Listener Questions #31

25:38And the last part of Rob's question is, we share something like 98.7 % of our DNA with bonobos. What does that mean? So now this, we can't do the segmental analysis at all. because by the time you get to 7 million years ago, which is when we have the common ancestor with the two species of chimpanzees, then the segments have all been obliterated. But the DNA is obviously still there. So we have a common ancestry, but the chunks are so small that we can't link up the markers and look for stretches. So this kind of 3 % Neanderthal or 50 % with your siblings, none of that would apply when we're comparing chimpanzees to humans.

26:14What we do instead is we do alignments. So we take the chromosomes and segments of chromosomes and align them. And what we do is we see how similar are the sequences. So when we can align them very well, which is most of the time, about 85 % of our DNA lines up very, very well with chimpanzees. When we line it up, the sequence similarity is around 98 and a half percent, meaning it will be basically identical versions. You know, 98 out of 100 base pairs will be exactly the same. That's what we mean when we say, so it's more of a genetic similarity, not necessarily strict inheritance. It's not shared inheritance.

26:54It's sequence similarity. And that's 98.5%. But remember, that's only within the segments that do align very well. We have another 13 to 15 % of our genome that actually doesn't line up at all with chimpanzees in humans. And that's because it's gobbledygook, right? It's been invaded by parasitic DNA, by repetitive elements that just copy themselves. About 9 % of our genome is virus carcasses, like the remains of virus infections. So that will be different from lineage to lineage. Chimpanzees have their carcasses and we have our carcasses. So when we say that it's 98 % similarity, that's just similarity in the regions that we can align, which would have all the genes in them, all the important stuff.

27:37the other regions of the genome are much harder to align because they are repetitive. So they get stuttered, they get broken, they, they invert, they break off and move to a different chromosome. That kind of, you know, we, we call that kind of gobbledygook just because that DNA in almost all cases doesn't do anything. It's not functional. It may be transcribed a little bit, but it doesn't really do anything. And so, and it's impossible to really compare because, you know, if you have, two puzzles that are made of different color pieces. They don't fit together. How similar are they? It doesn't really make any sense.

28:12But in about, like I said, 85 to 87 % of the genomes align very, very well. And their sequence similarity is around 98.5%, something like that. That answer was perfect. Thank you. So great. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. We're going to share this question with Rob and see what he has to say. Thank you so much, Kelly and Daniel, and especially thank you to Nathan for that comprehensive and clear answer. I was particularly surprised by the revelation that, except for the Y chromosome, we don't just get copy A of a given chromosome from one parent and copy B from the other, but take more of a genetic buffet approach.

28:50In hindsight, I really regret only taking biology classes up to the age of 14, which is about the worst time for a boy to stop learning about biology, But as this is a family show, that's all I'm going to say on the matter. Thanks again, guys. Keep being extraordinary.

29:28site quickly without compromising your vision. A fully functional site can be built for any business just by describing the idea. Then you can choose to chat with AI or edit everything manually to get it exactly right. There's also Aria, an AI agent available to answer questions or help complete tasks. And here's what makes it even better. Aria doesn't just live in a chat box. you can click anywhere on your site and ask her to make changes instantly. It's these details that make creating with Wix Harmony feel seamless. Join millions of businesses already using Wix and try Wix Harmony for free at Wix.com slash Harmony.

30:10That's Wix.com slash Harmony. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss Fourth of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Fourth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for$17.76 at America250.org.la. Introducing the all-new Mazda CX-5, featuring more connection. Hey, Google, where's the nearest Pilates class?

30:52Safety that has your back. more discovery on the scenic routes, more passion in the details, and more control in changing weather. The all-new Mazda CX-5. More to move every side of you. See it in five films at mazdausa.com slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. Sequences shortened and simulated. Change comes fast. So wouldn't it be nice if one thing stayed the same? Like the price of your Wi-Fi. Thanks to the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, you're guaranteed five years of the most reliable fiber-powered Wi-Fi with no annual contracts and our best equipment. Plus, get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi and stream your favorite podcast on iHeartRadio.

31:35Lock in your price and unlock the possibilities. Xfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply. Select plans only. Not available in all areas. Use a fiber coaxial cable.

31:55Okay, we're back and we're answering questions from listeners. And the next comes from Abhinit in London, who has a great question about black holes. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. I'm Abhinit from London. Thank you so much for your podcast. It's really helped me reconnect with topics I've always been curious about, but never seriously explored. I had a question about black holes. We often hear that black holes are completely described by just three things. their mass, spin, and electric charge. But I'm curious, why not color charge or V charge as well? I asked since Hawking radiation involves virtual particles, wouldn't that include quark-antiquark pairs too?

32:35And if so, wouldn't that give Blackwell some kind of a color charge? Thank you again, and looking forward to your thoughts. All right. Oh my gosh. Okay. Color charge. I got to be honest, I am still kind of confused about why y 'all decided to give a charge color. But, you know, actually, that is a like a colorful thing you all did. I dig that. I like when y 'all are whimsical, like the charm quarks. That is a good name. I like it. Maybe we should start with what our color charge is. Yeah, good. So when we talk about charge, we usually assume electric charge. And we're used to the idea of electrons having minus one and protons having plus one and all that good stuff.

33:16but we've talked on the podcast a lot of times about how charge is a more general concept. Electric charge is for the electromagnetic force, but there are other forces out there, like the weak force, and it has its own charges that tell you what things pull on each other and what things push on each other, et cetera. And there's the strong nuclear force, and it has charges. And those charges we call color charges because of the weird way that the strong force works. You don't just have plus and minus, you have these weird colors, red, green, and blue. But the bottom line is that some particles have some of these charges and some particles don't.

33:52So for example, an electron has electromagnetic charge and it has a weak charge. It has no color charge, so it doesn't feel the strong force. But a quark has all of those charges, so it feels every force. A neutrino has a weak charge, but no color charge and no electromagnetic charge. So the charge tells you which forces a particle feels. Okay, got it. And we often talk on the podcast about what black holes can do. And black holes have this incredible ability to hide whatever is behind their event horizon. And they're featureless. There's this no-hair theorem that tells you that once something goes beyond the event horizon, you can't tell anything about what's inside.

34:34Did you say a no-hair? Yes, a no-hair theorem. That's exactly right. Why no-hair? It's a way to say that black holes have no features. Like if you have two black holes of the same mass, they are exactly identical. There's no like hair on them that tells you this one's different from that one, or you dropped bananas into this one and apples into that one. So it could have been a no nose or a no glasses theorem, but, or whatever, but you guys. Or a no bonobos. Yeah. So why no hair? I think it's just physicists trying to be colorful and come up with the ways to envision this stuff. Hair being like a texture.

35:14There's no amount of zooming in on the black hole you can do to learn more about it. What a whimsical bunch. Hey, look, we're trying to take ourselves seriously over here, okay? Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. But you can know some things about a black hole. Like if you drop something into a black hole, it becomes more massive, right? So you can know that there is something inside the black hole. You can't know what happened to it or where is it on the inside, what's going on beyond the event horizon. But you can tell the difference between black holes that are big and small, right? So you can measure their mass.

35:50You can also measure their electric charge. Electric charge is conserved in the universe. If I have a black hole that's neutral and then I drop an electron into it, that black hole now has a charge of minus one. So I can measure that about a black hole. Also, angular momentum is conserved in the universe. If I spin my black hole, then I can tell that it's spinning. It has frame dragging effects around it. So I can know the black hole's mass. I can know the black hole's spin. And I can know the black hole's electric charge. That is what the no harem theorem says, that you can know those three things about a black hole.

36:24And Abeneet says, hold on a second, if you have other kinds of charge, why can't you tell if you've dropped those charges into a black hole too? No harem theorem? No hair theorem. Did I say no harem? You did, yeah. I was like, wow, that is one exciting black hole. We know a lot about a black hole if it's got a harem. Well, I think if you have no hair, you probably also have no harem, but I'm not sure how things work out there. There's a lot I want to say about that, but this is a show that kids can listen to. So let's move on. So why can't you see the color charges, Daniel? Yeah. So first, let's understand why you can see anything about a black hole, right?

37:02People sometimes wonder like, well, if the electron is inside the event horizon, how do we know that it's there? Isn't that communicating information outside of the black hole? So let's be clear about what you can and can't know about the black hole. What you can't know is the internal arrangements, what's inside the event horizon. but you can know the total charge. There's a theorem in physics called Gauss's law that tells you that the total flux of all the electromagnetic fields depends on the total enclosed charge, whatever the arrangement is. And that also applies to black holes. And so you can tell if there's a charge within some volume of space just by measuring like, what is the total flux of electromagnetic fields?

37:46So what you can't know is like, what happened to that charge? Where is it inside the black hole, did it mutate to something else with the same charge? But you can know that there is a charge. And the way to think about it is to say that charge is now applied to the event horizon. Think of it like a membrane of charge around the event horizon. The event horizon itself has a charge. You don't know what's going on internally. That's what the black hole is keeping hidden. But the fact that the black hole itself is charged, think of as like a charge on the whole event horizon, which is accessible to you in the same way that like the event horizon's mass is, right?

38:23If you'd have a black hole out in space, you can feel its mass, even if you're far away, you feel its gravity is quite powerful, even from beyond the event horizon. In the same way that a black hole's mass can affect things beyond the event horizon, so can the black hole's charge, even if you don't know the internal configurations. Does that make sense? Yeah, but is this hypothetical or is this something we actually do? Do we actually measure the charge of black holes? We have never measured the charge of a black hole directly. We do have some images of black holes and their accretion disks, and those are consistent with black holes having mass and spin and charge, but we haven't directly measured the charge of a black hole by like dropping an electron near it and seeing the effect or anything.

39:05So in that sense, it's still theoretical. Okay. So we know we can measure the electric charge. We know we can measure the mass. So what about a color charge, right? What if you take the same thought experiment and instead of dropping an electron into the black hole, you drop a quark. A quark has a color charge to it. Why doesn't that color charge spread across the membrane of the black hole? Yeah, why not? The reason is that you can't do that experiment. You can't have free quarks, right? You can have a free electron. You can hold one in your hand. It can be floating in space. It's all cool. But quarks or anything that has a color charge can't exist on its own because the color force is so powerful that when you create, for example, a quark and anti-quark pair, they have this very strong force between them.

39:50If you try to pull them apart so you get an individual quark, then the force actually gets stronger as they get further apart. It's the opposite of electricity or gravity. As things get further apart, they get a stronger force. More energy is now stored. It requires more energy to push them apart. It becomes crazy high energetic. So much energy is stored in that flux tube between them that that energy pops out into new quarks. And so the universe does not like to have quarks be that far apart. It'll create more quarks and antiquarks in between them to keep them from getting separated. That's kind of cute.

40:24Yeah, it's amazing. And we see this all the time in the Large Hadron Collider. We create quarks and antiquarks. They're shooting apart at super high speed. And then out of the vacuum, pop additional quarks. And we get these jets of particles, sprays of particles, instead of individual quarks. But where do they come from? Well, their mass just comes from the energy, right? You have to have enough energy to push these things apart. And then that energy gets turned into mass of new quarks. So you can't do this experiment. You can't drop a free quark into a black hole because there are no free quarks.

40:55All right. So that feels a little bit like an evasion, right? I've avoided the question. What about the weak charges, right? Because you can have neutrinos. Neutrinos have a weak charge and they have no color charge. and you could have individual neutrinos out in space. So what happens if you drop a weak charge into a black hole? I don't know. Why would you ask me, Daniel? It was a rhetorical setup for myself. Oh, got it, got it, okay. And so weak charge is fundamentally different from electric charge. Electric charge is conserved in the universe. There is a symmetry of the action, if you remember the episode we just did about action, that the Anothor's theorem enforces conservation of electric charge.

41:37Absolutely in the universe, totally conserved. Weak charge does not have the same symmetry, so there is no conservation law for weak charge. So it's not like if you drop a neutrino into a black hole, it has to keep that weak charge. It can morph into something else. Also, weak charges are short-range forces. So the electromagnetic force is communicated by photons. These have infinite range. Like if you have an electron across the universe, you can in principle feel that it's there because the electromagnetic force has an infinite range. The weak force, because it's communicated by massive bosons like the W and the Z instead of the massless photon, is a very weak range force.

42:19And you might be wondering like, all right, but if I drop a neutrino into a black hole and then I'm like really near the black hole, couldn't I still somehow tell that there was a neutrino dropped into there, even if it's a short range force? And here we have to clarify exactly what the Nohara theorem says. It's often said, okay, you can measure the charge, the mass, and the spin of the black hole, and that's it. But really it says that you can only measure the mass, the charge, and the spin of a black hole from very far away and over time. So these are the only long-term things you can measure from very far away.

42:53Black holes can have other properties short-term. Like, for example, if two black holes merge, their event horizons are not spherical briefly. So you can tell something about the internal arrangement or the history. Eventually, it settles down into a nice symmetrical spherical shape. That's where the long hair theorem applies. The long hair theorem? Sorry.

43:17I'm going to give this theorem like 10 different names before we're done. The long harem theorem. That's great. The no hair theorem. So the no hair theorem says that for a black hole that's had chance to stabilize, the things you can measure from very far away, essentially from infinity, are mass, charge, and spin. But for a black hole that recently you dropped a neutrino into it, if you're very near it, you could tell that a neutrino got dropped into it. So that's consistent with the long hair theorem.

43:51That's consistent with the Mohawk theorem. Let's keep going. That's consistent with the no hair theorem. I'm going to get it right once. As long as you spell out exactly what the no hair theorem says, right, which includes those caveats that it's after the black hole has had a chance to settle and your observer is far from the black hole. So, Ebony was right that you can measure the weak charge in a black hole under the right condition. You can measure the weak charge of a black hole if you're near it soon enough after a neutrino was dropped in. You're not guaranteed that that weak charge is going to persist or that you can measure it from far away.

44:28So that doesn't violate the Kelly's hair theorem of black holes. I like mohawks. I think it should be the mohawk theorem. And the last part of his question was about Hawking radiation, which is often told as this story of particles and antiparticles popping out of the vacuum near the event horizon and one falling in and one not. And the one that doesn't fall in is the Hawking radiation. That is not Hawking radiation. That is a cartoon picture in popular science, which does not reflect what actually happens to generate Hawking radiation. We don't know what actually happens because we don't have a theory of how gravity works for particles that would require a theory of quantum gravity.

45:07And Hawking radiation is a semi-classical approximation that says when you have an event horizon near a quantum field, there will be some radiation, but there's no accurate particle picture. This hand-wavy story about particles and antiparticles is very misleading. Actually, Hawking is the one who came up with it in one of his popular science books. And he acknowledges that it's not accurate and maybe misleading. And it's just like pervaded all of popular science and leads people astray in exactly this way. So discard, if you can, that picture of Hawking radiation from your mind. It won't teach you anything about what actually happens.

45:43I detect a touch of frustration in your voice. That's the Daniel's pulling his hair out theorem. Oh, yeah. I think we should call it the bad hair day theorem. There you go. Okay. All right. Let's send that answer off to Abinit and see if it answers his question. Thank you so much, Daniel and Kelly, for answering my question. The explanation really made sense. It was great to get a clearer understanding of what the no hair theorem actually says and why properties like color and weak charge can't show off for black holes in any observable way. I also really appreciated the clarification around Hawking radiation It's always helpful to unlearn some of the pop science imagery we pick up along the way And it definitely made me wonder what other common misconceptions are still floating around Like the one with the Hicks wheel for example Maybe that's something we'll hear more about in the future episodes Thanks again for such a thoughtful discussion I really enjoyed it

46:47For business owners and entrepreneurs, there's a constant challenge getting things done fast and done well. Why not have both? That's why Wix Harmony stands out. It's an AI website builder that helps create a website quickly without compromising your vision. A fully functional site can be built for any business just by describing the idea. Then you can choose to chat with AI or edit everything manually to get it exactly right. There's also Aria, an AI agent available to answer questions or help complete tasks. And here's what makes it even better. Aria doesn't just live in a chat box. You can click anywhere on your site and ask her to make changes instantly.

47:32It's these details that make creating with Wix Harmony feel seamless. Join millions of businesses already using Wix and try Wix Harmony for free at Wix.com slash Harmony. That's Wix.com slash Harmony. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Fourth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for$17.76 at america250.org.

48:18Introducing the all-new Mazda CX-5. Featuring more connection. Hey Google, where's the nearest Pilates class? Safety that has your back. More discovery on the scenic routes. More passion in the details. And more control in changing weather. The all-new Mazda CX-5. More to move every side of you. See it in five films at mazdausa.com slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. Sequences shortened and simulated. Change comes fast. So wouldn't it be nice if one thing stayed the same? Like the price of your Wi-Fi. Thanks to the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, you're guaranteed five years of the most reliable, fiber-powered Wi-Fi with no annual contracts and our best equipment.

49:03Plus, get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi and stream your favorite podcast on iHeartRadio. Lock in your price and unlock the possibilities. Xfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply. Select plans only. Not available in all areas. Use a fiber coaxial cable.

49:28All right, our last question of the day is from Gordon, who hopefully is over his flu by now. Let's go ahead and listen to the question. Hi, Daniel and Kelly. As I'm recovering from the flu, I was wondering about the various symptoms and treatments we tend to use for certain incurable diseases that we can't treat directly. As I understand it, some symptoms, like a fever, are ways our immune system is trying to combat the disease. In that case, trying to kill the infection by cooking it. Of course, we find this very uncomfortable and so often try to relieve such symptoms, like trying to cool ourselves down.

50:00So my question is, how much do our attempts to relieve the various symptoms actually hinder our body's natural mechanisms for fighting the diseases? Would we be better off in the long run just bearing with the discomfort and allowing it to fully run its course, or even possibly amplifying the effects if it could be done safely? Thank you so much. Love the podcast. Ooh, this is so fun because I also have this question. I'm often wondering if the Tylenol or Advil I'm taking to lower my fever is making me feel better at the expense of my body's ability to fight this infection. So, Kelly, who is not a doctor, give me some medical advice.

50:33Thank you for reminding everybody that I'm not a medical doctor. Right. But yes, okay. First, I want to clarify that fevers are different than hyperthermia, which is heat stroke. So when you have heat stroke, you should always try to lower your body temperature. But fevers are actually this evolutionarily ancient strategy for fighting infections. And so there's this field called evolutionary medicine where people study the way our bodies respond to infection by looking at the way, you know, other bodies have responded to infection over evolutionary history. So it turns out that birds and other mammals will get fevers when they're sick.

51:14And animals like lizards and insects, when they get infections, will generate fevers by sitting under the sun. So these are animals that are, you know, what we'd call ectotherms. They can't generate their own body heat. And so in order to raise their body temperature, they need to do things like lay on warm rocks under the sun to raise their body temperatures. And the idea here is that pathogens don't do as well under high temperatures. And so they are raising their body temperatures to try to kill the pathogens. So why are pathogens more sensitive to temperature than our cells? So there's a couple different hypotheses for what's happening here.

51:50So one idea is that our immune cells work better at higher temperatures. And so there have been some studies showing that certain immune cells like phagocytes, so these are cells that essentially engulf pathogens and like eat them, do better work under high temperatures. And so those cells would just be better at their jobs when your body is hotter. And then the other idea is that rapidly dividing pathogens are more likely to die or have trouble dividing. And the cells that they might infect would be more likely to die when those temperatures are high. And while you don't want your own cells to be dying, if those cells are infected by a virus, you might be willing to sacrifice them to your high temperature if it kills the pathogens as well.

52:39And so those are the two of the current hypotheses for why high temperatures are worse for pathogens than they are for you. And to be clear, the idea isn't that the high fevers don't harm you at all. The idea is that the high fevers are worse for the pathogens than they are for you. Because they're pretty bad for me. I mean, I am miserable when I have a fever. You're like achy and in general just feeling achy everywhere. Yeah, I get that. But there have been some studies where they found that people who mount high fevers tend to recover quickly and for certain kinds of diseases are less likely to die if they mount a high fever.

53:16The problem is those are observational studies. And an observational study might just be telling you that somebody who mounts a high fever just in general has a body that's doing a better job at like going all out attacking an invader. There have also been some experimental studies where they've done things like randomly picked individuals who come into the ER to put in a bed that's meant to cool their whole body down. And some of those studies have had to be shut down because it was clear that cooling people's bodies down was not helping. And that the fevers seemed to be part of the way that, you know, the body was proactively responding to an infection.

53:54So there is some good experimental evidence that fevers are part of how our body is proactively responding. And so evolutionary medicine folks would say, you know, bodies of all types have been doing this for millions of years as our way of responding to infection. you know, let's go ahead and believe that in a lot of cases this is good. But it is worth noting that, again, this strategy is accepting that it is also bad for the host, but it's hopefully going to be worse for the pathogen. But when you, for example, are pregnant or when you are very elderly, this becomes a riskier strategy because you are compromised in a variety of ways.

54:35And so this risky strategy might not play out in your favor under these conditions. And in general, you know, you should go to a doctor if you are feeling particularly crummy. Fevers are terrifying also. Our son Silas had a shockingly high fever recently due to an infection. And as a parent, you're like, oh, my God, that number terrifies me. Yeah. And so when you get a shockingly high fever and you're worried, you should always call a doctor or bring your kiddo into the hospital. You should probably call the doctor first. But I was going through a bunch of websites like the Texas Children's Hospital and stuff like that looking to see at what point should you start giving your kiddo medication for bringing their fever down.

55:16And the advice is much different than what I remember the advice being that my mom got. Because when my brother got a high fever when he was a kid, they dumped him in a container of ice water to bring his fever down. And he was miserable. And I remember a big concern was febrile seizures, which are very scary to watch. But apparently, based on these websites from children's hospitals that I was reading, one, quite often giving kiddos medication to bring the fevers down won't necessarily reduce the risk of getting that kind of seizure. And two, those seizures don't seem to, in most cases, be associated with long-term neurological outcomes.

55:57So you're just supposed to let them happen? Again, you should always call your doctor if your kiddo has a high fever and go with their advice. But yes, and they're more likely to happen in kids that are six and younger. So like, you know, call your doctor. Call your doctor. Well, it sounds like you're saying that the fever is not just a byproduct of your immune system at work, but actually part of its tactics. And that by reducing your fever, you may be suppressing or inhibiting your immune response. I've always thought that reducing your fever helps you sleep better and rest, and that would actually be helpful in recovery.

56:33What is your non-medical advice opinion about that? Yeah, so in the Wienersmith household, I ask my kiddos, like, hey, if you really feel like you can't sleep and you're going to be absolutely miserable all night, I will give you medication. But I think you will feel better sooner if you can let the fever run its course and just try to sleep best you can. But, for example, my autistic kiddo clearly kind of suffers at night when he's got a high fever and is not really sure what's going on in a lot of cases. And I will give him medication to reduce his fever if I think he will – if he'll feel better.

57:08And if I ever thought that he was feeling particularly bad, I'd take him to the doctor. But I don't take fever-reducing meds when I can avoid it. Okay, and so Gordon also wanted to know if there are any other symptoms of sickness that we should be not treating because maybe they're helping in some way. Should we be like cracking open our wounds to let the blood flow or anything else? No, that seems ridiculous. In a lot of cases, it's really hard to test this kind of stuff. And so I don't know that we have clear answers to too many other things. I think fever, we've got a pretty good handle on the fact that a lot of times – oh, oh, real quick, fun medical history fact.

57:49So syphilis, not going to go into too many details about where you get that disease from. Suffice it to say, this is a bacterial disease that is very unpleasant. And in the era before antibiotics, it could cause neurological issues when you couldn't get rid of it. You can probably avoid syphilis if you follow the no harem theorem. That's right. That's right. That's right. This used to be treated by giving people malaria, which gives people very high fevers because in some percent of the cases, the very high fever would kill the bacteria that causes syphilis. And then we could treat people with the medication for malaria and then you wouldn't have malaria or have syphilis anymore.

58:35And someone got the Nobel Prize for that. And then the next year, penicillin was discovered. And penicillin is way better than malaria. So that became the standard treatment. Anyway, so we have used fever as a way to treat disease in the past because it is helpful. Another medical history note, Katrina was telling me that the first trial of penicillin only worked in three out of five cases. Really? Like two out of the five patients died. And so, you know, preliminary studies, like, be careful with your conclusions. It's a good thing we weren't like, oh, penicillin? Nah, not really that effective.

59:09Let's move on. Holy cow. That's wow. Yeah. You got to be careful with small sample sizes and it's amazing. We are in the position we're in now. So there are some other hypotheses for other sickness behaviors. For example, why do you have reduced appetite when you're sick? There is a hypothesis that actually the pathogens that are infecting you need nutrients and energy as well. And the food that you've just eaten is a more easily accessible source of nutrients and energy than the food that you've already stored, for example, in like fat in your body. And so by eating less, you're sort of starving the pathogens more than you're starving yourself.

59:47I'm not necessarily sure that I buy that. And I really love an excuse to have wonton soup when I'm sick. But that is a hypothesis that people are floating. That flies in the face of like generations of chicken soup based knowledge also. It does. It does. You know, it's an interesting way to think about things. This is Kelly's no soup theorem for treating fevers. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. In my family, we buy everybody ice cream. We don't go that route. Okay. And then the last one, there's this idea that in a recent episode, we talked about kin selection and the idea that some behaviors are meant to increase the fitness of your family members.

1:00:26And so there's a hypothesis that sickness behavior, where essentially you withdraw and you isolate yourself is meant to protect your family from getting sick. And I really feel like I don't necessarily buy that because I feel like when you're sick, your family is the one who like comes in to take care of you. And like, you're way less likely to get your community sick and way more likely to get your family sick. Yeah, for sure. And so, yeah, I don't know that kin selection really helps explain that one so well. Well, when I'm sick, I tend to be miserable and moan a lot. And that makes everybody else around me miserable too.

1:00:59And I'm wondering, is that helping me get better? Is complaining actually part of the healing process or is that just part of being me? I think from a kin selection standpoint, you should keep complaining so that your family stays away from you and you don't get them sick. I think that's adaptive. Keep doing it. There you go. Yeah. Moaning and groaning has reasons, people. It's good. All right. So Kelly is squashing the no moaning and groaning theorem. No, Daniel can complain as much as he wants. Maybe that's why men are such babies when they're sick. It's, you know, to protect the women. No, I don't like where that's going.

1:01:36Exactly. It's altruistic, actually. No, no. Yeah, no, I don't like where that's going. All right. Well, before we digress into dangerous topics, let's send this answer to Gordon and hear if we have answered his question. Wow. Thanks for looking into this and answering my question. While it confirmed my suspicion about the potential benefits of not resisting a fever, I had no idea we shared this particular immune response with such a diverse range of animals, even as distantly related as the ectotherms. I find the idea of using one disease to treat another somewhat ironic, given the one being used just happens to be one of the deadliest in human history.

1:02:10But then I'm reminded we actually have a long history of using different diseases, parasites, and infections against each other for medical purposes, which is probably a whole topic on its own. Anyway, thanks for answering my questions. All right. Thank you very much. Everybody who sends in your question, who shares their curiosity with us and with a wider community of listeners. If you would like to chat with everybody about questions on your mind, you can always send your questions to us to questions at Daniel and Kelly dot org. Or if you'd like to chat with the community of listeners, join the discord.

1:02:38You can find the link on our website, www.Daniel and Kelly dot org. Come and chat with us. Thanks for listening. Have a good one.

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