Why Life Might Be Almost Impossible to Kill | June Sass, M.Sc. Microbiology

June Sass is a public health scientist and microbiologist with a master’s from Johns Hopkins in molecular microbiology and immunology. Her work connects fungal biology, public health, pathogens, therapeutics, astromycology, and the microbiome. She also runs Summercraft Kombucha, where she develops mushroom kombucha and wellness drinks.

Expect to learn why fungi and bacteria are not just harmful pathogens, but also essential parts of our health, our ecosystems, and the story of life on Earth. We talk about how microbes compete, cooperate, adapt, survive extreme environments, and sometimes behave in ways that start to feel strangely intelligent.

The conversation also covers kombucha, symbiosis, NASA clean rooms, fungi in space, extremophiles, panspermia, the origin of life, alien biology, the deep ocean, antibiotics, antifungals, microbial defense systems, and the weird power of tiny life.

Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler.

Lead with curiosity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back to Dr. Star Kid. I'm Dr. Dakota Tyler. And with me, I have a very special guest, a microbiologist, a specialist in fungal biology, June Sass. June is a public health scientist with a master's from Johns Hopkins. Congratulations. In molecular microbiology and immunology. June also has studied astromycology, which hopefully we can get into some fascinating conversations about. That instantly triggers my curiosity. Fungal pathogens and therapeutics, virology, immunology, and bacteriology. June's previous research is with soil fungal pathogens. You're an all-around microbiology specialist, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Public health scientist, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

And public health scientist. And not to forget, an entrepreneur. Yeah, June runs her own mushroom kombucha business, developing a unique wellness drink with proven efficacy and new supplements and wellness drinks. What's your company called? What is your kombucha?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Summercraft kombucha. Um if you Google it, it'll come up. Um, you can go ahead and explore my website and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Thanks for joining me, June. You are either my first or second guest on Dr. Starkid podcast. So super excited to talk to you. I think your area of research and your expertise is is highly underrated. I think that I think that mycology alone and like fungus is super underrated in terms of like public recognition for how cool it actually is. That's my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be on the show. Um, yeah, this is definitely a debut podcast for me as well. Um, also think that like mycology, fungi, and mushrooms are highly underrated. So I'm excited to kind of spread more of that that love and education.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Got you. So, and you say fungi.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

I actually will switch. I used to say fungi, now I say fungi. I like fungi. Fungi is also like in other languages, like you know, they'll say fungi. Um fungi is good too, but I feel like fungi is a little, then it just sounds like fungi.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Fungi. No, fungi. Um, yeah, I'm gonna just you're the expert, so I'm gonna say whatever you say. I'm gonna adopt your uh vernacular.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

And honor, yeah. Very cool. Yeah, I say fungi.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Okay, so I remember, so I'm gonna start off at a very, very basic level of understanding because I think that I always grew up, but like, you know, before I looked into any of these things and learned anything, and I just remember the vibes were that like bacteria and fungus, fungi, fungi, bacteria and fungi were were bad, that they were like gross, or that they were bad, or that if you had too much of them around, it was it was bad news. Like it was in any context, again, just in my mind, it equaled something that was like bad. And now obviously, and well, maybe not obviously, but um with like our microbiome and just the sheer number of bacteria that are in our bodies, which I think outnumber the number of human cells that we have in our bodies, or like something like that.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Oh yeah, yeah. I I think so. I'll have to look that up. I forgot.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Yeah, and it's like, oh, actually, there's a ton of bacteria that aren't just good that we actually we absolutely rely on to be able to like process food and that sort of thing. And um, and it's just like the same thing with fungi that there are, you know, these are just different life forms that we evolved to live with, and there are ones that are good for us. Why? So, like, why in a drink like kombucha? What is the what can explain it to me? Like, I don't know anything about it.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, what you're describing is the concept of symbiosis or dysbiosis, which is like, do organisms live well together or do they not live well together? Is that kind of what you're describing? There are, yeah, there are some of these microbes, these tiny things, these germs, um, but we have recently only in the past like 20 or so years, since like I would say probably 2005, 2010, discovered that there uh is a real benefit to having a a subset of these germs uh per se. Um so it's true. And also I would say the the path of my studies has reflected that as well, which is that I originally studied fungi and uh bacteria as pathogens. I studied E. coli and I studied aspergillus, which is aspergillus is a mold that you can get from soil, and then E. coli, you know, you get it from pork or food or whatever. Uh and uh then as interesting is later learned that those two bacteria can also actually be considered to be uh beneficial as well. There's a subspecies of Aspergillus that is used to ferment uh foods. It's Aspargillus orizay. I still don't know how to pronounce it, but it's used in koji, uh, which is used in sake, which is um used to make the you know the fermented rice wine. And then um E. coli, I believe there's a form of E. coli that is a probiotic. I might be wrong about that. Um, but so why is there's at least a symbiotic form?

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Why is fermenting why is fermenting something good? What is that like what does that even mean? Right, why is that beneficial?

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Sure. So um the reason is because it adds an influx of this type of bacteria. The reason why fermenting things is good is because it adds this whole you know colony and and population of good bacteria. But the it the the reason why some are good and some are bad is a reflection of their relationship to us because E. coli, um, you know, there are strains that have evolved to be good that are the probiotics that are you that are either cultivated or used in fermentation, and then they're the bad ones that will make you sick and take you to the hospital with diarrhea.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

And it just so I I I guess I'm trying to like I guess to answer your question, the reason why they are good is because they can uh digest cellulose and help to break down food, like you rec like you said, um, and they can fight off other pathogens through um competition and in their own defense mechanisms. So bacteria and all microbes, all tiny things, and this is the thing I love about microbiology is the tiny things reflect the bigger things too. They have defense mechanisms, so they will do things to other microbes to try to uh fight them off, to try to get more food for themselves, more space and area for their own niche, and to survive. We do the same thing. And they will do that to other bacteria that might take over, colonize, and become a pathogen, meaning that they grow too much and they're taking up resources from us humans. For example, uh yeast, right? Yeast can be um, I mean, yeast is not a transmissible, I mean it well, it is okay. Yeast is a pathogen that it can overgrow and dry up the area that it's infecting. That's it taking up the nutrients and the moisture. If you put a probiotic on top of yeast, say a kombucha bacteria, say a lactobacillus, that's like in yogurt, that will directly produce an acid that ultimately like will attempt to kill the yeast so that the bacteria can have the nutrient resources that the yeast is fighting for. So it's all about competition for resources, it's all about competition for survival and like which microbe can have the population that is the biggest, which is really like you know, we're kind of at war for the same thing as human beings and populations.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

So why are some like good for all of them are trying to like consume their own stuff, right? And like break down the food for themselves. Like when we like the good bacteria in our gut is not trying to like help us, right? It's try, it's just trying to itself consume the stuff that we that we that we're eating, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

It's interesting because it's more you're right, they're not like they're they don't have a motive or an attempt as a microbe to heal us, per se. Rather, rather, they have evolved to exist um in symbiosis, meaning that they there's a mutual benefit to both of us living together. They get to eat the cellulose that we eat, and then we get to digest food faster because they're in there, so we get to access the nutrients faster because they break it down, and they access nutrients too. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

So, does that mean that there are some specific bacteria that have evolved to only be in the stomachs or in the guts of humans? Or is it like not so suspicious?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

I don't that's an interesting question. I actually don't know the answer to that.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Um I assume that there are some that have only evolved to be in the guts of animals, period.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

I mean, yeah, the human like the human, the the mammalian gut microbiome is pretty it's quite uh it's quite conserved. Like we will use mice to study the gut microbiome of a human, right? So it's quite conserved across mammals. So it's evolved in that way. Mind you, it's similar to the bacteria on the skin. That being said, each skin niche has its own like microbiome that you can go in the database and look up, like which are the bacteria that are found in most abundance there in terms of the specific strains. But you know, it's the same kind of five strains that you're gonna find um on the both the skin and the gut that are pretty similar. Those are the same strains you're gonna find in a food product like kombucha. Um, there are now yogurt companies and other food products that are coming out with these essentially clinical grade um products, which is in a in this is a part of what I'm doing with my business, but like clinical grade products for the same bacteria that you would find in a supplement, which is going to be strains that are associated with that the human microbiome that have evolved uniquely to the human microbiome. So the answer is yes, in a way.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

So would you say that it's accurate, an accurate statement to say that life on our that that large life on earth or uh animals, I guess. Um animals and I guess also plants have evolved to fit in with the dominant life form that's like bacteria. Would you say that that's an accurate statement? Could you say that again? That the large life on earth, like the stuff that we you know that it is at scales that we can see is is constrained in a in a way by the like ubiquitous presence of bacteria that's everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

I think yes, and the way in which that is the case is through pathogens. That is disease. We are absolutely a hundred percent confined by the limitations of microbiology. The micro, the microbe, the microbial world defines your day-to-day as well as your life, like life, it it is it defines everything. One thing I will point out is that the microbe microbes evolve significantly faster than humans, which is why we can study things like gene expression from population to population over the course of like a few weeks, right? In like a microbe, we can look at that because they reproduce like every 24 hours. We don't, but they evolve very, very fast. So if you think that if you think about it, they have to be way smarter than us. Like they can't, that's why it's like they they're evolving all the time in terms of when it comes to intelligence.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Well, what do you so how do you define intelligence then?

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Uh, you know, ability to access resources and nutrients, um, ability to reproduce and like like you know, longevity, an ability to exist, um, an ability to fight for competition and win. And bacteria and microbes and fungi and yeast, they're they they excel at that. That's what they're good, that's what they do.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

So would you argue that yeah, it's like from a you know, from an evolutionary biology perspective, the the organism that can super quickly evolve and adapt to any new environment is obviously the one that is going to have over a long time scale the most success. And like, I guess why you everywhere is bacteria, it's like that's what's every no matter where you go and what animals are or aren't there, there is bacteria there. But right, and then so you know, in a sense, no matter how smart, like, for example, a human brain or a whale brain can get, we'll never be that adaptable. Or would you say that that's not true? Because it almost, I mean, humans have not have almost not quite, but almost gone as many places as bacteria go. I guess that's not true, because there's like bacteria that can live in volcanoes and stuff. Okay, so I'll take that back. There's also look, here's the crazy this this blew my mind that um they found in like I think two or three hundred million year old rock that had been like underground, they they found dormant bacteria that had yeah, just been like chilling for for over a hundred million years, and when they they did whatever sprayed water on it or like gave it whatever the food it, whatever the nutrition that that it would need was, and it's and they started reproducing, which is crazy. Yeah, that you you have the ability, they're like a bacteria, and it's like a large animal can't do that. Like there are those one, um, there are those fish that when their lake dries out or whatever, the pond dries out, they can kind of like cake up in some mud and turn into a little cocoon until it like gets wet again. But uh no animal can do that for like a hundred million years, crazy, yeah. But but bacteria can.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yes, um, yes, and they can exist in extreme environments, and that is the study of astromycology, which is like they found fungi on the ISS in space, like existing out in free in space. That's like insane.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

So is so is fungi considered microorganisms, yeah. Okay, um, even though they can also be macro organ or I don't even know if macroorganisms are sure, as a fruiting body in a mushroom, right? Like that's what I'm thinking of. Like I guess, yeah, yeah. Okay, so there are so fungi can be as much extremophiles as bacteria can.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, I would say probably all maybe more. I I I don't know, that's a strong argument, but I've seen, I mean, with the space stuff is crazy, but they've also found bacteria in space, they have both studies going on for when it comes to space-relevant microbes.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Yeah, yeah. So yes, there are several interesting things. One of them, so there was one of them that wasn't even in space, but it was in the NASA clean rooms. So the that's crazy, you know, it when when you're going in and out of space, you don't want to bring stuff with you that you're not trying to bring, and you don't want it on instruments or whatever that you're trying to send to space. Yeah, and then also you can think about the other way when you're coming back from someplace, you also you don't want to bring anything, right? Right. So in the clean rooms, you come up with this protocol that allows you to just like sterilize and basically nuke everything. So there's not, you know, no life can survive the transition in and out of the clean room. But what they found eventually was that there were a s a series, I think maybe dozens, of new bacteria that they realized were kind of like thriving in the clean rooms, yeah. Which is, I guess, the thing that we do at hospitals where like you create these super bugs that are impossible to kill.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

Because they're so what you were saying, they're so intelligent, they're like so adaptable that even if you come up with that 99.999% uh thing that kills them all, there's like a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction that survive. Very interesting. But I never thought of fun, I never thought of fungi like that.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

They could make you could make literally a whole sci-fi movie that's like a microcosm of microbes surviving in an apocalypse, because that's like how they've that how they've thrived. But yes, fungi are the same way. It's so it's crazy that you mentioned that. That's what we're worried about. Um, as like like public health scientists are concerned about um that type of new pathogen. I was concerned when I heard about the toilet issue on the um, and I was like, Why were you concerned?

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Just because they weren't gonna be able to go on the toilet?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

No, no, because like what if like when you you know when you poop, like there's you know, poop particles in the air. I'm just like, what happens to those particles under pressure, under spaceflight conditions? Do they mutate? Do they get weird? We don't know what happens to these bacteria and these pathogens. And I was just looking up the NASA cleaning, like the the the new bacterial species. I'm just curious to know where is the origin. If humans brought them, are they are they commensal, meaning do they live naturally on the skin? Do they pick them up as like, like, are they unique to that person's microbiome? And if so, why? This is the reason why microbiology exists and the study of microbiomes exists. Is like, why would you discover 26 new microbes? Like, that's crazy. I just am curious.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

That was the number for the clean room thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

I this is upon first search. I to be honest, I've not verified the source, but yeah, um, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

I think that that sounds right. It was like it was a while ago that I that I saw that, but yeah, and it's crazy. And it's like their expectation is that that number would be zero, that when they when they like check that there's nothing there, and instead they find dozens of new species because human-made species, these are not they're in a sense, they're not natural, yeah, because they're resistant.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

And what I was we were finding in the astromycology lab is when you expose microbes to these stressors, they behave differently. They there's there's different behavior. So so I just saw they said like rougher, like tougher spores, and um, you know, like what was this radiation damage DNA? These will change the microbes' behavior and therefore change the pathogenicity, meaning like how you get sick from it.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

So if you all right, so let me ask you this. Come up with with your own, you know, fine-tuned scenario. Is there a thing that you think could happen that could kill every living thing on Earth?

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Like, literally, I feel like I'm surprised that there hasn't been.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

I'm I'm surprised that there hasn't been. I'm just surprised that we like were able to survive, you know, like the plague and like the Spanish flu and COVID.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

I think it's really that's humans, though, right? There's definitely some things we can do.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Oh, do you mean like to kill all organisms?

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Every living thing.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Oh. I feel like that might be more your ball game, no?

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Well, I mean, from this conversation so far, it's starting to feel like you can't kill microorganisms. Even if you come up with a thing that could kill them all, there's just so many of them that what that some of them are gonna evolve to be able to survive what that thing is, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Because they exist in space, and there's that theory that says that uh like life uh life on earth uh emerged out of like a single spore from a mushroom from space.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Like I don't like that one, but I do think that there's there's a lot of these panspermia ones. Here's a yeah, here's a uh a single asexual spore. But that the reason why I don't like that is because you you're now starting you're starting with a fun you're starting with fungi, first of all, right? When you say spore, I'm thinking Yeah, yeah. Okay. But we know that on Earth fungi, you know, the the fungal kingdom evolves um after billions of years, right? The first things that we see evidence for are um Are bacteria, archaea? I think that the first stromatolites, which are like these mounds of bacteria that are found in um shallow tide pole areas, we have evidence that goes back to like 3.5-ish billion years or something. And then you don't even see multicellular, like the eukaryotes come about until at least a billion or two more years.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Not me pulling it like completely like dumb and incorrect theory. Um just because I believe in mushrooms so bad.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Well, no, it's just I'm just saying that you know, it doesn't mean that life couldn't have come from somewhere else. So, like, here's a here's a the what the reason I don't like panspermia as a theory overall is because you're just like you're just pushing the blame, the buck, you're like passing the buck, but you still have to figure out how that fruit like it can't always just have been from something that came from space, right? Why not? Because where does the first thing start?

SPEAKER_00 23:04

It's the chicken of the egg theory. This is the philosophy.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

It's I well, right. So it's like you can go back further and you can say, All right, well, let's do that. We can just do that right now. Yeah, yeah. We can go back and we can say that on the life on Earth was delivered, and that's how it got here. It like came from space. It's like, oh, well, where'd that come from? Okay, well, Mars was smaller, cooled off first, and so it could have started life, could have started on Mars first, whether that was abiotically from nothing or it was delivered to Mars. What?

SPEAKER_00 23:35

So that's not even what I'm saying. My I my question for you is uh, what is your like what is your intersection between science, philosophy, religion, and spirituality? I know that's probably a loaded question, but that's I think what does that have to do with what you're talking about origins of life. All of these things intersect. I don't believe, I I honestly I am under I am under the impression, I just this is where my scientific dogma and my spirituality intersect, where I do realize there that some people probably will run into disagreements with me, but um, I love having these conversations. I just don't believe that there was ever a beginning.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Of what?

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Who are we to like who are we to believe that there was some type of beginning of life? Like, what does that even mean? Do you know what I mean? How do we even know there to be a beginning in the way that we pre we if we if time time is we know that time is a human construct, like we know that we have we construct it's subjective. Time is a subjective construct, people experience time differently.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

That's you don't believe it. But that doesn't really have anything to do with it. That's like saying people experience joy differently. Well, okay, joy emer joy is literally an emotion that comes from like mammalian animals with brains, or you're saying time it's because time is measurable. Time is something that was passing before life existed, before life on earth existed, because it existed before, and that was not, and it is true that time is relative.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

This is where I'm like, I don't my my knowledge of astrology, as astronomy and physics is limited in this way. How can you guarantee go ahead, yeah, right? And that's my question. How do can you guarantee that?

SPEAKER_02 25:28

How can I guarantee what?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

How can you guarantee that there was a beginning of life and that there was time before on that there was time before life existed? If we are life, like I don't get it.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

But time doesn't have anything to do with life. Why does time have something to do with life to you?

SPEAKER_00 25:45

I don't understand, I do not well, okay. I guess I understand how there could be a time before like molecules have formed something to uh be called a life form, but I just am re I just I often struggle with this, like there being a narrative arc in the growth of life to where we perceive ourselves to be at this like complex state, and there was some type of original origin.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

What makes you I don't understand what's making you say that though?

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Wait, I don't because I don't understand the beginning, and I think it was poorly explained to me when I was like being educated about this in my early pedagogy.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

So when but what are you talking about when you're saying the beginning? The beginning of life and the bit the big bang. Okay, so to me, those are two different things, sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

But I don't even understand either of them.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

So to me, so we live on Earth now, it's the year 2026, but if you radiometric uh test like isotopes and rocks in the solar system, our solar system is like four and a half billion years old.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

So, how do you know that? Our solar system, but that's not the universe, that's not the universe, it's our solar system. But do you know how old the universe is?

SPEAKER_02 27:04

Yeah, well, yeah, we the best estimate is 13.8 billion years old. But these these are both all these things that I'm saying are I'm not like providing the the sources and stuff right here, but these are all things that are like well uh verified and have not been falsified.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

So no, I'm sure, I'm sure. I'm struggling with like the concept to I guess understand what would what would how how it's possible that nothing exists before that.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

I don't know. That's a different question. That's not a that's not that's not like something that I think first of all we know, and second of all, that I would even say it right it mo okay. I I I see your point now. Okay, so because I'm just like let me work backwards from where we're at now. Right now, the earth is about four and a half billion years old. Let's just just say that that's true. Four and a half billion years old. We have evidence of life, like obviously, we see how things evolve. We can look in the the fossil record, and you can see how you know uh hominins started walking on two legs, the older fossils they were doing other stuff, they were like crawling around, hands and feet, they were I have a strong education in evolution, okay. All right, so if we if we just keep going back, right? The first thing, period, is that we see that we can say, oh, that's which doesn't mean it's when life started, right? It's just like when the first things got fossilized, right? Maybe the earliest life forms didn't then they weren't in, they hadn't like evolved enough and they never ended up in places where they would get fossilized. So if that goes back to 3.5 billion years, and that's the earliest life form, then it's like sometime between that and after the earth formed, there had to be the first living thing. It couldn't be when the earth was forming, because it's you know, a planet formation, it's like there's this huge disk of stuff that's swirling around the sun, and most of it goes into the sun, but some of the scraps end up going into planets, yeah. And you're there, you're literally growing a planet from a pebble, right? Something the size of a football, and you slam two of them together, and maybe it breaks up, but maybe they have the right velocity where they kind of stick together, and then that thing grows and gets bigger and bigger, and eventually you're like just launching comets and asteroids and planetesimals into each other, and the whole thing is like lava because there's so much energy, the temperatures are so high. So you don't you wouldn't expect life to pop up in that environment because that's like a very unstable, unstable environment. Yeah, yeah, but eventually that cools down, you know, temperatures cool if you cool off the water vapor, right? And so you eventually you create the the the environment where reasonably with what we know about chemistry, you can have whatever the first thing was. I know they talk a lot about a um an RNA world where before DNA there was like lots of RNA that was doing things, and it's like is RNA life? Is that is that a living thing? Are viruses living? Um, you know, but eventually you cross whatever line we draw in the sand and says, okay, there's the first living thing.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Yeah, absolutely. 100%. It's making me think about your original question of like what would be an event that would cause an extension of life. Um, you know, I I often think about that like we exist in that very perfect sliver of um conditions for us to be able to be alive.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Um I I I think, you know, it would have to be some. That's why I say I think it would probably be more in your domain, because I think it would have to be something more planetary. I do think that uh in terms of like uh when it comes to like my field, I'm looking at microbes and how they live together and with human with I'm looking at life and life. I'm really, I really am looking at how does one life maybe compete over another. Um, it's so interesting though, because I haven't really thought about both. Like really, really that. And it's I actually am I'm almost I'm moving into the space of getting away from like sanit sanitation and like you know, antibiotics, I mean, and and all that, because it the what things that like typically will kill all microbes, they typically leave a little bit of you know remnants. I would even say that about chemotherapy and cancer, this idea of like, you know, this kill all, like it typically leaves behind a trace that is stronger than the rest, which is yeah, the resistance.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

Well, I mean, that's so that is sort of what I was where my question was coming from, was because like even if I imagine like the biggest possible asteroid, like something unrealistically large, and you know, slams into Earth and like kills everything, it's like short of destroying the planet, it seems like microbes would that some microbes would survive, like the the microbes that are miles down under the crust wouldn't be that affected by what's happening on the surface, I would think. Correct, and so it's just it just feels like, and we know that some microbes microbes can evolve to live in space, yeah. We know that some of them can evolve to like not be killed by substances that we make that's supposed to be able to kill everything that it touches, and so it feels like at least at the microbial level, it's almost extinction proof in it in a sense, it's like eradication proof, but and I don't know, and I'm just wondering if that's true or not. For a lot for stuff like us, I mean, I think it we could easily come up with ways that you could wipe out all the elephants, all the humans, you know, all the whales, but they will wipe us out, the microbes will wipe us out, yeah. The microbes and have tried to many times, yeah, and I'm sure we'll try to many more.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

But like, is can you wipe that? And the reason why I asked that question, June, is because I wonder if life that gets started anywhere is like set until the planet is wrecked, right? Like, if how interesting, if life did start on Mars and there's some interesting evidence that at least simple microbial life was around billions of years ago, right, and there was like a process that kind of ruined the surface. Could could it not could some of it have just not evolved to go underground? Like, is if life gets started at the microbial level, is it is it um is it like damn near impossible to eradicate?

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Hmm. I think I think it's a it's about the niche. I think it's it you eradicate it if you eradicate the confines in which it is impossible for it to exist, which is the niche. So I think about that because I start cultures of microbes, I start life forms all the time in the lab, in my kitchen with a kombucha, I'll start a life form, you start a colony in order to get rid of it completely. If you if you really want to get rid of it, you get rid of whatever you're growing it in, the niche. So I would say, you know, until the niche is gone. Um, but that you know, niches are being killed all the time with you know data centers and all kinds of pollutants and fires and whatnot. So these niches are being rebuilt and recycled. Um, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

What but would you expect, even with something like that, would you expect that some bacteria or fungi or archaea something would eventually evolve to like actually just feed on whatever in this example, pollutants come out from they do?

SPEAKER_00 35:26

They they they they often do. That is exactly what happens, is that's why you get these super bugs or you get these these these distorted or mutated um strains or things when they're exposed to these extreme environments. That's why it's important to study what is what is these when you have these extreme environmental pressures, how does that change the microbe? It distorts it, it changes it. I will say though, I'm having a thought, and I think that um I think that we are very limited in as humans in our thinking and the way that we think about life on other planets because we think in this this triad of you know bacteria, fungi, animals, plants. I I why do we think that that's the only thing that would exist in terms of its own life form? I think you almost challenged me with a question like that of like when you were asking about um are fungi kind of in between plants and animals, and I said I think that they have uh kind of their own unique qualities, but I also have been thinking about like why do we think that they would fit into that category? Because I think that those are such earthly things. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Yeah, I all I also don't know, and and people ask me this a lot. It's like if you're curious, it's the most intuitive question. Like, like, how do you know what's else would be physically possible? Or like how do you know we have this in um we have this organism that we talk about called Luca, the last universal common ancestor, and it's like oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the last single-celled organism that every living thing on earth today, if you go back and trace the lineage, can be traced back to that one group of whatever they were. Uh and right it and it doesn't mean that there wasn't other like life forms that had different DNA or anything, it's just that everything alive now can be traced back to that thing. And how many different ways could that Luca, that one I say one organism, but obviously, you know, there's like probably quadrillion of them or whatever, like how many ways could those have been different, which would have just immediately changed the step, the steps that were being taken, that would, you know, what does it matter how different it is at that stage, and maybe the differences aren't meaningful, or does it make a huge difference and like a small biochemical change in your starting point doesn't allow you to get to fungi or animals or gets you somewhere else altogether? And that's like not a question that we that anybody knows because on lot on earth we only have what exists to look at, yeah. Yeah, so it's like I don't it's who knows, but it what people I mean it is possible though, like it's one of the possibilities is that the only way for life to work is the way that it works here. That's not probable.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

That's exactly like not even likely to be the case. It's not like yeah, but there is a possibility, it is a possibility. I it's honestly slim. I mean, we honestly have a small even ability of like light that we can even see, like that's visible in our you know, spin of like ability. Like, why do we think that we can even see it? It's just crazy. My uh, my PI he went into the woods and took pictures of mushrooms with a thermal camera, and he saw that all the mushrooms were colder than their surrounding environment. And he was like, no one had ever seen that before. Like, no one had discovered that like mushrooms are naturally cold. Um, and then he built an air conditioner where he used mushrooms to like uh and he used like evaporative cooling to like cool down the environment because of the you know the cold temperature of the mushroom. So uh it was just to say, all it takes is literally a different type of lens. Like he literally took a thermal camera, which is we can't see that, but you can see it with the camera. So it's interesting because it's like there's so much to discover that we we don't know just on Earth, but this is only Earth. Crazy. I don't know, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

Yeah, and you could you know, there you could easily imagine different stars that peak and different wavelengths of light. So, like a star is basically this thing that gets so hot that it starts just creating a ton of photons, and the peak of our sun, because it's 5700 Kelvin, the peak of our sun produces the light that we can see, right? So it's like you imagine the little the little whatever the first thing is before it had the ability to sense photons. You get a huge advantage if you can sense photons because the sun is making those visible light photons in such abundance, so they're everywhere, they're like scattered all over the place. But you could imagine a star that was cooler that peaked in different in like the infrared or red light, and on that planet, it wouldn't make sense necessarily, it wouldn't be as advantageous to see the visible light that we see because your star is not producing that, and so for them they would evolve our eyes, but for their starlight, maybe that's so beautiful, and you and like how many things can you apply that to, right? Where the life forms are going to be having an advantage for developing yeah, tools, uh phalanges, whatever. But don't bees do that.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

I think that bees can see in the ultraviolet, yeah, because they can but they do that like I think for pollinating and stuff. What that that's like they they use that to like look for pollinate, like to like help them with the pot their pollination, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:29

They like see in different, and then I think that they're I think that maybe mosquitoes and maybe some snakes or some reptiles can see more in the infrared, and it's like, yeah, if you're looking for hot stuff, because you know the hot stuff is what you eat, you evolve for that, yeah, yeah. And there's no and then you have to take into account that what we evolve is um due to pressures that we feel from other life forms that are also evolving, and those aren't things that you can predict. Like we can predict if the temperature is cold on a planet and hot, then the organisms will like have more blubber or whatever, but you can't predict that um on one planet there's gonna be this thing that's kind of intelligent, but it's also getting hunted by these huge like birds or something. Yeah, you can't you can't predict what types of microorganisms are like ravaging through the continent. Yeah, um, you can't like predict the other life forms which are affecting the ones that we're trying to imagine to begin with. So people, I think people easily just if you're curious, it's easy to be like, how do how like how could we possibly know that it would be like this? But then at the same time, like as scientists, we want to try to use what we do know and think about oh, what would what would like a an alien fungi fungal species be like? I don't know. Would it be like the the fungi that we have here?

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Yeah, I mean it depends on it depends on the environment.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

Um we rarely ever know, that which is what I study. Like I study planet atmospheres, and it's like we know a little bit about planet atmospheres, but we don't know as much as we know about like the Earth's atmosphere. Obviously, we live here, and so we're we're so limited. There's this entire class of planets that we call water worlds, and that we don't know if they're like all water, but it seems like they might be, maybe. So it's like the level of certainty that we have is like astronomers debate back and forth. Oh, is this planet like 40% comprised of water? Maybe maybe it's a water world, but like we don't know for sure.

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Interesting. Is your work more like Theoretical.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

Um, I'm not a theorist. I'm an expert I'm you know in astronomy, an experimentalist is an observer. Like I use telescopes and make observations. Um theory in my field is almost always, and I think that this might be true in a lot of fields. Theory is almost always further than observation because you're limited by like technology and making observations, but in theory, you're not you can do much more, right? It's just doing emulations or something like that. So a theorist can say they can come up with like five different theories that produce outcomes, but we don't know for sure until it people who do experiments can go out and verify or falsify a theory.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

So what are the what do those experiments generally look like in your field? I'm so curious.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

So in my field, it would be like um, so here we'll, you know, we'll I'll give an interesting example with astrobiology. Um a theorist may take what we know about the earth and earth life and what molecules, you know, what gases tend to be in the atmosphere that are directly connected to organisms that are living. And it's like some specific ratio of CO2 to methane to water to nitrogen, whatever. And you know, maybe you can connect all those things to animal and plant activity and um bacterial activity. Like, let's just say that you can do that. And so uh if we imagined a planet that was several degrees hotter and had much more water, maybe you could come up with like a slew of potential atmospheric signatures that you may see on a planet that had similar life that we have on Earth. And so as an observer, you would have you kind of have like these suggestions for things that you may be able to find. And it's like, oh, we have uh um spectrum A, spectrum B, and spectrum C. Any one of those could be synonymous with life. And I can go out and I can look, and I realize we don't find anything that looks like A, and we don't find anything that looks like B. And we found something that kind of looks like C, but we're not sure because it was hard to get those observations. So we've started to like falsify the whatever model or theory was attached to A and B, right? It's not that um it it doesn't exist, it's that when we look in the places where we think we might find it, we don't find it.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

But we kind of found this thing on C, and then it's like, oh, well, maybe if we make a better instrument where we can get a like a a more um a more like low signal-to-noise detection, then we actually confirm C, and we're like, oh, the theorist predicted this, and we found it. And that's oftentimes what happens.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Interesting. It's so different from my work.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Yeah, what's it like for you?

SPEAKER_00 47:29

It's just like moving liquids with you know tiny amounts of the microbes and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Well, you can in your field in wet labs, you can do stuff. Like, yeah, we can't, I can't do stuff.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

Like, I can't that's why I'm like, how do you how do you do that when it's so far away? I'm it's right in my face.

SPEAKER_02 47:50

Yeah, yeah. So in my yeah, so I guess it's like in in fields where you can like get your hands dirty and you can like, oh, I what if we put more of this solution in, or you can sort of like quickly find those things out. Yeah, but for us, it's like we're always limited basically to what type of light we can detect. And if the thing that we're looking for, oh interesting, if the thing that we're looking for doesn't show up in some way in a light signature or the lack of a light signature, then it's not it's not like clear that we'll ever be able to to find it.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Okay, that'll make sense.

SPEAKER_02 48:30

Yeah, so astronomers do have to be very clever in that way, astronomer, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Okay, that makes sense, yeah. Yeah, so is it is a life full of yours to go to space?

SPEAKER_02 48:42

Nah, it never was. Um, but I will say that when I saw Artemis 2, when I saw those guys sitting in the thing ready to launch off in the launch pad, I got I was like, that is so cool. Yeah. So I think I would like to, but you know, I take a look at these astronauts' resumes, and it's like I don't know how people are even competing, honestly, with with their with that resume. So I don't know, would you ever go to space?

SPEAKER_00 49:19

I I don't think I'm fit for it. I don't think that's my background, but uh I guess like it's I'm I'm an earth studier, I study earth and earth beings.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

You don't have to a lot of the astronauts don't study space.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

Really?

SPEAKER_02 49:35

Yeah, in fact like get trained. I don't even think astrophysicists ever go to space.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

Interesting, they just like study it in the academic sense. I mean, yeah. I think I don't know. I mean, like, I'll I'll let somebody else take the space opportunity. I I'm I'm cool with it. I I think it'd be cool, but like I'm okay, you know, like I would be totally fine if I never went to space. Um you wouldn't even want to go up and do like um experiments, like I would potentially, but I would way rather go into a submarine.

SPEAKER_02 50:09

Where you're guaranteed to get smashed into a paste.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

No, I just I'm so curious about the underwater world. Like that shit fascinates me. I honestly I was very close to switching to via um a marine biology major, and then I was like, that's so impractical. I'm just gonna do microbiology because I can get a real job. Um, but to be honest, I still have a fantasy of being uh a marine biologist. And actually, when I came here, I I was kind of like looking into marine microbiology. Um, it there's a lot of work that Johns Hopkins does with the Chesapeake Bay looking at water quality, um, looking at like aquatics. But I do think that there's just so much of the the ocean world that is unexplored. I mean, I know that. Um, I trust the physicists and the engineers to be making better submarines. And when the time is right, put me in there. I'll go. I'll I'll go. And I will not in the way that they did it in that like nothing. Did you watch that documentary one? Uh no, I didn't, but um, I've seen it all about it, and you know, I crazy.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

Crazy. Yeah, they cut all the corners with that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

You can't do that. Uh but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

I I do I think that that is very it's you know, um technically, it is I think much more difficult to go down, especially if you're gonna put somebody down there and try to study stuff because it's so far down, the pressure is so incredibly high, it's dark, light doesn't get down there, the water is freezing cold. It's usually like in the deepest parts, it's like just above freezing. Um so it's like, yeah, it's a it's a it's a mystery. I mean, what is the stat? It's something that uh, well, it's that more people have walked on the surface of the moon than have been down to like the bottom of the uh uh Mariana's trench or oh okay, something like that. Probably and then there's like a huge swath of the ocean that has been um just unexplored, largely unexplored, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

Just and it's like I just don't I don't get it. I don't get why people don't care more and have a fascination about that. I guess probably because it's impractical, it doesn't pay.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

That's a part of it, but in a way though, I think we could argue that it's the most practical thing because the more and more that we learn about the ocean, the more that we find out that it's actually tied to our longevity and well-being in ways that we never knew.

SPEAKER_00 52:51

Oh, tell me about that. I'm not I'm not aware.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

Yeah, so well, first of all, most of the oxygen that we breathe that has ever been breathed by anything on earth is produced by um cyanobacteria and phytoplankton.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_02 53:08

Stuff that lives in the ocean, right? There's also uh liquid water ocean is also one of the best ways to pull out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and it kind of like dissolves into the water, and it can even get locked away in rocks at the bottom of the ocean, and it's like that's that's a critical part of keeping a stable climate on a planet, it's regulating the carbon dioxide, not letting it build up too much, but then also not letting it get too low. Um that makes sense, right? And then when you think about um the food chain overall and how that's tied to animals in the ocean, and I guess not even just animals, but to all to all life in the ocean. And you know, again, considering that three-fourths of the surface of the earth is cut is water. Yeah, so it's like it's having these huge effects on uh modulating the temperature and the climate, and they're like hunting, you know, they they recently signed in you the US. Well, actually, uh let me ask you, let me ask you this. Recently, there are a number of countries that sign this agreement that I think within the next decade they're gonna try to set aside 30% of the land on earth and 30% of the ocean uh to be completely conserved. Like you can't go fishing in it and depleting it. Um there's one there's one big country that didn't sign it. Who do you think it is?

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Uh the United States. It's the United States. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm a hundred percent sure.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

Oh god, it's easy because it's like, yeah, I guess it's not a surprise from this administration.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

I'm not surprised. They hate science, hate it, they hate it, they hate it. Yeah, um, yeah. Oh, god, yeah. I mean, yeah, some somebody needs to do it. Yeah, somebody people are doing it, they're just not paying, nobody's funding it.

SPEAKER_02 55:29

Yeah, well, yeah, they're trying not to fund anything. Pretty, they just they're pretty hell bent on like funding AI. Yeah, it seems like they keep signing bills to fund that. Um funding this stuff, yeah. Funding this repainting the reflecting pool in DC. Right. Um, like what the hell? Like, come on. Yeah, and like insane. What do you mean you don't know if you paint the bottom of the pool dark color, it's gonna get hotter? That's what this is like this is like you know, science 101.

SPEAKER_00 56:01

Yeah, no, insane.

SPEAKER_02 56:05

Insane. Okay, so I had uh I had one more thing. I know we're like at time, are you good? Yeah, okay. We I wanted to talk about um the way that or or I guess something that was a bit of a um revelation for me to to to to understand is that a lot of the um like medicinal things that that we use we do we actually derive from like plants, bacteria, and fungi. Yeah. And like penicillin, which is a type of fungus called something, right? Forget what it's called.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

I mean it's called penicillium.

SPEAKER_02 56:52

Oh, it's called penicillum.

SPEAKER_00 56:53

Okay, yeah, I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_02 56:54

That makes sense. Um is uh it is like very important for its antibacterial properties, but it's literally just I always I think when I was I think just intuitively growing up, I thought that there were scientists in a lab just creating little, I don't know, serums that would just kill kill bacteria or whatever. They are, but they're taking it from other ants, they're but they're really not though.

SPEAKER_00 57:22

Well, so what they do is they'll find it in an ant in like an organism and then try and then bioprocess it and recreate it that way, right, which is different. That's scale from many that's manufacturing scale. But in terms of discovery, there are multiple ways, but there are people creating little serums to do discovery as well. But that the penicillin was um discovered in the early 1900s by accident in a lab, yes, when they were culturing stuff, um, because it just overgrew over some of the bacteria, and they noticed that it the bacteria did not grow with this area where penicillin was expressing this um excrement. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:01

And why you know why is that what is it about fungi that it makes it so good at killing bacteria?

SPEAKER_00 58:16

Uh I mean it's different things. I mean, you you would ask, you'd say different different like compounds. Um to be honest, like that's a hard question to answer because I think there are different reasons. I will say that fungi have a different biologic, they have different like biological mechanisms than bacteria. Um they behave differently, they have different cell walls, um, they've evolved differently, they're dimorphic, meaning they can switch between like different forms of existing, if that's like a filament or like a yeast bud. Um, they can have fruiting bodies, like they're very dynamic, they can kind of switch and do different things, which bacteria can do a little bit too. They're a little bit more limited in their way of doing that. Uh, but it depends on them, it depends on the organism. But I guess the example of penicillin would be um, what was it? It would be called the the virulence factor. And I would say that that's specific to the organism. Oh, beta lactamase. That's what I remember studying. I had to study that for biochemistry. I had to study the structure.

SPEAKER_02 59:26

So there's so there's like nothing necessarily specific about about fungi, like maybe there's there's some that bacteria that are good at killing fungus, maybe. Or maybe there's some yeah, that is the case. Like, what is an antifungal? Is that something that we derive from plants? Or is that something we derive from bacterium?

SPEAKER_00 59:49

Yeah, so the statin group, amphocerotin B, which is a pretty common one, that was discovered from a bacteria. The azoles are this which have ergosterols, um that was huh. I think it's a chemical structure of the cell membrane that's like changed, and then uh another one also blocks cell wall building. But yeah, discover from bacteria or other fungi. Um interesting. Sometimes, or it's like a biochemical discovery, like what you're saying, and they're cooking up a serum where they're literally looking at the chemistry and trying to see what needs to be changed about how that could potentially disrupt the life cycle of the cell.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:40

It's almost like reverse engineering and a piece that will all yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:47

We listen, biologists are way too smart about this type of stuff. Um, this is part of why I didn't really want to go into genomics. It's super complicated. But like when you get into um antibiotics and um medications and things that are gonna kill the living organism, um, I did study this a quite a bit, but just mostly like overview. Um, it's mostly interrupting the life cycle. So, like doing like creating a molecule that's gonna interrupt replication, so it can't replicate, disrupting the cell wall, something that's gonna break apart the cell wall, which is typically held together pretty tightly. Um, usually they're like, you know, lipid molecules that are held together really tightly. You'll need something like a glycerin or something that's gonna like disrupt the cell wall, um, or um they make it so that the the microbe um uh yeah, it's usually like they can't reproduce or they kill the microbe somehow. But there's like different ways that you can either that you can violent engineer chemicals and molecules to disrupt that pattern. But that's also when I said like defense mechanisms that the microbes will have against each other. That's what that, that's what they're doing. They're they're the microbe is is uh the microbe has essentially learned uh what they can express, a metabolite, essentially a molecule, a chemical that they can output from their cell wall to then write to they they do it and then they they you know the the other microbes don't are not present competing in the area. I will say that fungi have these things called extracellular vesicles. Bacteria have them too. Well, actually, it was primarily thought that bacteria it was only bacteria that have them. And they're they are the excretions that they put out um that are things that will go and kill other bacteria. They also have this other thing that's really cool called quorum sensing, uh, which is that ability to use molecules to like almost like boomerang sense what is around them so they can uh then spit out the right defense mechanisms. So they're they're they're very smart in that way. That's why I say this intelligence. It's like we think that we're intelligent when they've evolved, they evolved way fast, they evolve actively faster than us.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:00

Yeah. Interesting. But very, but very simply though. Or no.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

No. That's the thing, is that we think that it's simple, but it's actually not because like then we ask, like, why did this person get this crazy freak strain of strep throat? You know, it's because that bacteria has evolved to have a very specific defense mechanism to make sure that it has survived longer. I got strep throat uh a lot as a kid, and I took penicillin over and over, which is the primary treatment. I remember I just started working in my antibiotic resistance lab in college, and I got strep throat again from like randomly, um, and took penicillin, took the whole course, and it came back worse. I got a high fever and I was like coughing of blood.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:50

You were patient, you were aging or uh patient zero. Agent you were creating the super bug in your throat.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:57

I created COVID and I didn't tell anyone, and that's when I went into public health. So, yeah, origin story. Actually, um, the crazy don't eat ice cream while you have um a bacterial infection because I I ate ice cream, put it back in the freezer, ate it a month later, and like basically like reinfected myself. Yeah. Same thing with like toothbrushes and stuff. But no, I took penicillin, didn't work, came back, I was sicker, and I was like, I think I have a resistant infection. Never, I should have known I shouldn't have said that to a doctor. They were like, What are you talking about? Like, that's does that's not a thing, that doesn't exist. And I was like, that's funny because I'm actually in a lab that studies that. Uh, but um uh they said that that wasn't really a thing, and I was like, I can literally I'm looking up on the internet like it's a thing. Um it was kind of wild to me that that wasn't really recognized at the time. This was like pre, this was right before COVID. But uh they gave me a different medication and I ended up being actually allergic to it. I had to stop taking it after three days, but that was enough to kill the um bacteria, and I didn't have strep anymore. But um strep is dangerous. People can get very severe cases if they have like any predisposition or they're immuno-compromised. But the the the reason why I say that is because I was actually penicillin resistant, because I took penicillin and it literally didn't work. Um so in the bacteria were I had a worse infection after finishing the course. Um that's because essentially the strep strain that I had had adapted defense mechanisms so they could fight off or they could survive through what the penicillin was um doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:34

Yeah, yeah. That's it's wild that it's like doing that inside. So, like, but is it that it's doing that inside of you, or is it that you caught a strain that all the people that have been taking penicillin have like been piece by piece training it to be like more, and then by the time it finally reaches you, it's like this. It was already like locked in and there was no hope that penicillin was going to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:03

So it's it's quite possible that I could have acquired some type of like crazy strep resistance strain from um a friend, which I believe it was. Uh it is also possible that I could have developed a resistance because I had strep throat so many times as a kid and was treated over the course of time with penicillin.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:22

You're like a factory for strep.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:24

Well, so this is but this is a RD. Yeah, but this is this is a very common thing when it comes to recurring chronic diseases. This happens with yeast infections, it happens with almost any microbial disease that is not a virus. Um, where oh, where uh uh if you take a medication over and over again enough, the microbe is gonna just learn. Yeah, they're gonna keep they're gonna that's not gonna work.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:50

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting. It's so interesting because I think that that like that keeps me bringing me back to just this thought that if life can get started and get complex enough, then maybe like as complex as a bacteria, for example, then maybe it can keep itself, it can like f potentially find a way to keep itself going.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:21

Right, which is why I ask about the origins, because it's it's interesting, like it that would make me almost think, oh, are we complex enough to be at the at that space? But if I think that I have to think like, how am I who am I to think that our universe is the only one where that would be the case?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:38

The only universe? Yeah, what do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:42

I just I know that there are other other universe. It seems like there are probably other universes with life forms that are more complex than ours, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:49

There's probably more complex life forms in our universe.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:53

Sure, okay, but yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

I guess like if you go to another universe, then it's like, are the laws of physics the same? Is it different? Do we know like I don't even know, like we didn't even know.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:04

I don't know either.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:05

We don't know if the laws of which is a crazy thing to think about. We don't know if the laws of physics are specific to our universe and like outside of it, like if you could just you know, hype thought experiment, if we had a device and could just like punch a hole in the universe and like get out of it. What I don't know what that means, but like whatever that means, you cross it and you're no longer in our universe. Maybe you're in another universe, maybe you're in like an a nothing. I didn't like I don't know what that means. Do the laws of physics work there? Like, what happens to your body that's made of protons and neutrons and electrons, right? If physics doesn't work, like do they do protons even exist right outside of our universe? Like, is it possible? And we don't know, like we literally have no idea. We don't like we don't know the answer.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:56

Damn, that's why I chose biology because we have like all these laws and rules about things that can and can't exist, so it's very easy to understand within that world. Oh, what is it and isn't possible, and you can actually dose it out in an experiment, you know. But when you get into your realm, that shit's scary, and that's where I kind of start having very I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, we you know, who knows?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:21

Philosophical. Hopefully, one day we will find other life outside of the earth, and then we can at least like take biology to the next level where we start to learn the learn if the rules are the same. Are they the are like the laws that we found in biology, are they like, you know, can we check those off somewhere else? Or is it different? Like on you know, one of the uh subsurface oceans on a moon in the outer solar system. Is like does that life obey our biology rules, or is it different? I think it would be cool if it I think either answer would be cool if it was yeah similar or different. If it was similar, then I think that we could we could probably start like guessing at what life is really is accurately like in other places, but if it was different, then I think it's like we just throw our hands up and it's like, oh yeah, anything goes type of thing. Wow, well, it has been great talking to you. I mean, I love nerds. Yeah, this is great, very interesting. Yeah, I appreciate you coming on.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:25

I appreciate being on. This is great. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:28

Yeah, yeah, you're very cool. Um, do you want to where can where can people find you? They want to follow me. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:37

Um, you can find me on TikTok ranting about random stuff. Some of it's science related, some of it's not. Um at June.ok. Um, yeah, you could my personal Instagram or my business Instagram, um, both of which are fun. Um, but um for now, TikTok is where you would find more kind of verbal science content. Um, love talking about new new science stuff. Um, but yeah, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:04

Absolutely. Um, so anybody that wants to check out your mushroom kombucha.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:10

Oh, yes. Um, go to just uh Google Summercraft kombucha. My website and my Instagram will come up. Um, my email is also on there. Feel free to reach out with any questions or anything. I also do custom batches, um, which is really fun, where you can get like a curated mushroom or non-mushroom kombucha flavor specific to you. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:30

And I'm this is out of my own curiosity. What is it like? Give me, explain to me the like the benefits of mushroom kombucha specifically. Because I'm not familiar with mushroom kombucha and like what the because that's like a a mix of fungi and bacteria, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:47

Yeah, it is. It's the holy trinity, really. It's um, you know, plants, uh, bacteria, and fungi all together. Uh, I honestly created it in my kitchen um just like as a hobby. Um, found it to be really fun to play with, really delicious. It's fermented whole food mushrooms. I typically use the functional ones. So reishi, chaga, uh, quartips. Um, I recently made a lobster mushroom strawberry blend that was really nice. Um, but um yeah, the benefits are um adaptogenic bioactive compounds. So mushrooms, like we talked about, can be pathogens, but they can also be medicine. And like uh we honestly haven't spent a lot of RD time, money, and resources really pumping out uh understanding the the compounds that are in um mushroom comp like mushrooms when we break them down in different ways, use different extraction methods to get um um these these molecules. Uh part of what I'm doing is like using fermentation as a tool to do that um and look at some of the bioactive compounds and see how they impact how they impact like immune cells through food and not so much through like high alcohol concentrated tinctures. Um the benefits have been studied and shown to be um like immune impacting. They they impact they all mushrooms impact the immune system in like different ways. Um Rishi is known to be more calming, and I know it stimulates uh cytokine production. Um Lion's mane, I think it's more of like the brain and like the um kind of um like some of the neurosystems. Um chaga is really good for the heart. Um, but yeah, they all have kind of different benefits. They're they're researched in herbal medicine capacities, large studies, but like part of what I aim to do is answer that question a little bit more acutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:45

Yeah, that's awesome. That's dope. I think that's very, very cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:49

All right. Well, thanks again. It's been great.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:52

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:54

Cool. Um, and as always, lead with curiosity.