Welcome back.

Can you multiply two times one?

You’re back with the 2SchemeQueens.

Kait’s still in the ocean, guys.

Kait came back for a little bit.

Yeah.

But then she got a call that they were seeing, there was some milky sea spotted.

And she had to go.

And she had to go back out.

She said, oh no, I gotta go.

Yeah, so.

She’s out there drinking the milky sea water. That was Megan last episode, milky, milky.

I do get made fun of for how I say milk and tour.

Very Canadian, isn’t it?

It’s not tour. Anyway.

It’s definitely tour.

All right. Anything going on with you?

Pool day, pool’s open. Got to walk to the pool though. Oh, you’re about to go on a trip.

I’m getting ready to go out on the ocean.

Oh my God.

I hope you see the milky sea.

Well, I think we’re going to be in Greece.

You might see this creature that we’re going to talk about today.

I’m thinking we’re probably going to see some octopi, some octopuses, maybe some dolphins.

You’re definitely going to see some jellyfish.

And maybe some mermaids.

I’m getting ready to go landlocked. I’m going to Ohio. Where do people swim in Ohio?

I bet you guys are going to have the sprinkler out.

Yeah.

I’m like, should I pack a bathing suit? Yeah, because I’m going to Boston after, and we’ll go to the beach there. But yeah, landlocked states.

Are you guys okay? I can’t imagine what it would be like not to see the ocean.

Like how often do you see the ocean now?

I mean, I see the Bay pretty frequently.

I hope our season inspires y’all to go to the sea.

Yeah.

I did see Lake Michigan and that was crazy. That’s equivalent to the sea. That will scratch your itch.

Yeah, that’s why it drove me crazy that the book was called Beach Read.

Oh, and they’re on Lake Michigan?

Yeah.

I didn’t know that.

I mean, it’s a beach on a lake.

But I felt like I didn’t like the name.

I don’t think I knew that they were in Michigan.

Vibes. Oh, are we talking about jellyfish today? I don’t know how that would make anybody want to get in the ocean.

And it’s a good thing that Kait is not here again because Kait is terrified. She does not swim at the beach. And the one thing that keeps me out of the water is when there’s a jellyfish.

These are not stinging jellyfish.

Okay.

Before we get into it, though, was it time for our drink check?

Drink check.

Before I give you the full details to explain why, I don’t think this jellyfish is scary. What are we drinking today, Megan?

We kind of already had our drink.

It was a quick one.

We took a shot before we sat down to record.

I had to make mine a three-sipper because I’m almost 30 now.

I have to say it was way too sweet, but we did it for the vibes.

Yeah.

So we had a blue jellyfish shot.

Yeah.

Which is blue curacao, which I make a point when I’m at a bar to never order a drink with blue curacao. Vodka, we did peach snaps, which I think is why it was so sweet.

Yeah.

And then you just do a splash of creamer, and so as the creamer went down into the shot, we’re going to post a picture to Instagram.

It’s supposed to look like a jellyfish.

It looked like a jellyfish. So that’s a fun kind of scientific experiment. Was the flavor good?

No.

Well, it’s so sweet.

Colleen made the like, when she takes a sip of my refresher and she’s like, it’s too much sugar. And I’m like, just let the ice melt. She made that face like, this is so sweet.

But it was fun.

It was the girliehood.

But it was cooled away. It was cool.

Yeah, it gave Jellyfish vibes.

Yeah.

Okay, so let’s get into it. Are we ready, folks?

Yes.

Have you ever thought to yourself, can we live forever? Besides the Cullens, what is truly immortal in this world? If you’ve ever participated in any treatment to reverse aging, you’re going to like today’s subject.

Today, we will be diving deep in floating with the jellyfish, a creature that is currently helping today’s scientists answer the infamous question, can we stop death?

Now, seen worldwide in tropical oceans, you may see a tiny little see-through blob with a red core floating around. This is the Turritopsis dornei, also referred to as immortal jellyfish.

The mysterious creature that is biologically immortal, like a Benjamin Button who never dies. How does it live forever? What mysteries is it hiding from us?

Let’s find out.

This feels like death becomes her.

Yeah. Look at this little cutie pie.

So they live forever?

They literally will not die.

Unless they get eaten or something.

Yes, correct. Yeah. And they glow a little bit.

Look how cute that is.

That looks like an alien. I wouldn’t call that cute.

That’s my theory. That’s my theory. That’s an alien.

Well, we’ve already said all of our sea creatures are aliens.

Yeah.

This is like, oh, this one made me cute because there was a whole article online about the Immortal Jellyfish and Immortal Love. And when you tell somebody that you love them, you should say you love them like this particular type of jellyfish.

It kind of looks like the McCall Swimmers.

Right. It does.

Remember when you said that Loch Ness was the deepest body of water? Sometimes I say things like McCall is like 15 times deeper.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Every time I hear McCall, I want to go like, McCall? Yeah. The scientific name is hard for me to pronounce, Turritopsis dornii, but it’s commonly referred to as the Immortal Jellyfish.

There are so many types of jellyfish, but there was only one called the Immortal Jellyfish. So going forward in this episode, I will be referring to it as the Immortal Jellyfish, because that’s the only one, okay?

But why do we call it the Immortal Jellyfish? First of all, do you know anything about this jellyfish?

You just told me they live forever?

Yeah. But have you ever seen anything about it online? I’d seen this on Reddit before.

No, but isn’t there something about people try…

I feel like what you said seems kind of, it’s tickling my brain that they’re trying to use jellyfish for anti-aging.

Yeah.

That feels familiar.

Yeah.

So instead of dying of old age, the Immortal Jellyfish can transform its cells back into an immature polyp state, and I will explain what a polyp is, when it’s stressed, injured, or life-threatening situations, thus restarting its life cycle

So every time it gets stressed out, it becomes like a child again?

Yeah, more than a child, like a zygote.

Like a polyp is like almost the egg.

Can you imagine if you’re just like, you’re like a successful human being, and then you get scared, and then you do high school all over again, but then you get scared and you gotta do it again?

But you never die. And if you’re never threatened, never stressed, you won’t reverse back. It’s only during stress and things like that.

Like only when it’s injured, stressed.

When it sees a shark?

Goes into a little bloop. So, when it’s an adult, then this term is used for all jellyfish. An adult jellyfish is a Medusa.

Don’t know why.

I think it makes sense.

With the limbs?

Yeah.

Or tentacles?

Like snake hair?

Yeah. And then baby jellyfish is a polyp. Not more than an egg.

Not a functional being. Like it literally looks like a little mucus ball. Okay.

Let me describe these creatures. In my notes, I have small little boys. These jellyfish are 4.5 millimeters wide.

On average, smaller than a pinky nail. I hope you see one on your trip.

Probably not. If it’s smaller than my pinky nail.

You’ll eat it by accident. Keep your mouth closed.

Oh my God. New year unlocked.

They look so cute. I have pictures that Megan looked at, but for the listeners, it is described as a bell shaped, uniformly thin.

And I thought that was a funny way to describe it, but it just looks like translucent, like an average jellyfish, kind of like the jellyfish in SpongeBob, but not pink, like a white see-through.

And then it has in the center of the creature is like this bright red shape. Sometimes it kind of looks like a cross, but that’s like its heart and nervous system. And then it can have up to 90 tentacles, which I thought was crazy.

Nine zero?

Yeah.

That’s a lot of tentacles.

They are free-floating creatures that feed off plankton and their bottom living.

So they’re just like, bloop, bloop, bloop.

Do they have brains?

They have something in the center of them that functions kind of like a brain system. But like, we don’t have proof proof of like…

Higher level people.

Yeah. Do they have memory? I don’t know.

I mean, they can process stress, right? And so they’re like, scared, ha, bloop. They have that thought.

But I wonder, I’m like, do they know what happened when they bloop and grow back up?

Yeah. I was thinking about, when people are like, would you ever go back in time? I’m like, only if I knew then what I knew now.

Yeah. I want to go live it again.

I’m not going back blind.

I wonder that if they go back and they’re like, I have all of the memories from last time I did this, or are they just like…

I really would like to think that they have the memory of their age.

Or like a goldfish, right? They have like a two second memory.

I really, really want them to be like, if it’s a 100 year old jellyfish, it has a 100 year old memory.

It would be a wise…

I fear we’re looking at idiots, so yeah. I think these are stupid creatures. But are they stupid?

Because the science behind them is pretty crazy. And they’ve got us hooked. Okay.

Fish line and sinker, right? Hook line and sinker. You should also know that there are boys and girls.

There are females and males. There is fertilization of an egg to populate. So it’s not like a cell going through mitosis over and over again.

They actually do like fertilize to make more. So the poop that is recreating is one being, and it can go and populate and fertilize eggs. Where are they at though?

I feel like this is the same conversation we had a couple episodes ago.

Go crazy.

Are they off the coast of California, in the Bermuda Triangle, in the Sargassus Sea?

My answer to your question is yes, because they are now found worldwide.

Okay, so they’re everywhere.

But in just where USO colonies are thought to exist.

But primarily in temperate or tropic waters, which kind of is where USOs primarily. But where did they start? I have found mixed explanations of where they start.

Some articles said that they originated from just the Pacific. Then I found a couple that stated the Mediterranean Sea. But they are now in temperate or tropic waters.

So you could see one.

I mean, if I was living forever, I wouldn’t want to be cold for the next 1,000 years.

I don’t know, there’s something nice about the Arctic. I think I’d like being a whale.

Speak for yourself.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, maybe if you’re a whale and you’ve got-

Oh, I’m assuming if I’m in cold, I’m not feeling the cold, I’m just there. I need temperature change. I’m a creature that needs temperature change.

I need to feel warm and cold.

Oh, these two girls are never comfortable.

No.

I tell you that. It’s always too hot or too cold.

Yeah.

And then they spend the night and they open all the windows and then they leave. And then four days later, I’m like, every window was open upstairs, guys.

It’s me who forgets to close the window.

I’m sorry.

So what’s the science? How are these creatures doing this? Well, similar to my last episode, there is one particular scientist that kept popping up in all the articles because she’s like famous in the jellyfish world.

It is Dr. Maria Miglietta. And I just thought she was a bad bee.

She’s the jellyfish expert?

She’s the jellyfish doctor.

Like she’s got her PhD. Love. Where is she studying?

So majority of what we know on these creatures stems from the work of Dr. Miglietta with the College of Marine Scientists at Texas A&M University.

That’s interesting because-

That’s a landlocked university, isn’t it?

They are one of the few universities that has a land grant, a sea grant, and a space grant.

Wow, that’s kind of sick. It’s a day’s trip from the water.

Okay, but it’s not on the water.

No, but Houston’s on the water, and it’s not far from Houston. Oh my God, stop. Their mascot right now is a Collie that is missing one eye.

It is a one-eyed Collie. Okay, so anyways, this is where this lady does her work. She’s really smart.

She has over 20 years experience studying jellyfish. Okay. That is giving nothing to my mystery.

I just thought it was cool to see a woman in STEM. So how does this creature, bloop, when it is stressed, injured, or feels the need to start over, the creature will sink to the ocean form, reabsorb its tentacle, morph into a blob-like cyst.

From this cyst, a new polyp will form, which is genetically identical to the jellyfish butt-off. So to the jellyfish that became into the blob, the little baby blob that comes from that blob is genetically a clone.

So they’re perfect clones of the original creature retaining all original DNA. So do you think that means they kept memory?

No, because I’m thinking about when you close, again, I am not convinced that jellyfish are that smart. Okay, I’m going to Google this.

I mean, the jellyfish and SpongeBob, they were pretty smart.

I’m going to answer your question.

About how smart jellyfish are?

Break your heart.

They’re not smart at all.

They only have a one-minute memory. One minute is a lot.

Hold on, because a goldfish is 10 seconds.

I thought a goldfish is like two minutes.

No, I think a goldfish is 10 seconds.

Okay, but the point is one minute, it doesn’t have a hundred years of knowledge.

Well, how do we have proof of that?

Maybe this, your doctor here.

Yeah, Dr. Magaleta.

Goldfish, this is not what I thought, but it does actually say here, Ripley’s, believe it or not, that goldfish actually can keep memories for five months.

Oh my God, I’ve inlined people.

I thought it was like two minutes too. So anyway, jellyfish, one minute, so they are not retaining their thing.

But even if they had a memory, I would have guessed no, because it’s sort of like when we talked about cloning, it happens, how it’s like, we think about it as like, yeah, bloop, there’s two of the same, but it’s really not.

It’s like, they have to go through development and all.

The same, yeah.

So it’s really just like a twin who’s a couple years behind or whatever. So I would have guessed no, but now that we know they have a one-minute memory, that answers that question.

I think I got the 10-second thing from 50 First Dates. You watch that movie?

It’s been a long time, yeah.

But there’s a scene where she’s in a memory care or something, and then there’s another guy with memory problems. This might be, I’m not chuckling to be offensive, but his name was 10-second Ted because he only had a 10-second memory.

I thought the whole thing was that’s why Dory has no memory because that’s accurate. Or did something else happen at Dory?

She got injured.

Oh, she had a brain injury. TBI?

Yeah, she had a TBI of a fish form, a TBI. And so with these Immortal Jellyfish, they can at any point in their life, from freshly hatched to completely matured, they can go back to the blob.

Okay.

So if they just pop out and they’re just floating for two seconds, but get a little scared, they’ll go back to booger form, which in my mind, life is so scary. How are we not seeing them constantly go back into bloop form?

That’s what I’m saying. Every time they make like a shark or something.

They must be so scared.

When you call them boogers, that’s a scientific term or that’s a term you made up?

It’s a term I made up.

Okay.

They called it a blob-like cyst. Okay. To me, I’m picturing a little booger on the bottom of the ocean floor.

For the listeners, I think that’s going to make sense.

Yeah. Okay.

So how are they doing this? There actually is a word that explains what they’re doing. It’s called transdifferentiation.

Have you ever heard of that?

No, but is it different from what the eels do?

No, it is different.

They have like five phases, they just like bop on the phase.

The mystery of the eels is that they are creating gonads from nothing. The Immortal Jellyfish is quite literally able to change its cells that it currently has completely.

Okay.

So transdifferentiation is when cells are altered and transform entirely into a different type of cell, also referred to as lineage reprogramming. So a way to think about it is a muscle turning into a nerve, like completely different work. Okay.

Okay.

Can they, if they lose one of their 90 tentacles, can they regrow one? Yeah.

I don’t know. That is a good question for Google.

And the answer is?

Yes.

Yes.

I figured as much, but.

In two to three days.

That’s crazy.

They will have a fully functional regrown tentacle.

That is crazy. So essentially with these creatures, they will transform every cell in their being back into essentially a stem cell, which is like a beginning cell that can then re-differentiate itself into anything.

And so when they’re going back into that booger stage, every single cell is going back into a stem cell. So it’s essentially like when you’re initially pregnant and you had that little booger in your uterus, they go back to that.

We know that that is what they’re doing, but we don’t know how to repeat that. Because they quite literally will do this for the rest of their life unless they are eaten or killed by a predator. So how do we know how old they are?

Isn’t that crazy? Immortal Jellyfish was recently differentiated from another species. So there’s a couple different jellyfish creatures within the species class that are specializing in their species, right?

Maybe they didn’t quite have the species narrowed down, and only recently did they narrow down the species. Got you. It’s kind of what I’m trying to explain.

So the same genus.

Yes, different species.

Exactly, yeah. And so there is another one called Tereptopsis nutrichilu, that is also known to do some form of transdifferentiation. It is a type of hydrozoon that can revert back to a juvenile from an adult.

So they are in the same genus, different species. The nutrichilu does some form of transdifferentiation, but I don’t believe it’s to the extent as the Immortal Jellyfish. And so that’s why they have been differentiated.

And it’s important to know that the Immortal Jellyfish is, to this date, the only known creature to do this.

How’s my next question? How many animals out there are?

This is the only one that we know to do this. We have proof of other creatures changing their cells’ purpose, but not completely the way that the Immortal Jellyfish does.

For an example, in humans, our pancreatic cells can switch from an alpha to a beta form, but it’s still a pancreatic cell.

So it’s not quite the extent as the Immortal Jellyfish, who is able to change everything from the tip to their blob to the bottom of their tentacle. It’s not the same. Which makes me think, are Jellyfish aliens?

Because there’s no one else like them. That’s the mystery to me.

Yeah, the Immortal Jellyfish and Jellyfish relatives, the Hydra, and then there’s some coral sponges, microbes that are immortal, and that’s it.

Jellyfish alien, question mark, question mark, question mark. Because there’s none else like there.

I don’t know. I believe octopuses are. But Jellyfish are not of any relation to an octopuses.

I mean, tentacle.

But also, they think octopus DNA came on a meteor, right?

Yeah, something like that.

That’s my mystery. Why are these the only ones? Crazy that it’s absolutely immortal.

That’s wild. Will Jellyfish cure cancer?

Yeah, I bet you there are so many. Well, cancer. You’re thinking cancer.

And I’m sitting here thinking about like the beauty.

Well, yeah.

Superficial anti-aging.

It’s going to help cure aging. But I’m thinking like disease. Like we’re going to be able to transform cancer cells back into regular cells, something like that.

That’s what I was thinking.

Yeah. Yeah. But there’s a lot of people investigating this right now for a ton of purposes that would probably be very financially beneficial.

Yeah.

Somebody’s going to privatize this.

Yeah.

Don’t privatize the jellyfish.

If you can cure the cancer, if you can stop wrinkles and superficial aging, people are going to pay so much money for that.

Just don’t privatize the jellyfish. It’s all going to be privatized. But my favorite article that I read, I hinted at it in the beginning of this episode, was the Immortal Jellyfish, the science of falling in love again.

Because it’s all about the true meaning of eternal devotion.

But they’re not eternally devoted to anything because in a minute they forget who they’re devoted to.

I love you like an immortal jellyfish.

Yeah. I don’t think that’s a good metaphor. Because they’re not mating for life, right?

I don’t know.

No, no.

If minute by minute they forget who they are.

I just thought it was cute. It’s just a jellyfish with a bunch of hearts behind it.

Do jellyfish mate for life? No, they lack the social structure and brains for monogamy.

But they’re so cute.

They do not even mate in the traditional sense.

Yeah, but I love you like an immortal jellyfish. Here’s Dr. Miglietta doing her hard work.

What a bad bee. We should tag her.

Yeah, it is a bad bee. We know some other bad bees. Yeah, women in stem.

Yeah, we love it.

That was my favorite part about-

I mean, I would argue we’re a couple of women in stem, but we know a lot of real stem people working in a lab.

The ending of this article says, it becomes a scientific valentine from the sea, a reminder that longevity, whether in nature or in love, is not defined by permanence alone. That was good. That’s a good article.

This is a Texas A&M article about Dr. Magliela. See our sources.

All right.

Well, that was interesting. I’ve never heard of this, and I did not think jellyfish were on the list of animals I really wanted to learn about, but you’re welcome. That is fascinating.

Yeah.

It was fun to read about. It did give me similar vibes as the eels, so.

Guys, just a reminder, don’t forget to check out our Facebook and Instagram pages at 3SchemeQueens. That’s the number 3 SchemeQueens, all one word. We’re also on Reddit, same username.

If you want to check out our website, go to 3schemequeens.com and you can find links to our social media accounts, our Buzzsprout page, all of our episodes, additional content, and our contact page where you can engage with us and share any updates

on the topics that we have discussed. Let us know how we’re doing and what you want to hear next. There are also opportunities to financially support us with links to buy us a cup of coffee and links to our merch store.

As always, if you choose not to financially support us, we appreciate the follows, the downloads, the listens, the likes. All right. Well, what should the people do?

I want you to stop right now.

I’d like you to send this and pick out your phone. When I say send this, you’re going to send this from your computer, you’re going to send this from your phone. Okay.

Whatever device. Actually, I think you can even ask Alexa to do it. My mom calls her Alexa Ziggy, which I think is so funny.

Anyways, send this episode to three people. One who likes peanut butter jelly sandwiches, another who likes SpongeBob, specifically the episode where the jellyfish are having a rave. Then the third one is just someone who likes women in STEM.

What’s peanut butter and jelly have to do with anything?

Jellyfish.

I thought that was obvious.

Okay.

I thought that was the most obvious one. After you’ve dispersed the episode, scroll on down on whatever format and give us a review. Interact with us.

Let us know how you thought. Did you learn something new today? Did we solve any mysteries inside your head?

I sure hope so.

Interesting.

Okay.

We’ll be back next week with another seasonal episode. He he.

See you next Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.