Pod Insights Short Wave The Mystery Mollusk Roaming The Midnight Zone About this episode This critter lurks in the ocean's midnight zone, has a voluminous hood, is completely see through and is bioluminescent. It's unlike any nudibranchs deep sea experts have ever seen before — and now, the researchers who spent twenty years studying them have finally published their findings.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This message comes from Avalara Aviator. Aviator is the agent hub for tax and compliance. Purpose-built AI agents work around the clock and across business systems to help execute the work. Visit avalara.com/aviator.
0:14 Emily Kwong? Hey, short waivers. Emily Kwong here. And Regina Barber. With our biweekly science news roundup, featuring the hosts of All Things Considered. Today, we have
0:25 Emily Kwong? Ari Shapiro.
0:26 Speaker 02 Oh, I love that introduction.
0:28 Emily Kwong? Welcome back.
0:28 Speaker 02 With the puff of smoke, the cannons, the fireworks. Good to be here.
0:34 Emily Kwong? So it has been an exciting week in science news. First, we're going to tell you about a newly identified deep-sea creature. And then the benefits of exercise for healing our nervous system. And finally, science-backed tips for holiday eating.
0:47 Speaker 02 And I will sit back and enjoy it all.
0:49 Emily Kwong? All that on this episode of Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.
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2:14 Speaker 02 OK, to start us off, let's go deep. What's down there?
2:18 Emily Kwong? So much stuff you don't want to know. No, we're going to talk about
2:20 Regina Barber? I do want to know.
2:21 Emily Kwong? this mysterious creature. Yeah, discovered in 2000 and now, for the first time, described in detail in the journal Deep Sea Research Part One by scientists at Embary. That's the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.
2:34 Speaker 02 I love Monterey Bay. It's an amazing place.
2:35 Emily Kwong? Yes. Yes, and they call this creature off their shores Batha Devius Cadactulus.
2:42 Speaker 02 How devious is it?
2:43 Emily Kwong? We're going to get into that because for a long time, they called it the mystery mollusk.
2:47 Speaker 02 Mystery mollusk. What's so mysterious about it?
2:51 Regina Barber? Yeah, well, one of the researchers, Bruce Robison, he said that at first, he and his colleagues couldn't figure out what it was.
2:57 Speaker 05 It's a pretty funny looking animal, if you get right down to it. It sort of looks like it was made up from spare parts left over from making a bunch of other animals.
3:07 Speaker 02 Oh, like a sphinx or a griffon? No, I'm guessing that's not what it actually looks like.
3:11 Emily Kwong? Picture a jellyfish crossed with a slug.
3:13 Speaker 02 Whoa.
3:14 Emily Kwong? Adorned with this cape-like hood. And the whole thing is transparent, so you can see right through it. And it can glow in the dark, this creature, because it's bioluminescent.
3:23 Speaker 02 I think I'm in love.
3:24 Emily Kwong? You want to see a picture?
3:25 Speaker 02 I would love to. Ooh, cool. It's got like little things in the middle of it. What's going on there? Can you just describe what this looks like?
3:31 Regina Barber? It's kind of see-through. There is these like three pops of color inside of its body.
3:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:35 Regina Barber? The thing that looks like a dried up orange is its digestive gland.
3:39 Speaker 02 Huh.
3:39 Regina Barber? And the bright red stomach looks like a cherry. And that white patch, that's its brain.
3:43 Speaker 02 Wow, and researchers had no idea what it was?
3:46 Emily Kwong? But now they do. Through much observation and also DNA sequencing, they were able to confirm that this is a nudibranch.
3:53 Speaker 02 Oh, I actually from tide pooling as a kid in Oregon. I am obsessed with nudibranch. They're like the punk rockers of the sea. Sea slugs, basically, right?
4:03 Regina Barber? Yeah, but this creature, like, it didn't look like any other nudibranch they'd ever seen.
4:06 Speaker 02 No, it doesn't.
4:07 Emily Kwong? This is the only nudibranch we know of so far that swims in the deep water of the midnight zone. That's the middle zone of the ocean, between the sunlit shallow waters and the seafloor. This creature goes deep.
4:18 Speaker 02 I'm so glad to learn about this creature.
4:20 Emily Kwong? Yeah. I know. Bruce told us it's a testament to how much we don't know about the deep sea, despite it being the largest ecosystem on the planet and why it's so important to do this kind of work.
4:30 Speaker 05 If we're ever to live in harmony with our planet, we'd better understand all that's out there and how it all works. Otherwise, we're liable to screw it up.
4:43 Speaker 02 All right. From the deep sea, let's pivot to exercise. What is the new discovery about exercise?
4:49 Emily Kwong? It's so good for us.
4:51 Speaker 02 That doesn't seem like a new discovery.
4:53 Emily Kwong? We can end that. We wrap this up right here. But it's good for us in ways we're uncovering even yet. Like, it's good for our brain, our immune system, our bones and muscles, but also our nervous system.
5:03 Speaker 02 So what does that mean, actually?
5:05 Regina Barber? So specifically, our, like, motor neurons, the cells in our body that attach to your muscles and control your movement. A research team at MIT wanted to know how muscles and neurons talk to each other specifically during exercise.
5:17 Speaker 02 How did they measure that?
5:19 Emily Kwong? They created a mini muscle factory. They took a Petri dish and they popped in some muscle fibers from mice, grew them, and generated this small sheet of tissue about the size of a quarter.
5:30 Regina Barber? The team then stimulated the muscle over and over again, mimicking like what happens during exercise. And when the muscles contracted, they released this soup of biochemicals called myokines.
5:41 Emily Kwong? The team, led by Ratu Ramen, then collected these delicious myokines and fed them to motor neurons.
5:49 Speaker 06 And what we saw is that the neurons grew four times faster and farther when they had this chemical soup versus when they didn't.
5:58 Speaker 02 So is the takeaway here that exercise helps promote nerve growth? Is that what they found?
6:02 Emily Kwong? Yes, in this experiment, that chemical soup created by those muscles helped with these motor neurons. In a separate experiment, Ratu jiggled the motor neurons, like, using magnets, kind of simulating exercise and just the physical forces helped the neurons grow just as well. No chemicals required.
6:21 Speaker 02 I'm picturing like those 80s exercise machines where a strap just kind of wobbles you back and forth and it's supposed to have some positive impact.
6:27 Emily Kwong? I totally remember those commercials. Yeah, they kind of did that to these neurons, proving that exercise really is medicine, helping to promote nerve growth, which ultimately could improve mobility.
6:37 Regina Barber? Yeah, and that's important to human health. There are so many situations where communication between muscles and motor neurons breaks down from a traumatic muscle injury to a neurodegenerative disease like ALS. So Ratu hopes that this study, published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials this week, adds to a growing body of knowledge on how these cells interact and how mobility can be recovered.
7:00 Speaker 02 OK, we've discussed exercise, now let's get to feasting.
7:03 Regina Barber? Yes.
7:03 Speaker 02 Tips for getting through the holidays, what do we need to know?
7:07 Regina Barber? Well, first, let's start with the findings of a poll that sparked this reporting. Last month, this hospital group in Florida called Orlando Health surveyed over 1,000 Americans nationally and found that during the holidays, some people try to counteract eating big meals in unhealthy ways. So tips today that we're going to talk about are about promoting healthy thinking and eating instead.
7:27 Speaker 02 Take it away.
7:28 Regina Barber? All right. Ari scooted forward to the table.
7:31 Speaker 02 Ready.
7:31 Regina Barber? Let's do it. All right. Come up to our science-backed holiday eating buffet table. Tip number one, don't skip meals before the big holiday feast.
7:41 Speaker 02 I actually don't have that problem.
7:43 Regina Barber? OK.
7:43 Speaker 02 I'm not one to skip meals.
7:44 Regina Barber? Well, Ari, 1 in 4 people surveyed thought that was a good idea.
7:48 Speaker 07 OK, I'm just going to have coffee, or I'm not going to eat until dinner. And that's really counterproductive to what we should be doing.
7:55 Regina Barber? That's Shauna Manis Spence, a registered dietitian, not involved in the survey, but she suggests eating small meals with protein and fiber throughout the day and says that that will keep you from overeating during the big meal.
8:06 Speaker 02 Overeating, I thought, was the whole point of the holidays. OK, what's tip number two?
8:10 Regina Barber? Tip two, ditch those detoxes you see online. You know the ones I'm talking about, because you can be thankful for your kidneys and liver, those organs for detoxing and filtering out stuff your body doesn't want. Shauna and the dietitians at Orlando Health made it clear, you don't need any sort of over-the-counter or home remedy. They don't live up to the true detox promise, and they're a waste of money and can sometimes even be harmful.
8:33 Speaker 02 No binging on celery juice and chili pepper, huh?
8:36 Regina Barber? No, she calls it spicy water. But Shauna also warns that anyone can call themselves a nutritionist, but to be a dietitian in many states, you need credentials. So she advises to be wary of advice from TikTok or Instagram.
8:49 Speaker 02 Noted. OK, what's your final tip?
8:51 Regina Barber? Tip number three, dig into those holiday foods and just enjoy yourself, Ari, and everyone else.
8:57 Speaker 02 That one I can take on board.
8:58 Regina Barber? Shauna wants to stress self-compassion, like, these meals are social and they bring us joy.
9:03 Speaker 07 Please don't let it overconsume you or make you feel guilty, like you're this horrible person, or that you have no self-control. Take a deep breath. It's okay.
9:13 Emily Kwong? Because in reality, one rich meal is not going to affect your health significantly, just like one healthy meal isn't going to suddenly make you a Greek god.
9:20 Speaker 02 Or Greek yogurt, for that matter.
9:22 Emily Kwong? Absolutely.
9:23 Regina Barber? I love Greek yogurt.
9:24 Emily Kwong? You can have that the morning after.
9:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, with the cranberry sauce stirred in. It's really delicious.
9:28 Regina Barber? Oh. Ari, I love your suggestions. It's always really fun to have you here. I'm so glad you're back.
9:34 Speaker 02 More tips and recipes on all things Considered.
9:39 Speaker 02 No, it's always really great to talk to you.
9:41 Emily Kwong? Thanks, Ari.
9:41 Regina Barber? Thank you.
9:46 Regina Barber? You can hear more of Ari Shapiro on Consider This, NPR's afternoon podcast about what the news means for you. This episode was produced by Jessica Young and Gus Conteras. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intagliata. Tyler Jones checked the facts. David Greenberg and Patrick Murray were the audio engineers. I'm Emily Kwong. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.
10:24 Speaker 00 Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.
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