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You're listening to shortwave. From

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Your waivers Regina Barbara here and this

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else ha ha ha for let me

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hang out again always any time and

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and nail Oza handle Hi. Gina Always

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always we're going to share three sign stories

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and the news that have caught our attention

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recently and I hear one of the stories

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is about a new satellite that tracks climate

0:49

warming emissions from the oil and gas industry.

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Yep and another one is about a sense

0:54

of rhythm that shared among cultures all over

0:56

the world and. One story about a

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fish that uses electricity to communicate in

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2:22

right, Elsa, as our guest, which topic do

2:24

you wanna start with? What calls to you

2:26

the most? Well, I'm kind of into all

2:29

of them, but thank you. I

2:31

really, really have a bias towards little fishies.

2:33

Sure, so the other day I took a trip

2:35

up to a lab over at Columbia University to

2:38

see these funky looking fish. They are called elephant

2:40

nose fish because they have these long noses and

2:42

elongated bodies. Oh, how cute. I know. The

2:44

researchers have this whole wall of them where they are

2:46

separated in big dark tanks. And I was kind

2:48

of struggling to see them, but these fish have no

2:51

problem with it because they actually use electricity to sense

2:53

the environment around them. Whoa,

2:55

so we're talking like electric fish,

2:58

but they don't shock themselves, right? Well,

3:01

I mean, these fish can send out weak

3:03

electric signals from their tails and they can

3:05

pick up these electric signals from these sensors

3:07

all over their body. And to answer your question, Elsa,

3:09

these signals are weak enough that they don't shock each

3:11

other or other animals. One of the researchers in the

3:14

lab actually told me he'll sometimes stick his finger in

3:16

the tank and play with these fish. This

3:19

is not the same as sticking your finger in

3:21

a socket, I trust. I hope not. No. And

3:24

while I was there, he stuck this electric sensor in

3:26

the tank too to get an idea of all of

3:28

that electrical activity going on. Here's what that sensor was

3:30

picking up. Oh

3:34

my God. It sounds like staticky socks

3:36

out of the laundry. So

3:39

do we know why they do this? Yeah,

3:41

these fish come from Africa where they live

3:43

in really murky rivers where it's tough to

3:45

see very far. So by putting out these

3:48

electrical signals and seeing what they bump up

3:50

against, these fish can much more easily navigate

3:52

around this really cloudy water. Think of it

3:54

like echolocation, but with electricity. And

3:56

these researchers at Columbia University have now discovered

3:59

that these fish... can team up and combine

4:01

their electric fields to sense a much wider

4:03

area than they could alone. And they wrote

4:05

about it this week in the journal Nature.

4:07

That is so cool. So they're like coordinating.

4:09

But how? Like how do these fish all

4:11

network together like that? Yeah. So imagine each

4:13

of these fish is sending out an electric

4:15

field around them. And if they swim near

4:17

each other in a group, they create one

4:19

huge electric field and they can tap into

4:21

this. And once a predator or something enters

4:24

that field, the fish will know instantly. Yeah.

4:26

And the researchers told me that these

4:28

fish's brains are organized completely different from

4:30

our human brains. And this weird brain

4:32

architecture might help the fish interpret this

4:34

huge storm of electrical signals coming in.

4:37

Okay. So next up, you

4:39

say we've got a story about rhythm from

4:41

around the world. Yeah. So Elsa, it turns

4:43

out that we all have rhythm, but not

4:45

all the same rhythm. Oh yeah. I see that

4:48

on the dance floor all the time. Yeah. And

4:50

so I'm going to do a little audio experiment with

4:52

you, Elsa. I want you to listen to this and

4:54

I want you to try to match the beat pattern

4:56

by clapping once you've heard it. Okay. This

5:05

totally reminds me of how one

5:07

of my ex-boyfriends would try to clap to like

5:10

a band. Right. Like he kind of gets it, but he's always

5:12

a little bit off. All right. Okay. All right. All right. All

5:14

right. Wait, hold on. Hold on. Let me try to recreate that.

5:20

Let me keep going. No, I could do this

5:22

the whole rest of the episode. Well,

5:25

like, I mean, I can hear your

5:27

clapping. It seems pretty close, right? So

5:29

like the researchers did this like over

5:31

and over again with participants in this

5:33

recent study and they played subjects, this

5:35

like funky irregular rhythm with beat space

5:37

at sort of like random intervals. And

5:40

then they would have the subjects respond and usually

5:42

they would respond with this like more evenly spaced

5:44

rhythm. And at the end, it sounded more like

5:47

this. Exactly.

5:55

Right. Yeah. Like steps

5:58

of triples. Okay,

6:01

so it's almost like our brain is trying

6:03

to impose order on disorder, like

6:05

tidy things up. Yeah, exactly. And

6:08

it's not just that we hear simple patterns.

6:10

The scientists found that when we hear something

6:12

kind of random, we instinctively impose a structure

6:14

on it that sounds musical and a little

6:16

rhythmic. That is so cool. And

6:19

this varies across all cultures. So

6:21

the researchers looked at people across

6:23

15 different countries in Bolivia, Botswana,

6:25

India, Mali, indigenous populations in the

6:27

Amazon, and of course college students

6:29

in Boston. And they wrote

6:32

about it in the journal Nature Human

6:34

Behavior. And across cultures, there was always

6:36

this tendency to take these more random

6:38

beat sequences and put them into a

6:40

simpler, more ordered rhythm. But those rhythms

6:42

varied by culture. So for example, dancers

6:44

and musicians in Mali who performed this

6:46

kind of music. When

6:53

the researchers did the experiment with them, they instinctively came

6:55

up with a rhythm that kind of sounded like the

6:57

structure that they already used to. That

6:59

held up for participants across the globe. That's

7:01

so fascinating. But despite these cultural differences,

7:04

there seemed to be this like universal

7:06

bias towards a more simple structured rhythm

7:08

instead of the original random samples they

7:10

heard. So our brains yearn for simplicity.

7:13

Well, I mean, researchers have a theory,

7:15

which is that this could be a

7:17

huge advantage for passing songs from one

7:19

performer to the next. Because if the

7:22

first performer makes a few rhythmic mistakes,

7:24

the second performer will probably hear it

7:26

the way it was intended to sound

7:28

and play it without mistakes. So this

7:31

phenomenon could have helped our ancestors pass on

7:33

rhythms and songs and keep traditions going. That

7:36

is so cool. Yeah, I think so. All

7:39

right, I'm going to move on to

7:41

our last topic, a satellite that tracks

7:43

climate warming emissions. Tell me more. Yeah,

7:46

so it's a story that's inspired a

7:48

lot of like climate related hope climate

7:51

hope. Wow. Okay,

7:53

that's a rarity. Agreed. Agreed.

7:55

Okay. So on Monday, our NPR colleague Julia

7:58

Simon was in Southern California watching the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. launch.

8:04

And taking a ride on that rocket is

8:06

a satellite called the Methane Sat. It's a

8:08

project led by the Environmental Defense Fund, and

8:11

it's designed to detect methane, a gas that

8:13

in the short term can have climate effects

8:15

even more harmful than carbon dioxide. It's

8:17

responsible for about one-third of human-caused

8:19

global warming. Methane leaks into

8:21

our atmosphere in a lot of ways, like

8:23

when fossil fuels are produced. And what the

8:26

oil industry calls natural gas is mostly methane.

8:28

But it's been hard to pinpoint where exactly

8:30

it's coming from. Wait, so how will

8:32

this satellite help us identify these methane

8:34

sources then? So it has these

8:36

sensors specifically designed to detect the fingerprint

8:38

of the methane molecule. For now, they'll

8:40

focus on looking at emissions from the

8:42

oil and gas industry. And the satellite

8:44

can zero in on specific oil and

8:46

gas producing regions like Texas or parts

8:48

of Russia. And once it's fully

8:51

operational in the coming months, it will send data

8:53

back to Earth, and that data will be free

8:55

to the public. And we should add, there

8:57

are other satellites that do this type of

8:59

detection. But this new satellite should give a

9:01

more precise and more public view of these

9:03

polluters. But I have to

9:05

say, other industries do produce methane as

9:07

well, like the agricultural industry. So why

9:09

focus first on oil and gas? Yeah,

9:11

the people behind the satellite say that

9:13

it's strategic. There are a relatively small

9:15

number of companies in the oil and

9:17

gas industry, and they have big budgets,

9:19

and that will allow them to actually

9:22

fix these leaks. So by making

9:24

this data free to the public, the hope

9:26

is that governments and other regulators can then

9:28

hold oil and gas operators accountable. Yeah,

9:30

for example, the EPA made a rule last

9:32

year that the oil and gas companies must

9:34

monitor, detect, and fix methane leaks when they

9:37

happen. So the satellite could help with that. Elsa,

9:40

thank you so much for hanging out

9:42

with us. Oh, totally, anytime. You can

9:44

also catch Elsa on Consider This and

9:47

PR's Afternoon News podcast. But

9:49

before we head out, a quick shout out to our

9:51

Shortwave Plus listeners. We appreciate you and we thank you

9:53

for being a subscriber. Shortwave Plus helps

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without sponsor interruptions. Find

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out more at plus dot

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npr.org/Shorewave. This episode was produced by

10:07

Michael Levitt and Rachel Carlson. It was

10:09

edited by Viet Le and Christopher Intagliata.

10:11

Britt Hansen checked the facts and the

10:13

audio engineer was Josh Newell. I'm Regina

10:15

Barber. I'm Anil Oza. Thank you for

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