

17 Jun 2025 · 36m · 20 chapters

DTNSB 5042 covers major US tech/media shifts and several tech-business headlines, then a “Ridiculous Science” segment explaining why basic research can look pointless.
For the first time, social media/video platforms surpass TV as Americans’ primary news source (54% vs 50%); digital news subscriptions plateau (only ~20% pay). Streaming becomes dominant TV viewing (44.8% streaming vs 44.2% cable/broadcast).
TikTok use for news (33% global sample); GFP discovered from glowing sea fireflies leading to widespread biomedical use.
Dr. Nicky (Nicole Ackerman) discusses Carly Ann York’s book The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog; she interviews York later.
Dr. Nicky is a science communicator and researcher (integrative/comparative biology context mentioned). Other “guests” are none; hosts are Jason Howell and Tom Merritt.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes.
Exploration of how social media has surpassed traditional TV as a news source.
“Also known as the big stories, because there's a couple of them that we'll talk about.”
Discussion on the challenges of determining credible news sources in social media.
“But it's not like we're getting news reports necessarily through TikTok.”
How media consumption has changed from traditional methods to a more decentralized approach.
“Is this giving me the information that I actually want to hear versus kind of finding an even ground of like, no, but this is grounded in reality or whatever you want to call it?”
Analysis of how streaming services have overtaken cable and broadcast television.
“And you did have to kind of cognitively, you did have to kind of understand or know kind of where you're getting that information from versus being served it on a silver platter, you know, in the form of mass media.”
Explore how YouTube's growth is impacting traditional media companies.
“Yeah, YouTube is actually bigger than broadcast cable and streaming TV.”
Delve into the complex negotiations between OpenAI and Microsoft regarding IP and funding.
“OpenAI reportedly having some tough negotiations with Microsoft as it needs that company to approve OpenAI's conversion to a for-profit company.”
Understand OpenAI's new contract with the U.S. Department of Defense and its implications.
“Department of Defense, sorry, worth up to$200 million as part of its new Open AI for Government initiative.”
Examine Intel's decision to reduce its factory workforce amid economic challenges.
“The Oregonian saw a memo shared with Intel employees that says the company is going to lay off 15 % to 20 % of factory workforce starting next month, July 2025.”
Discover Egyun's advancements in AI and the significance of sovereign AI for Mongolia.
“Mongolians, I want to say Eugene, but it's Egyun, I think, or Egyun?”
Learn about the regulatory challenges facing 23andMe following a data breach incident.
“I mean, 96 GPUs, eight weeks for a 30 billion parameter model.”
Explore Honda's entry into the delivery vehicle market with the Fastport e-Quad.
“It may be TTAM, which is the nonprofit that's taking over 23andMe.”
Discuss Patreon’s new fees for creators and Netflix's plans for immersive experiences.
“Patreon announced it's increasing its platform fees for new creators.”
Learn about Netflix's plans for immersive experience houses and their attractions.
“Because of the court order, Patreon does not have to – it can direct people outside of Patreon.”
Discussion about recent Spectrum internet outages caused by vandalism.
“If you don't know, people are always digging around.”
Instagram is testing a repost feature similar to retweets on Twitter.
“And yeah, if you're the people who were trying to steal the copper, turn yourselves in and claim the$25 ,000 reward, right?”
Meta's Threads app introduces a feature to hide spoilers in posts.
“And Meta's Threads app testing a new feature that hides spoilers in more news of Meta products getting old features.”
Dr. Nikki discusses the importance of basic scientific research and its unexpected applications.
“And we chatted about her book, and I'm really excited about its release.”
Examples illustrating the unforeseen benefits of seemingly trivial scientific studies.
“Maybe future research can build on this knowledge.”
Discussion on the importance of government funding for scientific research.
“But one example is there's a fluid dynamics researcher, David, who was featured in a quote unquote waste book in 2016.”
The hosts reflect on listener feedback and thank contributors.
“And we end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom.”

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.
On Daily Tech News Show, what are the key points of this episode?
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.
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3:52This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, June 17th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories, and help each other understand.
4:00Dr Niki: And today, Dr. Nicky tells us about why certain scientific studies are given the green light, even though they might seem silly. And social media, as news sources, has passed a major milestone. Yeah, it has. I'm Jason Howell. I'm Tom Merritt. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story.
4:21Also known as the big stories, because there's a couple of them that we'll talk about. First, for the first time, social media and video platforms have surpassed television as Americans' primary source for news. This is according to a report by Neiman Lab. The report shows that 54 % of Americans access news through these online channels. That's compared to 50 % for TV, 48 % for news websites, news apps, that sort of thing. The shift is more pronounced with younger audiences, as we could probably imagine, at least to a certain degree anyways, who show a strong preference for video content on devices, smartphones, that sort of thing.
5:04Also, social media platforms, also a preference for creators instead of traditional publishers. And there's a lot of information in here. I just pulled out a few things that kind of caught my eye in scanning through it. Digital news subscriptions have plateaued. Only one in five Americans paying for online news. Podcasts, which we care a lot about around here, gaining ground in the US with an almost equal, and actually a little bit more then, but right there on the same level, percentage of people consuming news podcasts as do read a printed newspaper or listen to news on the radio. And then 33 % of the global sample, so this isn't just US, but the global sample, use TikTok for news.
5:53Less so in the US, but still, nonetheless, a lot of people go into TikTok for news, which, I mean, as we've seen in the last couple of years. When I think of that, I think like, well, that's ridiculous. Why would you get your news from a social media video sharing platform? But it's not like we're getting news reports necessarily through TikTok. I think what a largely what what is happening is people are sharing when news is happening on TikTok. So it's a really great place to go for breaking news, glimpses, insight into the situations as they're happening or close to.
6:25Dr Niki: And news sources have TikTok accounts. So there is some of that like, oh, the New York Times has a TikTok account. CBS News has a TikTok account. So it's in the mix as well. But you're right. They're not sitting down and turning on TikTok at 530 p.m. to watch the evening TikTok. I think that's one of the things that may have slipped by people, if you weren't paying close attention, is that we're not saying 54 % of Americans access news online. It's through these kinds of channels. 48 % are using news websites or apps. 54 % using social media. And that is concerning to me a little bit because of that mix.
7:09Dr Niki: And I think it really is a big explanation of some of the confusion and stress people feel about the news because it takes more cognitive load to sort out what's reliable and what's not when you're using YouTube, TikTok, X, Mastodon, etc. Because everything is presented on an equal playing ground. back back when we were kids uh you knew that the zine printed up on xerox copy paper uh needed a little more skepticism you know it's still still might be extremely valuable but but needed a little extra skepticism than the the printed tabloid daily newspaper which needed a different kind of skepticism i'm not saying everything was true in there but you knew you could rely on large parts of it.
7:56Dr Niki: And on these platforms, everything's equal. And production values are so high that even on the video, everything's equal. And some people, I think, even go, well, the mainstream media, lamestream media, I can't trust them, but this person out on the street is going to give me the truth. And while that is sometimes the case, they also might have a secret agenda or they just might not be very good at what they're doing and telling you something that's not accurate. Yeah, probably to a certain degree, what this really reflects is what we hear about a lot right now around, you know, you talked a little bit about the distrust or the mistrust in mainstream media, right?
8:34And so if people aren't trusting the mainstream approach, the way you and I, you know, were exposed to it when we were younger, where are they going to go? So if they're going to these online places, they are finding more – I mean, to be entirely fair, we're doing a news podcast right now. We aren't working for a news organization, but we are doing what we can to present news in a fair fashion. It's still incumbent upon the person on the other end to scrutinize and to make sure that this is a trustworthy source of information. And I think a lot of what we've seen recently and we hear a lot about is less about like, is this traditionally trustworthy and more about does this confirm the kind of my worldview?
9:22Is this giving me the information that I actually want to hear versus kind of finding an even ground of like, no, but this is grounded in reality or whatever you want to call it?
9:33Dr Niki: I don't know how many times I have talked to a friend who said, I found this thing online. And honestly, usually it's not consequential stuff that could endanger the world. It's usually some kind of entertainment news. But I'm like, well, who said it? And they just get frustrated. Multiple people. I'm not just talking about one person. Like, well, I don't know. And I'm like, well, then how do you know whether to trust it or not? And I know I'm being annoying, but it is annoying to have to think that way. And it's too hard for somebody, anyone, including myself. And I find myself doing this too, where you see something, you're like, man, I really want to believe that.
10:16Dr Niki: And you resist what you know you should do, which is question the source, because you want to believe it so much. Yeah, totally. Confirming what we're looking for, you know? Yeah, totally. It's like, oh, I want that to be true. Or maybe I don't want it to be true, but it's so titillating, right? Or so interesting that I don't want to spend the time to undermine it because maybe, like you say, it confirms your worldview. Or maybe it's just a fact that when we operate in these kinds of places for our news sources, there is so much information flying towards us all the time that it becomes overwhelming or you're almost defeated if you want to try and vet any of this stuff.
11:03It's too hard for most people to do. Yeah, totally.
11:07Dr Niki: I think that really one of the things that you have to remember is that I'm not trying to say that it must be mainstream media to be trustworthy because sometimes it's the mainstream media that's getting it wrong. That happens less often than people think, but it does happen. And there are lots of independent voices. We would like to think we're among them, but there's lots of others who are very reliable. It's just that you have to figure those out. You have to go and you have to look into them a little more, which in the old days, when you had one daily newspaper, three broadcast media news sources, and a couple of radio sources, you didn't have to work as hard to decide whether it was reliable or not.
11:51Dr Niki: And it was the rare story from those venues that you had to raise your eyebrow and go, wait, is that really the case? the cool thing is now we have more ways than ever to investigate and find out if they're true but we also have more things than ever that we have to try to investigate to find out if they're true and verify and everything uh my you know my friend our our mutual friend jeff jarvis you know he's his career is steeped in in mass media and he's he's talked very recently on on the ai inside podcast uh that i do with him about the death of mass media and he's much more educated around explaining this, but essentially what he means is that right now we're getting back to a moment that existed a couple of hundred years ago where the voices were very independent.
12:38And you did have to kind of cognitively, you did have to kind of understand or know kind of where you're getting that information from versus being served it on a silver platter, you know, in the form of mass media.
12:50Dr Niki: I was doing a research for a historical study once, and I came across the fact that there There were like dozens and dozens of daily newspapers in Boston in the 1800s. Like you just picked one that was the flavor that you went with. And they had nothing that looked like journalistic ethics.
13:13Dr Niki: That's what I think Jeff is talking about is like, yeah, this used to just be the way it was. We're back to that. And it took a while for that to boil down. Yeah, interesting. Well, real quick before we move on, another study, a separate study by Nielsen showed another first, streaming officially becoming the dominant way Americans watch television, 44.8%, beating the combined viewership of cable and broadcast networks at 44.2 % for the first time ever. Again, the shift largely driven by younger viewers, but also a surge in users over 65 who've shifted toward the free ad-supported platforms like Tubi and YouTube is another one.
13:56YouTube led all streaming services with a record share of 12.5%, followed next by Netflix at 7.5%.
14:05Dr Niki: Yeah, YouTube is actually bigger than broadcast cable and streaming TV. Yes. That is wild. Massive. This is why we're seeing Warner Brothers Discovery and Comcast say, you know what? We're going to take our cable and TV networks and spin them out. They're not spinning out their streaming services. They're spinning out the literal cable and TV part of it. Yeah. Interesting stuff. There we go. DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. That's who we're beholden to. That's why we're an independent voice. Thank you, AB Puppy, Dale Mulcahy, Matt Zaglin, and Super Geek. We appreciate your support. Super Geek.
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18:05There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs.
18:08Dr Niki: OpenAI reportedly having some tough negotiations with Microsoft as it needs that company to approve OpenAI's conversion to a for-profit company. Microsoft loves that idea. It just wants a big chunk of it. According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is considering accusing Microsoft of anti-competitive practices and seeking regulatory intervention as an option. Doesn't mean they're going to do it, but they're considering pulling out that weapon. These two companies have a six-year relationship that's being disrupted by a number of factors, including OpenAI's$3 billion acquisition of Winsurf, which is a coding startup that directly competes with Microsoft's GitHub Copilot.
18:49Dr Niki: OpenAI's agreement with Microsoft includes IP sharing, intellectual property sharing, but OpenAI would rather not share Winsurf's IP with a direct competitor, which I understand. And of course, Microsoft wants a larger stake in a restructured for-profit OpenAI than OpenAI would like them to have, as well as exclusivity over cloud resources. So hardball negotiations between these two friends. Yeah. And who knows whether it's actually going to go to that extent of the anti-competitive charges or whatever, the regulatory intervention, but it's certainly a big piece of the chess game between two big companies.
19:29Dr Niki: Don't make me pull this out. Right, exactly. Kind of move, right? Yeah, totally. Reportedly having this article leaking out, gets people talking about it more, kind of applies some pressure on both sides to influence the situation. OpenAI leaks this to Wall Street Journal specifically so that Microsoft reads about this and goes, whoa. Hold on. What are you all doing there? There you go. It's a grand dance, if you will. Open AI has secured its first contract. This is a different type of dance. First contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, sorry, worth up to$200 million as part of its new Open AI for Government initiative.
20:09This contract will last for one year and aims to develop advanced AI prototypes for national security needs in military administrative applications, as well as providing chat GPT enterprise and gov access for federal, state and local governments and employees. The company will also provide custom models that are tailored around national security as they're needed. The contract opens up a new revenue stream, basically, for the company, which has up until now been primarily driven by consumer use, by its consumer base.
20:42Dr Niki: Yeah, I know a lot of people are going to be concerned about this, especially because they don't like to see military funding from companies. That's going to happen. The United States military is going to want to have access to the best technology that they can buy, especially if that's made by a U.S. company. So you're not going to not see this happen. It is also important for the military to have the security that these kinds of tools can provide. I mean, yes, some of this probably is LLMs and chatbots, but some of it is monitoring security networks and sort of matching wits with people who are using AI on the other side to try to break in networks.
21:24Dr Niki: And this is the kind of thing that can really improve security. This is one of the things that people have shown, right? So if you don't want the U.S. military to fall, if you do, then that's a whole different conversation, I suppose. But if you want the U.S. military to be able to do its job, it needs to have access to these tools. Indeed. Yep. The Oregonian saw a memo shared with Intel employees that says the company is going to lay off 15 % to 20 % of factory workforce starting next month, July 2025. That follows 15 ,000 jobs it cut in 2024. Intel will not offer voluntary buyouts, though, this time, instead basing its costs on investment priorities and individual performance.
22:10Oh, Intel. Are you okay?
22:12Dr Niki: Is everything all right, Intel? I don't think they're okay. Maybe they'll be okay. I think they're probably okay. They still got a long road. Yes. I don't think they're going anywhere, but no one likes to see that. Yeah. Mongolians, I want to say Eugene, but it's Egyun, I think, or Egyun? I'm not sure. E-G-U-N-E. E-G-U-N-E. So interpret it as you will. AI has developed a foundation model, one of the few companies to do so that isn't from the US, China, or Europe. Egyun's, I'm going to continue saying Eugene. It just gives it a personality. Eugene's LLM. It's not Eugene. He had training on Mongolian datasets in November 2022, weeks before the launch of ChatGPT.
22:53Last year, it launched a 30 billion parameter model trained over eight weeks on 96 GPUs. And if it actually worked in English, I think you'd be seeing a lot more press right now, kind of similar to something like DeepSeq. It just released a 70 billion parameter general purpose LLM that outperformed ChatGPT on Mongolian syntax and semantics. It has achieved 96 % accuracy in automatic speech recognition systems for Mongolian.
23:22Dr Niki: I don't actually know this, but I bet it does work in English, but probably not as well because that's not what they're trying to do. They are training this specifically to work as what is called a sovereign AI. In other words, one that is meant to work in Mongolia for Mongolians, developed by Mongolians. No one else can control it but people in Mongolia. and this is a great story because this is the kind of thing that people have been saying many countries need to do a lot of people have been talking in Europe about this not that Europe doesn't have some really good companies like Mistral but yeah I think if this was in English people would be going wild for this probably because you could invest in it and more people are going to use it because English is so much more widely spoken but this is a heck of an achievement And they are getting investment and getting rounds of funding that reflect how good they are.
24:18Dr Niki: I mean, 96 GPUs, eight weeks for a 30 billion parameter model. That's impressive. Yeah. I picture if this LLM was a picture of a person, it would be someone wearing nerdy glasses with some tape in between because its name is Eugene. It's Egun. I know, but it looks like Eugene. Egun, yeah. Egun. All right, Eugene. On the heels of the bankruptcy court's decision to award the assets of 23andMe to a nonprofit operated by its co-founder, Ann Wojcicki, which we talked about yesterday, the UK has fined 23andMe 2.31 million pounds. That's about$3 million US. This is in regards to the 2023 attack that exposed users' genetic data 23andMe found to be culpable in not taking enough preventative measures by UK regulators.
25:10Dr Niki: I don't know who pays this. Yeah, that's a really interesting question. It may be TTAM, which is the nonprofit that's taking over 23andMe. It may be the bankrupt entity that's left behind because I know they're not taking on a lot of the debt of 23andMe because of the bankruptcy process. So I'm curious how that works out. The timing is very curious. Yeah. It's very interesting that we get one major piece of news and then this follows on it. So it's like, what's going on here? They're not related, but yeah, it's just interesting how the news works. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Honda has entered the cargo delivery micro mobility market with the new Fastport e-Quad.
25:48It's a compact battery assisted four wheeled vehicle designed for urban delivery needs. So the vehicle has this large enclosed cargo hold in the back, still small enough to easily navigate through like congested city traffic using bike lanes. For example, the smaller Mini Cooper version has a payload capacity between 320 to 650 pounds and reaches a top speed of 12 miles per hour. So pretty slow, but that allows it to comply with bike lane restrictions. They're powered by swappable 22-pound mobile power pack batteries. So you can just pop a new one in when you need to. The new vehicles will be built at the Honda Performance Manufacturing Center in Ohio.
26:34Dr Niki: It looks like you're driving a refrigerator. Oh, totally. Yeah. It does not look very like maneuverable, but it probably is, but it looks, yeah, it's very boxy. I mean, by design. I imagine this in like dense city centers that need baked goods and fresh meats delivered to restaurants. Like, I don't know why that's the first thing that popped into my mind, but it's that kind of thing. It's somebody delivering small bits of stuff in places where you don't have a lot of room to drive a big old truck. Yep. Yep. Indeed. Patreon announced it's increasing its platform fees for new creators. Not us. New creators.
27:12Dr Niki: If you start a new Patreon. I've started enough. I'm not going to start anymore. Starting August 5th. So actually, if you want to start one, you want to do it before August 5th. It's actually consolidating the pro and premium plans into a single standard plan that will take 10 % of creators' earnings. That is up from 8%. Premium users actually save by shifting from 12 % to an 11 % rate with the option of dropping to 8 % if they don't want the merchandise feature. So there's some ways to save money too as well. Existing users, however, don't see an increase. Those who sign up before the new platform fee deadline is reached won't see an increase.
27:51Dr Niki: Patreon says the price hike reflects a number of expanded services that have been added since 2019, like media hosting, multiple RSS feeds, community features, chat, stuff like that. Maybe related to the, quote, Apple tax to a certain degree, possibly? No, because they avoided that. Because of the court order, Patreon does not have to – it can direct people outside of Patreon. So they're not even going to get rid of per episode billing, per post billing for now. So it's definitely not because of that. In fact, maybe because they don't have to do that, they're doing this. I don't know. Interesting.
28:28Interesting. Interesting. Netflix announced it will open the first of two locations of its permanent Netflix house in Philadelphia and Dallas later this year. It also said it plans to open one at Boulevard in Las Vegas in 2027. Netflix houses feature immersive experiences from popular Netflix franchises, Stranger Things, One Piece, which is one that I haven't heard of, but Wednesday, Squid Game, you know, pretty much the biggies. They'll also have a restaurant similar to the pop-up that opened in Las Vegas.
28:58Dr Niki: I'm pausing for that group of people that are still yelling, Jason hasn't heard of One Piece? Go watch it now. Really? Okay. It's incredibly popular. I'm surprised I missed it then. And kind of an animated thing. Okay. But yeah, these houses are really interesting. I always thought Netflix would move into the amusement park game at some point. I think this is it. But it's less costly. uh you know kind of a baby step towards it without having to put a bunch of outlay on land and roller coasters and stuff but it's that kind of thing like you go there yeah they're going to have the restaurants but you go there to to do the fun immersive experiences that's right interesting yep uh spectrum internet subscribers in southern california including me experienced significant outages over the weekend and this is why we're talking about it because we don't usually talk about outages.
29:52Dr Niki: Vandals looking for copper. If you don't know, people are always digging around. An apartment building nearby had copper pipes stolen from it and they had to get their water shut off. People are crazy for finding copper and selling it. Well, these vandals were not very smart because they dug up some fiber optic cables and then realized, oh wait, there's no copper in a fiber optic cable. Thousands of customers lost internet service during the outage with normal operation restored about 12 hours later. I'll tell you, it exactly went out at about 2 a.m. because that's when we tried to turn off the lights and it didn't work over the Amazon Echo.
30:28Dr Niki: And it came back at 8.15 p.m. later that day. Spectrum, however, this is the newsy part, is offering a$25 ,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest of those responsible. Affected customers will also receive a one-day service credit on their next bill. Thank you for that spectrum. And yeah, if you're the people who were trying to steal the copper, turn yourselves in and claim the$25 ,000 reward, right? Does it work like that? Yeah. That's genius. Yeah, totally. It totally works like that, Jason. Yeah, do it. Do it, please. No, totally do that. Instagram is testing a new repost feature that'll allow users to share both their own as well as other users' posts directly in their main feed.
31:14The button is appearing for some, but it appears to function similarly to the retweet feature that you might find on platforms like X, Twitter, whatever. Instagram has not confirmed when or if this repost feature will actually roll out to everyone. So yet another feature coming to Instagram. There you go.
31:32Dr Niki: Nice. And Meta's Threads app testing a new feature that hides spoilers in more news of Meta products getting old features. You can now hide spoilers in text and image blurring the content until someone chooses to reveal it. The tool is meant to encourage more open discussions about TV shows and movies on the platform without risk of spoiling key points. And I have to say, it's like a menu system, so it's a little easier to use than some other spoiler systems. It's not bad. I appreciate when those things exist. Yeah, me too. Those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper, Jason.
32:04All right, let's do it. We've heard about this or that scientific study coming along, and you kind of wonder, like, why would they do that study? That's a weird one. Well, Dr. Nikki has the answer.
32:17Dr Niki: Hi, Nikki. Thank you for bringing us Ridiculous Science. Oh, you know, that is one of my favorite things to bring to DTNS. So I'm glad we get to talk about it today. And specifically, I have a colleague who's coming out with a new book called The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog by Carly Ann York. And those maybe sound like things we would have covered on DTNS. So that's why I'm bringing you this book. It's coming out in June. And I was actually lucky enough to talk to Carly at a conference in January. This was the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. And we chatted about her book, and I'm really excited about its release.
32:54So I wanted to tell you about it, too.
32:56Dr Niki: Yeah. Salmon Cannons, Levitating Frogs. I'm in. What's the book about? Yeah. So it's not just about salmons and frogs, but it's really about the type of research that I like to come and talk to on DTNS. In science, we call this basic science. it's kind of the things that you do where you may not know exactly what is the point of this study people like to ask why are you wasting taxpayer money on silly research like caring about spider silk glowing in the dark or understanding why squids swim a certain way what's the point of this it seems like a waste what are we doing yeah i've run into this a lot uh even even with with people who are enthusiastic about technology where they hear about a study and it's not immediately obvious what it's good for.
33:43Dr Niki: And the question is, okay, but why? Why value this kind of seemingly useless thing? Yeah, and that's a fair question. People want to know how things apply to their life. But the goal of basic science is not the immediate pursuit of applications. I'd rather it's just to understand phenomena in the natural world. And maybe potentially this will have applications later, but it's not what we're going for right now. Maybe future research can build on this knowledge. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so give me some examples that maybe, I don't know if they're pulled from the book or just examples. Yeah, this one's pulled from the book and I really like it.
34:24So have you ever heard of sea fireflies? I hadn't until I read this example.
34:29Dr Niki: I want to say I have now, but I don't think I actually have. I think I've just seen like sci-fi movies with glowing things in the water. So they're little tiny crustaceans and they glow. And around the 1950s, scientists knew about them for about 20 years, but they kind of didn't care about them. They're like, we don't know how they glow, but it doesn't really seem important. So whatever, they're not going to study it. But in 1965, a Japanese chemist isolated the enzyme responsible for the way that they glow. And then a US researcher contacted him and was really interested in this and together they worked on unraveling how glowing jellyfish emitted light.
35:11So this may start to sound familiar and that's because together they discovered green fluorescent protein also known as GFP. Have you heard of GFP?
35:22Dr Niki: GFP doesn't ring a bell but I feel like I should know green fluorescent protein. You should but maybe it gets glazed over. It's pretty important in biomedical research to the point that the team earned the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry for GFP. And it's basically the main fluorescent thing that we use for everything in biomedical sciences. If you ever see like, oh, they made a cat glow in the dark or they made, there's a new type of flower now that you can buy that has GFP in it. It's one of the gene edited proteins that's really quote-unquote easy to gene edit. We also use it to track the spread of cancer cells.
36:01We use it during surgery to visualize nerves. So it's all over the place in biomedicine. And it's because someone decided they wanted to figure out why these little crabs were glowing. Yeah.
36:11Dr Niki: Why does it glow? And then what can we do with it comes next. The book is coming out at a time when there's a lot of debate in the US government about whether they should be funding science. What is the value of the government funding science? Yeah. And we talk about this every month on DTNS. So I'm sure you guys are familiar with that by now. And this book covers something really interesting and also kind of personal to me. And we'll talk about how this affects my research too. But one example is there's a fluid dynamics researcher, David, who was featured in a quote unquote waste book in 2016.
36:48I don't know if you've heard about waste books yeah i have heard about that okay so it's kind of like a political i don't know
36:55Dr Niki: not joke but like a political highlight name and shame kind of thing exactly so senator jeff flake who's a republican republican from arizona compiled at the time basically a book of what he considered the most wasteful uses of government funding and it included three grants from david who who on the surface looks like wasteful work so uh uh doctor who studies how long it takes mammals to pee. So sure. Okay. That seems wasteful. Isolated. That sounds silly. Yeah. Right. But like, obviously science is in a context of other things. And now that research is being used by doctors to evaluate whether or not people have prostate cancer.
37:33So I don't think actually it was that wasteful, especially if you're someone who worries about prostate cancer.
37:38Dr Niki: Yeah, absolutely. It's something of my age that I get tested for regularly. It's super important. And as we know, the former president has now prostate cancer. So I don't know if it was thanks to this mammals peeing study, but maybe it was. The point being that the book highlights a lot of these kinds of examples of things that maybe on the surface appear silly, but may have helped society. and it really shows that it's impossible to predict where a scientific project is going to end up, how it's going to benefit society, and basically that science for the sake of science is still pretty worthwhile.
38:17Dr Niki: Yeah, I imagine there are scientists who do just want to waste people's money, but I think they're pretty rare. I think most scientists really just want to get funding to do the research and discover knowledge and see where that knowledge goes. That's what I'm always trying to explain to people. It's like, you could take this out of context and it sounds silly because when you take it out of context, it sounds like the end was deciding how long mammals pee and who cares about that. But that wasn't the end. The end was, let's figure this out so that we can then figure the next thing out because you have to start with something.
38:53Yeah. Learning about the fluid dynamics of pee seems weird, but someone has to figure it out. Like, you know, to me, it's obvious that that would have medical applications somewhere down the line, but maybe not to everyone. I mean, my research is on headbutting goats, and I think maybe a lot of people think that sounds silly initially. And I didn't start out trying to figure out, you know, how can we solve human concussion? But I'm assuming that's probably where I'll end up. But I am on some of these kinds of lists as well. So it's maybe a little personal.
39:25Dr Niki: You know, when people talk about holistic medicine, a lot of times they very much value the story of like someone noticing something in nature and like realizing that, you know, the ladybugs do this. And so we realize that this plant is good for this kind of thing. It's the same thing. That's a very good point. Right. We love bio inspiration, but we're not patient enough to wait until it has like a good ending story sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Dr. Nikki, thank you for bringing us this good story, the book. First of all, remind people the name of the book so they can go check it out for themselves and then let folks know where they can find more of what you do.
40:06Yes, I will remind you. The book is called The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog by Carly Ann York. I assume you can go find it where you find books. It's coming out in June, probably on bookshop.com. And then if you want to find me, I'm over at NicoleAckermans.com and the same handle on Blue Sky.
40:25Dr Niki: Fantastic. Thanks, Nikki. Have a good one. If you'd like to hear more from Carly and York themselves, Dr. Nikki's going to interview her. In fact, we've been soliciting questions in our Discord. So keep an eye out for that interview on the weekend edition of DTNS. Also, what do you want to hear us talk about on this show? One way to let us know is our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at reddit.com slash r slash Daily Tech News Show.
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42:00And we end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. And today, Andrew is helping us understand.
42:06Dr Niki: Andrew says, interested to see how WhatsApp promise of ads in language of the user works. I'm skeptical as all big streamers can't figure out I'm an English speaking person watching English language content in an English language version of their app. And they feed me mostly French ads because I'm in Quebec based on my IP address, I assume. Cheers. Andrew, Andrew question. And he's like, yes, I have opted to pay for no ads on some of the services. but I can tell you exactly why they do this because I get Spanish language ads because I'm in Los Angeles quite often. Those are different than what WhatsApp is doing.
42:47Dr Niki: WhatsApp could avoid this because you're right. They are targeting you based on your IP address only. WhatsApp can say, oh, it's an English language user. Only give them English language ads. Andrew is right to question whether they will do that or not. We'll find out. We will find out. Thank you for sending that in. If anyone out there wants to send in your thoughts, please do. If you got some insight into a story, thinking about something we talked about, share it. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Thanks again to Andrew. Thanks to Dr. Nikki for contributing to today's show. And thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show.
43:25And great news here. If you want to keep up on music news, Daily Music Headlines is now available as an Amazon Flash Briefing. Check it out. We'll see you next time.
43:37The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand.
43:43Dr Niki: The Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.
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Plus Dr. Niki helps us understand why certain scientific studies are given the green light.
Starring Jason Howell, Tom Merritt, and Dr. Niki.
Links to stories in this episode can be found here.
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