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[Assistant] And distributed period kits that we had made ourselves that consisted of a pad and other items like a paper soap and sanitizer for maintaining hygiene, a piece of dark chocolate just to lift their mood, a sachet of ginger tea and so on.


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[Assistant] In whatever we did, we strived to think beyond the norm and break barriers. Be it by creating a physical period tracker to help girls without access to the internet to record their monthly cycle,


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[Assistant] Uh, sensitizing the masses by performing street plays or even developing a video game called Crimson Crusade that introduces both boys and girls to problems faced by menstruating women globally and players' progress in the game by defeating menstrual monsters.


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[Assistant] To sustain this effort, we've installed 10 sanitary napkin dispensers in several schools. Gradually, people's mindsets are changing. But does change come so easily?


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[Assistant] At a school for the underprivileged, we encountered a girl who had just got her first period but wasn't wearing anything to absorb the flow. Imagine being her.


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[Assistant] That forces you into living in ignorance and silence at the cost of your health and dignity.


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[Assistant] While we do our part, our endeavors will only be successful if each one of you internalizes and spreads onward the idea that menstruation is completely normal. If each one of you conveys this message to every person you know.


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[Assistant] When we can discuss digestion, blood circulation and respiration. All natural biological processes. Why should menstruation be off limits?


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[Assistant] Making menstrual bracelets with middle school kids in your area, or even by playing Crimson Crusade with your friends.


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[Assistant] Every small step counts because brushing this topic under the carpet perpetuates lack of access to sanitary absorbance, ignorance of menstrual health issues, school absenteeism, infection and so much more.


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[Assistant] I'd like to end with a few lines a volunteer wrote for us.


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[Assistant] Let the crimson tide turn, let there be waves of positivity, thundering applause, villages full of women who bleed with pride.


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[Assistant] In 2008, something incredible happened. A man was cured of HIV.


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[Assistant] In over 70 million HIV cases, that was a first, and so far a last. We don't yet understand exactly how he was cured.


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[Assistant] We can cure people of various diseases, such as malaria and hepatitis C. So why can't we cure HIV?


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[Assistant] Well, first, let's examine how HIV infects people and progresses into AIDS.


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[Assistant] HIV spreads through exchanges of bodily fluids. Unprotected sex and contaminated needles are the leading cause of transmission. It fortunately cannot spread through air, water, or casual contact.


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[Assistant] Once inside the body, HIV infects cells that are part of the immune system.


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[Assistant] Which means it can write its genetic code into the genome of infected cells, co-opting them into making more copies of itself. During the first stage of HIV infection


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[Assistant] The virus replicates within helper T cells, destroying many of them in the process.


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[Assistant] During this stage, patients often experience flu-like symptoms but are typically not yet in mortal danger.


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[Assistant] However, for a period ranging from a few months to several years, during which time the patient may look and feel completely healthy.


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[Assistant] The virus continues to replicate and destroy T cells. When T cell counts drop too low


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[Assistant] There are drugs that are highly effective at managing levels of HIV and preventing T cell counts from getting low enough for the disease to progress to AIDS. With antiretroviral therapy,


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[Assistant] Most HIV positive people can expect to live long and healthy lives and are much less likely to infect others. However, there are two major catches.


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[Assistant] One is that HIV positive patients must keep taking their drugs for the rest of their lives. Without them, the virus can make a deadly comeback. So how do these drugs work?


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[Assistant] The most commonly prescribed ones prevent the viral genome from being copied and incorporated into a host cells DNA.


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[Assistant] Causing HIV to be unable to infect new cells in the body.


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[Assistant] But HIV hides out somewhere our current drugs cannot reach it, inside the DNA of healthy T cells.


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[Assistant] But in a tiny percentage, the instructions for building more HIV viruses lies dormant. Sometimes for years.


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[Assistant] So even if we could wipe out every HIV virus from an infected person's body,


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[Assistant] The other major catch is that not everyone in the world has access to the therapies that could save their lives.


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[Assistant] In Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for over 70% of HIV patients worldwide,


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[Assistant] Anti-retrovirals reached only about 1 in 3 HIV positive patients in 2012. There is no easy answer to this problem.


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[Assistant] A mix of political, economic, and cultural barriers makes effective prevention and treatment difficult.


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[Assistant] And even in the US, HIV still claims more than 10,000 lives per year. However, there is ample cause for hope.


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[Assistant] Researchers may be closer than ever to developing a true cure. One research approach involves using a drug to activate all cells harboring the HIV genetic information


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[Assistant] This would both destroy those cells and flush the virus out into the open, where our current drugs are effective.


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[Assistant] Another is looking to use genetic tools to cut the HIV DNA out of cells' genomes altogether.


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[Assistant] And while one cure out of 70 million cases may seem like terrible odds, one is immeasurably better than zero. We now know that a cure is possible.


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[Assistant] And that may give us what we need to beat HIV for good.


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[Assistant] I think I'm coming down with the flu. I have a headache, a sore throat, a runny nose and I'm feeling slightly feverish.


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[Assistant] Yes, I was hoping to take the day off, uh, to recover.


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[Assistant] I think I'm coming down with the flu. I have a headache, a sore throat, a runny nose, and I'm feeling slightly feverish.


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[Assistant] Yes, I was hoping to take the day off, uh, to recover.


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[Assistant] I think I'm coming down with the flu. I have a headache, a sore throat, a runny nose, and


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[Assistant] Well, the situation is taking place in a hotel and someone is checking in and is obtaining an upgrade.


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[Assistant] Yes, there's some interesting phrases and vocabulary items here, and I know, Marco, you want to talk about some of them.


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[Assistant] I'm sorry sir, I don't have a reservation under that name. Do you have a reservation under the name Smith?


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[Assistant] Yes. Well, I have chosen another useful phrase for you and it is mix up.


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[Assistant] There seems to be a mix up. Before we talk about this phrase, let's listen to some examples of how it is used.


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[Assistant] Right, so they cannot accept any more people.


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[Assistant] There's so many other situations where you can use this word or hear it from other native English speakers. Uhm, for example, a bus or a train can be overbooked.


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[Assistant] I have a similar story, but I'm not gonna tell you about it now. For now, let's go and listen to the dialogue one more time, and when we come back we'll talk some more.


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[Assistant] I love listening to this dialogue. It just, uh, it's just so nice to see that someone is enjoying his upgrade so much, huh?


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[Assistant] I had a similar experience as well. I was flying from Shanghai to Qatar and, uh, I actually had an economy seat but for some reason they just upgraded me and I was so happy.


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[Assistant] Yes, and we would also appreciate your suggestions. And uhm, I hope you enjoyed the lesson today and Marco and I will be back tomorrow with another great lesson for you. But for now, it's bye.


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[Assistant] You're right, Mr. Roberts. There seems to be a mix-up. Unfortunately, we're overbooked at the moment.


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[Assistant] So this is where you've been hiding. In a world that has accepted its fate.


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[Assistant] Behold, the true nature of reality.


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[Assistant] When the boundaries of fate are breached, new worlds are born.


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[Assistant] The planet encompasses a multitude of worlds, ever unfolding. Some quickly perish while others endure.


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[Assistant] Yet even the most resilient worlds are doomed to fade. Nevertheless, their loss is not to be mourned. For it is not death, but a homecoming that awaits them. In the planet's embrace, all life is as one.


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[Assistant] Should this world be unmade, so too shall hurt children.


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[Assistant] I give you my blessing.


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[Assistant] The Grand Metropolis, where the ancients once gathered to pray, thought lost to time.


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[Assistant] And so it begins. A confluence of worlds and emotions.


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[Assistant] It engulfs with moving moments of joy, transforming them into rage, sadness, hatred.


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[Assistant] I, by the grace of the goddess, as she has set me free,


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[Assistant] God is some love! Let my blade strike true!


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[Assistant] I was starting to think that the Bodhisattva Guanyin had tricked me. She told me you would arrive in a year or so. But that was over ten years ago.


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[Assistant] I wanted to arrive much sooner, but we faced many dangers and delays along the way.


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[Assistant] I'm the great immortal of the golden head, and this abbey is my home. Beyond it lies the western paradise. Come inside and rest before you continue.


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[Assistant] This episode was recorded on January 26, 2021. If we have newer episodes about variants of the COVID-19 virus, or the pandemic in general, you'll find them in the playlist linked in the description.


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[Assistant] A couple weeks ago, we told you about two newer, faster-spreading variants of the COVID-19 virus. Well, scientists have been hard at work, and we now know a bit more about them. The news?


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[Assistant] Isn't good, but behind the scary headlines are some caveats and clarifications that help shed light on what we actually know. First up, on January 22nd, the UK government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, or NERVTAG for short,


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[Assistant] released a preliminary report suggesting one of the new variants is more deadly. The report examined multiple different analyses of COVID-19 cases and deaths from research universities in the UK, as well as Public Health England. All were looking at the B.1.1.7 variant, or what some have called the UK variant. It was first detected in the UK last September, but has since spread to at least 60 countries and 24 US states. Models also suggest it will become the dominant variant in the US by this March,


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[Assistant] That said, there are some limitations to the report. Perhaps the most glaring is that altogether, the studies examined only 8% of the total COVID-related deaths that occurred


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[Assistant] That's a small sample, so it may not be representative of the greater UK population.


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[Assistant] Let alone the world. Also, the delay that occurs between when a person's infected, when they are tested, and when we know what happens to them makes it difficult to analyze data and draw firm conclusions quickly. And the UK has seen big spikes in COVID-19 cases this winter, partly due to the extra infectious B.1.1.7. So many experts are emphasizing that we need more research before we can determine whether or not there really is a higher mortality rate associated with B.1.1.7. And on the plus side, another preliminary report issued this same week


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[Assistant] And are, of course, worth getting. What these studies suggest is that mutations on these variants may present challenges sooner than many scientists anticipated. Plus, it's possible that people who were infected with the earlier versions of the virus can be reinfected with a new variant. The first preprint, uploaded on January 19th,


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[Assistant] Looked at B1351, another extra-infectious variant of the virus that was first detected in South Africa. You might have heard this called the South African variant. Specifically, the researchers wanted to see whether a person's immune response to COVID-19 would also protect people against this new version of the virus. So they took blood serum samples from 44 people who had been infected with previously circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2. Unfortunately, 21 of those weren't able to stop B1351.


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[Assistant] could still be infected by this variant and others similar to it, like the one emerging from Brazil. The blood samples that did succeed had more antibodies in them.


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[Assistant] This could suggest that people with milder infections are particularly at risk of reinfection, as people tend to produce more antibodies after they've been really sick with something. On the upside, when people get two doses of the BioNTech or Moderna vaccines,


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[Assistant] Their bodies produce more neutralizing antibodies than people who've been naturally infected. So vaccines might be more protective than mild infections. However, the second preprint, also uploaded on January 19th,


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[Assistant] They likely aren't as robust against the new variants. Even still, experts stress that these vaccines are worth getting. Remember, the US FDA said that they'd consider authorizing any vaccine that showed at least a 50% reduction in cases, because that's enough to make a really big difference. And the researchers were clear to note that the vaccines are still expected to provide higher levels of protection than that, especially against severe sickness.


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[Assistant] But the data suggests they may not keep people from having mild or asymptomatic cases. So while they will keep people from dying, they might do less than we would all like to slow the spread of the virus itself. Luckily, if necessary, the vaccines can be updated to handle new variants in a matter of weeks. In fact, on January 25, Moderna announced it's developing another vaccine that could be used as a booster shot


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[Assistant] To protect against the variant from South Africa. Most importantly, health experts say that the faster we vaccinate people while the vaccines are still highly effective, and the better we stick to distancing guidelines and other health recommendations, the sooner we can end this pandemic.


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[Assistant] Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow News. We're here every Friday with an update on what's going on in the world of science.


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[Assistant] So if you have new or lingering questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, let us know in the comments. We'd love to know what you are most curious about.


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[Assistant] Or confused about. Every other day of the week, we cover less time-sensitive topics in biology, chemistry, physics, and more. So if science is your jam, you might consider clicking that subscribe button and even maybe ringing the notification bell. Is that a thing people do?


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[Assistant] You're terrible with numbers. You can't even remember your own telephone number.


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[Assistant] You'll never guess what I saw this morning. A delivery truck pulled into his driveway and it dropped off a long rectangular box. It almost looked like a coffin.


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[Assistant] Oh, I don't know if you've heard, but someone moved into that old house down the road.


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[Assistant] Well, you'll never guess what I saw this morning. A delivery truck pulled into his driveway and dropped off a long rectangular box. It almost looked like a coffin.


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[Assistant] I don't know if you've heard I don't know if you've heard


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[Assistant] Well, you'll never guess what I saw this morning.


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[Assistant] Well, you'll never guess what I saw this morning.


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[Assistant] Marco, I am doing really well and I'm really looking forward to today's lesson.


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[Assistant] Well today we're talking about computer viruses.


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[Assistant] Okay, today we've got two words to preview. The first word is virus.


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[Assistant] So if your computer has a computer virus, it means your computer is sick, right?


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[Assistant] Don't worry if you don't understand everything. At the end of this podcast, you'll understand everything.


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[Assistant] In today's language takeaway, we have two words. The first word for today is infected vile.


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[Assistant] An infected file is a file in your computer that has a virus in it.


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[Assistant] It means it doesn't have all the most recent information.


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[Assistant] Okay, that was pretty clear. You know, you can also use this phrase positively. You can say, up to date.


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[Assistant] Exactly, or if I bought a new computer, I could say, I just got a new computer. All my software is up to date. Okay, great. So now let's take a look at some phrases. And it's time for putting it all together. Putting it together.


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[Assistant] Okay, so Samuel said a really great phrase. He said, I'll be right up.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you know that phrase, I'll be right out. I used to hear this all the time when I was young.


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[Assistant] It turns out that this is a great phrase. You can use it in many different situations. Marco, can you give us an example?


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[Assistant] Yep, or I could say, oh, I've been feeling really sick recently. Why?


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[Assistant] In Fluency Builder, we give you some great, useful phrases to help you express your ideas clearly.


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[Assistant] I love this phrase, it's acting up. It just sounds really natural.


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[Assistant] It'll be at the normal speed. Try and see if you can hear these keywords.


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[Assistant] So Marco, I really think that my computer actually has a virus now.


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[Assistant] Because I have been turning on my computer and then suddenly it turns off by itself. It shuts down by itself.


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[Assistant] But I ran a virus scan and there was no problem.


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[Assistant] Oh great, the stupid computer froze again. That's the third time today!


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[Assistant] Hey Samuel, can you come take a look at my PC? It's acting up again. It must have a virus or something.


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[Assistant] I need to buy a new computer because mine isn't up to date.


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[Assistant] This stupid computer froze again. That's the third time today.


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[Assistant] Hey Samuel, can you come take a look at my PC? It's acting up again. It must have a virus or something.


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[Assistant] Hey Samuel, can you come take a look at my PC? It's acting up again. Unless I have a virus or something.


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[Assistant] What drives someone to kill in cold blood? What goes through the murderer's mind? And what kind of a society breeds such people?


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[Assistant] Over 150 years ago, Fyodor Mikhailovich Tostoyevsky took these questions up in what would become one of the best-known works of Russian literature— crime and punishment.


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[Assistant] Raskolnikov lives in abject poverty, and at the start of the story has run out of funds to continue his studies. Letters from his rural home only add to his distress when he realizes how much his mother and sister have sacrificed for his success.


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[Assistant] Increasingly desperate after selling the last of his valuables to an elderly pawnbroker, he resolves on a plan to murder and rob her.


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[Assistant] But the impact of carrying out this unthinkable act proves to be more than he was prepared for.


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[Assistant] Though the novel is sometimes cited as one of the first psychological thrillers, its scope reaches far beyond Raskolnikov's inner turmoil.


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[Assistant] From dank taverns to dilapidated apartments and claustrophobic police stations, the underbelly of 19th century St. Petersburg is brought to life by Dostoevsky's searing prose.


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[Assistant] We're introduced to characters such as Marmeladov, a miserable former official who has drank his family into ruin, and Svitrigailov, an unhinged and lecherous nobleman.


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[Assistant] As Raskolnikov's own family arrives in town, their moral innocence stands in stark contrast to the depravity of those around them, even as their fates grow increasingly intertwined. This bleak portrait of Russian society reflects the author's own complex life experiences and evolving ideas


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[Assistant] As a young writer who left behind a promising military career, Fjodor had been attracted to ideas of socialism and reform, and joined a circle of intellectuals to discuss radical texts banned by the imperial government.


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[Assistant] Upon exposure, members of this group, including Dostoevsky, were arrested. Many were sentenced to death, only to be subjected to a mock execution and last-minute pardon from the Tsar.


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[Assistant] Dostoyevsky spent the next four years in a Siberian labor camp before being released in 1854. The experience left him with a far more pessimistic view of social reform, and his focus shifted towards spiritual concerns.


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[Assistant] Crime and punishment was conceived and completed the following year, picking up on many of the same themes.


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[Assistant] In many ways, the novel follows a common narrative thread where a promising youth is seduced and corrupted by the dangers of urban life. But its social critique cuts far deeper.


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[Assistant] Raskolnikov rationalizes that his own advancement at the cost of the exploitative pawnbroker's death would be a net benefit to society.


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[Assistant] In doing so, he echoes the doctrines of egoism and utilitarianism embraced by many of Dostoevsky's contemporary intellectuals.


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[Assistant] And in believing that his intelligence allows him to transcend moral taboos, Raskolnikov cuts himself off from his own humanity.


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[Assistant] Yet although the book is deeply concerned with morality, crime and punishment never comes across as merely moralizing, with each character given their own distinctive and convincing voice.


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[Assistant] Raskolnikov's crime is clear, but it's only through Dostoevsky's gripping account of the ensuing social and psychological turmoil that we learn the true nature of his punishment and the possibility of redemption.


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[Assistant] You can download a free audio version of Crime and Punishment from audible.com slash Ted dash Ed. Anthony Heald's gripping narration animates each character with delightful precision. Support Ted Ed's nonprofit mission as you sink deeper and deeper into Dostoevsky's moral quagmire.


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[Assistant] When the COVID-19 pandemic began, researchers and public health experts warned us that the earliest


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[Assistant] But in the closing weeks of the year, two vaccines, one from pharma companies Pfizer and BioNTech, one from Moderna, began rolling out in some parts of the world. They weren't their first worldwide, but they were, in a sense.


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[Assistant] The first of their kind. And like Babe Ruth calling his shot, it seems a little like the experts knew how this was gonna go. And that's because a technology decades in the making was finally able to rise to the occasion


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[Assistant] Just when we needed it most. This is the story of how a new vaccine technology based on RNA came to be. And if it continues to prove safe and effective, it won't just be for COVID. It will be a major change in the way we design all vaccines in the future. Now, we're going to cover a lot of research today, but none of these papers were published out of the blue.


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[Assistant] A lot of progress in immunology and biotech had to happen for mRNA vaccines to happen, and a lot of people had to do that research. The job of a vaccine is to safely expose our immune system to an antigen, a piece of a protein from a pathogen,


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[Assistant] Or infectious agent that our immune system will remember and recognize.


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[Assistant] It's like a wanted poster that will teach our immune cells what to seek out and destroy when a real infection happens. Traditionally, we've introduced antigens in a few different ways, using a live, weakened pathogen, so one that is alive but won't hurt us.


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[Assistant] A killed pathogen or just a piece of one. We've also used viruses to deliver instructions to our cells to make an antigen. Whatever method you use, this takes years of work. For example, to make the measles vaccine, scientists had to grow the virus for almost


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[Assistant] By themselves. Instead of us producing them in a laboratory somewhere,


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[Assistant] Our cells could do the work. They hope that such an approach might be safer and more efficient than traditional vaccines, at least for some diseases. After all, the job of RNA is to guide the production of proteins in a cell, and antigens are generally proteins. But mRNA isn't actually the genetic material inside our cells. That's DNA.


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[Assistant] You can think of DNA as a giant library containing the blueprints for any kind of protein your body might need to make. But since it doesn't make sense to schlep the whole library with you every time you need to ask a manufacturing plant to make something, it is easier just to copy out the specific


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[Assistant] mRNA is that copy. It brings the genetic sequence for a protein transcribed from a cell's DNA to the place where proteins are made. mRNA vaccines use this feature to safely coax our cells into using their own protein-making machinery to create a viral antigen,


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[Assistant] And this turns out to be a big advantage when you're dealing with something like a totally new virus causing a sudden pandemic. Because designing one of these vaccines


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[Assistant] CNA and RNA are just linear strings. Scientists can simply download the genetic sequence of the virus and have a candidate vaccine ready to start testing within weeks


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[Assistant] Or even days. That's what happened with Moderna's vaccine, which was ready for preliminary tests less than a month after the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was published online. Also, this enables a plug-and-play approach. Once you have all the basic pieces to make an mRNA vaccine in place, you don't need a new setup to make a new vaccine for a new virus.


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[Assistant] Theoretically, you could just swap in new RNA and go from there. And there's also one more reason they're so speedy to put together. Many vaccines require adjuvants.


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[Assistant] These are substances that enhance the immune system's response to the vaccine and attract the right immune cells. But mRNA, it turns out, is pretty good at bringing in the immune system all by itself. So it avoids the potential need to spend additional months or years


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[Assistant] Testing various types and amounts of adjuvants, and whether they're necessary to make the vaccine work. You can see how all of this could make mRNA vaccines the perfect technology to rely on when we need a defense against a new pandemic stat. But there's a reason why we're only now hearing about them.


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[Assistant] Because they just weren't ready before. You see, for all its benefits, mRNA also has some drawbacks, which have taken literal decades of research to resolve.


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[Assistant] Just in time for COVID-19. This research got its start around 1971, when UK-based researchers studying protein production


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[Assistant] Put mRNA from a rabbit into frog egg cells. They found that those cells produced the rabbit version of that protein, thanks to the mRNA code.


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[Assistant] This led to a series of similar experiments, with scientists being able to insert mRNA into more and more complex types of cells. Researchers also kept working on efficient ways to deliver mRNA into a cell. The first experiments in using mRNA as an actual vaccine


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[Assistant] Pretty hard to keep in one piece. It turns out, free-floating RNA is often used by tumor cells to make it easier for them to spread around. RNA that hangs around outside of our cells can also be a remnant of a cell that was infected by a virus and then blasted apart by the immune system. And so, to keep us healthy from those two things, our bodies have a lot of ribonucleases.


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[Assistant] Which are enzymes that break up free-floating RNA to get rid of any potential danger. So that's why, in early experiments, mRNA would get destroyed before enough of it could get into a cell and start doing its magic. This problem stymied mRNA vaccine research for decades.


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[Assistant] Until scientists found ways to make mRNA more stable. One solution was adding specific gene sequences


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[Assistant] To cap the beginning and the end of the mRNA strand.


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[Assistant] That made it look more like mRNA that was generated by our own body. But that wasn't the only quirk of messenger RNA that scientists had to contend with. On top of the ribonuclease problem, free-floating RNA can activate the immune system and attract it to its location. Yeah, sure, like we said before, attracting the immune system can be helpful, because you need that to happen for a vaccine to work anyway. But this was too much of a good thing. In early attempts, the mRNA was activating the immune system so much


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[Assistant] Like, the goal of using an mRNA vaccine is to teach the immune system to seek out the antigens that the vaccine will program our cells to make, not


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[Assistant] To destroy the message before it gets the chance to do anything. And then, we reach 2005, when researchers discovered the secret handshake


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[Assistant] A lot of those bases are chemically modified until the RNA strand is needed to guide the creation of a protein. This is not the case in most pathogens. That's why when the immune system notices a strand of unmodified RNA, it's a clear sign that it's dealing with an invader. And then, it's time to mount an attack. Figuring this out,


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[Assistant] …meant that scientists could now apply those chemical modifications to manufactured RNA. In fact, it actually made mRNA vaccine technology more customizable. Basically, researchers could tweak the percentage of modified bases in the mRNA just enough to call the immune system to the area, but not enough


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[Assistant] to induce an all-out attack and deactivate the vaccine before it can start helping your body. Alright, we have done a lot of work here. From the 1970s to the early 2000s, the final challenge that scientists had to overcome


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[Assistant] was how to deliver the vaccine into a cell. The mRNA molecule itself is too big to get through a cell's membrane easily.


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[Assistant] Experiments demonstrated that some can sneak in, but not enough that you could just throw it at cells and hope for the best. Now, there are specialized ways to introduce nucleic acids into cells in a lab setting.


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[Assistant] But they aren't always suitable for use in, like, a living human body. Things like zapping the cells with electricity to open little holes to let things in. It's not that these methods can't be adapted for use in humans. It's just that there are better options.


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[Assistant] to hit the market. Lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, are tiny balls of layered lipids, or fats, with an mRNA payload tucked safely inside.


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[Assistant] The LNPs have a positive charge, which makes them stick to the negatively-charged cell membranes. In a process called endocytosis, the cell then wraps the LNP in a piece of its membrane and swallows the package. Once inside, our cellular machinery unpacks the whole package, and the mRNA can start making the antigen proteins necessary to train our immune system. And this isn't that new of a technology. As early as 1978,


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[Assistant] And make them synthesize a new protein. Early LNPs had some issues with efficacy, but researchers eventually perfected the technology just a few years before it turned out to be needed to quickly develop an mRNA vaccine for the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on successful studies delivering other types of RNA into cells,


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[Assistant] In the early 2000s, researchers started experimenting with LNPs as ways to make mRNA vaccines easily injectable. And in 2018, the FDA approved the first RNA drug that also used LNPs, which means the delivery vehicle was ready just in time when researchers


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[Assistant] So even though the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were the first mRNA vaccines to be authorized,


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[Assistant] Researchers had been excited about the potential of this technology and had been working on it


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[Assistant] It's true that we've thrown a lot of money and person hours at stopping this pandemic, and without that investment, we probably would not be seeing mRNA vaccines just yet. Some efforts to create other mRNA vaccines had already been abandoned, and mRNA vaccines were never considered a sure thing. We had to do the testing, which is why it took until late 2020.


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[Assistant] But there was an existing body of research to draw from, including into other major coronavirus diseases, SARS and MERS.


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[Assistant] Something that feels to me on the scale of an Apollo mission. But all science is incremental. It always builds on the dedicated work of generations of researchers.


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[Assistant] And it never happens in a vacuum. In fact, multiple mRNA vaccines for other viral and bacterial diseases, and even for some cancers, are undergoing human trials. Now that mRNA vaccines are working,


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[Assistant] It's likely they will keep working. And that is great news.


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[Assistant] Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow. We hope it's helped you understand how we got this far.


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[Assistant] This script didn't know a lot of this history. If you want to help us as we try to make this complicated world a little easier for everyone to understand, consider supporting us on Patreon. Patrons get access to cool perks like monthly livestreams and bloopers, and we couldn't do this without your support, so thank you. To get involved, check out patreon.com slash SciShow.


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[Assistant] Well, to think I didn't take you seriously. I was wrong.


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[Assistant] Chapter 6 The Money and the Ticket


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[Assistant] Jason did not sleep on Wednesday night.


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[Assistant] On Thursday morning, he got up very early and made some tea. What am I going to do? he thought.


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[Assistant] They're going to send me to prison because I stole that old woman's bag.


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[Assistant] But I'm going to say sorry. Sorry to the court. Sorry to the old woman. Sorry to everybody. Then perhaps I can get out of prison after... What did my lawyer say? Only 18 months. Okay, so I go to prison.


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[Assistant] But I don't want to lose that five million pounds.


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[Assistant] I want the court to believe it was my ticket. He drank his tea and remembered his meeting with Sally Cash.


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[Assistant] They're not going to like you, Jason. They're going to think this is a nasty young man. Okay, Jason thought. I'm going to do something nice. What can I do? Yes, I know. Give some of the money away.


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[Assistant] I can give it to that charity. Help the children.


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[Assistant] They sent doctors and nurses to Africa and India. I saw them on television last Christmas. They always need money. Wonderful!


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[Assistant] People can't say I'm nasty after that.


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[Assistant] Help the Children had a charity shop in the middle of the town.


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[Assistant] And at nine o'clock Jason was outside the door. There were two women in the shop. Good morning.


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[Assistant] Said the older woman, Can we help you? Are you looking for some cheap clothes? No, said Jason. I want to give you some money. That's nice of you, said the younger woman. Yes, Jason said.


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[Assistant] I want to give £500,000 to help the children.


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[Assistant] Five hundred pounds, said the older woman, that's wonderful. No, no, said Jason, not five hundred pounds.


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[Assistant] Of course I have, said Jason. Well, I haven't got the money now. It's at the court. But I want you to have it. The old woman looked at the younger woman and then at Jason. You haven't got any money. Go away. Yes, I have. I won the lottery, said Jason.


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[Assistant] Let's say a million pounds. How about that? One million pounds for help the children. The younger woman opened the door and the older woman said,


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[Assistant] Go away. We don't want you here.


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[Assistant] On Thursday afternoon, Edwin Jones was in the office of Sunshine Lotteries with Mr. David Ray.


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[Assistant] He told Mr Ray the story of Emma Carter and her winning numbers. Look, Mr Jones, said Mr Ray.


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[Assistant] Mr Williams had the winning ticket, so he gave him a cheque for the money.


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[Assistant] I'm sorry, but I can't help you. Or Mrs Carter.


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[Assistant] But it wasn't Williams' ticket. It was Mrs. Carter's.


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[Assistant] You can't prove that, Mr Jones. All lottery tickets look the same. They don't have names on them. I can prove it, said Edwin Jones. Listen.


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[Assistant] Mrs Carter's ticket is different. You see, she always gets the same numbers.


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[Assistant] And every week she puts an X on her ticket.


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[Assistant] He told Mr Ray about Mrs Carter's son in Australia. Then he took a lottery ticket out of his pocket. This is an old ticket. Look, Mrs Carter always puts an X here.


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[Assistant] Please go and look at the winning ticket. Now.


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[Assistant] Mr Ray went away and came back five minutes later. His face was unhappy. Well, said Edwin Jones. I don't know, Mr Ray said.


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[Assistant] All the tickets go through the computer many times, so it's difficult to see.


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[Assistant] Mr Ray, is there an X on that ticket or isn't there?


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[Assistant] Mr Ray looked angrily at Edwin Jones. Perhaps there is, and perhaps there isn't, he said. But what does an ex prove?


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[Assistant] Perhaps hundreds of people write an X on their lottery ticket?


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[Assistant] Perhaps it's Mrs Carter's ex, but how do we know? Tell me that, Mr Jones.


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[Assistant] I can't tell you, but the police can. Now, Mr Ray, please call your bank and stop that cheque.


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[Assistant] Next, give that lottery ticket to the police. They're going to want it. Mr. Ray looked unhappy. Yes, alright, he said. Then you need a lawyer, said Mr. Jones.


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[Assistant] Because Mrs. Carter wants her money. And she wants it now.


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[Assistant] On Thursday afternoon, Jason Williams went to Sally Cash's office and told her about Help the Children and the Women in the Shop. Sally looked tired.


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[Assistant] Jason, Jason, she said, what is all this? I don't want to listen to more lies. I'm telling the truth.


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[Assistant] I went into the help the children shop and they didn't believe me.


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[Assistant] They said, you haven't got any money. Go away. Please telephone them Miss Cash. I want to give them one million pounds. Please tell them that. But, said Sally Cash, but your lottery check is at the court. Yes or no?


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[Assistant] But when I get the money, I want to give one million pounds to help the children. I thought about it very carefully. I won all this money in the lottery and I want to do something good with it.


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[Assistant] All those little children in Africa and India. I want to help them. Sally looked at him for a minute. Please, said Jason. Please help me. You wanted to help me. You told me that. Okay, Sally said suddenly. I believe you. You want to give away a million pounds.


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[Assistant] She thought for a second. Write a letter to help the children. Write it here, now.


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[Assistant] Tell them about the million pounds and put your name on the letter. I'm going to put my name on the letter too. And take the letter to the charity's office now. Okay?


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[Assistant] If you won't come and claim him, I can always keep him from myself.


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[Assistant] You might be familiar with the cute pouncing technique many foxes use to hunt mice and voles. They'll jump high into the air and come down nearly directly on top of their prey, even if that prey is hidden from sight in snow or grassy underbrush. This is a tricky hunting technique to master, because a fox needs to know exactly where their prey is so they can successfully line up their attack


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[Assistant] Scientists know that they're using their big ears to help zero in on their target.


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[Assistant] But some think that they're also using another sense, that the foxes are actually hunting using magnetic fields. And no, this isn't like they've got a built-in metal detector for mice. Rather, they may be sensing the Earth's magnetic field. In fact,


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[Assistant] Foxes might be the first animal we know of to use magnetoreception to gauge the distance to their prey, and this sense might be crucial to their pouncing success. In a 2011 study of red foxes in Europe, researchers noticed that when their prey was hidden by vegetation,


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[Assistant] A whopping 74% of successful hunting pounces occurred when the fox was pointed in a northeasterly direction. They combed through their data, looking for other factors that might bias the direction of attack, like the wind or sunny versus cloudy conditions. After ruling all that out, they proposed that the foxes were using magnetoreception


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[Assistant] They did make a suggestion for why doing so would be helpful to the fox. You see, as a fox approaches its prey, it will use its other senses to gauge where its target is, if they can't see their prey.


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[Assistant] They'll listen for it. But the fox wants to know exactly where that hidden morsel is in order to jump the right distance to neatly close the gap. The researchers in this study proposed that the fox is searching for where its other sensory cues line up with the angle of the Earth's magnetic field. That would result in a sort of overlay targeting system.


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[Assistant] The angle of the magnetic field is fixed, meaning the fox could basically be using this stable reference point to line up where it thinks its prey is. Once it matches that angle, the fox knows the distance to its prey and can employ the exact same pounce successfully.


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[Assistant] It's almost like it has its own biological heads-up display, basically something in its visual field


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[Assistant] Cryptochromes. And foxes have them in their eyes, just like birds and some other magnetosensing species. So if these proteins are found in the eyes and are sensitive to light, what does that have to do with sensing magnetic fields? We're not totally sure, but there is some evidence for how it might work. When a photon of blue light hits a cryptochrome,


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[Assistant] This new arrangement leaves each partner with an uneven number of electrons. One has an extra electron and one has one fewer. And every electron has a property called spin, which can be either up or down. In the case of our unbalanced pair,


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[Assistant] One of those electrons has an up spin, and the other has a down spin at the time of the transfer. But then they flip back and forth and even wobble. Now, this electron transfer reaction is reversible, meaning it can go back the other way, but only when the electron spins are opposite. But because magnetic fields influence the rates of the electrons flipping between up and down spin, and the wobble in that spin,


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[Assistant] A magnetic field could change the rates and products of the chemical reactions, too.


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[Assistant] This is how it works in theory. We know migratory bird eyes contain cryptochromes, and that their ability to navigate with magnetic fields may require the presence of light.


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[Assistant] Foxes and some other mammals also have cryptochromes in their retinas. And they're our strongest candidate for the job of biochemical magnetoreceptor. But we still need to show experimentally that cryptochromes form enough of these electron pairs to signal in some way that this way is north


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[Assistant] And this way isn't. And, in fact, even if cryptochromes are sensitive to magnetic fields at a biologically relevant level,


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[Assistant] We don't know how that signal will get passed along to the animal's brain, so we can't be sure it actually senses anything. So while the chemistry and math seem to check out, scientists are still working on the biological details of foxes hunting magnetovision. Still!


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[Assistant] It's no wonder that pounce is a mouse's worst nightmare. Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow, and thanks, as ever, to our patrons for pouncing on this opportunity to help make it happen. To show our thanks, we have some cool perks available, like behind-the-scenes photos and monthly bloopers. To learn more or get involved, check out patreon.com slash SciShow.


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[Assistant] Gary and George. You think you're doing enough, George? No. Go head to head. Uhm, getting really fancy.


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[Assistant] This is pretty stressful, but... Service please! Only two will make it through. The question is, which two will it be?


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[Assistant] Baa Baa Black Sheep.


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[Assistant] Today each of you must prepare a main course and dessert for 20 guests. Plus the three of us. Cook whatever you want. Open pantry.


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[Assistant] Your garden is in play and you've got, my lucky number, four hours to prep before service starts.


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[Assistant] You got the great man himself running the kitchen.


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[Assistant] That sauce is like adding Vegemite to buttered toast. Just gives it this lovely sort of, you know, richness.


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[Assistant] Smell that. Smells good. This is Khan's Vietnamese sweet and sour barramundi broth. Khan cha cha. It is based on a...


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[Assistant] I love it. I don't want to talk to you boys anymore. I just wanna egg.


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[Assistant] If you're gonna reinvent a classic,


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[Assistant] And especially something that is so close to all of us and our Australian hearts. If it's not better, don't put it up. This.


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[Assistant] This is so much better. This has got everything I love about a pavlova. Chewyness of meringue with a little bit of crispiness on the outside and a little bit of marshmallow in the centre.


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[Assistant] I love passion fruit on pavlova. The coolness of that berry gelato. This is...


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[Assistant] The honeycomb, fantastic, bitter, it melts beautifully, the violet ice cream, I love


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[Assistant] And we know, just like the people standing behind you, when you leave this beautiful place, you're gonna fly high my friend. Yeah, you're a legend. Cheers.


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[Assistant] What have you loved most about your time here on MasterChef?


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[Assistant] Ben Sashi, congratulations.


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[Assistant] Get ready, because tomorrow is gonna be the biggest day of your life.


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[Assistant] Now I need to start prepping for my chicken rice. So I need to tender the chicken pets.


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[Assistant] I've got a second chance and I'm gonna show the judges everything I've got.


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[Assistant] They'll be saying, go mum, you can do this, you've got it.


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[Assistant] Cooking with my girls is so special. I really love it. And look, if I'm completely honest, I'm just training them up so I don't have to cook as much in the future.


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[Assistant] My sauce is bubbling away beautifully. My dough has rested and now I need to roll my pasta out. Michelle, how are you doing with the pasta? I'm going well, thanks Aldo. Yeah, the pasta's come out really nice.


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[Assistant] I'm making tagliatelle with pippies, garlic, white wine, butter sauce. I've put it through the cutter and I'm really happy with the way the tagliatelle's come out. Good balsa, Michelle. Looks good.


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[Assistant] Time is running out and I really need to start plating.


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[Assistant] This has to be the dish that is good enough to win me that apron to be in top 24.


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[Assistant] Very composed, Michelle, keep it up. I'm gonna make a chocolate lava cake with a vanilla bean ice cream and a berry cauli. Good job, Michelle. This is something that I've done a million times at home with my kids and everyone loves it. A really beautiful classic dessert.


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[Assistant] I'm stirring my enclaves and the flavour is beautiful. This is ready to go in the blast chiller. How you going?


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[Assistant] I can't believe that I've forgotten to put the ice cream maker on.


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[Assistant] This is the last chance that I've got. I really have to impress them with some mind-blowing dish.


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[Assistant] Good work Michelle, good work. So I'm gonna put that in the oven now.


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[Assistant] It needs to be cooked perfectly. This is the thing that makes the difference between a perfect lava cake or one that's over set.


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[Assistant] I'm going to serve my lava cake with a beautiful classic combination of cream, that berry cauli and some fresh berries with some mint.


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[Assistant] I take out the cake and I've got a skewer to test the middle of the centre just to see if that's really molten. It's literally seconds between something that's set and something that's just a mess. It's molten.


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[Assistant] Chocolate molten lava cake with a berry coulis and cream. I'm hoping it's really molten in the middle.


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[Assistant] Well, we didn't put a lot of time into the flamethrower. This was an off-the-cuff thing. And uhm...


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[Assistant] So, I, sort of like, it's sort of a, sort of a hobby company called The Boring Company, uh, which started out as a joke, uh, and we decided to make it real, um, and, and dig a tunnel under LA.


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[Assistant] And then dig, then people, other people asked us to dig tunnels. And so we said yes in a few cases.


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[Assistant] And then we have a merchandise section that only has one piece of merchandise at a time. And we started off with a cap. And there was only one thing on, it was just...


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[Assistant] Boringcompany.com slash cap. Or hat. That's it. And then we sold the hats. Limited edition. It just said The Boring Company. And then, I'm a big fan of Spaceballs the movie. And in Spaceballs,


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[Assistant] Yogurt, uhm, goes through the merchandising section and they have a flamethrower in the merchandising section of Spaceballs.


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[Assistant] And he, like, the kids love that one. Uh, that's the line. When he pulls out the flamethrower, it's like, we should do a flamethrower. So we...


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[Assistant] Terrible. Shouldn't buy one. I don't- I said don't buy this flamethrower. Don't buy it.


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[Assistant] Don't buy it, that's what I said. But still people bought it. There's nothing I can do to stop them.


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[Assistant] I could not stop them. I said don't buy it. It's a bad idea. How many did you make? It's dangerous. It's got, it's wrong. Don't buy it. Still people bought it. I couldn't stop them. How many did you make? Twenty thousand.


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[Assistant] That was a million dollars. And he was like, okay, we'll, we'll sell something for 10 million. And that was 20,000 flamethrowers at $500 each.


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[Assistant] I mean I didn't spend much time on this flamethrower. I mean to be totally frank, it's actually just a roofing torch with an air rifle cover. It's not a real flamethrower.


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[Assistant] Which is why it says not a flamethrower. That's why we were very clear. This is not actually a flamethrower. And, and, and it also were told, uh, that various countries would, would ban shipping of it, but they would not, they would ban flamethrowers. So we very, to solve this problem for all the customs agencies, we labeled it not a flamethrower. Did it work?


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[Assistant] Is it effective? I don't know, I think so. So far? Yes.


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[Assistant] I mean, I'm not saying it's going to be successful or, you know, I know it's just like asserting that it's going to be successful, but so far I've lived in LA for


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[Assistant] 16 years, and the traffic has always been terrible. Uhm, and so, I don't see any other, like, ideas for improving the traffic. Uhm, so, in desperation, we're going to take a tunnel, and maybe that tunnel will be successful, and maybe it won't.


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[Assistant] I'm, I'm listening. Yeah. I'm not trying to convince you it's gonna work.


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[Assistant] We've dug, uhm, about a mile. It's quite long. It takes a long time to walk it.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's, it's in LA because, uh, I mostly live in LA. That's the reason. It's a terrible place to dig tunnels. This is one of the worst places to dig tunnels because the...


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[Assistant] There's, mostly because of the paperwork. People think it's like, what about seismic? It's like, actually, earth, tunnels are very safe in earthquakes. Why is that? Earthquakes are, earthquakes are essentially a surface phenomenon. It's like, it's like waves on the ocean. So if, if you, if there's a storm, you want to be on the, on, in a submarine. So being in a tunnel is like being in a submarine. Now the way the tunnel's constructed is, it's constructed out of these,


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[Assistant] Interlocking segments, kind of like a snake. Uhm, it's sort of like a snake exoskeleton, uh, with uh, double seals. And so, even when the ground moves,


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[Assistant] The, it's able to, the tunnel actually is able to shift along with the ground, like an underground snake.


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[Assistant] And it doesn't crack or break or, or, and, and, and it's extremely unlikely that both seals would be broken. And it's, it's, it's capable of taking five atmospheres of pressure. It's waterproof, methane proof, or gas proof of any kind.


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[Assistant] And uh, meets all California seismic requirements.


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[Assistant] Uhm, there were, there were some engineers from SpaceX, uhm, who were, who thought it would be cool to do this, uh, and the guy who runs it, like, day to day, Steve Davis, he's a long time SpaceX engineer, he's great, uhm, so Steve was like,


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[Assistant] I'd like to help make this happen. It was like cool. Uhm, so we started off with digging a hole in the ground. It's got like a permit for a pit, big pit, and just dug a big pit.


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[Assistant] I just fill out this form. That's it. Yeah, I was a pet in our parking lot.


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[Assistant] Now we just started off with a pit. Okay. A big pit. And uhm, you know, it's not really, you know, I don't really...


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[Assistant] Care about the existential nature of a pit. You just say like, I don't want a pit.


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[Assistant] Yeaah. And, uh, it's a hole in the ground. So then...


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[Assistant] We got the permit for the pit, and we dug the pit, and...


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[Assistant] We dug it in like, I don't know, three days, two, three days, actually I think two, 48 hours, something like that.


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[Assistant] Because, uh, Eric Garcetti was coming by for the hype to, he was gonna attend the Hyperloop competition, uh, which is like a student competition we have for, uh, who can make the fastest pod in the Hyperloop. And, uh, he was coming, this was, the finals were gonna be on Sunday afternoon and,


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[Assistant] So, uh, Eric was coming by on Sunday afternoon, he was like, you know, we should take this pit and then, like, show Eric. Uh, so we, this was like Friday morning.


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[Assistant] And then, yeah, so it was about a little over 40 hours, 40 hours later, we dug the pit. It was like, we're in 24-7, oh, 24, 48 straight hours, something like that. And dug this big pit and, and, and we're like, sure, Eric, the pit, like obviously it's just a pit. But hey, it's hole in the ground is better than no hole in the ground.


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[Assistant] Nothing wrong with a hole in the ground. But it's a- People dig holes in the ground all the time.


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[Assistant] I got a million ideas. I'm sure you do. There's no shortage of that. Yeah.


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[Assistant] You know, I, I do basically, I think people like don't totally understand what I do with my time.


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[Assistant] They think like I'm a business guy or something like that. Uhm, like my Wikipedia page says business magnate. What would you call yourself? I'm a business magnate.


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[Assistant] You know, and manufacturing and that kind of thing. That's like 80% more of my time.


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[Assistant] That's like hardcore engineering, like, designing things, you know. Right.


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[Assistant] Structural, mechanical, electrical, software, uh, user interface, engineering, airspace engineering.


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[Assistant] For Retribution. Their memory is very good. I bet it's really good. It's really good.


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[Assistant] Yes, it's less of a worry than it used to be, uh, mostly due to taking more of a fatalistic attitude.


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[Assistant] Not necessarily bad, right? Yes, it's not necessarily bad, it's just...


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[Assistant] It's just outside of human control. Now the thing that's gonna be tricky here is that it's gonna be very tempting to use AI as a weapon.


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[Assistant] This could be very tempting. In fact, it will be used as a weapon.


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[Assistant] So the, the honor, the honor ramp to Sirius AI.


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[Assistant] The danger is gonna be more humans using it against each other, I think. Most likely. That'll be the danger. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Well, I mean, you could argue that any group of people, like a company is essentially a cybernetic collective of people and machines. That's what a company is.


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[Assistant] There's different levels of complexity in the way these companies are formed.


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[Assistant] And then there are sort of, there's this sort of like a collective AI in, in the Google sort of search, Google search, you know, the


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[Assistant] Where we're all sort of plugged in as like nodes on the network. Like leaves on a big tree.


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[Assistant] We're all feeding this network without questions and answers. We're all collectively programming the AI.


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[Assistant] And Google plus all the humans that connect to it are one giant cybernetic collective. This is also true of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all these social networks.


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[Assistant] I made this comment some years ago, but it feels like we are the biological bootloader for AI. Effectively, we are building it.


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[Assistant] And then we're building progressively greater intelligence.


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[Assistant] And the percentage of intelligence that is not human is increasing. And eventually, we will represent a very small percentage of intelligence.


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[Assistant] But the, the AI isn't formed strangely by the human limbic system.


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[Assistant] It is, in large part, our Idrit Lodge.


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[Assistant] We mentioned all those things, the sort of primal drives.


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[Assistant] They're all there on the internet. They're a projection of our limbic system.


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[Assistant] In some measure, like, the success of these online systems is sort of a function of


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[Assistant] Of how much limbic resonance they're able to achieve with people. The more limbic resonance, the more engagement.


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[Assistant] Yes, things are getting more and more connected. They're at this point constrained by bandwidth. Our input-output is slow, particularly output. Output got worse with thumbs. You know, we used to have input with ten fingers, now we have thumbs.


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[Assistant] But images are just, are also, are there a way of communicating at high bandwidth? You take pictures and you send pictures to people. What sends, that's, that communicates far more information than you can communicate with your thumbs.


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[Assistant] I try to convince people to slow down. Slow down AI. To regulate AI.


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[Assistant] I think people don't, like, normally the way that regulations work is very slow. Very slow indeed.


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[Assistant] Usually it'll be something, some new technology. It will cause damage or death. There will be an outcry.


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[Assistant] There will be an investigation. Years will pass. There will be.


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[Assistant] You know, the auto industry fought seat belts, I think, for more than a decade. Successfully fought any regulations on seat belts, even though...


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[Assistant] The numbers were extremely obvious. If you had a seatbelt on, you would be far less likely to die or be seriously injured. It was unequivocal.


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[Assistant] And the industry fought this for years successfully.


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[Assistant] This is a, this time frame is not relevant to AI. You can't take 10 years from the point at which it's dangerous. It's too late.


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[Assistant] It's not necessarily a doomsday countdown, it's, it's a... Out of control countdown? Out of control, yea. People call it the singularity.


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[Assistant] And, uh, that's probably a good way to think about it. It's a singular, it's hard to predict, like a black hole, what happens past the event horizon. Right.


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[Assistant] It could be terrible, and it could be great. It's not clear.


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[Assistant] Right. But one thing is for sure, we will not control it.


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[Assistant] From a long-term existential standpoint, that's like the purpose of Neuralink is to create a high bandwidth interface to the brain such that we can be symbiotic with AI.


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[Assistant] Cause we have a bandwidth problem. You just can't communicate through when it goes too slow.


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[Assistant] I think we'll have something interesting to announce in a few months. That's at least an order of magnitude better than anything else. Probably, I think better than probably anyone thinks is possible.


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[Assistant] Uh, where we've got the limbic system, um, kind of the, you know, primitive brain essentially. You've got the cortex. So you're, you're currently in a symbiotic relationship. Your cortex and limbic system are in a symbiotic relationship. And generally people,


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[Assistant] That, that they're, that their thinking part of themselves is in charge, but it's mostly their limbic system that's in charge. And the cortex is trying to make the limbic system happy. That's what most of that computing power is oriented towards. How can I make the limbic system happy? That's what it's trying to do.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and there's enough bandwidth between the cortex.


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[Assistant] And the AI extension of yourself such that the AI doesn't de facto separate.


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[Assistant] Then that could be a good outcome. That could be quite a positive outcome for the future.


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[Assistant] Enable anyone who wants to have superhuman cognition.


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[Assistant] Anyone who wants. This is not a matter of earning power because your earning power would be vastly greater after you do it. So, it's just like, anyone who wants can just do it.


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[Assistant] It would be difficult to really appreciate the difference.


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[Assistant] It's kind of like, how much smarter are you with a phone or computer than without? You're vastly smarter, actually.


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[Assistant] You know, you can answer any question, if you connect to the internet, you can answer any question pretty much instantly, any calculation, uh, that your phone's memory is essentially perfect, uh, you can remember flawlessly, your phone can remember videos,


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[Assistant] That's the, that your phone is already an extension of you. You're already a cyborg. You don't even, well, most people don't realize they are already a cyborg. That phone is an extension of yourself. It's just that.


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[Assistant] The data rate, the rate at which, the communication rate between you and the cybernetic extension of yourself that is your phone and computer is slow. It's very slow.


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[Assistant] And, and that, that it's like a tiny straw of, of, of information flow between your biological self and your digital self.


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[Assistant] I think we can hang on to human machines and biosis through the long term. And then people may decide that they want to retain their biological self or not. I think they'll probably choose to retain their biological self.


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[Assistant] You will be essentially snap-shotted into a computer at any time. If your biological self dies, you could just probably just upload into a new unit. Literally.


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[Assistant] I've been thinking about this for a long time by the way.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, I was really going on the warning quite, quite a lot.


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[Assistant] You've met with Obama, and just for one reason, look- Just to talk about AI. Yes.


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[Assistant] No, he, he listened. He certainly listened. Uhm, I met with Congress. I met with, I was at a meeting of all 50 governors and talked about just AI danger and I talked to everyone I could.


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[Assistant] Didn't quite understand it or didn't think it was near term or.


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[Assistant] When I said like, you know, an obvious thing to do is to just establish


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[Assistant] A committee, government committee to gain insight, you know, before, before you oversight, before you do make regulations, you should like try to understand what's going on. Um, and then if you have a insight committee, then the, once they learn what's going on, get up to speed.


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[Assistant] Then they can make maybe some rules or propose some rules.


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[Assistant] And, and that would be probably a safer way to go about things.


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[Assistant] They're real mean. They're real mean. I saw that movie, Chimpanzee. I thought it was gonna be like some Disney thing. I was like, oh like, cow. What movie was that? It's literally called Chimpanzee. Who, is it a documentary? Yeah, yeah, it's kinda like a documentary. I was like, damn, these chimps are mean. They're mean. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Like I didn't realize chimps did calculated cruelty.


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[Assistant] I don't know, I mean, how much do we think about chimps? Not much. Very little. It's like, these chimps are at war. It's like, groups of chimps just attack each other, and they kill each other, and they torture each other, that's pretty bad. Uhm, they hunt monkeys.


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[Assistant] Uh, they're, but, like, this is probably the most, but, you know, I mean, when was the last time you talked about chimps? Me? Yea. All the time. You do? Talking to the wrong guy.


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[Assistant] Yeah, exactly. When there's the bonobos, they got a better philosophy.


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[Assistant] Yes, I think that one of the issues with social media that's been pointed out by many people is that uhm,


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[Assistant] I think maybe particularly Instagram, uhm, people look like they have a much better life than they really do. Right.


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[Assistant] Yeah, people are posting pictures of when they're really happy. They're modifying those pictures to be better looking.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and they're way happier seeming than they really are. So if you look at everyone on Instagram you might think, man, they're all these happy beautiful people and


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[Assistant] I'm not that good looking and I'm not happy. So I'm a suck. You know, and that's gonna make people sad. So when in fact, those people you think are super happy, actually not that happy. Some of them are really depressed. They're very sad.


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[Assistant] Some of the happiest seeing people, actually some of the saddest people in reality. Uhm, and, and, and nobody looks good all the time, doesn't matter who you are.


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[Assistant] Yeah, exactly. So, uh, so I think, I think things like that can make people quite sad. Uhm, just by comparison, because you, you just sort of, you, you, people, people generally think of themselves relative to, to others. It's, it's a, we are constantly re, re-baselining our expectations. Uhm,


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[Assistant] And you can see this, say, if you watch some show like Naked and Afraid or, you know, if you just go and try living in the woods by yourself for a while and you're like,


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[Assistant] The learn that civilization is quite great. It has a lot, it's a lot of it. It's people want to come back to civilization pretty fast, only good and afraid.


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[Assistant] It will be at some point indistinguishable from reality.


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[Assistant] This could be some simulation. It could. Do you entertain that?


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[Assistant] Well, the argument for the simulation, I think is quite strong, because if you assume any improvement at all over time, any improvement,


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[Assistant] One percent. Point one percent. Just extend the time frame. Make it a thousand years. A million years. The universe is 13.8 billion years old.


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[Assistant] Civilization, if you count it, if you're a very generous civilization, is maybe 7 or 8,000 years old, if you count it from the first writing. This is nothing. This is nothing. Uhm. So.


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[Assistant] If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will be indistinguishable from reality.


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[Assistant] That would be fine. If there was, they glued it on or something. But it was made that way.


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[Assistant] Anyway, I don't wanna sound like things are too dark, cause I think like you kinda have to...


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[Assistant] Be optimistic about the future. There's no point in being pessimistic. It's just too negative. It doesn't help. It doesn't help. You know, I think you wanna be, I mean my theory is like you'd rather be optimistic


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[Assistant] I'd rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right. Right. At least err on that side.


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[Assistant] Yeaah. Because if you're pessimistic, you're just going to be miserable.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I mean ultimately, you know, even if we just sort of existed as humans forever, we'd be...


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[Assistant] Eventually it's gonna end. It's just a question of when. Right. So it really is all about the journey.


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[Assistant] The universe as we know it will dissipate into a fine mist of cold nothingness eventually.


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[Assistant] It's just a very long time. So I think it's really just about how can we make it last longer.


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[Assistant] I think most likely, this is just about probability, there are many, many simulations.


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[Assistant] These simulations are, we might as well call them reality. Or you could call them multiverse.


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[Assistant] They're running on the substrate. So, that substrate is probably boring.


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[Assistant] Like a game or a movie. It's a distillation of what's interesting about life.


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[Assistant] You know, it, it takes, it takes a year to shoot an action movie. And then, that's all to slow down into two or three hours.


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[Assistant] So, let me tell you, if you see an action movie being filmed, it's friggin', it's boring. Super boring.


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[Assistant] Takes, there's like lots of takes, everything's in a green screen, looks pretty goofy, doesn't look cool. But once you add the CGI and have great editing, it's amazing. So.


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[Assistant] If we're a simulation, it's really boring outside the simulation.


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[Assistant] Because why would you make a simulation that's boring? Because you make a simulation way more interesting than the base reality.


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[Assistant] This notion of place or where is, is a... Flawed. Yes. Flawed perception. Like where, like that, if you have that sort of, that, uh, vibe.


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[Assistant] That's made by Valve and it's really Valve that made it. HTC did the hardware, but it's really a Valve thing.


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[Assistant] Virtual reality, which is only gonna get better. Where are you? Where are you really?


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[Assistant] Right now you think you're in a studio in LA. That's what I heard. You might be in a computer.


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[Assistant] I think we should take the actions, the set of actions that are most likely to make the future better. Yes, right.


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[Assistant] And then reevaluate those actions to make sure they're, they're, that it's true.


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[Assistant] Uh, you didn't, you should, I'll show you afterwards. Well, I've driven one. I love them. Yea, but most people don't know.


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[Assistant] I mean the Model X can do this like ballet thing to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It's pretty cool. Were it dances? Yes. Legitimately?


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[Assistant] There was some engineers at Tesla that said, you know, what if we make this car dance and play music? I was like, that sounds great. Please do it. Let's try to get it done in time for Christmas. We did.


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[Assistant] Nope. No. Won't do it. Nope. It's actually, you have to, it's an easter egg.


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[Assistant] Including people who have the car. It's like, it can do lots of things. Lots of things.


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[Assistant] Yes. Yes. There's so many things about the model X and the model S and the model three that people don't know about. We should probably do a video or something and explain it.


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[Assistant] Cause I have close friends of mine and I say, do you know the car can do this? And they're like, nope.


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[Assistant] It's the most fun thing you could possibly buy ever. That's what it's meant to be. Our goal is to make, it's not exactly a car.


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[Assistant] It's actually a thing to maximize enjoyment. Make it as maximum fun.


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[Assistant] Yeaah. Do you, you have a- And we're gonna put video games in it.


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[Assistant] Well, you won't be able to drive while you're playing the video game. But we're like, for example, we're just putting the Atari emulator, ROM emulator in it. So we'll play missile command and lunar lander and a bunch of other things.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and we improved the interface of missile command because it was too hard with the old trackball. So this is, this is a touch screen version of missile command. So you have a chance.


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[Assistant] Yeah, how'd you know that? That's, that's much better than that. 61 Series 1 E-Type Jaguar. I love cars. It's great. Yeah, I love old cars.


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[Assistant] Yeah, the only two, only two gasoline cars I have are that, and...


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[Assistant] An old, like a Ford Model T that a friend of mine gave me.


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[Assistant] Ooh, look at that. That is a gorgeous car.


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[Assistant] Haha, that is, it's not mine, it's extremely close to mine. But I don't have a French license plate on mine.


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[Assistant] They nailed that. God, they nailed that.


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[Assistant] Yeah, my E-type is like basically no electronics.


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[Assistant] It's, we're about to release the software that will enable you to


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[Assistant] Just turn it on and it'll drive from highway on ramp to highway exit, do lane changes, overtake other cars. Jesus. Go from one interchange to the next. If you get on say the 405 and get off 300 miles later and go through several highway interchanges and just overtake other cars and hook into the nav system. And then, uh. And you're just meditating.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's very, it's kind of eerie. It's kind of eerie.


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[Assistant] Well, it's sort of more of a, it's sort of honks. Oh, honks?


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[Assistant] We could gently wake you up with a sultry voice.


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[Assistant] Exactly. You like pick, you could pick your...


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[Assistant] I like Australian. What flavor of, do you want it to be angry? Could be anything.


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[Assistant] All the time. All the time. And crash. At least our car doesn't crash. That's better.


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[Assistant] It's better not to crash. Imagine if that guy had fallen asleep in a gasoline car. They do it all the time. For sure.


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[Assistant] In fact, the thing that really, you know, got me to, it's like, man, we better get autopilot going and get it out there, was a guy was in an early Tesla.


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[Assistant] Wouldn't have run out of the, we might have fallen asleep, but at least he wouldn't have run over that cyclist.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you can program it to be more or less like more conservative, or like more aggressive driver, uhm, and you can say what speed you want it to


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[Assistant] Well, for lane changes it's tricky, because if you're in like,


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[Assistant] L.A. Like unless you're pretty aggressive, it's hard to change lanes sometimes.


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[Assistant] Sometimes, you know, I think people like overall are pretty nice on the highway, even in LA, but sometimes they're not. Do you think the neurolink will help that?


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[Assistant] Nice thing about tunnels, nice thing about tunnels is you can go 3D. So you can go many levels.


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[Assistant] Yeah, but you could go, you could have a hundred levels of tunnel, no problem.


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[Assistant] This is one of the fundamental things people don't appreciate about tunnels is that it's not like roads. The fundamental issue with roads is that you have a 2D transport system and a 3D


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and, and so that obviously is not gonna work. Uh, you're gonna have traffic guaranteed. But if you can go 3D on your transport system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's Earth. But 10,000 feet's not a big deal.


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[Assistant] I think, uh, ultra-high pressure compressed air.


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[Assistant] Too noisy and there's too much airflow. So the final issue with flying cars, I mean, if you get one of those like toy drones, think of how much, how loud those are and how much air, how much air they blow. Now imagine if that's like a thousand times heavier.


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[Assistant] Your neighbors are not going to be happy if you land a flying car in your backyard.


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[Assistant] Or on your roof, they're just really going to be like, what the hell, that was annoying. You can't even look, if you want a flying car, just put some wheels on a helicopter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And mass, mass times, your mass times gravity must equal the mass of airflow times acceleration of that airflow to have a neutral force. So it's impossible to get around. And then you won't move. But if, if mg is greater than ma, you will go down. And if ma is greater than mg, you will go up.


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[Assistant] Technically yes, you, you could have a strong enough magnet.


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[Assistant] But that magnet would be so strong that you would create a lot of trouble.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you'd have to repel off of either, uh, material on the ground or,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In a really nutty situation off of Earth's gravitational field. And somehow make that incredibly light.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that magnet would cause so much destruction, you'd be better off with a helicopter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it would work. You could do that. Cement's pretty ridiculous too, right? I would not recommend it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then if you want to go long distances, you can just draw the air out of the tunnel, make sure it's real straight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's a vacuum tunnel. Uhm, cause the, then, and then, depending on how fast you want to go, you can use wheels, or you could use air bearings, depending upon the ambient pressure in the tunnel, or you could, uh, maglev it, if you want to go super fast. Uhm. So magnet road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, but underground magnet roads. Underground magnet roads. Otherwise you're gonna really create a lot of trouble with, cause there's metal things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you want to go really fast underground, you would be in, you would be maglev in a vacuum tunnel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Magnetic levitation in a vacuum tunnel. Pardon?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nah, you'd have a pressurized pod. It'd be like a, like a little tiny underground spaceship basically.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is. It is? Yes. They have like a little hole? Yea they have a pump. Really? Yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's like, the aeros, aeroplanes have it, have it easy because essentially you can, they're pretty leaky, uh, but, yeah, but as long as they,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As long as the air pump is working at a decent speed, they have backup pumps. So they have like, you know, three pumps or four pumps or something. And, uh, and then that, then there's like, there's an ex, it exhausts through the outflow valve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and through whatever seals are not sealing quite right. Usually the door doesn't seal quite right on a plane. So there's a bit of leakage around the door.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, but the pumps exceed the outflow rate and then that sets the pressure in the cabin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I've talked to friends. Friends? Friends and- I'm your friend. Girlfriends and- You can tell me. What do you got? What's going on?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I mean, the exciting thing to do would be some sort of electric vertical takeoff and landing supersonic jet of some kind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, the trick is that you have to transition to level flight, and then the thing that you would use for vertical takeoff and landing is not suitable for high speed flight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The interesting thing about an electric plane is that you want to go as high as possible, but you need a certain energy density in the battery pack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, because you have to up, uh, overcome gravitational potential energy. Once you've overcome gravitational potential energy and you're at, at a high altitude, the energy you use in cruise is very low. And then you can recapture a large part of your, the gravitational potential energy on the way down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so you really don't need any kind of reserve fuel, if you will, because you have the energy of height, gravitational potential energy. This is a lot of energy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So once you can get high, like the way to think about a plane is it's a force balance. So the force balance...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So a plane that is not accelerating, uhm, is a neutral force balance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have the force of gravity, you have the lift force of the wings, then you've got the force of the whatever thrusting device, the, the propeller or turbine or whatever it is, uhm, and you've got the resistance force of the air. Now the higher you go, the lower the air resistance is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Air density drops exponentially, but drag increases with the square, and exponential beats the square. The higher you go, the faster you will go for the same amount of energy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And at a certain altitude you can go supersonic with less energy per mile, quite a lot less energy per mile than an aircraft at 35,000 feet. Because it's just a force balance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The airplane, electric airplane isn't necessary right now. Electric cars are important. Solar energy is important. Stationary storage of energy is important. These things are much more important than creating electric supersonic VTOL.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, uhm, the planes naturally, you really want that gravitational energy density for an aircraft, uhm, and this is improving over time. So,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it's important that we accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. That's why electric cars, it matters whether electric cars happen sooner or later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're really playing a crazy game here with the atmosphere and the oceans. We're taking vast amounts of carbon from deep underground and putting this


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Putting this ne- in the- in the atmosphere, this is crazy. We should not do this. It's very dangerous.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we should, we should accelerate the transition to sustainable energy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, the bizarre thing is that obviously we're going to run out of oil in the long term.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know we're gonna, there's only so much oil we can, we can mine and burn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's tautological. We must have a sustainable energy transport and energy infrastructure in the long term. So we know that's the endpoint. We know that. So why run this crazy experiment