Dr. Julia Schaletzky explains why the U.S. is having a hard time testing everyone for the coronavirus. Plus: learn about how ketamine can help with depression and anxiety; and how an anonymous Anime fan on 4chan helped solve a 25-year-old math puzzle.
Dr. Julia Schaletzky explains why the U.S. is having a hard time testing everyone for the coronavirus. Plus: learn about how ketamine can help with depression and anxiety; and how an anonymous Anime fan on 4chan helped solve a 25-year-old math puzzle.
Additional resources from Dr. Julia Schaletzky, Executive Director of the Henry Wheeler Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases at University of California, Berkeley:
How can ketamine treat anxiety? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Brock in Utah)
An anonymous 4chan post helped solve a 25-year-old math puzzle by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/coronavirus-test-shortages-explained-w-dr-julia-schaletzky-anonymous-anime-fan-helps-solve-25-year-old-math-mystery-and-can-ketamine-help-with-depression
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why the US is having a hard time testing everyone for the coronavirus, with some help from Dr. Julia Schaletzky. We’ll also answer a listener question about whether ketamine can help with depression and anxiety; and you’ll learn about how an anonymous Anime fan helped solve a 25-year-old math puzzle.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Why can’t we just test everyone in the US to see if they have COVID-19? We asked Dr. Julia Schaletzky about this, and today you’ll hear what she told us. Dr. Schaletzky is the Executive Director of the Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases, the Drug Discovery Center, and the Immunotherapy and Vaccine Research Institute at UC Berkeley.
[CLIP 3:20]
I know this isn’t exactly great news, but we wanted to at least shine a spotlight on a question that Americans seem to be asking VERY frequently these days. We’re gonna move on from talking about the coronavirus now, but if you’re interested in learning more, we’ll be posting our full uncut interview with Dr. Schaletzky on a special Sunday episode of Curiosity Daily this weekend. Keep an eye on your preferred podcast app to find the episode, or visit curiosity-daily-dot-com for links to stream or download, along with our full set of show notes.
We got a listener question on our studio line — and just so you know, we can still access your voicemails while we’re working from home during the pandemic. So keep the calls coming! Here’s today’s question. [CLIP]
Great question, Brock! I know, it sounds weird that a party drug like ketamine would be prescribed to treat...anything. And yet, almost exactly a year ago, the FDA approved it as a medication for depression. There’s a good reason, I promise.
First, some background: Ketamine started its life in the 1960s as a surgical anaesthetic because it has the ability to put people in a dissociative state that basically detaches them from any pain. That’s really handy in the operating room, and it’s still used that way today. But the drug is also commonly abused for the detached calm and distorted sights and sounds it produces.
2006 was when researchers began studying its use in treatment-resistant depression. When the results were successful, ketamine clinics for depression started popping up around the globe. That sounds illegal, but it isn’t — not technically. Ketamine has been an FDA-approved drug for decades, just as an anesthesia, not an antidepressant. These clinics use it off-label, the way doctors commonly prescribe a blood-pressure medication for ADHD or a seizure medicine for bipolar disorder. The FDA says that’s ok. But it wasn’t until March of 2019 that the FDA approved the first depression treatment based on ketamine. That treatment is a nasal spray that contains esketamine, which is one of the two types of ketamine molecules you’d find in the anaesthetic version.
So why ketamine for depression? Well, the typical pharmaceutical treatment for depression is designed to boost levels of a neurotransmitter called serotonin. These are called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. But over the years, it’s become clear that SSRIs are only helpful for about two thirds of patients, so researchers set their sights on other neurotransmitters, like glutamate. Glutamate is super important for making and maintaining connections between brain cells that enable learning and memory. Chronic stress can deplete some of these connections in a particular area of the brain that can make it harder to deal with negative events.
Research suggests that ketamine helps rebuild those connections by triggering glutamate production. It basically makes the brain more adaptable and ready to build new neural pathways, which can help people learn better ways to cope. Even more impressive? While SSRIs can take weeks or even months to take effect, ketamine can alleviate symptoms of depression in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, it doesn’t last. A course of multiple doses typically wears off within months. That’s why experts say it’s best to use ketamine as one ingredient in a comprehensive treatment plan. By combining ketamine’s brain-adapting effects with psychotherapy to learn more productive attitudes and behaviors, patients might find real, lasting relief from their depression. Thanks for your question, Brock! If you have a question, you can email us at podcast@curiosity.com — or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Purple Mattress. Here’s a question – how did you sleep last night?
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An anonymous website user helped solve a 25-year-old math puzzle. And I am SO excited to share this story with you, because it is nerdy on pretty much every level. Definitely something I can relate to.
You might have come across a TV show called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It’s an anime series that involves time travel, so of course people like to argue about it on the Internet. But instead of getting into a flame war, anonymous users who were discussing Haruhi on the website 4chan ended up making some significant headway on a puzzle that had vexed mathematicians for 25 years.
The topic was pretty much what you’d expect from an internet forum. Here’s the hypothetical question they asked: given that there are 14 episodes in the show’s first season, how many total episodes would you have to watch if you wanted to watch all of them in every possible order?
To figure this out, let’s simplify the question and pretend there are just two episodes. In that case, there are just two different orders you could watch the episodes in. You could watch episode one then two, or you could watch episode two then one. Mathematicians call these different possible sequences permutations, and they’re an active area of research.
But the 4chan users weren’t just talking about regular ol’ permutations. They were talking about what mathematicians call superpermutations. Superpermutations combine all permutations into a single sequence. So, for two episodes, the shortest superpermutation is one, two, one. It contains every possible permutation.
Mathematicians understood how to make these highly efficient superpermutations with small sets of numbers, but the pattern they relied on broke down when they tried to make superpermutations with more than five values. There was no good theory for figuring out, say, how many total episodes you’d have to watch in order to see every possible permutation of Haruhi.
Amazingly, a 4chan user offered an answer to the question less than an hour after it was asked: You’d have to watch at least ninety-three billion, eight hundred eighty-four million, three hundred thirteen thousand six hundred eleven total episodes. It wasn’t a complete solution, but it gave a “lower bound” for the number of episodes you’d have to watch. The proof also applied to series with any number of episodes, not just 14.
This happened all the way back in 2011, but the internet is a pretty big place. So the answer just kinda sat there until a couple of years ago, when science fiction novelist Greg Egan proved a new upper bound for the number of episodes required. That drew renewed attention to the problem, and in October 2018, three mathematicians confirmed the calculations in that 7-year-old post and offered a generalized version of the original answer in an academic paper.
All 4chan users are anonymous, so they couldn’t give direct credit to the person who made the breakthrough. Instead, they took the unusual step of giving first authorship to, quote, “Anonymous 4chan Poster,” end quote. May all of our silly internet debates be this significant.
Leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208!
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, I just wanted to remind you to keep an eye on your podcast app for a special episode of Curiosity Daily this Sunday, featuring our full interview with Dr. Julia Schaletzky. And here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about how your romantic attachment style affects your finances;
The surprising reason why some amphibians glow;
Why laughter might really be the best medicine;
How solar storms mess with whales;
A half-billion-year-old social network;
And more! Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Ashley Hamer and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: With additional audio editing by Ashley Hamer. Have a great weekend, and join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!