#once again these two are using chris as a proxy to think about their relationship

[haydenthewitch]

here i am. laying in bed. just thinking shooter arc thoughts. like, buck having his insane suisidal streak in him, probably thinking about eddie laid up in the hospital. and the little ammount of sleep he got on the diaz couch last night was guilt-riddled and scattered with imadges of eddie in the hospital, buck crying on chris's bed , buck in the hospital, eddie comforting chris. and buck is so angry, not even at the shooter but at himself for losing composure and probably scaring chris half-to-death at the relief that eddie was going to be okay. eddie. eddie. eddie. his heart thumps, and buck thinks that had that call gone diffrently, he probably would have been useless to chris, keeling over and dying of a heart attack on the spot. how could he keep going without his best frenid? hiw could his heart keep punping blood to his lungs and brain when eddie wasn't able to breathe, or think without him? and buck thinks bitterly, i was right there. i was right there, had the shooter moved his gun the slightest ammount and it would've been me; it could have been me, and i deserve it, but eddie doesn't. not when he has a bright, sunshine, smart kid at home who everyone loves. not when he's served the country buck calls home. not when he's eddie, a little perfect, just a little, and rough around the edges, but he's the better half of their frenidship. but then buck makes one small comment, that same thought thats been running around for days, "it would be better if i had been shot", and buck doesn't know it but it sends eddie into a spiral. becuse eddie is thinking 'how can he not know? how can he not know how important he is to me and my son?' and eddie is restless, becuse here is his best frenid, who took care of chris when he was down, who always has his back, who will fight for anyone he deems family like it's the last thing he'll ever do. here is this man who saved his son, rescued him through a tsunami, and still had the nerve to feel awful for every scratch and scar chris gained in the storm (physcal and mental) like it was his damn fault the tsunami happened!! how does he not know the eddie would intentionaly throw himself on front of that bullet so that buck wouldn't be hit? and eddie thinks back to the well incident. how does his best frenid not know that eddie had so much faith in him and his ablity to raise chris? every call, EVERY call that even went a little sideways since the well, eddie has it in the back of his mind that he MIGHT die. and his comfort lies in his saint christopher metal, and the man who is standing right beside him for all of it, who would get that call and would FIGHT for his heart walking around outside his body, his son. and so eddie is sitting there, restless in the hospital, and he comes to the conclusion that he has to tell him. becuse how dare buck insinate that his life is nothing? he's a protector of chris now, and he needed to hold that weight. yes. eddie was going to tell him. tommorow, when they discharge him. becuse buck deserves to live knowing the permenant teather he has to the diaz family. buck deserves it.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

10x18 - TTD Clues

Okay, let’s talk TTD. Usually I just have like 4-5 talking points from TTD, but there was a LOT in this episode. And, let’s face it. Given that it’s the Leah episode, there’s lots to discuss anyway. But everything in TTD just backs up what I’ve already said. Namely, that Leah and Daryl are NOT soulmates. And that there’s a lot of Beth symbolism and foreshadow here.

So, let’s just dive right in.

1)    Despite Chris calling it a “powerful relationship” in the intro (thanks a lot, Chris), when Nicole Mirante-Matthews, the writer, starts talking about it, it’s much better. She says this Leah thing will be relevant to a lot of things moving forward, including Connie. Which I take to mean that this affected his mindset and will probably change how he approaches things we’ll see in his story. 

She says that these were two lost souls, who happen to meet at a specific place and time and sort of crash together. That specifically suggests that it’s not a long-term thing. It’s more of a rebound and they were both lonely, and that’s why it happened. Then she says that this will affect things “reverberating forward into his present day story, which we’re rolling out here.” Because we understand the Bethyl template, and that Beth will be returning soonish, that just screams Beth to me.

2)    Chris talks about the grave marker Daryl looks at and how it’s kind of a fake out, as many people (who hadn’t read spoilers) would assume it was Leah’s grave. I talked about this Monday, and how it reminded me of the Beth/Tyreese fake out. I got that from TTD. Because I’d already read spoilers, the idea of that being mistaken for Leah’s grave wouldn’t have occurred to me.

And of course if she’s a hallucination, the grave marker may even be Leah’s. 

3)    Chris also mentioned massive time gaps. Now, he’s talking about the six-year time gap in which Leah happened, but still. I felt like the way he said it is to remind us that there are time gaps that have to be explained at some point, *coughs missing 17 days*

4)    Fun fact: the puppy’s name is Carl. Now, I can’t REALLY point to that as a TD thing, because the puppy’s name really is Carl. But I couldn’t help but wonder if THEY named the dog that. And even if not, they still felt the need to mention it here. I’m side-eyeing a little. Only because there are such strong symbolic ties between Carl’s death and Beth’s return. But hey, take it or leave it. Just my TD brain working overtime.

5)    They mentioned the map in the “in memoriam.” So, you know how I said yesterday that Map = Beth. Yeah, they actually treat Map as a lost character here. I’m just saying.

6)    Denise Huth’s pre-taped interview talks about a “lightening” for Daryl. Uuummmm. I don’t want to go into this in too much detail here, but this is part of the eclipse symbolism. Okay, I’ll just run through it super fast, but I’ll probably do a post in more detail later. Beth = sun. In an eclipse, the sun is hidden by the moon. So it’s the “what is hidden” or “what is not seen” theme. Some of the sun’s light is still seen around the edges of the moon (think of that as the symbolism that seeps out) but the sun itself (Beth) is still hidden. Gimple described Coda using the word “penumbra” which is the darkest part of the shadow thrown during an eclipse, and Maggie told Glennin 5x10, “This is just the dark part.” If things are getting lighter, it’s because the eclipse is almost over. The darkest part of the shadow has passed and things are getting lighter. And that’s actually what we see in the eclipse scene with Daryl and Leah. The eclipse being almost over and the sun starting to peek through. So this is all just another way of saying Beth is about to appear.

7)    There’s a point where Lynn Collins suggests that maybe we would have seen a Daryl/Leah kiss if not for Covid restrictions, but the writer immediately corrects her and says it was a creative choice. She sights reasons such as the fans being protective of Daryl and not trying to piss them off too much, but that seems very significant to me. I think they didn’t want to show Leah and Daryl kissing (even though the sex implication is there) because they’re saving that for someone else.

8)    At one point, talking of Daryl and Carol’s fight, MMB mentioned the scene in S2 where they fought over Sophia. Just seemed significant to me that she brought that up, because that’s basically ground zero for the missing girl theme, and the first person we saw Daryl searching for. Now, this entire episode, he’s searching for Rick, and it’s full of Beth themes.

9)    Back to the map. I said Monday I would go back to the opening scene where Carol picked up the piece of the map and put it in Daryl’s bag. I never did. Lol. Sorry about that. I threw a LOT of info at you and totally forgot to go back to it. Just keep in mind that this was probably a foreshadowing, and Map = Beth. And they specifically brought that scene up on TTD and drew attention to it, though of course they talked about it in the context of Daryl and Carol.

The other thing that several people have brought up is that map seems to be destroyed, and then whole again. I suppose I just thought he got a new map when I first watched the episode. Now, I agree with other that the state of the map is one of many ways they were hinting that parts or all of this is a hallucination. And again, they drew attention to the map on TTD.

10) When Chris asked the writer what the inspiration was for Carol’s “strong right foot” story, she got REALLY flustered. Now, that’s definitely TD symbolism. Related to the “missing foot/shoe” symbolism, in my opinion. In fact, if they’re synonymous (we’re just not entire certain yet) then this would definitely be a reference to both Beth and Ezekiel being missing. But anyway. The writer finally came up with how and why she had Carol tell the story of her grandmother. And I’m not saying it was a lie. The grandmother story is much more incidental than the “strong right foot” bit. But I don’t think Nicole expected that question or was prepared for it.

11) They did talk extensively about parallels between Leah and Carol, and I had to chuckle at what was said. They were just doing a lot of back-pedaling. So, first they said they are two completely different characters. Then they said they share a lot of qualities that Daryl recognizes. Then they say his relationship to Leah in the flashbacks is absolutely nothing like his relationship to Carol, both in the present and as it has been for many years. Did you catch all that? It’s their way of pointing out the parallels between Leah and Carol, but also taking care to make sure people know that Daryl and Carol are NOT romantic the way Daryl and Leah are. Lol. This is why I say its kind of the death knell for that ship. But again, why put parallels between Leah and Carol if the romance angle isn’t there? For the answer, read my very long analysis from yesterday.

12) On the “Inside the Dead” portion, it says that the breed of dog they use for Dog is often used for Military and Police K-9 Unites. Yeah, that’s purposeful. I think they specifically chose that breed of Dog to use on the show as Daryl/Leah’s dog, because it both calls back to Grady (police) and foreshadows the CRM (military).

13) Norma’s interview! Yay! This might have been my favorite part of TTD. Because the way he describes Daryl’s arc here makes it clear that it was one chapter of Daryl’s life that is now over. And what he says about Daryl being unable to allow himself to be happy with Leah says to me that he’s still hung up on someone else.

This probably made me happier back when I thought Leah was real. But the other thing is that he specifically uses a Matrix metaphor (the red pill vs the blue pill.) Umm? The red pill vs the blue pill situation in the Matrix is what brought Neo out of the construct and into reality. This is Norman’s very obvious way of telling us that Leah isn’t real. Daryl is in the Leah Matrix in this episode.

14) When speaking of the arm that Leah throws at Daryl, they said something really interesting. My fellow theorists and are still batting around ideas for what the arm symbolism might mean. But MMB called it “dead weight” that Leah was basically getting rid of. And they all agreed that symbolically that was true. So the arm represented Leah getting rid of the dead weight of her past and working through it. Wow. Where to start with this?

If she were real, that just shows that this is all this relationship was. Once she’d worked through her own losses, she wanted Daryl to commit to her, but he couldn’t. Because he hadn’t worked through his. Plus, a relationship built on this sort of thing, as I’ve already described, is never going to last in the long term. But of course, assuming she’s a hallucination, this is really just Daryl trying to work through his issues and shed his past. It doesn’t really work. 

Dead Weight is literally the name of the episode in 4b where the Governor was a MASSIVE Beth proxy.

Shedding one’s tragic past while in a little cabin in the woods, with DARYL, is pretty much the synopsis of Still. So, it just backs up the symbolic retelling of Bethyl.

All right. That’s what I got for TTD. Anyone see anything I missed?

[sparkwhorunswithwolves]

You've been posting Stallison, so...Stallison for the OTP pairings ask game, if you feel like it?

Yes! I was hoping someone would send them!

Coffee shop AU: Who is the barista, and who frequents the coffee shop?

Both are frequent customers, and their relationship starts when the shop is otherwise empty except for that one annoying customer and they give each other A Look and make faces at each other, trying not to laugh and piss off that customer even more. They definitely have a bet on when the two baristas end up together, completely oblivious to the fact that they and most of the regulars have that same bet about them.

Highschool/College AU: Who is the straight-A student, and who’s the backrow slacker?

Both have pretty good grades, but Allison is the one who actually studies regularly, while Stiles either doesn't care or pulls an all nighter the night before the exam.

Rivals to loves AU: Who takes their rivalry seriously, and who is half in it just to push the other’s buttons?

It depends on why they're rivals probably. But they're both ridiculously competitive over everything and push each other's buttons relentlessly. Everyone who doesn't know them is terrified.

Enemies to lovers AU: Which one switches sides?

Canon would suggest Allison, but I'm also too fond of good omens to not say they ditch the entire conflict and make their own side.

Soulmate AU: Who is eager to meet their soulmate? Who absolutely does not want to meet their soulmate?

Both. And neither. They want what it represents, they don't want the baggage that comes with it.

Allison is too much of a romantic to not want this, Stiles is ride or die for the few people he cares about, and he knows that his soulmate would be one of them, that they would do the same for him.

But Allison knows that even if she meets them in high school, her parents wouldn't care and they'd move again soon anyway, and her parents are soulmates, but it's not the fairytale romance she wants. Stiles parents were that couple, before his mom got sick and Stiles saw what it did to his dad, losing her. And he knows himself well enough that he knows he couldn't handle losing his dad or Scott, much less the person he's made for.

Single parent AU: Which one is the single parent? (Alt. if they’re both single parents: Which one is open to starting a new relationship from the start? Which one is never planning on finding love again… Until they meet the other and are instantly smitten?)

I— can't actually picture them as parents together. Friends to accidental parents to lovers? Sure.

But if I had to? Stiles has a just old enough to start archery daughter, and Allison becomes her teacher.

If they both have kids? The kids met at preschool, and immediately decided that they were best friends, and stallison spend a lot of time together by proxy. Stiles' ex left him soon after his kid was born, Allison moved into town because hers left her not too long ago. So Stiles is used to being the only parent/to not have to factor in anyone else when making decisions, Allison isn't going to put either herself or her kid through having someone else leave them again, so both are against starting a relationship.

Doesn't stop them from becoming friends, though. Or the kids from having a lot of play dates/sleepovers. And it becomes natural for one of them to pick up both kids after school, and plan most day trips together, and do start co-parenting to some degree without ever acknowledging it.

Everyone's happy, they have each other's keys and live close enough that it's not completely uncommon for either of them to just let themselves in (because someone can't remember where he left his stuff. Stiles would like to state for the record that Allison was the one who started it.)

Nothing hurts, they're one happy family, until Allison's kid ends up in the hospital and only family is allowed to see them, Stiles kid is with the sheriff, and Stiles hovers uselessly in the waiting room, because they're his family, dammit. And he want this, them, for as long as they'll have him.

They've known each other for over a year, and probably do something impulsive like get married as soon as her, their, kid is okay again, before they even had their first kiss.

Doctor AU: Which one is the longsuffering doctor? Which one is the patient?

Human AU, Stiles is obviously the one who comes into the ER at least twice a month with increasingly weird injuries, and Allison's the amused, and slightly worried, doctor.

Hunter/Stiles finds out AU, Allison ends up in the ER after a hunt, Stiles is there for Melissa/other job because I can't imagine him as a doctor, and somehow starts talking to her to avoid his responsibilities. Allison has a concussion/is on too many pain meds and can't really think coherently, and tells him what really happened. Stiles doesn't believe a word but is entertained, has to leave eventually, Chris picks up Allison. Until Stiles gets chased by that same monster, gets rescued by Allison and has an oh fuck moment.

Bodyguard AU: Who is the bodyguard? Who are they protecting? Which one is secretly pining for the other?

Stiles is the bodyguard, but it's Allison who kicks the bad guy's ass at the end. Stiles is probably also the one who is slightly drugged and makes hearteyes at Allison for the entire way home. Allison is the one who secretly pines for him because he doesn't just see her as Chris' daughter (or worse, Gerard's granddaughter) who needs to be protected at all cost (idk I'm picturing human AU in which the Argents are wealthy and relatively well known => threatened a lot, but Allison still doesn't know much about what they actually do) but rather her own person. Who can kick his ass. Allison is still either into weapons or martial arts, and they have a sparring-session-turned-love-confession post kidnapping.

Pirate AU: Who is the pirate? Who is the member of the royal family who did not sign up for this?

Allison is the princess turned pirate who just keeps accidentally kidnapping other royals. Well, the kidnappings are on purpose, that they all somehow end up joining her crew? Not so much. Stiles did not sign up for this but he's into it once he gets over the whole kidnapping thing.

(The crew Allison originally joined kidnapped and was trying to kill Lydia, so Allison got her out of there and they started doing their own thing. They were definitely dating at some point and this might turn into Stiles/Allison/Lydia. Isaac is there, too. Also Peter, because I love their dynamic. They're known for kidnapping royals, no one ever seems to recognize any of the crew.)

Childhood best friends AU: Which one was super obviously in love with the other the whole time? Who was oblivious until they were older?

Stiles. For both.

[thiswarisours-rp]

PAST ➜

ALLISON ARGENT led a pretty normal childhood – at least as far as she was concerned about it. Or, at least pseudo-normal – because of her father’s job, CHRIS ARGENT, they moved around a lot. She would barely get settled at one school, make new friends, before her father was shoving things into a bag and they were moving again. It became a bitter normal for the girl – to never have a sense of permanence. One thing she had for herself, however, was that by just fourteen she was a champion archer. She had a handful of trophies under her belt and her mother, VICTORIA ARGENT, and her father always encouraged her hobby. Even if it wouldn’t be another few years until she learned the family’s dark secret as to why the encouragement was there. Once again, when she was sixteen, they picked up and moved. This time to a small town called Beacon Hills. It was there that, first and foremost, she met LYDIA MARTIN. At first, she was slightly intimidated by both her looks, and her hidden smarts. But, beneath it all, Lydia seemed to be a good person and insisted on taking the new girl under her wing. The pair became close quite quickly and enjoyed each other’s company. It was in Beacon Hills that Allison also met SCOTT MCCALL - and, by proxy, his best friend STILES STILINSKI - and Allison was instantly smitten with the awkward Scott. As luck would have it, not after too long the two began dating ; and, at first, it was everything that Allison hoped it would be for a high school relationship that had always been right outside of her grasp. Because, it was through this and a string of more unfortunate events, that Allison found the door to the world of the supernatural – introduced into it by her aunt, KATE ARGENT. When worst came to worst and her mother died, Allison spiraled into the only thing that she knew she could consume herself in – her new huntress persona. Bitterness ate at her and she used it as a crutch to fuel the fire that was burning inside of her – doing a lot of things, by following first in Kate’s shadow, that she would later not be proud of. The world soon came into shocking focus – in full color – as her and her friends soon realized that the chaos that was Beacon Hills would never slow down. She buckled herself down and instead used her skills to help the pack – to help her first love and the people she cared so deeply for. Which now included a beta she previously injured –ISAAC LAHEY. Joining with Stiles and Scott as they sacrificed themselves to the Nemeton to spare their parents – and accepting the darkness that was harbored in her heart like a cloak. When the Nogistune and the Oni began to riddle their town and try to tear it apart at its seams; Allison once again did her best to help, growing both in skill and in loyalty. She penned a new code for her and her father to live by – Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger. We protect those who cannot protect themselves. And, in life and in death – Allison did just that. When the Nogistune peaked and chaos threatened to swallow the town whole, Allison was there and fighting with her friends. Falling to the Oni’s blade in a valiant death fit for a warrior – like herself.

NOW ➜

If only had it been that simple and that easy. The idea of her death was almost novelesque and romantic, in a way – dying in the arms of the first person she loved while protecting everything that she cared about. But – it was only that. Novelesque. Fictional – facts twisted and abused until everyone that she loved and adored believed in her demise. It was exactly what she planned – even if, truly and surely, it was the opposite of what she wanted. She didn’t want to see Scott, Isaac, or her father mourn for her untimely death. Her father – god, he had already lost so much. And, she was forcing him to believe that he lost so much more. Left with only his estranged sister and father left for his family. Albeit, proud as she watched from the shadows as her father grew into a man she could have only dreamed of – taking her new code and using it as a personal mantra. See, no – Allison continued to live as she was ; protecting her friends. Her grandfather, GERARD ARGENT, took her aside one day and explained to her his ideas for the future – telling her he saw great things for her if she only turned her back on her pack of misfits and embrace the guise that Kate had left behind when she went AWOL. Allison was adamant about trying to distance herself from her grandfather and the nasty ideals he spilled – but, for the sake of protection for her friends, she kept an ear on him. Among the chaos of the Nogistune, Allison was mentally battling another problem – while in the nursing home and visiting him, she ran across some files he had drawn up that looked … way too official for comfort. Labeled PROPERTY OF CITIZENS FOR THE WELFARE OF THE COMMON MAN. While Gerard was in one of his therapies, Allison ran over the papers. And was terrified by what she saw and what her grandfather was imposing onto a larger group of hunters – well known hunters that originated out of New York City. It seemed that, if he couldn’t have his way, he wanted to purge the world of the supernatural as a whole. So, she went to Gerard with a mask of bitterness and distaste and told him she gave it a lot of thought and that she would join him on his endeavors. So they could do this as a family. Nervous – Allison began to do monstrous amounts of research ; and, when the time came, she choose her battles. She would’ve been there anyway, the day that she went down. But – what more perfect of an opportunity to fake her death? To weed her way through the black markets of the supernatural to find herbs she couldn’t begin to understand, much less pronounce, that would slow her heart to a dangerous level. She had been critically injured – but Allison Argent was not dead. Gerard, playing the guise of a grieving grandfather, offered to have Allison’s body cremated the day she fell – arranging for men to come pick up her body ; time ticking for the injured girl. They took her to a secluded location and patched her up. Allison saw the dreaded handicap laws coming from miles away – and she still couldn’t do anything to stop them. She merely did her best to completely intertwine herself with the hunters in hopes of feeding out information to help her friends. When the laws passed, Allison could do nothing but watch the news and see how her former pack violently rejected the laws ; feeling almost pride for the way they fought for their freedom. It was lucky that, trying to find a way to filter to the rebellion and feed them information anonymously, she ran across someone who called himself THE PARIAH, almost tangled up in the threads of the web itself. Thinking quickly, and quite ironically, she introduced herself as Juliet – giving the rebellion information through The Pariah in a way that the mysterious user merely told them as obtained by The Juliet Effect. Four years into it all, she lost contact with The Pariah – and, once again, she felt helpless. Powerless to help her friends. And she hated that feeling – so, she planned her leave. Taking whatever physical documents she could with her and burning the rest. Well aware that the majority of what she burned was backed up digitally, it was the chaos and the effect that she was hoping to accomplish – knowing the full severity of it all was more than a few flames could damage. Gerard cornered her as she left, and she left him with one final, loving goodbye. A tinkered with and unstable handicap for the mangled, almost-werewolf of a man snapped and locked around his neck. A constant reminder of everyone he had wronged. And, with that, Allison left the hunters to find her friends. To find the Underground.

➜ ALLISON ARGENT IS OPEN!

[timeagainreviews]

“I call people dude now!”

Hello friends! Over the weekend I had myself a pretty difficult time. I learned a friend of mine is dying and there’s nothing that can be done for it. Because of this, I am not sure how long or thought out this article will be. I might just touch on some key elements from last night’s episode. Either way, I do have half of a Twin Peaks article written, and Edge of Destruction has been viewed, so expect those soon. Also, a friend of mine asked me to submit an article for her zine, and I will be writing that for both this and the zine. You can probably expect that one soon as well!

So far Chris Chibnall has proven to be an interesting showrunner. I’ve not hidden my disdain for his writing at times, but in other ways, I really do enjoy his work. His scripts have the tendency to be like a box of bran cereal with a really cool toy at the bottom. There’s a lot that works, and there’s a lot that doesn’t. One of my biggest issues with "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship," was how dour and depressing it was at times. With a title like that, you’d expect something more lighthearted. When I saw the trailer for last night’s episode, my biggest hope would be that it was more akin to "Gremlins 2." Something kind of camp and silly, which in some ways we did get.

The episode opens in a large hotel in Sheffield. A man named Jack Robertson (a Donald Trump proxy) is discussing the logistics of a vague problem that could "cost [him] in 2020." The woman he’s speaking to, Frankie, is his niece’s wife, though he had to be reminded of this. So far, we don’t like this guy much. His bodyguard waits to whisk him off to his plane, while he tells Frankie to make their problem disappear, though she’s not so sure it’s that easy. Before they can discuss this any further, they are interrupted by a woman named Najia Khan, the general manager of the hotel. She’s there to check up on things before the grand opening. Very callously Robertson fires her (further solidifying his Donald Trump status, and his role as the hotel owner) seemingly for interrupting his nefarious meeting. He gives Frankie and hour to "make this all go away."

Before saying anything else, I would like to talk about that time vortex sequence! How cool was that? The last time we saw the time vortex in such intimate detail was "Timelash," which if you ask the fandom, was pretty bad. (Though I sorta love it for that.) Elements of it reminded me of the hyperspace scenes from "Babylon 5," and other elements reminded me of "Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure," how you could take certain avenues to sort of dial a point in time. The way the sequence segues into the console room was a beautiful bit of production value series eleven has needed. (Even those god-awful closeups were missing!)

Watching the Doctor and her companions all fly the TARDIS, was kind of great. I was reminded of the scene in "Journey’s End," when the Doctor and his friends pilot the TARDIS together. I loved the idea of her still getting used to the controls. If you’ve not watched the video on YouTube of the production crew talking about the TARDIS interior, you really should. It’s a lovely glimpse into the design process. Not to be outshone, the exterior of the TARDIS, in its brilliant aqua blue, lands in Sheffield. This may be one of the Doctor’s best landings ever. She’s in Sheffield, it’s the right period, they’re right outside Yaz’s, and it’s only been thirty minutes since they were teleported away from the warehouse into the depths of space.

The Doctor made good on her promise- she brought her friends home. Looking like a kicked puppy, it’s more than obvious she doesn’t want to say goodbye. Yaz, picking up on this, invites her and the others up for tea. It’s a rather sweet scene. Graham, who’s not yet had any downtime to mourn since the funeral, decides to nip back home for a moment. Ryan offers to join, but Graham needs to do it alone. It’s a nice bit of character development between them. I rather loved it.

While heading into Yaz’s flat, the Doctor notices a worried woman trying to reach the occupant of a flat a couple doors down. She also notices a bit of spiderweb but doesn’t pay it much mind. Yaz lives with her family still, and we’re introduced to her dad and sister. I’ve been saying how I wanted a bit more Yaz, and this episode really delivers. Her dad is pretty much instantly likeable. He’s excitable, friendly, and has a personal project of keeping rubbish in the living room, or "evidence," as he calls it. It’s a conspiracy! Yaz’s sister is the typical bratty little sister. The banter they share was also charming. She teases Yaz that she’s surprised she even has friends. Yaz is usually too married to her job to worry about friends. Yaz counters with “At least I have a job to be married to.” I like sassy Yaz.

The Doctor is being her usual self- a bit weird. Marvelling at a couch is not exactly normal. Historically, she’s always been rather enamoured with the mundane elements of human life. Things like having a flat, going to work, watching a bit of telly, are all parts of a life she can never have. Yaz’s sister, Sonya, probes Ryan about his relationship to Yaz. She clearly has the hots for him. Yaz’s father, Hakim, wants to know if the police have followed up on the rubbish he’s collected. Before she can answer, Yaz’s phone rings revealing Najia to be her mother on the other end. She tells her she needs a ride home from work. (If you recall from my "The Woman Who Fell to Earth," review, I wondered if she didn’t have a mother, well she does!)

The sisters’ bickering as Yaz leaves, reminds the Doctor of her sisters. It also reminds her of the time she was a sister at an aqua-hospital, that actually turned out to be a training camp for the "Quiston Calcium Assassins." Ryan responds with "Going off on one again…" Which is what she’s doing right? Going off on a little tangent. Then why is it that the line really irked me? The Doctor is known for always telling stupid little stories, but this one really got to me. It’s right up there with suddenly having Audrey Hepburn or maybe Pythagoras’ sunglasses in her pockets. It’s a question of when. When would she have been a sister with some order of nuns?

The Doctor has always been male leading up to this point. So when would she be a woman in a past life to do this? When in this life would she have done this and not had Ryan around to have witnessed it first hand? If it’s just Chibnall trying to be cute, he’s really bad at it. It leaves you asking the wrong kind of questions, and for me, actually took me out of the story for a moment. Another implication is some "The Brain of Morbius" level fuckery indicating that the First Doctor, is not in fact, the first incarnation, which you could make an argument for. The War Doctor didn’t go as "the Doctor," which makes him "The War Doctor," and not "The Ninth Doctor." Another implication is that one of the past incarnations had a bit of a drag phase, which I could actually see. Both Two and Three have dressed in drag before. Either way, it’s a bad line and Chibnall should feel bad. (Ok rant over)

The Doctor notices that the Khans have a parcel to pick up from the neighbour down the way.  She offers to go pick it up while Yaz’s dad cooks his terrible pakora. We’re now back with Graham at his home. We see more of that portentous spiderweb. The house is empty and feels lifeless. It’s the first time he’s been back home since Grace died and is haunted by her essence, as depicted by having Sharon D Clarke actually there as Grace. She talks to him about all of the little things around the house he’ll need to remember to keep the house in working order. He indicates that he has something else to tell her, but it’s left unsaid. He sits and smells her clothes, trying to remember her. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one can immediately identify with this. I found these moments with Graham and Grace very effective. He’s interrupted by a sound up in Ryan’s room, where he finds massive strands of spider web, and the moulted exoskeleton of a spider the size of a house cat.

Graham isn’t the only one dealing with large spiders though. The Doctor and Ryan are about to discover these overgrown arachnids themselves. The parcel they’re picking up is at the same flat where the woman, we now know as Jade, was trying to reach her friend Anna. They both work in the same lab at their uni. After confirming Anna may be in trouble, the Doctor sonics the door open. Inside, the flat is covered in the same webbing as Ryan’s room. I’m reminded of "Mulholland Drive," where Naomi Watts and Elena Harring search the apartment of Diane Selwyn. Rather horrified, they discover the body of poor Anna, cocooned in spiderweb. "Spiders don’t do that, do they?" asks Ryan, but the Doctor asks a more important question- where is the spider that did this now?

Many people are squeamish about spiders. My mate Gerry’s wife sat this episode out, due to an intense dislike of the little creatures. Which is why I found myself rather amused when they finally show the spider, and it’s actually a bit cute. It’s a brown house spider, once again, about the size of a cat, but it is rather aggressive toward the Doctor, Ryan and Jade. Using some quick thinking, the Doctor uses vinegar and garlic paste to keep the spider quarantined, as the noses in spiders’ feet are sensitive to these substances. She creates a sort of perimeter around the spider which seems to work. Now outside the flat, they meet up with Graham who has also seen some freaky stuff today! Graham gives Ryan a sealed letter that he found back home. It’s from his father, who if you remember correctly, didn’t attend Grace’s funeral. The Doctor asks Jade to take her back to the lab where she’s been testing on spiders. Hakim and Sonya are having pakora alone tonight it would seem. 

The Doctor tells Jade she thinks she knows more than she leads on. She questions Jade about their experiments, but Jade defends their practices. They’ve been doing everything within the law. The spider carcasses are disposed of by a special containment unit. She doesn’t know why the spiders are mutating. Jade has been plotting out instances of giant spiders on a map in the lab. In what may be one of the most overused tropes in cinema history, the Doctor connects the dots with a series of lines all pointing to one centre point. It’s a bit stupid when you realise she could have just pointed at the centre point of the dots to the exact same effect, but that wouldn’t look as cool right? The centre point is, of course, the hotel Najia just got fired from, where she’s still waiting for Yaz.

Frankie walks through a pair of doors marked with danger warnings, into an underground tunnel that looks like rock that’s been excavated by human hands. It’s full of spider web. Timid and afraid, Frankie moves forward with her camera phone but is taken suddenly to her doom by an offscreen spider. Back in the lobby, Jack Robertson and Kevin confront Najia and Yaz who has just arrived. I was slightly frustrated by the fact that Kevin pulls a gun on Yaz and she doesn’t mention once that she’s a police officer. Not once does she cite any kind of statute or even try and calm the situation as a police officer. They explain that Yaz was there to pick her up, but feeling antagonistic, Robertson wants to show Yaz how bad her mother is at her job, and why he fired her. He takes them to a room full of spider web.

While in the room, Yaz thinks she hears something through the walls but is called away by the Doctor who is now outside the hotel with Jade, Ryan, and Graham. Still in the room, Kevin and Robertson are confronted by a very large spider, about the size of a car. Robertson very cowardly leaves Kevin as bait as he’s dragged into the depths underneath the hotel to his death. Poor Kevin.

The Doctor, using psychic paper (a nice callback I was hoping to see) tells Robertson she’s there on official business and goes about looking for the source of the spiders. Ryan and Graham know exactly who he is, as he’s a bit famous. Their standing there grinning like idiots at Robertson was cute. I loved the bravery the Doctor shows when sticking her head into the giant spider-sized hole to get a peek, and what a peek she gets! She pulls her head back just in time as the giant spider lunges at her and they all sprint toward the exit of the hotel, which has now been completely webbed up, which it hadn’t been before. The spiders are trapping them in!

The Doctor refers to Yaz’s mum since she knows the hotel so intimately. They go hide out in the kitchen where everyone begins asking questions. The Doctor doesn’t seem to know who Robertson is, much to his annoyance. She rather humorously asks if he’s the Ed Sheeran she’s been hearing so much about. Robertson, it turns out, is gunning for the presidency in 2020, mostly out of disdain for Trump. So he can’t be all bad, right? Robertson butts against the Doctor’s authority, but the companions in a sign of solidarity let him know with no uncertainty that she’s in charge. The Doctor sends Ryan and Graham to capture a spider for Jade to inspect and takes everyone else to find a map of the hotel.

Graham and Ryan find a spider and catch it in a cooking pot, only to get chased down the hall by an agitated army of arachnids. It’s about the closest the spiders get to being actually scary in the entire episode. If you don’t suffer from arachnophobia, it’s really rather tame. The true villain, as it turns out, is capitalism. It’s revealed that Robertson built the hotel on top of an old mine that was used as a landfill. It’s a profitable endeavour from his perspective. Get paid to cart off a bunch of rubbish, find use for a disused mine, and build a lavish resort on top of it! This explains the rubbish Mr Khan had been finding sprouting up all around Sheffield. While looking over maps, Najia wants to know how Yaz knows the Doctor and even asks if they’re in a relationship. The Doctor naively asks Yaz if they are, as she’s been ignorant to this sort of thing in the past. (Be still my heart.) They find the entrance to the mine on the map and set off.

As they barge past the danger doors, Robertson protests, trying to use his powerful status to keep everyone from discovering his dirty secret. He tries to stop Najia, and in what may be the best line of the episode she defiantly looks him in the eye and says "You’re not the boss of me anymore." Oof. Good one, girl. Now inside, they find the bodies of Frankie, Kevin, and several others, all of whom met the same fate as poor Anna. Even the callous Robertson can’t hide the tinge of guilt on his face, though it doesn’t stop him from pocketing Kevin’s web caked gun. Anna, who had spider pheromones on her from the lab, attracted spiders to her home from this location. (Why neither Jade nor the lab had been affected, or why they were attracted to the O'Brien homestead is anyone’s guess.) In a very "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," moment, it’s revealed that the toxic waste of gases building up, and the improperly disposed spider carcasses created a sort of mutagenic stew to breed giant mutant spiders. It’s all a rather stupid explanation, but I kind of love it for that. It was Laird and Eastman’s Doctor Who. I’m all for it.

Back in the kitchen, Jade tells Ryan and Graham she needs a bigger specimen, which basically is only written in as an excuse to give the two of them something to do. It’s a bit sloppy and doesn’t go anywhere. It does, however, give us a nice opportunity to have a bit of a heart to heart between Graham and Ryan. Ryan tells Graham that he read the letter from his father. He mentions he doesn’t like that his father referred to himself as the only proper family Ryan had left, indicating that he still thinks of Graham as family. Does this mean we might hear him call Graham "Granddad," soon? Their heart to heart is cut short, however, when they are confronted in the ballroom by a giant spider.

Once again, the spiders aren’t very scary, as the two of them escape rather quickly and they’re back in the kitchen. Why the kitchen has been established as the safest place in the hotel, is still unknown, but Yaz’s mum said! Robertson reveals he has a panic room installed in the hotel. He has one in every hotel, as he’s a bit of a paranoid guy. When he had it installed in case the poor ever decided to rise up and eat the rich, I’ll bet he didn’t foresee them being spiders! The panic room has an ocular scanner, a small green laser that really should have blinded him if I’m being honest, but hey, it looks cool! In the panic room, Robertson has enough food and drink to survive for six months. He also had a rather swank entertainment system with a flat screen and giant speakers. Using Ryan’s phone, the Doctor devises a plan! (Always with Ryan’s phone, that one.)

The next sequence is something akin to the campiness I was hoping we would get from this episode- hip hop spiders! Drawn to the sick beats from Ryan’s phone, and Robertson’s sound system, the spiders all gather inside the panic room where the Doctor and her friends trap them inside. Robertson, however, has become increasingly paranoid in the face of being the least powerful man in the room and has decided to take refuge in the safety of his gun.

The Doctor puts together a very "Ghostbusters," style backpack garden sprayer filled with peppermint and tea tree oil diluted in water. She plans on using this natural spider repellant as a way to wrangle the big spider that chased Graham and Ryan in the ballroom. After all, there’s the Sheffield Comic Con there in a week, they need it empty! However, the spider is behaving strangely. Under the weight of its own mass, the poor beast is struggling to breathe. The Doctor takes pity on it, and apologises to it, as she knows it’s going to die. Then the real monster enters the room in the form of Robertson wielding a gun. He fires a single shot into the spider, killing it, and angering the Doctor.

Now back at their homes, the companions all seem to be slightly removed from their roots. Before walking out of her flat, Yaz is told by Najia she still wants to know how she came to know the Doctor. There’s a sort of Jackie Tyler "I want to know who my daughter is out galavanting with," element to her questioning that I liked. They all convene back at the TARDIS, still parked outside Yaz’s. The Doctor invites them in, expecting to have to say goodbye. Instead, they decide they would rather travel with her. Graham says he’d rather grieve with her, than in an empty house. Ryan has no desire to resume working in a warehouse, and Yaz wants to see the universe. I rather like the responsibility the Doctor has been taking with her companions’ safety, as she tells them in no certain terms, that travelling with her will be dangerous. They all accept, and the Doctor christens their new "fam," as "the TARDIS team." Then, all together, they pull the lever and the TARDIS takes them on their next adventure!

And that’s it, really. Which I must say, was a bit disappointing. Not the entire episode, but the ending. It sort of fizzled out. While I was actually rather pleased to see the spiders weren’t treated as big evil monsters, it would have been nice to actually have some sort of final showdown. Maybe Ryan gets webbed up and they had to save him before it was too late. Something. Sadly, most of the danger was short-lived, or off camera. Also, what actually happened with the spiders? Will they spend the rest of their lives listening to garage beats? How many of them were still out in the wild? Did the waste get cleaned up? Will there be a public outcry? Are there more people dead in their homes, wrapped in a gauze of spider web? What’s the difference between killing spiders outright, and starving them in a panic room? Lots of unanswered questions.

I liked that they gave us more interior shots of the TARDIS. I liked that the console room still has Gallifreyan written somewhere. With as much change as the show has gone through, it’s nice to see that continuity. Speaking of change, Jodie Whittaker continues to sparkle as the Doctor. But I did have some issues with her role in this episode. Aside from wrangling spiders, and figuring out what was happening, the Doctor doesn’t actually do much in the episode. I mean, did she do anything to ensure this won’t continue to happen?

While I rather liked Jack Robertson’s campy turn as the villain, even his story seemed to fizzle out. Considering the Doctor had once taken down the prime minister with six words, I expected her to give Robertson a warning or something. But alas, he, like every villain this season, lives to fight another day. Doctor Who writer Paul Magrs said on twitter recently that Missy would have made them into mincemeat by now, and I’m inclined to agree. The Doctor and her crew have yet to really face a truly terrifying foe. The stakes have been disappointingly low. I’m beginning to expect we’ll see a sort of legion of men scorned by the Doctor come together at the end of this series. Perhaps they’ll form a society of the Doctor’s evil exes. Is this all turning out to be one big metaphor for misogyny? Maybe. Regardless, I must say I rather enjoyed this one.

[denisalvney]

RHR: What the Latest Research Says about Probiotics, with Lucy Mailing

In this episode, we discuss:

Why your stool microbiome may not be a good indicator of your gut health

Why probiotics aren’t useless

How your gut microbiome fights change

What really happens when you take probiotics after antibiotics

Why you should consider banking a stool sample, if possible

Key takeaways from these two studies

Show notes:

“Are Probiotics Useless? A Microbiome Researcher’s Perspective,” by Lucy Mailing

“Personalized Gut Mucosal Colonization Resistance to Empiric Probiotics Is Associated with Unique Host and Microbiome Features,” published in Cell

“Post-Antibiotic Gut Mucosal Microbiome Reconstitution Is Impaired by Probiotics and Improved by Autologous FMT,” published in Cell

NextGen Medicine

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Chris Kresser:  Lucy, thanks so much for joining me

Lucy Mailing:  Thanks for having me on.

Chris Kresser:  So this was kind of a big bombshell that was dropped. This study we’re going to be talking about today … and I’m excited that you've been able to join us. Because every so often in science and research, we get a finding that completely contradicts what we thought before. And this is, of course, vital to science.

This is part of the scientific method, that we continually challenge our hypotheses and try to falsify them. And if you were to ask the average person on the street, I think, should you take probiotics after take antibiotics, and the average physician and the average researcher, the answer would probably almost universally be yes. But this study suggests that the answer may be no.

Lucy Mailing:  Yep. Yeah, I think you really have to be willing to put your bias aside here and we have to go where the evidence takes us. And sometimes that results in a total paradigm shift and directly contradicts what we thought before, like you said. But I think we need to be open to that and especially honest about it with those who trust us for health information.

Chris Kresser:  Yes, this, of course, was a big topic on my recent appearance on the Joe Rogan debate, where the evidence over many years on saturated fat and cholesterol and their relationship with heart disease changed to the point where even the dietary guidelines in the US and other countries evolved. And yet there’s still a pretty committed group of people that is not willing to question those original hypotheses that were developed in the 50s and 60s. So let's maybe not make that same mistake in the case of probiotics.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Kresser:  So why don’t we start with just some general information about this study. We wrote, you wrote an article for a website that we published. It’s called “Are Probiotics Useless? A Microbiome Researcher’s Perspective,” and we’ll link to that in the show notes, and some folks may have already read it. But for those who haven't, why don’t you run us through the study.

What were the researchers trying to find?

How is it designed?

And then what were the findings?

And then we’ll talk little bit more about what to make of all that.

Why Your Stool Microbiome May Not Be a Good Indicator of Your Gut Health

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, absolutely. So for starters, I think it's important to go over a little gut anatomy just in case your listeners aren’t familiar. So we can think of the G.I. tract as a hollow tube, and all the inside walls of that tube are coated with this thick, protective gel. And so in this analogy, the gel represents the gut mucus layer, and the very inner center of that tube represents the gut lumen. And each of these regions has a distinct community of microbes, but these are rarely studied because these regions are rather inaccessible unless you undergo invasive endoscopy. And then of course we have the stool microbiome, which is the most widely—

Chris Kresser:  Let me just interrupt you, Lucy, because some folks might not know what that means. So that basically means a tube being put down your throat to look in your intestine. And not very practical on a broad scale to do that kind of testing to assess microbiome health.

Are probiotics really a good idea after taking antibiotics? Will banking our own stool samples to protect our gut health become routine someday? Check out this episode of RHR where Lucy Mailing, a microbiome researcher, describes surprising findings about probiotics. 

Lucy Mailing:  Right, right. And then of course we have the stool microbiome, which is the most widely used proxy marker for the gut microbiome. And you’ll often even hear these used interchangeably, the stool microbiome and the gut microbiome. But the first thing that was interesting about this study before they got really into the probiotics, was showing that, confirming previous findings that the stool microbiome was really not representative of the gut luminal or gut mucosal microbiome. And so that was really …

Chris Kresser:  That’s such an important finding. Again, you said it. It has already been known for some time, but I just want to clarify this for folks. What you see in your poop is not necessarily what's in the gut lumen, is what Lucy was saying. And that presents a challenge, doesn’t it?

Lucy Mailing:  Absolutely, yeah. And also not what's, not representative of what's most closely associated to the gut epithelium in the gut mucus layer, as well. And those might have the most impact on our health because they're so closely associated with the actual gut tissue.

Chris Kresser:  Right, and so all these studies that have been done, which are very useful and important, that have correlated the changes in the gut microbiome to health and disease states have been perhaps only seeing part of the picture, is really what we’re learning. And that there may be a whole other side.

Well, there almost certainly is a whole other side to this story that we don't know very much about yet. It's almost like the ocean covers two-thirds of the earth’s surface and we know quite a bit about what's happening up near the surface, but we know almost nothing about what's going on down in the depths. And in some ways we know more about space off of the surface of our planet than we know about the deep oceans. And I wonder if that's an apt analogy for the microbiome.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, I think so. They even showed that if they look at the total genetic information in the gut, so the metagenome, as it’s called, there was only 20 percent correlation between the stool microbiome and the gut mucosal microbiome. So we really can't necessarily use the stool samples to predict what is actually going on inside the gut.

Chris Kresser:  That's again an important point, and it's one that’s been so frustrating for me as a clinician, and I'm sure for you too, Lucy. That's what we have access to as practitioners is stool testing.

Lucy Mailing:  Right.

Chris Kresser:  Of course, there is a big variation in the quality of stool testing that's available. Some is better, some are better than others and then there … stool testing can still be very helpful for things like identifying pathogens.

Like, for example, I got recently caught up in an outbreak of Cyclospora in the Bay Area here, which folks on my staff know, but some listeners may not. It’s a parasite. It's an acute pathogenic organism. I also had in that same food poisoning episode, I contracted enteropathogenic E. coli. And so stool testing can be really helpful for finding, I did some testing and identified those pathogens and I was able to treat them.

So it's really helpful for that kind of thing. But what you’re saying is for identifying what the presence of “good versus bad bacteria” and the overall microbiome, stool testing may not be able to tell us all that much.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah, I think you said it really well there. It's definitely still useful for identifying pathogens. But any bacterial abundance I get, whether it's from a comprehensive stool analysis, biome thrive, I'm always taking that with a huge grain of salt now. Because it's really not necessarily representative of what's happening in the gut environment. And so stool testing can be one piece of the puzzle, but we kind of need a consortium of tests to get a better idea of the total gut environment.

Why Probiotics Aren't Useless

Chris Kresser:  Right. So another thing this study found, which we've talked about before on my blog and in the podcasts, is that probiotic, when you take probiotics, the effect that they have is transient. I think there's been this notion that, I refer to it as like a gas tank analogy, where if your tank is empty, like, you don't have much good bacteria and then you take probiotics, you're kind of filling up the tank, and then once the tank is full you can stop. But that's not really how it works, is it?

Lucy Mailing:  No, no, definitely not. I mean, this is not a new finding, but of course it sent the media crazy all over again.

Chris Kresser:  Probiotics are useless, right?

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, exactly. We have hundreds of randomized placebo-controlled trials in humans that have shown safety and efficacy of many different probiotic strains. So to just … outright, those media headlines saying “probiotics are useless,” they’ll maybe strip some probiotics, but there are certainly many probiotics that have been shown in randomized controlled trials to have beneficial effects.

Chris Kresser:  But what this is saying is they’re useful in a different way than we thought before and that maybe many people still think, right? So instead of working on that gas tank analogy where you're filling up your tank with good bacteria, what are they, how are they actually benefiting us as they transit through the G.I. tract?

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah. So they found that there wasn't really significant colonization. They did this in both mice and humans. So there wasn't any significant colonization in mice. In humans, it was very individual. So some people did have some colonization, and those people, they turn into permissive colonizers, and other people were completely resistant to the probiotic colonization. And so, but it didn't really matter because when they lumped them all together and looked overall, there were significant changes in the gene expression in the small intestine in those that were taking the probiotic.

So this is in alignment with many studies we’ve seen before, where probiotics don't really colonize the gut, but they're having really beneficial effects in transit, including modifying gene expression, eating and digestion, lots of these different things, stimulating the immune system. And so just because they don't colonize in this case, in some humans, they did. But even if they don't colonize, they’re still having benefits.

Chris Kresser:  They’re still doing a lot of good, and that’s why I've often told my patients to think of them almost like immune regulators or balancers because of the impact that they have there. And I mean in the same way that makes sense because, historically, a lot of our exposure to these kinds of organisms came through food. And so eating those foods was something that we would do on a regular basis, not just a few times, until we got what we needed. We had this kind of ongoing exposure to these organisms.

Lucy Mailing:  Right, right, yeah.

How Your Gut Microbiome Fights Change

Chris Kresser:  So another interesting finding, which again was not necessarily new, but I think is something that surprises people, is that our normal microbiome kind of wants to stay the way it is and doesn't necessarily, isn't easily changed. So tell us a little bit more about what they found here.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, so they did a really cool experiment in mice where they use germ-free mice, which are basically raised in a sterile incubator with no exposure to microbes, basically in a giant bubble. And so they gave these sterile mice the same 11-strain probiotic, and they found that in the absence of a normal microbiome, the germ-free mice had massive colonization of the probiotic strains. So this suggested to them that it was the commensal microbiome, the normal microbiome, that was inhibiting the colonization of the probiotic strains.

Chris Kresser:  And that's interesting too in light of the way that human microbiome colonization happens, right? I think we used to think that a baby’s gut was completely sterile when they're born. Now I think we know that that's not the case and there may be some colonization that happens in utero.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, I think it's still controversial.

Chris Kresser:  Still controversial.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, still controversial.

Chris Kresser:  But anyways, even if there is some colonization, it's extremely minimal, right?

Lucy Mailing:  Right.

Chris Kresser:  It's not, like, a baby is not born with a fully colonized gut and that doesn't even happen until later in childhood. So this seems to mimic what we understand about how the human gut develops is that that colonization happens early in life and that's why exposure to the right organisms through breastfeeding and vaginal birth is so important.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Kresser:  So another finding you talked about is that the probiotic colonization in humans is individualized. So you mentioned this in the context of some people being … what was the exact term? It was—

Lucy Mailing:  Permissive.

Chris Kresser:  They had a permissive microbiome. So they were more likely to experience colonization. But that wasn't the only individual difference. What else happened there in the study? So I think it was not all of the probiotics colonized equally or were not …

Lucy Mailing:  Correct, yeah. So there were, they looked and they found nine of the 11 strains colonized.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah.

Lucy Mailing:  Significantly enriched in the mucosa, especially, but there were some people who had significant enrichment, and some people who really didn't have any. And that was where they made the distinction between the permissive colonizers and the resistant colonizers. And they did look into some different factors that might explain the permissive or resistant.

But they really had a fairly small sample size there, so they weren't really able to tease out anything. Although it looked like the baseline microbiome, certain characteristics of the baseline microbiome were able to determine whether, predict whether they’d be permissive or resistant.

Chris Kresser:  Right. But again this, as you pointed out, this doesn’t mean the probiotics didn't have an effect. I want to read a part of the paper that you highlighted:

Nonetheless, when all probiotic consumers were considered together, probiotic consumption led to transcriptional changes in the ileum with 19 downregulated and 194 upregulated genes noted, many of which related to the immune system, including B cells.

So again we’re seeing changes in gene expression and immune function, even though there isn’t colonization.

Lucy Mailing:  Yep, yep, and it did colonize in some people, which was contrary to what we probably thought before.

What Really Happens When You Take Probiotics after Antibiotics

Chris Kresser:  Right, right. So now we’re getting into some of the really surprising perhaps parts of of the paper, which is that probiotics may slow recovery of the normal microbiome after antibiotics. I think this is the most, again, the most surprising part of the paper and the part of it that conflicts most with maybe what was known before. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, so like you said earlier, probiotics are widely used and prescribed during or after antibiotics, often suggested by the physician with this idea that flooding the system with “good bacteria” can help prevent the, some of these adverse effects of antibiotics.

And so in this study they wanted to see how probiotics, how taking probiotics after antibiotics impacted the long-term trajectory of the gut ecosystem. And so what they did first, they treated a group of mice. They did this in mice and humans again. So a group of mice and a cohort of healthy human volunteers with a single course of the broad-spectrum antibiotic ciprofloxacin and metronidazole. And that was just to kind of wipe out the gut bacteria.

Chris Kresser:  Carpet bomb.

Lucy Mailing:  Yep, exactly. And both of those antibiotics have been shown to have widespread devastation of the gut ecosystem.

Chris Kresser:  Those are the two worst I can think of, cipro and Flagyl, okay. Yeah, so okay, continue, please.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, so then they split the mice and the humans into three groups. So group one was just allowed to spontaneously recover over time. Group two was supplemented with the same 11-strain probiotic that they used in the first paper for four weeks beginning right at the end of the antibiotic treatment.

And then group three underwent what's called autologous fecal microbiota transplant, or aFMT. And that one’s a mouthful, and I think we’ll come back to that group in a second. We’ll focus on group one and two at first.

Chris Kresser:  Such a well-designed study, and I love the autologous FMT part of it. I think that was really a smart way to do it. Why don’t we just go ahead and explain what that is. Basically, it means that they took a sample of the microbiome prior to the intervention, and then they put that back using a fecal transplant after it. So it wasn't a fecal transplant using another donor’s stool. It was a fecal transplant using the own individual’s stool.

Lucy Mailing:  Yep.

Chris Kresser:  All right, so what happened? We got these three groups. What were the results?

Lucy Mailing:  So most interestingly they found that treating the gut with probiotics delayed the return of the normal microbiota for as long as five months after stopping probiotic treatment.

Chris Kresser:  Wow.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah.

Chris Kresser:  What have you made of this and other people in the field? Like, what’s the chatter? I know you work in a microbiome lab. I imagine this was kind of like a big day for all of you and a lot of discussion amongst your colleagues about this. So what do you make of it?

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, I mean to be honest, when I saw the headlines and I dove into this paper, or these two papers, I was prepared to say there's got to be something wrong with the methods here. Like, probiotics have to be good. We’ve known they're good for so long.

Chris Kresser:  Right.

Lucy Mailing:  And so you know, but I really tried to put my bias aside and really, like, look at it very critically. And I just couldn't get over this biotic treatment. And microbial diversity remained low for that five months as well. It was significantly lower at that five-month time point. Even lower than the spontaneous recovery.

Chris Kresser:  Right.

Lucy Mailing:  Which the spontaneous recovery group had no major differences in the stool microbiome within 21 days post-antibiotics.

Chris Kresser:  That's the part of it that I'm still not clear on because I know previous work has shown that, and I haven't gone into great, I haven't looked closely at these studies. So maybe there are methodological issues with these studies. But a single course of antibiotics can alter the gut microbiome for up to two years or even longer.

So it seems like they didn't find that in this case. And in fact, with no intervention, I think you just mentioned was about five months that they went back to normal, is that right?

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah. So I'm unfamiliar with the studies you're referring to, the previous studies, and that was with ciprofloxacin as well. In those studies they found that it closely resembled the pretreatment composition fairly quickly in terms of overall composition of the microbiome. There were a few taxa that failed to recover within six months or two years.

Chris Kresser:  I see.

Lucy Mailing:  So those previous studies, we’re still seeing the microbiome is still very resilient and so we’re still seeing this bounceback. We might be missing a few taxa, but we’re not preventing the return of the bulk of the normal microbiota for more than five months.

Chris Kresser:  So has there been any speculation on what the mechanism is in terms of the probiotic inhibiting the natural recovery of the microbiome?

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, so they did a really cool follow-up study to this, where they essentially took the probiotic pill and they cultured it in a bunch of different growth conditions that each supported the growth of each of the, there were four different genera in the 11-strain probiotic. And so they cultured it in such a way that one of the cultures had a lot of Lactobacillus and one of them had a lot of Bifidobacterium.

And so after 24 hours of culture they collected the supernatants, or kind of the soups that there are surrounding the probiotics on the dish. And then they took that and they kind of added it to a vat of a culture of human fecal microbiota. And they found that the soups, if you will, that had come from the plate with Lactobacillus, with a lot of Lactobacillus showed the strongest inhibition of the native human microbiome.

So this kind of points to Lactobacillus in particular might be preventing this recovery. So, and I mean, that's probably the most commonly used one, Lactobacillus acidophilus.

Chris Kresser:  Absolutely.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah. I mean it would be really interesting to see what the differential effects of different categories of probiotics would have in future studies. Like, wonder about soil-based organisms or something like E. coli Nissle, or even beneficial yeast Saccharomyces boulardii, which some people are often advised to take after antibiotics.

Of course, we don't know the answer, but I hope that future studies will be done to assess that. And then I also even wonder about different delivery systems because there are now companies that are, like Seed, for example, and others that are, have developed patented delivery systems which they claim make the probiotics more likely to survive the digestive, acidic stomach and upper part of the small intestine. And I wonder if there's a different effect there versus just a probiotic that doesn't have that kind of delivery system. So this study definitely raised even more questions than it answered, I think.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, definitely. And the other thing to point out is this was a single combination of antibiotics. Probably the most devastating of the broad spectrum antibiotics, arguably. And like you said, a single oral probiotic supplement mixture. So there's so many different combinations of antibiotics, probiotics, and even treatment timing.

So in this study they didn't begin the probiotics until after the antibiotic course was over. But there's some studies to suggest that if you begin the probiotics earlier, we don't know anything about how it affects the microbiome, but it certainly can prevent, be better at preventing antibiotic-associated diarrhea and Clostridium difficile infection.

Chris Kresser:  Right. And they didn't measure any clinical symptoms either during or after the antibiotic treatment, which would've been interesting to see if the changes are in the microbiome or the lack of change is correlated with any clinical symptoms.

Lucy Mailing:  Right.

Chris Kresser:  And I think you pointed out that it would have been also interesting to see, like they didn’t, one of the reasons it's often offered for taking probiotics after antibiotics is as a way of protecting against any kind of opportunistic pathogens, right? Enteropathogens like Salmonella. But we don't know whether maybe the probiotics would've protected against that even though they delayed recovery. So that might be another interesting study to see in the future.

Lucy Mailing:  Right, yeah. And I did dive into the literature a little bit on this to see what's the degree of the protective effect of probiotics after antibiotics for clinical symptoms or C. diff infection. And there are several meta-analyses, but there's a statistical concept that I think you’ve talked about before on your podcast or your blog. It's called the “number needed to treat.” And that's essentially a measure of the impact or efficacy of a particular therapy relative to the burden of treatment.

And so in this case, based on the most recent meta-analyses, you’d need to treat 13 patients with probiotics to prevent one case of antibiotic-associated diarrhea and at least 43 patients to prevent one case of C. diff. And so in all those other patients we’re potentially delaying restoration of the gut microbiome.

Chris Kresser:  Right.

Lucy Mailing:  And so there's definitely this trade-off here.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, yeah. Especially with the 43. I mean 13 is a little more of a gray area in my mind, but 43 it starts to, that starts to be, the calculus is pretty clear there. Although it may depend on the virulence of the pathogen. Like, with C. diff., there are some 30,000 people, I think, are still dying of that in the US each year. So tricky, very tricky.

Why You Should Consider Banking a Stool Sample, if Possible

Let's talk a little bit more about the autologous FMT because I thought that was one of the clever, most clever parts of the study and is certainly something that I think has a lot of potential in the future. I'm personally a lot less enamored with FMT than I was maybe five years ago as a potential treatment. Certainly I think it still can be lifesaving in the case of recalcitrant C. diff, where someone has failed antibiotics and they’re actually, they could die. In that case I think an FMT is a no-brainer and the research is still really solid on that.

But what I've seen clinically is a lot of people have come to think that FMT is some kind of miracle cure for all kinds of conditions, like fibromyalgia or even being overweight and autoimmune disease, etc. And I've seen definitely some improvement when people have done FMT and I've also seen no change, and I've seen people get worse.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, yeah.

Chris Kresser:  If we go back to what you said earlier about how stool testing is not necessarily telling us what's going on in somebody's gut or what's in the stool, like, I just don't know that we have the level, I'm not confident enough in stool testing right now to be able to know that we’re screening donors properly.

If the stakes are high enough that you’re facing death, then I think that, again, that calculus makes sense. But if it's like you've got an autoimmune condition, I'm not so sure. So it seems like autologous FMT where you replace … if there was a time where you were lucky enough to bank a stool sample before you were sick, of course, that's the big challenge here, the question. That makes a lot more sense to me than a donor that has not necessarily been screened adequately.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, absolutely. I think, I mean, certainly we only have this one study to my knowledge, but it certainly seems a lot safer because you’re not going to be re-inoculating yourself with anything that wasn't already there before.

Chris Kresser:  Right, right. And I mean, in this sort of situation, if someone knows they have to take antibiotics for some reason and they were fortunate enough to bank a sample, that's a lot more clear, right? But if someone is trying to use FMT to deal with a chronic condition, it's probably unlikely, at least at this point, that they would have banked a sample.

But there's no reason that in the future, it wouldn't be, that couldn't become something that people just do. That becomes part of our, sort of like when you’re 17 or 18 and you’re healthy, bank some stool samples, and then maybe when you're 30 and you develop an autoimmune disease, you could get an autologous FMT with your stool sample from when you were 18. Who knows?

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, definitely. And you can definitely imagine this being a part of normal clinical practice in the future. Like, if you, if you’re undergoing surgery and you have to have prophylactic antibiotics, then save a stool sample the day before your surgery.

Chris Kresser:  Absolutely.

Lucy Mailing:  Get your antibiotics and then you can re-inoculate.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, that’s a perfect example of where you know that you’re going to be taking antibiotics and it’s not because … and you can plan in advance, basically. Yeah. Well, this is really fascinating.

So let’s break this down. I know some people are probably scratching their head right now or just throwing up their hands, saying, “Oh, my gosh, should I even listen to anything anyone says anymore? It's just so frustrating, confusing.” And I totally understand that.

But again, this is how science works. We continue to learn, we continue to challenge our own hypotheses, even the most cherished held ones, and it doesn't mean that that process isn’t valuable. On the contrary, I think it makes it even more valuable, and over time if you look at the last hundred years, I think it's clear that what we've learned during that period of time is just enormous. And so it just means that we have to be willing to be flexible, right? And not hold on too tightly to certain beliefs that we may have had.

Lucy Mailing:  Right, yeah.

Key Takeaways from These Two Studies

Chris Kresser:  So why don’t you take us through some of the takeaways in a practical fashion. What can people take away from these two important studies?

Lucy Mailing:  Sure. So first, I just want to make sure we mention that we described what the autologous FMT is. But it resulted in rapid restoration of the gut ecosystem even within as little as a day to two days after the first infusion. So that was just dramatic compared to the probiotics and the spontaneous recovery group.

Chris Kresser:  Yes. And I've seen this in patients with C. diff who were on death's door, essentially, and couldn't even walk up a flight of stairs because they were so sick, who within a couple of days after an FMT are like running up the stairs and are well.

So it is pretty remarkable. When it works, it really works. And this aFMT, or autologous FMT, may even be better because it's, I think, Lucy, you may agree with this, what we’re beginning to understand is there's no one healthy microbiome. There's probably more like a fingerprint where each person has their own healthy microbiome. So it makes so much more sense to replace using your own stool than somebody else's.

Lucy Mailing: Yeah, definitely. There’s so much individual variability from person to person in the microbiome that I think this is a much, this is definitely the ideal choice is to use a sample from your prior, ideally healthy, self.

Chris Kresser:  Great. So what would you advise people now, given these results? I know this is just one study, or two studies, actually, but it seems to me that it was very well-designed. I’ve looked through it carefully and I know you have, and many have as well. And I’m certainly more reluctant to recommend probiotics after antibiotic use on this basis.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah, I think in most cases, this suggests that probiotic use during or after antibiotics may not be worthwhile. I certainly think it has to be a cost–benefit analysis for each individual person. So someone who's in a hospitalized environment where they have a greater chance of acquiring C. diff is very different from someone taking antibiotics in an outpatient setting.

Chris Kresser:  Right.

Lucy Mailing:  And so I don't want to blanket statement we should never take probiotics during or after antibiotics, but I also think this definitely suggests that caution is warranted.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, and I mean, another really key aspect of the scientific method is replication. So I really would love to see these results replicated by another research group, again, not because I think there was anything wrong with the way the study was done, but history is full of examples of really interesting findings that on the surface appeared to be totally credible and legitimate that failed to be replicated in subsequent studies.

So I hope that there are other research groups that are working on replicating these findings and that also we have research groups that are considering additional studies that would shed light on mechanisms and also maybe how these results would change if different antibiotics were used or if different probiotic preparations were used, etc.

Lucy Mailing:  Yeah. You and me both. I'm hopeful that those studies will come in the next few years as well, so that we can have more evidence to be able to give recommendations after antibiotics.

Chris Kresser:  Well, great. Thanks so much for joining me. This is, I think, going to be really enlightening for people, and I really appreciate you helping us to work through the studies. There's a lot of information there. A lot to unpack. And your article was fantastic, and I think this podcast will be helpful. So, Lucy, where can people find out more about your work?

Lucy Mailing:  So you can find me at NGmedicine.com or on Facebook or Instagram as NextGen Medicine. And I just wanted to say thanks for having me on. It’s been incredible working with you over the past few years, and it was your site originally that put me on this amazing career path and helped me heal my skin from healing my microbiome and my gut. So I certainly hope to continue to work together and expand our knowledge in this area.

Chris Kresser:  Absolutely. It's been a pleasure to have you on board, Lucy. I really appreciate your insight and your keen intellect and your willingness to dive deeply into the research and translate it in a way that people can understand. It’s so important to have that ability and that skill in today's world because as you and I both know, so much of what's reported in the media is just not really worth reading at this point when it comes to … I really miss those days where we had actual science journalists that were capable of reading a study with a critical eye and understanding it. Now, unfortunately, we just have, in most cases, there’s still a few good ones, but mostly it’s just pulling stuff off the wire and not really looking into it. Which is so confusing for people, right?

Lucy Mailing:  Right.

Chris Kresser:  It leads to an environment where people are just throwing up their hands and they feel like they've lost complete faith in public health recommendations. But I think now science literacy is increasing thanks to people like you who are out there translating your knowledge in ways that people can understand. And a more scientifically literate public is absolutely a good thing, with all the challenges that we’re facing. So thank you for your important work.

Lucy Mailing:  Thank you, and absolutely, your blog is doing the same, increasing scientific literacy.

Chris Kresser:  Okay, everybody, thanks for listening. I hope this was helpful. Continue to send us your questions at ChrisKresser.com/podcastquestion, and we’ll talk to you next time.

The post RHR: What the Latest Research Says about Probiotics, with Lucy Mailing appeared first on Chris Kresser.

RHR: What the Latest Research Says about Probiotics, with Lucy Mailing published first on https://chriskresser.com

[terrancedkennedy]

The Short-Vol Trade: Someone Forgot to Turn Off the Machine

Equity markets took a standing-8 count over the weekend and came out swinging on Monday, bouncing roughly 1.5% off the lows from Friday’s close, and a solid 4-5% off the spike bottom lows around lunchtime.

Friday’s headlines were notable given the change in sentiment--a correction!  To again quote Matt Levine at Bloomberg….”there you go. All you’re stock prices are correct now.” The rest of the financial media howled in unison.

It wasn’t a contrarian green light, but it was close. Buyers had a few strong points in support:

On the technical side, there’s little doubt a significant portion of the price action last week was driven by some combination of forced selling, negative convexity, liquidity seizures, and outright panic.  

Fundamentally, no change, and notably cheaper valuations:

still strong global growth, 

A weak USD

Strong commodity prices

Fiscal stimulus in the US

A new Fed chair that has pledged fealty to the credit-addict that gave him the job

Moreover, central banks that recognize the fragility of the beast they birthed

It adds up to a decent opportunity to buy...if you didn’t get run over making the same call at some point last week. I’ll let y’all duke it out in the comment section on that one. It is the last point that has been bothering me all week.

An astoundingly quiescent market, followed by higher rates and a modest risk-off move in stocks, contributed to a MOAB move in vol, gamma and the VIX. Usually when something like this happens--and it is supposed to happen periodically--vol everywhere spikes higher, FTQ assets appreciate, and the system rebalances itself.

What is not supposed to happen is something like this:

So what’s going on? There’s been no shortage of media coverage on the blowup of short vol ETNs like XIV. But as I highlighted last week, these products are--or were anyway--$2-4bn in notional value in a market that is many, many times that size.

The real iceberg beneath the surface is the short-vol trade writ large. The short-vol trade goes by a few different names--last October, in an article highlighting the depths of the short-vol monster, Chris Cole at Artemis Capital Management illustrated it as a pyramid:

Cole called this the Ouroboros, the mythical greek snake that devours itself by eating its own tail.

“Volatility as an asset class, both explicitly and implicitly, has been commoditized via financial engineering as an alternative form of yield….A long dated short option position receives an upfront yield for exposure to being short volatility, gamma, interest rates, and correlations. Many popular institutional investment strategies bear many, if not all, of these risks even if they are not explicitly shorting options….Lower volatility begets lower volatility, rewarding strategies that systematically bet on market stability so they can make even bigger bets on that stability. Investors assume increasingly higher levels of risk betting on the status quo for yields that look attractive only in comparison to bad alternatives.”

Put another way, as the avalanche of monetary stimulus compressed risk and pushed down expected returns, Wall Street needed a new asset class to sell in the search for yield. Pension funds needed to maintain high returns, and were ready to listen to the sales pitch for volatility as an asset class.  

Let's look back a couple of years for some examples of how this was sold to investors. Pimco led the charge in 2012 with this article entitled, “The Volatility Risk Premium.”

“We conclude that the risk-return tradeoff for volatility strategies compares favorably to those of traditional investments such and equities and bonds and that the strategies exhibit relatively low correlations to equity risk.”

Ooh, now you have my attention, says Joe Capital-Allocator at XYZ Pension Fund, tell me more.  All too happy to oblige, Pimco continues:

Well there it is...implied vol is typically higher than realized vol. Real MIT rocket science PhD type of stuff. There is a good rationale and justification for that “premium” that is not unlike an insurance premium. Though I wouldn’t call it that, since realized and implied volatility really don’t a relationship other than one that is backward looking, there is a “price” there. What’s the right price? Think back to 2012--in the article The Pimco authors concluded, “given the economic rationale for the existence of a volatility risk premium, and the supportive supply-demand situation that emerged following the 2008 financial crisis, we believe an allocation to volatility strategies could enhance portfolio efficiency.”

I’ll bet they did….but they were right! Back in 2012, there were no shortage of Black Swan disciples of Roubini and Taleb pitching and building tail risk products and funds. The memories of the GFC were still fresh, and the wounds were still healing. If that weren’t enough, the entire European project nearly imploded on itself, giving more ammunition to those that believed the financial system was on a steep descent into (further) chaos. It comes back to recency bias...The demand for volatility was high. The short-vol trade was born to provide the supply...and fees!....to support it....and yield-hungry institutional investors ate it up.  It was a good trade if you had a long-term time horizon and didn’t think the world was about to end.

The trouble is, someone forgot to turn off the machine. By 2015, Nomura was pitching a product they called the eVRP--the Equity Volatility Risk Premium-- all backed by a Nomura index that followed this kind of thing. As prices rose, financial engineering took over for thematic simplicity.    

Now, this wasn’t just a diversifier, it was some sexy stuff! Check out these charts:

The volatility risk premium has been a great trade compared to “long only”

The best time to sell for is when vol is low

The equity vol risk premium is better than ya know, other stuff

All the cool kids are doing it

So three years on from the Pimco article, when there was a tasty volatility premium thanks to the back-to-back existential crises in global markets, Nomura is pushing the same trade, only in the form of their esoteric eVRP product rather than the more straightforward Pimco strategies of 2012. And of course, Nomura has the data to back it up, and your friendly salesman has just the right product for your long-term risk bucket.

This is the Ouroboros. Just like the housing/credit bubble in the mid-00s, the financial system doesn’t know how to stop. Just because there was a rich volatility premium in 2012, doesn’t mean it is perpetually and always going to exist. In fact...quite the opposite. As markets calmed, the trade worked….and more money flowed into it. Supply and demand swung the opposite direction, but nobody ever turned off the machine.

The snake latched on to its own tail, compressing vols, perpetuating BTD, which compressed vols, which juiced returns. Lather, rinse, repeat. And wait for the bonus checks to roll in.

How can you identify when this trade is overdone? You can probably point to your own examples, but these two charts sum it up:

You’re telling me there’s an equity volatility premium….even as equity vol its generational lows?

That can only be because you’re looking at realized vol still below implied vol. That’s what you call a “premium”?

Then in fixed income….monetary authorities are finally hiking rates and decreasing or stopping asset purchases….and you think you can capture a “premium” for volatility above realized when implieds (as proxied here by 1m/10y USD swap vols) are THIS far below the long-term average?  

(I trimmed this chart back to the lows in January before the spike in the last two weeks to illustrate the point, but the current level stands just above 80)

As Cole said in the “Alchemy of Risk” article...as the short-vol sales machine perpetuated itself, it gave birth to a reflexive process:

“What we think we know about volatility is all wrong….Modern Portfolio theory conceives volatility as an external measurement of intrinsic risk of an asset….this highly flawed concept, widely taught in MBA and financial engineering programs, preceives volatility as an exogenous measurement of risk, ignoring its role as both a source of excess returns and as a direct influencer on risk itself. To this extent, portfolio theory evaluates volatility the same way a sports commentator see hits, strikeouts, or shots on goal. The problem is volatility isn’t just keeping score, but is massively affecting the outcome of the game itself in real time. Volatility is now a player on the field. “

That’s what has changed...Pimco and Nomura built their analysis on a history where volatility was a measure. Now it is a player. It has a price. What once was rich is now obscenely expensive.

Yet for these guys it all comes back to returns--more specifically risk-adjusted returns.   How did the Nomura guys fair at selling volatility?

This is the stated performance of their “eVRP” product as of January 25:

12-month excess return of 4716 basis points! A 1yr sharpe ratio of 3.74! As Kevin Muir at MacroTourist said back in November in a post on the same subject, “Hedge fund managers do terrible unspeakable things for Sharpe Ratios of 2.5 to 3. Indeed...and pension fund investors are no different. Moreover, that 5-yr Sharpe of 1.28 is pretty spicy too when compared to the Sharpe on long-only equity returns skulking on either side of .5.

Now, fast forward to last Thursday:

Oh dear. Our precious short-vol baby vaporized that 1yr excess return in only two weeks! And those Sharpe ratios went from heavenly to downright ordinary, and I’ll hazard a guess that these figures aren’t including the tasty fees that your pension fund paid their friendly neighborhood bank or hedge fund for managing this risk over the past few years.

It started as a good trade...but as the money rolled in, they just couldn't turn the machine off.

And so it begins, where the top of Cole’s short-vol pyramid has gotten wiped out--the $60-$100bn in explicitly short-vol funds that were betting on pension fund overwriting, “risk premiums”, or just whacking bids in the VIX. While these funds may not have blown up in style like XIV, they have been mortally wounded by the combination of a landmine in their performance record and the demonstrable gap in liquidity for their strategies. The universal risk management strategies like VaR de-risking like those discussed by Polemic in his weekend posts will play a big role too.

Nevertheless, for short-vol the sales pitch is dead--these strategies won’t go away overnight but they will die a slow death. In the short-term, vol will subside--but the next chapter hasn’t been written yet. What does the future hold for the more subtle short vol strategies--like “volatility control” and risk parity?

That might depend on faith in the system, the continued negative correlation of equities and fixed income products, and the ability of leveraged corporations to continue servicing their debt in the event of a shock to the system or a material slowdown in global growth.  And don’t forget this….liquidity is now such that this short-gamma trainwreck may not be so easily contained within equity markets when we inevitably encounter a genuine exogenous shock to the system. Shawn TeamMacroMan2@gmail.com