Five Slimes To Rule Them All

**Kiki Sanford** (0:00)
This is Twist. This Week in Science, episode number 1071, recorded on Wednesday, August 12th, 2026 Five slimes to rule them all. And one slime to bind them? I don't really know. I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight we will fill your head with red spots, snail slime, and primate brains. But first, thanks to our amazing Patreon sponsors for their generous support of Twists. You can become a part of the Patreon community at patreon.com/thisweek in Science. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer.
Fauci in contempt of Congress, the National Academy is capitulating on a climate chapter. More vaccines are optional, while MMR might be split into three, and unproven peptides are more available than ever, maybe.
Political pet projects have taken over the hill, regardless of scientific support. At least we still look to the evidence here on This Week in Science, coming up next.

**Blair Bazdarich** (1:43)
Good science to you, Kiki.

**Kiki Sanford** (1:47)
And a good science to you, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We're back again to talk about all the science that was fit to spit in this episode of this podcast.
I mean, it's not really fit to print, because we don't go to print. So, yeah, I don't know. I got to work on some of these words sometimes.

**Blair Bazdarich** (2:14)
No, it sounds to me like the plan is to say it and spray it. And that's fine, because none of you are actually physically here with us.

**Kiki Sanford** (2:20)
And I have a pop filter, so hopefully that helps a little bit.
I hope everyone had a wonderful week. We're back, ready to talk about all the science that we brought tonight. I have stories about some unnatural viruses. Black hole star. Yeah, that's as far as I'm going to go with that one. Bacteria for babies, maybe some elven coral, some monkey brains, some trust tests, and the LLM study that we really all needed but didn't know we needed.

**Blair Bazdarich** (2:59)
Excellent.

**Kiki Sanford** (3:00)
What's in the animal corner, Blair?

**Blair Bazdarich** (3:02)
Platypus, frogs, snails.

**Kiki Sanford** (3:05)
It sounds like an animal corner.

**Blair Bazdarich** (3:07)
Yeah.

**Kiki Sanford** (3:08)
Sounds like it's rounded out as well. You've got some verts, inverts.
Yeah. And monotremes.

**Blair Bazdarich** (3:14)
Yeah.

**Kiki Sanford** (3:16)
Monotremes, amphibians. It's so many good groups here.

**Blair Bazdarich** (3:19)
Literally three of my favorite animals also. This is pretty exciting.

**Kiki Sanford** (3:23)
So Blair's going to be waiting impatiently for her turn for her animal corner.

**Blair Bazdarich** (3:29)
I'll be patient. I'll be patient. It's fine.

**Kiki Sanford** (3:32)
I see how it goes. All right. As we jump into the show tonight, I do want to remind everyone that if you have not yet subscribed to This Week in Science, you can find us live streaming on our channels weekly Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Pacific time-ish on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. I said that Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Pacific time-ish, right? On YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. I started hearing doors closing and things happening in my house, and I got off kilter there with what I was saying. Anyway, you can also find us on your favorite podcast platform. You can look for This Week in Science, look for twists, and you will probably find our wonderful orange Starburst flag and be able to subscribe so that you can find us every time a new episode is published. If you want information about show notes, the stories we talk about, please head over to twists.org, our website, where we also have links to our Patreon account and our Zazzle store. But now it is time for the science.
Should we jump in? Let's do it. Okay.
Story published in Science this last week, and a bunch of articles came out about it. Carl Zimmer wrote about this in The New York Times. And there's a great article, if you're not able to get Carl Zimmer's wonderful guest link through The New York Times. There is another great article by some scientists in The Conversation. Now, what is this story? Researchers published in Science their work titled Generative Design of Bacteriophages with Genome Language Models. What does this mean? Scientists have used large language model technology trained on genomic information about bacteriophages, very specific genetic data sets, and used that to create synthetic bacteriophages. We'll just shorten that and say phages from here on out. Now, it's been simplified and said, it's a virus. Well, that's because everything that's small and infects things and is not really living, quote unquote, it's a virus. It's not bacterial. These bacteriophages, phages, they're virus viruses. They are, or actually, I'm sorry about that. They are bacteria viruses. Bacteriophages are little tiny viruses that infect bacteria.