Season 8 Episode 6: A.I. Issues, Tick Meds, and Dr. Mitchell on Volcanoes

AI chatbots are everywhere now, and the real problem is not cheating or convenience. It is what happens to your brain when a tool offers a confident answer before you have wrestled with the evidence. We break down a fascinating study on generative AI and critical thinking that puts people in a city council scenario, forces a decision under time pressure, and tests how early versus late AI access changes argument quality, memory, and bias. The takeaway is practical for students, teachers, and anyone writing for work: timing matters, and “think first, then ask AI” is a stronger strategy than outsourcing the whole frame.

Then we shift into pet science with a topic that hits right as spring arrives: flea and tick medication for dogs and cats. These antiparasitic drugs are effective, but new research suggests residues of common ingredients like isoxazoline can persist and enter the environment through pet waste. That raises uncomfortable questions about non-target insects, nutrient cycling, and the tradeoff between protecting our pets and protecting ecosystem health.

Finally, volcanologist Dr. Sam Mitchell joins us for an Ask an Expert that moves from Antarctica to the ocean floor, where most of Earth’s volcanic activity actually happens. We talk seafloor basalt, subduction zones, disaster movies worth watching, and the geology behind Olympic curling stones made from granite sourced on a tiny Scottish island. If you like science communication that connects daily life to big systems, this one is for you. 

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Transcript

Welcome Back And What Changed

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Um Hello, science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zakowski.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

And I'm Chris Zakowski.

SPEAKER_05 0:14

We're the pet parents of Bunsen, Beaker, Bernoulli, and Ginger.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

And the science animals on social media.

SPEAKER_05 0:21

If you love science.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

And you love pets.

SPEAKER_05 0:24

You've come to the right spot. So put on your safety glasses.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

And hold on to your tail.

SPEAKER_05 0:29

This is the Science Podcast. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. It is episode six of season eight. It has been a minute since we've done a new episode. I was super sick. I had lost my voice. And then you got super sick, and you are still not 100%.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Yeah, but here we are. We're trying our best and we're ready to release this podcast episode.

SPEAKER_05 0:52

Right. Some big science things have happened since then. I feel like we haven't had a show since the Artemis splashdown. So that was a big thing. We got to see Project Hillmary. So I think it's been three weeks since we've done a new show. I'm looking back, and March 21st was the last of the last time we did an episode. It's almost been a month. So thank you for everybody for your patience. But we both have been sick for a week and then a week. So it's been it's been a bit of a mess.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Yeah, I remember us talking about like the plausibility of the science on the Project Hail Mary movie. And then it was very exciting with Artemis. We watched it go around the moon on my birthday on April 6th, and then Touchdown on April 10th. And boy oh boy, that was a really exciting time for sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:42

Our stories today aren't about Artemis, though that's very cool. Our science article that we're going to be looking at is about using AI chatbots. So a generative AI thing like Cloud or Chat GPT and how it affects your arguments and critical thinking, which is pernient to us as teachers, but also people at large. And then a study that's really interesting about the unintended consequences of flea and tick medicines on dogs or flea and tick medicines that dogs might take. That was really interesting because we are heading into spring. Hopefully we get spring soon here in Alberta, but most people are. Our guest this week and ask an expert is Vulcanologist, Dr. Sam Mitchell. So that's not from Vulcan, somebody who studies the Vulcans, which are from Star Trek. You're more familiar with Star Trek, Chris.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Maybe not as familiar, but I did when you did say I you interviewed Vulcanist, I definitely made the Spock motion with my hand.

SPEAKER_05 2:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

And you were like, exactly. But no.

SPEAKER_05 2:49

No, Dr. Mitchell is going to be talking to us about volcanoes. It's really cool. All right, let's get on with the show.

AI Chatbots And Argument Quality

SPEAKER_02 2:54

There's no time like Science Time.

SPEAKER_05 2:57

This week in Science News, a really interesting study comes from the University of Chicago about the effect of using generative AI and AI chatbots on critical thinking, amongst other things. There's been like the last couple years, there's been an explosion in the ease of use and the different versions of AI that you can use to ask problems, get help from. Chris, you sent me a story that some guy fell in love with an AI chatbot.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Yes. It was it now where I am familiar with using it is I tell the students you can definitely use it to do your math, but it'll be wrong pretty much all of the time. And the scary thing about it is very confidently wrong. When I talk to the students, I'll say, yep, it's very kind and it's polite and it's giving you wrong information. But that kind of kindness and the connection and the confidence of speech patterns maybe led that guy to believe that he was having a genuine connection with AI.

SPEAKER_05 4:12

Yeah. And then I know my teach my teaching colleagues in the humanities, it's just been like a mess because if they get if they let kids take home anything to do, like any essay at home, it is very difficult to stop the kids from using AI. Um, of course, you can tell uh based on a kid's writing ability that all of a sudden now they're writing at like a university level, but it doesn't stop kids from using it and they get caught. And so for assessments like that, they have to do them in school on a lockdown browser. So school is changing because of the amount of the intrusion of all of these different forms of AI. Now, the that all of this is important, and you talked about how math is always wrong. Science is usually it's okay, but the higher level stuff it gets wrong too. This study is about critical thinking and argument reasoning based on using AI before or after or during problem solving.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

The study actually was based on 393 participants, and they were given a task, and they were to be acting as city council members, and they were given seven documents about a water contamination issue. Now, the task was to decide whether or not to accept or reject a company proposal and write an essay explaining their decision. And these participants were divided into a timed group where they were given 30 minutes, which was deemed sufficient time, or 10 minutes, which was deemed insufficient time. So they would have to get their decision made quickly. And they had they had divided them into AI usage groups, so early access to AI, continuous access, late access, and then no access to AI. And each subgroup of the participants had about 40 to 50 participants.

SPEAKER_05 6:27

Okay. I think I would struggle with that. I don't know a lot about water contamination. Like I know the chemistry, but oof, that's a tough, that's a tough thing to try to figure out. So they had to grade their essays, and the prefem performance was measured on the number of valid arguments and the use of evidence. And then they also measured their memory recall of documents and the ability to consider multiple perspectives. Now, folks who are listening at home, which group do you think did the best? The best overall essay was the participants with 30 minutes, which was considered enough time, and late AI access. The groups with the best memory recall had 30 minutes and no AI access. And the best balancing reasoning with the least amount of bias, so that's the most balanced show, were the participants with 30 minutes of time and late AI access. So as you'd expect, if you were given people not enough time, their essays probably weren't very good. That was the un that was the under time pressure 10-minute group. And the best performers, shockingly or not, maybe if you understand the power of AI, were those that used AI early. But they, if they used AI early, they relied on it like a crutch. The AI framing became their entire essay, and they showed a lot less independent engagement with materials. So they just gave these went with what AI said. Under the gun, that's what they did. There are so there's some reasons why that might happen.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

There's two types of thinking. There's slow, effortful reasoning with deep understanding and careful evaluation of the information. And then on the other side, there's fast and automatic thinking, which you use to make quick decisions, and there's less reflection time. So the best results came in when people engaged in slow thinking first, and then they used AI to perhaps augment their ideas that they had already had.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 8:51

Yeah, AI is pretty good also at summarizing. So if they if they had their own framework for an argument in their essay, the AI maybe nudged them from a, if you're grading it out of five, the AI might have nudged them from a three out of five to a four out of five by filling in the gaps, correcting mistakes, syntax errors, proofreading, all that kind of stuff, that would really help in the end. And you're right, maybe augmenting them with different things that they didn't think about before. But the risk of using AI early is something that we in science know about. If kids are doing any kind of research or any kind of like design problem, and they go to AI without just thinking about it for themselves, the kids just automatically adopt what AI says immediately. I do a design lab where kids have to make some kind of system that neutralizes a sulfuric acid. And one year, one group they used AI, even I let them use it, as you said, Chris, like you can use it. So they were using Chat GPT, and it gave them this situation where they had to use all of these chemicals and it would work. And I told them, like, you guys, this isn't gonna work. We don't have these concentrations, we don't have these glasswares, like, we just don't have it. The AI is telling you something we cannot do. But they still went through it, and when it was time to do the lab, they were totally out to lunch because they had no backup plan. And that's what you risk with using AI too early, is you miss alternative viewpoints. And if you're given any material to read and mull over papered material or studies on paper, you might engage with it less and just again go with what the AI tells you.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Mm-hmm. So I guess as educators, we need to look at the big picture implications of using AI and recognizing that the we can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. It's out there. So AI is useful, but the timing of it matters when we're introducing it into projects or or any anything that we're doing. And then, of course, people and students need AI literacy. So they need to know when and how to use it, and also an awareness of their own thinking habits and being able to work more fluidly with AI. I guess the important question is just not to ask, should I use AI, but when should I use AI? So it reminds me of the Jurassic Park. Should we use it? What does he say?

SPEAKER_05 11:39

He says, uh, John, if the pirates of the Caribbean break down, the pirates don't eat the tourists. Oh no, that's not the one you wanted. He says, uh he says, uh, your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. Great line.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

Great line.

Flea And Tick Meds In Nature

SPEAKER_05 11:58

That's right. So, should you use AI? You can. Think about Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park. Life finds a way. That's science news for this week. This week in Pet Science, we're going to talk about flea and tick medications and their unintended environmental consequences. What? That's crazy. We're heading into flea and tick season, or at least tick season. I think we've got tick meds for the dogs, hey.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Absolutely. I make sure that they take them monthly, and I always give it to them, and they just love taking their medicine. I don't know why, but they do, and they're like, oh, can I have some? Ooh, can I have some? Because we have the three dogs now, and they all just take their flea and tick medication, their antiparasitics for sure.

SPEAKER_05 12:48

Yeah, and like when I was at the vet with Beaker this week, this last week, because she hurt her paw and it got infected. She's fine now. They had, you should have seen, plastered everywhere was like, is your dog on tick medication? It's tick season coming up. And we don't really even have bad ticks out here. Like for all the time we've lived on the farm, not a single one of our dogs has gotten a tick. And they run through tall grass and it freaks out the people from eastern Canada and the southeastern United States because they're like, if you go through tall grass where I live, you're gonna come up with a million ticks all of our body, and I can't even imagine that.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

But I do think we need to be more aware and definitely vigilant because they are migrating, they're moving north, they're moving west, they're just they're coming.

SPEAKER_05 13:36

So this is where our study picks up. Active ingredients from any of these treatments can enter the ecosystem through pet waste. So pee and poop. And as it's a medication that kills ticks, that exposure may harm non-target insects, especially those beneficial to your ecosystems. So here we go. The study looked at these antiparasitic drugs used for dogs and cats that were introduced in 2013. There were oral medications which lasted up to a month or more. That's like what our dogs are on. Do you remember with Callan we used to put the goo on her back? Do you remember like that sticky goo we would put on her back? I think even with Bunsen, there was the sticky goo, but now there's a pill.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yes, for sure. And that's what we do give the dog. It's like a timed release, but it is as it goes through, you think, oh, the effectiveness is done. But what they're finding is that just a second, there's still after a month, a concentration in of the medication in the dog's feces or their urine or or their the the shed hair that they have. And the residues from those drugs enter enter into the soil, into the yard, into parks, like dog parks that you would take your dogs to, and the natural ecosystems.

SPEAKER_05 15:00

And not everybody picks up after their dog when they're when they're out walking through the forest, they poop and we just leave it.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

I know. And now I'm thinking about that. And maybe we need to bet better pet owners on our property because I do remember Dr. Keyes talking about it when we were really questioning, hey, where did Bunsen get that tapeworm cyst? And he just talked about cleaning up after your dog's in the yard. And I got to thinking about that. And there are some people who in winter the snow covers it up, so they just send their dog out. They might have a fenced yard, and then when the snow starts to melt and the spring poo comes out, and then they do the mass a lot of poo, and then they do a mass clean.

SPEAKER_05 15:48

But that's what I that's what we do.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

That's what we do, and now I'm just thinking about that. Those residues are staying in the snow for a considerable amount of time, even if it's frozen, like it thaw froze, this year it's been ridiculous for how much it's warmed up and then froze and warmed and froze.

SPEAKER_05 16:09

So the specific chemical we're talking about is isoxazoline, and that's in flea and tick medication. Now, we knit they're very effective against flea and ticks, but the targeted species that they want to kill isn't always the targeted species, isn't always the species that touches the medication from all of this residue. The most vulnerable insects in the study were dung feeding insects, such as flies, beetles, and butterflies. That makes me sad about the butterflies. Not flies. Flies suck, but I know they're really important for the ecosystem. God, sometimes it's flies are bad. I don't know if we even have dung beetles. We have beetles, though, but I'm not sure if they're called dung beetles. But, anyways, uh, all these insects are incredibly important for breaking down waste material and recycling nutrients, which improves your soil health. So all these organisms are important for how your plants grow. The better the soil, the better the plants. Also, some of these insects eat other insects and they help control pest populations. I'm not so sure about the flies. They're like pests, but maybe. The study was done in so where they're getting the data from is a location in France. They took a bunch, they took 20 dogs and 20 cats and looked at them for three months. The animals received this fleet medication and they analyzed their poop and they measured the levels of the active drug ingredients.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

And what they found is that the drug residues were still found in pet feces after the treatment period ended. So specifically, two out of the four common active ingredients were still detectable. And that indicates a long-lasting environmental presence. And I just, it makes me think of biomagnification and moving up that food chain. Right? So the dung feeding insects may experience high exposure levels to those compounds, and that has unintended potential consequences like reduced insects' populations and disruption of nutrient cycling, also negative effects on the soil ecosystem, and what a broader impact on food webs, because it's it starts with the producer and can go all the way up the food chain lake with biomagnification.

SPEAKER_05 18:35

So I guess what this study is trying to get us to think about is that there are potentially these hidden ecological consequences for the things we do for our pets. Now, the flip side to that is you don't want to have your dog covered with flea and ticks or your cat. And ticks do carry some really nasty diseases that can even spread to humans. So just deciding to not protect your dog or your cat against fleas and ticks is probably a hard sell for pet owners. So the whole point of this is like if this is affecting animals, it's not supposed to. Maybe there's further research that needs to go into these medications. Um, and then it's the question of balancing our pet health with ecosystem health. Again, like I said, I think that's gonna be a real tough sell to say, hey, think about the flies that you might be accidentally killing. Like people would be like, What? What are you talking about? I'm gonna protect my dog or my cat. Who cares about the flies?

SPEAKER_02 19:35

But we could look at changing the guidelines to something that might be more palatable or using safer alternatives.

Meet Volcanologist Dr. Sam Mitchell

SPEAKER_05 19:44

Yeah. Something to think about. And anyways, remember fleeing tech season is upon us if it never really left for you if you're in a warmer climate. Okay, that's pet science for this week. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Sam Mitchell, volcanologist, to the show. Sam, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Good, good, really good. Exciting to be here to do something a little bit different, and I'm happy to talk about volcanoes and anything Earth Science Oceans.

SPEAKER_05 20:14

Oh, yeah, we I am too. I think I mentioned it in our discourse before the emails. I don't think I've spoken to a volcanologist yet, so this is really fun.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

There's not many of us around. Actually, there's probably more than people think, but there's still not many of us. Yeah, it's good to share a bit of that world with everybody. Where are you calling into the show from? Where are you in the world?

SPEAKER_05 20:32

I'm currently in the UK in England. Nice. So just real quick, like what's your training in science? What how does one become a volcanologist?

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Yes, I most volcanologists usually have a training in geology. That's the primary source of where most people get their training from. In more general geology, earth science, geoscience, there's several different ways you can term that. But volcanology is an incredibly broad subject. And so you actually get people coming in sometimes with a background in chemistry or physics or engineering or even computer science. Because just like a lot of earth science, it's incredibly varied, like across all of the STEM subjects. We need all of the STEM subjects. So it's quite cool because you have this real variety of backgrounds that people come from. But myself, my background in classic hardcore geology.

SPEAKER_05 21:27

When you were young, were you all into earth science, like rocks and dirt and plate tectonics? I actually wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

I think most of the people that you talk to, like if they're in this kind of field, will have some kind of like very romantic kind of like story and background about how they were collecting rocks and pebbles on the beach from when they were four or five years old. But until I was in my probably early teens, I wanted to be a musician. Oh, good for you. Actually, very specifically, I think I wanted to be the mu a musician, but also the music teacher in my high school. School. It was a very strange career aspiration. But I always had an interest in the STEM subjects, particularly chemistry and physics. So I was enjoying those subjects. But then for me, there was a turning point which was a natural hazard, a disaster that happened in the world. And I just remember being completely hooked by the news cycle for that event and just in awe at the power of the planet. And so from then I started to read more about earthquakes and tsunamis. And eventually that led me into volcanoes. So that's my routine, is more through hazards rather than through actual geology itself. But I realized doing some research, and in these are the days where you couldn't just jump on the internet for all your answers. So I had to go to the library and take some books out and take the books home and do some reading. And realizing ah, if I want to do this, I probably need a degree in geology or earth science.

SPEAKER_05 23:01

Gotcha. Because I was going to say, I apologies if I'm wrong, but you grew up in the United Kingdom. Yes, I did. And like Alberta, a similar kind of analogy is that's like somebody in my province growing up to be a marine biologist. Sandlocked, there's no ocean within two days' drive of where I live. Yeah, and I kind of think the United Kingdom's fresh out of volcanoes, too.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Yeah, pretty much where I grew up, I am equidistant to my nearest volcanoes, are either Vesuvius in Italy or Iceland. So I'm like in the middle. Although there are some very old volcanoes in France and Germany, actually. But as you say, there are no volcanoes active within the UK. So it was stumbling upon an area that I wasn't really exposed to. And then from then basically managing to not force but lightly persuade my folks that maybe we should go to Mount Vesuvius for a holiday. Maybe we should go to Mount Etna in Sicily for holiday.

SPEAKER_05 24:04

I have to ask, what did you what was the first volcano you got to? Because I'm assuming you did.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Yes. Oh, first volcano I actually got to. Oh, now I am making sure I've got this one correct. I think it actually is Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Yes, I think it is. Yeah, I was about 14 or 15, so I was a couple of years into this, like early passion by that point. And I think by then I'd solidified, yeah, this is the route I want to take. And with Vesuvius, you essentially drive almost all the way there, and then you can hike the rest of the way. And there's nothing really in the crater, there's no boiling lava lake or magma or anything like that. But you're at the top of this volcano, which of course is well known for the destruction of the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and you're up there at the summit of this volcano, and just looking down around you at the bay and realizing just kind of like the raw power that this singular mountain can have and still could potentially have today. It's really quite incredible.

SPEAKER_05 25:11

That's cool. My family was very lucky six or seven years ago pre-COVID. We went to Kona, Hawaii. Yes. And then we went to the Volcano National Park as unbelievable. We don't have volcanoes. We're fresh out of volcanoes also in Alberta. So we were down oceans and volcanoes. You could have gone to some a little closer, but uh with all respect, of course you've got to go to Hawaii. That's pretty cool. We did see it erupt. We did see the magma blind. It was unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

It was unbelievable. It's an it's an incredible site up at Kilauea, it really is, and it's been changing so much even over the course. If you take the past five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years, the activity at that volcano is so variable. But one of the wonderful things about it is most of the time its activity is very contained to a relatively small area within the summit of the volcano. And so what that allows is it allows people to experience it just like you did. A lot of other volcanoes don't grace as that opportunity. Yeah, exactly. Too unpredictable, too dangerous, and you don't want people to go to there. And the the observatories that monitor these volcanoes, their priorities have to be, of course, monitoring the volcano for safety and for the risk. But if you've got a volcano that's not doing a huge amount, or it's it's doing a lot, but the hazards are relatively contained and the risk is low, it allows people to observe that activity in a relatively safe environment. And for us as scientists, that's what we want people to see. That these things shouldn't be forbidden knowledge. It's it's it's nature, it's this raw power that I was talking about. It's wonderful for the everyday public to be able to experience that.

Antarctica Ice And Hidden History

SPEAKER_05 27:02

That's cool. Huh. Well, I appreciate you giving us uh a good story of who you are and why you got into um your area of science. I do have to ask about your trip to Antarctica this year. We follow you on social media. You got a great social media account. Um did you go there for geology and volcanoes or just penguins? Because you got a lot of adorable shots of the penguins down there.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

One of the things you can't not come away with are shots of the penguins. No matter how you're down there for work, you've got to be able to love them. Even though I'm a geologist, they really do they do have a special place in my heart. Uh geologists are usually tended to not be associated with wildlife, but we can love other aspects of nature. We just tend to prefer to study the things that aren't alive. But for Antarctica, so this is actually some other work I do that's tied. It's tied to my background as a geologist in Earth Science, but I'm also a trained expedition guide. This work for me, I go down to Antarctica, not just Antarctica, but also places like Patagonia. I have done some of this work in the Great Lakes as well, and essentially my job is as an expedition guide, is I'm taking people to these places that are a little more extreme, but I'm educating them and enriching their experience down there. So essentially, my role in Antarctica is to teach people about the geology, the glaciology, the oceanography of Antarctica and its surrounding ocean. And part of that is on ships and part of that is physically on land as well. But the thing is, I said about wildlife, wildlife has an incredible way of being able to usurp the geology in the area. Because I can be I can be talking about the most incredible story of geological history for a million years, and then one penguin's gonna walk by, and immediately all the cameras have gone to the penguin, and I'm done.

SPEAKER_05 29:03

They're they're pretty personable, those little those penguins, hey.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

They are characters, they are absolute characters. I do love them to pieces, and even I will stop. I've I fully recognize that they have taken the stage and it's their right. Also, we are in their backyard, so they always do take priority.

SPEAKER_05 29:23

Hey, this big movie has is coming out, Project Hailmary. Have you heard of it? Project Hailmary?

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yes, I heard about it, but I honestly don't know that much. I've been here, there, and everywhere the past couple of months, so I'm tending not to hear a lot about things that are happening in the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_05 29:40

My family, my wife and my father-in-law, we went and saw it yesterday. Amazing movie. I it's not really the question about the movie, it's more about in the book. They and I was wondering if you could fact-check this or just say if it's true or not. Um, Antarctica has enormous amounts of stored methane because it used to be jungly. Is that correct? Like at one point, or is that a bit far-fetched?

SPEAKER_01 30:05

No, absol absolutely. The thing to remember about Antarctica is there is an entire continent locked under all of that ice. If you were to cover the entirety of North America in a single ice sheet, and it almost has been at some points in geological time, but think about the variety of landscapes and environments and climates that just encompass North America, and that's from Mexico all the way through to the far reaches of the Canadian tundra. That variety of geology and wildlife and forests and deserts and lakes and valleys and anything you can imagine, all on one continent. Now imagine that in Antarctica, but it's all covered in a giant ice sheet. And so the continent of Antarctica has moved through geological time. If you go back 300, 400 million years, Antarctica was in just exactly like a subtropical kind of climate. So at some point in time, part of Antarctica was absolutely tropical jungle. There is a huge amount of resources that are potentially also locked under that ice, which is why there's big conversations about what do we do or not do with the Antarctic continents.

SPEAKER_05 31:22

Huh. Yeah, it's it's enormous. People don't understand how big Antarctica is. Like it's not a little island, like I don't know, one of the Canadian provinces, like per PEI.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's no, it's absolutely huge. But and then when we take people there where a lot of the exploration is on a very small part of it, there are bases scattered all around Antarctica, but I think the numbers on over the course of the year, there are only ever about 40,000 people that are on that entire continent. And majority of those, if not all of those, are scientists. So even then, they're not classified as a permanent resident population because there is no nation of Antarctica, there is no nationality. So the people there are external residents working as scientists.

SPEAKER_05 32:09

Are there legit people that have just put up a house and lived there? That seems like crazy.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Like I said, uh, most of what you have down there are research. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:19

They're scientists from different nations, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yeah, but so you have a lot of larger research bases, and there's dozens of countries that have presence in Antarctica, and that's grown with the Antarctic Treaty over many years. Yeah. But even then, the development of bases has to go through the International Antarctic Treaty. So you can't just rock up and make a house. That's not good. Although the thing is, a lot of the older huts down there, because in this early of before like the Antarctic Treaty was put in place, lots of countries essentially did that. They turned up on a ship with a load of timber and a load of two by fours, and they constructed themselves a hut and a small base for the purposes of exploration and early scientific study. So when you go to some of the older historic sites in Antarctica, they are just that. It's a wooden hut. Like some of the science bases now, the science bases now are starting to get updated and they're looking really snazzy, and there's these giant almost porter cabins built upon giant stilts, so it allows snow drift to blow under them and they don't get buried in the winter. But then you have the historic sites, which are literally these little huts that are no less than a couple of feet across in some cases. Man, wow. That is cool. That is cool. Yeah, it's a really amazing kind of continent to experience and not just from the environment, but that history as well of exploration. Humans around the planet, we've been exploring many continents and countries across our planet for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, even into the millions if you go back to the beginning of humans. But humans only started first setting foot in Antarctica in like the 1800s. It's so new. It's so new to humanity.

SPEAKER_05 34:18

And the just I don't want to waste more time talking about Antarctica. I guess it's not wasting time. I don't want to give up more talking about Antarctica. It's so fascinating. The ice isn't like ice fishing depth. Like you it's crazy deep crazy thick in places, right? We're not talking about a tiny little slick of ice.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

But no, so let's put some exact numbers on that. The average thickness across the entirety of the Antarctic ice sheet is just over three kilometers.

SPEAKER_05 34:46

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Okay. That's the average thickness. And your maximum is over, I think it's over 4.5 kilometers thick in the peak over towards the center of the continent. It is big. If you think about that sort of height, we're talking like the some of the highest peaks in the contiguous USA, like the big peaks over there. Crazy deep. And also if you the to consider that volume, if you were to melt all of that ice and put it into the oceans, global sea level would rise by about 200 feet. If you were to melt all of the ice on Antarctica. That would be that that'd be civilization. It would be 200 feet of sea level rise, is devastating to so many. So we always make sure we let people know that because it gives some perspective of just how much ice there is there. And Antarctica holds 90% of Earth's fresh water. It's locked up in the ice. So yeah, there's you could keep spouting the numbers and the facts about Antarctica for days. You really could.

Volcanoes On The Seafloor

SPEAKER_05 35:53

That's wild. So cool. Thanks for talking about that with us. I don't know much about Antarctica. I do know a little bit about different places in the world, but nothing. Like Antarctica, just nothing. I just know penguins live there. So this is good for me. On your social media, you do link. Speaking of Antarctica and the oceans around there, you do talk about the ocean floor and the ocean itself. Um, from your training as a geologist. Like what are some of the fun connections you could talk to us about from studying the ocean floor and the ocean itself?

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Yeah, so going back to my sort of background, I got into say marine science through my PhD. So my training as a geologist, I knew I wanted to go into volcanology, but then for a PhD, you have to choose a project and a topic and also the place. So I ended up moving to Hawaii. So I lived in Hawaii for nearly four years, and my project was about volcanoes on the seafloor. And so I actually ended up switching track a bit and doing a lot more marine science as part of that research.

SPEAKER_05 36:59

Okay. Not a bad place to do four years of work in Hawaii, I'd imagine.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

No, not at all. But yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was a pretty good place to go. The change from cold wet England to a sunny tropical Hawaii was quite welcome. Yeah, it's a bit of a shock from Alberta. But yeah, you were saying about these the connections for me, but in terms of the world of volcanoes, 80% of the world's volcanic activity happens on the seafloor. And I think that's something that most people just either they don't realize or they've just never even heard that. But when you think about it, two-thirds of our planet's surface is seafloor, because two-thirds of it is covered by ocean. So the majority of our land does exist on the seafloor, and most of that is volcanic. It's covered by a lot of sediment in many places, but the ocean crust is all formed, it's all basalt, all formed at mid-ocean ridges, like the mid-Atlantic ridge that runs all the way down from Iceland all the way down to the southern ocean. It's just continents pulling themselves apart and fresh basalt spilling out onto the ocean floor. So the majority of our Earth's surface is actually covered by volcanic basalt in terms of its major rock. And so for me, to be able to study volcanoes on the seafloor was like this incredible blend of geology, marine science. Yeah, it was just a really incredible opportunity to dive more into that.

SPEAKER_05 38:27

Now, my general geology isn't the best, but that basalt or basalt that is made from these volcanoes, isn't it much heavier than continental crust? Like when they meet, the ocean goes under because it's heavier? Or am I getting it backwards?

SPEAKER_01 38:41

No, that's absolutely right. So technically it's the density of the rock. Yeah, so yeah, so it's the density that matters there. And that's down to the individual elements that actually make up a magma that's made of bat, like that basalt, that is what you would get in Hawaii. It's the similar kind of composition and chemistry versus like your granite and your sandstones that are on the continent. So it's elements like iron and magnesium that are making that magma heavier, whereas on land, there's a lot of lighter elements like sodium and potassium that are making the rocks less dense. So exactly that your seafloor crust is denser than your continent, and that's what allows it to the technical words subduct, basically get squished under at the edges of plate boundaries.

SPEAKER_05 39:32

And that's and where they nudge up to each other and fight it out, that's where the big earthquakes are, if I'm not sure. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's your big collision zone. Those are those zones of subduction, which is also where you find a lot of big ocean trenches. So these big ocean trenches with volcanic mountain ranges on them. So examples being the Cascades, closer to you, but places places like Japan, Indonesia as well, the Chilean Andes, all of these are places where you can have these large, as we call them, mega thrust earthquakes, the magnet, the big magnitude eights and nines. I'm sure it's talked about a lot, you know, the big one in Cascadia, right? It gets talked about a lot about waiting on this big major earthquake that could happen at some point.

SPEAKER_05 40:21

In North America, uh, we have been told that if something happens with the San Andreas fault, the rock will save us. I think that was a I don't know. Wait, that wasn't a documentary, that was a movie. But anyway, that was a movie, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Yeah, no, wait, that wasn't a documentary.

SPEAKER_05 40:39

He just hold uh hold it together with his muscles.

Volcano Movies Good And Bad

SPEAKER_01 40:42

That's the the area of geo disaster movies is it's a bit of a wild ride. And there are to be fair, there is yeah, there are some fantastic ones out there. I won't watch them all, but you have to watch some of them. But one that I will stand by, and I think most volcanologists would probably stand by as being a relatively good volcanic disaster movie, is Dante's Peak.

SPEAKER_03 41:07

Really? Oh, cool, okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

I like that one. I've seen that one. Yeah, yeah, but purely because it's not down to Pierce Brosnan and the uh the it's Linda Hamilton. I think, yeah, Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton, the volcanologist and the mayor of the town getting together. It's not about that. It's the portrayal of how a volcanic eruption would naturally build itself up. They put it's very well done in this. You have this like swarm of small earthquakes like throughout a town. It's like slowly building over maybe months to weeks before an eruption. There's changes in the groundwater, so there's stuff happening at the hot springs nearby, the volcano, they go to the summit and there's changes in the gases. So they portray this buildup of activity, which is what naturally happens at these kinds of volcanoes. They portray it really well. And even when the volcano erupts, they again the sequence of events that plays out is also very well done. On the other side of things, I will give you a fantastic example of a terrible volcanic disaster movie. I wonder if you're gonna say the one I'm thinking of, but yeah, I'm don't know, but I'll be curious to hear what your thought is. But if you haven't heard this one, I'm glad you now have. It's called Lava Lantula, and you already know where this is going.

SPEAKER_05 42:24

No, I've never heard what is it?

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Lava lantula, what? Lava lantula, as in tarantula.

SPEAKER_05 42:29

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

So yeah, we're setting the premise. It's in LA. So, first of all, no volcanoes in LA, so that's already strike one. Oh my god, I just Googled it. Yes, so the ground is opening up under LA, and it's not just like lava erupting out of the fissures, it's lava breathing spiders. So lava breathing spiders are terrorizing LA. It is phenomenal cinema.

SPEAKER_05 42:56

That I might have to find out where that's playing. That is wild. It's got uh Steve Gutenberg in it. There you go, from way back when with from Police Academy. I thought you were gonna say the core. Have you seen that? Oh, yes. Just because it's so cheesy.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

It is so cheesy. Let's, yeah, oh, that the Earth's core has stopped. Let's go and nuke it and see if it will start up again with a ship that we've made out of an element that we haven't discovered yet.

SPEAKER_05 43:22

Yeah, that's my chemistry teacher. So that always I was like, wait a second. Yeah, it's where would that be on the table, guys? It's one room.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

It's certainly one that comes up, but for me, I guess for specifically volcano movies, lava lantula definitely takes that title. Decent.

Why Olympic Curling Stones Matter

SPEAKER_05 43:37

In our marketing, I'm gonna have to have a picture of these lava spewing spiders coming out of the ground. I'd highly recommend it just to them experience it more than anything. Speaking of something a little bit more topical, the Winter Olympics have just wrapped up, and the Paralympic Paralympics have just wrapped up. You did a video, which will be very Near and dear to the heart of Canadians that listen to the podcast on the origin of curling stones. Um, our winters are very long in Canada, in some provinces. They're longer than the summers by far. And curling is a very popular thing that people do. And I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about that. I think it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of this comes down to the specifics of the Olympics, but also the sport in general. And there's some really nice connections to the origin of the sport, one being in Scotland itself. And this is actually where the majority of all of the world's curling stones come from, are granites from Scotland. But more specifically, all of the Olympic curling stones come from one tiny island. And when I say tiny, this island is like less than two miles across. It is tiny, and this entire island called Elsa Craig, so that's A-I-L-S-A Craig C-R-A-I-G. So yeah, have a look at Elsa Craig, it's a tiny little island off the coast of southwest Scotland, and it's essentially an entire body of granite. So let's step back for a second and actually talk about what granite really is. Granite is essentially the very slowly cooled down interior of magma systems. It doesn't always have to be a volcano because there are many places around the world where magma is just sitting within our crust and not really erupt, it's not erupting at the surface, but it's just slowly cooling down. And these bodies, like they're big, they are many kilometers and miles across. But when you get a hot body of magma just sat in the crust, it just basically slowly cools down over time and it allows the crystals to grow. That's why the crystals are bigger in granite. It's because it's been allowed to cool slowly. If you cool magma down really quickly, you make obsidian. If you flash it in water, it will turn into essentially a glass. But if you allow it time, it grows the crystals. So now tying that back to this rock in Scotland, about 60 million years ago, there was a huge amount of volcanic activity in what is Scotland today. So about 60 million years ago, there was volcanic activity and volcanoes and magma all over the place. And Elsa Craig is one example of this, but it's now just one tiny island. And because granite is incredibly hard, it's incredibly durable, a lot of any other rocks around it can be eroded away. So if you have a if you have like sandstones and sediments all around that granite, they're going to get eroded away, and all you're going to get left behind is this kind of island of granite. But even then, there's lots of different types of granites and different crystals that make up the granites. But the reason why all of the Olympic curling stones come from this one specific island is because of the type of granite itself. It's incredibly durable, it's incredibly hard. That comes down to specifics of its chemistry and, like I say, the proportions of different minerals, because some granites are quite fluffy, is almost the wrong word, but they can be porous. Granites can actually have a lot of pore space and small gaps and fractures running through them. But if you don't have any of that, the granite itself is incredibly hard and it can last for a long time. So for the consistency of the stones, by them basically essentially extracting the granite from the same body, they can ensure that consistency in one, the durability of the stone, but also the density being the same. And that's really key, if you can imagine, because the curling stone can only be a certain size. So if the size is fixed and the density is fixed, then the weight of that stone is also fixed.

SPEAKER_05 48:01

And we're talking about something made from stone that isn't made like in a plant, like uh like a basketball or a ping pong ball. You don't go to a mountain and with a pickaxe and pickaxe out of basketball. No, exactly. You have good quality control in a factory, so that's interesting. That's why it comes from this island.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Yeah, I would encourage anybody curious about this to go and look up the K's of Scotland. So that's K-A-Y-S, the K's of Scotland. They are the essentially the company that is extracting this granite from Elsa Craig. So that's the company that has essentially the sole rights to produce the Olympic curling stones. It's not been forever. I can't remember the exact year since they've been producing them. I think it's only in the 2000s that they are the sole producer of the Olympic curling stones. But they've got the process on the website of how they extract out the cores and then how they do the polishing and the rounding, because they also combine two types of granite from the island for durability reasons. So that if you want to get into the polish the polishing and the rock mechanics, absolutely go and look at the K's of Scotland. That's cool.

SPEAKER_05 49:13

I can see why you don't want fast cooling magma, because if you chuck a piece of obsidian down the ice and a piece of obsidian, and it's gonna shatter and a bunch of people are gonna die. Curling would be a lot more of a lethal sport. No, I'm not much of a curler, nor do I this might be blasphemy to the Canadians that listen. Um, it sometimes is not the most exciting to me. It would be interesting if every there was a random obsidian rock somewhere that you had to throw. So basically your wild card. Yeah, it adds some RNG a bit to the curling events.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

But no, yeah, it's really it's this beautiful tie-in. I I like I love these areas where you can tie, you know, a science like geology, which may not be necessarily the most exciting science to a lot of people at face value, but it plays so many parts in society that people don't always recognize. So for me, one thing I always try to advocate for is you know, showcasing these stories where geology comes into sport or art or literature. There's so many incredible places that it basically weaves into our society and particularly volcanoes. Volcanoes have been massively influential on art. We've talked about movies and media, but like I say, art, literature, history, there's some incredible ties out there. So, yeah, this is just one example. A 60 million-year-old volcano in Scotland is responsible for the product of an entire sport. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_05 50:49

Yeah, I love the storytelling that people like yourself that have such expertise can weave into explaining the science.

SPEAKER_01 50:56

Yeah, it helps us ground ourselves as well back to I was gonna say reality, but I guess it is kind of reality because sometimes as academics, we're focused on very specific high-end research questions, but it's good for us quite frequently to step ourselves back and remember why this matters, who we're doing this for, who are the audience, who are we trying to communicate, which is why I decided to go more into a route of science communication rather than full-time academia. So I'm trying to balance those two now.

SPEAKER_05 51:29

Yeah, we do need folks like yourself in science, just telling everybody the good word.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

Yeah, we're doing our best, and there are many of us out there screaming into the void sometimes. So if you can respond in the void with us, it's always appreciated.

SPEAKER_05 51:43

That's why our show exists.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Favorite Volcano Facts And Cryovolcanoes

SPEAKER_05 51:46

Doc, as we wrap up, I do have uh kind of a fun coup, couple two more questions. One kind of wraps up our talk about science. I was wondering if you have a couple fun facts about volcanoes that you love to tell people. I would just be so tickled to hear what your response is to that.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

Okay, so one of them I already shared, which is the over three-quarters, 80% of the world's volcanic activity is happening on the seafloor. But we've already done that one. So let's go with at any given point in time, there could be 20 to 50 volcanoes erupting on any day. And I think that number is baffling to some people because you only hear about the ones that make it on the news, right? You only get that segment on the news if it's Kilauea in Hawaii erupting or somewhere in Iceland or Italy. Basically, you hear about the ones where it's going to make a news cycle, but actually there are volcanoes in very remote places around the world, so there potentially is up to 50 volcanoes erupting at any one time. That's wild. Yeah, so I really enjoy that one. The other one I'm going to go for, I think. Oh, here we go. So most people are familiar with what magma and lava looks like on the Earth's surface. It's hot and it's incredible. It's 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 1200 degrees C, but you can have volcanoes on other planetary systems that are erupting out cold material. So if you go to the moons of Saturn, or if you go to say the moons of Jupiter as well, you can have something called cryovolcanism. So these are still volcanoes in a physical sense, but the chemistry is so different that the magma is essentially just ice, it's just water being erupted out of these volcanoes, or in some cases it's like liquid methane. So magma as we see it on the earth is not the only magma that exists out there in the solar system. Oh, I love that. Um planetary volcanism is another field onto itself.

SPEAKER_05 54:04

Very cool. I forget if I'm getting it right or wrong, but one of the moons of Jupiter, Europa, I think, has ice volcanoes that like burp out ice and water into outer space.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

Yeah, so you've got Europe. So Europa has a we've not found anything erupting out of Europa yes, far as I'm aware, but it's got an underwater ocean and the curious. Yeah, no, you're yeah, the one you're thinking of is Enceladus, and that's Enceladus after that. Yeah, Enceladus, and that's the moon of Saturn. So yeah, you're right, just at the right E, but just yeah. But yeah, so Enceladus is a tiny little moon. It's so much smaller than our own moon, and it's exactly that. The it's got an ice shell, but its mantle, so our mantle is made up of hot silica, molten, semi-molten rock. The mantle of Enceladus, this moon, is a liquid water ocean that is erupting out through ice fissures on the surface, and it's, as you said, belching water out directly into space. And we've been able to fly essentially through the basically the mist that's coming through there and detect signs of organics, which is just incredible. Yeah, that's so exciting.

SPEAKER_05 55:17

Very cool. Thanks for sharing those uh volcano facts with us.

A Kitten Named Brian

SPEAKER_01 55:22

Yeah, absolutely. And there are many more out there, and I like I say I do like to share them on my videos, as do other creators out there. If you're curious about them, then do look out for your fellow geo geoscience and geology air science communicators online. You bet.

SPEAKER_05 55:36

We always uh we always end the interview asking the guests to share a pet story from their life with us. I was wondering if you could do that, Doc.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Okay, so pet story. The first one I'll do very quickly is not a story, but it's a shout out because it has volcanic ties. One of my very good friends has a dog called Sid. And normally Sid is short for Sydney, but this dog is jet black. So uh Sid is actually short for Obsidian. So the dog's name is Obsidian, which I just absolutely love. Um yeah, I love those ties sometimes. Uh, what's the joke I've seen before is oh, your name's Liz. Oh, is that short for Elizabeth? No, it's short for Lizard. So yeah, Sid in this case is short for Obsidian. But my pet story that I'll go with is tying back to my time in Hawaii, and I was living in the living in this house with a couple of people that I'd only just moved in with, and we had no intention on getting a pet. But there are lots of feral cats on the island of Oahu. Like they are all over the place. It's not surprised that you come into contact with one of them, but one morning we basically found it must have been four or five-week-old stray kitten essentially tucked under like by the tyre of my friend's car right before my housemate's car before he was going to work. And it's a stray. We was looking around for a mother, couldn't find it. And so we took this little kitten in. We gave him a nice classic name of Brian. So the cat's name was Brian, which was fantastic, although he ended up with a Hawaiian middle name and then also a Mexican surname. So he was a very multicultural cat. But essentially, this little kitten that we took in basically brought our entire house together, which was really lovely. But because of his background, he slowly just started exploring more and more of the houses around him, and eventually he became known as like the neighborhood cat, and a lot of people knew of him. And I don't live there now, I've been gone many years, but I still have friends on the island who say they still see him around that part of the community. So Brett Brian is still out there prowling the streets of that neighborhood. Oh, that's sweet. So yeah, I miss my Brian, but he was a lovely little addition to our family for a few years.

SPEAKER_05 58:06

Yeah. I was allergic to cats most of my life, and then there's a cat food that came out that helps with the allergies. So now we have yeah, it binds to their saliva and knocks down some of the allergy proteins that make people sick. Oh wow. Okay. The long and short of it is we've had we have a cat now, and I just love that cat so much. He did the coolest thing.

SPEAKER_01 58:27

Yeah, so for us, he used to chase the geckos around our house. Oh my god, heck for hours. Yeah, no, I love geckos, I love lizards, I really do, but boy, can they poop. Like they and it's all over the place, and it gets on the walls, and it's acidic, and it's oh, it's an absolute nightmare. So Brian was he would never eat them, but he would just chase them out. So he was very useful in that regard. Although that I didn't mind. Like I always have to say, I didn't mind gecko sticking around, but the one thing he wouldn't go for, which really frustrated is he would not go near cockroaches, and they are plentiful, and you want those out of your house.

SPEAKER_05 59:08

They must have not they must have made a scary sound and not tasted good if you ever took a bite.

SPEAKER_01 59:13

Exactly. Yeah, maybe he had one bad experience that we didn't know about, but yeah, he would not go for the cockroaches. Well, thanks for sharing your pet story, Sam.

SPEAKER_05 59:22

No problem at all. Um, we're at the end of the interview. Thank you so much for giving up some of your busy time to talk to us about volcanoes, geology. Brian LeCat, this has been a treat to talk with you.

SPEAKER_01 59:35

Absolutely, no problem. It's always happy to share, like I say, that I'm happy to share stories about volcanoes, oceans, and earth science. And yeah, if you're curious for more, either follow me or, like I say, look out for other earth science communicators out there because we've, as you said, we've got lots of stories to tell. We just need people to listen to them.

Patreon Shoutouts And Farewell

SPEAKER_05 59:53

You betcha. And folks, we'll have a couple links to Sam's social media in the show notes. So you're just one click away from following Dr. Mitchell. Sam from Me to You, thank you so much for the chat today. This was amazing. No problem. Thank you for having me. That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. And a shout out to all the top dogs. That's the top tier of our Patreon community, The Popack. You can sign up in our show notes. All right, Chris, let's hear those names that are part of the top dogs.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:23

Amelia Fete, Re Oda, Carol Hino, Jennifer Challenge, Linnea Janet, Karen Cronister, Vicky Oteiro, Christy Walker, Sarah Bram, Wendy Diane, Mason and Lou, Helen Chin, Elizabeth Bourgeois, Marianne McNally, Katherine Jordan, Shelly Smith, Laura Stephenson, Tracy Leinbach, Ann Uchida, Heather Burbach, Kelly, Tracy Halbert, Ben Rather, Debbie Anderson, Sandy Brimer, Mary Rader, Bianca Hyde, Andrew Lynn, Brenda Clark, Brianne Haas, Peggy McKeel, Holly Birch, Kathy Zirker, Susan Wagner, and Liz Button.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:09

I wanna see how the water doesn't drown. Let's go adventure in the deep blue sea.