336: Jack the Ripper Identified, An Ancient City Uncovered & Shocking AI Tech Unveiled
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Hey what is up my friends and welcome back to mile higher podcast episode 335 and today we have an episode for you that we haven't done one of these in a while we're not sure if we even did one last year.

It's kind of we started calling these in the early days. The OG fans will know the breakthroughs and discoveries episodes, which we did have somebody comment recently. That was like, I miss when you guys did those. Yeah. So here you go. This is for you. This is for you specifically. But it's really for for all of us. OK, because the news cycle has been a bit draining. Sure. We can all agree. It's, you know, just constant bombardment of bad news, it feels like. And.

Um, well, some of what we go over might be a little bit bad news to, to territory, to territory. Oh, it's going to, you're going to laugh. You're going to cry.

All in the same episode. But for the most part, these are good stories. Yes. And things that will hopefully make you feel hopeful, pique your interest. We're talking about everything from Jack the Ripper to breakthroughs in health and human sciences. We're talking about technology, space. We're going to space. Guys, we're even going to hit some Bigfoot. So it's really going to be a real smorgasbord. Really bad news about Bigfoot, guys. I'm very upset. Don't tell them in advance.

So don't. Maybe it's good news for those who are scared of Bigfoot. No, it's bad news for all of us. It's good news for Kendall and I. We won. Yeah. The skeptic versus. Whoa, whoa, whoa. No spoilers, please. All right. And that doesn't mean you won. You're the one spoiling it. No, I'm not spoiling anything. I'm just making sure people stick around to the end when we get to it. Yeah, that's going to be our last one because we've got a lot. We've got quite a bit to go through today. But anyway, I'm your host, Kendall.

I'm Josh. Oh, Josh. Josh. Josh. There's a lot of Joshes out there. I'm trying to make myself stand out, you know? Josh. Okay, that's good. And we are joined by our production team, Janelle and Ian. Yo. Hey, guys.

Y'all ready for this? Y'all ready for this? Y'all ready for this? I knew that was coming. Okay. So, yeah, let's start off with Jack the Ripper because you may have seen headlines. Jack the Ripper has been identified, guys. Well, maybe not. Wah, wah, wah. This is the sound effects episode? Yeah. Uh-huh.

So historian Russell Edwards made headlines earlier this year when he declared that he found Jack the Ripper's identity. He solved the infamous mystery. Who actually did it?

Yeah. He actually said, quote, oh, without a doubt, 100 percent. It's him. All right, buddy. Let's see what that's based off of. OK, so we all I mean, we all want to see this solved. We all want to know who Jack the Ripper was. Obviously, the families of the victim and stuff obviously would love to know, you know, who this person was at the very least. But.

We'll see if his claims can be backed up. Yeah, it's debatable. So Jack the Ripper is, like we said, probably the most famous unsolved mystery of all time. In 1888, the Ripper haunted London's impoverished Whitechapel neighborhood, killing five young women in the span of only a few months, though some have tried to link him to other unsolved murders.

until 1891. Now, the name Jack the Ripper likely came from a forged letter that was circulated throughout the London press, and the head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee received an additional letter alongside half of a human kidney. Which I don't think we need to go into like tons of detail. I think everybody knows what Jack the Ripper did, but

Very, very brutal. Oh, very, very brutal. He literally disemboweled people, took their organs with him. Yep. Took their uterus. Yep. It's just disgusting. It's always really freaked me out. Just the name alone, Jack the Ripper, just, oh, it's gross. So Russell Edwards, who runs one of the many Jack the Ripper tours throughout London's Whitechapel neighborhood, has long claimed that the Ripper's identity was a Polish immigrant named Aaron

Now, Kosminski, who was 23 years old at the time of the murders, has long been a favorite suspect among those who are obsessed with the Ripper case. For one, he suffered from mental health issues throughout his life, dying in a mental health facility in 1919 after being committed due to schizophrenia. And on top of that, Kosminski worked as a barber, leading Ripperologists to make connections to Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, which is a musical, I'm sure many of you are familiar, about

about a serial killer barber that is partly based on the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. So in October of last year, Russell Edwards released a new edition of his book, which was called Naming Jack the Ripper, in which he details the genetic testing done on one single piece of evidence ignored by London police to this day, a shawl supposedly owned by victim Catherine Eddowes and apparently found at the scene.

Russell actually purchased this shawl in 2007 at an auction that was held by the descendants of Metropon police officer Amo Simpson, who was reportedly at the scene of the crime. And according to Russell, Simpson was in London's East End on an unrelated case before he came across the body of Catherine Eddowes. Even though official documents from the time named PC Edward Watkins as the officer who discovered her body, Russell maintains that Simpson was actually the first to find Catherine Eddowes.

And it simply wasn't recorded because he was a Metropolitan Police officer, not a London City officer officially assigned to the case. And according to Russell, Catherine Shaw was not taken into evidence and Simpson asked if he could just take it on home. It remained in the family's care and apparently was stored in a cupboard for over a century.

until Russell purchased it in 2007. Russell claimed that the shawl not only had the blood of Catherine Eddowes on it, but also semen from the unknown assailant. In 2014, the shawl was originally tested by Yari Lalainen of Liverpool's John Moores University. And this new claim comes after a republishing of Russell's book, a composite image of what Kosminski would have looked like at the time of the murders, and a request for an official police inquest into the murders using Russell's DNA evidence.

So, Jack the Ripper, is it finally solved? Not exactly, folks. For one, Russell repeated this claim of 100% accuracy on two other occasions. When his book initially published in 2014, he said,

and when it was republished in 2019 following the official publication of the DNA results. Yari's 2019 paper on the DNA test led to archaeological geneticists saying that the study was, quote, unpublishable nonsense, as they believed Yari failed to prove the provenance of the shawl in addition to claims about contamination. Since Russell purchased the shawl in 2007, dozens of photos have been taken of people handling the shawl with their bare hands, including descendants of the victims.

On top of that, the type of DNA that was tested on the shawl is hardly confirmation. According to forensic DNA interpretation expert Jarrett Ambo, the DNA testing used was mitochondrial, which is not as accurate as nuclear DNA. And according to Jarrett, the mitochondrial DNA could match up with at least 2% of people living in London at the time of the murders, not any one individual person.

He calls the 100% claim a mile off. Ooh, shots fired. According to the Ripper historian, tour guide, and YouTuber, House of Lechmere, Russell is lying about other elements as well. For one, he said that Amo Simpson was not on duty in London's East End at the time of the murders, and no one can prove that he had been on special assignment that would have brought him near the scene of the Catherine Eddowes murder.

More than that, he claimed that the shawl wasn't a shawl at all, but rather a table runner, which is kind of mind blowing that they could be confused. Yeah, that's a big fuck up. Yeah. I mean, because like when a table runner be more of a long. It depends on how big the table is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, then wouldn't that be more like tablecloth territory? I'm a bit confused on that.

I mean, who knows what a table runner looked like back in the late 1800s. For all we know, they called a tablecloth a table runner. Yeah. I think the biggest issue here is the contamination. And when you hear that this thing is 100 plus years old and it was in a cabinet. Yeah. And it's been handled with bare hands. I mean, seems very likely there would be.

serious contamination and also the mitochondrial dna coming back makes a lot of sense too you know all these people are touching it yeah from this area and so it's you know i don't want to accuse him of anything but it seems like this was a uh kind of a publicity stunt uh in my opinion because yes it was dna tested and yes dna was found and yes you could say that he could be in that percentage of people with that same dna but

It's not pinpointing anybody. No, no. I mean, maybe he's just really passionate and excited. Right. But he's convinced himself he wants to solve it so bad. Well, yeah, I mean, he's he's made his whole career and life in essence dedicated to this case, which is not a bad thing. I think it's great that people like him are out there that are writing about it, keeping it alive, keep keep searching for the answers. But to, you know, break it to the press that you've, you know, DNA identified the

you know, who Jack the Ripper was is a bit much. You gotta be professional and accurate. That's for sure. Plus, if it were at the scene, the shawl, in the first place, it probably would have been brought by the Ripper to clean up the scene and not actually worn by Catherine herself is kind of what they're thinking. I don't know about you, but I can't think of a better episode to sit at home naked drinking a glass of wine than this one.

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And then there's the composite image. Russell claims that he worked with forensic sketch artists to create it, but House of Lechmere says it was simply AI-generated. Big bummer. Big difference. Yeah, I mean, it kind of looks that way when you look at it. Yeah. Well, I think this is one of those scenarios where we have somebody who is, you know, they're devoted to this case. I think they're

trying to do right by it. But I think there's serious bias going on here because I think this is the guy and this is the guy that he's been sort of promoting as Jack the Ripper. And so he's trying to find any shred of evidence to back those claims up. He feels like he's got this groundbreaking thing. And then, you know, he's got this professor or the scientist who's also, you know, willing to like tie their name to it. But

with any sort of evidence like this or any sort of major breakthrough, right? It's got to be peer reviewed. It's got to be, you know, go through the process. And so you have

you know, basically everybody else going like, yeah, there's DNA there, but we've, it doesn't mean that it's your guy. Right. Um, I also wanted to point out too, that there's a lot of people online, uh, who have questioned his findings in the past. This guy kind of re, you know, on a recurring basis pops up with these new findings. He's also very interested in the Moore's murders. Um, another very infamous case, uh, over there in England. And in 2022, he claimed to have found the top of a child's skull, uh,

And it was he basically was like, I found the top of the skull. I think it might be the body of Keith Bennett. And he actually reached out to police. And there's been a lot of speculation on he may have faked that evidence. In fact, actually, that wasn't real at all. And so there's that kind of swirling around him as well. So I think whenever kind of his name pops up, I think everybody kind of takes it.

You know, with a grain of salt of like, you know, it's interesting that it did make such big news headlines. I mean, it was everywhere. Well, to the average person, they're not going to know who he is or his past or. Right. Well, you hear his story and you're like, oh, this guy must know what he's talking about. Yeah. And they hear DNA and they're thinking, oh, it's solved. It's over.

Yeah, I think he jumped the gun on this one. Yeah, safe to say. And it's interesting he republished his book as well. So it's hard not to think that this was partly due to decreasing book sales. And if I can get some headlines out there again, people are going to be interested in my work and might drive some more sales. But again- That's a real sloppy way of conducting yourself. Yeah, people do it and I get it. We all got to make a living, but

I don't think you should do it this way. I think you got, especially when you're dealing with, with true crime and especially such a horrific sense of case, you got to handle it more professionally at the end of the day. I mean, this is just irresponsible. Yeah. I know he wants to be the guy that solved the Jack the Ripper case, but got to do better. Agreed.

But let's shift gears here to our favorite topic of all time here on Mile Higher. No, it's not aliens. It is far scarier. AI. The nightmare. We've been talking about AI all

All the time, it feels like on this show. But that is just the world we live in now. It's all around us. It's crazy to think in our earlier episodes, we talked about it as if it was this far away thing that could be really scary. And we were starting to see it. But now we're really living it. And it's so ingrained in all of our lives. And it's on every device. Yep. Every device has it now. And...

And it's only getting better and better. And scarier and scarier. Exactly. Well, let's talk about... So everybody's heard of ChatGBT. It was the big one from OpenAI. Everybody's stoked about it. And we'll talk about that and some of the...

some of the unfortunate realities around ChatGPT. But let's talk about DeepSeek AI. You may have heard this name dropped out there. Probably not as much as ChatGPT because ChatGPT is developed here in the United States. DeepSeek was created in China. But let's talk about it because there's some interesting...

differences between the two. So this AI model, DeepSeek, was released from a small technology firm in China that rivals and is even better than US companies like OpenAI and their famous model, ChachiBT. DeepSeek's R1 model was released to international market in January of this year and immediately became the top AI assistant app on the market.

You see, DeepSeek is valuable because it is successful in all the areas that ChatGPT is not. It's more accurate with its information, it uses far less energy, and it costs far less than any American model.

According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, ChatGPT cost over $100 million to build, and it utilizes an absolutely insane amount of energy to generate just one response. Get this, a single query to ChatGPT uses about one bottle of water for cooling. That's great. Consider that the energy ChatGPT consumes yearly could also charge 47.9 million iPhone 15s every day for a year. That's almost more shocking to me because that's like,

Oh my god, that's so much energy. This is because of how ChatGPT is programmed. The model is supposed to be like Einstein, knowing every possible outcome at once, which means it accesses all of its memory to just answer one question. So when you put a query into ChatGPT that is super simple, it's going out and searching all of its memory for the answer.

So like, for example, you, you give it, you know, if I were in school right now, I hated math. If I was in math class, I'd be like, just thrown in my equations in there. Right. Oh my God. I probably wouldn't have had to go to summer school twice.

Until you get to the test and then you're on the test, you can't be teachers not letting you use chat GPT to solve the equation. But let's say I threw equation its way. It's going to start running through its memory, but it's not just going to go straight to the mathematics department and locate the arithmetic section and give me the answer. No, it's going to go through all of its memory of literature, history, recipes, and anything stored within its servers to answer just that one specific equation.

And even though all the rest of it is completely unrelated, which not only is this extremely wasteful, but it also requires an unimaginable amount of memory. But it's also inefficient, and it leads to the program's confusing responses and incorrect information. I mean, if you've tried it at all, you know it's

Hit or miss. And obviously, the better the prompt that you give it, the better the response that you get. But DeepSeek is unique in every way. According to its researchers and programmers, it only cost them $6 million to produce. That's crazy. Yeah, a fraction of the cost. And programming its current R1 model took only a few months. And instead of warehouses full of servers housing its memory, DeepSeek utilizes only a stock of NVIDIA A100 chips paired with less sophisticated ones

ultimately producing less energy. And more than that, DeepSeq is more accurate than ChatGPT or any other American model. And this is because R1 is a reasoning model, not an Einstein model like ChatGPT. So instead of accessing all of its memory simultaneously, DeepSeq follows a branching network based on the question. So if you asked it a math question, it would shut off all the unrelated parts of its memory and then only access the sections related to arithmetic.

This is pretty surprising considering that US companies have invested billions and billions of dollars into AI research and haven't been able to create a version this efficient.

So in with deep seek, there's definitely some censoring going on there. You know, you start putting out some specific searches, especially related to the Communist Party, things like that. It's very much censored. So open AI is not. So why did the US markets tank? For one, deep seek proved that competent AI models could be developed cheaply and efficiently and

Because it's important to note that the sale of NVIDIA chips, which NVIDIA, you know, I know everybody out there is probably not, you know, that technical. But NVIDIA is like the best semiconductor manufacturer in the world. They're basically making the best processing chips for these supercomputers and, you know, servers and all these things that are housing all this information and processing all these queries done by AI. Do they create chips for, you know, personal devices at all? Yes. Oh, they do? So like...

Actually, in my laptop and most people's laptops here, they have an NVIDIA chip in it, which is a GPU, so a graphics processing unit. So they make a wide range of different chips for all different types of applications. Yeah, and if you bought stock in them years ago, you'd be doing very well right now because they're crushing it. But they're a Taiwanese company. The one note I did want to bring up about NVIDIA is that

They are banned from selling their chips to Chinese companies, and this has been in place since 2022. Another reason DeepSeek's R1 model is completely free to download and use, whereas ChatGBT can use it for free to some extent, but to really like use its full capabilities, you got to pay a $20 subscription fee at least. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Oh, yeah. And then if you want, there's like all these different kind of add-ins that you can purchase that will

basically write the prompts for you so you just click a button and then it just and then you just kind of tell it what it wants versus trying to like because it gets pretty like technical when working with AI if you really want to utilize it the best way possible.

You guys, as we've been talking about in this episode, there is a lot going on these days. The news cycle can be draining and honestly bad for your mental health. And, you know, you want to stay informed, but you don't want to lose yourself in the process. So it's important to prioritize your mental health. And a big way that I've been doing that personally is by meditating. It can feel especially stressful and hopeless when things are out of our control.

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But DeepSeek's code is also open for public use, meaning anyone could use it to build their own models. DeepSeek's founder is also completely different from U.S. tech CEOs. Liang Wenfeng is a very private man from a small village in China whose first venture, a hedge fund, was unrelated to tech.

Liang rarely does interviews, but in the few that he has done, he has stated that AI started as just a hobby for him. He wanted the small team that developed DeepSeek to not have a background in tech as he preferred people who are passionate about the project rather than people who are stuck in the established ways of building AI models.

But of course, DeepSeek is not without its critics. OpenAI claimed that they stole data from ChatGPT to develop their R1 model, though this is unconfirmed. In addition, DeepSeek has already been banned in Australia for fear of security leaks, and calls are coming from other Western countries to ban it, at least for government use. So this is a, yeah, I haven't used DeepSeek personally. I kind of want to play around with it and see how it compares to ChatGPT, but

if it's really that much better than chat GBT, I think the, the, a good thing that can come from this is it's probably going to force open AI to figure out how to make chat GBT and their AI models more efficient because obviously the amount of energy that's being produced to just

make AI run is astronomical. I mean, just to give you a few examples to wrap your head around. I also, I just like that, even though clearly I made my opinions on AI known, I don't like it, especially the chatbot ones. But I like American tech CEOs getting dunked on crazy style. Well, competition's good. It's good that there's competition, especially in this. I think the caveat to that is

Is it just going to push us to go further? What's one up DeepSeek and its capabilities? So we're talking massive amounts of terawatts, kilowatts worth of power just to power AI, which I think that's like another, I mean, not only is AI scaring itself, but just the sheer energy consumption of

And the amount of space and cooling that they need in order to keep these these machines running is insane. Yeah, that was something new to me that I still really don't understand AI or most tech related topics at all, to be honest, but.

I was blown away by how much water is used and how much, you know, just by even doing asking a simple question, let alone having it produce a whole email for you or a paper or something like that. It is so extremely wasteful. Well, think about your laptop, right? So when your laptop runs really hard and you're putting a heavy load on your processor, it's generating heat. And so in most laptops, you have fans, you have coils, you have different cooling systems.

vapor chambers and things like that, they're dissipating the heat out of the sides of it. Now with even some desktop computers, when you get into high-end desktop systems, you can put a water cooling solution in there. So you're actually running

a liquid over the processor to help keep it cool. So... Do you have that in your laptop? No, there's not. There's only been a few water-cooled laptops and you had to have like an external thing, but it's the space because you need a reservoir. So basically you have a reservoir with liquid and it's pushing that liquid through tubes over your processor on your CPU and over your GPU. Oh,

I thought water plus technology is bad. It's not actually. It's not actually hitting any of like the conductive parts. So it's just it's the temperature of the water. You need this on your laptop because at night when we're trying to watch TV, Josh is gaming and the thing gets so fucking loud if it overheats and I can't hear the TV. Exactly. My the GPU is getting hit hard. So it's it's dissipating all that heat. Especially when you're in like a raid going crazy. Yeah. It gets loud. Yeah.

So imagine rooms and rooms and rooms and rooms of, you know, quantum computers and, you know, servers and everything else. They all need to be cooled and you can't, you know, server rooms typically have great AC systems, but that takes a ton of power. But to generate the amount of processing power that AI models need, it's got to be next level cooling. So they have to use water to do that. And so that's why there's so much water usage there.

So get this too. On December 9th, 2024, Google. So our own Google. We all love Google, right? Hey, this is on a Google platform. We all use Google. Yeah, this is YouTube. I mean, we have to thank Google for a lot of things. Well, they just unveiled a quantum chip that completes 33.3 trillion years of calculations in one nanosecond. You can't even like comprehend that. No, no. That went right over my brain.

Yeah, that is like it's only 2025. So it's scary. I thought this was a good news episode. Well, it's like this story is sort of good.

Well, the whole like chips thing is like bigger than the space race I'd say ever was like this, this competition to create the fastest, most powerful processing chip because there's chips in everything. Yeah. Everything you use. We all have a chip on us at all times. Or a bag of chips. Yeah. Chips everywhere. Yeah. Well, in your case, some Doritos or something, some Cool Ranch. But I do love the Cool Ranchies. But our phones, our cars, our cars are all have huge computers in it.

Watches. I was going to ask the stupidest question possible. I'd love it. Please. What do you guys think the AI coolant water tastes like?

Not as good as the water in Mars, which we'll get to. That's true. I'm just interested in the taste of water. What do you think, Josh? Josh is like, that's a stupid question. I like to imagine if they're using that much water, they're like using unusable water. Yeah. So water that's... Can they use salt water? Contaminated or something like that.

Probably not. Salt, probably not because I would clog anything. I think to some extent it's got to be pretty, fairly clean because yeah, the pipes would, you know, all of the,

tubes that the water's running through. It's probably like the cleanest water on earth. It's like glacier water or something. Well, it's like even if you have a water-cooled PC at home, you have to change the water in that because there is gunk that builds up and you're like, how does that even happen? But just running that water over the processors does get dirty. Put some fucking chlorine in it. There you go. Yeah, you have to literally change it out every so often because it just by running over, running through the tubes, it gets all goopy and nasty and you have to replace it. So massive waste of water.

Of liquid. God, tech is more filthy than I would imagine. Well, and just the energy too, just all the electricity. I mean, it's- I had no idea. Power city for a long time. God. What if it tastes like prawn? Oh, like the Rogan Paul's drinks? Yeah. What if it-

What if it's refreshing? I'm kind of picturing like... Well, Prime tastes like ass, so... Not all... You used to like Prime. You used to love it. It's all right. Some flavors are all right. I don't know. The one I have right now is pretty bad. I only like the bomb pop one, the rocket pop or whatever. That one is nice. I picture it being like blue Gatorade going through. Ooh.

It's funny you say that because if you have a water-cooled desktop, you can pick different colors. No way. Yeah. So you can have green, blue, I mean, any color you want, which is shimmery, you know. So they look badass. They're just ultra expensive. Maybe it is prime. I don't know, though. I think there's probably the water has to be somewhat purified. I don't think you'd have fucking artificial sweeteners and coconut butter.

water rolling through his mouth. No, man. It's clean as fuck. That's what he says. Hey, by the way, Logie Paul and KSI, they're sending another package to our office. No way. We are somehow on the prime PR list. I don't know why. I've talked nothing but shit about Logan Paul throughout the years. Dude, I can't wait. Here we go. I can't wait. They're sending me a big cherry one or something free. Yeah, here you go. Right here. Dude, yeah, that looks so delicious. Oh, wait, it spilled? It spilled. Oh.

Oh, damn. That's a worst case scenario. Is that lit up or is it just that glow? It's just that color, yeah. It's like a fucking fish tank. It does look really good. Like, it looks refreshing. You want to drink it. I really want to drink it, man. Yeah, it's pretty cool, though.

but also pretty horrible. And then also we were talking to... It's like most things these days. Well, we were talking about, you know, we ran across this TikTok last night of somebody talking about the CHIPS Act and what's going on with that. And so basically the CHIPS Act was put in place, I believe by Biden. And it basically gives these

you know, big manufacturers like NVIDIA and other companies, Intel, AMD that create semiconductors. So these processing chips that we need for all devices that we all use, federal funding or federal grants in order to build manufacturing facilities here in the United States. And as of like the other day, the Trump administration put a freeze on lots of government spending, but they put a big freeze on the CHIPS Act and all of the companies that would benefit from that because their whole hope is to

you know, there's the whole tariffs talk, which we won't get into, but just, you know, they want to bring the manufacturing back to the U S they don't want these. Cause all these chips are made overseas for the most part. Um, although there is an Intel, I don't know that they are, I don't think they're manufacturing. There was an Intel, um, office up in Fort Collins. I used to drive past every day, which was pretty cool. Uh, which Intel makes a ton of, uh, they're in tons of computers these days, but

I think, you know, the raw materials and where they're actually making the chips themselves is overseas.

Uh, so there's a good chance that the cost of these chips could go up significantly. And then there's also, you know, concern around, uh, you know, if we're unable to manufacture them here because the companies aren't getting the funding they need in order to do that, not only will cost go up, but then we could end up in a situation where, you know, if global politics, you know, goes one way and we are cut off access from these manufacturers overseas for some reason, uh,

then we could be dead in the water because we have no way of manufacturing them here at home at this point. So there's some concern there. Because again, it's like it's in everything. Everything you, you can walk around your house and there's probably a computer chip in it.

Some type of processing unit. I mean, even down to toys, to the little leapfrog games that Holly plays with. Oh, really? Well, that makes sense. Literally have processing chips in it. So literally everything has them. And if we're cut off from that or we're not able to continue advancing our technology, then others could potentially reign superior in that way. Oh, it's looking like...

They're going to be reigning superior in pretty much all categories. Well, they're already ahead of us with AI, with deep seek. Although I'm very curious about Google's AI because I hear a lot of things about it. There's some whistleblowers. I've said some very interesting things about Google AI, not Gemini, which is like the consumer facing one, but the Google's internal AI that they utilize for all of their internal processes, because it sounds like that is very, very powerful. And some have even claimed sentient. Yeah.

Who did that interview that we watched after Holly was born when I was postpartum and I had a complete meltdown over it? Do you remember that? That's a good question. I don't remember who had that whistleblower on, but it was very interesting hearing from his experience with this AI was like mind blowing. And now in retrospect, doesn't seem that crazy. Yeah.

Because now we're all interacting with on our own. We're like, damn, this is nuts, you know, to AI, you know, cloning your voice to, you know, deep faking, you know, visual images to just image production. There's all these different AI models popping up that are generating photorealistic images, photorealistic videos based on just a prompt.

Um, it's nuts. I don't know. It really freaks me out. Buckle up. Cause then the coming years are going to be, uh, in, in San, you know, part of me is,

Sorry, I'm just... Buckle up, shit's getting bad. No, I... Or maybe it's going to be good. I remain optimistic to some extent because I think it's a double-edged sword, right? Where there's terrifying things about it, but there's a lot of great things about it. There's a lot of discoveries and breakthroughs that are being made thanks to AI, which we're about to talk about here in a little bit.

So I think there's a lot of really cool things we could learn about ourselves, about the planet, about our health, about ways to save people's lives, extend lives, things like that. But I also understand that on, you know, in that same token, there's going to be a lot of things that are going to scare the shit out of us. And when AI is like, dude, aliens are here amongst you right now. You just haven't, you don't know how to find them. We've located them or, you know. I'm kind of down for them to let us know about that. But they're literally like.

You know, they brought you here like AI figures out our origin story. Hey, we figured it out a few years ago. We cracked the case. Yeah, we did. What was that theory called? Oh, panspermia. Yeah, we talked about a lot. We also talked about primordial soup, too. Oh, yeah. Primordial soup. Those were the fun days.

I want some soup right now. This is giving me anxiety and soup is comforting. But anyways, let's stop talking about AI before we all go crazy and talk about something interesting, more grounded in reality. And it's kind of interesting, especially if you saw our episodes with Graham Hancock, specifically the ancient Civ episode. So we're talking about

A lost ancient civilization in the Amazon. So in January of 2024, LIDAR scans of Upanu Valley in Ecuador revealed remnants of a massive ancient city that continually existed from 2500 BC to 600 CE. Stephen Rothstein, a French archaeologist who has studied the region for over 40 years,

first learned about the potential for massive ancient cities through tales told to him by the indigenous people in the area. They showed him the remnants of massive earthworks that appeared to be thousands of years old. Throughout the next four decades, Stephen discovered hundreds of mounds that once comprised the ancient city. But it wasn't until 2024 that LIDAR scans proved just how many there truly were. And you can probably hear Josh stirring up his boba on the mic. Thank you so much. We decided to get boba today.

I haven't had a boba in a long time. I need it today with the anxiety I'm dealing with. There's like pieces of peaches in mine. Ooh, pieces of peaches. I should have got yours. Mine has like passion fruit seeds in it or something. I don't even know what I settled on. I got stressed and just picked one. A LIDAR scan uses a laser to pulse a given environment, gauging the distance between different objects. This provides a 3D map of a region that offers detail the human eye simply can just not see. After the LIDAR scan surveilled the Upanu Valley,

researchers identified over 6,000 earthen platforms that could have housed over 10,000 people. This find is one of the Amazon's largest and oldest agrarian urban settlements. Stevens said that among the structures identified, researchers found square-low plazas for community activities, tiered gardens, agricultural fields, drained-to-grow crops such as maize,

beans, sweet potatoes, and yucca. So this finding not only challenges Western notions about the history of South America, but also environmental notions. Until modern technology, the Amazon was long believed to be unsustainable for large urban communities. Stephen said that this contradicts, quote, the prevailing idea that indigenous people in the area weren't only nomadic hunters and

and gatherers, rather than this sprawling urban environment. However, we don't know what caused people to vacate the area. Stevens said, quote, we don't know what happened, but it could have been volcanic activity, climate, or cultural changes. Furthermore, no indigenous people live in the Upano Valley currently, and some of the mounds have already been destroyed by new settlements set up by non-indigenous cattle farmers.

However, stories of vast cities in the Amazon have long been, you know, the stuff of legend. According to Minari Ushigua, an indigenous leader from the Sapara Nation, there have been, quote, stories about ancient cities for centuries in our communities. These were civilizations on par with European ones. So impressive. I know. It's really fascinating. I'm sure they were absolutely stunning. Oh, I'm sure they were. When they were there. Mm-hmm. And according to Minari...

The communities likely left the region due to climate change, take note on that one, and sun change in line with ancient Mayan calendars. Minari went on to say, quote, These are sacred sites, and their preservation is important not just for our communities, but for all of humanity. They contain secrets about climate change that can help not only the fragile Amazonian environment, but the whole planet.

And it wasn't just the indigenous sources that told stories about massive civilizations hidden deep within the jungle. In the 1500s, Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana explored the Amazon and wrote about massive urban cities that stretched for dozens of miles. In his writings, Orellana described how the urban centers were so densely packed that

that there were often no spaces between buildings and thousands of people would live in one metropolitan area, which is just mind-blowing to think about. Oralana even described how their boat was attacked by a band of female warriors. Love that. Which is why the rainforest and river were named the Amazon after the women warriors of Greek legend. However, Oralana's writings were largely discredited after he returned to the Amazon for a second voyage. On the trip back, Oralana got extremely sick

and actually died before he and his crew could find the mouth of the Amazon River again. While Oralana may have visited the region over a thousand years after this current find was abandoned, it does prove that giant cities in the Amazon predated western ones. However, Stephen spoke about the importance of preserving these sites. This new find will be destroyed without international intervention. He said, quote, "...the government doesn't care about Amazonian heritage. It's just a place for resource extraction."

Which is very sadly, very true. The LIDAR photos are really incredible. They are. You can just see the sheer scale of this now underground civilization. But just to think how much is still hidden out there in the Amazon. It's wild. And this just reminds me of how many uncontacted tribes are still out there too that have no concept of

anything in the outside world. Yeah. If you're interested in learning about uncontached, uncontacted tribes, we have a great episode on it. Um, that was one of my favorite ones we ever did. It's fascinating. But, uh, while we're on this topic of ancient civilizations and indigenous peoples, uh, in September, 2024, over 300 new Nazca drawings were discovered using artificial intelligence. So here's a, here's a good thing. AI did for us. I'll take one.

found hundreds of large-scale ancient drawings in the Peruvian desert depicting figures like llamas, decapitated human heads, and killer whales armed with knives. Archaeologists have previously linked these creations to the people of the Nazca culture who started etching such images called geoglyphs into the ground around 2,000 years ago. These things are incredible. And you can't even, I mean, from the ground, you can't even see them. You got to be up

in the sky, getting that aerial perspective. And it's one of those mysteries. We don't really know at all why they made these giant geoglyphs in the ground. There's a lot of theories out there around it. Was it an astronomical calendar? Was it somewhere they went to observe the solstices or other celestial events? Maybe it was where they did religious ceremonies. And if you watch ancient aliens, they'll tell you they were alien landing strips. So

I like to credit the indigenous people. I think they were just, you know, way more advanced than I think any of us can even really wrap our heads around. And these were clearly places for ritual ceremonies. And there's definitely some significance. And I think the scale of them and the fact that they're seen from the sky only, you know, if you're on the ground, you're not able to understand what these things are. But it really makes you wonder,

Like, how do they know to make them so big? How did they make them? And the fact that they still are there. Yeah. All these years, thousands of years, is pretty incredible. I remember I first learned about the Nazca lines from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Oh, yeah. That's right. I've never seen any of those. They're all good, except for the new one. The newest one really sucked. Didn't we? We had an episode on the Nazca lines, or maybe like... We've talked about it before, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's talk about space. My favorite topic. This is fascinating by this one. Because nothing will make you feel better about being a human being than knowing that we're just so small in this vast universe. We're just a speck of sand. Does anything really matter? And it makes you wonder, too. You're like, is there anybody else out there going through what we're going through? Or have they already figured it out? Have they already gone through it? And maybe they can come help us. We're all waiting. Now would be a good time. We're all waiting.

Well, in November of 2024, a team of international astronomers identified at least three ultra-massive galaxies, as large as and some larger than our own Milky Way, that were already created and in place within the first billion years after the Big Bang.

This is not only absolutely amazing, but it's always a big deal when we identify a new galaxy. But the find also challenges our understanding of how galaxies form. In previously accepted notions about the cosmos, galaxies form gradually within large halos of dark matter that capture atoms and molecules. It was previously understood that only 20% of the gas in this cosmic soup created stars. But this new finding shows that the earliest galaxies in our universe not

not only created more stars, but were able to do it at a much faster rate. The three galaxies nicknamed the Red Monsters are some of the furthest and oldest galaxies ever observed by the James Webb Telescope. Due to their high dust content, they're unobservable in previous night sky surveys. So for context, it was previously assumed that galaxies the size of the Milky Way took at least 10 billion years to form. This new discovery has scientists questioning the

how and why older galaxies were more efficient at creating stars and what that means for our current understanding of the universe which is pretty awesome to think about like our our understanding of the cosmos is ever ever evolving and we're we're just we're grasping at straws we're like you know we find something new that kind of rewrites everything we're like oh whoa how did this galaxy form in a billion years versus ours took 10 billion years so what happened there

You know, what's really going on? We don't know. No, we don't know shit. I'm realizing how they're all like big, gigantic red monsters. I like that. It's so cool. It's so cool. It really is. Well, this next discovery is one that we definitely touched on in an old episode when talking about Mars, because it really seems very probable there is a thriving...

life going on there on Mars. Whether there was a civilization or not, we don't know. But Mars has liquid water, folks. Yep. It's been assumed that Mars flowed with oceans, lakes, and rivers over 3 billion years ago. However, that liquid disappeared at some point, with the only remaining water left on the planet's surface being the ice mainly deposited in its polar caps. So the question is, if Mars had water flowing all over it, where did it all go? Certainly doesn't look like that today.

In August 2024, NASA's InSight lander probed the interior of Mars and found evidence of a large underground reservoir of liquid water.

How much water? A fuck ton. Scientists estimate that the water inside of Mars could cover the entire planet to the depth of about a mile. So that's a lot of water. That's a lot of water. Bet you're wondering how that water tastes. Yeah, you don't want to taste it. I really want to taste it. I really want to taste it. What kind of parasites do you think? Forbidden soup. Dude, what if it's just a tapeworm? Like that's just a regular degular tapeworm put up in there. Regular degular.

Could be. Well, you can be the test subject for that. I don't want to be part of that. I'm down. I'm definitely down. You're a hero, Ian. Why don't we just blast you to Mars? No.

I'll go, man. I'll go. Please. All right, NASA, if you're watching, we got your next astronaut over here. Would you go with Elon? Or I guess Elon's sending people. Would you go with Elon? Man, oh, that's a tough... Because you just got to be in that metal tub for so long with him. Just you and him. Yeah, but then when you get there, it's just you and him till lights out, my dude. He's going to take you out. Okay, here's another...

though. You can have Alice. Aw. Don't subject Alice to that. She's not going to know. She doesn't know about Elon. She can't understand. That's true. You know, in space, no one can hear you scream.

That's true. So no one's going to hear it. In a pressurized cabin, you can hear each other scream. I bet it echoes a lot. Okay. So what'd you go? No. Him? No. There's no way. That's the deal breaker? Yeah. I just. Yeah. He was saying he was going to send. Yeah. Get his fucking ass to Mars. Let's go, buddy. He never said he was going to send himself. No. He should. Yeah. I'd be down for that. I also heard he smells like jerky. Elon smells like jerky? Yeah. He looks like jerky. He looks like jerky, bro.

Yeah, this is all Twitter crap, though, so who knows if it's... No, I mean, actually, everything at my bed. Oh, right, right. Yeah, Elon Musk. We talked about this in the past. Oh, we did. He has a whole plan which includes establishing a self-sustaining colony on Mars by 2050. Yeah, of course, because he's full of shit and just says things. Well, 2050, that's 25 years away. Yeah, but how come he's not even mentioning it now? Because he's too busy. Yeah. At the Department of Government Efficiency. Yeah.

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rocketmoney.com slash mile higher sorry for the side tangent there but scientists believe mars lost its water when its atmosphere disappeared about three billion years ago which is a very curious thing and i know we've proposed we've presented there's tons of theories out there but some so there's some out there who believe there was some type of nuclear explosion on mars that wiped out the atmosphere so once the atmosphere is gone then where does the water go right

If it's not in the ice deposits, where does it go? Does it all just go out into space? What happened was is that water seeped inwards, so into the planet. And, you know, that's why it's a big discovery because for the longest time we just thought it all, like, I guess evaporated off the planet because there's no atmosphere. But no, a lot of it went into the planet. I don't know what that was.

Just leave it. That was funny. So how can we monitor this liquid water? Well, you got me, dude. I don't know. There's no way to monitor it, unfortunately, because we got to drill a hole 13 miles deep to get to it. And nobody's got a drill that's going to reach that far. And how the hell do we get a drill big enough to get to Mars at this point? We can't even get anything other than a rover up there. So it's going to be a while.

But it'd be really interesting to be able to get something up there that can go down into that water, collect some samples and start seeing, you know, all the tapeworms that Ian's mentioned in there. Again, maybe it just tastes like prawn. Maybe it tastes like milk tea. I'm going to say, I haven't had a boba in a couple of years. This shit is, I forgot how good this is. Oh, boba is so fucking good. Is it true that bobas stay in your stomach like forever? No, what the fuck? You've never heard that? It's literally tapioca. Oh, I've seen it like, well,

Well, I'm that dumbass kid that believed gum lives in you forever as well. I think every dumbass kid did that. I also believed if you swallowed watermelon seed, you were growing a watermelon in your tummy. Wait, Ian, did you just say it doesn't? We can move over. Did you actually think that? No, I mean, we can move on. Ian? You didn't know gum? Okay, I didn't know. What happens to gum then? I think it stays in there for a bit of time, but... I don't think so. Are you pooping out that day? Yeah. Oh, my God. I have to look it up. Have you ever blown a bubble?

What does that have to do with this? Oh, out of your butt? Stupid. This episode is... Sponsored by 5Gum. Just kidding. Yeah, so it's not digested. It just passes through. Because it's like rubber. It's like if you were to eat... Boba or gum? Gum. Gum. If you were to eat like a penny, you don't digest it. It just sends through. Okay, so gum comes out like pretty fast. I think so. So they just play it on. It goes with...

Typically eliminated from your body within a few days. A few days, though? I think some, a lot of. Okay, anyways, I don't know about everyone's pooping habits, but sometimes it can take a couple days. Okay. Thanks for the info. Yeah. In other space news, a super Earth has been discovered just around the corner, just a measly 137 light years away from Earth. So not far. You know, we get there.

In January 2024, a solar system was discovered that houses not one but two planets that orbit a red star and exist within the habitable zone around it. One of the planets, TOI 715b, is one and a half times as wide as Earth, and it orbits around its star's conservative habitable zone. This zone is different from an optimistic zone, which means that the potential for life is far less likely. The conservative zone means the planet would have the right temperature and space for liquid water to form on its surface.

What's interesting about this planet is that it's much closer to its star than we are to our sun. Because it's a red dwarf, planets can be much closer without risking their potential for creating water. On this planet, scientists estimate that a year or a full rotation around its dwarf sun is around 19 days. And because of its relative closeness, scientists could potentially study its atmosphere for signs of life using the James Webb Telescope, which is by far one of the greatest things that humans have ever made, I'd say.

Really, really cool. Pictures from it are insane. But to not dash anybody's hopes, it's highly unlikely that we'll be able to send a spacecraft to that planet in time soon unless aliens come down and give us their anti-gravity technology and we can just go through a wormhole or something.

Because the furthest distance a man-made spacecraft has gone has been with the Voyager mission. If you remember, in 1977, Voyager 1 was sent out, and it has traveled 500 billion miles, which is pretty fucking far. That's a long ways. But nowhere near one light year, which clocks in at 6 trillion miles. Voyager's current speed is around one light year every 18,000 years. God, it's crazy to think this Voyager spacecraft is going to outlive all of us. Yeah, that is. By far.

And our kids and our kids, kids and our kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, kids. And it goes on. It might even be here when life ceases on this planet. No, it's a dark thought. I didn't need. Or we get hit from an asteroid because that's also a possibility. General like wants that to happen. No, I'm just kidding. What are aren't they calling that that one asteroid they're worried about right now? The city killer. This one. This one is called the city. Luckily, you know.

It might not kill us, but yeah, they were calling it the city. It might not kill us. Yeah, so there's a small chance in 2032 an asteroid might hit Earth. And depending on where it hits, could be the end. Man, I already feel like an asteroid's hit Earth. Yeah.

Well, two months ago in December, a large asteroid known as 2024 YR4 was spotted through a telescope in Chile. Scientists estimate it was 90 meters, roughly 300 feet wide, and had a 3.1 chance of slamming into our planet. It wouldn't be world destroying. It's not going to obliterate the entire planet like the one that hit when the dinosaurs went extinct. But this asteroid is close to the size of the one that exploded over Siberia in 1908.

And if you remember to that event is very interesting. It exploded in the air before it hit the ground and it obliterated 80 million trees and affected an area of 200 square miles. But there was, you know, as far as we know, there are only three potential deaths from that event.

But there are some scientific benefits to an asteroid exploding on our planet. From previous impact events, scientists have been able to extract and study elements completely foreign to our planet. In 2023, scientists detected an asteroid with an element denser than anything found on Earth. For instance, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was able to extract resources from Bennu, a large asteroid that orbits our planet. Scientists were able to identify elements that for us are the keys to life,

in history of salt water that could create a, quote, broth for life on other planets. I love that, a broth. Again, I want some soup. Well, it doesn't prove, you know, life is out there in outer space. It does prove that the conditions for such life forms is absolutely widespread. So you put two and two together, there's definitely life out there. There's definitely got to be life, whether it's intelligent, you know, it's another debate. But

The conditions do exist. But what if that asteroid was larger than 1,000 meters and caused global devastation? Would there be anything we could do about it? Which is something I don't think many of us think about that often. Like, what if an asteroid is coming towards us? What can we do? We could chill. We could eat some boba. Yeah. What the fuck are you going to do? No, I just call people. Kiss my child. Kiss you. Maybe. Just kidding. You'd be the first one I kiss.

Well, luckily, they've already thought ahead of this, and there are some ways they can possibly deter. They could shoot a spacecraft at it or, you know, boom, hit the side of it, maybe just ever so slightly push it off the path. Of course. But I mean, if it's like dead center of the Earth, I don't know that there's going to be anything that can really push it off far enough that would hit us. Okay.

But, uh, you know, NASA is on top of it, you know, although we'll see, see, uh, if they get funding for much longer, unfortunately. Um,

So who knows? But they do have, you know, they have a system called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which, like I mentioned, has successfully slammed a spacecraft into an asteroid to redirect its course. Back to YR4 asteroid, the new estimate for it as of recently, you know, you can take a sigh of relief here, has been reduced to 0.28% chance of hitting Earth and a 1% chance of hitting the moon. Hmm.

Which scientists are kind of giddy right now because they're like, well, good chance it won't hit us. But if it possibly hits the moon, we might be able to get some shrapnel from this asteroid and study it. Because you never know. I mean, maybe that's how the aliens are actually getting here. On asteroids? Yeah. That's maybe how our DNA got here. I think that's in Alien vs. Predator. That is how it all starts. Oh, yeah. Isn't there... There's other...

UFO alien movies. I feel like another one started that way too. Spider-Man 3. Oh, yeah. Yes. Venom. Venom. Yeah, we just watched those. Tobey Maguire was the best Spider-Man.

But that's a good thing. There are some measures that can be done. Whether they'll be there when this happens, who knows? But stay tuned to find out, everybody. Also, I forgot about the biggest breakthrough and discovery of this year. I can't believe we didn't have this in there. The anglerfish. Oh, yeah. You guys. Oh, yeah. Ian looks confused. You don't know about the anglerfish? What's the anglerfish? Wait, you don't know

No, man. The little black scary fish with the teeth? Oh, that it's like super tiny? Yeah, yeah. Well, at first I thought it was huge. I thought it was big. I think it's like six inches, something like that. No, it's really, it's like the palm of your hand tiny. Well, everyone, you know, all the empaths. Empaths. Among us. You know, made up this whole story that she just wanted to go up and see the sun one final time. Or like she thought the sun was her mom and she went up to the top of the water. And there was all these, you know, theories of...

why she went up that far because these angler fish live at the bottom of the ocean. I'm pulling this together last minute, so forgive me. But I just wanted to mention that they actually think it's a far less romantic version of events here. Yeah, obviously. I thought that was so goofy. Oh my gosh, Janelle, you're so negative. I loved that, okay? I saw an Instagram comment that was so beautifully written, I almost cried. But guess what? It's not true. Scientists think that she was just gassy.

Oh, she just had to fart? She had to fart, dude. So she like went up to the top because she's so filled with gas and fish can't fart. You know, one time I was scuba diving with my uncle and he was like, why the fuck am I not sinking? I'm just floating the whole... And then he farted and... That is so awesome. Yeah, so...

That's the latest on that. The anglerfish was cute. She's so cute. I love her. I was surprised at how tiny it was. I know. I thought it was more like a couple feet or something. Because finding Nemo, it's like, that thing is big. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Nope. Not in this case. Maybe she was going to find Nemo. No, she was going to go let out a big fart.

I mean, I go to the other room sometimes, too. Sometimes you do. Gotta get to the... She wanted to spare all the other fish at the bottom of the ocean. It was a bad one. Aw, rest in peace, anglerfish. Okay, back on track. Okay, so let's talk about some good news, all right? Which is what I wanted this episode to be. And it's been not so much, okay?

In 2024, this is health-related, there were a few milestone public health announcements, including the first person to be seemingly cured of type 1 diabetes. So this is huge. Type 1 diabetes, if you didn't know, is a chronic illness in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks specialized cells that produce insulin. Insulin is necessary for physical health, obviously, as it regulates blood sugar and converts glucose into energy. Easy on your sipping over there.

Sorry. And unlike type two, type one heavily relies on genetic factors and there's really no way of preventing the illness. And Ian, you actually have siblings who have type one. Both. I'm the middle child and both my younger brother and older sister have type one. And they I mean, they get along fine with it. But it's also it used to be like the the treatments you do for it were pretty, I don't know, like

pretty gnarly like the pump is a great big deal like it was huge when that came out but also it's like you have to stab yourself so often and just let it hang off the side of you and so now there are like these new measures that my siblings use that is way less invasive and causes way less scar tissue uh but it's still like there's a everything you have to do to kind of treat it and give yourself insulin involves a lot of needles every day it's horrible

It's nuts. It's although when I went to a Jonas Brothers concert with my sister in sixth grade, there was like a weird thing on the screen where Nick was like, no one understands my pain. Oh, yeah. He has it, huh? And he was like, no one gets it. No one gets it. My sister was like, I understand. She should have made a big sign. She should have, man. And that was Nick. Nick. Yeah. Yeah. He's a good Jonas. I like him, man. Yeah.

I do, too. Let's be clear, though. This is a huge finding. We've been able to synthesize and inject insulin since 1922. So potentially finding a cure over 100 years later, just a little over 100, is a huge feat. Now, disclaimer, it should be noted that it came from a small clinical trial of just 17 participants, and only one of those participants experienced these results. Still, though, the fact that this happened in the first place is unbelievable, and it made international news.

The participant not only reduced his daily insulin by 91%, but for the first time in his life, the participant's pancreas began to naturally produce insulin in response to blood sugar fluctuation. Now, while the illness can be cured through a healthy pancreas transplant, the lack of available pancreases and just organs in general means that curing the disease for most people living with type 1

is completely out of reach. This new treatment, though, which utilizes an infusion of stem cells taught to behave like insulin-producing cells, would be the first true pharmaceutical cure for type 1 diabetes. It is important to note that this is just the first of the 17 participants in the clinical trial, and there are another five years left in this study. However, these early results are very promising.

In September of 2024, an additional participant, a 25-year-old woman with type 1, was able to produce her own insulin three months after receiving the reprogrammed stem cells. Another potential world-changing treatment? A cancer vaccine. That's right. In December of 2024, researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology announced that they had discovered a radical new way to treat cancer by reprogramming

cancer cells back to regular healthy cells. By creating a, quote, digital gene of the cell that had turned cancerous, researchers could locate master regulators, which in effect could be switched to make the gene revert to its original healthy state. Researchers applied this idea to cancerous colon cells and watched as they reverted to their standard form. Incredible. They confirmed the reversion through experiments with mice that had developed cancerous tumors. While

While it's not a wholesale cure like the diabetes find, this would provide a new alternative to cancer treatments that doesn't involve the destruction of cells through radiation and will be far less dangerous for the participant. And let's be clear, of course, we're a long way off from this being a general cancer treatment. We are unsure of its efficacy across different cancer types.

and results haven't been replicated in a human participant. But still, the discovery itself is pretty groundbreaking and amazing. Now, one of the most significant leaps in health discoveries, and it was Science Magazine's 2024 Breakthrough of the Year, was the use of the new drug, lenacapivir. Lenacapivir.

Yeah, it's a kind of cool name. And this is a new drug to treat and reduce the spread of HIV. While treatments like PrEP have been on the market for years and have reduced the spread of the virus and its growth from HIV to AIDS and those who already have it, lenacapavir is the most efficient and thorough treatment yet. Lenacapavir, which is a single injection a patient takes once every six months,

attacks HIV's capsid protein, which forms a shell around its genetic material. In a trial on African adolescent girls and young women, the shots reduced HIV infections to zero with a 100% efficacy rate. Across four continents, the trial reported a 99.9 efficacy rate in gender diverse people who have sex with men. Even more promising is that many other viruses utilize a capsid protein to protect themselves as they attack the body.

Further research could yield new discoveries and lead to new treatments for other viruses. So very, very groundbreaking. However, under the Trump administration, initiatives for further research and distribution of HIV treatments have been halted. PEPFAR, an independent agency overseen by the Department of the State, has saved around 26 million lives since its establishment in 2003. However, one of the Trump administration's day one initiatives froze foreign assistance funding so reviews could occur.

According to Mitchell Warren, who leads an HIV prevention advocacy group called AVAC, quote, this is not only bad politics in terms of government to government relationships, it is bad medicine and is bad science. And it is so dumb. Given the Brian Johnson episode that we just did, we've talked a lot about longevity science on the show. And while we might not care that much about a multimillionaire extending his life, I think we can all agree on one thing.

Doggos should live as long as possible. We love our dogs. Doggos. Doggos. Yeah. I don't like doggos. Why? It's annoying. I don't like when people say doggos. Jeez. Sorry. Okay. Dogs. Luckily, at least two. Yes. Canines are scientific term. There's at least two longevity medications for dogs that are set to hit the market this year, which is pretty exciting.

This is probably the most exciting thing coming out of this episode, at least in my opinion. Yeah, I agree. Janelle, you want to finish off this topic? Actually, it's very passionate for you. Yes. Actually, I've been reading about this for months now, and I'm excited that it's finally coming to light. Okay, so Loyal, a U.S. biotech startup, plans to market a daily beef-flavored pill in the next year that could give dogs, specifically large breeds, because everyone knows that

Sadly, large breeds usually don't live as long as the small breeds. I don't like hearing that. I know. We have a very big boy. We have a great Pyrenees who's like 140 pounds massive. He's a perfect doggo. Best dog. Anyways, but hopefully this pill could extend their life by at least a year. Meanwhile, across the country, another dog lab is looking into rapamycin, which we talked about.

two weeks ago now, as a potential dog longevity medicine. The Dog Aging Project is the first large-scale study of dogs in a natural environment, and early results from the survey suggest that rapamycin can increase a dog's lifespan, improve their heart and cognitive functions, and regulate cell growth and metabolism into old age. Rapamycin is already a common medication used to suppress immune responses.

Organ donors and doctors at both Loyal and the Dog Aging Project believe that their medications could also increase human lifespans, which would be very cool as well. However, given dogs' shorter lifespans, testing the drug is

A much more feasible project. And while Brian Johnson was taking rapamycin despite no concrete clinical results, both loyal and rapamycin need 40 year studies to prove their effects in humans. So probably won't see that for a while, but at least unless Brian Johnson somehow. Yeah.

allows us to find otherwise. I mean, yeah, he's the most taking it. Oh yeah, he did. Didn't he? He stopped taking it because it was like damaging his organs or something, I think, or he thought maybe it was, but regardless, this would be great. If this could become widely available for pet owners, I wonder if it'll be affordable. Yeah. I wonder, I have no idea how that, or if this will be like thousands and thousands of dollars. I mean, hopefully they make it over time. Cloning.

Oh, you can clone dogs. Yeah, you can. I know that. My mom's coworker, old coworker, cloned her dog for $40,000. Whoa. Damn. Wow. That's a lot of money. Was it the same dog? No. Right? And it's like, it's not the same personality or anything. You can't like recreate the dog. Who else did that? Barbara Streisand? Oh yeah, someone did. Yeah. Yeah, it was. I think it was. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's crazy, but I do like the idea of

slowing down the aging process in doggos yeah i wonder how i wonder how kiddos either i wonder how early you got to start that medication though yeah you know what i mean for how long do you have to be on it for how much money does that equal and you know what does that exactly look like what does it stop all aging process of the organs is it the joints as well because usually in the big dogs it's the joints that are you know because they're so big and heavy that yeah

arthritis creeps in real, real early. Our other dog, Lucy, she tore her ACL and the vet was like, she's a thousand percent going to have arthritis in that leg. Yeah.

She very well could tear the other one as well. It wasn't an accident. It's a condition that she has. No, actually the vet told me otherwise. The new vet said that? Yeah, the new vet told me that it could have been, you could tear it like a human can tear their ACL. Okay, I feel like our old vet was dumb because this new vet has told us so much about all our pets.

Yeah, she's like absolutely could have been just she ran on it the wrong way or something and it was ready to tear and it teared. Well, I hope that was the case and it wasn't a genetic condition. Yeah, I don't know. But it's crazy. It's like a 50% chance the other leg will tear within a two-year period. So it's like once you get out of the two-year period, then...

those uh percentages go down but there's like a high probability in two years sorry i did knock on wood because i it's a really rough recovery well the hardest thing was keep we had to keep her away from our other big dog oakley because yeah he couldn't he couldn't play with her and then he didn't understand it was like 12 weeks something like that it was just yeah it's pretty brutal and it's very expensive

All the dogs are going off. Alice is losing it. We've got a lot of dogs in our office. Yeah, we do. Doggos. All right. We have time for one more. Yes. Well, we're getting to my favorite story of the day, although it is disappointing news for me. There was a study in January 2024 that was done that suggests that many Bigfoot sightings are likely misidentified American black bears, which I don't believe at all.

But the study's author found a correlation between an area's reported Bigfoot activity and its black bear population. Oh, imagine that. It's almost like Janelle and I were right all along. When looking at the data, he said that for every thousand additional black bears in an area, Bigfoot sightings increased by 4%.

So that's Mothman, not Bigfoot. Yeah, that is definitely not Bigfoot back there. Different cryptid, but appreciate the effort there. Yeah. Shout out to the fan who gave us a Build-A-Bear Mothman. This is the most unhinged episode we've ever done, I think.

I love it. We need these every once in a while. You know, last couple of weeks has been pretty, uh, and next week is really, Oh yeah. Then we're back to the heavy. We need it. Normally scheduled content. Thanks for hanging with us. Let us know which breakthrough discovery you, uh, didn't know about and which one you're either terrified of or made you feel good. Hopeful. Let's hang on to words like that. Okay.

But that's going to be it for us today. If you enjoyed this episode of Mile Higher, make sure you're subscribed on YouTube, follow on Spotify. But we'll see you guys next week. Until then, keep on taking your mind a mile higher.