Ep.8: Aliens & Avocados PvP

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Episode Agenda with Time Stamps:

• 00:40 - Announcement: Changes to Yondercast
• 04:09 - Banter
  • Patrick’s kitchen remodel.
  • Josh’s avocado plants.
  • Ian’s drum set.
• 11:24 - “Break” - Thank you to our reviewers.
• 13:55 - Gaming
  • Josh - Destiny 2
  • Ian - Call of Duty: Black Ops Civil War, Pandemic Legacy Season 0
  • Patrick - Nintendo Switch, World of Warcraft PvP
• 31:03 - Science
  • Ian - Harvard's Avi Loeb is more sure than ever that we were visited by alien spacecraft - https://www.cnet.com/news/harvard-astronomy-professor-avi-loeb-more-sure-than-ever-we-were-visited-by-alien-spacecraft/
  • Josh - Venus flytraps found to produce magnetic fields - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202113815.htm
  • Patrick - Butterfly wing clap explains mystery of flight - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210121132059.htm

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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Ep.8: Aliens & Avocados PvP

Ian: [00:00:00] 

Hello, and welcome back to Yondercast. My name is Ian Lake and I'm joined this week by a man who is famous in the chess world for the Leitch gambit. It's Patrick Leitch.

Patrick: [00:00:16] Oh, wow. Thank you.

Ian: [00:00:18] Now, if Patrick is the King on the chess board, then I'm also joined by a man who is kind of like that checkers piece that you're using because you lost one of the pawns on your chess board. Josh Baltzell.

Josh: [00:00:32] The Old sweater button.

Patrick: [00:00:35] But sometimes the most valuable piece

Josh: [00:00:37] It's true. You pay attention to it.

Ian: [00:00:41] welcome back everybody. It is a new year since our last recording. We have a new president, lots of new things, including some new changes to Yondercast. So the three of us have been discussing this and we have decided to do just a little bit of. What I guess you would call rebranding of our show. So if you like our show, don't worry things aren't going to change that much, but we have listened to some feedback that we've gotten from listeners. And we are going to change our name just a little bit. So up until this point, we have been Yondercast: Ask Us Anything!. But as we've recorded the last several episodes, we've realized that the things that we seem to talk about quite a bit are particularly science because we're all science teachers.

And we also talk about games a lot because we are all fans of video games and board games, and we're just fun, loving dudes. So we are switching our. Name with the release of this episode to Yondercast: Science and Gaming, that will hopefully be a little bit more specific to what we talk about now. It doesn't mean we're not going to talk about other things or were resistant to talking about other things, but that felt like a little bit more of a fit as to.

How this podcast is evolving over time. Now, even though we remove the, ask us anything from our title, please continue to ask us anything. We're going to leave that questions. Submission survey open. You're always welcome to use that it is linked in the show notes, and you can always contact us at yondercast@gmail.com for any suggestions on what you'd like us to talk about or any questions you have.

We are also going to shift the structure of the show a little bit. We got some feedback that we only have two sections on the show, the banter and the, the main topic. And it would be helpful for navigation, for us to have a little bit more of a breakdown of the show. So now from here on out, we're going to have banter, which is just going to be about our lives and, and personal stuff.

It's going to be a short, personal update. Then we're going to have two more sections, one specifically on gaming and one specifically on science and that last section, the science section, we're going to do a little bit differently. We, up until this point have done sort of deep dives into a single topic.

We're going to move away from that a little bit, just because in order to do that, it required a lot of research on one of our parts. To, to go into that depth. One of us had to do five, six, maybe more hours of research on that topic. And that's a huge amount of work for, for all of us who are, you know, also have jobs and families and things like that.

And even after five or six hours of research, it still felt a little weird for us to be claiming that we were complete experts on that topic when there are people who, you know, in their entire careers devoted to that topic. So we're not going to do super deep dives into scientific stuff, unless we have a special guest who was an expert on that, in which case we will do that and we're going to try and have more special guests on in the future. But instead we're going to do sort of a science smattering, I guess you would say we're going to cover multiple different topics that we think that you'll be interested in. And just give you a little bit of information and a little bit of discussion about those. We all think that these are going to make big improvements to the show, and I hope you all feel that way as well. So Patrick and Josh, how you guys been. What's new in your lives.

Patrick: [00:04:13] Very busy. It's been very, very, very busy, busy in this household. We're kind of starting a little kitchen remodel where we replaced our gas stove and our microwave. And of course I decided to get a couple of the wrong parts to put the microwave up on the wall. So it has turned into two to three weeks of project versus one to two days of project, because of course, shipping time and finding the right exact piece to the microwave.

Cause we got some lightly used models instead of all brand new, because apparently it takes months to get brand new things bought and installed during a pandemic. So I think everyone's doing remodels around their house. So it's been fun because even though they're lightly used our little one, he's almost three.

He just loves to say that we got new stuff. So it kind of feels nice. Like every time we walked into the kitchen, that's our new stove. Oh yeah, it is kind of new. So. That's really

Josh: [00:05:07] part too.

Patrick: [00:05:08] yeah, seriously. Like he loves it. It's like every day is brand new. And I guess that kind of keeps us in check a little bit.

Oh yeah. Maybe we should enjoy the little things. Like we have a better, more functioning stove right now. So other than that, it's just been busy round a little kids and school and life, but it's been fun. Been

Ian: [00:05:26] you guys have been making lots of improvements to your house. I've I've actually, because we can't go in each other's homes. I've only seen the outside of your house, but you did a ton of work in your backyard. I know doing some like terracing and gardening, and that looks amazing. And I know you redid your bathroom and now you're updating your kitchen.

Patrick: [00:05:46] Yeah, we've done both. We've done both upstairs bathrooms. We're doing our kitchen now and we're going to repaint our cabinets. And so, I mean, we're kind of having the idea of looking for someone else can believe it or not having two kids just absolutely uses up an insanely large amount of space. Like we thought this house would supply like 15 K.

Okay. I'm kidding. We're not 15 kids, but we thought it would have plenty of space and it just, it was just, just gone away. So it's one of those things that, ah, we'll upgrade it for a little bit and enjoy it for a while. And at least maybe make some money off of it in the end.

Ian: [00:06:18] that's awesome. Speaking of raising youngling's Josh, I see that you have been raising some youngling's of your own.

Josh: [00:06:28] My children consist of plants and animals.

Yeah. My sister got into botany recently and she keeps sending me avocado plants. And so at this point I just have three avocado plants and there's three more on the way. And it started to get ridiculous. I've been given away avocado plants. So if you guys want avocado plants, I've I've got avocado plants for you.

Ian: [00:06:51] will they grow here? I didn't think avocados would grow here.

Josh: [00:06:56] Difficult part about them is that they have to grow inside because that's the only place where it's warm enough to actually grow them. So now I have like a four foot tall avocado plant that I have to keep turning it every day. They're are a lot of work. Just warning you. If you want an avocado plant, they are like a kid, probably not really.

Patrick: [00:07:15] like my mom trying to do some starts, like you take the pit and you'd would like, put like what do they call toothpicks in the sides? And then you'd suspend it in a little bit of water. And I just remember seeing those around the house, thinking like how much work is it to just get it started?

And then I wondered, like I don't, I can't remember ever getting us past that. So when you said four foot, I'm like, Oh my God, that's well into the process.

Josh: [00:07:36] well, every time I've tried to grow an avocado plant, it didn't work because I did the toothpick thing. My sister's a green thumb. I'm super jealous of her. I don't know how she does this stuff, but she learned everything from Tik TOK. So like Tik TOK is the new education program apparently. And like she learned that you can soak the, the seed peel it and then like wrap it in a paper towel and stuff it in a Ziploc bag for a week. And then that makes it grow. Makes no sense to me from like a photosynthesis standpoint. But I mean, germination is germination, I guess

Ian: [00:08:13] that's really interesting. I, I just Googled avocado plant and they're, they're really pretty. They're like nice looking plants. And got

Josh: [00:08:21] I love mine.

Ian: [00:08:22] kind of, you know, they've got that sort of, they'd be a great houseplant.

Josh: [00:08:26] Yeah. And they only grow get you're more well, more than welcome. Cause I, I have three more that are going to be on the way today. So once I get them germinated, cause it's the super bowl. So I'm making a lot of guacamole.

Ian: [00:08:41] of course. So you're taking your avocado plants and grinding them up with garlic and.

Josh: [00:08:45] Oh, absolutely. Yeah, exactly.

Ian: [00:08:48] It's like a pesto guacamole. Well, I haven't been raising any new youngling's at all, but I have been developing a hobby and a passion of mine on our last episode. Drew was on talking about augmented reality and virtual reality. And like we mentioned on that show. We're in a band together. Our band is called Space Club.

We don't have any presence online yet, but we are working on it. And we also talked about how we've recorded a bunch of stuff, but that all has robot drums, because I didn't have a way of recording my drums and making them not sound like complete garbage. So I have been sort of upping my game in the drumming world, I, I miked up my whole drum set and it's super, it, it sounds pretty good.

Not like pro quality, but it sounds pretty good. Now I can record it. And yesterday I made the biggest purchase I've made in a long time. I went out and I bought a new drum set.

Patrick: [00:09:49] Yes,

Ian: [00:09:50] I sent you guys a picture of it.

Josh: [00:09:53] that was gorgeous.

Ian: [00:09:54] just couldn't resist. It is just an absolute beauty. So that is my new baby. I got it all set up yesterday, but it was set up by the time it was set up, it was like 10:30 PM.

And so I didn't want to run the chance of disturbing any neighbors. So I couldn't play it. I played it for the first time this morning for about 20 minutes before we came on to record this episode. And as soon as we're done, I'm going to go back down and I'm going to

Patrick: [00:10:18] A little bit of inspiration. That's awesome.

Ian: [00:10:23] been super fun.

Patrick: [00:10:24] You didn't want to disturb the neighbors or the family in the house, anything like that? She just got after it. When as hard as you possibly could at 10:00 PM.

Ian: [00:10:34] Yeah. I guess I also should have mentioned that, like my wife was asleep and she had to leave at 6:00 AM this morning to work a 12 hour shift. That was probably more important than the possibility of maybe neighbors hearing me. But

Patrick: [00:10:47] Was it like, is it like in the basement downstairs or is it sat in the living

Ian: [00:10:51] in the, yeah, I've got, I have a little basement space. It's nothing special, but I've been able to sort of sequester that as a music space and I put up a little bit of pretty inexpensive sound treatment. You know, some of those foam sound tiles up on the wall to try and soak up a little bit of the echo.

So yeah, I've got a little bit of a music space down there. I can, at least I can at least leave my drum set, set up and I don't have to tear it down and put it up every time I want to play.

Patrick: [00:11:17] Oh, that would be brutal.

Ian: [00:11:18] It would

Patrick: [00:11:19] Especially who feel like Mike it up every time.

Ian: [00:11:22] Yeah, it would never happen. Well, before we move on to talking about what games we've been playing, I want to take a moment to thank some of our listeners for writing us very nice reviews on Apple podcasts. 

Patrick: [00:11:35] I haven't actually checked them in a while. There were some really good ones. I love to see your face as you're scrolling through.

Ian: [00:11:41] So at this point we have 17 ratings, you guys, every single one of those 17 ratings is five stars, which warms my heart to know that people feel positively about our show. And some people have been nice enough to write some really nice comments. We have a listener by the name of tinyspacewitch who says.

Josh: [00:12:04] I love 

Ian: [00:12:04] so Literally so funny and amazing. Love seeing my fave teachers talk about everything smiley face.

Josh: [00:12:13] that is the best name.

Ian: [00:12:15] That is a great name. I'm not sure who that is, but thank you so much tinyspacewitch we've got a breadmanishere. Who says TBH I could listen to the guy, these guys talk about science all day.

Thank you. Breadman. You've got Eve at CC, the exploration to this trio content is like Steve Dubner of Freakonomics. That is a very flattering comparison. Thank you. Their approach is personable. The content is interesting excitement for what the topic is comes through in their curiosity. I look forward to many more episodes.

Thank you very much. And we have, we have. A review from Prince Ali fabulous he himself, the title is the yondergang is fire emoji, he says, I absolutely love the yondergang and have been listening to them. The last two, three days. I love these three Musketeers and I'm addicted to their podcast.

10 out of 10 recommend they integrate happiness, hilarity education, and informative learning into their podcast. I listened to it on my run in the morning and it's a great way to start the day. Thank you so much, Prince Ali

Patrick: [00:13:26] thank you.

Josh: [00:13:27] thank you.

Ian: [00:13:28] those reviews are not only just a great way to make us feel good if you want to make us feel good, but it's also the number one way that we can grow and improve our show is to hear that feedback. And the more reviews we have, the more access we have to new listeners, we can build into the new, into the yonder community, the yonder squad.

So thank you so much. Now I want to know what you guys have been playing. I'm very curious. It's been a couple of months since we've talked about this. What has been occupying your gaming time?

Josh: [00:14:03] Well, I decided to go to a throwback. Do you guys remember Destiny?

Ian: [00:14:09] I do.

Josh: [00:14:10] Yeah, I stopped playing it a while ago because. I got tired of all of the advertisements and they, the, the word on the street is that they kind of destroyed the game, which I agree with. I thought that it would be fun to go back and try it because I had a clan. Our, our group played together like every single night and we had so much fun playing it, but then they came out with all of the, now you need to buy this DLC and now you need to buy the silver so that you can exchange it for this.

And they just turned it into a microtransaction nightmare. I got to admit that since they came out with Destiny 2 and everybody stopped playing, they worked really hard to try and bring it back. It's not quite at the level that it was before, because there's still so many instances where I'll run and talk to somebody.

And they're like, if you want to continue this mission, you need the special light orb that's only 1999. And if you buy it, then you can do this. And. It's frustrating, but at the same time, I'm like, okay, I'm just not going to get that. And then I go off and do a patrol.

Ian: [00:15:15] so what's changed because I did play a little bit. I played quite a bit of Destiny I feel like I played a little bit of destiny too. But maybe I didn't even play destiny two at all. So what's different. Like what did they improve other than like, do they improve any of the gameplay at all or any of the mission structure?

Josh: [00:15:33] they definitely improve the gameplay. I think that that's my favorite part is that they made it so that it's a little bit more open world. It used to be that you'd have to go back into orbit and then pick a mission and then you'd go back down. And once you completed the mission, it was like, okay, goodbye.

And then you'd go back into orbit. Now. It's like you land on the planet. You can run around and just do patrols, which are like tiny missions that you find all over the map or you actually follow through with a storyline. But when the mission is over, you just go back to where you started and then it's like, you're back in on the planet doing your own thing.

I dunno. I've loved it. I've had a great time. I thought it was really awesome so far.

Ian: [00:16:15] any, yeah, that experience, it was so fun to play that game with friends. And, and the reason that I fell out of it was just because I fell behind. The people that I was playing with because I didn't play it on my own. So it was like, you know, we'd played on the weekend and we'd have a blast. And we, you know, the first weekend we all like leveled up to level six or something like that.

And then. And then a week went by and I was like, Hey, let's do it again. Like Saturday. And we locked back in and I was at level six and they were all at low level, like 28. And it was just like, I couldn't even keep up. I, I didn't do enough damage. I didn't have the weapons or anything. So yeah, like if you have the right people to play it with one of those co-op experiences are my favorite way to play games.

Josh: [00:16:58] I love being the toddler friend that has no armor, and this is a really low level because then you just run around and they protect you. And you're like, I'm having fun, but I'm not helping at all. That's me. And every single game that I play.

Patrick: [00:17:11] I've been that way sometimes too. And I actually really liked that part because then it feels like you're important in almost a non-important way.

Josh: [00:17:19] you're the president and they're your body guards.

Ian: [00:17:24] Yeah. Always my experience, especially with first person shooters is I was always the one on the team who just couldn't keep up. You know, never like God as many eliminations never, never helped as much. And like my team completely carried me. And you know, was always reviving me and things like that, which is actually why.

So lately the game that I've been playing is. Call of Duty, the newest one, the Black Ops, Cold War one. I, I, I'm not sure why, but I just made this decision to reinvest in getting good at a first person shooter again, because it's been many years since I've worked on my hand eye coordination in that way.

And and I was like, I'm tired of always lagging behind my friends. And so I've been playing that one a bunch and. I have to say, I understand why the game is so popular. Once you get to the point where you feel like you can do it, which does take a little while there's a little bit of a learning curve.

It's really fun. It's just a great, like, you know, pop in each matches like 10 to 15 minutes long. It's a, you know, you can spend 15 minutes playing or an hour and a half playing and, and there's you know, Engaging level up mechanism and achievement mechanism and all that kind of stuff. So I've been, I've been really enjoying that one.

And when I do have a chance to play with, with friends, which isn't too often, but I've had a chance a few times. And, and it's, again, just anytime you can play with friends, it's so fun.

Josh: [00:18:48] and with first-person shooters, it really is that if you don't use it, you lose it. It is so easy to go a couple months without playing an FPS and then you get back on and you're just absolute trash. It's painful. You have to work hard to earn that back.

Ian: [00:19:04] Yeah, I think that like, when I phase out of. In fact, I think I only paid for like three months of the online, like PlayStation plus. And so when that runs out, I think it'll just be kind of like that period of my life is over. Like, I'm just going to move on, you know, next thing.

Patrick: [00:19:21] console. First person shooters have always been kind of difficult for me though. So I feel like there's. Kind of a different dynamic, if you will, around console, like I've always been keyboard and mouse, first person shooter. Like I was like, OG, Counter-Strike beta 1.0 1.6 days. And that was like the height of my first person shooter playing.

And then I started playing like halo and call of duty. And I was like, how do you do this? Like, why don't my thumbs move in the way that my hand would on a mouse? Like you would think it's okay. Pretty translatable, but I was awful on console for the longest time. Like those fine tune moments. So when we were playing like Overwatch on the PS4, I was like, okay, I'm definitely going to be mercy where I can just lock on for one split second, hold the trigger button and literally just be done, heal and boost or whatever it is.

So, I mean, if you're on PS4, I, it can be difficult, especially in a  fast paced game like that. I mean, it's. That quick Twitch muscle memory slash fine motor movement of your thumbs can be quite difficult. And in fact, I was even hearing about like, surgeons are actually practicing on PS4 controllers for that finite motor movement for like robotic surgeries, like that same sort of idea.

So that's a skill that, I mean, even some of the top professionals in their field are practicing to get good. With that sort of same aspect, obviously it's the difference between call of duty and maybe life or death and a surgery, but still it's, it's kind of a cool translation.

Ian: [00:20:44] Yeah. I like to think my hours spent at Call of Duty is, you know, has improved my fine motor skills or my hand-eye coordination or something that's going to benefit me elsewhere in my life. I haven't seen any evidence of that, you know, anywhere else. It's not like I can suddenly juggle knives or something like that.

But you know, yeah. I think that you really like do. It's amazing. Just putting in the time and you slowly feel yourself just getting better at controlling those really minute movements and that really very specific and very fast feedback. It's it's interesting. It's interesting to think that like my brain, you know, and my brain extremity connection has, it has like shifting and altering and strengthening because I'm playing this.

Silly game, you

Josh: [00:21:30] getting that basal ganglia activated.

Patrick: [00:21:34] do you think you could be better at it? If you had a button for a foot pedal or a foot pedal for a button? Cause you're a drummer, right? If you can use your hands and feet independently, what if your like trigger button was actually your feet?

Ian: [00:21:48] maybe, maybe like, for me, because I do have a little bit of that, like sort of hand-foot independence. So yeah, if I could offload something like. You know, I don't know, you know, tossing a grenade or something like that to a foot pedal so that I wouldn't ever have to switch what triggers my fingers are on.

Yeah. That would be cool.

Patrick: [00:22:07] That would be very interesting.

Ian: [00:22:08] I have to say, I'm not really tempted to buy a PlayStation 5 yet, but what I've been hearing about the controller and like the new sort of haptic feedback that it offers really, really intrigued me, it sounds like. It sounds like that's going to be a really cool experience.

Patrick: [00:22:24] That sounds awesome.

Ian: [00:22:25] I actually haven't spend spending most of my gaming time playing video games. I think I've mentioned on the show that I'm a big board game fan. I'm super into hobby board games. And over the last couple of months since Christmas my wife and I have actually been playing this game called Pandemic Legacy.

Specifically Pandemic Legacy Season Zero. And I don't know if you guys or anybody out there has ever played the board game pandemic, but it's one of it's so good. It's one of my favorites of all time. It's a cooperative game. You are working together to rid the world of disease which is a, it's a little hard to play right now because of the state of the

Patrick: [00:23:03] it is.

Ian: [00:23:04] It's a little on the nose, but. This game is actually not super disease centric, which was very nice. It's actually a cold war game where you are kind of secret agents fighting against other spies. It's very interesting. But it's a legacy game, meaning that you play a series of games and depending on what happens in each of the games, it changes the game permanently.

So like decisions you make while playing the game will actually alter the board or alter the cards that you have, or alter your character for the rest of the games that you play. And at the end of the game, depending on what went wrong, like negative consequences happen, you add stickers to the board, you might have to rip up cards.

You might have to like. You know, destroy components of the game. And then you also get at the end of every game, you get upgrades, you get to add power to your characters. You get to add permanent bases on the board that you get to keep for, you know, the rest of the game. And there's also a story that evolves.

So depending on what happens, you get to like w draw specific cards from this deck of hidden cards. You get to read sections out of a booklet that sort of evolve this, like. Narrative not to mention that there's a bunch of boxes and envelopes in the box that you don't open until you're instructed to do so.

So it be like, Oh, you just finished your third game. And this happened open box number four, and you'll open it up and there'll be like a whole new component in there, or a whole new character that you can play or something like that. It's it was super, super cool. My wife got it for me for Christmas, but the real gift was that she promise to play it with me. And and that was like one of the best gifts ever. And we played 13 games

Patrick: [00:24:50] Wow.

Ian: [00:24:50] of Pandemic Legacy and had a blast play in it. So it is, it is complicated if you've never played a complexer or like a hobby board game before this probably isn't like the right one to start with.

But if you like pandemic and you kind of know how to play that game, And this interests you. I can't recommend it enough. It was awesome.

Patrick: [00:25:11] I love that so much. Co-op games are so much fun. That's why I think we. Yeah, we got the switch, which 

Ian: [00:25:18] I was going to say you 

Patrick: [00:25:18] guys have been hammering on me for years to get one. It feels like, and I was like, I don't know if that's going to happen. I don't know. Like I already have PC and PlayStation. I got a lot of things I'm already playing.

And then the wifey got it for me for as, almost like a little family gift so we can play it together. Like we were playing Mario party. Like it was something that we also played a lot in college too. And. It was a lot of fun like that co-op versus playing against each other. Like, it was fun to be a part of a team and play against each other or play with each other against the computer.

Even though I feel like the computer was like, like unreal, good. Like what, how do you roll that every time? Like, come on, what's going on here? Like, what are you trying to do? But yeah, I gotta get Diablo three, which is something I play a lot on the PC too, which is very like. Really easy on to play on the switch.

I was expecting the translation from PC to the switch to not be very good. Honestly, it's kind of better. Like it was, it was very surprising to me. I could see if like, let's say Diablo four came out on PC and switch at the same time. I might just get it on switch. Like that's the kind of game-changing ability for the handhold console that I don't know.

You kind of look for in a game like that, where you, I mean, kind of want to be able to pick it up and put it down. Literally, if you're like, Oh, I'm just going to play for like five to 10 minutes to a couple things in the game, then just set it down and walk away versus go to your computer, sit down and boot it up.

That whole thing. So. That's been pretty sweet, but other than that, I mean just still playing WoW. Shadowlands was the new expansion that came out and the PVP player versus player part of it is fun, but I'm not gonna lie. Like I'm just stressed out all the time. I think I've lost more hair in the last month because of that game.

Then both of my kids combined, like, it's insane. Like basically, I don't know if you guys have seen anything, like sometimes on Reddit, there's memes on it all the time on, on gaming, but basically for healers, which I'm trying to be a. A really good healer, this expansion you can die in like 0.3 seconds.

Like, I'm not even kidding, like before your reaction time registers that something happened to you, you could be dead and mistakes are very, very punishing. And I play with a buddy who's really good. So he's like trying to coach me up this entire time. And sometimes I just don't even know how we lost. I'm just sitting there on my computer, like mouth open, confused, but it's, I mean, it kind of keeps you coming back cause you can do the same thing to the other team.

Like you can just completely outplay them or you completely like just one shot. And when they're done. So that's been one of those things. That's been hard cause it's like, I've always been deterred from games like dark souls and Neo where you just get one shot and lose like five to 15 minutes of your time in a split second.

But at the same time, you know, you can do it back and it's that dynamic. Aspect of that, that's been pretty fun. It's stressful. Like I can only handle it a couple of nights a week because if I play it for more than like 30 minutes to an hour at one given time, it's, I'm just frustrated. And that's not the reason why you want to play video games,

Josh: [00:28:07] Yeah. I don't think that I could handle that. Cause I can't even handle Overwatch. Every time I die, which that game you're supposed to die in. I get really mad and rage quit after like three rounds.

Patrick: [00:28:17] Yeah, you're kind of a function of your team at that point. Like if your team's not helping to support you out, or you're not like playing together and you're just dying over and over and over, there's no point to be playing anymore. You're like, Hey, go take a break and do something a little bit more fun.

Okay.

Ian: [00:28:31] For anybody who is listening and, and missed it. So Patrick, you said, WoW, PVP is what you've been playing. So WoW stands for World of Warcraft and PVP stands for player versus player. Is that right?

Patrick: [00:28:44] correct. So here's, what's funny. So,

Ian: [00:28:47] world of Warcraft.

Patrick: [00:28:48] yes. So here's, what's funny. So I don't realize I'm using a lot of these gaming acronyms in my real life. Like my RL. Right. I literally do

not. Realize this. So I, here's a funny story. So we, we also play rated battlegrounds, so it's like 10 V 10 and it's rated. So it's like more competitive.

And yesterday I was talking to one of my buddies about it. We were like strategic rising, and I accidentally sent the text to him, to my parents' group. so there was a lot of video game. We'll say terminology being used. And my mom was like, what are you even talking about? The number probably back, LOL, sorry, miss tell miss Tel.

And so I didn't realize that that is something you do in wow. Like you slash tell, like whispering different people. And so I basically whispered the wrong person. I told this to the wrong group. I missed told what I was trying to say to another person. And everyone was so confused by it. And I just figured.

I've used that so much in my life. I've literally said it to students and like my zoom chat, like I accidentally sent it to the wrong person. I go, oops, sorry, mis tel. And it's one of those things that you've just used it for so long that you assume other people know what it is. And I think like, wow, and PVP and all those sorts of things are terminology that I use so much, I guess, in my common vernacular with friends that I just assume everyone knows what they mean. Oops.

Ian: [00:30:11] I've never heard mis tel before that tells you

I I've never played wild before, so

Patrick: [00:30:17] so I guess that's one of those things. I just be more aware of when I'm like, oops, they're probably like, what is he talking about? So, yeah. Sorry. If there's anything else I forgot to define in terms of acronym, let me know.

Ian: [00:30:29] no, you made sense. You made sense.

Patrick: [00:30:32] I get so excited talking about it. I just can't stop.

Ian: [00:30:34] that sounds like fun, especially like, I think for me going into, you know, something that sounds that stressful in that competitive. I don't know how much I would do it, but like just on my own, but it sounds like you've been doing it with friends and other people a lot. And that, you know, it's fun to enter competitive situations with somebody else at your side.

Patrick: [00:30:51] exactly. I play a little bit kind of just like with random people, like they have, like, what'd they call it looking for group. You can just like pick up with some other people, like pickup games or whatever, but it's just not as fun for sure.

Ian: [00:31:03] Well, that's what we've been playing. I think it's time for us to transition into talking a little bit about science and some, some more academic topics. We're going to need some sort of like a sting, you know, like a, a little bit 15 seconds of music to transition us. You know, like

Josh: [00:31:19] dirt or deterred or

Ian: [00:31:22] Beep boop Science. 

Patrick: [00:31:27] Well, I think a little like drum Diddy with a couple of samples from our previous podcasts of like me saying something silly or someone saying something silly every once in a while.

Ian: [00:31:37] It should just be . Wow. Wow. PVP, P P P P P P P. Wow.

Mistel.

science.

Josh: [00:31:47] We can ask Scrillex to come up with something.

Patrick: [00:31:49] Oh, gosh dude. Funny story Scrillex. His old band from first to last super hardcore emo band. Look them up, went to a couple of their shows in high school. From first 

Ian: [00:32:01] from first to last. All

Patrick: [00:32:03] Sonny Moore, AKA Scrillex. So if you're way back in the day, you want to old way back playback a band called from first to last super emo, a screamo art post hardcore metal lead type band.

Ian: [00:32:16] I will listen to that. That sounds like good stuff.

Patrick: [00:32:18] You can call it that

Ian: [00:32:21] so it's time for us to talk about some science and the way that we've done this, we've worked, trying a new system is that we've each chosen one topic, one scientific article to just summarize and present that we thought was really cool and really worth sharing and interesting and we're going to do it in a shorter format than we normally have.

Who's interested in going first.

Patrick: [00:32:43] doesn't matter to me. 

Roll a three-sided die. 

Ian: [00:32:46] I can go first. So th this topic actually came to me from a family member. My uncle Russ is what I call him. He is my dad's brother. And I have always had a close connection with my uncle Russ, even though we've never lived close by and we really haven't seen much of each other, but whenever I have seen my uncle Russ, I'm always surprised by how similar our personalities and our senses of humor and everything are.

He's also the only living family member that I have, who also has red hair. So we've got that. connection. And I haven't talked to my uncle Russ in a long time, but my dad had a birthday just a couple of weeks ago. And on his birthday we had a three-way phone conversation between the three of us.

And so I got to catch up with my uncle Russ and he uh, was talking to me about my podcast, which he has checked out which is phenomenal. And he told me that he had a topic for me, which was to talk about, Oumuamua. And I was like, excuse me, what, what do you

Josh: [00:33:49] I've been pronouncing it wrong this whole time.

Ian: [00:33:53] I'm pretty sure that's how it's pronounced. Oumuamua. So let me tell you a little bit about Oumuamua well, first of all, let me tell you a little bit about Avi Loeb, who is a very famous and very reputable. Astrophysicist slash cosmologist slash astronomist, who is a professor at Harvard university and has been an department head there for like over 10 years.

He is a very, he's the real deal. He's a real astrophysicist. He's collaborated with Stephen Hawking and, and you know, lots of other really prominent scientists in the past. And he is kind of. Now a little bit of a controversial figure because he is a strong proponent of what some perceive as kind of a conspiracy theory slash okay. I guess just ridiculous theory, which is all about this object by the name of Oumuamua. So in 2017, this. Space rock was detected and it was detected from the Haleakala observatory in Hawaii. So it was given a Hawaiian scientific name. So Oumuamua translates, I think, roughly to scout.

Basically it's it was this weird set kind of cigar shaped rock flying through space tumbling end over end. And we didn't detect it until it had already flown past the earth and past the sun and was on its way out of the solar system. Now what makes this object really special is that it is actually the first interstellar object that we have detected in our solar system. And an interstellar object means an object that is not bound to the gravitational. Force of a star. So it is basically an independently moving thing, just flying through space, not orbiting around anything, not gravitational l attached to anything. It's just fine through space. And it flew through our solar system is the first object that we've ever detected like that.

So it's already kind of like, it's this cool, mysterious thing. Now what makes it even more mysterious is that it appears to have accelerated. As it left our solar system, which isn't something that's impossible for like an object in space to do, but it didn't give any of the signs of things that we normally would see from something that accelerates in space.

Like it doesn't have a cometary tail or anything like that. So it kind of acted like an asteroid kind of acted like a comment. It accelerated, but not in a way we've ever seen before. And so there is. A lot of speculation about, you know, what it is. And, and professor Avi, Loeb has come out famously saying that he thinks it is a construct of an intelligent alien race. And the way that he has proposed is that basically he thinks that that is actually the most reasonable explanation. What he thinks it is, is he thinks that it is what's called a light sail, which is a piece of technology that uses light particles accelerate and to propel itself. And he knows a lot about this topic because he is, I believe working with a team of other scientists who are developing Light Sail technology for humanity, with the goal of basically creating these, these.

Spacecraft that can be propelled by light and that could therefore travel like to the next solar system over which we've, you know, haven't been able to like get something to another solar system before. So, so he knows a lot about this technology and he thinks that's what it is. And, you know, over the years, he first published this idea in 2018 and in the last several years, he has only become more convinced.

Even in the face of, you know, tons of people saying that can't be it, it's got to be a more reasonable explanation. It says, ridiculous. This is just conspiracy. He's become more and more convinced that the evidence points to the fact that it is a light sail constructed by another intelligent race is the most reasonable explanation to behave  behavior. So.

Josh: [00:38:02] My 

Ian: [00:38:03] Take that as you will.

Josh: [00:38:05] favorite part of this is that I just picture some extremely intelligent alien species. That's like, what should we do with this piece of space junk? And then one of them's like, I dunno, just launch it over next to that sol star system. It'll probably land in the star and just burn up and be done with they missed we're like worshiping it as it passes by going, Oh, it's alien.

It's like alien technology. And to them, it's just space trash.

Patrick: [00:38:33] Or it's like a transport vessel and they're flying by and on the right. You can see earth. They probably have no idea that we're here. Okay. Onto the next one.

Josh: [00:38:42] That's

amazing. 

Ian: [00:38:44] my story. And there's a lot that you there's a lot deeper. You could go into this topic if you want it to. But I'm curious to hear what you guys have to talk about.

Josh: [00:38:51] I can, I can follow us up next.

Patrick: [00:38:53] go for it.

Josh: [00:38:54] So I like plants, which I'm pretty sure my avocado talk probably brought us to this conclusion. So I'm super excited about this topic because I also love carnivorous plants. I think I've owned three Venus fly traps in my life. They've all died of mysterious circumstances.

Not because I'm a terrible gardener at all, but that might have something to do with it. Although one of them in my defense, I had a roommate that tried to feed it yogurt. And Venus fly traps. Can't eat yogurt for those of you that don't know

Patrick: [00:39:24] or something.

Josh: [00:39:25] they are lactose intolerant. Yeah. So that one wasn't my fault.

Ian: [00:39:30] Did it, was it just like an eyedropper full of yogurt? Like

Josh: [00:39:33] No, it was a full spoonful. It was a full spoonful.

Ian: [00:39:37] a spoonful of yogurt on the plant.

Josh: [00:39:41] I, I came home from classes and was like, what is that? And he was like, I tried to feed it yogurt. And I was like, W what? So, yeah, that was the thing. Well, the cool thing about Venus fly traps is that we actually don't know how they work, but we're getting closer and closer to understanding how they work.

Because they don't have muscles or they don't have like a musculature structure that would enable them to actually close. And so there's been physicists and biologists that have been trying to figure out how it is that their leaves actually close when a fly lands inside of the trap. And this article, there was actually like this interdisciplinary group from, I always pronounce this wrong Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. I always say that wrong. That's the best that I can do. I apologize for pronunciation issues and a couple of other different universities, like Helmholtz Institute bio center of Julius Maximilian's universitate of Vertsberg. So just lots and lots of different universities have been working together on this project.

And basically what they did was they used some pretty common Pieces of technology like electroencephalography magnetoencephalography magnetic resonance imaging. So EEG, Meg, and MRI, and what they did was they actually put the plants inside the structures, these pieces of equipment and they triggered what's called a hair cell because the inside of these Venus fly traps have these little hairs.

And if you trigger them, that's what causes the plant to snap shut. Well, what they did was they would trigger the hair cell and then they would use these pieces of technology to measure what was going on. And the cool part about a lot of plants is that plants have very similar neural structures to humans just, they don't have a central nervous system, so they have more like a peripheral nervous system.

So basically a body with no brain and no spinal column picture that if you can. Kind of creepy.

Ian: [00:41:46] wait. Do plants have nerves?

Josh: [00:41:48] Yeah, they do.

Ian: [00:41:50] wow. I didn't know that.

Josh: [00:41:51] I know it's kind of hard to wrap your mind around because you just don't really think of plants as having neurons, but they do. They send messages throughout their entire body and they have vasculature.

That's how they actually spread hormones. My avocado plant, it's leaning to one side because it's releasing this hormone called oxen and whichever cells get touched by the oxen they stop growing and that makes it so that it leans a certain direction towards the sun. Well the neural structures of these plants, they, they have this thing called an action potential, and you guys actually have action potentials too, which is when a certain stimulation occurs depending on the type of nerve or the type of neuron ions will get released in those cells.

And if it re reaches a particular voltage, Then it causes this massive cascade where all of the neurons that are connected to that neuron, that guy thought the, the correct voltage will all of a sudden start triggering and have the same voltage, which makes the next Duran's, that are touching it, have the same cascade effect.

So it's like this massive, I don't even know like explosion of ions being released from all of these neurons and we call it an action potential. Well, here's the cool part of what these guys did is they already knew the action potentials occur in plants, but Venus fly traps. They found out that when it has that action potential, it actually gives off a magnetic field and they call it bio magnetism.

And so humans have biomagnetism. We give off a magnetic field when our neurons activate. And so now what they found is that complex multicellular plants have those same biomagnetism levels. And I just thought that that was the coolest thing in the world is that humans and plants are so much more similar than we think we are.

We always seem to think that like, plants are less evolved than us, but for those of you that have taken biology, you know, that there's no such thing as less evolved, just differently evolved. But we have a lot more in common than we seem to think.

Ian: [00:43:58] there are so many parts of that that are fascinating. I mean, just the fact that plants have neurons and action potentials is something I didn't know, that kind of blew my mind. And the fact that action potentials release a magnetic field. Completely makes sense. But is something that I hadn't ever thought about, and that's fascinating, and this similarity between plants and, and heave now, I'm really worried that like plants can feel pain.

Josh: [00:44:22] Actually, there's a really cool YouTube video that I should find that maybe we could link if I can find it where the cool part about this technology is that they can test the plant without damaging the plant, because this is very similar to another research study that was done, where they wanted to see if plants had neurons.

And so what they did was they would actually set up the plant and then light one of the leaves on fire. And what they found from that study. And there's this cool video where you can actually see the action potential being achieved. They hold the flame under the leaf and you can see the neurons transmitting the messages throughout the entire plant.

And what that tells the plant is don't grow that direction. So they don't cognitively perceive pain. Like we do. But they certainly can detect damage and they'll send a message throughout the rest of the plant saying we've been injured. Don't grow that way.

 Patrick: [00:45:18] more of like a mechanical feedback rather than an emotional feedback. 

Ian: [00:45:23] like you said, we, we think plants are just these dumb things that grow out of the ground, but I mean, they have some really sophisticated feedback mechanisms and

Yeah.

They're, I mean, plants are incredible.

Josh: [00:45:36] next time you call your friend to potato to try and make fun of them. Remember that a potato is smarter than you think it is?

Ian: [00:45:44] Wow. Thank you, Josh. That was awesome.

Patrick: [00:45:46] there's a lot of sweet instances of that sort of stuff. Like just humans, sort of like you see how humans, biological systems are like almost inferior to some others. 

And I think that's kind of what led towards this article with. The butterflies and being, having a sort of pre vet background and college has really led me to view plants and animals in a different way and how we can improve our lives from them. And sort of short aside, we were in Belize one time and we went to a butterfly farm and it was one of the coolest experiences of my life.

And I remember sitting there in the butterfly farm, thinking these things fly in a horrible way. Like you think of flight, you think of birds, right? You think of a Peregrine Falcon diving at 200 kilometers an hour, and you think about an Eagle soaring, then you see these butterflies flying, like, what are they doing? sporadic. They're not really efficient, all that sort of stuff. And this article is actually talking about how that's probably not actually the case. They actually have a very effective and purposeful flying pattern. And so researchers at Lund university in Sweden were studying the aerodynamics of butterflies.

And what better way to do that than throw them in a wind tunnel.

Josh: [00:46:54] okay.

Patrick: [00:46:55] Like what? Same probably aerodynamic wind tunnel that they put cars in going like 70 miles an hour to test the aerodynamics they did to butter. Well, probably not exactly like that. I'm sort of extrapolating from this, but essentially they were studying the benefits of their wing shape and flexibility, like, which kind of surprised me a little bit, sort of, you would think that the butterfly wings they're so big and they're so sturdy, they would need to be.

Fairly strong, but I guess flexible makes sense because they started to study how they almost clap when they start trying to take off and propel themselves forward. So basically what had happened when they were starting to study it, their upward stroke of their wings actually cup almost like you'd cup your hands when you're clapping and create this like air-filled pocket between them.

And if you push air through a small space, you propel yourself almost like a rocket. So basically when they're taking off that beat causes them to glide and clap and propel themselves forward. So when you're seeing this very erratic motion, it's actually a quick burst of speed in one direction that looks like it's randomness, but actually might be directed depending like if a predator is coming and same thing in the downward.

When their wings go down, it acts almost as like a parachute, right? Where they increase that area and the wind resistance. So they fall softly. So they can almost time these things in a way that they can direct their movement and be almost pre escape predators quickly, but then slow it down and speed it up and slow it down depending on how they're beating and everything else.

And so what researchers are looking into, how can we take advantage of this? Right. We think of like stealth planes, and we think about speedy planes and how their shapes have been taken from animals before. And they're starting to look into like drone technology, how can the shape and the flexibility of those butterfly wings help.

Sort of improve performance and technology and our drones, because when you think of drones, it's almost like a helicopter fashion, right? A couple of blades spinning to cause it in different directions. What if it was something slightly different, more efficient? Some of the research they found was that those flexible wings actually created an impulse that was 22% higher, right.

They could actually propel themselves 22% better and their efficiency was actually 28% better compared to re rigid wings. Which I thought was pretty interesting. It's almost like if they can change the technology a little bit, they can cause a slight bit, I mean, 20 to 20% isn't necessarily groundbreaking, but over the long-term that can save a lot of energy, save a lot of components sort of stuff.

So, I mean, you always think of like, like something like a butterfly. Right. They can't have that much sophistication, but then all of a sudden you're looking at their flight and you're looking at their coloration. Another thing that really stuck with me in my undergrad and when I was studying in vertebrate biology was the coloration of butterfly wings.

Like the structure of the pigments inside of their wings is so strong. Like it's one of the one colors that lasts for such a long time. Like if you think about it, it's a color that just doesn't fade the sun. Doesn't break it down time. Doesn't break around. They're very, very, very strong. And so that's why you see all of these 

displays of butterfly wings being vibrant for so long and very vibrant coloration in terms of maybe deterring a predator or maybe camouflage or those sorts of things, which, I mean, if you have a chance, not that I'm going to say you should just go buy a ticket to Belize right now and go visit the butterfly farm.

But it was an incredible experience. Nothing like standing in the middle of just thousands of butterflies, flying all over you, different colors, different varieties, just a very serene, surreal and amazing experience.

Ian: [00:50:19] that's so cool. Yeah. Power to those butterflies. That's phenomenal. It's an, it's amazing to think about.

How, you know, there are things that have evolved in multiple different ways. You know, we, we talk about evolution in our biology, our high school biology classes a lot. And one of my favorite things to talk to kids about is, is how 

there's something called parallel evolution, right? Where like the same thing evolves in different ways. It's so interesting to think about how multiple different life forms have developed something like flight, but, but they've, they've arrived at a different form of flight, you know, bird like traditional birds.

Basic birds, right? We're thinking about birds versus hummingbirds versus dragonflies. And now we know more about butterflies and how, the way that they fly and, and achieve , suspension in the air is completely different. It's so cool.

Well, there you have it folks. That was the first episode of Yondercast: Science & Gaming. We hope that you had a good time. We had a great time recording this. Thank you all so much for listening to the show. If you haven't yet, please subscribe to the show. And if you have 30 seconds to spare rate and review us on Apple podcast. I can't tell you how much those reviews help us to, to grow and improve our show.

If you have any suggestions for what we should discuss on the show, you can fill out the form linked in the show notes, or if you want to contact us directly to send an email to yondercast@gmail.com. Take care, everybody!

Josh: [00:51:49] Bye! I don't know why I waived.