SPEAKER_11: What if AI could help your business deliver mission-critical outcomes with speed? With IBM Consulting, your business can design, build, and scale trusted AI using Watson X
and modernize the way you work to accelerate real impact. Let's create AI that transforms your business.
Learn more at ibm.com. IBM. Let's create.
SPEAKER_18: You know, in today's world, it seems the best treatment is reserved only for a few. Well, Discover wants to change that by making everyone feel special. That's why with your Discover card, you'll have access to 24x7 live customer service as well as $0 fraud liability, which means you're never held responsible for unauthorized purchases. Finally, no matter who you are or where you are in life, you'll feel special with Discover. Learn more at discover.com credit card. Limitations apply. Managing your diabetes just got easier. The powerful new Dexcom G7 lets you see your glucose numbers on your compatible watch and phone without finger sticks. And because Dexcom G7 is the most accurate CGM system, you can be confident in your food, exercise, and medication decisions. And all those decisions can lead to big results, like more time and range and lower A1c.
SPEAKER_17: Get started at Dexcom.com.
SPEAKER_06: Dexcom data on file 2023. If your glucose alerts and readings from the G7 do not match symptoms or expectations, use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. For a list of compatible devices, visit Dexcom.com slash compatibility. Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, the groundbreaking podcast from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
SPEAKER_01: wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody out there in the Pacific Northwest or with access to an airport or a car rental
SPEAKER_00: place that can get you to the Pacific Northwest specifically at the end of January, we'll
SPEAKER_12: see you in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. That's right. To our new live show for 2024, Seattle, Washington, January 24th at the Paramount Theater, then Portland at our home way from home at Revolution Hall on the 25th, and then winding it all
SPEAKER_06: up at Sketchfest on the 26th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater. Very nice. If you want tickets, if you want information, if you want tickets, you can go to a couple of places. You can go to our Linktree at Linktree slash S-Y-S-K, and you can go to our home on the
SPEAKER_02: web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Click on the tour button, and it'll take you to all of the beautiful places you can go to buy your tickets. And we'll see you guys in January. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
SPEAKER_06: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the last edition of the two to the O to the... Deuce tray.
Oh, is this our final of the year?
SPEAKER_13: It is. It's the last one of 2023, Chuck. We've recorded all of the episodes that we're ever going to record in the year 2023.
SPEAKER_06: Isn't that amazing? Yeah. And hey, you know, since you brought that up, can I say something? Sure. Spotify, who carries our show, as do all platforms, they have this really cool thing they send out called the wrap, W-R-A-P, I guess as in year-end wrap-up kind of thing. And they sent us as a show our own statistical analysis, but then they send individual users
SPEAKER_02: their own. And we just had a lot of great listeners sending us in their wrap statistics, like, hey, I'm
in the top 1% of Stuff You Should Know listenership. And it was just really neat to see all that stuff coming in.
SPEAKER_02: So thank you.
It really is. It's amazing. Everybody's so proud of it.
It's so great to see. So no matter what percentage you're in, if you are proud enough to send an email or post it, kudos to you, because we're proud of you right back. I do think, though, Chuck, that we probably should shout out the person who wrote in with far and away the largest number of listening minutes, according to Spotify. Yeah. Who's that?
SPEAKER_06: That is Erivan Canchella, who is in the top 0.05% of listeners.
And based on the 86,772 minutes, I don't see how there could be anybody else in the remaining 0.05% left.
SPEAKER_06:
Yeah. I did a little back of the envelope math, and that's something somewhere between, like, 25 and 30 hours of Stuff You Should Know a week. Yeah. That's a lot. Doesn't seem possible. So I have suspicions that this person might have just played it on a loop so they could, you know, and then just went out shopping or whatever. I don't know. I think Erivan strikes me as a pretty straightforward person.
SPEAKER_02: So congrats to Erivan. And also, seriously, thank you to everybody who listens to us so much that you get statistics at the end of the year that make you proud.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's amazing, guys.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much. Yeah. And thanks to Spotify. That's a cool service that they are. I don't know. Is that a service? Whatever. It's a cool thing they do.
SPEAKER_02: It's a service. It's a public service.
SPEAKER_06: We were downloaded in 163 countries.
I didn't know there were that many countries. Which is, we looked it up. It was actually something like 190. So that's most of the countries. Yeah. I would say that's the vast majority of them. And by the way, everybody, I knew that there were more countries than that.
SPEAKER_02:
I was joking. And quickly, I saw that, I don't know if you went through that yet, Josh, but we, our third
biggest country of growth was Mexico.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, no way. And I'm gaming, I'm aiming for a show in Mexico City.
SPEAKER_02: I'd like to do that. We just don't know if like people would come.
SPEAKER_06:
So, you know, if we can get like a thousand people in a room in Mexico City, I think that might be a fun thing to do.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Especially if it's a room with seats. Yeah. So we should get at least 500 emails saying at least two people will come. And then that means we might go. All right. So anyway, should we get on with barbaric practices?
Yeah, let's. Because I find this endlessly fascinating.
Livia helped us with this. And basically what we're doing here is reversing what we already kind of like to do, smugly,
SPEAKER_02: which is look back 50, 100, 200 years and be like, look at how backwards and antiquated those people were back then.
Like even as recently as the 90s, I remember in the mid 90s, I smoked on an airplane on
SPEAKER_06:
the way to Amsterdam. Yeah. And like there was, it was just like the last three rows were smoking, but it's not like it was sectioned off. There wasn't even a curtain. It's just like, this is the smoking section, even though the entire plane's being covered in your cigarette smoke. This was the 90s, man. Yeah. Yeah. The first time I flew to Europe, there was smoking in like, that was, it would have been 96. Yeah. I mean, imagine that today.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you would literally go to federal prison if you tried to light a cigarette on
SPEAKER_06: an airplane today. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's about the fire, but sure. Yeah. A few decades before that, there was Jell-O salad was all the rage and like the weirdest
SPEAKER_02:
Jell-O salad. If you've never just kind of taken a stroll down memory lane and looked up like pictures
SPEAKER_06: of Jell-O molds from the 50s to the 70s, treat yourself and go do that. But make sure you have not had lunch yet because you're going to want to gag when you see a
lot of them.
SPEAKER_02: That's another fun thing to judge people for, being stupid with Jell-O.
SPEAKER_06: Because I don't know if we said it yet, we're going to do the opposite. We're going to look forward and try to figure out what our descendants are going to ridicule us or look down at us about. Right. What will we seem primitive or barbaric or ridiculous about? That's right.
SPEAKER_07: But what we have before us are seven, I think, a little more serious things than Jell-O molds.
SPEAKER_06: And spanking kids is on up there. However, it really depends on who you ask because about half of Americans still think, and this is a quote in this from a survey a couple of years ago from the American Family Survey, quote, it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking.
SPEAKER_02: And half of those respondents said almost under their breath, feel so right.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. I mean, big change from, you know, back in the day, they have another stat from 68 when
SPEAKER_02:
94 percent of parents said, yeah, hit your kids. It's awesome. It's quite a drop. That's a big drop. But things are really changing because a third of the respondents between 18 and 29 agree
SPEAKER_06: with spanking compared to 50 percent of the overall survey. So it's something that's going out of fashion for sure.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. It seems to be following a larger trend of moving away from social acceptance of violence
in any form. And it's being supported by studies that find like, yeah, it's actually good if you
SPEAKER_02: don't spank your kids because not only has there never been a study that shows it improves
children's behavior, study after study keeps suggesting it does the opposite. It actually maladjusts children.
SPEAKER_06: I mean, I can't imagine what a well-adjusted person I would be if I hadn't been spanked that handful of times when I was a kid. Yeah. You know, I was, we're always trying to poke around to find, you know, the other opinion on something just to take a look at it. And, you know, there are people who don't agree. I saw this one professor from the Oklahoma State, Robert Larzelli. I can't even read my own handwriting now.
But he said that the studies that are out there are flawed for a couple of reasons. One, he says these studies that say that if you spank kids more, that leads to them actually
SPEAKER_02: acting out more. He's saying, no, it's the kids that are acting out more that it's a chicken and the egg thing. Yes. Those are the ones getting spanked more. I've seen that. And I think I found in a Scientific American article, there was at least one group that
SPEAKER_02: managed to control for that and basically have shown like, no, it actually does have this effect on kids. The problem that, what did you say, Larzelli? I think so if my writing is an indicator. That what Larzelli is saying is that these studies don't, they don't start following
SPEAKER_06:
kids from like birth to 25 or 30 and then see, you know, where you spanked, where you not spanked. It's all just like, they might peek in on a kid who's at the spanking age and look at their behavior then and you just can't parse it apart.
SPEAKER_02: So there's not really good quality studies. But I saw it put like this, even if there are no studies that conclusively show spanking
SPEAKER_06: is bad for kids or produces maladjusted behavior in kids, there are plenty of studies that
SPEAKER_06: seem to suggest that. There aren't any studies that seem to suggest otherwise, that it's actually good, it's
SPEAKER_06: actually, it's effective to spank your kids.
SPEAKER_06: And so the argument that I've seen is like, why do it then? Yeah, I saw a, first of all, I'm a parent. I can't in a million years imagine hitting Ruby for any reason. That's nice. It makes me want to cry just thinking about that. It's terrible for our family. But I did find a study from 2018 that I found from NPR. They didn't do the study, but they were, you know, did a thing on it.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure they were hot and heavy on it. Of course.
It was what they claim, and it seems like probably one of the most robust studies, at
SPEAKER_06: least, that looks at countries that have banned spanking because I think something like 62
SPEAKER_02:
countries have banned spanking, starting with Sweden in 1979. Did you even know there were that many countries? But they followed four, or they used 400,000 children from kids from 88 countries. So that's pretty good. 58 countries have the bans and 30 don't.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure which one it is.
SPEAKER_02: But what they found when, what they were tracking was incidences of kids fighting, like, you
know, getting in fights at school. And in the countries that have banned spanking, there was a school fighting reduction by 69
SPEAKER_02:
in boys and 42% in girls, which is, I mean, that is pretty substantial.
I was curious about the United States because, you know, we both grew up like my dad was
SPEAKER_02:
my elementary school principal and they were, he spanked me and other kids. It's ridiculous to think about.
SPEAKER_02: But apparently in 77, the Supreme Court of the United States gave the power to the states. These days, 90% of schools don't use corporal punishment, but it is still legal in 17 states.
SPEAKER_02:
SPEAKER_02: There are restrictions in place in a lot of those, like maybe your parents have to sign
a thing that said, sure, hit my kid.
But 17% of states, you can still do this with Mississippi leading the way in the most spankings.
SPEAKER_02:
And the other thing I found out that we should point out is that black males are twice as likely to be spanked than anyone. And get this, 16.5% of kids that are corporately punished in schools in America today are disabled. Usually it's an intellectual disability.
SPEAKER_02: Is that not disturbing? Of course it's disturbing. That's horrible.
That's one of the most horrible statistics you've ever spouted out. And I should say also, just want to verify for the listeners in any of those 62 countries
SPEAKER_02:
where spanking is banned, you're talking about like public spanking, like in school. In 17 states in schools, you're allowed to do that, right?
SPEAKER_02: Yes. Okay. A teacher or a principal, and they say it's, you know, and this is one of the other problems
SPEAKER_06:
that professor had is that those studies, he says, lump everyone in together.
As in like the parents who do it as the very last resort after several other attempts at discipline or parents are just like, oh, you screwed up, you know, let's hit you or whatever. And apparently most, you know, almost all the schools, it is a last resort as in they've
SPEAKER_02: tried other things, but you know, it's just, I don't know. Gotta do something. I try not to judge people, but don't hit your kids. Well, I was going to say it's legal in 17 states for schools to spank kids. It's legal in all 50 states for a parent to spank kids. There's not really anything coming down the horizon that makes it seem like that's ever going to be banned, but it does seem generationally like we're moving away from spanking pretty rapidly. Yeah. My spankings as a kid were very infrequent and very organized as in it was never done
SPEAKER_06:
in the heat of anger, like just getting slapped or something. It was like, all right, go to the bathroom and spend 10 minutes, you know, upset and scared. And then I got spanked with a bolo paddle. You know, the little bolo paddle games? I know the bolo tie. No, the bolo paddle where you, it's a little light plywood paddle with a ball on a rubber
SPEAKER_02: band. Yeah, sure. That was the spanking device in my house. Those things were made of like balsa wood. Yeah, it wasn't too bad. It stung, but you know. How about all of your spankings as a grown-up? That usually involves leather.
SPEAKER_02: Okay. You want to move on to the next one? Yeah, let's move on to chemotherapy. Okay, so chemotherapy is one of these things where if you start kind of putting it down today, what you're talking about is our current modern medical miracle that since the 90s
SPEAKER_06: has reduced the cancer death rate by 25%. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: It's a really big deal that we have chemotherapy now.
SPEAKER_06:
It's saved a lot of lives. Yeah, this is not poo-pooing chemotherapy.
SPEAKER_02: No, it's not.
SPEAKER_06: The reason why we can probably guess that our descendants down the line are going to
look at chemotherapy as fairly primitive and barbaric is because it's so indiscriminate in how it harms the body. It harms the whole body in order to kill the cancer cells, right?
SPEAKER_06: And we're moving, it seems like, much more toward far, far more specific and tailored
SPEAKER_06: medicine. And so all of the side effects and the horribleness that come with chemotherapy, even though it does save lives, will be going away in future decades, it looks like. Yeah, and it seems like, and we're going to talk about a few ways that things are
SPEAKER_06: becoming more specific, but that seems to be the way it's all trying to go is instead
of just like killing all the cells, let's see if they can just specifically target cancer cells and then eventually get down to the human-specific targeting of things, which would be amazing, obviously. Patient-specific.
SPEAKER_02: But one of the first ones is antibody drug conjugates. And this is a type of chemotherapy, but it combines chemotherapy, like the drugs used in chemotherapy, with monoclonal antibodies, which are lab, just like antibodies that we have in our body, except they're created in a lab. Right. And so what happens is we inject these drugs, these antibody drug conjugates into a patient with cancer, and those antibodies are designed to go seek out that tumor, the specific kind of tumor that that patient has and attach to that tumor, that cancer cell, and it delivers that payload of chemo drugs to it.
SPEAKER_06: It says, here you go, here's a nice little present, and then turns around and runs, and then in the background, the cell explodes and the antibody ends up on its chest, but lives to fight another day. Yeah, exactly. That's a, if we're headed in that direction, that's fantastic. Vaccines is another one. The mRNA vaccines that we detailed back when those came out for COVID, two of the most successful versions of those vaccines were originally brought about to begin with as tumor vaccines. And the idea is to use sort of that same technology to just specifically target tumors themselves.
SPEAKER_02:
So it's not like a vaccine to prevent a disease. It's a shot that will essentially specifically shrink a tumor. Yeah, just like the mRNA vaccines for COVID trained the body to look for and respond to COVID viruses saying like, hey, if you see anything with this little horn on it, the spike, go after it. They're doing the same thing with tumors, right? So that's boosting the immune response. It's also training the immune response. So technically it does qualify as a vaccine. And because like we talked about in the COVID vaccine episode, this mRNA technology is just
SPEAKER_06: so you can just, it's just like ready to wear vaccines, basically. Yeah. Apparently they have reached a turning point and in the next five years, a lot of cancer researchers are saying we're going to see a lot more cancer vaccines coming down the pike. Amazing. And then what I talked about earlier, like making, like targeting cancer cells specifically is like a great direction to go, but really getting into personalized cancer care will be the next step beyond that. Like, hey, I'm going to identify exactly what kind of tumor that you have in your body and not just maybe this kind of tumor and, you know, treat, like get to patient specific
SPEAKER_02: levels of treatment. And, you know, I know we pooh-poohed AI in certain respects, but this is a place where
AI can really probably do a lot of good.
Yeah. I think we should just clarify our position on it. If I can speak for both of us. Sure. As long as AI is not taking over the world or damaging humanity in some terrible way,
I'm all for all the great ways that can help things. And this is a really sterling example of that. Yeah. They gave us a new Beatles song. Yeah. I would say that's right in the middle for me. But I think what you were talking about was taking a sample of the specific tumor that
SPEAKER_06: a specific person has, analyzing its genetic makeup, and then looking at that genetic makeup thanks to AI spitting out all of the information that we need from analyzing that huge genome,
SPEAKER_06: saying, oh, this is an Achilles heel.
This is another weakness. This is another way we can attack it. And then tailoring the treatment for that specific tumor. Like that tumor, like you said, not that kind of tumor. That tumor is getting attacked. It's so specific. You could name the tumor. Name the tumor Melvin. Melvin is toast when you're using precision or personal cancer treatments. Yeah. This kind of stuff could even be possible now. It's just really, really expensive to target a specific tumor for a specific human. And so the idea is, hopefully with the help of AI, they can just reduce a lot of the cost, basically, for doing that. So it becomes, instead of something that's not even something worth pursuing or able to be pursued because of finances, something that's like, oh, yeah, just step right up
SPEAKER_02:
and we'll spit out your treatment. Yeah. And as the costs come down, more people use it, which means more people using it allows for a greater chance of new breakthroughs. So yeah, hopefully we're going to have cancer-licked in the future. I saw somebody suggest that it'll end up being kind of like a chronic disease akin to diabetes in the future. Just something you can live fairly healthily with? Yeah, you can manage and there'll be plenty of drugs to keep you going.
SPEAKER_06:
Amazing. You want to take a break? Yeah. Okay. Well, then let's do that.
SPEAKER_06:
SPEAKER_04: And then he started getting nodules on his body.
SPEAKER_04: He had been to so many different doctors and I just felt like they were just throwing a dart at what this could be and trying different medications.
You couldn't imagine that anyone could be alive and have a mutation in that gene.
Let's see if he can get a new one.
I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine.
I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine.
I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be fine. Hey everybody, let's talk about Squarespace.
SPEAKER_04: Squarespace has an amazing new feature called Fluid Engine.
SPEAKER_05:
It's a next generation website design system from Squarespace only and it makes it easier
than ever for anybody to unlock unbreakable creativity. You start with a best in class website design template from Squarespace and you customize every design detail you want with the reimagined drag and drop technology which anybody can use
SPEAKER_10: and you can use it on desktop or mobile. So stretch your imagination online with Squarespace's Fluid Engine built in and ready to go on any new Squarespace site. Go to squarespace.com stuff and get a free trial and when you're ready to launch use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Squarespace. What's your reason for wanting to be healthy? Is it because of your job or because your kids depend on you for everything? Is it because you just want to feel your best and live life to the fullest? Everyone has their own reason for wanting to be healthy and those are the exact reasons why Teladoc Health was created. That's right, simply stated, Teladoc Health relieves the burden of getting sick. It gives you access to doctors and nurses 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, all from the comfort of your own home. With Teladoc Health, you can connect with a board certified doctor who will help diagnose
SPEAKER_16: your issue, provide a treatment plan, and even write a prescription if needed. Yeah, Teladoc Health is not only convenient, it's affordable too and it's covered by a surprising number of insurance plans. It's always important to stay on top of your health. For more information, visit teladochealth.com slash what's your why. That's T-E-L-A-D-O-C health dot com slash what's your why.
SPEAKER_00: Every person living with a rare autoimmune condition navigates their own unique journey. That's why in season two of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a
Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenics, they are sharing even more empowering
stories. That's right. From myasthenia gravis to chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, also known as
CIDP, learn about the daily challenges and triumphs of those with these conditions. Yep, host Martine Hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the debilitating
muscle weakness and fatigue caused by these conditions.
From early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care, every
person with an autoimmune condition has a story to tell.
SPEAKER_02: All right, next up on the list of things that people may one day look back and say,
SPEAKER_02: why did you do it that way? Dummies of the 21st century is organ transplants.
We have a pretty great episode on organ transplants somewhere in our back catalog.
It feels like a long time ago. It was a little while. But what we're basically talking about, and again, organ transplants, awesome. It's amazing how far they've come in the past since they've been doing them. But rejection rates are still an issue, up to 10 to 15 percent for kidneys, for instance. And then also the fact that transporting organs, getting them to the people in time can still be an issue. 17 Americans die every day waiting on organs. And it's also inequitable in that, you know, generally people that are the most funded
SPEAKER_06: get the most organs for transplant. But there's a better way forward, right? Yeah, I just want to say one, I found a stat that I found rather shocking. One in five donated kidneys goes unused. It goes to waste, even though people die waiting for kidneys. That's just how kludgy the whole setup is right now. Yeah. So yeah, they're trying to fix the process and the system and the organization in charge of that in the United States. But further down the pike, on a longer timeline, the goal is organogenesis, which is what it sounds like. It's creating entirely new organs from cells, from scratch. It's like, watch this grow. You remember those little dinosaur sponges that you added water to and they just grew, grew, grew?
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like that, but with fully functioning organs.
Yeah. How far are we away from someone trying to grow a human out in a lab?
SPEAKER_06: I'm sure somebody is probably trying it already, but I don't know how long it'll be till
SPEAKER_02: they're successful.
SPEAKER_06:
I mean, we had Dolly the sheep. That was, Dolly was a clone, right? Yes. And I don't know if everybody's read our book and if you haven't, I'll just go ahead and share with you a little fact from it. Passage of dramatic reading. Apparently Dolly was named Dolly because she was grown from a mammary cell.
SPEAKER_02: So it was a 90s ha ha joke about Dolly Parton. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06: I think we might've said that in the Dolly Parton episode, didn't we?
SPEAKER_02: Or did we? Oh, if we did. I'll have to go back and listen.
SPEAKER_06: If so, we'll edit this part out. No, no, no. It bears repeating, I think. Okay. So yes, we're a little ways off because not only, Chuck, are we not capable of growing human from cells, we're not capable of growing kidneys or hearts. But we are somewhere. We've grown and successfully transplanted wind pipes, bladders, fairly like simple organs and structures. But I mean, simple is like a relative term because we're talking about something that was grown from that person's own cells into the very like piece of equipment that they
SPEAKER_02: needed and then put in them and it worked. Yeah, which is remarkable. I know that they can do this with, at least right now, the epidermis. So if you're a burn victim, you can get your own stem cells and you can get some new epidermis. I was about to say just skin, but they're working on growing like the entire thickness
SPEAKER_02: of the skin. They're not there yet. Right.
Yeah. But they can now grow epidermis from your own stem cells in a lab and they transfer
it to something called fibrin, which is a protein that really kind of helps your blood
SPEAKER_02: clot when you get a cut or something.
And then they put it on your body and it just, it goes and then you're done.
Yeah, it makes that sound. It takes, you know, obviously it's a process. I was just kidding around. But right now they can't like grow skin that grows hair or sebaceous glands and stuff like
SPEAKER_02:
that, but if you're a burn victim and you can get, you know, your own epidermis to replace,
SPEAKER_06:
you know, your scarred skin on your body, then that's pretty amazing.
It's kind of akin to laying sod, but with skin, you know?
SPEAKER_06: Sure. So right now I think the state of the art with organogenesis, that extra O trips me up and I like to add syllables. So that's a real tricky one is growing organs in other animals. And as we'll see, hopefully we're going to be moving away from that because to take that organ from the animal and transplant it into a human, you kill that animal in the process. Right? Like you don't, you can't take a pig's heart and be like, good luck with the rest of your
SPEAKER_06: life because it doesn't have a rest of its life. It's missing its heart. And from a lot of the trends that I've seen, it seems like a fairly safe bet that we're moving in a direction where animal welfare is going to become more and more and more
important to where how we treat animals will be maybe the most critical thing that people
SPEAKER_02:
will of the future will look back at us on, you know? Yeah, which that's coming up in a more robust way in a second. But to finish this up, there's also a 3D bio printing, which is pretty amazing. I remember telling the story one time.
SPEAKER_02: I've known two people in my life who were born without an external ear.
SPEAKER_02:
And the process back then was they formed a sort of a skeleton of the shape of an ear.
And if I'm not, I'm not sure what it was made of, I think cartilage. But if I'm not mistaken, that then was, there was like a skin bubble around it. And then they would suck the air out of that skin bubble very quickly to onto that cartilage
SPEAKER_02: to form, you know, what looked close enough to an external ear.
SPEAKER_02: And I say external, like, you know, the ear parts. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. And I've known two people in my life that had that done. And they, you know, back in the day, it was not like it is now. I think the 3D bioprinting of ears is much, much further along and they look much better than they used to, and that's kind of the point. But they're thinking that, you know, maybe one day we can 3D bioprint a liver.
SPEAKER_06:
Yeah, pretty amazing. And that'll kind of come up in, well, in the next section too. So I say we move on to the next section because it does kind of tie into what we were talking
about just now. That's right. Let's do it. So getting meat from animals is probably something that will really be looked down upon in the future because we already have techniques that will, that make it so we don't really need live animals to create meat, to eat meat. And yet we're still eating meat. And that's despite, and I'm very much guilty of this too, that's despite knowing how horrific and terrible factory farming is for the animals themselves, for the environment. People just really love meat and it's tough to give up. So rather than forcing people to give up, there's other alternatives that people are
working on to replace it. We're going to need to do that too because apparently, Chuck, the growing demand for
SPEAKER_02: meat is going to be totally unsustainable in the next couple decades. Yeah, I mean, there are statistics like the UN will throw out that say we're going to, by the year 2050, the meat demand means we're going to have to produce 50 to 100 percent more meat than we do now.
SPEAKER_02: But there's also other people saying like, hey, this whole notion of wealthier countries
eat meat because they can afford it and countries that are more developing eat agriculturally
SPEAKER_02:
largely or vegetarian because they're forced to isn't really the case or at least moving
forward it looks like because what they found is the emerging trend is that people are eating
less meat once they get enough wealth to afford it for a bunch of reasons and one of which
is what you're talking about is there's just a forever changing way that humans look at
animals and animal welfare for one and also, you know, red meat and the fact that it's
SPEAKER_06: terrible for your body is another one. And terrible for the environment. Livestock raising that includes transportation, tractor emissions, but also methane from the
cows shooting ducks all the time. That accounts for 14 and a half percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
SPEAKER_06: So it has like this triple impact, triple negative impact on the animals welfare, the human body and the health of the earth. And for those reasons, it does seem like people in wealthier countries are starting to move away from meat. And so I think the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, they released the agricultural outlook within the last couple of years and they predicted that around 2075 the whole world will start moving away from meat and that eventually we're just going to stop eating what's called carcass meat very appropriately altogether.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
And they light that thing so they can see a flame to judge like how much gas is still
SPEAKER_02: in there. Oh, wow. So there was a video of a cow with a blowtorch coming out of its side, essentially.
SPEAKER_02: Wow. What was the cow's expression like? Well, all I saw was the cow, but the guy who was hosting the video, his expression was
horrified because he was like, you know, can you believe that this is where we are in the
SPEAKER_06: world?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I totally can believe that. That doesn't surprise me at all, to tell you the truth. And they're trying to help the cow, but it's, you know, the reason the cow's there is because
SPEAKER_06: of factory farming. Right. Tomiko, by the way, has one of the better non-celebrity Instagram feeds you can find.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, Tomiko, this is great. It's good stuff. But what you were saying about moving away from, what did you call it, carcass meat?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. There are two main ways that that's happening right now, and that is obviously what they call novel vegan meat replacements, you know, fake meat, impossible stuff, beyond stuff. And then lab-grown meat, which, did we do a whole episode on lab-grown meat?
SPEAKER_06:
Yeah, we did a while back. I thought so. We should update it. Like we did the recycling episode, you know, like so much stuff has changed since then, I'm sure. We'll update it eventually. But lab-grown meat or cultured meat is exactly what it sounds like. You use a bioreactor, sometimes a 3D like bio printer, using animal cells to recreate meat. And they, I think there's a consulting group called AT Kearney. They predict that by 2040, which is not that long off, everybody, up to 60% of global meat consumption will be from cultured or non-vegan meat replacements. That's significant. That's a huge change. Like there may be countries that are developing now that won't even eat carcass meat when they become wealthy because the replacements will have become so great.
SPEAKER_02: There'll be no reason to eat meat. Yeah. You know, if you ask the CEOs of Beyond and Impossible, they're going to say in 15 years, there will be no more eating of meat. Yeah. That's a little ambitious.
SPEAKER_02: And I think that, you know, maybe they're trying to drive up the stock price. Uh huh. So that's probably not going to be the case, but that AT Kearney group prediction, like
SPEAKER_06: that seems quite possible. I buy that, especially if there's a couple of challenges that are overcome by then, which is, you know, that's 17, sorry, 16 years now away. And that's plenty of time to overcome some relative speed bumps. One is replicating. No, I think they have flavor kind of licked at least as far as cultured meat goes.
SPEAKER_02:
SPEAKER_06:
Yeah. Texture. Texture's the problem because you don't want to eat like a little, a little scoby of beef that tastes just like beef, but looks like a scoby from a kombucha batch.
SPEAKER_06: No one wants to eat that. And yet Japanese researchers recently showed, I think in, according to Freethink, this great website I found, in 2021, they recreated a wagyu steak, which has got some of the most complex marbling of fat mixed in with the meat that you could possibly ever come across. And they faithfully recreated one. I'm sure it costs them a million and a half dollars to make that one steak, but there
SPEAKER_06: was a proof of concept that it can be done. The other big challenge is right now, when you're making that wagyu steak from cellular culture, you actually need to take it from an unborn calf as you slaughter the mom. I don't think the mom has to be slaughtered.
SPEAKER_06: I think they just take it while they're slaughtering the mom. And that's what they use to grow meat right now. And a lot of people are like, nope, still, I'm not okay with that. It's still, an animal suffers somehow, some way. And so there's a company called Meatable, a Dutch company that said, we got this, we
SPEAKER_02: got our way around this. Yeah. They made a sausage in July 2022 that was lab grown sausage, lab grown pork.
SPEAKER_02: But it was not, it did not use, I don't think we said what it's called, fetal bovine serum. Is that blood drawn from the cow's fetus. And that's what you said is typically used, but they didn't use that at all.
SPEAKER_02:
It was, you know, there were, there was no animal involved.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they used cells from like a live animal that was unharmed by it. Well, yeah, yeah, that's what I meant.
SPEAKER_06:
No animal involved as in their death was not involved. Right, right, exactly.
Yeah, the animal couldn't have cared less either way from what I understand. They just, they were in the process of having, they were being degassed. So they had bigger fish to fry than somebody scraping a few cells off their hindquarters.
SPEAKER_06: You know, it's like, I got a blow torch coming out of my side. Exactly. Okay. I say we move on. Oh, but first Chuck, let's take a break because it's, it's that kind of time.
SPEAKER_08: Let's do it. I'm Lauren Breit Pacheco, host of Symptomatic, a medical mystery podcast, a production of
SPEAKER_10: Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. Every other week, we get to know the everyday people living with a mysterious illness and hear their firsthand stories of struggle and perseverance on their quest for answers. During the day, I'd feel like I'm just getting sick. I'd sort of have that flu-ish feeling. And then the next morning I'd be fine. Then he started getting nodules on his body. He had been to so many different doctors and I just felt like they were just throwing a dart at what this could be and trying different medications. You couldn't imagine that anyone could be alive and have a mutation in that gene. Listen to Symptomatic, a medical mystery podcast, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_00: This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by National Car Rental. National knows the way we all work has changed. Business can happen from virtually anywhere now.
But that said, there's nothing like being there.
That's right. And when you need to put the power of business travel to work, those that know go with National.
Because when you rent from National as a member of their complimentary Emerald Club, you don't have to stop at the counter.
You can just fly right on by and head directly to the lot. Yeah, and there you can choose any car in the aisle you want, even upgrades,
and still just pay the reserved mid-size rate, then manage everything right from the app.
They're giving you speed, choice, and the control to get more done.
So go National and go like a pro. Learn more at NationalCar.com, subject to availability and other restrictions.
SPEAKER_06: Hey friends, did you know that it's estimated that 85% of all customer service interactions are automated? Yeah, it's true. And customers are the lifeblood of all business. So you probably don't want to put that responsibility in the hands of a robot. And that's why thousands of business owners call Ruby and hire them. That's right. Ruby is the virtual receptionist company who screens, transfers,
SPEAKER_02: and takes messages 24-7 all while making your customers feel special. Yep, you definitely don't want to hire a subpar front desk person. And with Ruby, they engage with your callers in a conversational way, just like your best employee would.
SPEAKER_06: That's right. Finding someone who cares about your business as much as you do feels impossible at times. But the team at Ruby are experts in providing the best customer experience and turn every ring into a relationship. Yep, this year can be your best year yet. Small, efficient changes can make a huge impact on your bottom line.
SPEAKER_02: That's right. And Ruby answers all of your calls live from right here in the US. They'll take messages, answer questions, route calls, and much more. Visit Ruby.com or better yet, give them a call at 844-900-RUBY.
SPEAKER_15: Every person living with a rare autoimmune condition navigates their own unique journey. That's why in season 2 of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenix, they are sharing even more empowering stories. That's right. From myasthenia gravis to chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, also known as CIDP, learn about the daily challenges and triumphs of those with these conditions.
Yep, host Martine Hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the
SPEAKER_06: debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by these conditions. From early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care, every person with an autoimmune condition has a story to tell.
By featuring these real-life experiences, the podcast hopes to inspire each community, educate others about these severe conditions, and let those living with them know that they are not alone. Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back, Charles. We're talking about what people in the future are going to think of us based on the stuff we do today. It may seem primitive, and one of them might not seem, well, it could seem primitive. It'll seem quaint, probably, is driving a car yourself. Or maybe even owning your own car. Because the predictions for the future are that car hailing apps will become so ubiquitous
SPEAKER_02:
that you're going to need your own car less and less and less. This is a prediction from Kara Swisher, the New York Times tech columnist. Sorry, Kara.
SPEAKER_02: That in not too many years, owning your own car is going to become obsolete. And then eventually the next step, this is me adding to that prediction,
those cars that pick you up when you use a ride hailing app will not have a driver in them.
SPEAKER_02: You will just get in the back and go. Yeah, I mean, self-driving cars has been in the news a lot over the past decade or so. I remember being in San Francisco a couple of years ago and seeing a car with a crazy contraption on top. And I was like, what in the world is that? Is that a Google Maps or a Google Earth thing taking pictures?
SPEAKER_02: That car is wearing braces. And I looked inside. I was like, no, no, no, there's no human in that car.
And it kind of startled me. Did you shout witchcraft? I did. I threw a Molotov cocktail at it. I don't care about that problem. But there was a company, I think there was more than one company that's trying this stuff out. But there's a company called Cruz, which just recently in October of this year, I guess last year now, of 2023, the California state government said,
SPEAKER_02:
you can't do this, you can't practice this anymore.
SPEAKER_02:
No more driverless practicing out of you. Because, well, for a lot of reasons, building up to what was called the incident. But minor incidents involve things like blocking ambulances,
SPEAKER_06: stopping in the middle of an intersection, rear-ending a bus, running red lights, stuff like that.
SPEAKER_06:
But the big incident was when a pedestrian finally was bound to happen, was hit in downtown San Francisco when she was hit by another car driven by a real human, knocked into the other lane,
SPEAKER_06: and then the Cruz car apparently braked, but then rolled over her anyway, pulled her forward, and then stopped on top of her. Just stopped. It was like, okay, I'm fine. I don't know what to do. I'm just going to freeze right here on top of this pedestrian. So, yeah, Cruz is far and away the only company from having problems with their tech that they're working on. They're just the most recent poster child of the problems with self-driving cars. Yeah, she didn't die, by the way.
SPEAKER_02: No, thank you for saying that. The point of this is, though, is that despite these setbacks, we exist in the time of setbacks. In a couple of decades, we'll exist in the time where we're beyond those setbacks and we have driverless cars. These setbacks don't mean that we're never going to have driverless cars. In fact, even people who are super skeptical of them right now still admit we're probably going to have them at some point in the future. It's just a question
SPEAKER_02: of when, and it seems like we're a little further behind than we may have thought a few years ago. Yeah, and one thing that if it's not, I think the road there may not be as abrupt because we already see in newer cars a lot of things like lane assistance, like your car will correct itself
SPEAKER_06: and steer itself back if it sees that it's driving off the road. Like if you're drowsy or you're on your phone, which you should never be. So, you see like lane assistance and stuff like that.
You know, if your speed like really, really changes a lot, a lot of times cars these days will send you an alert that says like, you know, are you okay? Maybe you should pull over. Stuff like that. So, that's sort of like these are the intermediary steps that will lead to
SPEAKER_02: full automation and they've already come a long way, but apparently, again, with the help of AI, they could go a lot further. Yeah, eventually the car is just going to start talking to itself and
SPEAKER_06: you'll feel so left out you just don't even get in the driver's seat anymore. But the whole point of removing humans from cars is to remove humans from the equation of driving. Not for our convenience, necessarily, but for our safety because we're our own worst enemies when it comes to driving. You found a stat that recently, was it like 2020, 2021, do you know?
SPEAKER_06: It's 2021, but just over the last few years in general, it's been about 30 to 33 percent.
SPEAKER_06: Of fatalities involved at least one of the drivers being drunk. I couldn't find any statistics that also include drugs, but just being drunk alone, 30 percent of people who die in the United States die
SPEAKER_02: because one of the people involved in that crash was drunk. That is unacceptable, but it's humans.
SPEAKER_02:
People do that. It's a terrible decision. People think that that's not going to happen to them and it does and it accounts for thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths every year.
Driverless cars don't drink. They have other problems right now, but as we work them out,
those problems will become a part of the past and drunk driving accidents will become a part
of the past as well, which will be great for everybody. Yeah, I mean, 94 percent of any
SPEAKER_02: accident in the United States involves some kind of human error. So, you know, what I'm curious
about is what the acceptable percentage of driverless car error because it seems like
SPEAKER_02: human car error is just endlessly forgivable to the point where, you know, like every car these
days you shouldn't be able to start unless you can blow into a breathalyzer. Like that technology is there.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, we're harder on computers than we are on ourselves is what you're saying, huh? Well, exactly. So, like what if all of a sudden driverless cars they prove like, you know, they can reduce total accidents by 90 percent. There would still be people saying like
SPEAKER_06:
in those 10 percent of cases where someone died, it was some AI computer or whatever. So, it's just, I don't know, just find it really interesting that we still allow people to get into a car after they've been drinking and drive even though the technology exists to stop that from happening. Well, yeah, I think that it's a cognitive bias of ours. We tend to focus on the more sensational
and the more sensational is a car being driven by a computer killing somebody than a drunk dude
SPEAKER_06:
killing somebody in his car. So, yeah, there's just removing people from the equation should
SPEAKER_06: increase safety. It should also probably increase or decrease pollution as a result. There's
SPEAKER_06: somebody who came up with the eye-popping statistic that 30 percent of the traffic in
SPEAKER_02:
metropolitan areas is people circling the block looking for a place to park. If you don't own a car and you're not driving your own car, that goes away. So, 30 percent of traffic goes away instantaneously with that. Yeah. I mean, that, you have me right there. Yeah. Yeah. So, driverless cars almost certainly coming down the pike as long as AI doesn't take over the world, of course. I think we should caveat this entire episode with that. All of this is going to happen if AI doesn't take over the world, okay? That's right. And we're going to finish up with a couple of shorter ones that I think are just pretty awesome and interesting. One is the fact that sort of the current thinking is that we tend to tie like progress as a nation, definitely in the United States, but in most places around the world, to how robust an economy is. It's like always tied to finances on what kind of progress we're
SPEAKER_06: making. And there are people that think sort of like with the way we're starting to look at animals, like one day that's not going to be the most important factor for humans. And things like
the health of the earth and human beings' health and well-being, both physically and mentally, is the, you should equate that with the success of a nation. And one day they're going to look back and say, you remember when we, all that we cared about was the fact that the stock market
SPEAKER_06: was flush? Yeah, because GDP just tells you whether an economy is growing or shrinking, right? That's basically all it tells you. And it leaves out a lot of stuff, like you said, human well-being, things like whether people are dying of deaths of despair,
or whether they're generally happy, how many resources are being depleted, is anybody working
on an alternative to that? All of the stuff that creates that growing economy just is totally ignored. And I think that's what that economist, Kate Raworth, was saying, is like it's madness. Like it's so ridiculous to just completely not count all of this stuff that really, really counts in favor of just this one metric, which is growth or shrinkage. And not only is that probably going to be thought of as ridiculous in the future, people, younger people today who are becoming
SPEAKER_02: adults or who have recently become adults, they already tend to think this way as a group. So it's
a pretty sure indicator that we're going to leave GDP or growth behind as an indicator of the health
of an economy and start thinking more about the other stuff, the more important stuff. And who knows what can result from that, like what great cascading knock-on effects that that will have.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, you found this Princeton University bioethicist named Peter Singer who talked about the fact that the circle of concern as humankind advances is expanding. And that's just
SPEAKER_06: a wonderful thought. And you see it in everything from the fact that we've laughed before it, like the Mad Men episode where people used to just willingly throw litter on the ground. We look back at that as barbaric generally. And that's just one small example. So as humans are evolving down the line, that circle of concern is expanding and people are caring about more and more things that they didn't care about before. And that's great. Yeah, and Peter Singer, by the way, is a very famous ethicist as far as animal rights are concerned and animal welfare. So yeah, his whole thing is like, we're going to stop focusing on conspicuous consumption and rather, you'll be more considered like a great person, not from your
SPEAKER_02: wealth but from your charity and your charitable giving, which would be great. And then that circle of concern kind of leads us to our last one too, because the most recent inclusion into the circle of concern is the environment, the earth, the health of the earth. And this one is
SPEAKER_02:
just a sure gimme. There is no way that we're not going to be looked down upon for this by our
descendants. That is burning fossil fuels. Yeah, I mean, in 500 years, who knows, maybe sooner, it seems like people will definitely look back and say, I can't believe that we used to burn fossil fuels like we did. And for a lot of reasons, not just the process of removing fossil fuels and all that goes into that, or even the climate and the ozone, which are all
SPEAKER_06: huge concerns, obviously, but just things like pollution and air quality and the fact that, you know, that kills people and that costs so much money in healthcare. I think there was a study from the University of Wisconsin in Madison that said if we stopped burning fossil fuels altogether, it would eliminate about 50,000 premature deaths per year because of air quality alone and about $600 billion annually in the US alone in healthcare costs. Yeah, and I think even more than looking at us as like dumdums for ignoring that, we're going to be looked at as kind of reviled because of the future we'll have delivered our descendants because of the climate change we just allowed to happen. I saw a WHO estimate that 250,000 additional deaths per year
SPEAKER_02: are expected to come each year between 2030 and 2050 because of climate change from things like heat stress, malnutrition, insect-borne diseases, that an additional quarter of a million people
SPEAKER_06:
are going to die every year because of climate change starting six years from now. That's nuts. So I can only imagine what the people of, you know, 2100 are going to think of us. Hopefully, they'll have everything under control by then, but they're probably going to be pretty ticked
off that they had to go to the trouble. Yeah, I mean, you can see this coming because it already happens now, once again, by seeing younger generations already looking at previous generations
SPEAKER_02: as barbaric and how we treat the earth. For sure. I saw an RHS financial estimate or prediction
that the oil market will collapse this decade, that we're just based on trends, current trends
SPEAKER_06: now and the way people think now that probably we won't be using oil nearly as much in the next 10, 20 years. Very interesting. Yeah. The future is interesting, Chuck, and it is the future. As a matter of fact, it's almost 2024, and I just want to say happy new year to everybody, huh? Uh, that's right. Happy new year, everyone. We thank you once again for your support. We say it all the time. If there was no you, there would be no us. We are always grateful that we are allowed
SPEAKER_14:
to do this job because you listen. Yeah, thank you and happy new year to everyone. Happy birthday to you, me. Happy birthday. Thanks, Chuck. And we'll see you guys next year. And if you want to get in
SPEAKER_09: touch with us in the interim, in this very short time left in 2023, you can do it via email, almost instantaneously. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, put a sash on it that says 2024 and send it off to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
SPEAKER_15: For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Have you heard about Vivgard? F-Guard, TIGAMOD, Alpha, F-Cab? Ask your neurologist if Vivgard could be right for you and learn more at vivgard.com slash learn.
That's v-y-v-g-a-r-t dot com slash learn brought to you by Archenex.
SPEAKER_03: Hey, this is Jason Alexander for Visible Wireless. You know, some wireless companies say they have no yada yada. But details matter. You should know what you're signing up for. So yada yada, I'm reading this ad for Visible. On the Visible plan, get one line of wireless on Verizon's 5G network for $25 a month every month. That's unlimited data, text, talk, and hotspot for $25 a month, all taxes and fees included. No surprises, like some other guys. Learn more
about Visible Wireless and Visible's data management practices at visible.com. Additional terms apply. So you're saying with Hilton Honors, I can use points for a free night stay anywhere?
SPEAKER_02: Anywhere. What about fancy places like the Canopy in Paris? Yeah, Hilton Honors, baby. Or relaxing sanctuaries like the Conrad and Tulum? Hilton Honors, baby. What about the five-star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you going to do this for all 7,000 hotels and resorts? When you want points that can take you anywhere, it matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Click the banner to join Hilton Honors for free today. It's football season and you can now get almost,
