WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.020 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.020 --> 00:00:03.260 align:middle line:84% This is a poem called "Luciferin." 00:00:03.260 --> 00:00:07.170 align:middle line:84% And as you know, luciferin is the enzyme 00:00:07.170 --> 00:00:10.830 align:middle line:84% that makes it possible for fireflies, for instance, 00:00:10.830 --> 00:00:12.720 align:middle line:90% to bioluminesce. 00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:16.440 align:middle line:84% And it's the one, it's the one enzyme [? we ?] [? lack. ?] If 00:00:16.440 --> 00:00:18.420 align:middle line:84% we just had this-- well, actually, 00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:20.220 align:middle line:90% this and-- this is the protein. 00:00:20.220 --> 00:00:27.330 align:middle line:84% The enzyme is bioluciferase, the thing that breaks it, 00:00:27.330 --> 00:00:29.820 align:middle line:84% which causes the bioluminescence. 00:00:29.820 --> 00:00:33.090 align:middle line:84% So it's just this one thing that we're missing, 00:00:33.090 --> 00:00:37.590 align:middle line:90% and we could glow. 00:00:37.590 --> 00:00:39.090 align:middle line:84% I don't know in what ways that would 00:00:39.090 --> 00:00:40.950 align:middle line:84% be helpful to our current predicament. 00:00:40.950 --> 00:00:43.435 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:43.435 --> 00:00:45.430 align:middle line:90% 00:00:45.430 --> 00:00:47.010 align:middle line:90% It seems like it couldn't hurt. 00:00:47.010 --> 00:00:50.850 align:middle line:90% 00:00:50.850 --> 00:00:52.628 align:middle line:84% You'd want to be able to turn it off, too. 00:00:52.628 --> 00:00:56.220 align:middle line:90% 00:00:56.220 --> 00:00:59.940 align:middle line:84% It starts with a-- the first line is in quotes. 00:00:59.940 --> 00:01:02.730 align:middle line:90% It's spoken. 00:01:02.730 --> 00:01:07.170 align:middle line:84% "'They won't attack us here in the Indian graveyard.' 00:01:07.170 --> 00:01:09.240 align:middle line:90% I love that moment. 00:01:09.240 --> 00:01:11.010 align:middle line:84% And I love the moment when I climb 00:01:11.010 --> 00:01:15.480 align:middle line:84% into your warm you-smelling bed-dent after you've risen. 00:01:15.480 --> 00:01:19.920 align:middle line:84% And sunflowers, once a whole field and I almost crashed, 00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:22.500 align:middle line:90% the next year all pumpkins! 00:01:22.500 --> 00:01:26.160 align:middle line:90% Crop rotation, I love you. 00:01:26.160 --> 00:01:29.750 align:middle line:84% Dividing words between syl-lables! 00:01:29.750 --> 00:01:31.470 align:middle line:90% Dachshunds! 00:01:31.470 --> 00:01:35.430 align:middle line:84% What am I but the intersection of these loves? 00:01:35.430 --> 00:01:39.870 align:middle line:84% I spent $35 on a CD by some guy with 15 different guitars 00:01:39.870 --> 00:01:45.540 align:middle line:84% in the shack with lots of tape delays and loops, a good buy! 00:01:45.540 --> 00:01:48.690 align:middle line:90% Mexican animal crackers! 00:01:48.690 --> 00:01:51.180 align:middle line:84% But only to be identified by what you love 00:01:51.180 --> 00:01:55.200 align:middle line:84% is a malformation just as embryonic chickens grow 00:01:55.200 --> 00:01:58.410 align:middle line:90% very strange in zero gravity. 00:01:58.410 --> 00:02:03.030 align:middle line:84% I hate those experiments on animals, varnished bats, 00:02:03.030 --> 00:02:07.290 align:middle line:84% blinded rabbits, cows with windows in their flanks 00:02:07.290 --> 00:02:10.590 align:middle line:90% but obviously I'm fascinated. 00:02:10.590 --> 00:02:14.340 align:middle line:84% Perhaps it was my early exposure to Frankenstein. 00:02:14.340 --> 00:02:16.540 align:middle line:90% I love Frankenstein! 00:02:16.540 --> 00:02:20.520 align:middle line:84% Arrgh, he replies to everything, fire 00:02:20.520 --> 00:02:23.340 align:middle line:84% particularly sets him off, something 00:02:23.340 --> 00:02:25.140 align:middle line:90% the villagers pick up-- 00:02:25.140 --> 00:02:28.310 align:middle line:84% something the villages quickly pick up. 00:02:28.310 --> 00:02:30.800 align:middle line:90% Fucking villagers. 00:02:30.800 --> 00:02:34.790 align:middle line:84% All their shouting's making conversation impossible and now 00:02:34.790 --> 00:02:36.470 align:middle line:84% there's grit in my lettuce which I 00:02:36.470 --> 00:02:40.640 align:middle line:84% hate but kind of like in clams as one bespeaks poor hygiene-- 00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:42.740 align:middle line:90% the other the sea. 00:02:42.740 --> 00:02:45.770 align:middle line:84% I hate what we're doing to the sea, 00:02:45.770 --> 00:02:51.110 align:middle line:84% dragging huge chains across the bottom, bleaching reefs. 00:02:51.110 --> 00:02:54.650 align:middle line:84% Either you're a rubber/gasoline salesman 00:02:54.650 --> 00:02:57.230 align:middle line:84% or like me, you'd like to duct tape 00:02:57.230 --> 00:03:02.570 align:middle line:84% the vice president's mouth to the exhaust pipe of an SUV 00:03:02.570 --> 00:03:05.150 align:middle line:90% and I hate feeling like that. 00:03:05.150 --> 00:03:09.650 align:middle line:84% I would rather concentrate on the rapidity of your ideograms, 00:03:09.650 --> 00:03:12.740 align:middle line:84% how only a biochemical or two keeps me 00:03:12.740 --> 00:03:17.200 align:middle line:84% from becoming the world's biggest lightning bug."