Selects: Slime Mold: 0% Mold, 100% Amazing

If you’ve ever wandered past what looked like a pile of dog barf on a log during a hike in the woods, you’d just seen slime mold - one of the most perplexing organisms on Earth. Listen to this classic episode and get as amazed as Josh and Chuck were when they recorded it. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:35Speaker 02

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• 0:51Speaker 03

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• 1:36Speaker 03

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• 1:58Speaker 02

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• 2:05Speaker 04

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• 2:38Josh Clark?

  Hey there, everybody. It's Josh. And for this week's select, I've chosen our June of 2021 episode on slime mold. It's actually a powerhouse episode, and it's filled with maybe more amazing facts than any other episode we've ever recorded. It's just like mind blow after mind blow after mind blow. So strap on your old timey football helmet and prepare for slime mold. I really think you're going to enjoy it.

• 3:10Speaker 05

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 3:20Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W., Chuck, Wayne, Brian. And this is Stuff You Should Know, no producer edition.

• 3:31Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 3:33Josh Clark?

  It's just us, buddy. We're gonna do it. We're gonna be just fine.

• 3:37Speaker 06

  Jerry took an early vacation for Memorial Day.

• 3:40Josh Clark?

  I know. She's always doing stuff like that. She knows how to live.

• 3:44Speaker 06

  And we're stuck with slime mold in her absence.

• 3:49Josh Clark?

  I like slime mold.

• 3:50Speaker 06

  I knew you would love slime mold.

• 3:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting stuff.

• 3:55Speaker 06

  It's very Josh Clarky.

• 3:56Josh Clark?

  It is kind of Josh Clarky, so much so that as I was researching this, like, I mean, I just kind of generally knew about slime mold, that it exhibited, you know, some weird level of intelligence here or there, but I didn't know much about it. And then as I was researching, I was like, I'm kind of into slime mold now.

• 4:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:13Josh Clark?

  Like, all the different kinds of it. I like regressed into like, you know, the nerdy eight-year-old I never was.

• 4:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then you're like, let me Clark this over to Chuck and see what he thinks.

• 4:23Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 4:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, I like slime mold, too. I think it's kind of cool.

• 4:27Speaker 06

  Let's do it.

• 4:28Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck.

• 4:29Speaker 06

  I'm ready.

• 4:30Josh Clark?

  All right, everybody, stand back, because we are doing it.

• 4:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I think you could file this. I mean, it's not an animal, slime mold. I guess we should just tell you right away, it's not an animal. It's not a fungus, even though you would think it's a fungus. If you saw it on the forest floor, and we'll get to all this stuff. But it feels like an animal, one of our animal episodes, anyway, sort of.

• 4:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I was gonna save the fact that it's not an animal or fungus for the very end, but sure, we could do it at the beginning, I guess.

• 5:01Speaker 06

  You mean, like, literally in the last minute, and they were like, I still don't know if this is an animal. Is it a dog in disguise?

• 5:06Josh Clark?

  You know, everything we just told you about? It's not an animal. It's not even a fungus. And then we just go to listener mail.

• 5:12Speaker 06

  Uh, so what is it, though, besides super ancient, as in, like, maybe one of the very first living things?

• 5:20Josh Clark?

  Well, it's a protist, actually, they figured out. And protist seems to be, well, it's one of the five main kingdoms, animal, bacteria, plants, fungi, and then protists. And protists are typically single-celled organisms, like amoeba.

• 5:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:34Josh Clark?

  Um, or protozoans, things like that. And they have, I don't, I couldn't find out exactly when they did it. But they fairly recently, I guess in the history of biology, fairly recently, reclassified slime molds from the kingdom fungi over to the kingdom protista.

• 5:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, which is interesting, because for years, they had been studied by mycologists, who were fungi's.

• 6:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 06

  And they found out later, they were like, you know what? Sorry, this should really go over to the protostologists. And they said, we kind of like these guys. Can we keep studying them since we have been? And they said, sure. And the protostologists were super pissed.

• 6:17Josh Clark?

  They were, they were. They're still actually not over it. They're frequently TPing the academic halls of the mycologists whenever they get the chance.

• 6:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's this very bitter battle.

• 6:28Josh Clark?

  So that is pretty cute that the fungi people are still studying slime molds even though they're not fungi. But there's, you know, some good reasons why they were originally considered to be fungi. Mostly that they're like these big kind of clumps and there's all sorts of different ways that they take shape and form depending on the species. They're different colors. Some of them form kind of net-like honeycomb structures. Some of them look like dog barf. One of the main ones we'll talk about today looks a lot like dog barf.

• 6:59Speaker 06

  They look like a fungus, though. Like, if you were walking in the woods and you saw this, nine out of 10 people would say, well, it's gotta be some kind of fungus.

• 7:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, especially because if you're staring at them, you would have to stare at them for about five, six, 10 hours to see that they have a huge difference between them and fungi in that they move. They just move so slowly, it's not apparent to the naked eye. But if you film these things with time-lapse cameras and speed it up, you can see, oh, they very clearly move about from place to place. So that's a big differentiator between them and fungi. But one of the reasons they thought they were like fungi, that they were fungi, is because they produce spores to reproduce.

• 7:42Speaker 06

  Right. And I mentioned their ancient origins. They are about a billion years old and, like I said, could be, like, as soon as there was stuff, it seems like there was slime mold.

• 7:55Josh Clark?

  Eating the bacteria that breaks down other stuff that dies.

• 8:00Speaker 06

  And that's what they feed on. Bacteria, mold, yeast, basically anything that decomposes dead things. Slime molds engulf. I think it's not called photography, it's called phagotrophy.

• 8:14Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. That's not how I was gonna say it.

• 8:17Speaker 06

  What were you gonna say? Phagotrophy?

• 8:18Josh Clark?

  Phagotrophy, yeah. But I think you're absolutely right.

• 8:21Speaker 06

  Well, you know us, it wouldn't be us if we didn't probably both get it wrong.

• 8:26Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 8:27Speaker 06

  But that's when you basically surround something and engulf it and just sort of like move it into your body, just like sort of absorb it, basically.

• 8:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is another difference between slime molds and fungi, because fungi actually break the food down and then absorb the broken down nutrients. But the fact is, if you have things that are decomposing other things, like bacteria, molds, yeast, the things that crawl onto or grow on dead people, dead trees, all that stuff, and break them back down into their constituents. So the fact that the slime mold feeds on other things, it makes it a really important part of the food web.

• 9:06Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 9:06Josh Clark?

  It's part of the nutrient cycle, because other things come along and eat the slime molds. There's apparently a kind of beetle that has a specialized jaw that allows it to slurp up slime molds. I think some kinds of insect larvae eat them. And then so it just kind of keeps going. But they're a really important part, where you just have these microbes that like the beetle couldn't get to, that they're able to basically get that energy from, you know, the bacteria by eating the slime mold.

• 9:35Speaker 06

  Right. And even though other protists can carry disease, slime mold is quite human friendly, actually. You can eat the stuff if you want. There's a dish in Mexico, in some parts of Mexico, called caca de luna, which is exactly what you think. It is poop of the moon, moon poop.

• 9:53Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 9:53Speaker 06

  And they eat this stuff. I even looked online to try and get a good recipe, but it's not on like the pages of Martha Stewart Living. Like it's, you gotta dive deep into Reddit and stuff like that to get some good recipes, it seems like.

• 10:08Josh Clark?

  Almost, almost smacks of urban legend, but I'm seeing it in different enough forms that I think it's probable that it actually is a thing. The thing that scares me is that people say like in some regions of Mexico, it's like, that's not super specific, you know?

• 10:25Speaker 06

  True. And we've pointed out, they weren't animals or plants, but we definitely need to point out that slime mold is also not mold.

• 10:33Josh Clark?

  No.

• 10:33Speaker 06

  As a protest.

• 10:35Josh Clark?

  That's right. So, um, one of the, one of the really amazing things about slime mold is, there's a couple of different kinds, as we'll talk about in a second, but one, a whole bunch of different kinds of species, one type of slime mold can get really big. I mean, some of them can get up to the size of like a, a medium or pizza, large pizza, I guess, depending on whether you're getting ripped off by your pizza guy. But like 12 inches in diameter.

• 11:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:02Josh Clark?

  That's enormous, right? So you're like, well, that's pretty cool. It's a big blob of mold. Well, put your sock garters on, because I'm about to blow your socks right off your feet. Some of those types of slime mold that are as big as a pizza are one giant cell.

• 11:17Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, this is truly amazing. The plasmodial slime mold, which is, I guess you could call it one of the true slime mold, is, it has all the stuff like as if it were undergoing cellular division and all the, all the different nuclei, like millions of nuclei, organelles, cytoplasm, all that stuff. But it's just not, it doesn't have cell walls. It's not individual little cells. It's just, it splits and lives inside this giant fortress wall.

• 11:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It's almost like if you took all the cells that should have made this giant blob up as a multicellular organism and just kind of broke them open and dumped all the contents into this blob.

• 11:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:56Josh Clark?

  And then threw the cell walls away. That's what you would have.

• 11:59Speaker 06

  It's super interesting.

• 12:00Josh Clark?

  It is. And it's, it's really kind of straightforward if you, if you just hear it. But it's also really easy to, to just keep going like, wait, why? Why is it like that? And how is it like this? What's going on here? Which is one of those things that it just, it makes slime mold its, its own thing. And we're still learning about this stuff, you know, every day.

• 12:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it, I mean, it gets, there's quite a few times in here where we're going to say, and here's where it gets even crazier.

• 12:26Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 12:27Speaker 06

  Uh, this isn't super crazy, but the, the other kind of slime mold, um, or the other big broad category is the cellular slime mold. And these are lots of individual, single-celled organisms. But the kind of knockout fact about them is when they're stressed out, if they don't have a lot of food around, they can, join up together and sort of look like one of those plasmodial slime molds. But it's not. It's called, I guess, pseudoplasmodial?

• 12:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 06

  Because it's not a real one, but it basically says, all right, we're gonna all come together to try and find food together. And then when they do have food, they can be like, all right, we'll just go along our merry way and split up again.

• 13:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is pretty nuts. They also will come together. Apparently it makes it harder for predators, like those specialized beetles to eat them. Because those individual slime molds can be, you know, a millimeter in size or smaller.

• 13:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:25Josh Clark?

  So it's pretty easy for a beetle to eat that. It's much harder for a beetle to eat something the size of like, you know, a quarter, right? So they actually do come together. They come together to move. They also come together to reproduce and produce spores. But the characteristic of this, that what makes it a pseudoplasmodium rather than an actual true slime mold, is that they retain their cell walls, their individual cells, when they come together. They just kind of loosely form together. And a really good way of understanding what this, these cellular slime molds create is kind of like a swarm.

• 13:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's a good way to put it, I think. Or, what's the, God, that's my favorite thing when the birds do that. What's that called?

• 14:06Josh Clark?

  A flock of seagulls haircut.

• 14:08Speaker 06

  Sure, that's it.

• 14:15Speaker 06

  Boy, you threw me there. So these, the plasmodium is covered by a layer of slime, and you're gonna wanna put a pin in this, because when they do move around, they leave behind a little, these little collapsed tubules, and it looks basically like, not exactly like a snail trail, but sort of like a layer of slime. And you're gonna wanna remember that for later on, because these actually kind of serve as important little markers.

• 14:39Josh Clark?

  As a matter of fact, write it down, everybody. We'll wait until you get a pen and a piece of paper.

• 14:43Speaker 06

  Pull over, go inside, the CVS closest to you.

• 14:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 06

  Put on your mask, buy a pen.

• 14:50Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 14:51Speaker 06

  Buy a piece of paper.

• 14:52Josh Clark?

  Pay 10, 12 times what you should have paid for that pen.

• 14:55Speaker 06

  Really?

• 14:56Josh Clark?

  Oh my god.

• 14:57Speaker 06

  The pen markup is big at CVS?

• 14:59Josh Clark?

  I think the general markup at CVS is fairly high.

• 15:02Speaker 06

  Oh, they're like, we get them in here for the aspirin, then we really juice them with this ballpoint pen.

• 15:07Josh Clark?

  That's right. I hope there's no CVS ads in this episode, but we'll find out.

• 15:11Speaker 06

  What is a, what's a good deal at a drugstore? Is there like a?

• 15:15Josh Clark?

  There's none. There's zero.

• 15:16Speaker 06

  Oh, they all mark it up?

• 15:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, everything's marked up because it's like, it's like convenience kind of thing.

• 15:22Speaker 06

  You sound like a grandfather. It's all marked up.

• 15:25Josh Clark?

  Right. Back in my day, you'd just go to a regular grocery store and buy your pens.

• 15:30Speaker 06

  Oh, you buy it from the pen factory, straight from the man who made it.

• 15:34Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 15:35Speaker 06

  Uh, you know, when I was little, we would, uh, for a short time, I'm not sure why we did this. Cause it's not like we lived out in the country and this is a very old timey country thing to do. We bought our milk direct from a farm.

• 15:47Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 15:47Speaker 06

  And we would pull up and, and, uh, I would get to walk inside this huge walk-in cooler, like next to a loading dock. And I just thought it was like the coolest thing in the world somehow to get that fresh milk.

• 15:58Josh Clark?

  Sure. Didn't they, they back the cow up and it make a beeping sound? And then they just squirt the milk right into the back of your station wagon.

• 16:05Speaker 06

  That's right. They mark it up first.

• 16:07Josh Clark?

  And slosh your way home.

• 16:09Speaker 06

  Uh, so where were we? Okay. If you do see this stuff in the woods, if you're ever hiking along and you see a big or medium sized pizza, like yellow blob or orange blob. They can be red, they can be white, they can be maroon, uh, very rarely they can be black, blue or green. Uh, but usually it's sort of yellowish and orange. And you see that in the forest, you're probably looking at a slime mold.

• 16:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, especially if it's really hot out and it just rained.

• 16:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, the two, the worst thing in the world for me.

• 16:43Josh Clark?

  You can also see them like on your grass too. Apparently if it gets really rainy and hot, slime molds will actually come out of the woods into your grass and be like, oh, this is pretty nice. And they aren't going to do any harm. It's not a problem for your grass. It just looks kind of gross. It's certainly not going to hurt you or your pets. And then eventually it'll dry up and turn to kind of a gray or tan powder and blow away. And that means that it just turned into spores and it just reproduced all over your place.

• 17:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think maybe we should take a break because right now people are probably like, dudes, you promised greatness here. And so far, it's a little humdrum.

• 17:21Josh Clark?

  What?

• 17:22Speaker 06

  So put those sock garters back on because when we come back, we're really going to start knocking them off with some of these amazing facts.

• 17:41Josh Clark?

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• 19:51Speaker 02

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• 20:07Speaker 03

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• 20:50Speaker 03

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• 21:15Speaker 02

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 21:38Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, we set them up. Let's knock them back down.

• 21:43Speaker 06

  So here's one cool fact is that slime molds basically can do the equivalent and do the equivalent of throwing themselves on the grenade. They will sacrifice themselves to save others. And these are things without a brain or a central nervous system. Like it's not like they think, hmm, I'm feeling empathy today for my fellow mold.

• 22:04Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 22:04Speaker 06

  And so I'm going to save everybody because I've come across some infectious bacteria. But what they do is they, they come across it. They engulf it and then they say, let me go. And they cut themselves off from the pack, from the swarm and detach themselves and die of that infection, but save the rest of the group.

• 22:24Josh Clark?

  And my heart will go on plays in the background as they, they get further and further away.

• 22:31Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 22:32Josh Clark?

  But that's, that's altruism.

• 22:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:34Josh Clark?

  Which is pretty amazing considering, like you said, they don't have a brain or anything like that. So how, how are they doing this? We'll get to that later.

• 22:43Speaker 06

  So what about, uh, tell everyone about the, uh, dictistelium discoitis?

• 22:49Josh Clark?

  Discoitis.

• 22:50Speaker 06

  Discoitis, okay.

• 22:52Josh Clark?

  That's one of my favorite words now, discoitis.

• 22:54Speaker 06

  Just because it has disco in it.

• 22:56Josh Clark?

  So that, this was, uh, this is a kind of cellular slime mold, right? So it's made up of a bunch of different individual organisms that come together. And when they come together, they, um, practice altruism to some degree as well, because some of them will basically be like, okay, I'm dead now, I'm dead. And we're going to turn into a bundle of cellulose fibers. And that cellulose is going to connect with other slime mold cells that have died and turned into cellulose and come together and form a stalk. And then the top of the stalk, a bunch of different slime mold cells, they're called slugs when they're individual like that, will climb up the stalk and then they'll turn into spores. And then in that way, they're sticking up out of the ground.

• 23:41Josh Clark?

  And a passing animal will come and they'll stick to it and it'll get a ride to greener pastures. But to do that, some of them have to die to form the stalk to let the spores grow on top of, which is pretty amazing itself.

• 23:56Speaker 06

  It is. And you know, we mentioned that they move. You know, they're not, they don't just sit around and wait for someone to drop a pepperoni near their pizza shape in the woods so they can eat it. They gotta go where the food is. And they either move by these little appendages, like little feet-like appendages. Those are the cellular slime molds, the individual, single-celled organisms that can come together. Or, and this is crazy, the other kind, they move as one big mass. Because you know, there's no cell wall going on, so they just sort of expand and contract the cytoplasm to kind of gush their way along the ground, very slowly.

• 24:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is really neat to see because when they're, especially when they're searching for food, which is basically all they're ever doing. Like, everything that they do is either to get away from some noxious stimuli or to go toward food, usually to go toward food.

• 24:48Speaker 06

  It sounds like us.

• 24:50Josh Clark?

  It basically, yeah. I don't like that smell.

• 24:53Speaker 06

  No wonder we love them.

• 24:54Josh Clark?

  But I like that smell. I'm gonna go toward that. So they make these amazing kind of, they look almost like sea fans. You know what I'm talking about? They look very fractally and they just kind of, they fan out is the best way to put it. When they start to go look for food. And when they do find food, they start moving toward it. It's the cell walls contract and that cytoplasm goes that way. And next thing you know, over a very long period of time.

• 25:22Speaker 06

  Next thing you know, five days later.

• 25:24Josh Clark?

  The slime mold has moved. And actually slime molds, if you don't, they're totally fine living in Petri dishes for as long as you want them to. As long as you feed them. If you stop feeding them, they'll just get out of the Petri dish and start looking for food elsewhere. So they'll escape.

• 25:43Speaker 06

  A little creepy.

• 25:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah. But I mean, again, it's not like you're just sitting there watching this thing crawl out of its Petri dish. It's you leave overnight and you forget to feed the thing and you come back and it's half of it is out onto the table or something like that.

• 25:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's something like right out of Gremlins.

• 25:59Josh Clark?

  Kind of, yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 06

  And I think you said they move at about a millimeter an hour, but some of them, actually, if they're really cooking, can go about an inch and a half in an hour, which...

• 26:08Josh Clark?

  That's really fast.

• 26:10Speaker 06

  I mean, it doesn't sound fast, but when you're talking about what we're talking about, it is pretty fast.

• 26:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I saw that a couple of places. Most people cite something like a millimeter an hour. I can't remember which one goes that fast, but yeah, I mean, you can't see it moving when you're staring at it, but over time you can for sure.

• 26:26Speaker 06

  Sure. Or, you know, if you're just really patient and you can lock in on something, you might be able to see that.

• 26:33Josh Clark?

  So when they started figuring out, in the early 2000s, Japanese researchers were some of the first to like really study slime molds as showing some sort of intelligence. They figured this out from, you know, from watching these things actually move about. And when you film them at like high speed and then replay it, you can see their movements are deliberate in a lot of ways. They're not just blind dumb movements where they happen on to food. They clearly can sense food somehow or some way, and they spread out. And they seem to spread out, and again, in a really deliberate way.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  And so some researchers started to test slime molds to see what they were capable of. One of the first researchers was a Japanese scientist named Toshiyuki Nakagaki.

• 27:27Speaker 06

  Great name.

• 27:29Josh Clark?

  I think so too. And Dr. Nakagaki, which is even better.

• 27:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 27:33Josh Clark?

  Built a maze, like a pretty simple maze, but an actual three dimensional maze in a good sized Petri dish. Put what has come to be known as probably the smartest slime mold, Physarium Polycephalum, which is kind of like the rock star of the slime mold world these days. Put a physarium in it and said, "Go to town, go find your little favorite oatflake treat," which is their favorite food.

• 28:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, and the key here is, is there were four different routes to two different endpoints where this food was. It wasn't just like, "There's only one way to solve this maze." And so, they put the little oatflake at these endpoints, and the microorganisms that grow on the oatflakes is what they're after. It's not like they love oatmeal or anything like that.

• 28:20Josh Clark?

  Right, right.

• 28:21Speaker 06

  And so, he put them there and studied them, and over the course of hours, these things basically learned to get to that food in the quickest, fastest way every single time.

• 28:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like, it could conceivably get to it, like you said, four different ways, but that fast way was the way that it would just, like, that's impressive. That's definitely noteworthy. You can write multiple papers on that kind of study. And so, another Japanese researcher came along and said, "Hold my sake." A researcher named Atsushi Taro, from Hokkaido University. Did you like that?

• 28:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's good.

• 29:00Josh Clark?

  And Dr. Tiro said, "All right, what about this? What if we take some oat flakes and basically make a general map of the neighborhoods in Tokyo, and see what the slime mold does with that? Put a little slime mold in a Petri dish with these oat flakes that kind of mimic the neighborhoods of Tokyo, and watch it go." I think over the course of like, four or five days, right?

• 29:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, and you might think, "Cool, it does what it does, and it goes after that food in the most direct way possible," which is what it did. But here's where it gets genuinely amazing, is they went back, and they overlaid a map of the current Tokyo railway commuter system, the subway system.

• 29:44Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 29:45Speaker 06

  And they laid it over this grid. Of this slime and it was almost a perfect match.

• 29:51Josh Clark?

  Isn't that nuts?

• 29:52Speaker 06

  That's, I mean, I had to reread that like five times. To even believe that that's what happened, that this slime basically figured out the most efficient route to get around essentially Tokyo.

• 30:06Josh Clark?

  Yes, which, I mean, humans had figured out too, but it took teams of human engineers and a very long time for them to figure this out, right? So the slime mold was just like, this is, this is nothing. What else you got? You got any more cities that are more densely populated with more neighborhoods? Cause I'll just make your subway maps all day long, basically.

• 30:26Speaker 06

  And they're like, nah, Tokyo is probably one of the most dense. It's like, okay.

• 30:31Josh Clark?

  I saw another, um, another similar kind of, uh, bit of research, Chuck, where they actually used oat flakes to signify ancient Roman cities in the Balkans.

• 30:43Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 30:44Josh Clark?

  This is, this is crazy. This is like an archaeological study. And they put some, they sticked some phizarium on it and phizarum on it. And it mimicked ancient Roman roads that had been lost, were very obscure, had largely been forgotten and ones that were well-known in the Balkans. It, it mimicked these, these Roman roads, like things that people had been like, okay, this is the best route from this city to this city. The, the slime mold did basically the same thing and, and apparently revealed some lost stuff.

• 31:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I guess it could also, it's interesting, like if it doesn't match up, if they do an experiment like this, does that mean like the humans get it wrong? Like, can they use this as a test and be like, sorry, the slime mold has spoken?

• 31:31Josh Clark?

  I guess so. I kind of like the octopus picking the World Cup. You know, they always take the World Cup away if the other team that the octopus didn't win ends up winning.

• 31:41Speaker 06

  Well, I wonder if you, I mean, and we'll get to the real applications of this, but I wonder if they could do something like that where they, let's say they look at the Tokyo system and a couple of places it didn't match. They're like, we totally should have gone this way.

• 31:54Josh Clark?

  Yes, I feel like that that is the direction that people are kind of going in, that they, they could conceivably use this for planning new stuff, you know?

• 32:04Speaker 06

  Wow. So every city planner will have a slime mold researcher at their behest?

• 32:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, like this is crazy. Why not? You know? All you have to do is have some oat flakes in a Petri dish and you're good. So I think we should take another break. What do you think?

• 32:22Speaker 06

  I, quite frankly, want to eat some oat flakes right about now.

• 32:25Josh Clark?

  I'm kinda in the mood for that, too. We'll be right back.

• 32:40Speaker 07

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• 32:59Josh Clark?

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• 35:14Speaker 07

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• 35:25Josh Clark?

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• 35:48Josh Clark?

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• 36:30Josh Clark?

  Okay, did you just eat some oat flakes?

• 36:33Speaker 06

  I did not.

• 36:34Josh Clark?

  All right, well, we'll get you some.

• 36:36Speaker 06

  Because here's the secret, everybody. When we take a break, we don't really go take a break.

• 36:42Josh Clark?

  No, you could have had some crusty old oat flakes on your desk and just eaten them real quick. I don't know, I can't see.

• 36:49Speaker 06

  So, all right, we've said that these things don't have brains, they don't have, and I don't think we mentioned, it's not like they have, like, it's not like they're jellyfish and they have some sort of weird neural net.

• 36:59Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 37:00Speaker 06

  They got nothing like that at all.

• 37:02Josh Clark?

  Nothing, like, they have no way of generating consciousness in any form that we recognize. And yet, slime mold is teaching us to open our horizons.

• 37:16Speaker 06

  In hearts.

• 37:16Josh Clark?

  To, sure, to new ideas of what constitutes consciousness and intelligence, you know what I'm saying?

• 37:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:22Josh Clark?

  Like, it makes sense as a swarm, as a bunch of cellular, a cellular slime mold makes sense. We're already familiar with the hive mind and, you know, the emergent property of a bunch of different things, you know, operating together. The real puzzler, though, is the, the single-cell plasmodial slime mold. That's one big giant cell, and the fact that it behaves in ways that seem conscious to some degree.

• 37:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, so if you want to kind of go back in time to where a lot of this research started, it wasn't actually in Japan, but it was in the 1960s. A physicist named Evelyn Fox Keller was curious if she could use math to model biological systems, because they had had success using math to explain and expand our understanding of physics. So she was like, let me see if we can do this with biology. And someone said, well, you got to meet Lee Siegel. Lee Siegel is, got a little surprise for you. And Lee Siegel got together and said, oh, Dr. Keller, you need to meet our friend slime mold.

• 38:30Speaker 06

  And Dr. Keller was like, this is the 1960s, I don't know what slime mold is yet. And Keller and, sorry, Siegel said, oh, we'll just take a seat and let me tell you about this, which is dictio, dictio stellium, dictostellium, right?

• 38:48Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:48Speaker 06

  Dictostellium discoidium.

• 38:52Josh Clark?

  I think that's discoites.

• 38:54Speaker 06

  Discoidium?

• 38:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 38:57Josh Clark?

  But it's the one we were talking about earlier that, that creates the stems. They sacrifice themselves to create stems for the spores.

• 39:03Speaker 06

  Right, and I think this was just significant because it was kind of like the first time anyone had observed and, you know, fell off of their lab stool and could explain it to others, the pseudoplasmidiums. But what they were missing was they were like, all right, we see this happening and it's amazing. And how are they doing this, though? And the, the very first thing they thought of is, like, maybe it's like an ant colony or something, and maybe there's like a leader or a pacemaker cell, or maybe a few of them, they get together and they just sort of send out chemical signals to everyone else and say, go this way, and the rest are just sort of the worker ants that follow along.

• 39:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they knew in particular that there is a, a chemical called cyclical AMP, which is related to ATP, the adenosine triphosphate, and that that was how they were signaling. But they thought that, that, like you're saying, that there are just a few signaling and everybody else was responding. And what they figured out is that, that they had that totally wrong, that there weren't leaders, there weren't pacemakers who were in charge of like, you know, signaling and in effect, making decisions for the group, that it was actually like a group effort in that the, the whatever, whatever cell or slug that they're called in this cellular slime mold swarm was closest to food, it would signal with AMP that, hey, there's

• 40:26Josh Clark?

  some food over here, let's all go over this way. And that signal would just kind of be passed along through the swarm, through the cellular slime mold, and the slime mold would move toward the food and start eating.

• 40:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, and this was, you know, I mean, you can see why they went in that initial direction because it made sense and a lot of nature is organized with a top-down principle in mind. Humans often organize with a top-down principle, big business, government. It's just a, it's a system that we're used to seeing in, in nature and in people. And so it made sense that they went that way and they never, they never really thought about the fact that it could be like, no, they're, it's a total bottom-up system and whatever is closest can send out these signals.

• 41:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so instead of like a hierarchy, it's more like, it's like, it's like how a flock of birds operates, a flock of seagulls haircut operates where-

• 41:20Speaker 06

  They run so far away?

• 41:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but it's the hare that's closest to whatever it's running from is the first to run and everybody else follows. It's kind of like how a flock of birds will turn depending on, you know, which way they need to turn based on that bird making that decision and the rest of the flock basically following it. It's a bottom-up, bottom-up decision-making kind of thing. And so we started to learn a lot and we know a lot about bottom-up decision-making now as opposed to when these guys were working back in the 60s, I think. But in the 21st century, that whole idea of bottom-up decision-making or decentralized decision-making has become a real component in, in artificial intelligence design.

• 42:06Josh Clark?

  Because if you've listened to The End of the World with Josh Clark, you know that one of the hardest things in the world to do is program something to understand everything because you have to input all the stuff it needs to know. Whereas if you can just kind of set up some sort of simple algorithm to let the machine think for itself, you, you finally got something.

• 42:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I would imagine, I didn't see this anywhere, but it seems like this might could have some applications in nanotechnology as well, like the idea that we could program, you know, billions of tiny little nanobot bugs to clean the windows of your house every day.

• 42:43Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 42:44Speaker 06

  Like a lot of things collectively doing one bigger thing.

• 42:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 06

  Am I off base there, or could that potentially be a thing?

• 42:52Josh Clark?

  Not at all. I think it totally could be a thing. It's anytime you have a huge amount of things that you're trying to all get to do roughly the same thing, but they need to not, you know, redouble their efforts or replicate their efforts. So you don't want one cleaning one part of the window and the other one coming over and cleaning the same part of the window that's already clean. All you have to do is figure out how to teach them, if this happens, do this. And if you can figure out how to strip it down to a basic enough algorithm that could conceivably be used for just about any situation, you've got the key to the universe in your hand.

• 43:35Josh Clark?

  Like, there's actually, I wrote, we'll have to do an episode on it one day. But I read an article about a guy who was, I think he was a physicist back in the 80s, who was like, "I think the universe is basically an operating system." That is, that is, that is, goes down to two, there's two bits. You could say it's black and white, one or zero, it doesn't matter. But there are two kinds of bits, and depending on the combinations that these things form, everything else in the universe arises from that, including consciousness, planets, slime mold, everything comes out of these two types of bits that basically make up the fabric of space and time, interacting with one another in increasingly sophisticated patterns.

• 44:18Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 44:19Josh Clark?

  And that is exactly what you're talking about. So if we can figure out what that that computation is, what those algorithms are that give rise to larger and larger stuff, you can, you can do anything. It's weird. You can do increasingly sophisticated stuff, the more basic your algorithm is. It's almost a paradox.

• 44:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. This is like Dr. Octagon stuff. Dr. Octagon?

• 44:45Josh Clark?

  I don't know.

• 44:46Speaker 06

  Is that right? From Spiderman?

• 44:47Josh Clark?

  I don't. Yeah, he was, Alfred Molina, you mean?

• 44:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:52Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 44:52Speaker 06

  All right.

• 44:54Josh Clark?

  I like Alfred Molina. I think he makes some really weird choices for parts.

• 44:59Speaker 06

  Oh, he's great.

• 45:00Josh Clark?

  I'm sure if somebody's like, hey, we'll give you $10 million to play Dr. Octagon. I'd be like, sure. You got it. Where do I sign up?

• 45:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, I need to get him on Movie Crush because he actually is friends of the network. He's a friend of the network. I think he's been on the Daily Zeitgeist a few times.

• 45:15Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:16Speaker 06

  And like they booked him on some other comedy shows. I'm like, guys, throw a little Molina my way.

• 45:19Josh Clark?

  For real? Get that Molina spread all over Movie Crush.

• 45:23Speaker 06

  You've been on Daily Zeitgeist twice. I've never been on.

• 45:26Josh Clark?

  I've been on Movie Crush once, too.

• 45:29Speaker 06

  I had Miles on Movie Crush the other day and I was giving him a hard time because they haven't asked me on and they think I see you on twice.

• 45:36Josh Clark?

  That's hilarious. Keep it up, Chuck. Keep it up.

• 45:38Speaker 06

  He was like, uh, no, man. I was like, Miles, it's cool.

• 45:42Josh Clark?

  Did he really? You flustered him?

• 45:44Speaker 06

  I feel like he was on skates for a second there.

• 45:46Josh Clark?

  That's hilarious.

• 45:47Speaker 06

  I let him off the hook. I'm having Jack on next week, so I'm really like going full court press here.

• 45:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Miles is like, man, be on guard. Chuck does not pull punches.

• 45:57Speaker 06

  It's funny because Miles, you know, as you know, is such a smart, smart guy. And just like having a conversation with him is always amazing. And then he comes on and he picks Mallrats. What's his favorite movie?

• 46:10Josh Clark?

  Was it really? That's his favorite movie of all time, huh?

• 46:13Speaker 06

  I mean, that's what he picked. And he was like, hey, man, I never said I had good taste. So it was pretty fun.

• 46:17Josh Clark?

  Do you have any hints of what Jack's is gonna be?

• 46:20Speaker 06

  Well, I know it's Pulp Fiction because he had me save it like two years ago and I just, you know, we kept slipping through the cracks. So he's gonna come on next week for Pulp Fiction.

• 46:30Josh Clark?

  Very nice.

• 46:30Speaker 06

  All right. So let's get back to, I mean, we talked about how the DD, as we're gonna call it, moves around.

• 46:38Josh Clark?

  Discoites.

• 46:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, without the pacemaker cells, but that original true slime mold, the big, single-celled one that's just made up of all the goopy cytoplasm. We didn't really talk about what they do and because if you don't have cell walls, you're like, well, how's this stuff moving around? It's actually made up of what's called oscillating units. And so these units oscillate at different frequencies depending what's going on, like where they are. And then what their little neighbor oscillating units are doing. And so when they go close to food, they start oscillating and shaking like, hey, hey, hey, I'm near some food. And then that just sort of gets that flow. Everyone else starts oscillating in a similar manner.

• 47:21Speaker 06

  And that gets that flow of cytoplasm going in that food direction.

• 47:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so the slime mold effectively moves to the food because of that oscillating unit. That looks again like a fan spreading out, going to find food. And then finding it, the slime mold moves toward it.

• 47:38Speaker 06

  Or like you said, away from something that they don't like.

• 47:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yes. Which is pretty neat. So those are the two things. It's moving toward food or moving away from something. And one of the things that they found is that slime mold can actually learn, and not only learn to like stay away from something, it can actually teach other slime mold to stay away from it. Even slime mold that's never been introduced to it. Or alternately, it can teach, this is really the Sotgarter fact. It can teach other slime mold that something that seems harmful is actually harmless.

• 48:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, this is a pretty cool experiment.

• 48:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 06

  So these researchers put slime molds. They built a little tiny bridge. It was very cute. And they coated this bridge in a noxious substance. It wasn't harmful to them. It was harmless. It was like salt or something, let's say. And then they put the little oat flakes on the other side as their ultimate temptation. And so these first slime molds start creeping up to it and sort of dipping their little toe in the water and saying, uh, this stuff is pretty noxious. But then they learned. That's so gross. Right. Like, oh, okay. So it's not actually harmful. I can go across this stuff. And what they found was that it learned to cross this little bridge.

• 49:02Speaker 06

  Just as fast as slime molds that were placed on bridges that didn't have any coating going on.

• 49:08Josh Clark?

  Right, so it said, okay, this stuff's fine, it tastes gross, it's way too salty, but it's not gonna hurt me. So I'm gonna get to food just as fast, right? That's pretty amazing in and of itself.

• 49:18Speaker 06

  But here's where it gets crazy.

• 49:19Josh Clark?

  Yes, right. They, um, we need like a banner, matter, Noel to come in and say that.

• 49:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, totally.

• 49:25Josh Clark?

  Um, so they, they take the slime mold and break it apart and fuse it together with other slime molds that have never been exposed to this noxious stuff before. They're called naive and the other ones are called habituated. And those naive ones, when they encounter this noxious stuff, like a salt bridge for the first time, they don't approach it with trepidation. They go right across it as fast as the habituated ones that it's fused to.

• 49:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:52Josh Clark?

  This is really weird that because this is the first time this stuff's encountering it. And they think that somehow the habituated slime molds are passing on the information like, no, no, we know it's gross, but it's actually fine to the naive slime molds. And they figured out Chuck that it doesn't matter if you take three habituated slime molds and fuse them with one naive slime mold. Or take three naive slime molds and one, just one habituated slime mold. It's going to approach us and move across it just as fast as, as either, in either situation.

• 50:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, and then they also sort of figured out how long this took. So the naive slime molds, they separated after an hour of fusion with those, uh, habituated, I'm gonna call them in the know molds.

• 50:39Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 50:40Speaker 06

  And it forgot, it forgot that the coating was harmless and it sort of had to approach it with a little more trepidation. But if they'd been fused for three hours or more and then separated, it, it remembered. I mean, it technically can't remember, but they do have this weird sort of memory, uh, that works. And, and I think they even figured out some of this snail trail stuff that they leave behind acts as sort of like a spatial memory, cuz they come across this snail trail and say, oh, someone's already been here before me.

• 51:14Josh Clark?

  Right, so there's no reason to go research this area because there clearly wasn't food there, yeah. And again, here's your 10-minute reminder that slime mold don't have brains or neurons. So all of this is just astounding stuff that we're still trying to get to the bottom of. Like that habituation thing, they're like, we don't know, we have no idea. But we're gonna go find out, and maybe in 10 years, we'll be able to explain it.

• 51:38Speaker 06

  Right, so eventually, you know, the people that are hip to the slime mold thing are like, trying to spread the word, and be like, this stuff is really amazing. They're doing TED Talks on it, there was a really good TED Talk on it, in fact. And some coders said, hey, wait a minute. You know, they're doing all this amazing stuff, like the overlay of the Tokyo subway, and it's lining up perfectly. What if we actually generated code of the slime mold? And kind of reverse engineered it, and we could see what that looked like, and how we could use it?

• 52:16Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, this one artist named Sage Jensen basically figured out, or took, I don't know exactly who figured out exactly what the slime mold's algorithms were, but somebody wrote them down, and Sage Jensen came along and turned them into C++ code, and basically ran these things, it's like, algorithms, and found that these fractals started forming that looked essentially just like slime mold moving across a Petri dish in search of food, which is pretty cool in and of itself. It was an art project, basically. But someone on a team of astrophysicists heard about Sage Jensen's work,

• 52:59Josh Clark?

  and they used it when they were stumped trying to figure out how to map the invisible matter that makes up basically the structure of our universe. That if we can just crack that nut, we'll understand the universe exponentially better than we do now. But we cannot figure out how to do it. And so, just like with the ancient roads between the Roman cities, or the Tokyo subway map, someone figured out to use slime mold to basically try to create the structure of the universe, this invisible, these invisible filaments.

• 53:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, these filaments that came out of the Big Bang. So I guess they went back to Sage Jensen and said, first of all, Sage, you use C++ code, isn't that really just B- code, if we're being honest? And he said, that's not how it works. Get out of my office.

• 53:52Josh Clark?

  That was a great coding joke.

• 53:54Speaker 06

  Uh, thank you. It's my only coding joke. And I just made it up.

• 53:58Josh Clark?

  It's the only coding joke, I think.

• 54:00Speaker 06

  No, I think it's not a bug. It's a feature. Isn't that one of the--

• 54:03Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's true. True dat.

• 54:04Speaker 06

  Old timey. So, yeah, they, they went to Sage and they said, you're an artist, but this is pretty amazing. I think we can apply it here. And they modified it. And what they did was, and of course, there's always Oats involved. They put a model in place with virtual slime mold cells. And they put it on a map with 37,000 real galaxies. And they used, I guess, virtual piles of food to represent the galaxies. And the bigger the galaxy, the bigger the pile of food. And so they did this modeling through the coding and had the virtual slime mold seek out the most efficient way to reach this.

• 54:46Speaker 06

  And I guess in theory, they're hoping that they get a sort of map of the universe out of it.

• 54:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, so when the slime mold was finished, they all stood back around. That's amazing. How accurate is it? And they all just realized that they had no idea how to verify.

• 55:03Josh Clark?

  But no, surely, like, I think what they're doing is they're taking this as an initial, you know, guide. And then they'll go back and try to figure out how to verify it. And maybe the slime mold did figure out the most efficient way to link together these galaxies. But that would be-- I, I can't even put a word on that of what that would-- how impressive that would be if the slime mold recreated how the universe is invisibly linked together, the structure of it, you know?

• 55:31Speaker 06

  What if slime mold is God?

• 55:34Josh Clark?

  What if we're asleep right now and this is all just one dream, Chuck?

• 55:38Speaker 06

  The other cool thing they figured out with the slime mold moving around is when they were researching them, they found that they-- those mazes that they were running them through, they went even faster through the maze when they had some sort of noise, like a bright light or something. Like we said, they like to go away from things they don't like. And that negative input of that light basically made them say, all right, let's, let's pick up the pace and make-- make these decisions quicker and get to that food.

• 56:04Josh Clark?

  And stop fussing around. I don't like this light staring at me.

• 56:07Speaker 06

  I think we kind of blew some minds today.

• 56:10Josh Clark?

  I think so. My mind's definitely been blown.

• 56:12Speaker 06

  Did you want to cover the Amazon thing?

• 56:14Josh Clark?

  Nope.

• 56:15Speaker 06

  Okay, good.

• 56:17Josh Clark?

  That's it for slime mold unless you got anything else right now, do you?

• 56:21Speaker 06

  I got nothing else.

• 56:22Josh Clark?

  We'll have to revisit this in 10 years. And thanks to Dave Ruse for helping us with this one. And since I said Dave Ruse, I think Chuck, it means it's time for listener mail.

• 56:34Speaker 06

  Hey, guys. I'm gonna call this Night Trap response.

• 56:39Josh Clark?

  I just laugh every time I hear those words together now.

• 56:41Speaker 06

  I know, Night Trap. This is from Aaron. Hey, guys. Just finished the Night Trap video game show. Thanks for bringing it to everyone. I own the 25th anniversary edition. Like you said, it's not a good game, but has its moments. One other game worth noting is called Double Switch. It's of the same style and video camera control quality, and it starred Corey Haim.

• 57:01Speaker 06

  Perhaps arguably a little better game, but still had the same thing going on, really. I'm sure your research finds lots of things that don't quite make it to the final show. Aaron, we did not know about Double Switch, so nice work there.

• 57:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 06

  And Aaron says, I've listened to so many shows, I feel that Chuck and I are some sort of long-lost brothers, separated at birth. Generally agree with just about everything he says, and I'm always fully entertained. It would be nice to meet you guys if you ever get another tour started and make it back to Michigan. Keep up the good work. I finished your book, and I have the pre-order poster in my office.

• 57:33Josh Clark?

  Very nice.

• 57:34Speaker 06

  And I've converted friends and family. So that is from Aaron in Michigan, and we're definitely gonna start touring again. I would say probably next year, although we haven't really talked much about it.

• 57:46Josh Clark?

  No, but we need to. It's definitely starting to get to be time to get talking, I guess. Although, I gotta admit, I have not missed the traveling. I've missed being on stage, but not the traveling part.

• 57:56Speaker 06

  Well, you know, that's what they say. That's what rock stars say.

• 57:59Josh Clark?

  It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

• 58:03Speaker 06

  No, they say that, you know, you get paid to travel. You don't get paid to play shows.

• 58:08Josh Clark?

  I've never heard that before, but it really makes sense.

• 58:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:12Josh Clark?

  If you can figure out how to get paid for both, then you're really, really doing something right.

• 58:17Speaker 06

  Good stuff. Yeah. And if we get back to Michigan, we've already done Detroit. We've had a lot of calls over the year for Ann Arbor, so maybe that's where we go.

• 58:24Josh Clark?

  Yes. Well, who was that again?

• 58:27Speaker 06

  Aaron.

• 58:28Josh Clark?

  Aaron, that's what I was gonna guess. Thanks a lot, Aaron. That was a great email. Thanks for the Corey Haim reference and all that stuff. And if you want to get in touch with us like Aaron did, you can send us an email to [email protected].

• 58:44Speaker 05

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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