Ep.12: Tyrannical Time & Terrifying Telomeres

We apologize for the lower audio quality of this episode. There was a breakdown in our recording equipment and we lost a portion of our high quality recording, so we had to revert to the lower quality backup. We hope you still enjoy it!

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Episode Agenda with Time Stamps:

• 00:00:00 - Cold Open - Masks make life hard.
• 00:03:10 - Intro
• 00:04:39 - Science
  • 00:04:39 - The science of telomeres
  • 00:15:42 - Animals are evolving due to climate change - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210907110718.htm
  • 00:26:50 - The tyranny of time - https://www.noemamag.com/the-tyranny-of-time/
• 00:46:15 - “Break” - Thank you to our listeners.
• 00:46:55 - Banter - Free range toddler, Ted Lasso, Outer Banks Season 2, Pumpkin Spice Season, McDonalds Ice Cream Conspiracy Theory
• 01:04:39 - Gaming - Diablo 2 Remaster, No Man’s Sky, Psychonauts 2, The Crew
• 01:17:30 - Outro - Listener Question: Are salt lamps cool?

Credits:

• Cover Art Photo: Mosby Lake - follow this dog on instagram at regular_mo.
• Cover Art Font: Paper Cuts 2 by Empire of Dust (Daniel Werneck) is Public Domain.
• Intro Music: Shortened version of “Sweat Time” by Loyalty Freak Music is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal License.
• Outro Music: Shortened version of “Alethia” by Nihilore is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Transcript

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Ian: [00:00:00] I now have this weird sort of self-consciousness about stuff hanging out of my face when I take my mask off and time, I don't even remember what I was eating, but there's like this massive black speck on my lip. And I was like, I'm pretty sure I took my mask off at some point.

And no one's said anything to me. So I wonder when it got there anywhere between the hours of 8:00 AM and 3:00 PM,

the mask things so weird. I know it's way too late to complain about masks. We've been wearing masks for well over a year, but going and being like in school full-time and trying to get to know kids and trying to. Well, everyone's wearing masks is so bizarre. I can't get over it. Like, I don't know who's talking, when you have a room, so full of kids, like not only like the masks, first of all, kind of diffuse the sound.

So it doesn't even sound like it's coming from like a singular source. It kind of sounds like it's just like coming from [00:01:00] around an area and then like, everyone's just looking at you. And so someone is talking and you're kind of like trying to figure out whose mask is moving the most. Sometimes you can't tell, so you just make eye contact with one of them and you have no idea if it's the right one it's that happened to me.

I think yesterday I had a group of four in the front and their. Kind of facing ish forward and someone started talking and I literally put my hand up and almost like a little like metal detector, like voice detector, and started pointing it at the three individuals until one person kind of like gave me a nod that it was, I was like honing in on where the voice is coming from in my mind, a long time ago. I remember we would try and make this really high pitched noise when we are taking tests, but we'd all be looking down, taking the test. We had just like, it was just really high pitch.

Hum. I was like, but it was just soft enough where you couldn't tell it was coming from. So our teacher who was [00:02:00] doing the test, which is awful now that I think about it, like I know some students going to hear this and try and do it to me, but I was, he'd be walking around during the test trying to identify who it was coming from.

And we had made this agreement that as soon as he got close enough, like within six feet we'd stop and someone else would try and pick it up in another spot. So not only could you not tell where it was coming from, it would also change and it was just driving him crazy. And I feel like that's kind of how this talking thing is.

We constantly trying to figure out where the voice is coming from. You're like, well, is it like behind me? Was it over here? Over there? So I it's stressful kind of, kind of terrifying hearing my hearing is so bad that that just wouldn't even work on me. I wouldn't even notice the humming. The kids would get bored.

It's that guy? He's, he's good at this. I would just start humming along, trying to harmonize. You'd be like, I'd be like, Hey, did it hit and knocked him lower? well, [00:03:00] I am so glad that in this setting, we don't have to wear masks and I get to stare at both of your beautiful faces and we get to record yonder. Ooh. Hey everybody. Welcome back to yonder cast. This week, we are going to discuss telomeres. We're going to discuss how climate change is affecting animal evolution.

We're going to discuss the tyranny of time, and we're also going to get caught up on all of the things we've been playing. The things we've been watching, everything going on in our lives, because man, it has been a while since we recorded our last episode Well, how are you guys? Yeah, I'm okay. Hanging in there. Gotta say I'm alive. Things are good. Just it's the first week of school is done.

And so like I woke up so late today I needed sleep. I even went to bed at like eight or nine last night. That's impressive. That is impressive. That's a, that's a lot of good sleep.[00:04:00] Yeah. I got, I got nine hours of sleep last night and man, I feel so much better today than I have felt all week. This first week has been really exhausting.

Oh, I bet.

Well, we are trying something different with the show. We've gotten some feedback from listeners that we should try. Talking about science first, because our traditional setup was that we would banter and kind of talk about games and life for a little while. And then we would get to what you could, I guess, call the meat of the show, talking about scientific ideas.

And some of our listeners thought that maybe we should just start with the meat and then we can end on the personal stuff. So we're going to give that a try. So our first scientific topic of the day, Josh is going to answer a, a, a long awaited question from a listener from one of our listeners named Sidney who asked this question probably like five months ago about telomeres and what they are and why they are so fascinating.

And Josh has a [00:05:00] little bit information for us, Josh, over to you. Ooh, well, this is one of my favorite topics because I always get excited when scientists don't have the answer to things and like there's always those burning questions. We just don't know a lot about like how eels reproduce. We still don't know how eels reproduce.

And that is just the funniest thing in the world to me. And telomeres is actually on that list. Like we know what they are, we know what they do, but it's still this big open field where we just don't know a lot about them. And so all of these studies are coming out and telling us new information about how we age, how our health is affected by cell division.

And I'm excited to talk about it. I was really excited by this question. So for those of you that don't know a telemere is essentially like an end cap on your DNA. It's just like a repeating string of nitrogen bases. That really doesn't code for anything. It's just [00:06:00] like essentially garbage code that can be clipped and snipped and removed as necessary.

So every time your cells divide. Your DNA gets replicated, but the enzymes that are responsible for replication, they end up snipping off a little piece of the end of your DNA. Each time they replicate. And we don't really want our genetic code to have pieces snipped off each time. So there in lies, the reason for Tila mirrors, they are responsible for just slowly being clipped away and cut down every time your DNA replicates.

One of the coolest things that we know about Tila mirrors is that they are responsible for how we age. So there's this hypothesis right now that the length of telomeres and humans. Actually determines the maximum age that a person can live. Because once you run out of Tila mirrors, you actually start clipping away, important pieces of coding.

And that's when you start getting [00:07:00] things like cancers and other illnesses that will end your life. Well, I guess not prematurely because that's your maximum lifespan. And so predetermined life based off of your Tila mirrors, like reverse tree rings or something. Yeah. Isn't that terrifying? It's like little terrifying.

You have age, pull one out and look at mine right now. Where am I at? What percentage? Oh gosh. Well, I thought that that would be the cool thing to talk about because I found two studies that kind of blew my mind. Some of them are a little bit depressing, so I always feel like I'm the one that brings up really depressing things.

Hey, you can't have joy without sadness. Haven't you seen inside? That's true. That's true. So I make everyone sad. And then you guys bust in with like, did you know that puppies love you back?

So one of the first studies that, well, actually, I'm going to pose a question to you guys because I want to see if you can figure out what the correct answer [00:08:00] is. So you have a mom and you have a smoker. Who do you think has shorter telomeres? I thought, I thought you were telling me about myself. I was like, I have a mom.

I was like, no, I don't, I don't have, I don't have a trigger in the bag. I don't smoke meats. Okay. Repeat the question. Cause I got really distracted. So you have two individuals. One of them is a mom and one of them is a smoker. Who do you think has shorter telomere. I'm going to go with mom only because my first inclination was to think smoker and I feel like I'm being tricked.

I have no other basis for this than, than that. You know, me too. Well, I'm going to say trick question, neither that smoke doesn't affect your telomeres. Ooh. And neither just being a mom and neither [00:09:00] does being a mom. So for some reason, I assume that maybe the smoker was also a mom I'm reading way too far into this smoking mom there.

I further, well, yeah, no. The two studies that I read the first one I found really weird because apparently smoking does not affect your telomeres at all. And the scientists that published the article were basically saying like, this is not a pro smoking campaign whatsoever. We're just reporting the data as is what they ended up finding is that there was no statistical difference in the length of Tila mirrors between smokers and non-smokers.

Hmm. So basically what they found was that smoking does affect your DNA. Cause I mean, radioactive, polonium and lead, that's gonna, that's definitely gonna affect your DNA, but yeah, it doesn't affect your telomeres at all. How wherever, and here's the sad part [00:10:00] women that had kids had telomeres shorter by an average of 11 years of lifespan.

And so if we get number B, the mom decrease the length of your telomeres. Roughly 11 years. So is that I don't, did they like try and figure out whether this was due to just like the stress and the work of being a mom over the course of years shortens your telomeres? Or is it just like a genetic thing that like, because being a parent does like, especially being a mom, like changes your body, so is it, oh yeah.

Just something that like biologically changes when you have when you become pregnant or when you give birth. Well, that's the fun part. They have no idea. So this study so far, all they've done is determined that there is a statistical significant lead, different length of telomeres between women who are mothers and women who are not they [00:11:00] haven't done any studies yet to actually figure out why that's the case.

But I found that super weird and kind of mind-blown. Yeah. I especially cause smoking doesn't. Yeah. That's something so weird. Especially like, I mean, we were always told that you get half of your DNA from your parents. I didn't know that was literal, but it's giving you their telomeres. You're literally stealing your mom's Tila mirrors.

Like these are my now. So when my mother told me I'm sucking the life out of her, it's real. No, I'm just kidding. That never happened. I love my mom. She loved that. That is a wild number though. Yeah. I would have expected does that line up with the data? I mean like do women with children, have it an 11 year shorter life expectancy than women without you?

Like, does that line up with like population data? Oh, oh, I don't know. I haven't read anything about that. I have heard that women who are married live shorter than women who never [00:12:00] get. There's a lot of comedians that bring that up all the time. I'm sure that you could see the implications of that. I'm going to go ahead and say that your is because the one partner passes.

The other usually goes shortly after and since males live shorter than females, maybe that's the case. I like it. That's my color. My rose colored glasses coming. No, this is a positive spin on that statistic. I think it's just that like women are supporting the entire world. I just, I just take it as, you know, we, as men are just, we are just toxic presences.

We are just shortening the lives of everyone that we're around all the time. Fair. Yeah. But the way that they actually tested this was really cool. So in the past, the way that we've tested telomeres is strictly from a whole red [00:13:00] blood cell samples. But they've recently developed new methods of testing.

They had like a thousand cadavers that they took tissue samples from all over the body. And what they found is depending on the type of tissue, your telomere length is actually going to be different. Hmm. So now we're starting to find that like, different types of cells have different lengths of telomeres in their DNA, which when you really think about it, it actually makes sense because different types of tissues, the cells replicate at different speeds.

And so naturally you would want your telomeres to be different lengths, but they took, I'm probably going to get this wrong, but they took like 23 different tissue samples from a thousand different patients. And they found that only 15 of them matched. The red blood cell telomere length. Hmm. So now it's, it's opening up even more doors where we're starting to say like, okay, does it matter what kind of tissue we're testing and [00:14:00] how does that affect the lifespan of humans and how can we alter telomere length in different types of cells?

And could this actually help with organ transplants? And I don't know, whenever I hear like the scientists don't know, I get so excited because then they list the implications of their study and you just get to read, like, this is going to open doors for cancer treatments, for aging medicines, for organ transplants and all these different things under the sun, because of one study where it's like, Hey, we found out this weird thing that we didn't expect.

And now everything's different. Those are the best open up one door, which opens up 30 more or closing one. I was like the best, the true nature of science.

Yeah, but that's all I got for a Tila mirrors. That's amazing. Super interesting. Thank you Josh. Oh yeah. That's fantastic. I I'm sure that that's something that we could also circle back on and kind of revisit

it's amazing that [00:15:00] that's going to be

it's it's like a, it's like a weird science fiction kind of thing to think about like Tila mirrors could be, if we can figure them out and we can control them. Like we could change human life. You know what I mean? Long as they don't make me a mortal, I mean, I'm fine with lengthening my lifespan, but like at 500 years, I'm going to be like, I'm not saying that that should happen.

I'm not saying that we should mess with telomeres. It's just take, think about that. Being a part of genetics that, I mean, we're figuring out how to control genetics in so many ways. If that's something we could adjust or control, the implications could be massive. Oh yeah. Crazy. Well, Patrick, you were going to talk about something completely.

Well, I don't, I shouldn't say completely unrelated. Maybe it is related, but you're going to talk about the, the effect of climate change on animal evolution that we have for us there. Well, I mean, this one would kind of came up to me. I was thinking about a while [00:16:00] ago and this articles from not too long ago, it's actually was published, I guess, brought four or five days ago.

But it was thinking about this during our massive heat wave. We were moving during the heat wave where it was like 110 degrees outside and it was insanely hot. And we as humans have developed ways to kind of combat that. Air conditioning being in a house. And I started watching like a bunch of squirrels and birds outside.

Wondering how are they going to deal with this? Like, there's not really an air condition to place that they can go, unless I let them inside my house. And so I'm thinking like, God, there's going to be probably. I don't want to say mass extinction events. There's not going to necessarily cease to exist as a species anymore, but there'll be a lot of animals not being able to make it.

And so the article itself is talking about the warming climate, especially we had a really hot summer and that's causing animals to shapeshift. Now, of course, when I heard that it, I don't know if that's kind of clickbait E cause I heard, Ooh, shape-shifting, they're going to turn from a squirrel to a bird and just fly away.

But then I started thinking about a little bit more and [00:17:00] shape-shifting in a non-traditional sense, more of like shape as in morphology. So like the shape and structures of an animal is shifting or changing. And I, a lot of times it's hard for us to say like, okay, this, this evolution is happening.

Cause those things that are happening quickly, maybe like a virus mutating or anything else are things we can't necessarily see. But with a bird, we would expect that to take thousands upon millions of years to actually. Really change what an animal looks like, but because there's all these crazy pressures in terms of weather and heat and they can't cool down or heat up, they can't reproduce, they can't pass on their genes.

And so all of a sudden we have this organism that's I guess, adapting or becoming more fit to survive, just because of a trait that they have. Like, I have a little bit longer of a nose, which means I can cool down a little bit faster. And if I can cool down a little bit faster, I don't die. If I don't die, I can reproduce and produce offspring that have along those like me, which I don't know if I do or donut.

I haven't really got to say that a self read. Yeah. I [00:18:00] don't know. I was just looking at a nose, so I said it, but I mean, birds have beaks, which I mean, I guess is somewhat analogous to a nose. So the study looked at a bunch of different animals and found some positive correlations with biological morphologies or structures and temperature increases around the last 150 years.

So I'll just go over a couple of them really quick that I found interesting. And what they found. So one of the things they found were that these Australian parrots and multiples of them, I have found like a five to 10% increase in bill size over the last 150 years. And that number is kind of interesting, cause that makes it seem like it's a long time, but I guess evolutionarily or in terms of the history of the earth really isn't that long 150 years, isn't a long time.

And we've seen the temperature rise in that 150 years. And this increase in bill size. So maybe these things are related and beaks are important for birds because it is one of the ways they cool down, right? So if they need to be able to cool their core temperature, they can't sweat. They don't have sweat glands [00:19:00] they're covered in feathers, which are meant to insulate them and keep heat out or in and cold air out.

And vice-a-versa but the problem is that they can either do it through their beaks or through their legs. And so if they have to cool down through their respiratory areas, the longer the nose, the more it can cool down the longer the beak, if you will. That's awesome. Yeah. So if they have a super high temperature and temperatures are rising all over the place those birds that can cool down faster are probably more likely to reproduce because all of a sudden they have more time to do that versus just waiting around for a little bit longer to cool down or dying to put a little bit more bluntly, I guess.

They're also looking at tales. So the tales of, I guess, rodents, if you will sometimes like rats. So one of the things I kind of looked into was rats. Cause they were talking. Wood mice and mast shrews is what they looked at in the study. And they're seeing that their tails and their legs were actually becoming longer.

And a rat tail is really only 5% of the [00:20:00] rat's surface area in terms of like total body area. But it can actually dissipate about 17% of the body heat. So even though it's a large or a small proportion of the actual overall body, it can actually release a lot of heat. And you kind of hear this with humans, like, oh, you're going to lose all this heat through your head.

So don't wear a hat or you're going to lose it through your feet. So don't wear socks and all this sort of stuff. But they also looked at, well, I looked into tailless rats versus. Tailed rats. And I was reading a study from, I think it was about 30 years ago that was talking about how entail lap tail.

This rats were warmed their body. Temperatures rose about 0.2 to 0.5 degrees higher than those that had tails. So they actually just had a higher core temperature. And as we know, if maybe we've had a fever point, five degrees can be pretty significant, pretty high, especially if it was like one or two degrees that could be really, really significant and cause serious harm or death.

And it actually took them an hour longer to cool back down. So [00:21:00] not only did they get a higher temperature, it took them a little bit longer to cool down them. And that's because they have these big blood vessels that can actually dilate when they're warmer to get more blood going through. Then as that hot blood goes through the tail, it can actually transfer heat to the outside and cool down.

And when it goes back into the body, it cools down a little bit. So then when they're obviously cold, they can constrict and save some body heat. So that, that was kind of cool, kind of like water cooling and a PC is I guess, where my mind kind of went with that, but another thing was ears. So they're looking at ear size.

Now the article kind of referenced having a bunch of Dumbos running around because Dumbo had really big ears and could fly with them. But there's a lot of animals actually around like elephants, themselves that have differences in ear size. So if you looked at like Asian elephants versus African elephants, Asian elephants tend to have smaller ears.

Whereas African elephants tend to have bigger ones because they're in a hotter climate and they'll use their ears. One kind of like the rat. To circulate hot blood to the area air to cool it down and then put it back through the body in [00:22:00] a cooler state to cool down the core temperature, or just a fan themselves off a little bit, get rid of some of that hot, warm air on their body and replace it with some nice cooler stuff.

Like if you fan yourself right now, you're feeling cold air, but the air is the same temperature that it's been in the room for all day. Just feels cooler. This was 100% a question on the practice exam to become a teacher. If you took the biology exam, it talked about surface area of elephant ears.

Awesome. I don't, I totally remember this question. I have a question though. Sure. Is this why Dumbo always wears a shirt? He's got some, so it's called all the time, baby. It might actually be his, the blood going through his ears is so cold. It's going back into his core and keeping it low. So he's gotta keep his core temperature high with a nice little shirt or sweater.

I actually don't remember if he always wears a shirt. I think he does, but I don't know. I mean, it could be, it could be like, like the dogs where the thunder jackets, cause everyone's cheering and screaming so much. It actually just calms them down a little bit too. You [00:23:00] never know? Good question. I'll have to look into that.

Maybe we'll have another episode on that. That's that is fascinating. That's really cool. Well, and then like foxes too. Like one of my favorite foxes is the Fennec Fox. I don't know if you've seen or heard of those, but they have massive, big, big, and there's the cutest tiny little things I'm old. They also live in Africa.

What's really, really hot. So they have to have these big old ears to help one probably with hearing. But to also with cooling down a little bit. So I mean, in a study, they're talking about wood mice and mass shrews. So probably a little bit more in our area, but they also talked a little bit about dark eyed juncos, which are here in Oregon, in that area as well.

So their beak sizes were also fluctuating a little bit. Now it's not a ton in the study. They said really the appendage like ear size and leg size had only really gone up probably about. 10% max. So it's not massive, but I mean over time, if it keeps getting warmer and these traits keep getting selected for obviously not chosen, but these animals that are [00:24:00] surviving tend to have longer ear logger, appendages, and bigger ears.

If that keeps getting selected for, we could see animals with really big ears and really long legs. And I don't know what that would look like. Maybe it's cute. Maybe it's terrifying. But if we, we keep getting warmer, who knows, we could actually see a slow evolution of different looking shape-shifting animals.

That's wild, longer delays. I was thinking that we're going to get squirrels that look like spiders, spider squirrels, squirrel slender, man's slender squirrel.

I, so I always knew that like dogs, you know, they can't sweat. And so the reason that they pants and all of that is because. Are getting rid of most of their their heat through their mouth. And now you're telling me that there's lots of other animals that are kind of the same, like heat. They, they produce heat kind of like throughout their bodies, but they can only get rid of heat through certain parts of their bodies.

And I'm starting to wonder are [00:25:00] humans, like how many species, like humans have a way of dispersing heat, like throughout their entire body. Cause we like sweat and stuff like that. We sort of give off heat globally, not globally, but you know, like, yeah, like, are we, are we special in that way? Well, now that you've said that I'm trying to think of another organism that I know for a fact sweats.

And I can't think of one, cause like we're really closely related to pigs and pigs. Don't sweat. They have to roll in like mud so that it evaporates and cools off. Then why do we have the sweating. Free. Apparently that's a lie. Hang on. I'm going to check this now because I heard that pigs don't sweat. And that, that is like one of those phrases that isn't accurate.

Is it one of those, like more of like a farm industry term? Like maybe the sweating is more of a metaphorical sweat, if you will, rather than a [00:26:00] literal sweat. I don't know. Maybe they're like pretty similar to term to describe a completely different process that pigs do. Oh yeah. Pigs. Don't sweat. The heck.

Everything is a lie all the time. We should do an episode on idiotic idioms. That just don't make sense. They're not rare. Some good ones. That could be a lot of. Probably cause we use them too, like who knows how many times we're using something that's incorrect or outdated or insensitive and that sort of stuff, just because we've heard it before we're mimics.

We like to copy things. It's so, so weird. How many things we say that we don't actually know what it means in a literal sense? We just use it in a figurative sense. It's bizarre. Well, I'm I'm going to talk a little bit about time. Because a while back I read this article called the tyranny of time and it's not [00:27:00] so much about like a new scientific study or a new scientific discovery.

It is more about, it was more a reflection on history and our relationship with time. And I found it to just be really thought provoking basically. The argument in this article is that our time system is really flawed and our time system is not as, as clear and as clear cut as we think it is. You know, I think especially like coming from a scientific background, I have always seen time as kind of the perfect metric of measurement that we use.

You know, we know that there's different places in the world that use different forms of measuring measurement for like volume and, and weight and all this kind of stuff. And there's like conversions and it's, you know, but everyone in the world uses seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, right. We know there's [00:28:00] different calendars.

Some are lunar and some are solar and that sort of thing, but, but time seems to be really universal and really pure. It has always seemed that way to. , this article argues differently. And it points out that time is something that we constructed as humans and that we created and the way that we created it is actually not representative of biology and the way that our bodies experience time, if you will.

 And one of the things they pointed out, which I can't believe, I never thought about before, but the way that we measure time does not change at all through the season. And through the times throughout the year, when it gets colder, it gets warmer.

We have less daylight during the day. We have more daylight during the day. If you think about animals, the way that they're experiencing time is, you know, they are, they are experiencing like sunrise, sunset changes of light throughout the day, changes of temperature throughout the [00:29:00] day. And that's going to dictate their behavior when they do things, when they don't do things, when they sleep, when they are awake, all of this kind of stuff.

And we have completely dissociated ourselves from that. And we've placed this expert expectation on ourselves that we are going to sleep the same amount, whether the day is 16 hours long or nine hours long. And we're going to have the same amount of productivity, no matter what the season is and how cold it is and how warm it is.

And we're going to do all of the same things and we're going to behave in all the same ways we're going to eat the same. Regardless of, you know, all these different environmental factors. And I, I thought that was just really, really super thought provoking. And, you know, the fact that I hadn't ever thought about this was really interesting.

And they point out that we learn how to tell time in, I don't remember, but it's probably like second grade probably pied them really great school. Right. And when have we [00:30:00] ever had a conversation about time after that point or, or like learned anything more about it? Right. We learned like this is the clock and this is where the hands point, and this is what it means.

And there's a lot of people now who don't even know how to tell time using hands, it's just numbers on a screen. And like, and so, I mean, we just, you know, we're, we're walking around with basically the same kind of understanding of how time works that we learned when we were very, very young and without ever discussing, reflecting on it.

And and we're taking that thing that we've put so little thought into and completely defining everything in our life, by it, like how productive we are, how much we get done. all of our biological functions when we do certain things, you know, how old should you be when you do this thing?

Or, you know, are you a more effective person? If you get up at 5:00 AM. And you're one of those early birds who gets the worm rather than someone who likes to wake up at nine, but is productive later into the evening. Like we've placed all these totally arbitrary measures of our [00:31:00] self-worth on this completely bizarre.

If you think about it measurement of time. And the article also talks about the history of time and how There wasn't like some global meeting of, you know, representatives of every culture and every place who came together and decided like, yes, this is the best way to measure time, time actually you know, in the past was kind of measured differently in different places and the real motivating force for making a standardized time.

The first motivating force was religion. Like churches wanted a, a way to regulate prayer and way to regulate religious activity. And then that idea sort of got really broadened and ingrained with modern industrialization and capitalism. And this idea that, you know, if we're going to ship something.

From the east coast of the United States to the west coast of the United States on a train, we have to have a way to [00:32:00] like standardize how we are telling time and when to predict it's going to depart and when it's going to arrive. And so really religion and capitalism have completely driven our modern construct of time.

And in a way we're kind of paying the price for that now, because I'm sure that one thing that we probably have all thought about is how things like the 40 hour work week, how these don't actually reflect how we are productive or how we experience life and how we actually get things.

I'm kind of rambling at this point, but basically the whole, what this, what this, this gave me basically a bunch of wood to stoke the fire behind this kind of feeling that, that I have, and maybe other people have about how, like, man, we are like shackled into this concept of time and how much we should be working and how much we should be producing.

And it's like, totally not reflective of our biology we have this, this misalignment, we have become untuned [00:33:00] with our actual biological functions. And maybe that is what's causing , such rising anxiety and depression and all of these other problems.

We just like art, listening to ourselves. anyway, that's crazy. I'm biased because I'm a teacher. We all are just in case. You're all wondering we're all teachers, but it immediately made me think of like the education system, because I've had conversations with students about like how we structure time in schools and how it's, it's weird because the human brain craves information all the time, we are always seeking input.

We're trying to recognize patterns and build those patterns into concepts. If you're breathing, you're learning, like it's impossible to not learn. And there's been all kinds of different studies where like, they'll let students choose their own learning schedule and how great it ends up turning out. And one thing that I've talked about with my students before that it always is, so again, [00:34:00] depressing things that I bring up, but like I told students before, why there's a bell schedule, why we use a bell system at all why you're required to sit in the class for a certain length of time and why all of those sections are the same length of time, even though you're learning different amounts of information in each course.

And it actually came about during the industrial revolution to train kids, to work in factories. And we've just never gotten away from that. And so it's very time is your boss and you are required to be in this chair, doing this activity for a set period of time. And I've just always found it weird that we've never gotten away from that system before where time is the ultimate decider of what you do and when you're doing it when really we could just like sit down and ask the kids, Hey, do you feel like sitting in a biology class for 20 minutes and then doing an art class for four [00:35:00] hours?

Like what's wrong with that. And then inverse for other students, just allowing them to decide what length of time they're spending on an activity. And when they're done moving to where they want to go. And usually it's because everybody's scared that the kid is going to end up saying like, well, I'm going to go sit and play video games for 12 hours, but the truth is they've tested that.

And yeah, the kid will spend a couple of days playing video games for 12 hours, but then there'll be like, I want to research this thing. Cause I'm curious. I agree with that. I mean, that's like me during the summer, I spent about two weeks of getting after gaming for a while. Then after a while, like I want to do something.

I want to do work for school. I want to do stuff around my house. And I think to me, like my mind immediately went to the perspective of time, like how is my day partitioned out when I'm not sleeping? Because we all know like when you sleep, it's like, boom, you're up. So even though I spent you guys spent what last night, nine hours sleeping, [00:36:00] 10 hours sleeping.

I won't give the number I got. And I'll talk about why later, but the fact is, is that perception of us sleeping was probably about the same, like, unless we had like a dream where it felt like it was a little bit longer, something else was going on. the time we spend sleeping is pretty stagnant.

Like let's say it's, it feels like one minute, even though it could have been eight hours. And so now when we look at the rest of our day, we're really wasn't a 24 hour day. It was maybe a 13 hour. And now all of a sudden we're spending eight hours in school. We have this like, feeling that most of my day is spent doing something I have to do.

And I have, like, you guys were saying, I have no choice over it. And I'm just feeling constrained and confined by this activity that is really limiting who I am and what my biology is telling me to do and what my mind and heart are telling me to do. And I start thinking about like, bears, right? Like bears hibernate for months at a time.

Their year is not 365 days because if [00:37:00] they're sleeping for six months, that could feel like a minute. Like if I slept in for six hours versus 10 hours, that could be the same time. If for some reason I was in a coma that could feel like two seconds if I wanted to hibernation, which would be kind of cool.

I guess. I don't know if my family would agree, but if I hibernated for a little bit, all of a sudden six months has gone when it really wasn't. So a bear's perspective on time versus our perspective on time versus a fruit fly who has a very short life span, their perspective of time is completely different.

And it just got me thinking like, oh my gosh, like the percentage of time, I'm I'll say conscious when I'm actually physically awake is spent a lot of doing things like work. A lot of things like that I don't necessarily would say is progressing me in other ways that it could be. So when Josh was saying like a student is saying, let's just do biology for 20 minutes and do art for four hours, that could really progress them.

That could be really, really beneficial for that one individual because of their biology. And [00:38:00] regimenting it to these strict times that we've created is I think touching back to like, oh my gosh, are we creating these stresses? Are we creating this anxiety and these problems because of time because of having to partition and having to be so rigid and straight.

Oh, you were right. And I just started thinking, I can't it's wild. Right? Like you just start, like, I just was like, man, time really is the thing that it always comes back to. You know, it's like the thing that we measure everything by. And it's just so interesting to think about that. And, and I like you guys, I just, it made me like question everything like, especially productivity, you know, when you think about like other animals, it's like w what, what productivity is really necessary.

Like we need to, we need to get food. We need to get things to eat. So we don't die. We need to get water. Reproduce at some point. And like the amount of time that those things take is not eight to 10 hours a day, every day. Right. Probably. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe, [00:39:00] maybe certain animals do spend that much time looking for food cause it's really scarce or something.

But like this idea that we, as humans should be productive for like 8, 10, 12, 14 hours every day. It's, it's insanity. and it's, probably caught up to us to the point where we actually are less productive because we're always tired. We are always fatigued from that last twelve-hour day of being productive.

That like the next day we're going to be even less productive with the 12 hours we're spending, trying to be productive because of that fatigue. You know, you think about it. It's like, man, if I just, if I just slept, when I was tired eight, when I was hungry and was productive, when I felt energy. I'd probably get just as much done as I do in my 40 hour work week where I'm tired and hungry and I've been working for five hours and I really don't feel like I have the mental capability to do anything else, but I have to try.

And so I'm going to get it done [00:40:00] at like 20%, the speed and efficiency that I could have if I just took a break and came back to it later. What's that, that's what a lot of companies are starting to realize. That's like the big discussion right now because of COVID. We just spent a year where most occupations went online for a little bit.

And I actually have a couple good friends that are computer scientists. And they have said that like their world is completely different now because they had this opportunity to work from home and what their bosses ended up finding was that productivity increases. By like allowing their computer scientists to work on their own schedule.

Like people were sleeping in and it started to make their bosses get really scared. Like, are people just going to stop working? What's going to happen? But what ended up happening is that people were doing more in shorter periods of time because they were able to take care of themselves. They were going to the bathroom when they wanted to, they would run into the kitchen and grab a snack.

And so like the world is starting to recognize, like [00:41:00] we can't just ignore our biology because there's so much evidence to support that we need to take naps when we want them. We need to eat when we want them. You're supposed to be drinking water 24 7, like not just carrying around a water bottle. And then once every four hours drinking half of it, you're supposed to be like constantly drinking water.

And we just don't think about that. Right. I'd be willing to bet that we don't even recognize the signals that we're thirsty and hungry sometimes because we're so overwhelmed. Everything going on, which is not good. Don't you don't want to ignore that biology. I drink a glass of water and my cells are like, what is this?

We haven't seen this before your cells get belly aches from drinking too much. Where's our soda.

Hey, there's a lot of water and soda. It's true. It's mostly H2O Josh. Yeah. The main ingredient. And there's this whole other [00:42:00] aspect to it too, that the article goes into that I feel like I need to mention, which is the kind of social justice side of it. Cause if you think about it, right? I mean, cultures have had some way that they have managed to get everything done that they need to get done.

Right. Manage their productivity and thought about their relationship with the earth and the day and the seasons and all that kind of stuff. And then. This standardized time developed in one place and then was spread across the globe due to colonialism and, you know, all sorts of other factors. Basically this time was, has been imposed that the time that we use globally is basically reflective of one culture and what it wanted, and it has been imposed on every other culture across the globe.

So as there, there is some sort of just kind of a human rights, social justice lens. You could look at this through as well. And I feel like, I feel like we've. Carry this conversation on for a while. But I think looking it's, I don't know about you guys. I don't know about our listeners, but I'm feeling kind [00:43:00] of like trapped by time now, after thinking about it this way, Josh, you're not the only one who brings up depressing stuff on the show.

Yay. I'm not the only one causing existential crises. I think it's so important to like circle back to that social justice thing, right? Like if you think about like Muslims, they're praying five times a day at sunrise. And do they have those times built into the day in this setting where it's so rigid?

Like, you know, you have to be doing these things at these specific times where sometimes that time is dictated by biologically, right? So if it's the sun's rising at 5:00 AM versus 10:00 AM, those are two different time periods, even though that's one specific time that they should be doing something according to the religion I mean, you hear it all the time.

Like some people joke about like Hawaiian time, right. Things open when they're ready, things closed when they're. That's normally it works and it works really, really well. And so it's one of those things, like maybe we take a siesta at 2:00 PM and close all of the shops down. [00:44:00] Like there's no one thing that's necessarily been the best or worked for these specific things.

So it's hard when you're talking about like the colonialization of just standardizing time based off of one thing is kind of working backwards and it is kind of depressing. It's kind of sad, but to end on a more positive note, I believe that if thought and care was given to it, I think that we can improve our time system is basically what I'm saying.

it's hard for us to step outside of our construct of time as it exists, but something else the article went into it's a very long article was some of the thoughts that people had, like when. Railroad time was imposed on their town or when the government said, okay, this is how we're, you know, taking time.

There are accounts of, of how people felt about that. And, and looking back at, you know, what they had to say about it and just thinking about different ways that time could be conceived of. I think that we could probably infuse some more healthy biological ideas into our concept of [00:45:00] time while still maintaining an ability to communicate with our, with each other globally, and, you know, deliver things around the earth because that's, that's the reality.

We have to be able to continue to do that, but also honor our biology and, cultures more as a part of that, there, there's gotta be a way there's gotta be a way that we can merge those things together. And also, I mean, I don't know, I think maybe different cultures and places should just take it into their own hands and say, this is how we think time needs to be.

And why that one country with Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, back in I think it was 1894. No, no, it wasn't. I'm getting my dates wrong. Anyway, there's this town Bristol in the UK that when the government or the church, I don't remember who it was said, Hey, this is how we're going to tell time. They were like, sure, you can build your clock tower in the middle of the town, but we're going to add a third.

Arm to that clock and it's going to be [00:46:00] called Bristol time. And that's how we do time here, the old west alarm.

So in melting again, gee, thank you for that discussion. I hope that that was. Interesting to our listeners to think about that as well, but we should move on. So uh, before we move on, I would like to really quickly thank our listeners. Once again, I like to do this every single show and just thank you for continuing to tune in and listen to us.

We have had slowly but steadily growing listenership, every time that we release a new episode, and that is super encouraging, it means that people are coming back and listening to our show. And that just means a lot to us. And people are also writing us reviews on apple podcasts, and that is, extremely touching and extremely helpful to us, in our efforts, to make yonder Casta better and reach out to more people.

So now that we've talked about science for like 45 minutes, [00:47:00] what's up with you guys, what's going on in your lives? What is new with you? Well, we recently moved, so that's a big life change for us. And I would say the biggest part of that is we have our kids in a different part of the house than we traditionally had before.

And we joke now that we kind of have a free range toddler. Um, He's found out how to open doors and get to places. And so he's up whenever he wants. And so I mentioned it earlier, how I might not be getting as much sleep as you guys, because every once in a while I'll hear a door open and a little voice from over yonder in the house going daddy.

I'm like, oh my gosh, it's 4:00 AM. And sometimes they'll just get up. One, a chat at 4:00 AM. And as much as I would love to have a meaningful conversation at 4:00 AM, like we talked about, you need to pay attention to your biology and get some sleep if you need it. So that's been a little, a little bit challenging in our new place is finding a way to help [00:48:00] promote some intrinsic motivation for him to want to stay in his room and sleep a little bit more rather than I guess just treating him when he does that.

But other than that, we started watching season two of Ted lasso. I don't know if you guys have watched that at all, but, oh my gosh, like, I'll be honest. Last night I was just balling. I was just crying so hard at that show. And it's hard because when you watch kind of the first season, everything else, you're thinking it's going to be like a soccer football sort of show.

And it's kind of quirky. Jason Sudeikis is that kind of quirky, goofy sorta thing. But season two starts dipping into a little bit more of the mental health aspect of life, right? Sports and relationships and stuff. And I think after the pandemic, I think they maybe did this because of it there's a lot of more serious, real issues that they're starting to talk about.

Especially working with a sports therapist. So there's a sports therapist who starts working with their team and it is, it is really meaningful. It is really [00:49:00] impactful. And especially people who have gone through some hard times, whether it be in their own lives or in, in their families, the pandemic, whatever it is, it's just hitting a lot of places that I was not expecting it to in a very good and meaningful way.

And so it's just like, it's, it's very moving. So it was one of those that I was not quite expecting that from season two. I will say, like I connect with some aspects. I deflect really well with comedy. I joke a lot about a lot of things that is like causing discomfort and that's a Ted lasso thing, a deflection and it's almost like eerily similar to what I'm going through sometimes in my own life.

It's good. It's I would highly, highly recommend it. It's on apple TV plus, so it might have to do a subscribe sort of thing or do a free trial, but yeah, it's a really, really good. So I'm still recovering from that a little bit, but yeah, it's really good. Yeah. I watched the first season and absolutely loved it.

It felt like such a breath of fresh air. I mean, it's a, it's a show where[00:50:00] it's a comedy where the source of comedy is not just from every single character being the worst possible, like human in the world, which I feel like is 90% of comedies these days is just setting up a situation where there's a bunch of dysfunctional, horrible people and ha let's see how they treat each other.

And this is a comedy that was actually very uplifting and it was an example of. People treating each other really well and like overcoming their expectations of each other or their, their biases against one another. I just felt like it was very uplifting. And, but at the same time, really funny, really engaging and encouraging.

And I haven't watched season two because I like to watch whole seasons at a time. So I've been waiting, it's getting close to the point where I can start watching it. And so I'm excited that that you have enjoyed it and that it's a positive review from you. It builds off of season one really? Well, I would say it's, it's still has its [00:51:00] really funny moments.

Like that's why I loved last night's episode. I was crying half the time and laughing half the time and well, probably more like a third and a third and another third of it was just truly engaged with the. I feel like we're in a society where a lot of times we're watching a show. We're not really watching it cause he pull out our phone or something else that's going on.

And I do feel like it's one of those shows where I don't even want to be on my phone just cause I don't even think about it. I'm actually fully involved with the show, which I love. I've never even heard of this show. That's good. It's on apple TV. So it's like not a platform that a lot of people have access to, but I feel like it's starting to get kind of like a, it's starting to get some buzz, which is going to be of course good for apple because they're going to get more people buying their, you know, premier streaming service so they can watch the show.

But but it also means that a good show is, is getting out there to people. So that's also. Well, I, I was, I've been watching a show lately that I feel like we should talk about on the show because it's something that [00:52:00] we have had done an entire episode on before. And that is outer banks, season two. Yes.

Does anyone want to ask me how I feel about outer Outerbanks season two? The, what do you feel about outer banks? Season two, Ian. Horrible. I hate it. It's the worse. Can we put a video of that somewhere on the show notes? Seriously though. It is so bad. I actually I'm on see I'm on episode six and I don't think I can stand to finish the rest of the 10 episode season.

It's just so horrible. Oh, Patrick, you've been watching it too. Right? I got through it. You got through it. I got through it. Does it get better? I will say. I mean, the bar was low after, like you said, the first five episodes. It took all of my effort, not to stand up and walk out of the room as I'm watching one important life-saving scene.

I don't want to give out too many spoilers, [00:53:00] but I will say like, the thing that bothered me about this the most is there was so many Jon snow moments. If you've seen game of Thrones and this you'll know what I'm talking about, and that just bothers me, like really, I will say to the second half of the season felt a little bit more like the first season.

So it definitely felt like they finally got back to some treasure hunting and that goofy quirkiness that was kind of endearing about the first season without feeling like it had to be forced in really weird ways. We had a conversation about some characters, just kind of disappearing, not really being involved with it.

But there was some resolution to some of that. So I will say it's, it's better. I won't give you the metric scale at which. I had somebody spoil the whole season for me and tell me the ending. And now the people that have seen the whole season are going to understand my dark sense of humor. I want to watch the whole season just to watch how it ends.

Yeah. I, I should finish the whole [00:54:00] season if I'm going to pass such harsh judgment on it. I should finish it and actually judge it as an entire product. But I just felt like consistently for five hours of watching the show, it was just, I just felt like it was very sloppily written. It was just like every overdone overused, plot device and plot hook was just thrown in there.

Haphazardly, every single scene contains something where I was like, that doesn't make sense or a normal person would never do that. Or. What that's that's inconsistent with something that happened previously in the show. It was just like, I don't know how, or in what situation they wrote this, this show, but it's just like, it just felt illogical.

Like every moment you're just like, wait, there's no way that they could run carrying 40 pounds of gasoline like that. And that 40 pounds of gasoline is not going to be enough to take them [00:55:00] 550 miles from where they are to where they're going. And, and there's no way they could get there by the next afternoon.

It was just like this, you know, super, I don't know. And that's what, that's not even the best quick have someone take their shirt off. Seriously. I have to say, I did not think I would ever say this about the outer banks, but for the first three, four episodes, I was like, will John B just take. His shirt.

They, they are, I guess, some minor spoilers here. They are in hiding. He and Sarah are trying to hide and they don't change their clothes for like a week. They're wearing the exact same clothes that are like in all the pictures that everyone is looking for. They don't even put on sunglasses. They don't put on a hat.

They don't try in any way to disguise or hide themselves. And where they camp out is like on the roof of a one-story building on the beach. [00:56:00] The most exposed, visible space you could ever imagine is where they think is like, this is where we're going to hide out. And probably the loudest metal lawn chairs to sit in ever.

Anyway, our next outer banks episode is finding all of those things. Maybe it's a critique rather than a. If you finish it, I don't know how it could not be. I dunno how it could not be. I wasn't taking notes and I hate to say this, but I feel like I'd have to rewatch it in order to pick out all the things that bothered me.

But it was also a characterization thing. I feel like there were some likable qualities of the characters in the first season. And then the second season, I just can't stand anybody. Even the Pogues. They're just so annoying and acting so dumb all the time. Can't stand them. I'm sitting over here. Like yes, yes.

The dark side. Yeah. Josh, you were right. As what I want to say, I have [00:57:00] so many regrets about giving outer banks. What an eight? Did I give it an eight? I can't believe I gave it that highest score. Did I give it a four? I can't remember what I gave it. I got hate mail. I had students telling me, I hate you for hating this show.

I was like, well, I hate you right back. How do you like that?

Well, Patrick, it's interesting to hear you talking about having a toddler, because as I mentioned on the last show, I am, I am moving that direction with my life. My wife is pregnant and we're expecting a baby next month at the end of October. and so I am, I am seeing the future through your eyes as you talk about that.

And, and that is, that has been the biggest thing for me, other than watching out our banks. The, the most positive thing for me has been, you know, thinking about and getting ready for baby time. Getting the baby room, ready, building the crib and the, the dresser and the closet organizer and hanging the, the nice, colorful pictures on the wall.

And that's been super fun and and that's been the biggest thing for me, but Josh, we haven't heard much from you [00:58:00] what's been going on with you. So you asked me to think about what I've been doing since our last podcast. I was sitting there like. I haven't done anything. Although things I do have a review because it's officially pumpkin spice season and Halloween is my favorite holiday.

And so I've already been to spirit Halloween and spent $60 on decorations. That was just like my pregame. Like, I'm going to go back like the spirit, Halloween employees already know who I am. It's kind of embarrassing. I was so excited when the JC penny around the block shut down. Cause I knew it was going to be a spirit, Halloween perfect and empty large store space.

You're like, it's going to be a spirit. Well, I did you guys see the Reddit meme where a spirit Halloween took over a Victoria secret and everyone thought it was hilarious because they didn't like take down the wallpaper or anything.[00:59:00] 

It's like spirit, you got to try harder. Oh, it's as terrifying as it is. Any uh, I guess a lot of similar trailers are secrets. You can give us about how your Halloween is going to be, who you're going to be. Well, are we waiting on well, we're definitely waiting on Halloween costume, cause I haven't decided yet, but I do have a review because yesterday my husband and I went to McDonald's to get iced coffees and there was a sign promoting that they have pumpkin spiced iced coffee now.

Wow. And we got to try it out and let me tell you, they taste like a Joann's. That was the first thing that my husband said, they taste like how a Joanne smells, you know, how they put out those like cinnamon, like pine cones and stuff. But everything is like pumpkin spice, fabrics and whatnot. It tastes like burnt pumpkin pie.

I'm glad he also tastes the smell of things. [01:00:00] Like we were kind of having this conversation earlier about how weird it is when you like, think you're the only person that does something like tasting a smell of something. I'm like, I feel like I'm the only person that tea tastes the smell of like, like lemon pledge or something.

I'm not eating lemon pledge. But I think I just read a book that actually explains that, oh boy, it's a neuro gastronomy book. And it talks about how humans we evolve to have retro nasal smelling capabilities. So we don't smell very good externally, but we smell things really well from inside our mouth.

So if you sniff with your mouth open, you can actually smell better than if you sniff with your mouth closed. So you're telling me if I go to the bathroom after somebody, I should keep my mouth closed. Yes. For multiple reasons. And that's why you can do the whole thing where like you plug your nose and things don't have a taste anymore because while you're chewing it, none of the smell can get up into that retro nasal [01:01:00] cavity.

So chewing with your mouth opens a good thing. Exactly. It's polite. You're just savoring the food. Excuse me. Don't be mad. I'm going to savor my food here. Yeah. It's a compliment. True. If it's near cooking bite, you just take like a big breath. Like,

I mean, in some, I guess in some cultures that could be really good, right? Like a Japanese slurping, this. Yeah, probably like super aggravating to like a family event for here. But if I'm slipping as a sign of, I really liked this, the louder, it is the better it is. So maybe that's the gasp of eating is the new thing.

Just joke

 Questions regarding the McDonald's trip. Was there ice cream machine working? I D I just gave up, I no longer ask. I'm never going to have a reesesMcFlurry ever again. And it's very disappointing. It's not just my local [01:02:00] McDonald's that randomly are like, oh yeah, we're cleaning the machine.

Have you seen that video? The conspiracy theory slash research behind why the machines are down and broken, why you should use. I'm not trying to episode topic. Yes. It's not my tinfoil hat going on. I was watching this. It was on Reddit again, but someone's looking into why the ice machines are always broken down and I mean, to, to preview it, it's maybe a deal between McDonald's and something else, so.

Okay. Well now this has to be an episode topic, cause I want this to be explored. I think I watched like a 30 to 45 minute YouTube video on it. So, but I was thinking like the reason why I said that flippantly and seriously was like pumpkin spice McFlurry would probably be pretty good. Like uh, I mean I'm thinking maybe some Reese's peanut butter cups in there.

I don't know if that's going to be a good blend, but I could see like pumpkin spice and peanut butter cups being a nice little pairing. So I like, I was like, mm, that sounds actually really good. I know we don't live close to each [01:03:00] other, but I'm like, gosh, if you guys go invite me, please. So I can have one of those I'm thinking like it's like a McFlurry has got to have some sort of, kind of like chunks in it or something.

Right. So. Thinking like maybe like a spiced pumpkin pie would be the way to incorporate that into like an edible form. Oh, that would get soggy. You can just say it or is there something, if you go to Sherry's you can get their pie milkshakes. Oh, Sharon. And I've definitely gotten a pumpkin pie milkshake before.

And I, now I want to go to Sherry's today. I didn't really want to go, are we going to go to Sherry's after this? Yeah. Tripped to Sherry's. I love Sherry. Well much. I have to say pumpkin spice is not really my preferred flavoring, but uh, I guess it sounds like, but I will say it sounds like a pumpkin spice latte from McDonald's would leave a better tasting.

Then the outer banks season two. Yeah, it was, I mean, I'm, I'm like [01:04:00] ripping on the pumpkin spiced ice coffee, but honestly it was the best thing ever. It tasted like burnt nasty pumpkin pie and I'm going to get another one. Awesome. I mean, I I'm pretty torn about pumpkin, so I worked at Starbucks for a really long time, so I'm always torn on pumpkin spice, but if you throw a little bit of it and other things it's so good, like a pumpkin spice, soy chai is one of the tastiest things I could have ever like drank or made at Starbucks.

So, I mean, it gets a lot of flack, but there's some things you can do that make pumpkin spice in credible. And sometimes it's nice that it starts early because I don't know, try that milkshake for sure. Oh yeah. Sherry's oh man. Well, you guys, we are yonder cast science and gaming, and we haven't talked about games at all yet on the episode we've been talking for a while, so I want to know what you guys have been playing in.

Six months or whenever it was the last time we talked about it, Patrick, I know what you're going to talk about. I'm not going to talk about it very much. I'm going to defer to you guys because I mean, [01:05:00] I won't stop talking about it and they're probably tired of my texts already, but Diablo two resurrected the three page texts about one class with videos and yeah, but I mean, it releases in 11 days, 12 hours, 50 minutes and 23 seconds, who's counting

all, I'm going to play it. Let's just, let's just leave it scribing to the tyranny of time. Only within a construct. I made myself of Diablo two time, but everything is based on that release date. I literally haven't been playing much just because of like the busy-ness of everything. And I've, I've done a lot of what I'll consider playing the YouTube game.

Like there's a huge. You tuber called Mr. Llama se that I watch a lot in terms of Diablo two stuff and he's put out some pretty good stuff. So I haven't really been playing a game. I've been just kind of researching a game cause that's kind of how I am. So between just some Diablo, [01:06:00] two stuff coming out, I think, I think that's it.

Like I haven't been playing much else and I'm just kind of excited for that to be able to play on switch or play on PC. That cross progression thing just sounds pretty sweet, ready for some nostalgia for my high school days. Well, we all played the beta together when that was happening and and that was really fun and I'd never played Diablo before.

And I, I think I'm going to pick it up on the switch because I definitely want to be able to play with you guys. And also I think that I will, first of all, enjoy having a portable version of it and secondly, enjoy joystick control. Cause I'm not a super like. Fan as a primary method of, of control.

And so I'm excited to be able to just run around and like, you know, press buttons to do things. So, yeah, I'm very excited for us to play together. I think switch would be the best because we could do it anywhere. So the beauty of it, you don't have to bring the whole PC and do a massive land party anymore, or you switch.

And Josh you've been, we have weights, we have way more [01:07:00] gaming than like we're ever going to have time for it. Cause Josh, you've been trying to get us to play another, like big, expansive game that you could just spend all of your time exploring kind of like Diablo. I want to hear you talk about it though.

Yeah. For those of you that have ever played no man's sky before, it's been like five years since they first released it and we will not talk about the disaster that was their initial release, but five years later, the game is actually for lack of a better way of saying it plays. Like, it's been really fantastic.

I I've been playing with a good friend of mine and the two of us are just like messing around all the time on different planets. And there's just so much to do now because it used to be you'd run around and you could harvest three different elements and put them in your backpack. And then you could like craft a nano tubule and you'd be like, yay.

I built a thing. And then that was the end of the game. And it was so [01:08:00] boring. But now like you can build settlements and have freighters that run different errands for you. And there's just so much to do. And the game has gotten really, really good. So I highly recommend. It's so impressive that finally companies are listening to player base and listening to community.

It feels, and you could correct me cause I'm wrong. Cause I don't follow it, but it does feel like they took some feet, some harsh, harsh, harsh back, and slowly made something better. And the fact that people are willing to go back after that is pretty impressive. And I don't know who makes it or what company, but I mean, that's gotta be a massive positive cause that thing was about as low as reviews could get and people were up in arms, there's memes everywhere.

And so now that it's like this playable thing what's going to happen in the next couple of years, like is it actually going to be a top tier game that people love to play? And so far my favorite thing to do in the game is that my friend and I will go out [01:09:00] and train different species that we find.

And you can actually use them as much. And the graphics are like beautifully, not that good right now with the writing different species. And so you'll like sit on the back of this animal and it's like, , you're like trying to run on it. It's the weirdest thing ever, but it's so much fun. I highly recommend training or like, I don't even know what you'd call it.

Wrangling some animal that you find as soon as you start playing the game and then ride it around and have a really good laugh. That's awesome. Is there a lot of player interaction in that game? Cause I remember when the game came out and the thing that like just blew everyone's minds is that the game world, the shared game world that everyone is in and you can correct me if I'm wrong is like a procedurally generated galaxy with like billions of planets.

And so even though you're all existing in the same world, [01:10:00] that just the likelihood that you're going to encounter, another player is extremely low, even if there's millions of people playing the game. And you can, you know, explore that world and travel from planet to planet. And so it's like, like even the creators of the game don't even really know what the game contains because all these basically the computer made the whole environment.

Is that true? And is there a way to like interact with more players or is it still kind of a rare occurrence that you would come across? So they made it so that now you can go to certain space stations and there'll be like, multi-player lounges. And so you can definitely go to one of those space stations and then like form a group and whatnot.

But yeah, it's still, if you don't go to one of those space stations, you might never see another player. You're just warping from one solar system to another. And they actually also just made it. One of my biggest complaints was that every time you went to a solar system, there was already like a species that had founded.

It had a space station. I was like, well, that's kind of lame. But now [01:11:00] they've made it so that you'll go to a solar system and be like, wow, I'm completely on my own. And one of the most exciting things is you'll just be like warping from one solar system to another. And then you see that a solar system that you landed on was discovered by someone already.

And so it's just really cool because you'll be like, wow, somebody already found this. Somebody already built something. This is really awesome. That's that is cool. Did you ever play Eve online or is it any sort of comparable to that style of game? Like, I'm just trying to like picture what it would look like.

Eve online is way too complex for me. I mean, I have a student, Chris, if he's listening, he's going to laugh at me because he already laughed at me. I couldn't handle that game. I tried to play it and I was like, there's math in this? So I was like, no, I'm not playing this. It has like a real working economy.

No man's sky does have any economy, but it's re it's kind of like animal crossing. It's really easy to turn up [01:12:00] the economy. I made a couple million dollars just with some cobalt and it was like, okay, this is an easy system to trick if I can figure it out. That's awesome. You guys know that I am.

Uh, My taste in games tends to, unless you guys get me into a more complex, more time intensive game, I tend to. Err on the side of like games that do not have an economy, I'm fine with like a leveling system. That's always fun, but I'm not into grinding. I like to like play a game and experience a story and feel powerful and feel like excitement and progress.

And so the game that has really captured my attention in the last couple of months is Psychonauts two. Yes, because I was a big fan of the original Psychonauts back in the day. And I'm so happy that it has developed kind of a cult following and Psychonauts two came out and you're always worried about, you know, followups, are they gonna live up to the original?

But the critical consensus is that it's an amazing [01:13:00] game. And despite being super excited about. I've played probably about an hour of it, because it was so busy with school and getting ready for a kid and all of that. And so my Psychonauts review is incoming. Hopefully on a future episode, I will have a more thorough understanding and, and be able to say more about it, but I'm excited to get there.

And so far it's good so far. It's great. So I haven't, I haven't aspect of it looks incredible. Like I haven't played it, but it looks really cool. It's such a cool game and it's got such a cool personality to it. Just the whole atmosphere and characters and the vibe. It's just, it's cool. I definitely recommend the original Psychonauts.

If you're into playing older games, I don't know how well the controls stand up to modern, but I mean, it's, it's innovative. I think even by today's standards in terms of video. Storytelling. But I do have a, you guys know I'm a, I'm a tabletop game guy and I do have a game that I'd like to [01:14:00] recommend.

 It's a card game called the crew and crew. The crew is a game. That one, like the game of the year award, I think last year, I believe it was 2020. I don't think it was 2019. So this game in the, in the gaming community has been a really big deal. But I don't think it's really broken into the, you know, kind of wider community yet, but I really think it's great.

It is a trick taking game. I don't know if either of you are familiar with trick taking games, like Like spades, I think is a trick taking game. There's lots of the ideas. You know, you can, a lot of games, you can trick taking games. You can play with a standard deck of cards and you get a bunch of cards of different suits and different numbers.

And you basically play rounds where someone leads a card and everyone has to play a card in the same suit. And at the end of that round, once everyone's played the person who played the highest card wins and they get to take that whole trick and take it in front of them and they've won that trick. And there's been a lot of [01:15:00] innovations on trick taking, but this is a cooperative trick taking game, which is super cool.

It is a, the idea is you are a crew of a spaceship and you are traveling through space and there's 50 missions in the game and each mission which can take anywhere from like two to 10 minutes to play, you are playing a trick taking game, but you're trying to ensure as. That certain people take or when certain tricks in the game, trying to make sure that the right people get the right cards essentially, and it gets harder and harder and gets more and more complex.

And there's all sorts of like kind of strategic thinking. And you're trying to like read other players, but not in a competitive way in a cooperative way of trying to like, cause you're, you're allowed very limited communication. So you're trying to like create this hive mind where you all understand what you're supposed to do without really communicating about it.

But if somebody messes it up, it's not really a big deal because you just start their mission over and, you know, you've lost [01:16:00] five minutes or whatever. Super great. And the best thing about it is it's $15. It's really inexpensive, highly recommended for anybody. I think it's a great introduction to trick taking games to cause the trick taking mechanism is, is really pretty simple.

So that's my recommendation for uh, a card game that could, I think, appeal to a lot of people. Is there too, is it, can it be two people or does it need, it is a, it is a three to five player game. Gotcha. But they just came out with the crew two, which is a deep sea adventure theme. And I think that that game includes rules where you can play it with two people and I've heard that it works really well with those rules.

 so there is an option there that games, like, I think it's releasing next week, actually, my crew too. so if you want to get on that, you can. But if you're looking for a co-operative two-player trick taking game, one of those exists, and it's a game that my wife and I love to play, it's called the Fox in the forest duet.

That games like[01:17:00] 10 or $12, very inexpensive. I think that they sell it at target. And that's a great game, Patrick. I think you have that game. Yeah. You recommend. And that one and we got it and we played it all the time. It was a lot of fun, highly recommend. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Hey, is there anything else that we haven't discussed the meaning of life though?

Yeah. Well that one, the meaning of life. Well, we don't have time for that on this episode. We'll get to that in a future episode. So sticker around Awesome. Well, that is going to be it for this episode of yonder casts. Thank you so much to all of you for tuning in and listening once again.

And if you haven't yet, please subscribe to the show. And if you've got a few seconds to spare, you can rate us and review us on apple podcasts or wherever you listen to us. that would be so appreciated and so helpful to us. And if you ever have any suggestions or any questions that you would like to ask us or things that you'd like us to discuss on the show, there is a form linked in the show notes that [01:18:00] you can fill out and ask us those questions.

Or you can always email us@yondercastatgmail.com and speaking of listener questions, I've got a listener question for both of you to end the show. An anonymous listener asked us, do we think salt lamps are cool? 10 seconds. Josh go. I'm going to say no. Do I have to explain why? No. You don't have to explain Patrick.

What do you think ourselves? Cool. I mean, they look cool. I don't know if I personally have one, but they look cool. I think that they are cool and also very delayed. Oh, Is this going to be one of those questions that ends up telling a lot about our personality and I'm going to be embarrassed for saying no.

No, no. Okay, good. You're all good. Well, thanks everybody. Take care and we will see you next time. Bye. Bye bye-bye.