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[Assistant] Led South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy, he explained,


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[Assistant] Resentment is like drinking a poison and hoping it will kill your enemies.


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[Assistant] In 39 states in the United States and the District of Columbia, there are laws that allow medical professionals to apologize when something goes wrong and not fear that that statement could later be used against them in an action for damages.


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[Assistant] More actively, bankruptcy law offers debtors, under some conditions, the chance to start anew.


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[Assistant] I have been teaching law for almost 40 years, hard to believe, but recently I realized


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[Assistant] Lost obligations even, because the students that I teach ...


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[Assistant] Will become prosecutors, judges, governors, presidents.


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[Assistant] Barack Obama, my former student, used his power as the President of the United States to give pardons.


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[Assistant] That released several hundred people from prison after the law changed to provide shorter sentences for the same drug crimes for which they had been convicted. But if he hadn't used his pardon power, they would still be in prison. Legal tools of forgiveness should be used more


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[Assistant] A New Yorker cartoon shows a judge with a big nose and a big mustache looking down at a defendant with the exact same nose and exact same mustache and says, obviously not guilty.


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[Assistant] Forgiveness could undermine the commitment that law has to treat people the same under the same circumstances, to apply rules evenly.


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[Assistant] In this age of resentment, mass incarceration, widespread consumer debt,


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[Assistant] We need more forgiveness, but we need a philosophy of forgiveness. We need to forgive fairly. Contrast the treatment globally of child soldiers.


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[Assistant] With the treatment of juvenile offenders in the United States.


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[Assistant] International human rights condemn and punish adults who involve children in armed conflict as those most responsible, but treat the children themselves quite differently.


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[Assistant] The International Criminal Court, now with 122 member nations.


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[Assistant] For enlisting, recruiting and deploying children, teens as soldiers.


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[Assistant] Many nations commit to ensuring that people under the age of 15 do not become child soldiers, and most nations ...


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[Assistant] Treat those who do become soldiers, not as objects of punishment, but as people deserving a fresh start.


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[Assistant] Compare in contrast how the United States treats juvenile offenders.


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[Assistant] Where we severely punish minors, often moving them to adult courts, even adult prisons, and yet, like child soldiers,


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[Assistant] Teens and children are drawn into violent activity in the United States when there are few options.


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[Assistant] When they're threatened or when adults induce them with money or ideology.


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[Assistant] The rhetoric of innocence is resonant when we talk about child soldiers.


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[Assistant] But not when we talk about teen gang members in the United States.


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[Assistant] Young people caught in criminal activity and violence could have chances to accept responsibility while learning


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[Assistant] And rebuilding their lives and their own communities.


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[Assistant] Legal frameworks inviting youth to describe their conduct could also involve community members to hear and forgive.


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[Assistant] Called restorative justice, such efforts emphasize accountability and service rather than punishment.


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[Assistant] Many schools in the United States have turned to use restorative justice methods to resolve conflicts and to prevent them, and to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.


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[Assistant] Some American high schools have replaced automatic suspensions with opportunities for victims to narrate their experiences and for offenders to take responsibility for their actions.


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[Assistant] As they describe their experiences and feelings about a theft.


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[Assistant] Or hateful graffiti, or a verbal or physical assault.


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[Assistant] The victims and offenders often express strong emotions.


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[Assistant] The leader is often a student peer who is trained to deescalate the conflict.


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[Assistant] And orchestrate a conversation about what the offender can do that would help the victim.


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[Assistant] Together they come to an agreement about how to move forward.


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[Assistant] What the wrongdoer can do to repair the injury and what all could do to better avoid future conflicts.


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[Assistant] Consider this example recently in a publication.


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[Assistant] Young woman named Mercedes M. transferred in California from one high school to another after she was so repeatedly suspended in her old high school for getting into fights. And here in her new high school, two other young women,


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[Assistant] Accused her of lying and called her the B word.


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[Assistant] A counselor came over and talked to her and earned enough trust that she acknowledged she had stolen the shoes of one of the other classmates.


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[Assistant] Turns out the three of them had known each other for a long time and they didn't know any other way to deal with each other other than to fight.


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[Assistant] The facilitator invited them to participate in a circle, a confidential conversation about what happened, and they agreed.


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[Assistant] And initially, each of them expressed a lot of emotion. And then Mercedes apologized. And she said she had stolen the shoes, but she did so because she wanted to sell them and take the money to pay for a drug test so that her mother could show she was clean


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[Assistant] And try to regain custody of two younger children who were then in state protective care.


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[Assistant] The other girls heard this, saw Mercedes crying and they hugged her.


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[Assistant] They did not ask her to return what she'd stolen, but they did say they wanted a restart. They wanted a reason they could trust her. Later Mercedes explained,


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[Assistant] That she was sure she would have been suspended if they hadn't had this process. And her high school ...


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[Assistant] has reduced suspensions by more than half through the use of this kind of restorative justice method.


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[Assistant] Restorative justice alternatives involve offenders and victims in communicating in ways that an adversarial and defensive process does not allow, and it's become the go-to method in places like the District of Columbia Juvenile Justice System and innovations like Los Angeles' Teen Court. If tuned to fairness,


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[Assistant] Forgiveness methods like bankruptcy would be available not only for the for-profit college that goes belly up, but also for the students stuck with the loans.


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[Assistant] Pardons would not be given to campaign contributors, and black men would no longer have 20 percent longer criminal sentences than do white men due to how judges exercise discretion.


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[Assistant] Forgiveness across the board is one way to avoid such biases.


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[Assistant] Forgiveness of deaths and freeing prisoners.


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[Assistant] Jubilee 2000 joined Pope John Paul II and Rockstar Bono and over 60 nations in an effort to seek the cancellation and succeed in canceling the debt of developing countries.


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[Assistant] Resulting in measurable reduction in poverty.


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[Assistant] For pennies on the dollar and then seek to enforce it.


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[Assistant] Late night television host John Oliver partnered with a non-profit group called R.I.P. Medical Debt.


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[Assistant] And for only 60,000 dollars, they purchased 15 million dollars worth of medical debt. And then they forgave it.


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[Assistant] That allowed nearly 9,000 people to have a restart in their lives.


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[Assistant] This kind of precedent should trigger and encourage more such actions. It's time for a reset, given mass incarceration, medical and consumer debt.


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[Assistant] And given indigent criminal defendants who are charged and put in debt because they're expected to pay for their own probation officers and their own electronic monitors.


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[Assistant] Forgiving violations of law or promises to pay back loans does pose risks.


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[Assistant] Forgiveness may encourage more violations. Economists even have a name for it. They call it moral hazard.


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[Assistant] Should a president offer pardons to protect himself or to induce law breaking? These are tough questions for our time.


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[Assistant] So does attributing blame to individuals for circumstances largely outside their own control.


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[Assistant] It's to widen the lens, to enable glimpses of the larger patterns and to enable new choices that ...


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[Assistant] Can go forward if we can wipe the slate clean. Thank you.


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[Assistant] The focus is always on the boundaries of where we want to take the food. We try and incorporate different methods of the preparation of the food and different styles of presentation.


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[Assistant] Today, you'll be preparing our lemon meringue pie.


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[Assistant] Then we have the nitro phenyl balls.


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[Assistant] And then we have a meringue sheet that sits on the top. On the base, with the 3D printer, we have the caramelized white chocolate.


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[Assistant] It's all about those little nuances, making sure that you're extracting as much flavor out of every single ingredient.


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[Assistant] Just remember what you're trying to achieve is a perfect round ball.


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[Assistant] So you've got to think how much you need to get in there, how forceful do you need to actually be with piping it in there. That's right.


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[Assistant] Some of the contestants had some struggles towards the end, actually completing the challenge in its entirety.


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[Assistant] I think that's bang on. I think that's beautiful. Beautiful execution. Flavours all there.


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[Assistant] For someone to walk into a kitchen, walk into our kitchen, professional setup, three hour time frame, bang this out, I tell you he's probably twice the cook than I am.


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[Assistant] Just by the looks of it, she's missing what seems to be the candied ginger, the crisp pearls,


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[Assistant] The lemon-coat puff head balls are beautiful. The snow, actually, despite it not being blended, is really fresh, and that's cutting through very nicely.


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[Assistant] All the elements that she's put up, you know, aren't on their own, they're really tasty, they're really well executed. And that's indicative of a really well executed plate of food.


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[Assistant] I think the first thing that stands out for me is the caramelized white chocolate. That depth of flavour just brings out so much more character in the dish.


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[Assistant] It's been an absolute privilege for us as well, having you guys here.


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[Assistant] Over the past 70 years, the number of barriers between countries has doubled.


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[Assistant] Growing up in Germany, the fall of the Berlin Wall always felt to me like the introduction of a new world, a world without barriers. But since the attacks of 9-11, the construction has experienced an extreme rise.


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[Assistant] Security from another group of people, from crime, from illegal trades.


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[Assistant] The other way around, mental walls can grow so strong that they encourage us to build, keep or strengthen physical walls.


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[Assistant] It's a constant cycle. Physical walls empower mental walls and mental walls empower physical walls until at one point, one part falls away and the cycle is disrupted.


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[Assistant] During the time of separation, both sides developed differently and formed individual identities. All of a sudden, there was an us and a them. A mental war was built.


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[Assistant] And when the Berlin Wall fell again in 1989,


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[Assistant] Eastern Germans had to be reintegrated into their own country. And even though they didn't have to move places, many, still today, feel like they have never fully arrived.


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[Assistant] Germans still believe that cities on the other side of the former wall are further away than they really are.


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[Assistant] But in our defense, this could be seen as an improvement, right? We never experienced the actual wall. This physical barrier was never able to make us build a mental wall in the first place.


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[Assistant] I would love to take this as a serious indication that there could be a future without a mental wall dividing Germany, but I think we have to face reality. This one wall could be disappearing, but in the meanwhile, a billion others are constructed.


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[Assistant] Neighborhoods surrounded by walls and fences to protect citizens from other citizens. And the only difference is, it's by choice.


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[Assistant] When I started to work there, it made me sad to see children having to stand at a fence to talk to their friend on the other side.


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[Assistant] But what's even worse is that most of the children will never get the opportunity to even make a friend on the other side.


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[Assistant] Learn from the teacher, but more importantly, learn from each other. And the more diversity, the more there is to learn.


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[Assistant] Separating children during this time of their development will make integration extremely difficult, if not impossible.


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[Assistant] Then I asked if he would play with them if the fence wasn't there, and he said, probably.


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[Assistant] The children on both sides dislike each other, and there are regularly arguments breaking out at this fence.


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[Assistant] But what I did know when I started to work there was that I wanted to change something about the situation. I wanted to show both sides again how much they have in common.


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[Assistant] And all of a sudden, children were drawing together, exchanging pencils and talking on the phone.


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[Assistant] But for parents, this was a lot more difficult, because most of them speak different languages, work different jobs with different income, live in different social circles, believe in different religions, experience different cultures and share different values. And then there was me, a student, different in all of these aspects, again.


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[Assistant] I designed a picture exhibition on the schoolyard, showing them their children playing together through the fence.


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[Assistant] At the end of this exhibition, I asked people to write down their thoughts, ideas and wishes on these big wooden boxes. And I labeled the boxes with, what do you think? A lot of people wrote yes on it. Yes, what?


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[Assistant] I never mentioned my opinion or an action that should follow. So which question were they answering with yes? When I asked, they said yes, the fence should go. Yes, we want to play with the other side.


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[Assistant] I chose the word crumbling because breaking a mental wall is a long journey. And breaking a mental wall can be a lot more difficult than simply tearing down the physical one.


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[Assistant] There are many examples from all over the world telling the same story I experienced in Brussels and Germany. Enough examples from which we could have learned.


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[Assistant] Or you are planning to support someone who wants to build a wall.


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[Assistant] People who, despite the geographic border, often share a lot of culture and values.


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[Assistant] That's right, we've got an elementary lesson about canceling an appointment.


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[Assistant] Yes, so we're going to learn some great language to help you cancel appointments today. Let's go straight to the dialogue then. We're going to be listening as Samantha and Angela have a phone conversation and Angela is trying to cancel an appointment.


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[Assistant] When you reschedule an appointment, you...


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[Assistant] Postpone. We have some examples of the word postpone that will help you to understand its meaning a little bit better. Let's listen.


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[Assistant] We use this phrase when we want to say, I cannot attend.


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[Assistant] Exactly. Maybe one more example. So Marco, we've got a meeting today at three o'clock.


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[Assistant] Yeah, let's listen to a few examples of this phrase so we can see how it's used in the wild.


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[Assistant] Uhm, well I may not have, you know, told my boss so I can't make it to a meeting because this thing came up and then I really was going shopping and I've never done that, but how about you Marco?


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[Assistant] Alright guys, I hope you found some of these phrases helpful and useful. And remember, if you have any questions about anything you heard in today's lesson, please visit our website at EnglishPod.com.


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[Assistant] Hello English learners, welcome back to EnglishPod. My name is Marco. And I'm Erica. We're bringing you an advanced


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[Assistant] Right, so it's kind of a business topic, it's kind of a world topic as well.


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[Assistant] Right, so if you're listening and you don't understand everything, please don't get discouraged. Don't, uh, worry about it because we're here to learn.


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[Assistant] So, let's get started with this. I'm really excited about this lesson.


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[Assistant] An emerging market is a market that is starting to develop.


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[Assistant] Well for example, China is an emerging market. Yeaah. In the last years it's been growing rapidly.


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[Assistant] Okay, so we have some great words that we want to look at here. Why don't we start with the first one? Turmoil. Turmoil. Turmoil. Turmoil. So we have some great examples of how turmoil is used in different sentences, so let's listen.


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[Assistant] Uncertainty. Okay, good word. Alright, and we also saw something really interesting in the dialogue about a proposed stimulus package.


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[Assistant] So a proposed stimulus package is something that's going on now.


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[Assistant] A stimulus package, uh, something to stimulate the economy, right?


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[Assistant] To get it moving, stimulus package. Proposed! It means that it hasn't been approved yet.


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[Assistant] So the proposed stimulus package for the US economy, for example, is 150 billion dollars.


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[Assistant] Where cities like in Shanghai or cities like Beijing


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[Assistant] Where more and more people are accumulating wealth, the aggregate demand is increasing.


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[Assistant] Yeah, pay attention to these words. Nest egg.


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[Assistant] Hit up. So from the context of the dialogue, try and see if you can figure out what they mean. But after listening to it, we'll come back and explain it anyways.


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[Assistant] So as you can see, the noun and adjective form are the same. Yes, inevitable. Inevitable. When we use it as an adverb though, we add the L-Y to it. Inevitably. Inevitably. Yes. So yea, as you can see, we could use it in many different ways depending on what we want to say.


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[Assistant] So he says he's going to hit up mom for the cash.


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[Assistant] Well you wouldn't go up to your boss and say, oh I need to hit you up for some vacation time.


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[Assistant] Exactly, where you can leave all your questions and comments and we'll be there to answer them. But until then, it's goodbye.


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[Assistant] We always eat hamburgers for dinner. I'm in the mood for something different.


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[Assistant] Why is it easier to burn dry leaves but not green leaves? Cause it is easier to spell dry than green.


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[Assistant] Nah, it is because of ignition temperature. Ignition temperature is the lowest temperature at which a combustible substance starts burning. Now, green leaves have moisture or water in them. Wow, so I can use them as water balloons?


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[Assistant] Please listen. Water has a property of absorbing a huge amount of heat before evaporating.


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[Assistant] Hence, when we try to burn green leaves, a large amount of heat is required to first evaporate the water and then to reach the ignition temperature of leaves, thus not allowing the leaves to catch fire easily.


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[Assistant] Anything you need, just ask. What about the camp gift? That was my favorite camp ever free tradition.


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[Assistant] At least I hope it was. Last thing I want is to have camp ruined by some power crazed magical creature.


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[Assistant] Did you tell him what happened? So crazy.


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[Assistant] I know I said we should try to forget all about this new magic business, but I can't.


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[Assistant] This camp has meant so much to so many people. My sister and me included.


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[Assistant] Gloriosa! I kicked my beanbag into the lake!


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[Assistant] Thanks to Brilliant for supporting this episode of SciShow. Go to Brilliant.org slash SciShow to learn how you can take your STEM skills to the next level this year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every year, in eastern Thailand, at the height of the rainy season, thousands of tourists flock to the edge of the Lam Dum River to see a remarkable sight. All night long, streams of tiny shrimp


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[Assistant] No one knew why they did it. Now if you're not familiar with shrimp,


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[Assistant] Walking is a weird way for them to get around. Shrimp are aquatic animals, like they have


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[Assistant] Plus, there's a slew of predators on land waiting to eat them. Yet here, these less than one centimeter long shrimps are leaving the water for ten minutes or more and crawling some twenty meters onto land.


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[Assistant] was that it had to do with breeding. Migrating upstream to breed is pretty common for animals, like salmon, and even other species of shrimp, so it's a pretty good guess. But when scientists systematically studied the parading shrimp, they found that they were almost all juvenile.


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[Assistant] That meant they were too young to mate or spawn. Instead, the reason was much simpler and cuter.


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[Assistant] It's to avoid strong currents. Researchers realized two of the most reliable places to see these shrimp parades were next to a set of rapids and a small artificial dam. So for a 2020 article, they tested this idea in the lab.


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[Assistant] They set up tanks where they could vary the current.


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[Assistant] Got out whenever the current was too strong, while the larger ones could still swim. That's why in the wild, these shrimp that walk on land are so teeny. Bigger ones are also going upstream, but they swim instead. What we don't know for sure is why they're so


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[Assistant] For clues, we had to look at other shrimp that parade, because yes, apparently other species do this as well, including ones in India, Australia, and the Americas. Those species also seem to parade to get around barriers. And the upstream areas they head for often have fewer predators, so the behavior may be a survival tactic. It may also shed light on how shrimp


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[Assistant] So knowing how and why they move can help us figure out how to keep them in check. But on the other, many species are struggling, and this sort of knowledge can help with conservation. These lambdom shrimp likely fall into that latter category. It seems like fewer shrimp show up to parade each year. And if that's not bad enough, some unpublished research suggests the animals themselves are getting smaller,


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[Assistant] It's pretty amazing that shrimp can tell when they're big enough to tough out some rapids. They may have an instinctive understanding of fluid dynamics, something I definitely do not have. Luckily,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can turn to Brilliant. Fluid dynamics is notoriously complex, but their differential equations course can help you really understand how fluids flow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can have some fun learning about math because of their great interactive teaching style. Brilliant also offers courses in science, engineering, and computer science. And with an annual premium subscription, you get access to all of them, so you can up your STEM skills all year long. Plus, as a thank you for watching SciShow, you can actually get 20% off the annual price.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All you have to do is go to sign up at Brilliant.org slash SciShow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, Armand, thank you for such a thoughtful invitation.


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[Assistant] It's really very nice of you to invite us over for dinner. Don't you think so, Ellen?


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[Assistant] It'll be nice to get to know him, besides, he's new to the neighborhood, and it would be rude to decline his invitation.


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[Assistant] Oh, Armand, thank you for such a thoughtful invitation.


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[Assistant] It's really very nice of you to invite us over for dinner. Don't you think so, Ellen?


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[Assistant] Oh, come on, Ellen. It would be nice to get to know him. Besides, he's new to the neighborhood, and it would be rude to decline his invitation.


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[Assistant] Oh, Armand, thank you for such a thoughtful invitation.


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[Assistant] It's really very nice of you to invite us over for dinner. Don't you think so, Ellen?


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[Assistant] It'll be nice to get to know him. Besides, he's new to the neighborhood, and it would be rude to decline his invitation.


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[Assistant] It's just so surreal being here at Maggie Beers Farm. You kind of forget for a second that you're up for elimination today.


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[Assistant] I'm really happy that Khan's using his pin today. It's super smart and I would do the same in his shoes.


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[Assistant] Given that this cook is the longest amount of time, I'm gonna go with a braised dish because it just makes sense.


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[Assistant] There's definitely a dish that comes to mind straight away. It's a favourite of mine. I'm going to be cooking ginger chilli chicken along with some greens and some steamed rice. I'm using the drumsticks and the thighs. Cooking for Maggie today and being here on her beautiful farm, this is a memory that I'm going to cherish.


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[Assistant] But I'm hoping that this is my first and last call of today.


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[Assistant] 30 minutes is not a long amount of time, let alone 20. I don't want to be in that last hook.


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[Assistant] Uhm, I'm doing, uhm, my take on a Thai, uh, chicken salad but I'm using mango and I want to use chicken two ways. Uhm, I want to put chicken throughout when I toss it and chicken skin on top.


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[Assistant] I'm feeling good, but not great. There was definitely mistakes in the areas that I could have improved on. Will I be safe? I really don't know.


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[Assistant] It's not the first time that I've been faced up against challenges. So I'm embracing the 20 minute cook. Let's give it a go.


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[Assistant] I have my chicken breast left and the only dish that comes to mind given the 20 minutes is grilled chicken salad.


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[Assistant] I gotta get my marinade on. I want some familiar flavors of the soy, the balance with honey, and a bit of the zest to just give it that little pizzazz.


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[Assistant] Once my marinade's done, I put the chicken into the bowl for a few minutes. It's absolutely ridiculous how fast the time is going. I've just gotta get a move on.


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[Assistant] I think about this avocado corn salad that I've done before. I decide to go with that.


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[Assistant] When you're in front of the judges, no matter how good you felt about your cook, you also feel like you couldn't be going home.


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[Assistant] I'll be sad that I'll be leaving the competition and you guys.


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[Assistant] But I felt like I had a really great day. You know, I was really happy with my cooks.


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[Assistant] I'm enjoying myself in the kitchen, and my first question is always, what would you eat? You know, if you opened up a restaurant tomorrow, you wrote your cookbook, what would you happily put in that book for people to share? So hopefully you guys can feel that.


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[Assistant] It's just so cool being in a place where everyone loves food, you know, and everyone speaks your language, you know, you go into Coles together and, ooh, apple!


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[Assistant] The Wind in the Willows Episode 95 Toads Party Plans


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[Assistant] Mr. Toad, said the ferret shyly.


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[Assistant] Why, yes, said Toad. Deliver these right away. Toad handed him the letters.


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[Assistant] Hello, friends! Shouted Toad, happily. Did you order everything for the party?


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[Assistant] Well, said Toad, I'm going for a walk.


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[Assistant] Toad wanted to practice his songs and speeches. He took a step toward the garden.


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[Assistant] Hey, Badger! cried Toad. What's going on? They dragged Toad to a chair.


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[Assistant] When my parents had the restaurant, my dad cooked this really beautiful dish. So I want to replicate that today.


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[Assistant] It is a bit of a risk because the chicken thigh is one of the most flavorsome and if I can't bring that into round two, I could be in trouble.


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[Assistant] I can't use them today because I've already used both of them for my first round.


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[Assistant] Although it's safe, I'm still in the game. I'm just hoping to push through. I'm gonna cook my heart out.


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[Assistant] All I can think about is my dad's amazing lemon chicken.


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[Assistant] It's really fast and I'm thinking that's definitely what I can do in 20 minutes.


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[Assistant] The stress is definitely up here and I just gotta keep calm and cook for the best of my abilities.


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[Assistant] My dad, he taught me how to make the most amazing batter that's so simple, doesn't even need eggs.


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[Assistant] I have to get that batter right. If I don't get the ratio of that batter right, it's just not going to be crispy. My survival today is definitely coming down to the batter.


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[Assistant] Lemon sauce. I always use honey. And that's kind of like a thickening agent. And I've got the lemon juice.


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[Assistant] Put a bit of lemon peel and it just binds it all together.


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[Assistant] Uhm, I made lemon chicken. It's basically a crispy bun on the outside with a lemon sauce.


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[Assistant] Little by little, I'm trying to hold back the emotion and let my mind think a little bit more clearer.


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[Assistant] Our immune systems are incredible disease fighters, thanks in no small part to proteins called antibodies. Their job is simple. Grab onto things your body wants to get rid of, and only those things. This act alone can be enough to prevent a virus from infecting a cell,


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[Assistant] Or stop a toxin from working. And even if not, it flags the problem so your immune cells know what they need to deal with. In fact, antibodies are so powerful that doctors and scientists use them a lot.


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[Assistant] Antibodies are also called immunoglobulins. And they're Y-shaped proteins with sticky tips. They're made from a special kind of white blood cell called B lymphocyte, or B cell. And your body has


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[Assistant] That's why your immune system can fend off so many different attackers. So you aren't producing


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[Assistant] All of those antibodies at once. Most of your B cells are immature.


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[Assistant] Which means they're kind of just sitting around with the special antibodies they produce embedded in their outer membrane. They wait this way until something sticks to one of those antibodies. That tells the B cell there's something out there for its antibody to grab. So it matures and starts ramping up production. We call that something an antigen.


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[Assistant] No matter what it is, a bit of virus, a toxic protein,


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[Assistant] Whatever. Like, nowadays, we use the sticking power of antibodies in pregnancy tests. Animals, or more recently, cells, are used to make antibodies which bind to the hormones that signal pregnancy. And those are the detection part of your at-home pregnancy test. Similar tests exist for things like drugs and pathogens. Now, especially when it comes to using antibodies to fight disease,


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[Assistant] It's important to note that antigens are small. That's because the sticky part of an antibody is only a few nanometers wide. Meanwhile, the viruses that infect us tend to be one or two orders of magnitude larger.


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[Assistant] And bacteria are even larger than that. So a single pathogen has many potential antigens, or places where different antibodies could attach. Some of those antibodies may be more effective than others.


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[Assistant] We call those neutralizing antibodies, because they neutralize things. But neutralizing or not, once antibodies are floating around in the blood,


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[Assistant] Their sole job is to stick to their antigens. That way, if nothing else, other immune cells can spot them and destroy whatever they're attached to. Now, once your body's dealt with a problem, some of the B cells that were called to arms become memory B cells. Essentially, they go back to waiting.


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[Assistant] The only real difference is that to generate those memory B cells, they use


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[Assistant] And it's thanks to those cases that scientists and doctors first figured out how to use antibodies as medicines. Antibody-based medicines only really became a thing at the end of the 19th century. One of the biggest breakthroughs happened in 1890, when two scientists


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[Assistant] What they had figured out was that animals could develop a resistance to toxins.


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[Assistant] It's often too late. So, scientists invented antivenoms, the cleaned-up serum from animals injected with venoms. And they work by boosting the amount of venom-neutralizing antibodies in a person's blood. That said, there is a catch to using other animals to make antibodies.


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[Assistant] These treatments also tend to contain other proteins from the animals. And when our immune system sees those, they can trigger a separate immune response.


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[Assistant] One way around this is to use convalescent plasma. It's essentially the same sort of antibody-packed serum, but from people. Since the blood is human, there's less likelihood of a bad reaction. And in the early 20th century, convalescent plasma was used for all sorts of diseases.


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[Assistant] Including, famously, the global flu pandemic of 1918. Then it somewhat fell out of favor because antibiotics became a thing. It's always considered an option, though. Like, we tried it for MERS, SARS, Ebola, and most recently,


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[Assistant] But by and large, antibody-based medicines have moved beyond using actual blood. That's because in 1975, antibody researchers had another Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough. They fused a B cell with a rapidly reproducing blood cancer cell. That allowed them to make lots of copies from that B cell.


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[Assistant] This was the beginning of monoclonal antibody treatments, which are now


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[Assistant] Remember, the immune system doesn't just make one type of antibody per invader. It makes tons of different ones, some of which are better than others. With blood-based treatments, you're stuck with whatever antibodies happen to be in there in whatever concentration. But monoclonal methods allow you to produce lots of a really good antibody


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[Assistant] So the medicines are more potent and have fewer side effects.


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[Assistant] Have been approved in the US, including ones for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease,


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[Assistant] You'll have to wait for another day. Like tomorrow! Because this is just the first of three episodes in our mini-series on antibodies. Tomorrow's episode will dive into how scientists find and create the best monoclonal antibodies


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[Assistant] Then, in our last installment, we'll talk about what the future of antibody-based technologies might look like. We hope to see you tomorrow!


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[Assistant] In today's lesson we've got some excellent language that will help you to describe someone's appearance.


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[Assistant] This is a small world. I don't know how I would feel about dating my friend's brother.


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[Assistant] So you guys know this word, past tense of here, right?


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[Assistant] Let's listen to a couple of examples of how it's used.


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[Assistant] Exactly, or I could say, I missed the first five minutes of the movie, fill me in.


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[Assistant] I guess this is the plan for your job over several like 10 or 20 years.


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[Assistant] So in this case, uhm, David has a really good career path because he's going to be a really rich and powerful investment banker.


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[Assistant] Exactly. There's a lot of language in here talking about the way someone looks. So let's listen again as Irene describes David.


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[Assistant] But I think good looking sounds a lot more natural than handsome.


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[Assistant] Even though it's correct, it just good looking sounds much more natural.


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[Assistant] So this is another sort of informal way of describing someone who's really good looking.


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[Assistant] Well guys, thanks for listening today, and until next time, goodbye!


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[Assistant] It's been such an incredible week. You know, we've been all over South Australia. We've been from McLaren Vale to the Hills to the Barossa. So to finish here in the heart of Adelaide at Central Markets is just amazing.


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[Assistant] And could you please not bring this whole levitating thing up to the others? Why not? You heard, Applejack. This is supposed to be a place where everyone can get away from magic.


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[Assistant] I still don't think it's a good idea for me to be near the rest of our friends right now. Not until we know why this is happening.


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[Assistant] I would love to, but I really need to get the stitching on this poncho done if it's going to make it into the camp fashion show!


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[Assistant] Gloriosa! I kicked my beanbag into the lake!


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[Assistant] Smart learning for all. Hmm.


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[Assistant] Also, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel.


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[Assistant] To all of you, said Toad, you saved


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[Assistant] But it's nicer when someone else says them.


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[Assistant] Right, we're doing a podcast on sports today. Uh, we're starting off with basketball.


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[Assistant] Right, so if you're playing basketball and you kick the other player...


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[Assistant] That was a foul, exactly. Ref. Also known as referee.


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[Assistant] Alright, a really common situation whenever you're watching games with friends, right?


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[Assistant] We'll talk about that in a little while, uhm, let's take a look at Language Takeaway.


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[Assistant] It's a little bit hard to explain, but if you're playing basketball,


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[Assistant] To the basket without anyone blocking you or anything.


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[Assistant] Little bit complicated, but I'm sure the basketball fans understand what a free throw is.


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[Assistant] So it's clear now, to make the shot is to successfully put the ball in the basket.


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[Assistant] Well, technically you're allowed to take two steps in basketball.


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[Assistant] So yea, traveling means to take more than two steps with the ball.


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[Assistant] Alright sports fans, so now let's take a look at Fluency Builder.


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[Assistant] Okay, today on Fluency Builder, we have two really common words that you would listen to while you're watching a game.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, they're kind of a common informal. The first one that we have is screw up. Screw up. Screw up. Screw up. To screw up.


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[Assistant] Let's listen to some examples of how this word is used.


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[Assistant] Great, and our last word on Fluency Builder today, a beer run.


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[Assistant] Yeah, usually you're watching a game or you're at home with your friends, you run out of beer, so somebody has to go get some beer. Go get some beer, make a beer run.


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[Assistant] Okay guys, I hope you enjoyed our lesson today. We'll be bringing you more sports lessons in the future.


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[Assistant] So if you have a particular sport that you want to learn about, you can tell us.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and uh, leave us your comments or your suggestions or any doubts that you have.


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[Assistant] Last week, the Mars River Perseverance made it safely to the surface of Mars. Over the next two years or so, the car-sized rover will be driving around the red planet, looking for signs of ancient life. But according to a new study in Frontiers in Microbiology, there's a chance, albeit slim, of finding somewhat recently dead microbes, or even


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[Assistant] Very different from the surface of Earth. Its atmosphere is much drier than ours, and thinner. So the planet doesn't have the thick barrier that helps protect us from much of the Sun's damaging high-energy radiation. Plus, Earth has a layer of ozone adding to that radiation shielding Mars does not. Also, you may have heard, it's very cold there, like it's an average of negative 63 degrees Celsius. All of that could make it hard for anything from Earth to survive, but microbes


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[Assistant] Especially crewed missions, where the environment inside the vessel would have to support life. This is not a simple thing to test, because it's not easy to recreate that perfect mix of terribleness in the lab. So in order to simulate a world without our thick atmosphere and ozone layer, the international team of researchers behind this recent paper went above it.


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[Assistant] If anything survived. And some of the microbes did, especially the Aspergillus spores, even without the UV shielding. So any mission to Mars may need to consider microbial hitchhikers. After all, we wouldn't want to accidentally contaminate Mars' potential biosphere.


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[Assistant] Some scientists are looking for ways to ensure microbes from Earth make it to and survive on Mars. That's because we could harness those microbes to produce food or resources.


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[Assistant] And a separate study in Frontiers and Microbiology last week suggests that's a real possibility. Once we put humans on Mars, those people will need oxygen, water, and food. And Earth?


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[Assistant] But we're nowhere near figuring out how to grow entire gardens on the red planet. Luckily, we don't need potatoes to get the job done. We could grow microbes like cyanobacteria, which produce oxygen and can act as a protein source for us or other edible organisms. Problem is,


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[Assistant] Cyanobacteria evolved here on Earth, and like we said earlier, Mars is a very different place. Even though it has some of the same gases, nutrients like phosphorus in its soil, and maybe even water if locals could mine it from the planet's ice, the air pressure


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[Assistant] We're talking only around 1% of the air pressure here on Earth. Now, we haven't studied how bacteria grow at low atmospheric pressure all that much, but it seems like lower pressure can make it harder for microbes to take up the gases they need. Also, it turns out that about 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure


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[Assistant] Plus, a Martian plausible temperature of just above zero degrees C is water's triple point. Meaning, under those conditions, it can exist as a liquid, gas, or solid. Imagine being poor little cyanobacteria trying to grow in water that's both freezing and vaporizing at the same time. Now, people might be able to get around this whole low-pressure issue by creating an enclosure that perfectly mimics Earth's atmosphere.


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[Assistant] Cyanobacteria pressure cooker, if you will. But a structure robust enough to pressurize the air that much would probably be too heavy to carry through space. So scientists…


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[Assistant] I've been trying to find some kind of middle ground, and they think they've hit on something that could work. A research team from the University of Bremen has designed a proof-of-concept bioreactor they're calling Atman.


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[Assistant] It's made up of nine one-liter vessels made of glass and steel, so it looks a bit like


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[Assistant] Soda bottles in a very strange washing machine. But inside, cyanobacteria are bathed in an atmosphere that's about one-tenth of Earth's air pressure at sea level, but roughly ten times what they'd experience on Mars. And that's apparently enough for them! Scientists found that using these conditions, colonies of cyanobacteria could grow just as big as those in Earth's atmosphere. So maybe they could form the bottom of a Martian food chain.


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[Assistant] The best part, though, is that the lightweight low-pressure enclosure could work with what's available on Mars. The nitrogen and other gases could be refined from the atmosphere using existing technology, and nutrients could come from the Martian soil. It won't be Atmos specifically that goes to Mars one day, but this opens the door to further research and refinement. So all this suggests that we really could, eventually, have a cyanobacteria farm on Mars.


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[Assistant] Helping provide oxygen and nutrition with no support from Earth. There's always more work to be done, like optimizing everything so that the bacteria can grow as fast as they can. And eventually, this kind of tech will need to be actually tested on Mars. Still, it's a solid step towards the hope of a Martian colony.


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[Assistant] Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow News! We're here every Friday to cover some of the latest news from the world of science.


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[Assistant] So be sure to come back here next week for more. And if you don't want to have to remember that all on your own, you can click on the subscribe button and ring the notification bell to get a reminder. Also, if you want to learn more about Percy and the incredible mission this new rover is just beginning, I recommend you head over to our space channel. Did you know we have a space channel? At youtube.com.


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[Assistant] And check out this week's Space News Episode Plus. You can subscribe there as well and pack your YouTube feed with amazing space videos.


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[Assistant] So, our first speaker gave a TED talk at TED Global, I think seven years ago, uh, his name is Professor Yuri Alon, um, at the Weisman Institute of Science.


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[Assistant] Now, he and his colleagues there have come up with a powerful idea that addresses this key question. How on earth do we get back to work?


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[Assistant] I guess the key to your idea is this obsession with the reproduction number R, R0. If that number is less than one, then ...


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[Assistant] Fewer than one person is infected by a typical person, and eventually the epidemic fades away. People are worried that as we come back to work, we'll shoot up above one again. You have a suggestion for how we might avoid that. What is that suggestion?


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[Assistant] If you take the worst-case scenario where you come to work on a Monday morning at the start of your four days and you're infected on that, on the subway, say, on the way to work,


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[Assistant] Uhm, the theory here is that even by the end of that four days, you're not really starting to infect your coworkers.


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[Assistant] Is it frustrating at the thought that people are going to say, wait, I don't want to infect people at home, I'd rather infect people at work than at home? How, what's the response there?


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[Assistant] But the hope is that you're serving the needs of your family by engaging in a strategy where very few of your fellow workers are going to be infectious anyway. So that's, that's the plan. But uhm,


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[Assistant] Tell me this, though, because four days out of 14, someone's going to say, well, great idea, but that implies like a 70 percent loss of productivity in the economy, so that can't possibly work. I think you think that the productivity loss need not be anything like that much.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so talk through how that could work. I mean, let's imagine, first of all, like, manufacturing, uh, which is currently shut down. Is the implication here that a manufacturer could set up sort of two, possibly even three shifts of four days, maybe,


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[Assistant] 35 hours or something of work over those, those four days and still get, uhm, a lot of productivity, you know, basically having the lines almost running continuously that way.


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[Assistant] And applying it to thinking about offices coming back, I mean, it seems to me that


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[Assistant] As we've already seen, there's a lot of productivity that can happen when you're at home. So you could picture on this idea people doing one set of things during the four days when they're, say, back at the office doing the sort of, uhm,


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[Assistant] You know, exposure to each other, sparking off each other, the sort of discussions, the brainstorming, uhm, all that good stuff. Uhm, while at home, uhm, they're then doing all the things that we've been doing the last few weeks, which is kind of working, working solo. And is that, how much have you thought about how that


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[Assistant] Whether it's possible effectively to divide work into different types and actually use a strategy like this to maintain almost full or even better productivity.


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[Assistant] I mean, I read this and I started thinking about our own organization, TED, and how ...


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[Assistant] How, in many ways, you could argue that could work really well. I mean, for one thing, there's this question about extroverts and introverts. Some introverts, if they were honest, might say that this pandemic has been manna from heaven for them. They've found work less stressful. They've been able to focus and so forth.


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[Assistant] Uhm, with, with this sort of, uhm, four days on, four days off.


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[Assistant] Again, how, I mean it's, you know, if you're delivering goods and so forth and you can't do that virtually, is there any thought about how a four days on and then isolation strategy, how that off time could be used to nonetheless contribute to that person's work through some


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[Assistant] Form of training or is it more just that, uhm,


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[Assistant] And is it something that is best implemented by, um, an individual company, or is it actually much better implemented a city at a time or even a nation at a time?


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[Assistant] By aligning work schedules with schools, for example, that suddenly allows ...


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[Assistant] I mean, is the best instantiation of this that countries literally divide households into sort of different A and B categories or something like that so that that kind of alignment could happen?


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[Assistant] Indeed, uhm, uhm, David, stay on, but uhm, uhm, just before you go, have any governments expressed interest in exploring this? Do you see people considering actually implementing this as national policy?


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[Assistant] Well, I love the basic start point of starting by looking at the enemy's weakness, and it's, you've got this ...


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[Assistant] Four day period where, you know, it's not necessarily that dangerous after an infection.


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[Assistant] If you could figure out a way to work then, uhm, I assume that testing would actually enhance this idea as well a lot, right? To test people before they come back and stuff like that.


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[Assistant] Indeed, instead of having to test the whole population every three or four days, it's just once every two weeks, that's a much more imaginable goal.


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[Assistant] How many times does the chorus repeat in your favorite song? And take a moment to think. How many times have you listened to it?


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[Assistant] Chances are you've heard that chorus repeated dozens, if not hundreds of times. And it's not just popular songs in the West that repeat a lot. Repetition is a feature that music from cultures around the world tends to share.


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[Assistant] So why does music rely so heavily on repetition?


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[Assistant] They heard excerpts from these pieces in either their original form or in a version that had been digitally altered to include repetition. Although the original versions had been composed by some of the most respected 20th century composers and the repetitive versions had been assembled by brute force audio editing,


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[Assistant] People rated the repetitive versions as more enjoyable, more interesting, and more likely to have been composed by a human artist.


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[Assistant] Musical repetition is deeply compelling. Think about the Muppets classic, Mina Mina.


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[Assistant] Repetition connects each bit of music irresistibly to the next bit of music that follows it. So when you hear a few notes, you're already imagining what's coming next. Your mind is unconsciously singing along, and without noticing, you might start humming out loud.


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[Assistant] Recent studies have shown that when people hear a segment of music repeated, they are more likely to move or tap along to it. Repetition invites us into music as imagined participants rather than as passive listeners.


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[Assistant] Research has also shown that listeners shift their attention across musical repetitions, focusing on different aspects of the sound on each new listen.


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[Assistant] You might notice the melody of a phrase the first time, but when it's repeated, your attention shifts to how the guitarist bends a pitch.


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[Assistant] This also occurs in language with something called semantic satiation. Repeating a word like atlas, ad nauseum, can make you stop thinking about what the word means and instead focus on the sounds. The odd way the L follows the T.


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[Assistant] In this way, repetition can open up new worlds of sound not accessible on first hearing. The L following the T might not be aesthetically relevant to Atlas, but the guitarist's pitch bending might be of critical expressive importance.


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[Assistant] A similar effect happens with random sequences of sound. People will rate random sequences they've heard on repeated loop as more musical than a random sequence they've only heard once.


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[Assistant] This mode of listening ties in with our susceptibility to musical earworms, where segments of music burrow into our head and play again and again as if stuck on repeat.


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[Assistant] Critics are often embarrassed by music's repetitiveness, finding it childish or regressive. But repetition, far from an embarrassment, is actually a key feature that gives rise to the kind of experience we think about as musical.


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[Assistant] I love fresh white bread. There's nothing better. Butter, Vegemite. You can toast it, have a sandwich. I love bread. Eat it all the time.


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[Assistant] I love eating the crumb cutlets, Frenching the bone, and using it like a lollipop. You can just tuck in, dip it into gravy, sauce, whatever you want. Straight up. Chuck it in your mouth, get it done.


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[Assistant] My biggest concern with this cook today is getting that golden crunchy crust on the lamb and making sure it's cooked perfectly.


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[Assistant] I'm just prepping up my flour, egg, and I've got my Jew base for my gravy going as well. Some vegetables, herbs, and lamb bones as well.


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[Assistant] I'm thinking it could be a time now for me to step up and really prove that I belong in this competition.


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[Assistant] Today I'm making crumb lamb cutlets with caramelised onion and red wine jus.


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[Assistant] I know the judges have had probably hundreds of lamb cutlets before and I really need to elevate what I'm doing today to a restaurant quality dish.


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[Assistant] To finish off my breadcrumb cutlets, I fry them off in oil in a hot pan. Cooking a crumb lamb cutlets a bit tricky, you've got to get a beautiful crust on the crumb without overcooking the lamb inside.


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[Assistant] If you overcook it, it's gonna be tough. If it's undercooked, you're just gonna have a soggy mess.


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[Assistant] It's gonna be a fine line to tread. Love to get that immunity pin more than anything.


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[Assistant] I've got my red wine jus with the butter and it's just reducing a bit further. My zucchini's fried off and ready to go. My caramelized onions are looking good.


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[Assistant] I just hope the lamb cutlets are beautifully medium rare with a great crunch on the breadcrumb.


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[Assistant] I'm really happy with how it looks. I just hope the lamb's cooked perfectly.


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[Assistant] Crumbed lamb cutlets with caramelised onions, zucchini and a red wine jus.


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[Assistant] Are we dipping or are we pouring? I think that would be the way to go. Dip would be uhm, definitely better. It's a personal choice if you want to eat it like a lollipop.


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[Assistant] I've really put my best foot forward today and I really think I've found what I'm meant to do and what I'm about in this competition.


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[Assistant] Loves Bag Bowl. You can knock it up in an hour. It's always better the next day. Have it cold on toast. It's a great meal.


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[Assistant] All the ingredients for the spag bowl is something that I use all the time. Definitely sticking with the steak. Gotta play to my strength. I can put a few different techniques onto that and just take something so simple as steak and veggies and tart it up.


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[Assistant] It really gives me a bit of confidence having a good dish out of the mystery box, getting my first tasting, so just need to make sure I keep it up.


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[Assistant] It's time to plate up. I decided to cut the carrot and set it up so it looks a bit symmetrical on the plate.


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[Assistant] I really think that the dish and the flavours are up there and hopefully my skills are really improving.


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[Assistant] It was nearly midnight. In their warm living room.


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[Assistant] The two old people and their sons sat and talked about the soldier stories. India is a wonderful country, Mr. White said. What exciting stories. It was a good evening. Mrs. White stood up to take some things into the kitchen. But she stopped and listened to Herbert and his father. Yes, Herbert said. Morris told some interesting stories.


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[Assistant] But of course, some of them weren't true. Oh, Herbert, Mrs. White said. Well, Mother, that story about the monkey's paw wasn't true. A dirty little monkey's paw isn't magic, but it was a good story. And Herbert smiled. Well, I think you're right, Herbert, his mother said. I don't know.


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[Assistant] Mr. White said quietly, perhaps the story was true.


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[Assistant] Did you give some money to Tom Morris for that paw? She asked. We don't have money to give away for nothing. Mrs. White was angry now. Well, yes, her husband answered. I did, but not much. And at first he didn't want to take it. He wanted the monkey's paw. Well, he can't have it, Herbert laughed.


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[Assistant] It's our paw now. And we're going to be rich and happy. Come on, father. Make a wish. Old Mr. White took the paw from his pocket. Okay, Herbert. But what am I going to ask for? I have everything. You, your mother. What do I need? Money, of course.


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[Assistant] Herbert answered quickly, We need money. You're always thinking about money. That's because we haven't got very much of it.


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[Assistant] With money, you can pay for this house. It can be your house.


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[Assistant] Go on, Father. Wish for thirty thousand pounds.


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[Assistant] Herbert stopped talking and his old father thought for a minute. The room was quiet and they could hear the rain on the windows.


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[Assistant] Then Mr White took the monkey's paw in his right hand. He was afraid, but he looked at his wife and she smiled at him. Go on, she said. Slowly and carefully, Mr White said,


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[Assistant] I wish for thirty thousand pounds. Suddenly, he gave a cry, and Mrs. White and Herbert ran to him. What's the matter, father? Herbert asked. It moved! Mr. White cried. The monkey's paw! It moved! They looked at the paw.


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[Assistant] It was now on the floor and not in the old man's hand. The family watched it and they waited, but it did not move again. So the little family sat down again and they waited. Nothing happened.


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[Assistant] The noise of the rain on the windows was worse now.


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[Assistant] And their little living room did not feel nice and warm. Mrs. White said, it's cold. Let's go to bed. Mr. White did not answer. And in the end, Herbert said, well, there's no money, father. Your friend's story wasn't true. But Mr. White did not answer. He sat quietly and said nothing.


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[Assistant] After some time, Mrs. White said to her husband, Are you okay? Yes. Yes, the old man answered. But for a minute or two, I was afraid. Well, we needed that money, Mrs. White said. But we aren't going to get it. I'm tired. I'm going to bed.


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[Assistant] After Mrs. White went to bed, the two men sat and smoked for some time. Then Herbert said, Well, Father, I'm going to bed too. Perhaps the money is in a bag under your bed. Good night, Father. And Herbert laughed and went out of the room.


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[Assistant] Old Mr. White sat in the cold living room for a long time. The candle died, and it was dark. Suddenly, the old man saw a face at the window. Quickly, he looked again. But there was nothing there. He felt afraid. Slowly, he stood up and left the cold, dark room.


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[Assistant] Thanks to Brilliant for supporting this episode of SciShow. Go to Brilliant.org slash SciShow to see if you can solve today's daily challenges.


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[Assistant] We often think of the ocean as, like, a very serene, lovely place to relax. But that's only because we're oblivious to the racket that is going on underwater. From sea urchins rasping on rocks to whales


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[Assistant] Bellowing, there is a cacophony of sound in the ocean, and for good reason. Water's densely packed molecules make it a great sound conductor. In fact,


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[Assistant] Sounds travel more than four times faster and farther in water than in air. But don't expect to hear that from the beach. When sound waves from underwater hit air at the surface, they reflect back into the depths.


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[Assistant] And even when we're swimming, our ears aren't adapted for underwater hearing. That said, the incredible sound transmission underwater makes the ocean a great place for marine animals to communicate or even use sound


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[Assistant] And while you're probably familiar with whale songs and dolphin chatter, there are some unlikely culprits, including these six. First up are, maybe unexpectedly, seahorses. You might not think of them as loud, but they make two kinds of sound that are hard to ignore.


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[Assistant] Is a growl. It's only been recorded in captive seahorses, but researchers think this warning sound is likely used in the wild as well. It comes from the animals using muscle contractions to vibrate their bodies, particularly their cheeks.


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[Assistant] And at 115 decibels, the growl is as loud as an ambulance siren. Researchers think the point of the sound might be to scare away danger and give the seahorse a chance to escape. I…


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[Assistant] Specifically, if a predator has captured a seahorse, these low, long pulses, along with the body quivers, might make them let go. That's only half the story with these animals, though, because when seahorses are


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[Assistant] Make the sounds with their skulls. As an amorous seahorse rubs its own skull bones together, it generates the clicks, each one a low-frequency sliding sound followed by a higher-frequency knocking. Males and females even make duets of head-bone clicks during their complex array of courtship behaviors. And while it's not clear,


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[Assistant] Clicky she is. Next, many ocean fishes can make some impressive sounds of their own using their swim bladders, gas-filled organs that help a fish maintain buoyancy. A swim bladder is like a personal balloon that expands and contracts as it lets air in and out. But some fish also use these big balloons for their acoustic properties, like


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[Assistant] A group called toadfishes. The male toadfish guard their nests, and during the night, they use muscles around their swim bladders to vibrate them, creating a call to lure in females.


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[Assistant] This call involves a grunt like a foghorn, followed by higher-frequency boops, and it can reach


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[Assistant] Each male toadfish has a signature style and voice, which is a key part of using sound for communication. Like, their grunts vary based on the number of boops,


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[Assistant] Length of boops and pauses between them, and these signals might convey information that helps females decide whether he's worthy of her attention. Researchers hypothesized that the males might be signaling things like their age,


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[Assistant] Health condition and level of motivation to mate, or maybe even their size. For instance, a 2010 study on Lusitanian toadfish found that larger males vibrated their swim bladders faster thanks to bigger and healthier muscles. Now, one toadfish is loud enough on its own, but when fishes with sonic swim bladders group up,


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[Assistant] The volume just goes through the roof. Just ask the Gulf corvina fish. Every spring, all the adults congregate in one spot, the Colorado River Delta in the Gulf of California. Unlike the toadfish, who spread out into different burrows, the corvinas


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[Assistant] Spawning aggregations like this are thought to increase breeding success by concentrating males and females in a known place at a known time, based on natural cues. Like, in this case, Gulf corvina might be taking advantage of extreme tides in the area at certain parts of the lunar cycle,


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[Assistant] Which could wash their eggs out to sea. Guided by the tides and moon cycles, adults arrive within a few days of each other. And that is when the shouting starts.


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[Assistant] Now, communication is a huge part of underwater sounds, but lots of ocean animals also use sound for defense.


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[Assistant] Like spiny lobsters. Lobsters are arthropods in the same large group as insects, and many arthropods make sounds by rubbing parts of their hard exoskeletons together, including grasshoppers and locusts. But spiny lobsters have taken a novel approach. They rub a piece of soft tissue called the plectrum at the base of their antennas,


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[Assistant] The ability to use soft tissues might be especially helpful to a recently molted lobster that's just outgrown and shed its old exoskeleton. During this time, the animal is especially vulnerable since its new body covering hasn't hardened yet.


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[Assistant] But even though it's lacking that defense, it can still make the same warning sound as everyone else. Also, if you're thinking that soft tissue can't generate that much noise, you'd be surprised.


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[Assistant] At 150 decibels, this lobster's warning is as loud as a fighter jet. And like many animal warning sounds, it's abrasive enough to help drive off predators that get too close, along with other defense behaviors like lunging or flipping their tails. Also as a nice bonus, this sound fades into the loud background noise pretty easily, too.


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[Assistant] Can make itself heard. Snapping worms live inside sponges more than 100 meters underwater off the coast of Japan. They have see-through bodies with tentacles surrounding a circular mouth. And when it comes time for the worms to defend the narrow sponge chambers they call home,


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[Assistant] Their mouths come in handy. The worms will run into each other, mouth first, and then they will burst away with a startling popping sound.


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[Assistant] It's hard to figure out exactly why the sound evolved, like it might have been to startle a competitor, or it could just be a side effect of the attack. But either way, it's definitely noticeable. At 157 decibels, the sound is louder than the fans at the loudest sports stadium in the world. Scientists recording these interactions are also still figuring out


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[Assistant] How the worms make such a loud sound? But one idea is that it has to do with a part of their digestive tract


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[Assistant] And a process called cavitation. Cavitation happens when a part of a liquid experiences a big temperature or velocity change


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[Assistant] Which causes a dramatic change in pressure. It's so dramatic that the liquid can temporarily go from a liquid to a gas, forming a bubble. Then, when that bubble encounters the rest of the liquid, the gas turns back into a liquid with an intense pop. In the case of the worms, scientists think they use their muscles to block off a piece of their digestive tract.


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[Assistant] And then, they use other muscles to expand that little chamber, changing the pressure in there so fast that the water becomes a gas. And finally, they open up that part of their digestive tract and let the chamber collapse. When they do, that gas converts back into a liquid, and the water shoots out of their mouths at the other worm.


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[Assistant] Pretty special. Still, when it comes to cavitation, they cannot beat the pinky-sized snapping shrimps. These animals make repetitive cracking sounds that punctuate the tranquility of coral reefs. In fact, the cracking sound is so constant that in World War II, submarines took advantage of it to hide from sonar, a technique that uses sound waves to identify objects.


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[Assistant] When that gas runs into the water around it, it converts into a liquid again, and you get a pop. Except this time, it releases so much energy that it creates a flash of light, along with a shock wave.


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[Assistant] That kills nearby fish! And at 220 decibels, the collapsing cavitation bubbles are even louder than the takeoff of the Saturn V rocket.


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[Assistant] Which carried astronauts to the Moon. Researchers think this mechanism may have evolved for feeding, but today, it's also used to spar with rivals. Because if evolution gives you a weapon like that…


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[Assistant] Might as well use it. The diversity of underwater sound is incredible, and it speaks to how much animals have evolved to take the water they live in and use it to their advantage.


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[Assistant] But also, be thankful human ears don't work so well down there. These sounds are so loud that if our ears were evolved to actually hear them, they could easily damage nerves or even bust eardrums. So if you can't, it's best to put on a snorkeling mask and just enjoy the view or the feel of the water without


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[Assistant] Eavesdropping on anyone's conversations. If you liked this episode of SciShow and are into learning more about the world around you, you might want to try your hand at today's daily challenges from Brilliant. Brilliant puts out multiple new challenge questions every day about all kinds of topics,


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[Assistant] But the cool thing is, you don't need to be an expert in those fields to answer them. Brilliant gives you all the context you need. That makes them a great way to brush up on your skills or discover something new. And if you like a question, there's a related course to teach you even more.


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[Assistant] And if you want to try out today's questions, head over to Brilliant.org slash SciShow. And if you decide to sign up for an annual premium subscription, you will get 20% off.


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[Assistant] You've had over a month to get this finalized. Why are things delayed?


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[Assistant] Well, the thing is, we ran into a lot of problems. I'm not looking for excuses here. I just want to get this finished on time.


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[Assistant] You've had over a month to get this finalized. Why are things delayed?


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[Assistant] Well, the thing is, we ran into a lot of problems. I'm not looking for excuses here. I just want to get this finished on time.


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[Assistant] I'm not going to put this off any longer, Casey. I want those photos ASAP.


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[Assistant] I'm not looking for excuses here. I just want to get this finished on time.


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[Assistant] Can we put off our meeting until next week? I'm too busy right now.


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[Assistant] The list of individual freedoms known as the Bill of Rights was not in the original text and wasn't added for another three years. So does this mean the founders didn't consider them?


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[Assistant] The answer goes back to the very origins of the Constitution itself. Even prior to the first shots of the American Revolution, the 13 colonies worked together through a provisional government called the Continental Congress.


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[Assistant] During the war in 1781, the Articles of Confederation were ratified as the first truly national government. But establishing a new nation would prove easier than running it.


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[Assistant] Congress had no power to make the states comply with their laws. When the national government proved unable to raise funds, enforce foreign treaties, or suppress rebellions, it was clear reform was needed.


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[Assistant] Thanks to compromises on issues like state representation, taxation power, and how to elect the president, their proposal gradually gained support. But the final text drafted in September still had to be approved by conventions held in the states.


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[Assistant] Together, they laid out eloquent philosophical arguments for their positions in a series of 85 essays now known as the Federalist Papers.


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[Assistant] But others felt the Constitution was overreaching and that more centralized authority would return the states to the sort of tyranny they had just escaped.


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[Assistant] These anti-federalists were especially worried by the text's apparent lack of protections for individual liberties.


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[Assistant] As the conventions proceeded, many of these critics shifted from opposing the Constitution entirely to insisting on adding an explicit declaration of rights. So what was the Federalist's problem with this idea?


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[Assistant] More importantly, Madison felt that people's rights were already guaranteed through the democratic process, while adding extra provisions risked misinterpretation. And some feared that creating an explicit list of things the government can't do would imply that it can do everything else.


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[Assistant] After the first five states ratified the Constitution quickly, the debate grew more intense. Massachusetts and several other states would only ratify if they could propose their own amendments for consideration.


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[Assistant] Leading federalists recognized the need to compromise and promised to give them due regard. Once ratification by nine states finally brought the Constitution into legal force, they made good on their promise.


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[Assistant] During a meeting of the first United States Congress, Representative James Madison stood on the House floor to propose the very amendments he had previously believed to be unnecessary. After much debate and revision, first in the Congress and then in the states,


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[Assistant] Over three years after the U.S. Constitution had become law, today every sentence, word, and punctuation mark in the Bill of Rights is still considered fundamental to the freedoms Americans enjoy, even though the original framers left them out.


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[Assistant] Hello. Today we're talking about enhancing sentence style. There are many, many ways to enhance sentence style. We're gonna think about two ways in particular and refer you to some resources that you can use to find other ways to enhance your style.


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[Assistant] Uhm, I also want to say that the enhancing sentence style should come towards the latter part of the writing process on a project because uhm, while it might be just personally edifying to enhance sentences early on in the drafting process in terms of the writing project,


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[Assistant] If you spend time making a sentence really beautiful and then you end up deleting that sentence entirely or the whole paragraph entirely because the idea didn't work within the writing project.


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[Assistant] Anything you can do to vary your sentences. You wanna try to avoid lulling or falling into a pattern or a...


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[Assistant] Here's an example from Ed White in an article he wrote called The Scoring of Writing Portfolios, Phase 2. And I think he does a really good job of illustrating sentence variety in these three sentences. I think it's three sentences here. Okay, so let's read it and I'll point out some of the ways that he's incorporating variety.


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[Assistant] Thinking about thinking that no other assessment device includes.


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[Assistant] But one link in our own thinking about portfolios yet remains, and that is the purpose of this paper, to connect the power of the reflective letter to the actual scoring of portfolios. And here, we have first, a, a,


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[Assistant] The next sentence is two lines long and the next sentence is


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[Assistant] He's also got, instead of a dash at the end, in this sentence he chooses to include a dash here. In the third sentence he includes a colon.


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[Assistant] And every sentence begins differently, right? It is a powerful when a student.


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[Assistant] But one link. So we have a lot of variety in these sentences and I think that's what you might want to aim for in your own writing to


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[Assistant] There are many, many verbs in the English language. One of the most frequently used is our forms of the verb to be. And I have no problem with the verb to be. And in fact, in the example we just looked at, I think


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[Assistant] The choice to use to be is, is a choice that you're deliberately making, and that it's the best choice for that particular sentence, or if there might be other more exciting, stronger verbs that you could use.


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[Assistant] To show you how you might want to weed out forms of the verb to be.


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[Assistant] The frequency with which writers use forms of the verb to be is interesting to me. And so here we have


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[Assistant] And yet, right after it, we have this great potential verb right there.


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[Assistant] Interest. So instead you could have, right after that,


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[Assistant] And now our sentence has an exciting verb in it. The frequency with which writers use forms of the verb to be interests me. And I think that that's using a verb like interests instead of, of to be. Let's take a look at some other examples.


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[Assistant] Veejers article was an argument about the invasiveness of kudzu. Take a minute and see if you can


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[Assistant] If you want to revise out the form of the verb to be or if you want to leave it in and if so, uhm, if you do want to revise it out, how would you do so?


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[Assistant] Welcome back. The way that I would revise this is to take out this was in and here we have right there a possible verb, right?


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[Assistant] So I would say Vijra's article argues about the invasiveness of kudzu. If I wanted to


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[Assistant] The writers were asking how to enhance their sentence style. Go ahead and try to see if you want to revise this and if so, how.


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[Assistant] Here's my suggestion. The writers asked,


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[Assistant] How to enhance their sentence style. And right away we moved from a form of to be to a great verb called asked. Here's one final example.


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[Assistant] There are many people who want to improve their writing. Now I will point out that constructions like this, there are, are very common, along with it is, there were, that is, uh, so,


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[Assistant] Welcome back. My, my way of revising would involve starting there. Many people want.


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[Assistant] So go ahead and in your writing, look for moments where you use to be. You can do a find


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[Assistant] Function on your word processing program where you look for words like are, is, were,


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[Assistant] We all want to make greener choices and help the environment. But sometimes, what's best for the planet can be counterintuitive. Like, single-use plastic shopping bags seem to be quickly going extinct. They are now banned by stores, cities, even entire countries. And in their place are sturdier, reusable, supposedly greener bags.


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[Assistant] Case in point, by some measures, plastic bags can be the best option, at least if you leave out one important factor. There are all kinds of bags out there, but here we will focus on the five most popular. Single-use plastic bags, single-use compostable or biodegradable bags,


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[Assistant] is a study that looks at the full environmental impact of a product. In it, researchers study and add up each step in how a product is made


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[Assistant] used and disposed of. Several studies have been done like this, and the overall conclusions tend to be the same. But one major report was prepared in 2018 by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. This report looked at two types of impact, climate change and total environmental impact.


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[Assistant] The climate change bit was pretty straightforward. They added up all the greenhouse gases emitted throughout the lifetime of these bags. Now, not all greenhouse gases are equal. Each has a unique potential to warm the planet. But for easy comparison, this team converted all the gases to the equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, the total environmental impact


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[Assistant] Here, the researchers looked at 15 effects, everything from ozone depletion to toxicity to water and resource use.


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[Assistant] And a lot more. By putting a number on these things and adding them up, they could compare a broad range of impacts at the same time. The downside is that this is a big oversimplification, and they couldn't fit in some important variables. We'll get to those later. But for now, the big question is, what did this study find?


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[Assistant] The first thing to consider is what it took to make the bags, because producing them is the stage with the biggest impact. Single-use plastic bags are made of petroleum, also known as oil. Specifically, this study looked at a type called low-density polyethylene. And the majority of the impact there


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[Assistant] came from turning the oil into the plastic material itself. For biodegradable plastic bags, they looked at a material called starch-complexed biopolymer, basically a plastic that incorporates plant starches. Overall, manufacturing these bags releases a similar amount of greenhouse gases as making plastic bags that aren't biodegradable.


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[Assistant] There are also some additional effects of the agriculture involved in making the plant starches, like more water, fertilizer, and pesticide use. So just from a production standpoint, biodegradable plastic is actually worse than single-use stuff. Similarly, to make a paper bag,


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[Assistant] How a specific forest is managed is hard to capture in this sort of comparison, but either way, the process of turning wood pulp into paper can emit


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[Assistant] This depends on what kind of fuel is used at the paper mill, so that different studies can come to different conclusions about paper bags. According to the Danish researchers' calculations, they have a similar climate impact to single-use plastic. Now, have you been holding out for the reusable bags to come and blow everyone else away? Well, they do.


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[Assistant] But not how you might think. See, thick, reusable bags are also made from oil, and you need more of it to make a thicker bag, so there is a bigger impact. Heavier bags also need more fuel to transport them to the grocery store.


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[Assistant] But others have disagreed with that and calculated that paper bags can be worse. And either way, when it comes to production, the worst material by far is cotton.


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[Assistant] But that said, just how something is produced doesn't really reflect real life.


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[Assistant] Paper bags and biodegradable plastic bags are roughly the same as a single-use plastic bag. Meanwhile, heavier, reusable plastic bags need to be reused at least six times to make up for their climate change impact compared to single-use plastics. And cotton bags need to be reused at least


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[Assistant] 149 times. And this isn't just something the Danish report found. These numbers are similar to the findings of a 2011 study from the Environmental Agency in the UK. To offset climate change impact relative to a single-use plastic bag, they found that you would need to use a paper bag


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[Assistant] was even higher for organic cotton because organic crop yields tend to be lower. You would need to reuse that bag 20,000 times.


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[Assistant] There's clearly an issue with some of these materials. The numbers for reusable plastic bags are well within the expected lifespan. I have reusable plastic bags that I have been using since