Dan Riskin Returns: The Bat Signal & Science for Everyone

Jann Arden  0:00  
Hello everyone. It's Jann Arden. This is the Jann Arden podcast. I am with Caitlin green, Sarah Burke, as always, they are in their Toronto homes, and our special guest today, Dan Riskin, who is, for one thing, I'm gonna have you do your own bio, but your backdrop is a bunch of books. There's a bat. Dan Riskin, tell us who you are, what you do, and if you were to write your own Wikipedia, what the hell would that look like?

Dan Riskin  0:24  
I don't know. I guess I feel like I need to test Wikipedia to see if the fact checkers are on. So I might put some stuff in there that's not true, just to sort of just see if the if it works that. I think that'd be what I do. So, but the things that are true, I'm a scientist and I'm a science journalist, and my claim to fame is that I have a PhD in bats, and that's why I have a picture of a bat behind me, and that's why some of those books behind me are bat biology textbooks. And yeah, I explore the world of science and what makes it fun and interesting, and I share that as widely as I can with as many people as I can, through podcast appearances, through TV appearances. And now I've got this newsletter that I'm all excited about, called the bat signal, which people can sign up. It's follow the Bat signal.com,

Jann Arden  1:05  
let's start right there. That seems like the obvious entry point, the bat signal, a brand new newsletter. How did it come to be and what can people expect when they sign up? Every

Dan Riskin  1:15  
week? I am looking through literally about 1000 press releases.

Jann Arden  1:20  
Oh, god, you're making me tired. Well, it

Dan Riskin  1:22  
is a little bit tiring, frankly, but it's fun because you find these nuggets. It's a little bit like panning for gold, like there's a lot of dirt and manure and all this other stuff. And sometimes you're like, I don't even get it. Why? Why do I care? And then you find, like, some beautiful thing about why we love dogs, or something that just touches your heart, or something about space that makes you understand what's happening in Space News differently, or whatever. And you find these nuggets. And so I have been, you know, for work. I've been finding these for the press so that I can make these appearances on CTV and on Bell Media, radio and all these places to talk about these science things. But I'm like finding these nuggets. I'm bringing them to the press. I talk about them when they're in the news, and then I've just sort of been dropping them and letting them go. And so now I've made this newsletter where I take the best of the best, I even whittle it down from what I get share with the press to even better ones, and then I share that in a really concise once a week newsletter that will make you laugh, will make you sort of go, Oh, weird. And it's got a little trivia section, and I just try to make it as fun as possible, and just a quick little read that makes you feel like you feel like you know a little something that your friends don't know. So it's, it's been really fun to put together, and the response has been really, really great.

Jann Arden  2:26  
Now, is there a monetary number attached to this newsletter there? At this time, the

Dan Riskin  2:32  
number is zero. You don't have to pay anything. It's, it's free newsletter. I think that, like, what I'm supposed to do is make some kind of a paid version of it. I know I should, but I just, for me, I just, I really want to share this stuff, and it's really fun to put it out there. And I feel like it's, I don't know, it makes the world a better place, and it gets people excited. It's very nice. I just feel like I, for now, maybe I'll make money on it later, but for now, it's this thing I do that I don't actually make money on, but it's a passion project

Jann Arden  2:59  
I love that I think we do need to do things in life that aren't always about making money, although this show is not that place, because we have a Patreon, we have a Patreon, and, you know, we have like 565 members that we try and provide wonderful guests like you and all those kinds of things before we move forward, because Caitlin has supplied me with so many cool things that we want to talk to you about today, I want you to tell our listeners one thing about bats that they might not know. Oh,

Dan Riskin  3:31  
I mean, there that is a hard one right to pick the one thing what I've been kind of obsessed with lately is the fact that different bats have different smells to them, and you would think that a bat, I don't know what the average person would think a bat smells like. Have

Jann Arden  3:46  
you been lifting their little armpits up there? Well, sometimes

Dan Riskin  3:48  
it is in the armpits. So different bats have scent lines in different places. Sometimes it's on the neck, sometimes it's in the wing. It's built into the wing. Sometimes it's in the shoulders. You have a lot of bats with shoulder secretions. And then there's one bat called the crested free tail bat. It's a, I've never seen it. It lives in Africa, and it's got basically like this. It can flip its hair up, so it's got like, almost like a mohawk, but wider, more of a Billy Idol, but longer. And this thing flips up. And the males, they can flick it to flick their scent onto females and with their hair, like they're just, I mean, and I've never smelled it. And the thing about smells is you can't, you can't write a smell in a in a journal. You can't, you can't really share a smell. So you gotta not yet. So for now, I need to travel the world and smell these bats. And so I have, like, this hit list of bats that I have smelled, that I love, and I can recognize them by smell, and I've got a hit list of bats that I haven't smelled yet, and so that's one thing most people don't know about bats, and whether that makes people like them more or not, I don't know, but it's one thing that I am I really love about them, nerd. So

Jann Arden  4:52  
I just want to get this straight so you have smelled a couple of bats. Yeah. Okay. And how did that happen? What were the circumstances in which you were able to smell a bat? Well, you

Caitlin Green  5:03  
do these tours, right? Like you do travel tours, yeah, I

Dan Riskin  5:06  
take people on wildlife tours, and you know, you experience nature and you smell different places. But sometimes you go into a bat cave, and if there are bats in it, you can smell their droppings and but different bat caves have different smells, like there's a bat that lives in in the southern states, called the Mexican free tail bat, or Brazilian free tail bat, and that bat has a really strong sort of ammonia odor to its droppings. You could smell it really far away. And often you'll be walking through the countryside in Texas and you're like, there's a cave near here. I can smell it because it's really, really strong. And it's not actually the bats that make that smell. It's the breakdown of their their droppings, and the way that gets broken down by these beetles that live in their droppings, that secrete these smells so but anyway, you can recognize what bat is in the cave by the smell. And then if you go to other caves, you can smell other things, but, but there are these bats called Yellow shouldered bats that live in Belize. And when you catch one of those, if you catch a good, healthy male, he'll have these dark orange patches on his on his shoulders, they're normally like a lighter yellow, and the females are lighter yellow, but in a male, it's dark and orange, and it is a scent gland. And you how do you if you're holding that bat? Because I'm a biologist and I'm holding the bat for research purposes, how do you not smell the bat? I mean, you have to. It's a scent gland and it's bright orange. You got to get right in there, and you got to smell what it smells like. So yeah, I've smelled a couple bats. If

Jann Arden  6:23  
you're just joining us. Dan Riskin is our guest. Okay, well, moving on. That's great. That's not the fact that I expected to hear. I thought it would be. Why did they sleep upside down and, you know, things like that? Yeah.

Dan Riskin  6:37  
I mean, that's interesting too. That's the thing is, like, there's no boring part, right? And the thing about bats is that some people, nobody's indifferent about bats. Everybody, like has an opinion. If a bat enters a room, it's the only thing anybody's talking about. I like bats. Yeah, you love bats.

Jann Arden  6:52  
I like them. I have really good childhood memories of bats. Do you guys have childhood memories of bats? No, hard No, when we used to play badminton, when I was a kid, as soon as we started playing badminton, Dan, like, badly over our little crappy net that mom and dad bought us at consumers distributing. Oh, nice. The bats would come out, and they would follow that, that shuttle back and forth, and they were so, I mean, we'd run around screaming because, you know, you think mom would say, don't let it get in your hair, right? Like, oh God, they

Dan Riskin  7:21  
don't. They don't go in your hair, but they do go after things in the air. Sometimes they're curious little creatures.

Caitlin Green  7:25  
They seem cute, like I think that's my only estimation I have of bats, is that they seem cute and they eat a lot of bugs. That's that's when I mostly see them as they're flying around at night, eating stuff that I don't love. So they feel handy, but I don't have a desire to smell their shoulders. They

Dan Riskin  7:40  
do feel handy. If I had a yellow shoulder bat in my hand and we were in Belize together, and I said, smell this. You would

Jann Arden  7:46  
smell it.

Caitlin Green  7:46  
I would, but it's not like on my legs. It's not on my bucket list.

Dan Riskin  7:50  
We'll work on that. We'll

Jann Arden  7:51  
work. Kids would love that too. If you held it, they would if you were holding it, and say, no, no, I've got it. It's not gonna fly away. Come and smell it. It's not gonna bite you. Come

Sarah Burke  7:58  
and smell who was this celebrity or no, it was a musician in the middle of a set, a bat landed on them this summer at a music festival, and it was like the talk of the internet.

Jann Arden  8:07  
I want to say Alice Cooper, but who was it? Taylor Momsen,

Caitlin Green  8:10  
how does Dan not know this? Taylor Momsen, who's that? Is that the girl from gossip? Girl,

Sarah Burke  8:15  
yes, yes. Where

Dan Riskin  8:16  
did this happen? And how was I not there? Where was it? So

Sarah Burke  8:19  
she she's the front woman of a band called The Pretty Reckless. Okay, and what happened with the bat? It was, where was it? That's what I'm trying to find out. You want to know the region, right? Oh, Spain. In Spain. Oh,

Dan Riskin  8:31  
a Spanish bat that's exciting. A Murcielago that's exciting. That's Oh, that wow. There's some good bats there. They've got some big bats that are, like, carnivorous. Oh, they've got some good stuff there. So that, oh, my carnivorous

Jann Arden  8:43  
bat, you see that's, that's where I'm drawing the line. Some of them have wingspans of, like, six feet. Do they not? Yeah. But

Dan Riskin  8:50  
those are fruit eaters, the big bats, the really big bats with the six foot wingspan, those are all frugivores. They're, you're good with those. The carnivorous ones. The biggest carnivorous bat has about a one meter wingspan, so about three feet. It's called vampire spectrum. And it's not really a vampire, but it's got a cool name, like a vampire. And vampire spectrum is it's also called the spectral bat. Lives in Central and South America. I've never seen it, but I've seen pictures, and every time I drool, and it is a big bat that eats smaller bats, sometimes eats birds, sometimes eats reptiles and amphibians. Like it's an impressive it's a cool animal, for sure,

Jann Arden  9:23  
this world, this world. Dan, Okay, moving on,

Dan Riskin  9:28  
trying to move on. You almost did before.

Jann Arden  9:30  
What I want to talk about now was, of course, the visual was an egg frying egg in a pan, and basically the heading was teens using marijuana. It's causing visible brain injury. So if you're a young person smoking marijuana, we're here to offer you a warning. I'll be over here. But Sarah, you're also not 14 years old. You're 37

Sarah Burke  9:57  
and a half. Started at 15. Yeah.

Dan Riskin  9:59  
You started using marijuana 15 Well,

Jann Arden  10:04  
we know that marijuana is bad for kids. I mean, any any kind of mind altering drug I would think would be terrible for a developing, growing brain. So I'm going to hand it over to you now.

Dan Riskin  10:16  
That's exactly it is. That's the big difference between a kid's brain and a grown ups brain is that the kid's brain is still developing and it looks like THC specifically interferes with the growth of the brain. And so one of the great silver linings to the decriminalization of marijuana in Canada has been the ability of researchers to do proper work on it and figure out what really the deal is. And there's been a lot of work on adults using it, and there's been some really nice stories about it being a great therapeutic drug for a lot of different things, and helping people with their anxiety and helping with PTSD and other stuff and and so there's a lot of good stuff that can come from it, but everything I've seen that comes from the sort of what's the effect on kids has been really sobering and not the same at all. It seems to be like a totally different deal for kids versus adults. And so there are a couple studies that have come out, but the one that really caught my eye, they did a big study at McMaster, this came out about a year ago, where they looked at the likelihood of teens developing a psychiatric disorder, and they found that teens who were using marijuana were 11 times more likely to develop a psychiatric disorder compared to kids who did not use marijuana. So that right away is is quite scary. Now there is the possibility that kids who are already at risk of developing a psychiatric disorder are drawn to marijuana differently, and the cause and effect isn't very clear there, because they don't pick kids and say, Okay, you're going to smoke weed and you're not going to smoke weed like they just can't do can't do it that way. So the cause and effect is a little bit tricky, but this newer study, which comes out of the University of Montreal, again, really points to a big difference. And I think it's a little bit more of a smoking gun here, where you can say which is the cause and which is the effect. They basically took a whole bunch of teens and just scanned their brains while the kids just lay down in a brain scanner. They weren't doing anything. They weren't high on the drug or anything like that. And the kids were put into two groups, those that had experimented with cannabis before the age of 16 and those who had not. These were all kids older than that. And there was a significant difference in how thick the cerebral cortex is, and the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain on the outside that you can see when you look at a picture of a brain with the with those folds in it and stuff. And it's like higher reasoning, math, social relationships, keeping track of like higher level processes. And what this shows is that the kids who are using the marijuana don't have as much mass of cerebral cortex as the kids who don't use it. And so, like being a teenager, you really need that thing, and you need it throughout your life. And so the fact that taking THC is making that grow less and stunting it, and they did some other stuff on mice to show that THC really does block the growth of those neurons. So it really does look like it's a really bad thing for kids to be using.

Jann Arden  12:58  
Answer me this. So marijuana and edible marijuana products are legal in Canada. You can go into a store on Queen Street, and there's about 49,000 of them, and you can buy products. So it is illegal for under 18 or 19, correct, in that province too, part so kids are still getting pot from an older friend, or smoking their parents stuff, or whatever. Was there any specifics in edibles that the kids might be doing? Because that's quite popular. They're in different flavors. They're kind of gummy bears and all that stuff. I would think that would be appealing to kids. Anecdotally,

Caitlin Green  13:34  
I believe it's worse, honestly,

Dan Riskin  13:37  
tell me more well,

Caitlin Green  13:39  
so I my only like experience in talking about this was one of my close friends as a psychiatric nurse. And her specialization, she used to be at kmh, and now she's at U of T, and her specialization was first incident nursing. So she would see people when they were coming into contact with her in kmh, and it was the first time they were experiencing the psychiatric incident that required hospital level intervention. And a lot of the people that she was seeing were from THC, and it was, you know, it created this first incident of, like, you know, maybe with schizophrenia or whatever. But a lot of the cases were edibles, and because it's, you know, the case of, like, the poison is always in the dose, and so you take the edible, perhaps you're not familiar with how much to take. And unlike you know, smoking, you're not having a small amount, and necessarily waiting. You've eaten the whole gummy or cookie or whatever. Now you just have the whole bag eaten whatever you've eaten, and now you just have to wait. And so sometimes the effects also can take longer. When I think when you ingest it, then when you smoke it. And so people will think, oh, it's not working. I'm gonna have another Yeah. And then they frequently have too many, and all of a sudden you're having a psychiatric break.

Dan Riskin  14:48  
Yeah? I mean, there's that. There's also the fact that, like, just the stuff you smoke today is so much more powerful and more potent than back in the day, like when Cheech and Chong were making their jokes and all that stuff. So, you know. So how that stuff, the dosage issue, isn't addressed by either of these studies? They're really like a black and white, like, did you use it or did you not? But I do think that that may be part of why the landscape is as fraught as it is. And so it might be that it's more dangerous now for teens than it was in the past, but we don't know, because of what the studies couldn't be done at the same level, but they're digging into that. What I do see, though, with the University of Montreal study in the mouse, stuff that they did alongside the brain scans was they really were able to show on a molecular level how THC, specifically, is the culprit. And so it's not the smoking thereof. It's actually just the ingestion of that chemical that does it. And so maybe CBD is a different story, you know, and whether that has a different impact, impact for kids, that's, that's a different thing. But, you know, I don't have any data on that.

Caitlin Green  15:45  
You have two kids, though, do you feel like you would thus encourage them away from it?

Dan Riskin  15:50  
Yeah, no, I have so I have three kids. I have that's okay, no, I have a 13 year old who's, you know, like just waltzing into this world of all this stuff. And then I've got twins who are 10, and the all of them have their own personalities, and all of them are gonna, I know, interact with the environment and the pressures differently. I don't know what the right answer is. So I think that the parent saying, Look, science says that it doesn't that it's bad for you, so you shouldn't, probably isn't very effective. Like, I think that's what people have been trying for a long time. And like, here's a frying pan and here's your brain, here's your brain, here's your brain on drugs. Like, it just doesn't quite land, but I do. There is a really interesting study about how to get kids to eat healthy that I think is informative. They did a study where they had it was at a junior high, and they tried two different interventions for kids in these different classes, and then they spied on the kids when they went to the cafeteria to see what foods they chose as a way of measuring which one was more effective. And one way of telling them that they shouldn't eat junk food is they told them all the health reasons and all the stuff that you normally would do that are logical and make sense. The second intervention was to say to the kids, you know, these big companies are trying to make a lot of money off of you, and they're trying to make you addicted to their junk food. And look at how they're preying on you. Look at their packaging. Look how they're trying to manipulate you. They think they're smarter than you. You'd say that to a kid. They're like, well, they're not going to get me. And then they go out into the cafeteria, and they don't buy they don't choose the the Coca Cola or the other things that have more sugar. They make healthier choices. And so, you know, if you can put it into those kinds and it's funny, because you're saying to the kid, you don't want to be manipulated by big pharma, but really, you're manipulating the kid. Yeah, exactly. So you just, you have to hope they don't connect those dots. But that's maybe part of the answer. I don't know what the answer is. And of course, nothing's gonna be 100% and every kid is different. And you know, these kids aren't dropping dead from it immediately. It might be that in some cases, you know, some kids are gonna end up doing it, and that's just what you have to work with. But you know, well, then

Jann Arden  17:41  
there's the gateway question, right? The gateway drug conversation that comes up, you know, he starts with marijuana, and then you're you're suddenly snorting cocaine, a line of cocaine, and then the next thing you know, you're sticking a needle in your arm. I'm sure that is true in some circumstances, that you're chasing that that high that's a little bit bigger and a little more riskier as you get older. I would think it's funny to think about, you know, big pharma making or whoever making money off you these big companies. And with marijuana, of course, there's the whole snack thing that's part of that conversation, is that you get the munchies. So it's funny how those two things are interconnected. And further to that. I thought you might say that for the women having, you know, these things put in front of them, I'll do this or do that, or this is bad for you, that weight gain might have played into that conversation. I thought that might have been part of an

Dan Riskin  18:34  
interesting I didn't see that in the studies, but that's a you're gonna,

Jann Arden  18:36  
you're gonna pack on the pounds. And I would think that in women in particular, would be like, Oh, I'm not gonna eat that. Then. I

Dan Riskin  18:42  
mean, that's part of the supposed appeal of cigarettes, is that they're supposed to make you skinny, lose weight, you their appetite. Is there any truth to that? I don't know, but I will say that cigarette use, nicotine use, in teens in the US, there was a 2024, survey. It's lower than it's ever been. Nicotine is on its way out, even with vaping, with vapor there, but okay, all nicotine products, so even chewing tobacco, right? Like that's none of it. There's still a little bit of cigarettes. But vaping is the vast majority of it. But that the percentage of when you ask kids in the States, and I say the states, because we don't have data for Canada yet, but if you ask kids in the States, have you used any any product that has nicotine in it in the last 30 days? The percent that say yes has gone from about 24% just about five years ago, it's now about 8% that's so encouraging. So yeah, so there's hope, right? Like we don't have to just accept that kids are always going to use stuff, and that's just the way it is. Kids are changing their patterns of behavior. They're changing their relationship to alcohol to cigarettes, and so their relationship to marijuana isn't a fixed thing that's going to be stuck. And if anything, maybe the availability of it on Queen Street in 24,000 locations, makes it less appealing, because it's just part of the mainstream what everybody else has got access to, and it doesn't make it as cool. We

Jann Arden  19:57  
had a smoking room in my highest. Go. It was a little room. There was no ventilation. Is

Dan Riskin  20:04  
it like? Seriously? The teachers were like, This is the room you can go into to smoke. It was

Jann Arden  20:07  
carpeted. I think they gave up trying to stop us from doing it. And of course, where I went to school, there was fields of wheat all around us and cattle. I think they were terrified of our Bic lighters lighting giant hay stacks on fire. So they we literally had a smoking room, and these were for grades from 10 till 12. So there was literally 16 year olds in there puffing away. There was some real great art deco ashtrays that were on the stands with the brass handles. And there was lighters that people would leave in there. And I did not partake until I was in college, but

Caitlin Green  20:44  
my pregnant grandmother was told to pick up smoking to lose weight by her doctor, wow, in Prince Edward Island. So I always look to that as a great example of like, things do kind of get better over time. They do.

Dan Riskin  20:55  
They totally do. I mean, yeah, we don't have smoking rooms in high schools most anyway. And I mean, I was a waiter as an undergrad, and I remember, if you worked in the smoking section, you know, you'd come home and you just reeked, like cigarette smoke, and you had to, like, just, you'd have to have a shower before you went to bed, because you just reeked. I'm not even

Sarah Burke  21:11  
still today. Like when I went to Greece, which is only about a year ago, there was in the airport a smoking room. Oh, wow,

Jann Arden  21:19  
you'll still see those. I see those like all the time in Europe, there's and there's 10 guys like bowling pins down in there just trying to smoke that whole cigarette in 14 seconds. They're just drag exhale, drag, exhale, drag, exhale. And they all just look like worried maniacs, and their eyes are bulging out, and they're looking at their watches of how much time they've got. Yeah, it's, it's kind of sad. I think meat is the new smoking. Myself, personally, yeah,

Dan Riskin  21:46  
yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. I think that if we fast forward a little bit, I think meat consumption is going to look a little bit in the rear view mirror the way cigarettes do now. But we're not there yet, for sure,

Jann Arden  21:55  
no, but there is meat shaming happening now, right? So, yeah, and like cigarettes. It's getting more expensive, right down. Yeah,

Dan Riskin  22:02  
no, it's, it's the whole meat conversation is really interesting. I mean, you know that? I guess I'm pescatarian technically, so I'm not as Are you vegan, or Are you vegetarian?

Jann Arden  22:12  
I'm vegan.

Dan Riskin  22:12  
You're vegan. Wow. Well, good, good for you. There's a study that I flagged. Tell me the good things. It's kind of a weird, counter intuitive result where they put out menus and they labeled things as vegan, or they didn't label them as vegan, they looked at what it did to sales. And when you call something vegan, the sales of it plummet like people don't want the vegan, if it's exactly

Jann Arden  22:34  
any menu says plant based now, so I rarely, rarely see a menu where the big, bold headline is vegan. It's always plant based whether you walk into an Earl's whether you're walking into a sushi restaurant, and they're having a ton of success with it, like you'll just see people ordering that because it's like going to the side dishes where it's broccoli and braised cabbage or whatever. So they've learned trial and error that it's not a great marketing strength to say vegan, yeah, people immediately think of girls with long hairy legs and hairy armpits and wearing patchouli, chaining themselves to trees and generally petting a beaver. And not

Dan Riskin  23:17  
you've really you've sold me on whatever this place is. I want to go to the hairy legged fever petting tree chain woman. But

Jann Arden  23:23  
this is the visual, I think, that people and certainly this movement started in the 60s with peace and love and all that, right, but it has changed. They're getting very clever about that. In fact, there was a cheese company that this year, in 2024 was competing in France for the world cheese championships, and a plant based cheese company won nice and they raised hell. They wanted them disqualified. They felt like it was, you know, a travesty. But you know, change is hard. There's growing pains with change, and people want things the way they are, like if people could still have their milk delivered by a milkman to their door, they would probably gladly do it just to save them having to run to the convenience store to get milk. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. It

Dan Riskin  24:08  
is interesting. It is interesting the way change comes in. And I do agree, I think in the long term, I think I'm optimistic, and it's sort of inevitability that we're moving in the right direction. Life has bumps. Sometimes you have a, you know, an event here or an event there that gives you pause, but

Caitlin Green  24:26  
possibly be referencing recently, nothing recent

Dan Riskin  24:29  
at all, in the news at all. But I will just say that really, in the long term, we are on a trajectory of improvement. And then that has been true for a long time. And I just, I'm just an optimist. I really do think things are going in the right

Jann Arden  24:41  
direction. Yeah, and there is, there is going to be five steps forward and three steps back, and that's just how it is. But if anything we've all learned as time goes on is that we were built for change. We were built to adapt. I think it's why we are here hundreds of 1000s of years later, in some shape or form. But it's pretty encouraging just to know how. How adaptable we are and and how much we can we think we can't do things like, oh, just our brains just can't get around problem solving. And then all of a sudden, voila, there you are. You're still standing you're still getting up in the morning, the sun's still shining. And I love that we're so resilient. I want to talk to you about jet lag.

Caitlin Green  25:23  
Also, when your jet lag is intermixed with a hangover, it's hard to decide you're like, what is really doing

Jann Arden  25:28  
that's terrible. So what? What is jet lag, Dan, and why do our body clocks? Why are they so sensitive to that it just nails you. I have a really hard time. I'm still, I'm just back from the South Pacific, and I'm still struggling on this end. I'm, I'm five, six days in now, yeah, it's, I'm waking up at four o'clock in the morning. I'm just like, nope, get up, right? That's what I do.

Dan Riskin  25:54  
Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting to think about the human brain and its clock like people have done experiments where they stick people in a cave for like, 100 days, and they say, like, do they wake up every 24 hours? Like, what's their normal? What's the human cycle? And the human cycle isn't 24 hours. It's like, I think it's a little bit longer. I think it's like 25 hours. And so they start to get out of phase with what's happening in the real world. And we do need these exogenous cues about when we're supposed to be awake. And so our brains are built. They're not like, you know, a grandfather clock that you could put away in the closet, then you open the closet and comes back on, it still going. We, we are built to pay attention how much light is in the sky. And so, you know, looking at a phone before you go to bed, and having all that light hitting your eyeballs, it absolutely messes you up. But when you wake up in the morning, if you get those lights on as early as possible, it will help you big time waking up, because your your retinas and your brain are built to take that information and be like, Okay, this is when I'm awake, and it really does pay attention. And so that's a really easy hack, like just to pay tons of attention to the lighting around you, to really set your clock to where you want it to be, whether you're anticipating a daylight savings or a trip, or something like that, or if you're trying to recover from something like that, but it is really interesting how hard it is for the brain to recover. And you know, we didn't evolve with the ability to go as fast across time zones as we now go, right like at some point we domesticated horses, but that's even pretty recent, right? And so maybe you could ride a horse pretty fast if you went due east, and then find yourself with a little bit of jet lag going but of course, you know, there weren't there weren't standardized clocks and all this stuff back then. So it's, it's this new problem that we're finding the human brain just really can't handle. And we make matters even worse with daylight savings, where we, like, give everybody jet lag for no flipping reason. We're like, Hey everybody, you just moved over one province. Congratulations. I

Caitlin Green  27:38  
thought about Jan because Jan. I was like, okay, not only are you dealing with jet lag, but you came back and then they jam us on the clocks.

Dan Riskin  27:45  
Yeah, yeah. So jet lag. I mean, there are lots of studies that that show why that's a problem. And the biggest one, the easiest one to point your finger at, is just the number of car accidents. Goes up. If you look at the day after everybody loses an hour of sleep, there are 6% more car accidents in the US, in the places where they have daylight savings, they don't have it everywhere, but in the places where they have it, there's 6% increase, and that's equivalent to 28 deaths that happen every year that we don't need to have. It's not like we don't get get a discount on deaths at the other side of the year when more sleep that doesn't happen. So, so it's a problem. It's a bigger problem depending on where you are in the time zone and just how how how dark it is in the morning and how tired you feel. So that's, that's part of the story too. But yeah, it's, it's a huge problem, and it also hurts your productivity and your ability to get things done in the morning. So

Jann Arden  28:29  
Saskatchewan stays static, so they don't move forward or back. Saskatchewan doesn't participate in daylight savings, and they're talking constantly in this conversation comes up every year around, well, twice a year when we're changing the clocks, about abolishing it altogether? Yeah, what do you feel like in your heart of hearts? Is it worthwhile? Is it just, we just stay the course and not screw with anything? Do I feel very

Dan Riskin  28:54  
strongly we should get rid of it as soon as okay? My understanding is that the legislation has been passed in a bunch of Canadian provinces, and they all have this thing, like, as soon as America does, but like, America has not yet adopted the metric system. They

Jann Arden  29:06  
never will. They're not going to. They certainly won't now, no, they

Dan Riskin  29:10  
not. They're not going to do that in this next four year period. Pretty confident, but who knows? Stranger things have happened? So, yeah, so I think it's like, a really obvious thing, but the fact that we can't stop doing daylight saving, which has only been done since, like, 1917 or 1918 or something like that, the fact that that can't be changed, to me, is like this screaming sign of the fact that our governments just don't function quite as well as they could. Like, that's a really obvious benefit we could have for society. If they would just do it. That'd be really nice. But my dad

Jann Arden  29:39  
used to say it was because of travel schedules. He said it's because of international flights. And, you know, people buying tickets and, and, I mean, how hard is it? You buy your ticket, you're leaving from one destination. This is the time you're given out of Calgary, not anywhere else. You're leaving Calgary at 715 so it wouldn't affect, no, it's like when I'm in Toronto. I don't base the time that I'm leaving Toronto on mountain Central Time. I'm basing it on my time in Toronto. So I never really bought into that whole idea of, like, it would be very confusing for international travelers,

Dan Riskin  30:10  
no, especially smartphones do all that stuff first. Now, I mean, the argument I always hear is, oh, no, the farmers. And I'm like, Saskatchewan is the one place that doesn't do it. I think they have farmers in Saskatchewan, and they seem to be doing okay, yeah, like, I don't think the farmers need this. No,

Jann Arden  30:24  
not at all. Well, it's really kicking me in my butt, and I try and do all the stuff. I do melatonin leading up to it. I do it when I get back. But maybe it's just because I'm getting older in my 60s, I'm just more adversely affected by that kind of movement. And unlike Caitlyn, I have not been hung over traveling, and I have a toddler that would make it exponentially worse, for sure. Really feel

Caitlin Green  30:49  
worse for me, of all of us, two year old, well,

Dan Riskin  30:52  
daylight saving, I will say my deep seated hatred of daylight saving is from when my twins were babies. And they'd be like, everybody gets to sleep in an extra hour. And I'm like, No, I don't now they just wake up an hour earlier. That just means I lose like, one more hour of sleep when they wake up at four instead of five.

Caitlin Green  31:08  
And I will angrily adjust the time to everyone in conversation for at least a week. Like, we'll be like, Oh my god, I'm so tired. It's like only 530 and I'm like, it's really 630 Right? Like, I'm telling everyone that it's really an hour later for at least a week just because I have a grudge about it.

Dan Riskin  31:23  
Yeah, but, but I will say, Jen, I can see from from your camera shot that you have nice big windows behind you. You're getting lots of natural light. You're doing that, right? So keep doing that. That's gonna help you. Yeah,

Jann Arden  31:33  
no. And I don't try and force myself to go back to sleep. I just get up. If I'm up and my body's going, ding, ding, ding. I get up. It's funny you say about your phone's telling you where, you know what time it is. Well, when I was in the South Pacific, toodling around the Fijian islands, my phone thought I was in Italy. My GPS map told me I was in Italy. It told me that it was 1220 and everybody else had 620 I'm like, and never mind that it was the day before. Like, we were on tomorrow all the time in Fiji, and I'm like, Guys, why isn't my phone changing? I would shut it off and turn it back on again. It was becoming a real problem,

Caitlin Green  32:08  
a Huawei or something. What's going on?

Jann Arden  32:10  
I don't it. Finally, even

Caitlin Green  32:12  
iPhone, you've just,

Jann Arden  32:13  
I know, three days in, it adjusted internet. Like,

Dan Riskin  32:16  
did they have some kind of router thing going where? Like, oh, they were on

Jann Arden  32:18  
Elon Musk Skylink. That's what they had on that ship. And it was about was actually the best, best internet I've ever had on any kind of sea vessel in my life. Like it was, it was dead on. But my phone, I'm telling you, I didn't know who to talk to. Thought you were in Italy, wow. And never the Google Maps. Like the little blue dot. I'd be like, Oh my god, I'm a blue dot. I'm just outside of Venice. Like, what is happening? Where did the ship go overnight?

Dan Riskin  32:43  
That is so cool. Okay,

Caitlin Green  32:45  
wait, that brings me to another topic that I wanted to go Dan's take on why I have thought this for a long time, why GPS is making us all worse at direction.

Dan Riskin  32:55  
Yeah, this is so thank you for bringing that up. I think this is really neat. I mean, some people, it's so bad that when they're in Fiji, they think they're in Italy. Can you believe that that really happens because of GPS? Are you blaming me? Sorry, I had to. This is a study asking the question, Does GPS ruin your sense of direction? So you get out of your house, you get in the car, you put on the GPS, and then you go to the wherever you're going, and it tells you how to get there, and you know how to get there, but you still have the GPS on, maybe because of traffic, or maybe because you're lazy, or maybe because it's habit, but are you ruining your sense of direction by using that GPS by not having to figure it out yourself? This is a big meta analysis where they looked at all the studies that have ever looked at these kinds of things, and put them all into one big pile, and then analyze the data all together. So very, very big study. And what they found is that when people are using GPS compared to people who don't use GPS, a couple things do get worse. So one is people are worse at knowing landmarks in their area. So if I say to Caitlin, like between your house and the daycare, how many, how many bakeries do you pass? And her answer on that will be more accurate on average, when I ask a whole bunch of people if she doesn't use GPS, compared to people who do use GPS and wouldn't notice those landmarks as much. So that's one way that GPS is ruining us, but the second one is just your overall sense of direction. If I say, Okay, Sarah, point towards Lake Ontario, literally in front of me. Can you see it? Yes. Okay, well, that's cheating, so that's not fair, but if you ask that kind of question, like, point towards, you know, Vancouver, whatever it is, just your ability to pick that right direction is also affected by whether or not you're a GPS user. And so there are these two pieces. And then the third piece of the study showed that your actual performance at getting to your destination is not improved by using GPS. Most people can get where they need to get just fine without using GPS and so often, because we're using it when we've already been there. And so, you know, I have sympathy for Uber drivers who have to find the best route and all that stuff. But for the most of us, it's like, maybe we shouldn't be using GPS quite so much. It's interesting

Jann Arden  34:55  
in London, you know, back in the day, I'm sure it's changed now, because they, too, have. Uber, the black cabs that were iconic. You know, if you go to London and you hop in a cab and you know, they're just great, they're like, oh, that's what a cab looks like. But they had to take tests for two years in order to get their cab licenses. They needed to know every single side street. It was like the most intensive learning curve for a street map, you can imagine. I mean, London's got 10 million people in central in downtown London, but it always blew my mind. And I would talk to drivers, you know, every time I got in the car, I was so curious about that whole thing. So you guys have to, yeah, it takes about two years. You have to do these testing to get a license to drive these cabs. And now Uber is on the scene. But anytime I've been in a black cab, oh, let's say since like 2021 they've had a GPS running, so they no longer need to know. What is that? But before that, it was literally, you would tell them where you were going, and they'd say, Oh, sat near the St Patrick's Church. All right. I know, I know we were going, and off they'd go because they, like, you said, they had a landmark,

Dan Riskin  36:02  
yeah, there were studies that showed that parts of their brain were hyper developed, that those cab drivers in the map. I don't remember what part of the brain that is, but I do remember seeing studies on them because they were exceptional. And it's funny, because, like, for me, as the tourist who might go to London, you know, three more times in my life, and might get in the cab on half of those occasions. Oh, wouldn't it be nice if they could still do that? But then it's like, if you're actually somebody that makes a living drive of people around, it's like, oh no, that would be nice for you if I had to spend two years memorizing this map. That would be quaint for you, instead of just being able to put a GPS on my dashboard. So I can see why it benefits them to have made the switch. And obviously

Jann Arden  36:38  
you can't be driving people around with a giant fold out map, the

Caitlin Green  36:41  
pearlies, the old pearlies maps. Yes, my dad, oh yeah. I'm like, Oh, I miss those.

Jann Arden  36:46  
Yeah, I do too. And my parents fought constantly about, dude, Christ, you're folding the goddamn thing. That's not where the folds go. And we'd have to pull over like it was a big deal, fighting of how to fold a map before we go. I do want to talk about dogs or pets, or birds or cats, or whatever your pet preferences. I'm focusing on dogs. Sarah's got a brand new little dog rescue dog that she's got, but just the whole concept, like, I live alone out here in the trees, and I couldn't be here without my seven and a half pound dog, and the girls know that we've talked about it a lot. I just want you to know, tell us about the science behind what pets do for us. I know there's very important for seniors and things like that, but there is a real science behind the benefits that these animals bring to human life. And I thought you could talk to that a little bit. Yeah,

Dan Riskin  37:37  
I would love to. I have two studies that I really that really, for me, sort of deepened my appreciation for dogs that are both from the last few months. One is that they can smell if you're stressed. So if you are stressed, you'll act differently. And so it's not that surprising. Your dog sees how you slump around the house and you kind of throw down a book or whatever, fold the map wrong, or whatever it is that you do when you're angry. But what the fact that they can smell a difference? So this is a behavioral test where they had dogs and they measured how long it took for them to feed on the different bowls. And the only thing that they changed in the experiment was that the dog would smell some cotton that had been in the armpit of a person while either the person relaxed and listened to relaxing music or did a mock job interview where they were asked really hard questions. It was stressful. And so they took and so they took the scent that the people secreted into the other armpits onto this cotton, they had the dog smell it, and they were able to show that dogs perform differently, and it wasn't their owner, it was a total stranger. And so dogs, their behavior is changed depending on whether they smell the stress smell of a person or not, and that is purely their their evolutionary change toward becoming our ultimate companions, right? And so they are so tuned to us to be able to smell that you're feeling stressed today, probably before you even notice it. You know, that's one thing that I just really for me, really I felt moved by that

Caitlin Green  38:58  
I feel so bad for dogs when I hear that, I'm like, it's like, they have an abusive partner walking on eggshells their whole anyway, like, what

Sarah Burke  39:05  
if your general baseline is stress? Would they perform like, differently? It when, when you like, are so happy, right? Right? And you have the slice of life, right?

Dan Riskin  39:16  
I mean, it would be, I don't know, it's you bring up a really interesting set of questions. Because, like, what is the experience of the dog, and to what extent do they feel like they can do something about it? Because, I mean, some dogs, like, like, my dog is a herding dog, and she loves to, like, run up ahead and pull the kids back and, like, you know, make sure that we're all together, and it gives her a sense that she's doing her job. And I feel like a good companion dog might smell that and say, You know what? I got this that I you need me to go and Yap at the door so that I can give you an interaction that's going to bring you joy, or whatever it is. And so, oh, there. Now, Sarah is holding her dog up. Is this the new rescue? This

Sarah Burke  39:53  
is Stevie. Yeah. Stevie, how

Dan Riskin  39:54  
old is she was right, boss.

Sarah Burke  39:56  
She's seven months. She was right beside me this entire time, and like when she. Knows I'm going into recording mode. She needs to be near. It doesn't matter if she's hungry, she has to come with that's so good.

Caitlin Green  40:06  
I love that. Sarah asked, What happens if your baseline is stressed? She's like, not at all personalizing this

Unknown Speaker  40:10  
question, hypothetically,

Speaker 1  40:12  
does Stevie know how stressed Stevie's

Jann Arden  40:15  
helping her keep her stress down, though? Correct? Like, there's another, there's another side to that therapy,

Dan Riskin  40:20  
yes, and that is, yeah, we're both going to the same place. That second study that I really wanted to hit is that dogs really do lower your stress. And so what they did is they they had people do these stressful tasks where they basically had to do a really hard math test, where you had to add up numbers and subtract them in your head. And then once people were worked up, what they did is they put them into three groups. Some people got to spend some time with a dog. There were no rules. You just had to pet the dog or look at the dog, or just be near the dog. It didn't matter. The other people did one of those stress reducing coloring books, which was nice. And then other people did nothing. They just sat quietly and tried to calm down without either of those two assistants. And then afterwards, they measured, you know, how stressed they were, and asked blood

Jann Arden  41:01  
pressure, respiratory rate, all that stuff, exactly, and

Dan Riskin  41:05  
all of those metrics. It didn't matter if this was a dog person or not a dog person, dog owner, not a dog owner, and it wasn't their dog in this study, but the dog was head and shoulders above either those other two treatments. In fact, the coloring books were no different from doing nothing at all. I hate to hurt the sales of those coloring books, but they don't really do anything for stress reduction. They might be fun, but they're not. They're not like petting a dog. And so, you know, I guess the dog can sense when you're stressed, but the dog really does have the skills to pay the bills. The dog can help you calm down, they really do. And spending time with a dog is immeasurable. You know this intuitively, but it's nice when the science backs it up. Dogs really do work to lower our stress. And so they are miracles. Well,

Jann Arden  41:42  
they say it's so important for kids to have a pet when they're growing up as well. And I will say that as much as my dad was opposed to it, and my mom actually overrode that, she a lot of times succumbed to his will. You know, we saw that a lot growing up in the 60s, but when it came to having a dog, we had geese, we had rabbits. My mom was like, these kids are going to be around animals. And that's the end of it. She rescued a couple of geese. They spent the first two months of their lives underneath that laundry basket, and then my dad actually, begrudgingly went and built them a little concrete pond and a and a little hut, and they were the best guard animals we ever had. They loved my mom. No kidding so much, and they would chase us within an inch of our lives and pinch us. We were terrified of them. Their arms were their wing, their arms, their their arms were very strong, their arms, it's correct to call those arms. And they were fierce. People were afraid to get out of their cars, like, can we get out of the car? Because, you know, they wandered around during the day anyway. Yeah, that was an interesting time to have geese, but we learned so much. How

Caitlin Green  42:46  
did I not know this until right now? You could guard geese. It wasn't

Jann Arden  42:52  
intentional. It wasn't intentional my mom. It was probably some farmer. She worked at an egg farm. Maybe they had geese eggs that came along, I don't know, but we literally they did. They were already hatched. It's not like we were keeping them in the in the oven, but they grew. They attached to my mom, and they let my they'd coup and purr and and they just want to be near her, and they just pick at her, and they'd pick at her hair and and it was something, but my mom was magic. Anyway. She was magical with animals, period. But

Caitlin Green  43:23  
my mom grew up with pet crows, and that really into, yeah, her family had pet crows,

Sarah Burke  43:29  
Canary, which would have been eaten by the geese and the crown. Yeah,

Caitlin Green  43:33  
the crows were predominantly in the barn and like, they grew up on a farm and but the crows remembered the kids, and the kids would leave them food and things that they would like, and then the crows would come back and bring them trinkets, and they would kind of follow them around. And they were very attached to, like, the family, and yeah, they didn't like if a dog was around, if, like, an unknown dog came around, and they thought the dog was, like, up to no good around the kids, they would sort of dive around. And they were, like, quite protective. But I've always loved crows, so I feel attached to them as animals. And so having a pet crow seems very cool.

Dan Riskin  44:06  
They're so smart. They are so unreal. Yeah, they're beautiful, smart, great animals. And there's a, there was just a write up about a study about how long they can hold a grudge for. I believe

Caitlin Green  44:18  
it's I love them even more.

Dan Riskin  44:20  
I think it's 17 years. They've done studies where they wear a mask, and they go and they mess with the crows, or they go collect blood samples or something you have to do for your biology, but they wear this mask, and then they see how long, if you wear that mask nearby, they'll attack you. And I think 17 years is there's a big red in the New York Times.

Caitlin Green  44:39  
Amazing. Yeah, the

Jann Arden  44:40  
fact that they live that long is amazing. Yeah, they're

Dan Riskin  44:42  
so into there. And there are all these stories about, like them having weird behavior, and like funerals, and there's all kinds of anecdotal stuff. But I think crows, that's, that's a neat system. I think those are some of the most interesting animals on our planet. Me too. I

Caitlin Green  44:56  
really love them.

Jann Arden  44:57  
Well, Sarah was saying before you guys. Hopped on. We were just a little bit early, and I was just asking her how it was going with Stevie, and she was just like, I don't need a boyfriend. I don't need a date. I don't need nothing. I've got my dog. And I know that there was part of that was that was very truthful, because you felt like I'm suddenly really not lonesome. I would liken it to having having a child and and, you know, someone that's that constant company and someone that just looks at you adoringly. You know, when you have a two year old that's just like, huh, you've got a halo around your head. But I know I couldn't live out here when my little dog passed away three years ago. I lasted five months. I thought I was going to go a year. I'll travel. It'll be a little less stressful. And I I won't be so tied down. You know, when I'm touring and stuff, and I was just like, I am miserable, and I found Poppy, and he's so different than my other dog, and I just it's changed my life for the better. But I can't even explain it, and I'm not embarrassed talking about it anymore. I think people are kind of reluctant to talk to non pet people about how much of a difference a pet, and it's not just a pet. He's He's my he's my family member. He's my he's my pal, he's my friend. I sleep better. And that's the last question I wanted to ask you. I don't know if you know anything about this, but I just I read something probably two weeks ago that prompted me to ask you this about sleeping with a pet, that you sleep better, and I know it causes a lot of couples problems. To have a large Labrador when you're trying to make out and there's a lab, you know, staring at you. This is

Sarah Burke  46:27  
one part. I don't know how it's gonna go yet.

Unknown Speaker  46:30  
Just close the door,

Jann Arden  46:32  
because Poppy sleeps on the bed with me. He doesn't sleep in a kennel. He's little, and I'm single, so he girl, but I know I sleep better when I'm with him. Yeah,

Dan Riskin  46:42  
I don't have any science on that, okay, at all. I wish I had science on how to best deal with the dog feeling left out when you're trying to make out with somebody. Well,

Jann Arden  46:51  
no, that wasn't my question. It's

Sarah Burke  46:52  
mine, though.

Jann Arden  46:57  
Now I'm just a no. I'm literally getting red

Dan Riskin  46:58  
No, I don't know. I don't know the answer to the that stuff, but I do. I do really think that there is no this one isn't based in science. It's something that my wife, my wife's a scientist, and she told me this, so maybe it's from a scientist issue. By the way, she's a biologist. She teaches at University of Toronto, yeah, yeah. She studies the tropics and nutrients and all this other stuff. It's a whole that's a bag of worms that I'm not gonna open. Yeah, it's a very nerdy household. But she told me that she's seen a study where people often, if they've got a family with multiple people, and they get, you know, sometimes you're talking to one kid, you say the other kid's name, the dog name will go into that list. So I'll often call my kids by my dog's name, or vice versa. And that doesn't happen often with cats. People don't often make the same mistake. And I hate to make it a cat's versus dogs thing, but you don't often call your kid your cat's name, but you often call your kid your dog's name. And I think that speaks to the fact that the place they hold in your heart, they really have weaseled their way into our families in a way that is very human, like, like they really are members of the family, and that really is real, you

Sarah Burke  47:59  
know, like the science with smells again. Just going back to that for two seconds, I feel like it's pretty normal that dogs are attracted to. Like, you know, if I've come back from the gym and like, let's say I take my stuff off pretty quick and it's like, lying in the pile on the floor and I haven't cleaned it up yet, the dog is like, right over there. Like, oh, what's going on over here? Have you been but that's also, I would think, somehow scientifically connected to why they want to, like, sleep close to you. If that makes the sense, would it be pheromones? For

Dan Riskin  48:25  
sure? Yeah. Well, yeah. So interesting. I mean, you get into a nerdy thing. So for pheromones, for something to be technically a pheromone, it has to be within the same species. So if it's, if it's a different species, it doesn't technically count as a pheromone. But if a dog smells a dog, it's pheromone. If a human. That's a pheromone. It's it's definitely chemical communication, but pheromone, technically, if you were going to get it addiction,

Caitlin Green  48:46  
pet owners are they do eventually lose the ability to smell their own pets. Is the thing I've noticed.

Dan Riskin  48:51  
Oh, you go into their house, you're like, Oh,

Sarah Burke  48:54  
your dog stinks. Yeah.

Caitlin Green  48:55  
I'm like, your dog smells your house, smells your clothing, smells you need to take it to a groomer more often. But I know that you love it so much that you don't notice, like you don't even notice it.

Jann Arden  49:04  
People do that with their own bodies, like they're not aware of how they smell. They just, they just get so acclimated to it. Well, listen, we're gonna bookend this particular podcast episode with smells. We started out with smelling a bat's armpit, and we're now gonna end up leaving, you know, our dog smells, but the animal world is amazing. You are an amazing guest. We love every time that you're on, you're welcome to come and join us on the show anytime. I just love you taking the time and the fact that you have your newsletter, the bat signal. The Bat Signal newsletter, and it is $0 it's in the show notes as well. It's in the show notes. But Dan, as always, thank you.

Dan Riskin  49:41  
Follow the Bat signal.com and I will say, I just while I have you, I so often, like I'll give a talk in some random place, and so many people listen to you and come up and say, I, I love Jan Arden's podcast so much. And when you appeared on there, it was good, but you have such a loyal fan base that spreads so far and wide. And. It's just, it's a real pleasure to bump into people who like listening to you. Because it's, you know, it's just, it's just really neat the way you just bump into somebody you don't realize that they're a listener.

Sarah Burke  50:09  
And no shock that Jan's listeners love animals as well. It's,

Dan Riskin  50:14  
I'm shocked to know that, but anyway, you've got and they're always wonderful people. So it's, it's always a treat when I have those interactions with people.

Jann Arden  50:20  
Well, that's amazing. Thank you very much for being with us. You're absolutely fantastic. And I think your trivia thing on your newsletter should be called nerdle.

Unknown Speaker  50:31  
That's very good. I

Dan Riskin  50:33  
just might change it.

Caitlin Green  50:34  
It's very good. Here's

Jann Arden  50:35  
your nerdle of the week. And we call ourselves only Jans. Our fans are called our only Jans, which is really funny anyway, we'll see you next time on the Jan Arden podcast and show. Don't forget to sign up on Patreon. Five bucks a month. It's less than a coffee it's way more than Dan's newsletter. It's five bucks more than Dan's newsletter,

Sarah Burke  50:53  
but we'll put his trivia. Yes, we'll

Jann Arden  50:55  
steal everything he's got, but we appreciate you guys. There's always new content going up there every week, every day. I think I put two very whiny things up there just yesterday that you can watch. You guys are the best. You can find us on all your favorite streaming platforms, and you can leave us a five star rating, which will help other people find us. And of course, you can write us a review and just say how great Dan was, how great Caitlin was, how great Sarah was. And of course, me your favorite person in Canada. Canada's greatest song stress, singer and dancer and welder. Don't forget, I weld as well. I will see you next time with a janitor and podcast. Totally. Do you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai