is just a way of tracing like where something goes. It's like add like a little dye to so you can see where something goes. But in this case, it's not a visual dye. It's like you're measuring the radioactive decays or how's that work?

• 29:33Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep, that's exactly right.

• 29:34Daniel Whiteson?

  Fascinating. Wow.

• 29:35Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, yeah, pretty cool experiment. Okay, and then they did some other experiments to try to figure out what it is that the wasp is queuing in on to figure out where it's supposed to deposit, what we call, we call this the stuff that gets deposited during the sting venom, which is awesome. Anyway, so, so they've done things like humanely euthanize a cockroach, and then remove its brain, and then give it back to the wasp. And when you do that, the wasp spends a bunch of time like searching and not delivering its venom. It's like, what, something is missing in here? So it's like, it's definitely.

• 30:10Daniel Whiteson?

  It's looking for the brain.

• 30:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  It's looking for the brain and it gets kind of confused when it's not there. And so then the scientists looked a little bit closer at the ovopositor and they found sensors on there. And some of the sensors are mechanical receptors, so they like can touch things. And some are chemical receptors. And so first they wanted to dive into what happens with the mechanical receptors. And so they, they took all the mechanical receptors off of the wasp. And the wasp just kind of like searched around for a really long time. It was super confused because it couldn't feel anything. Then they humanely euthanized the cockroaches and they put a very soft substance that wasn't very brain like into the head of the cockroach. And the wasp also searched around for a really long time and was like, what is going on?

• 30:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  But then they put a hard substance, harder substance that's more like the brain. And the wasp responded more quickly. So it doesn't have to be a brain, but it's got to feel right.

• 31:06Daniel Whiteson?

  So they're testing what the wasp wants to sting. And they're like, how about a squishy brain? How about an actual brain? How about something that feels like a brain? They're like exploring the space of what the wasp is willing to engage with. That's fascinating.

• 31:18Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and if you like, kind of mix up the brain and kind of change its consistency by like, mixing it up with like scissors or something. They also are confused and are like, what the heck is going on here? So it looks like the mechanical stuff really matters. And so that suggests to me that there's some genetic coding that gets passed from generation to generation. Doesn't need to be learned where they know like it goes in the neck. And then you look for something that feels a certain way. And I don't think we've looked close enough in this system to understand exactly how that happens. But we have looked at other behaviors that are, you know, what we would say is innate. They just happen without learning.

• 31:58Daniel Whiteson?

  So it's so important that it touches the brain, that the system has evolved requirements to ensure that it only happens when there's like an actual brain there to be delivered on, not just like randomly spraying this stuff in the head of the cockroach.

• 32:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah. So presumably the chemical cocktail that gets delivered into the brain is expensive to make in some way. Like requires a lot of energy or certain nutrients or something. So you don't want to go stinging things and wasting it. And so if this cockroach seems like it's totally off for some reason, then you, you abandon it.

• 32:30Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, go, go find a cockroach with a bigger, tastier brain.

• 32:34Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right. What, well, there are other parasitoids that can test and see like, are there already parasitoid wasps living inside of this insect? Because I don't want my babies to have to compete with babies that had a head start. And so there's all sorts of like crazy stuff that happens when the wasp is like evaluating its host for quality.

• 32:52Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. So this is really fascinating and very complex behavior. And I feel like Marco's question is essentially, how does the wasp evolve this kind of behavior? The mom is not there to teach it, which means it must be somehow innate, which suggests it's like in the code of the DNA, which means it comes from evolution, not from like the wasp culture. How is such a complex process ever evolved? It feels impossible to imagine that you develop such an intricate system because it needs many parts to work all at once.

• 33:22Kelly Weinersmith?

  Well, maybe your imagination is limited, Daniel. No, I'm just kidding. Yes, it is very complicated. So one of the ways that we look at the evolution of complex behaviors is that we'll look at things that closely related species are doing. And sometimes you can see the steps that build in a more complicated behavior. So for example, this system has two stings, and one of them is a little bit more complicated. But a lot of other parasitoids, as we've already talked about, do one sting to paralyze their prey. So you can see that as like a beneficial early step. We have not in this system been able to work out the order in which all of these complicated things evolved and sort of built up.

• 34:02Daniel Whiteson?

  And so let me just make it explicit. You're suggesting that it's a complex series of behaviors, but there probably are simpler versions of it that are also beneficial. You don't need all of the complex pieces in order to gain some benefit, and that would allow you to tell the evolutionary story. Is that the argument?

• 34:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  That, yep, that's exactly right. And every intermediate step needs to be beneficial in order for it to like keep passing through the population. Unless you've got drift going on. But anyway, okay, so these are, there are beneficial steps. And, and you know, you can imagine something like initially, the jewel wasps only stung the cockroach once and paralyzed it. And then you had to drag it. But then there was one wasp that had some mutation that made it extra stabby. And it stabbed once in the thorax and once in the brain. And that did something that made the cockroach a little bit easier to handle, which meant the mom could lay more eggs and could do this more times. And maybe that got passed on genetically. And you can imagine generation after generation that gets honed and more and more beneficial.

• 35:00Daniel Whiteson?

  And maybe my imagination is limited, but does the phrase extra stabby appear in the biological literature anywhere?

• 35:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  No, that, that's just because I'm super creative, you know, that was my creativity. I'm just kidding. You're very creative. But yeah, so we don't know exactly the path that this took. But you can imagine how it would have built up. And then, you know, it's possible somebody could test this by looking at closely related wasp species. And maybe if you understood more mechanistically about how this was all happening, you could understand how one step could happen after another. But for this system, I, I would say we don't have a really good evolutionary answer.

• 35:37Daniel Whiteson?

  I think that all makes sense that complex behaviors evolve from simpler behaviors that are also beneficial. And it sometimes takes a while to figure out what path you can take from simpler to more complex. I think the thing that blows my mind is that these complex behaviors feel kind of fragile. Like, everything has to work for this to happen. And it feels like there's so many ways for it to go wrong. It's incredible that it relies on such a complex system. And then it mostly works. And then I look at, you know, like, humans, I've raised a child, it's complicated. It's, it feels like there's so many ways it can go wrong. And then I walk around, I'm like, wow, all of these humans, they were raised by people. It seems to mostly work. It's incredible.

• 36:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 36:17Daniel Whiteson?

  You know, biology seems so fragile, but it is pretty robust.

• 36:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, I mean, it is incredible. But, you know, there's plenty of times when jewel wasps go after cockroaches in nature and the cockroach wins and the jewel wasp doesn't get to sting, or

• 36:29Daniel Whiteson?

  Yay, cockroach.

• 36:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yay, cockroach. Or, you know, the jewel wasp dies for one reason or another, or just doesn't Like there's plenty of times in nature where these things do fail. And those individuals usually just get wiped out of the population. And, and just so it doesn't sound like I'm saying, well, whenever we're talking about complex behaviors, we always just imagine a picture. There are systems where step by step, we've sort of figured this stuff out. And I'm working on finding a behavioral geneticist to come on the show to talk to us about those answers. So stay tuned.

• 36:59Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. Well, I think that's a pretty good answer for Marco. Let's inject that into his head and see how his brain responds.

• 37:06Kelly Weinersmith?

  Did we lead you to the answer, Marco? I promise we won't lay any eggs on you.

• 37:12Speaker 06

  After hearing your answer, I admit I'm no less terrified of jewel wasps. I can only hope I don't have another fever dream frantically trying to keep one from stinging the back of my head by jumping into water I can't find. I'm forever in awe of evolution coming down to random events and mind boggling numbers until some advantage emerges and gets successfully encoded. I keep going back to a couple of points you made. One is that without passing down knowledge, genetic coding instructs in organisms behavior. The wasps are compelled to behave as they do, then evolution handles the rest. As with most of the podcast episodes, we end up with more questions like, how did Kelly end up on team jewel wasp? I can't side with that freak show.

• 37:54Speaker 06

  I fully support Wally's cute sidekick, not the jewel wasps. That feels like siding with monstrous killers or the 17% of people that prefer white chocolate. Not tolerate it, but like it better. It truly is an extraordinary universe. Thanks, Daniel and Kelly.

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• 38:48Speaker 05

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers, producer, songwriter, guitarist and co-founder of the group Sheik. A great song has a way of defining a moment, a moment of joy, heartbreak, or anything in between. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, dropping in on some of the coolest, most fascinating artists working today. We'll go deep into their lives and careers and hear what it was like before the moment that made them. From hitmakers like Miguel.

• 39:22Speaker 06

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• 39:34Speaker 05

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• 39:37Speaker 07

  You know, a song is a story and the verse is setting the scene. And for me, at least, it's allowing me to be personal and vulnerable with the audience, whether it's about my wife and I'm being vulnerable about her, or it's about, you know, my parents and I'm being vulnerable to them. And it's almost like a cinematic piece in a way where each song tells that beautiful story.

• 39:55Speaker 05

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• 40:07Speaker 07

  Hello, hello, I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI. AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making

• 40:25Kelly Weinersmith?

  decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where. Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

• 40:49Kelly Weinersmith?

  Next up, we have a question from southern Scotland, and I am so excited because I got to go to Scotland for the first time last month. I was in Edinburgh, which is probably not where Ben is from, but Ben, your country is beautiful. I loved it. And vegetarian haggis, A+.

• 41:03Daniel Whiteson?

  And I'm going to Scotland next week for a wedding in Inverness.

• 41:07Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, and you're gonna wear a kilt.

• 41:08Daniel Whiteson?

  I'm gonna wear a kilt, exactly. All right, but today, the question is not about Daniel's wardrobe at Scottish weddings. It's about what these terms in science mean. So let's hear Ben's question.

• 41:20Speaker 05

  Hello, Daniel and Kelly. It's Ben here from Cuckoobury in southern Scotland. I'd really like to know what you think is the difference, if any, between a theory, a law, a hypothesis, and a model. I'm especially curious about Darwin's theory of the origin of species. Is this a typical scientific theory? Does it have predictive power? Can it be refuted by experiment? I feel I really need the combined advice of a particle physicist and a parasitologist to help to settle these questions. I really enjoy your podcast.

• 41:57Kelly Weinersmith?

  Oh, this is a really great question.

• 41:59Daniel Whiteson?

  This is a really fun question. I'm really glad that Ben asked it because it's one of these questions where if you ask philosophers, or if you ask scientists, you'll get a different answer. And if you ask different philosophers and different scientists, you'll get lots of different answers.

• 42:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah.

• 42:11Daniel Whiteson?

  It's something a lot of people are not very precise about, frankly.

• 42:14Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, I think when I was an undergrad, I remember in my biology class, there were definitions of all of these terms. And then I was very confused later on when they were used in ways that were not at all consistent with what was in that textbook. And anyway, now I know we're all sloppy.

• 42:30Daniel Whiteson?

  Well, you know, scientists are practitioners who are not experts in the philosophy of science. We go out there and we do science and we say theory, we say law, we say model. We haven't all taken philosophy classes where like the distinctions between these things are argued by nerds who are super excited about it. You know, we're excited about the biology or the chemistry or the physics or that kind of stuff. And so when you hear scientists talk about it, they're not often being very precise because they're not experts in the definitions of these terms. Philosophers of science are the folks who really narrow down on this. But again, also philosophers of science disagree reasonably with each other about how to describe this stuff. So I'll break it down for you in a way that makes sense to me, but definitely other people will have.

• 43:12Daniel Whiteson?

  Different definitions of this. This is not definitive in any sense.

• 43:16Kelly Weinersmith?

  And if I could just mention that I also think another thing that makes it complicated isn't just that most of us don't actually know what these terms mean. It's that even if we did, when you understand something, it's not usually like there's a clear

• 43:28Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 43:28Kelly Weinersmith?

  switch that gets flipped where you're like, oh, now we've entered law lands before we were in hypothesis land. It's like you need to slowly accumulate and it's not always clear when it's time to like update to a new term. And so anyway, that probably complicates things too.

• 43:41Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let's start with laws. I think of a law as something the universe actually does. There's some truth out there and one of the basic assumptions in science is that the universe follows laws. And we don't know them, but we can do experiments and think about it and all those sorts of stuff to try to figure them out. So we think the universe follows some sort of concise, simple, fundamental rules, and those are the laws of the universe. All right, still with me.

• 44:12Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep.

• 44:12Daniel Whiteson?

  Cool. Now, we don't know what those things are, but we can have theories about it. So we went from law to theory. Theories are like our explanations for how the universe works. So general relativity, for example, is a theory about how matter bends space and how space tells matter to move. Quantum mechanics is a theory that tells us that space is filled with oscillating fields. These are theories. They're like our explanatory frameworks to describe the things that we see in the universe. And we hope that those theories line up with the truth. The laws are actually out there in the universe. And so theories, it's kind of a fuzzy term, right? Theories are sort of like our ideas. They include a bunch of evidence and they come together to give like

• 44:57Daniel Whiteson?

  some sort of coherent explanation for how something is working in the universe. A theory is not just like a random guess, not just like, hmm, maybe it's this, right? Like a fan theory to explain the ending of some movie you just saw, right? It's something that's really based in evidence and has been tested and it's sort of part of our explanation of the universe.

• 45:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, lots of different labs have looked at it. It's been looked at from lots of different angles. Predictions have been tested. Yeah, agreed.

• 45:26Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, so the whole like, you know, gravity is just a theory, man, doesn't mean that like, we don't know anything about gravity, or it's just like one of 10 options to explain why we stick to the surface of the earth, right? A theory can be something that's very well-developed and understood.

• 45:41Kelly Weinersmith?

  I don't know, was gravity really the best pick there? Seems like there's a lot we don't know about gravity.

• 45:47Daniel Whiteson?

  There is a lot we don't know about gravity. That's the other thing about a theory is that they're never complete, right? They're evolving, they're changing, you know? Gravity is a wonderful, amazing theory, but there's definitely a lot we don't know about, you know, what's going on at the center of black holes, or the early universe, or fundamentally, how gravity works for particles, right? Definitely, it's not a complete explanation of the universe, it's an explanation of part of the universe, and we don't have a unified theory. We'd love to have one, because we think there is one set of laws, but we have sort of piecemeal theories that we think are approximating those laws.

• 46:20Kelly Weinersmith?

  Excellent. I'm glad we have a scientist slash philosopher on the show.

• 46:25Daniel Whiteson?

  So there are laws out there. We try to build theories about how the universe works and follow those laws. What's a model, in that sense? And model is a very overloaded term. In physics, we use model to mean sort of a simplified version of a theory, because theories are complicated. Like, if you wanted to calculate the orbit of the earth around the sun, you couldn't use general relativity. Nobody knows how to do that calculation. General relativity, really, really nasty. The only times we've ever been able to solve problems with general relativity are in simplified settings, like an empty universe, a universe with just a black hole in it, a universe filled with uniform dust. None of those correspond to our reality. Our reality is too complicated to solve with the full theory. And so, we

• 47:10Daniel Whiteson?

  build a model, we can simplify the universe, we can say like, hmm, let's assume the universe is empty except for the earth and the sun. Now let's do the calculation. And we hope that the calculation is still relevant to the real universe, right? We find a simpler version, something we actually can crank on, and hope that the answer is still relevant. Or, we can simplify the calculations. We can say, well, let's use an approximate Version of the theory, you know, Einstein's equations for general relativity. If things are far apart and masses are not too high and they're slow moving, they reduce to Newton's theory. And so you can use Newton's theory for most stuff. You want to calculate whether your cannonball is going to fly over the castle walls? You don't need to use general relativity.

• 47:55Daniel Whiteson?

  You're going to get basically the right answer using a simpler model, right? A model of general relativity, which is just Newton's equations. And so, you know, spherical cows are a fun joke because that's the kind of thing physicists do. We're like, well, let's replace a complex situation with a simpler situation where the answer is basically the same. And so a model is a simplification. Either you've simplified the universe or you've simplified the theory so that you can get some answers out.

• 48:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, and models are great. They help you decide if, you know, your simplification.

• 48:23Daniel Whiteson?

  Yep.

• 48:24Kelly Weinersmith?

  When you do a simplification, you're making assumptions that some things don't matter that much. And so then when your model gives you an answer and you test it, you can see, oh, was I right? That that thing doesn't matter that much. And, you know, ideally it's an iterative process. The model gives you a prediction you can test. You actually go out and you test it and then you update your model as needed.

• 48:41Daniel Whiteson?

  That's right. And it's important to understand that every calculation anybody has ever done uses models, uses simplifications. All of physics uses approximations. If you want to calculate how the earth goes around the sun, in principle, you need to include the gravitational tug from every single object out there in the universe, which is pulling on the earth. Most of those are negligible and some rock out there in Andromeda is really not going to change the path of the earth in a way we can measure, but in principle it does. So we always do approximations. It's impossible to ever do full calculations in any of our theories for any situations. So all of science is approximate to some degree. And that's where a lot of science happens is figuring out how to be clever about it.

• 49:23Daniel Whiteson?

  What approximations can I make so that the answer is still useful and relevant, right? And I can get this done in a PhD length of time and not be here for 10,000 years.

• 49:32Kelly Weinersmith?

  That can often be a very painstaking part of the process though. What are my parameter estimates that are reasonable and useful? And that can be a lot of work.

• 49:41Daniel Whiteson?

  That's right. And so that's what a model is. And let me say that model is used very differently in different fields. Like I talk to computer scientists and machine learning people. For them, a model is like a trained network. They talk about neural networks as my model or their boosted decision tree is a model. They use model to mean something very different than physicists do. And I know biologists talk about like model systems. They're studying the brain, they're doing it in mice, or they're doing it in rats, or they're doing it in flies. To them, that's the meaning of model, like which model system are you using?

• 50:11Kelly Weinersmith?

  But, but when, when someone says to you, you know, what do you do? And you say, oh, I do modeling. They know that that means that you are using equations to try to capture the dynamics of a system and are making predictions that way. So we, I think we use the word model in a couple of different ways. One of which is model systems.

• 50:28Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah, and I think that fits in because like you're using the mouse as a model system to understand Alzheimer's because you can't and you shouldn't do experiments on humans and to use the mouse brain as a stand-in, as an approximation for the human brain, because you know, it's not okay to do the things to humans that you do to mice. And maybe it's not okay to do to mice either, but it's maybe more okay. I think it's the argument biologists make.

• 50:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, yes, depends on who you're talking to, but I guess I'd prefer it happened on mice. Yeah.

• 50:55Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. And so the last term was hypothesis. We test our model by generating hypotheses. We're saying, here's my model of the universe. I think that this interstellar comet is made of ice and CO2. Let me generate a hypothesis about what James Webb Space Telescope will see when we point it at it. And then I can compare that hypothesis to what we actually see. So the model predicts something that's our hypothesis and then we compare it to reality in order to learn whether the model is correct or not.

• 51:23Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep.

• 51:24Daniel Whiteson?

  Cool. So we have laws, theories, models and hypotheses. And the last bit of Ben's question was a sort of loaded question about Darwin's theory. I hear a lot of this discussion online about how evolution is just a theory, man. And because it all happened in the past, it's not really predicting anything. It's just descriptive and therefore it's unfalsifiable and not really scientifically valid. And, and I wonder if these critiques are really done in good faith. You know, these are folks attacking evolution, trying to use the language of science to undermine it, but I don't think they really believe in the scientific process personally.

• 51:56Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, agreed.

• 51:57Daniel Whiteson?

  So let's talk about it. Darwin's theory is definitely a theory. I mean, it provides an explanation for how specization happens, right? There's lots of evidence out. There that's pulled together, it definitely qualifies as a theory. And in that sense, it's not just like some dude's random guess, right? It's a well-established explanation for a huge variety of stuff that we see out there. What do you think?

• 52:19Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yes. So for 150 years, we've been trying to decide if evolution through natural selection is supported by the data. And, you know, there's probably evolutionary biologists in every department that does research around the world. And we have found results that make us think about evolution through natural selection in a different way. But in 150 years, none of us have come up with a result that's like, oh, definitely we dropped this theory. So we've got 150 years of researching, coming up with predictions based on this theory that are supported by future work. So yeah, I agree with you.

• 52:53Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. And Ben asks, like, is this a predictive theory? And I think the answer is absolutely, you know, it predicts lots of things about what you should find out there in the world. You should find fossils, you should find simpler behaviors, leading to more complex behaviors. You should see real time evolution, you know, when communities respond to changing circumstances. You should see a connection between the species that we observe and the genetic information that leads to them. This is, I think, a really powerful confirmation of natural selection is finding the sort of mechanism, the DNA, the biochemistry that underlies all this and seeing confirmed in the history of that evolution in the DNA.

• 53:33Daniel Whiteson?

  I think it's super fascinating, you know, we can learn things about like when communities diverge by seeing the differences in their DNA.

• 53:40Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep, yep. And, and you know, Darwin is clearly like the best scientist of all time. Sorry, Daniel. And, and so if you could be the scientist who finds the data that refutes this theory, you could replace the name Darwin, right? And so there's no

• 53:56Daniel Whiteson?

  mainstream narrative the biologist is trying to protect.

• 53:59Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yeah, that's right. That's right.

• 54:01Daniel Whiteson?

  No, every scientist out there wants to overthrow the mainstream narrative because that's how you become a famous scientist. And also, that's what we all want to do. We want to learn the truth about the universe. We're driven by our curiosity to reveal the truth, not to support some sort of dogma.

• 54:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  That's right.

• 54:18Daniel Whiteson?

  But you raised, I think, the last, maybe the most important point, is the question about whether this could be refuted. So can you, Kelly, imagine some evidence that hypothetically would undercut this theory of evolution?

• 54:30Kelly Weinersmith?

  At this point, we have so much evidence, it's kind of hard to imagine something we could have missed and like one piece of information that would refute everything. So I think at this point, if you had a finding that like, you know, multicellular life existed before we found unicellular life, like it just popped into existence or something, we would have to look really hard at like, have we collected all the data and all the different places?

• 54:54Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah.

• 54:55Kelly Weinersmith?

  Because there's this mountain of evidence and you've got this one thing that maybe doesn't fit. But I do think that if there were evidence out there, scientists would be open to considering it and looking at it and trying to understand if that makes us wrong, or if it's just a like shady corner in the room of evolution that we haven't explored yet, and we just need to move into that into that area instead.

• 55:16Daniel Whiteson?

  Yeah. And I think the question is reasonable. Like, we expect theories to do more than just describe the data we've seen. We want them to generalize. If they really are coming close to the truth, the laws of the actual universe, they should be able to predict things we haven't seen. And Ben's question is like, well, hasn't this all this stuff happened in the past? Yeah, a lot of stuff has happened in the past, but we haven't seen it yet. And so we can predict like, I predict what I'm going to find when I dig into the ground. Yeah, the stuff is already there and the events already occurred. But if we haven't seen it yet, then it's fair to predict it and to treat that as a test of the theory.

• 55:50Kelly Weinersmith?

  Yep, agreed.

• 55:50Daniel Whiteson?

  All right. So Ben, let us know if we answered your question about the definition of these terms and their application to Darwin's theory of the origin of the species.

• 55:59Speaker 05

  Well, Daniel and Kelly, even though the classification of groups of ideas is obviously a complicated topic, I just knew that you would come up with some clear insights. Thank you very much. And it's good to hear that Darwin's amazing theories are currently being used by scientists to help both explain and predict many phenomena. I wish you all the best for your trip to Inverness, Daniel, and I hope the weather matches that in Southern California. So you can stay comfortable. Wearing that kills.

• 56:27Kelly Weinersmith?

  All right. Well, that was a ton of fun. As always, I learned a ton. Hopefully the listeners learned a ton, too. Please remember you can write us at questions at danielandkelly.org. You can join us on our Discord channel. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram and Blue Sky. Reach out to us, please.

• 56:43Daniel Whiteson?

  And let curiosity drive you through your day.

• 56:52Kelly Weinersmith?

  Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you.

• 56:58Daniel Whiteson?

  We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe.

• 57:04Kelly Weinersmith?

  We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you.

• 57:10Daniel Whiteson?

  We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us at questions at danielandkelly.org.

• 57:17Kelly Weinersmith?

  Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky. And on all of those platforms, you can find us at D and K Universe.

• 57:26Daniel Whiteson?

  Don't be shy. Write to us.

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