Dr Karl Podcast

00:00 This is a Triple J podcast. 00:02 Hello, welcome to another episode of Science with Dr. Carl, and it is a very special one because it is National Science Week. 00:13 Yes, a very happy National Science Week to you. It is science's week of weeks. 00:20 If there was a time to be a science head, a friend of the pod, this is the week to do it. Thank you so much for joining us. And we had to roll out the red carpet. We had two very special guests joining Dr. Carl this week. Caitlin Thurn, who's been on the show before. She's from the University of Sydney, an expert in all things neuroscience, physics... 00:39 And we also had someone who made their podcast and science with Dr. Carl debut. 00:45 Someone who actually came across my desk via TikTok. 00:48 Seeing them popping up a fair bit. And there's someone who can speak to all things pharmaceutical. So we did just that on this week's episode. Let's meet her. This is Kate Thomas. 00:58 Hello. Hi. Welcome. Thanks. Now, this is true. I saw you say, listen, I'm going to get Botox. I'm going to see what the vibe is. Yeah. And I'm going to show you the process from start to finish. Yeah. 01:08 What was that like? It was really good and I really like that I was able to do it in the name of science and not in the name of vanity. Yes, exactly. 01:15 You said, I want to see. So what was your biggest takeaway from that? What's something that you discovered? Oh. 01:21 Oh, well, I guess I really wanted to experience the feeling. So I sort of understood the science behind how it was going to paralyse my forehead and make me look 30 years younger. But I really just wanted to experience that feeling. So I would actually... 01:37 i mean it's in no way important for your looks but if you want to do it give it a go yeah it only lasts three months if you don't like it then you can not get it again and what's something that you know led you to want to make videos on tiktok you know because you are in these areas where people do have a lot of questions and there is a lot of misinformation out there what drove you what motivated you to want to speak and and explore this realm of science communication 02:03 So I started my social media journey about a year ago when my beautiful daughter was doing her HSC and she was studying really hard and she came down one night and said to me, can you please make me a saffron latte because this girl on TikTok said it will help my anxiety and I'm a good pharmacist. So I thought I'll research the dose because I want to make sure I'm giving the correct dose and And I've got this $30 little tiny box of saffron. And as I researched it, I went, wow, I'm going to need – this is going to be a very expensive latte. 02:37 So I ended up just saying to her, look, I think it's probably best if you go out and walk your dog. That's probably better for your anxiety. But then I was like, what is going on? TikTok didn't even have the app. Downloaded it and started – doom scrolling i was like wow it's like the wild west out here so just did one video threw it up debunking something went to bed woke up the next night and it had resonated with people so yeah okay we also have someone else in the studio who has been on the show before caitlin thurn now caitlin welcome back to science with dr carl 03:09 Oh, thanks for having me. Yeah, we love having you on because you're someone who can speak to physics, mathematics, neuroscience, but you're also kind of working in the education space. What's something you've been working on at the moment? 03:19 Yeah, well, it's interesting that Kate raised her daughter having anxiety through the HSC because that's actually something that through the work that I do with the Artemis Project, it's an education charity. 03:30 We've been looking at how much anxiety is starting to impact high school students and their capability to actually commit themselves to their educations and build futures that they can't wait to chase. But so much is getting affected by the pressure they put on themselves, the pressure they're getting put on them by schooling systems and teachers and parents and kind of the whole cacophony that goes around their lives when they're coming into those most senior years. 03:58 And it's hitting the point where I think about half of young Australians are reporting high or very high levels of psychological distress that's in the 15 to 25 age band so it's just becoming this increasingly prevalent issue so we've been looking a lot at ways and options that can help mitigate that stress and support those students so they can commit to what they love and they can actually go out and chase the futures that they want without needing this constant weight of expectation. 04:25 Absolutely and we'll talk more about that throughout the episode but what are some questions Caitlin that you can answer this morning you reckon? What kind of topics do you want to delve into? 04:33 Yeah, certainly. Well, I am physics at university. I'm still studying. Definitely not qualified yet, but absolutely in trouble to answer anything in the kind of physics realm. Previously studied neuroscience. Definitely not to the level of Kate over here in terms of the pharmacological effects, but more around the day-to-day of what does your brain do for you and what's some different things that can help with... 04:55 You operating in your daily life with a bit of a neuroscientific background. Fabulous. 04:59 And Kate Thomas, what kind of questions do you want to explore? This is your debut episode. 05:03 Yeah, so anything that you would ask your friendly pharmacist. Yeah. Shoot it across. 05:09 All right, but also remember that Kate is not your GP, okay? 05:13 Kate is not your GP. No, Kate isn't. But Kate will do a good job of trying to answer your question. 05:18 Yes, 0439757555. Dr Karl, are you ready to get into it? Ready to rock. 05:24 All right. We've got Henry in Sydney. Now, Henry, this kind of takes us back to a term that we hear a lot. What's your question? 05:31 Oh, yeah. Hi, Dr. Carls and doctors. Really nice to talk to you. So my question is about E equals MC squared. And I'd just love to know what it really means. 05:46 Yeah, certainly. I'm happy to give you a hand with that, Henry. 05:49 So E equals MC squared, obviously famous from Einstein, the absolutely written on a chalkboard everywhere in the background of every movie. But what it's really getting at is just the fundamental idea that anything that weighs anything, anything that has that mass component associated with it, has inherent energy in it. 06:08 And the amount of energy that is in matter and it's in something that has mass compared to, you know, the amount of energy that goes through your kettle when you flick the switch or something is just an absolutely ludicrous scale. So the speed of light, which is what we use the letter C to denote, that is three... 06:28 times 10 to the 8 metres per second. So it's, you know, 10 with eight zeros after it. And then we square that to get the amount of energy that we could get from a single kilogram of matter. So it is an absolutely ridiculous volume. 06:43 of energy that is stored in matter um it's fundamental to how the sun works as well that's essentially all of the energy that comes into the earth that makes life happen and consistent in uh on our planet that is coming from that e equals mc squared conversion the fact we're turning tiny little bits of matter on the sun into energy and that's getting radiated down to the earth dr carl anything to add there 07:08 So, correct me if I'm wrong here, Dr. Clayton, because you're a real physicist, I'm not. So, is it fair to say that energy is matter that's been allowed to run free and then matter is just energy that's coalesced down and they can be converted from one to the other by, if you know the right, physics? 07:26 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 07:28 And then the other thing was the Oppenheimer movie. They made the atom bomb with 60 kilograms of uranium, but the amount that actually went bang was 0.7 of a gram. So if you just get a sheet of A4 paper and tear off one corner, that's what went bang. And finally... When one atom of uranium splits, it gives off enough energy to make a grain of sand jump a whole centimetre, which you don't think is very much. But on the other hand, there's a lot of atoms of uranium inside an atom bomb. 08:01 Wow. Henry, I think that's all of us right now, okay? I love that delayed. Wow. Michelle Imramzi. Michelle, you've got a question which I've never thought about before. What do you want to know? 08:14 I was wondering, doctors, why buckets the same size can fit inside each other. 08:21 Dr. Carl? 08:23 I'm thinking this is geometry, Caitlin. Is it some sort of taper thing? 08:30 Yeah, I mean, it depends on the bucket you're holding. I certainly know some just will refuse to stack for me when I'm trying to pot around the shed. 08:39 But yeah, if you have a look quite closely at the bucket, even if it's just a very slight taper, they usually tape it in some way. 08:46 which is why they horribly tend to slop water out the top of them when you're trying to walk around with them because that area at the top is a lot wider so the volume displacement will slop it out the side. 08:58 But that will also mean they can stack and I think it's a lot easier to stack a bucket and lose a little bit of water than it is to have a more closed kind of shape to it but then that means you'd have to have so much more shed space to be able to fit them and store them. Okay, so if a... 09:13 a mug was in that kind of formation where it kind of ventures up like that is it more prone to slopping then yeah well i mean if you've ever tried to carry a martini glass uh back in my bartending years many many a day spent trying to walk around with a martini glass they're so prone to making a mess because they just have that conical shape that wow it all slops out the top so if you are someone who's ever tried to you know hold a tray of espresso martinis know that you are not alone there is a reason there's a science behind it michelle does that help That's excellent. 09:44 Thank you. Thank you so much. And then we've got Ellen in French's Forest. Now, Ellen, this is a bit of a big question. What do you want to know? 09:50 Hi, doctors. I'd really like to know if we're likely to see more drug-resistant infections like MRSA and what we're doing to overcome them. 09:59 So Kate, talk us through the elements of this question. Great question. It's a great question. It's a big, scary question. 10:06 You're absolutely right. We definitely need really strict, we call it antimicrobial stewardship. 10:13 And that is definitely one arm of how we're going to solve this problem. But also we need really good surveillance of resistance. 10:25 And that just means if we can identify, specifically identify the organism, the microbe that is causing the infection, then we can really target that treatment to that specific bug instead of having what we call a broad spectrum, which is sort of a little bit more indiscriminate. 10:41 But also remembering that, yes, GPs in the community and also in hospital, but also the antibiotics, antimicrobials that we use in our animals and in our environment are So the World Health Organization is really concerned and they are rightfully concerned because yes, they do develop resistance and it really could mean something like, something as simple as, I don't know, having your tooth out could be a really big deal. We don't think it's a big deal because we've got penicillin, but it really could be. 11:14 Dr. Carl, have I forgotten anything? 11:15 No, you put in one, like in the old days, I remember talking to some of the older doctors when I was studying medicine, and they said in the old days with pneumonia, they'd come up to a patient and say, well, I've got good news and bad news. 11:26 The bad news is you've got pneumonia, you'll be dead in three days, but the good news is your brain's still okay, so you can say goodbye to your family and make sure you do your will over the next two days. 11:34 Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. 11:36 And now it's just antibiotics, and people go, oh, my God, you know I had to take the antibiotics for three whole days? Oh, my God. What's the world coming to? And they're not dead. 11:44 We've really thrown some sunshine down upon that, haven't we? 11:48 Ellen, does that kind of help? 11:50 It helps a lot. I also am wondering, do you guys know if we're having any success with the AI scanning of molecular combinations to target these... 11:59 different microbes whoa whoa whoa whoa okay can you speak to that i don't know the answer to that i i caitlin does though caitlin yeah sorry personal interest with um the absolute wonderful work that dennis demis is doing it um alpha fold uh so it's an ai platform that actually just went and folded all of the protein sequences to with varying degrees of accuracy but gave this enormous database of how do proteins fold and what's the constituent building blocks that we can look at for various different bits of molecular machinery that are all composed of proteins. 12:37 So with that, it has made it so much easier to start doing more targeted understanding and research of proteins the various different mechanisms and ways in which proteins can get targeted and equally with being able to use those protein chains to build more bespoke drug designs and things. It's still definitely a work in progress, but that was what Demis and his team won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this year. Amazing. Fantastic, amazing work. And that first... 13:06 of AI giving us just benefit to humanity. And I know AI in and of itself is a bit of a contentious subject, but that is just such an open door for the research community in drug design and biological understanding. 13:20 Wow. Ellen? 13:22 Thanks, doctors. 13:23 Thank you so much. Some scary things, but also some promising things coming. 13:26 Exactly. You know, multifaceted questions there. 043975755 is where you can send in your questions for science with Dr. Carl. It is a big episode this morning as it is National Science Week. We've got Kate Thomas and Caitlin Thurn with us also helping out with your questions. 13:44 Happy National Science Week to you. We are doing science with Dr. Carl, answering your science questions. And we've got a couple of special guests. Caitlin Thurn, who is someone who can speak to your questions on physics, maths, neuroscience, and Kate Thomas, joining us for the very first time, who can speak to anything that you might ask your pharmacist. She's not your GP. But if you want to talk pharmacy stuff, medications, you might have called her before on TikTok. Now is the time to ask on the text line, just like Oscar from Yarrawonga did. Now, Oscar, you've got a question about calcium and iron. 14:15 What's going on? 14:15 Hi, doctors. My question has two parts. Is it true that calcium inhibits the uptake of iron in the body? And if so... 14:33 How would it be possible for the body to absorb the iron that a lot of popular breakfast cereals are advertised as containing when they're commonly consumed with cow's milk? 14:47 Great question. Can I take that one? Yeah. Yeah. That is a great question. So you're right, sort of. So calcium can reduce iron absorption, particularly non-heme iron. So that's the iron that you get from plants and fortified foods and not from meat. But not completely. So if you're eating your iron-fortified cereal with cow's milk, you're still getting some of that iron but potentially just a bit less than if you were, say, having it with your orange juice, which would be an interesting flavor combination. 15:23 But try it. I don't know. But, yeah, so I think also there's a difference between the calcium that you get from Fubinant and a calcium supplement. So the calcium... 15:36 It sort of interacts with the way the iron is absorbed through a transporter and calcium supplements. So they're a separate conversation. If you're having a calcium supplement, yes, take it away from your own. 15:50 In a different compound... 15:52 Yes, yes. And actually having – so vitamin C, so the orange juice comment, that's a legitimate way of increasing iron absorption. So if you're deficient in iron and you're having an iron supplement and if you're deficient in calcium and having a calcium supplement, you do want to separate them. Dr. Carl, anything to add? 16:11 Awesome. No, I do remember that the tea apparently contains chemicals called phytates, which may also absorb the iron. So if you're a vegetarian and you're trying to get your iron, and at the end of the meal you have a cup of tea, the tea, the phytates, can absorb the iron. And typically, you find in older people when... 16:32 A married couple, the woman dies. The guy then lives on a tea and toast diet. Both of them have phytase. The iron level goes down. And what keeps him alive is that single meal of a chicken schnitty at the RSL or whatever. 16:46 There you go. 16:47 You're making me hungry. Thanks, Oscar. 16:49 Thanks very much. Bye. 16:50 All right. Aidan and Newey, talk us through this fundraiser that you're doing and what your question is alongside it. 16:56 Yeah, so I'm doing a fundraise for Crohn's and Colitis Australia. I'm basically traveling Australia, giving people free stickers and trying to raise some awareness. But basically my question is, we have so much bacteria in our guts, can we possibly change it out or retrain the bacteria instead of taking immunosuppressant drugs to have them go hand in hand instead of attacking each other in a way? 17:23 We have tried but not with a huge amount of success. So there are various inflammatory bowel diseases or IBD. Crohn's disease is one of them. So in addition to the abdo pain and the diarrhea and the fever and the gut swelling and the weight loss, you can also have stuff outside your gut. anemia, you know low iron, skin rashes and stuff like that. 17:44 We don't really know the causes, we think it's some combination of various factors and if you start running through these factors you see how messy it gets. 17:53 So you have a genetic susceptibility, that's the first thing, then that alters the barrier in your gut that where things can go across from your gut into your liver circulation then that also can alter the gut bacteria and that can then set off an abnormal immune response which can then set up the inflammation and then that alters the microbiome and you go around and around so it's not just simply good bacteria versus bad bacteria and it's not that the immune system has gone wrong but it's a complicated interaction we have tried of microbiota transplantation. 18:30 Fecal microbiota, they work really well for something like Clostridium difficile. Doesn't seem to work as well in Crohn's disease and we don't know and there probably is not just a single missing bacterium that we can add in there but it's more of how the system works and something weird that we've discovered is that you get somebody to not put food into their gut but get the nutrition via needle and chemicals coming in through their veins, and that tends to relieve it. 19:01 So we're in this situation that we've, sometimes the bacteria transplantation works, but mostly not, and we're learning like crazy. 19:10 Yeah, okay, so it's not as simple as I tried to think about it. 19:14 Well, Kate, you've got something to add here, right? 19:16 Oh, I was just going to also chime in with if we think about taking probiotics, then a couple of things I like people to be aware of when they take probiotics in general. But for a start, they have to survive if you take them orally. they have to survive that horrible acidic environment within your stomach. So assuming that they survived manufacture and then the journey from wherever they were manufactured to the shelf, wherever you buy them, and then they have to have the same number of billions at the expiry date as they did at the start. 19:53 So all of that has to still be true. Then you swallow them and you're hoping that some of them actually get through the acid in your stomach into your intestines where they want to be doing their work they don't um they don't actually they're not really recolonizing because i suppose if you think you take five billion a day and then you take five billion tomorrow and then so after a month you'd have 30 lots of five like they don't sort of stack up on top of each other like that yeah that's um that was just my little two cents worth aiden does that help yeah no that's awesome thanks guys thanks so much for your question and good luck with your fundraiser thank you will do 20:30 We've got Lily in Melbourne here. Dr. Lily, what's your question? 20:34 Hey, doctors. So my question is, I have a friend who has grandparents in Nepal and he was telling me that in Nepal, most people have a higher blood pressure because of the altitude. 20:49 So I was wondering why altitude highs your blood pressure and also if this is why people experience altitude sickness. 20:56 Yeah, Caitlin, what do you reckon? 20:57 Yeah, there's certainly a few different things that go into it, particularly if your friend's grandparents are actually from and live in Nepal and have like whole family history there. 21:08 So when you're at higher altitude, the air is thinner. So there's less air going around, which also means less oxygen going around. 21:16 And oxygen is really important. Your body needs it to live and function and keep you running around in circles and Melbourne going to concerts. So... 21:25 When you're in a low oxygen environment or a decreased oxygen environment, there's a few things that happens. In the short term, your blood pressure will go up because of something called vasodilation, which just means all the little blood vessels carrying blood around your body get a little bit bigger in order to let more blood go through and therefore let more oxygen get to your cells and things when it's not as available. 21:47 So that's in the short term if, for example, me or you were to go to Nepal to visit your lovely grandparents and ask for a cup of tea, we'd be having that happen. And that low oxygen availability combined with that higher blood pressure would probably make us feel a little bit sick as well. And the higher an altitude we get, the more pronounced that altitude sickness is. 22:07 For people who live there and have a history there and a genetic history there as well, there's all sorts of wonderful adaptations the body goes through to be able to sustain and survive in that environment. So that includes having more red blood cells in your blood, so having more availability to grab onto that oxygen to be able to pass it around and that's what athletes who are training for high altitude marathons and Ironmans and all that kind of thing, they'll often be in hyperbaric chambers or they'll do that gas mask running thing that just looks like the hardest thing in the world if you've seen it go past. 22:42 That's all training your red blood cell availability, which would naturally be the case for your grandparents. It also... leads to structural changes when you're consistently there so your your vasodilation like the amount of capillaries and effusion within your body just increases and stays increased for people who are living long term in those environments which means they don't get altitude sickness when they wake up in the morning because they've adapted over time and over generations as well to that climate wow lily does that help 23:16 Yes, thank you. Thanks so much for your question. We are doing the Science Hour with not only Dr Karl, but two very special guests with us. We have Caitlin Thurn and Kate Thomas. 23:28 Happy National Science Week to you as we are joined not only by the man, Dr. Carl, but also two very special guests who can speak to a bunch of different areas, whether it is physics, neuroscience or pharmaceuticals. We've got Kate Thomas with us and Caitlin Thurn. If you've got a question for them or Dr. Carl, send it in on 0439 757555. We've got Claire in Dalton here. Now, Claire, talk to us about this question. You're taking us into the ocean. 23:56 Yeah, so myself and a couple of mums were sitting around having a couple of drinks and got on the subject of motherhood and instincts and that sort of thing. And then somehow I started talking about seahorses, how they, male seahorse, will give birth to their offspring. And male penguins, I think, sit on the eggs while the female goes and hunts. So I was wondering what, if any, scientific reason there is and if there's any other species that do that as well. Hmm. 24:27 Dr. Carl? 24:28 Yeah, well, there isn't a rule that says the female entity must carry the eggs or raise the babies. But rather, evolution is looking at it from a point of view of what's going to give us more babies by staying with these babies and who is going to gain more by leaving and reproducing again. So in the case of the seahorse, it is genuinely that the female deposits her egg in the male rather than the male deposits the sperm in the female. 24:59 So the female puts the eggs in the male. She, the advantage is she can now go and make another set of eggs. 25:05 Ah, okay. 25:06 We're turning it around, right? And so the way it works is that the female gives the eggs male pregnancy and the offspring, and the advantage of the male is that he's got a thing called a brood pouch, which is doing kind of the equivalent of the uterus, my favourite organ, oxygen, protection. It controls salt and water and does nutrients, and he will give birth to fully developed miniature seahorses. 25:30 Now, with the penguins, the female penguin, especially the ember penguin, has got an enormous energy investment. She lays this ginormous egg and then says, see you later. She goes off to the ocean to feed. 25:45 The male stands there, balances the egg on his feet and then covers it with a bit of floppy skin on his tummy. And then he spends two months just keeping the egg warm. That's all he is. He is now a heat machine and he's just gradually losing mass while the female is out in the ocean building up her mass. And then they play tag team. 26:06 So the main thing is that you're looking after which gives you the greatest reproductive success. And yes, I think it'd be fair if... 26:14 half the time males humans carried the baby it sounds fair claire we can only imagine thank you so much for your question thanks a lot doctors hey jared in newcastle um your partner has done something recently what what's what's their journey with um smoking hey doctors yes so my partner's given up the evades and swapped to smoke but she reckons her nicotine is acting like a laxative is this true 26:42 Yeah, I'll take that one. Yeah, it's a great question. 26:45 So nicotine absolutely can affect gut motility for sure. And it's variable between different people. And I'm going to assume when you say giving up vapes, you don't mean the prescribed ones that she gets in the pharmacy. You mean the bubblegum flavoured ones? 27:03 Yeah, that's correct. 27:04 Okay. So I think that yes, nicotine can have a laxative-like effect in some people. 27:12 Don't forget that in a cigarette, there's thousands of other chemicals. I mean, in a vape too, lots and lots of other chemicals. 27:21 Maybe you don't know because both of them are delivering nicotine. Perhaps we don't know if it's the nicotine that's causing it or if there's maybe one of the other thousands of chemicals that she's now experiencing from the cigarettes that she wasn't getting in the vape that's causing the laxative-like effect would be my thoughts. Do you think, Dr. Carl? 27:41 I've just got an anecdote, and remember the plural of anecdote is anecdotes or stories, it's not data, but the anecdote is that when I was working in the Veteran Affairs Hospital, so many of the ex-military guys and women would go off to the toilet, have a smoke on the toilet, and then have a poo at the same time. They were just together. That's anecdotal. 28:02 Yeah, no, we've always said, you know, people talk about having a coffee and a cigarette first thing in the morning and then boom, straight to the toilet. Well, Jared, good luck to your partner. Is there motivation there to then move off cigarettes? 28:16 Yeah, that's the plan that she wants to do. 28:18 Yeah, okay. All the best. Yeah. We've got Ben in Meandham, Brisbane. Dr. Ben, what do you want to know? 28:24 Hi, doctors. 28:26 My question is around mental health. I'd like to understand how some mental health conditions are actually passed down biologically rather than through experience and trauma. 28:38 Dr Caitlin. Yeah, Ben, that's certainly a very, very salient question, relevant question to ask. 28:46 There's no strict, it's 50% your genetics and 50% what they did to you. It's definitely something that absolutely has elements of both in it. Some conditions like schizophrenia, autism as well, are very highly correlated with genetics. So if your mum or your sister is autistic, you are probably pretty well going to be autistic as well with a fairly high likelihood. 29:09 Less so for other conditions like depression, anxiety, but there's still definitely a genetic factor there that influences a capacity or a predisposition to suffering from those diseases. 29:21 And equally, yes, there is absolutely an element of personal experience and the impacts of your childhood and even coming into adulthood that can foster those conditions coming up later in life as well. They certainly are not to be diminished in terms of the impact. They absolutely have an impact on creating those conditions. But it's also worth remembering as well that even that experiential element is in a way genetic too because what your parents experienced in their childhood will absolutely inform how they then create and shape your own childhood and will absolutely inform you and your children if you choose to have them. 30:04 So as much as there's not 100% a genetic component, that psycho... social element of your experience during your childhood and what mum did that you went no absolutely not when I'm a parent I will never make my kids finish their plate they're going to just say they're full and then they can go to bed or have ice cream all of those kind of things will have an impact as well and it's so interesting to see that the things that your parents may not have thought twice about have had a significant impact on you. 30:34 I will admit that's one of the things that terrifies me about becoming a parent myself is how impactful one moment can be when it might not be. It's just a part of your day as a parent, but it's a shaping moment for your child. Wow. 30:49 Yeah. 30:50 Yes, it's scary. Caitlin giving us a lot to think about. Ben, does that help? 30:56 Definitely. Thank you very much. 30:59 We are joined by two very special guests for this week's episode for National Science Week. Caitlin Thurn joins us and Kate Thomas getting into your science questions alongside the man, the myth, the legend, Dr Carl. Tash in Adelaide, you've got a question about mirrors. What do you want to know? 31:15 Hello, doctors. Happy Science Week. Yes. 31:19 Ahoy, thank you. Okay, so I've got a bit of a curly one. 31:24 My friend and I did an experiment in front of the mirror where he held a sheet up in front of him and he was moving so he couldn't see himself or his reflection and I stood to the side but I could still see him in the mirror moving. 31:40 So you want to know what's going on, why that is? Yeah. 31:43 How can I still see him but he can't see himself? 31:46 All right, Caitlin. I feel like this was a bit of a trend a few years ago on TikTok, you know, hiding an orange behind a sheet of paper. What's going on? 31:56 Yeah. Well, you've actually done a fantastic recreation of a really interesting experiment that actually kind of proved something really wonderful about how light works. So everyone thinks light comes towards a mirror from one spot and it bounces off the mirror and follows, you know, angle of incidence equals angle of reflection, if you remember that from way back in the day of year 10 science or something. But there's this expectation or assumption that light just travels in a straight path. 32:25 Very interestingly, that's actually completely not true. So what you're seeing is actual proof and the experimental proof of that. Light can travel across all different paths on its way to that mirror before bouncing off and then going to your friend or going to your own eye as well. 32:47 It's a wonderfully interesting kind of topic that I've been actually reading a book on lately. So it's wonderfully topical. Yeah. Wow. The absolute giant of a scientist, Richard Feynman, has a wonderful explanation where if you think about like the normal path light would take going a straight line where it comes in, it bounces off, it bounces out at the same angle. We can think of that as just being the most common way. 33:15 However, it does actually take all of the other paths. It does take the really long way around where it bounces at the most oblique angle into the mirror and then reflects off and lets you see your friend behind the sheet. And all of the paths in between those as well, it takes all of them. 33:33 but they're not the most prevalent. It's not the most visible way you see it. So normally we just see the straight path. But then when you're holding up a sheet and you can do it with lasers as well in a kind of more refined way, you're actually seeing all of those other paths that light is taking, almost like ripples coming out from the pond that are coming back. 33:57 Wow, I didn't know that. 33:59 Yeah, it's really cool and interesting stuff. 34:02 I had another one and it's the spoon one. 34:04 Oh, yeah. 34:06 How on one side of the spoon, you're the right way up and then you turn it around. I think it's the... 34:12 outwards way you turn it around and then you're upside down yeah yeah so that's uh it's the same phenomenon uh but what you're seeing is all of those paths of light either crossing over each other to flip that image upside down when the spoon is or con i might get this wrong convex yeah and then concave is when you look shortened because it's just the paths those reflections take from all of the tracks they could go, either ending up at your eye upside down because of that curvature or ending up at your eye right way up. 34:46 Yep. Yeah, I'm doing it now and it's the upside down one is the part where you, like what you eat off of, like what you scoop with. Yes. I'm not sure which one that is. 34:55 Yes, yeah, the concave is the eaten bit. Yeah, does that help? It's all the same light stuff. There's a wonderful video. Yeah, I thought it might be. Yeah, it's pretty cool. 35:06 Great. Thanks, Tash. All right. Thanks, Doctor. Sophie in Hobart, what's your question? 35:12 Hello, Doctors. 35:14 My question is just in regards to a condition my daughter has called pseudohypoaldosteronism. Yeah. Yeah, basically she doesn't retain salt and I'm just curious if anyone's ever come across it or have any sort of knowledge about whether kids can grow out of it or... Obviously she's getting all the best care, but it's just my little science brain finds it fascinating and I just thought I'd throw it out there. 35:47 Dan, Dr. Carl, what is this condition and, yeah... 35:50 Well, the first part, pseudo, which means fake, but not fake in a bad way, not saying you're a malingerer. Hypo means under, like hypodermic, under the skin. Pseudo-hypo-aldosterone. Aldo, aldosterone, is one of the body's major salt-retaining hormones. It hangs onto salt and water and it dumps potassium. And what happens in this pseudo-hypo-aldosteronism is you've actually got normal or high aldo but the kidneys are not responding and that's why they throw the pseudo in and so they end up with low sodium and high potassium and maybe dehydration. 36:34 Then it turns out that this can sometimes happen regularly when a child gets some sort of temporary illness, like a urinary tract infection, and then there's a second type of it, which is not the kidney one, renal, P-H-A-1, but they're systemic. So educate yourself on this, go to Google Scholar rather than Google, type in the words, and then go looking, and you want to type in pseudo-hypo-aldosteronism, and the next word, review. So you're not really reading all the little tiny articles that talk about small advances, You want to read a review by somebody who's been in the field for 20 years and then go through it with your GP. 37:11 And let me just tell you, kidneys are hard. Don't worry if it takes a lot of time. It took me a long time. And I hope things do work out and you're lucky to be in Australia. 37:19 Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thanks, Sophie. And we've got Grace in Melbourne. Grace, last question. What do you want to know? 37:27 Hi, doctors. I was just wondering, when you're on the pill, they say, like, don't really skip your period. But, like, can you and why not? 37:37 Yeah, can I take this one? Yeah, absolutely. Skip your period. Why not? 37:41 So when you take the pill, so I'm talking now for generally otherwise well people, right? But when you take the sugar tablets, that's actually not really a period. They call it a withdrawal bleed because you've stopped taking the hormones and there's no medical requirement to have that bleed every month. So yeah, go ahead, live large. 38:02 You would ask then why put the white little sugar tablets in in any like for any reason and i think the answer is just that it's trying to mimic a 28 day cycle and you can get spotting but importantly to know that the endometrium so the lining of the uterus isn't just building up and building up and building up if you don't have a withdrawal bleed so yeah That's great. Thank you so much. 38:24 Grace, thank you so much. Hey, Kate Thomas, thank you so much for joining us on the show for the very first time. 38:29 Thanks for having me. I hope you have me back. 38:31 Of course, of course. And, you know, you answer questions like this all the time on your socials. Where can we find out more about what you're doing and get some more knowledge from you? 38:39 Thanks, yeah. So find me on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube at Prescribe or Pass. 38:45 And yeah, I've got some podcasts. I've got a podcast called Prescribe or Pass. So if you like the sound of me, yeah. Amazing. 38:52 And Caitlin Thurn, thank you so much for joining us again on the show. If we want to find out more about the work you're doing with the Artemis Project, making education and science education more accessible, where should we go? 39:02 Yeah, absolutely. So we've got an Instagram account as well, which is artemisproject.au. 39:09 And our website has lots of wonderful information about how we're using the program to battle systemic inequity in education and trying to make it more of a level playing field. 39:19 Hell yeah. Happy National Science Week to the two of you. Thank you so much for joining us. Dr Karl, happy National Science Week to you. 39:25 When too much science is barely enough. 39:29 I loved that episode. Seriously, find three of the smartest people and chuck them in a room together. Caitlin Thurn, Kate Thomas, and Dr. Carl. If you want to listen back to this week's episode, you might need to. Honestly, some of this stuff was melting my brain. You can do so anytime via the Science with Dr. Carl podcast, and we've got all their details for you in the show notes if you want to check out more of Caitlin and Kate's work. 39:50 My name is Lucy Smith. This episode was produced by Ella Carter and Byron Smith, and I'll catch you next week. Bye. 39:58 Dave Marchese here from the Triple J Hack team. Hey, if you love Dr. Carl's podcast like I do, you might enjoy the Hack podcast as well. Each day we bring you the news that matters to you, from the latest science on climate change to what's happening in politics and news around the world. The Hack podcast. It's your daily fix of the news you need to know. Get it wherever you're listening now.