Speaker 1: I'll get a team. It's Fatty Harps, it's Craig Athney Harper,
Speaker 1: It's the Youth Project. It's Easter Monday. I feel like
Speaker 1: I should be more religious and spiritual than I currently am.
Speaker 1: But in the thriving metropolis of Melbourne, it's nine thirty
Speaker 1: five am and a lot of you are out and about.
Speaker 1: It's a public holiday in Melbourne. It's very quiet in
Speaker 1: the thriving metropolis that I lived. This morning. I was
Speaker 1: up walking around suburban suburban Hampton like the ninja that
Speaker 1: I am, and there wasn't another human to be seen,
Speaker 1: just me and the footpath or the sidewalk, as my
Speaker 1: guest would call it. And speaking of my guest, Hi, buddy,
Speaker 1: welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: No good to see you, Craig. Guess happy Easter is
Speaker 2: in order?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you said that, and I'm with you. You're
Speaker 1: not a particularly eastery family. It's just a kind of
Speaker 1: a is it a I imagine it's a long weekend
Speaker 1: over there. Do you call them public holidays? Is that's
Speaker 1: what it's called or something else?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Pretty much. And a lot of things are closed today,
Speaker 2: even some of the bigger stores. That was kind of
Speaker 2: a surprise, But it's nice to see that they are
Speaker 2: giving their employees time with their families and you know,
Speaker 2: a spiritual outlet to go celebrate Easter, or if they
Speaker 2: don't celebrate such a thing, just to have a nice,
Speaker 2: pleasant day off. It was gorgeous weather today, so that
Speaker 2: helped a lot too.
Speaker 1: What's your I know we're going to talk about something
Speaker 1: other than this today, but before we open that door,
Speaker 1: what's the doctor bill? Off switch? Like? Do you I don't.
Speaker 1: You don't seem like someone who gets overly stressed, but
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, But where do you? Where do
Speaker 1: you kind of chill out? And how do you turn off?
Speaker 2: Well? I have a switch on the back of my
Speaker 2: neck right here. Yeah. Yeah, it's actually a dial, so
Speaker 2: you can like turn it down and I'll get real mellow,
Speaker 2: turn it up and yeah, I'll just go. But you mean, like,
Speaker 2: how do I chill out? What do I do for
Speaker 2: to react? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, Like do you well, one, do you get anxious?
Speaker 1: Do you get stressed or not so much?
Speaker 2: Oh? I used to when I was younger that that
Speaker 2: was you know, science. Being a scientist is a pretty
Speaker 2: stressful career, especially in the States, when you have you know,
Speaker 2: your currency in life, your currency in your job is
Speaker 2: generating papers and grant research funding and then being productive
Speaker 2: on that. And sometimes science isn't productive because your hypotheses
Speaker 2: are just bad guesses, or they could have been good guesses,
Speaker 2: but the data surprises you. So you have to run
Speaker 2: this constant treadmill of trying to keep up and being
Speaker 2: really super productive. And you know, that's that wears on
Speaker 2: you after a while, and you have you know, you're
Speaker 2: a manager of a lab. So if you don't get
Speaker 2: grant funding, you have to tell all those people, sometimes students, sorry,
Speaker 2: we can't keep the lights on. You know, we're gonna
Speaker 2: have to shut down, or at least close down temporarily.
Speaker 2: So that's that's incredibly stressful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people wouldn't think of that dumb in some way,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people wouldn't even think that that's
Speaker 1: a thing, like you've, No, they don't.
Speaker 2: They take it for granted that scientists have these guaranteed jobs.
Speaker 2: But even with tenure, if you are not productive and
Speaker 2: generating research funding, there are mechanisms now in place that
Speaker 2: can you know, either reduce your salary or even get
Speaker 2: you dismissed from the university.
Speaker 1: That kind of makes the idea of tenure redundant, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the definition has certainly been eroded over time,
Speaker 2: and that's because there are some bad apples in the bunch.
Speaker 2: There are some that take advantage of the process. You know,
Speaker 2: once they get tenure, they slack off and you know,
Speaker 2: don't pull their own weight. So I can see the incentive,
Speaker 2: you know, for cracking down on it. But the real
Speaker 2: purpose of tenure is also to provide academic freedom. It
Speaker 2: gives you job security so that if you say or
Speaker 2: research something controversial, your career is protected. And that serves
Speaker 2: everyone because you know, it allows truth seekers to do
Speaker 2: their thing. So, you know, I respect the tenure process.
Speaker 2: I think it's important it should be maintained. But then again,
Speaker 2: on the flip side, you do have people who take
Speaker 2: advantage of it.
Speaker 1: It must be hard at the level that you're at,
Speaker 1: and then the kind of the sphere that you play
Speaker 1: in where you know, like you're still a human, you're
Speaker 1: still emotional, you still have certain ideas that will work
Speaker 1: out and won't work out. I don't mean this so
Speaker 1: much with you personally, but I feel like some of
Speaker 1: the people that I talk to, their identity is very
Speaker 1: much intertwined with how right they are in their thinking,
Speaker 1: like this, this is the way this particular thing works,
Speaker 1: and that's that's it. Like I'm unequivocally right about this,
Speaker 1: so therefore any other data is just noise and where right,
Speaker 1: you're wrong. You know, I think that like the idea
Speaker 1: of science being this totally objective, pure, unimpacted by human
Speaker 1: folly is it's a good idea. But in the real world,
Speaker 1: scientists are all humans. Scientists have all got to pay
Speaker 1: the bills. Scientists have all got bias and flaws and emotions,
Speaker 1: and so in the middle of all of that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's trying to navigate the complexity of being a human
Speaker 1: producing this stuff that is influent that is not influenced
Speaker 1: by my humanity. That's a tricky road.
Speaker 2: It is, and it takes a certain personality. It takes
Speaker 2: someone who has a great deal of intellectual curiosity and
Speaker 2: an equal amount of humility, because a lot of your
Speaker 2: edge cada guesses are going to be wrong.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Nature is very hard to figure out and it's full surprises.
Speaker 2: So you just have to develop this thick skin and
Speaker 2: this you have to learn to reframe when things don't
Speaker 2: conform to your hypothesis. You have to couch that as
Speaker 2: interesting and compelling, because odds are everyone is thinking the.
Speaker 1: Way you did.
Speaker 2: We all expected the same thing. But when you find
Speaker 2: out something different, that could be a really profound discovery
Speaker 2: down the road because no one's really thinking about it.
Speaker 2: So you just have to learn how to reframe some
Speaker 2: of these perceived setbacks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not a particularly academic academic, as you know,
Speaker 1: but me doing about I don't know, three or four
Speaker 1: months away from the finish line. I think writing stuff,
Speaker 1: submitting pipers for publication, all that stuff at the moment, right,
Speaker 1: But I've changed not complete change of direction, but slight
Speaker 1: shift in direction and had to rethink, as you would understand. Also,
Speaker 1: psychology is a very messy field. I think it's a
Speaker 1: very imprecise science. Shout out to all the psychologists and
Speaker 1: the psychology researchers and neuropsychology researchers, but it's a very
Speaker 1: I think it's a very messy kind of a minefield
Speaker 1: of you know, trying to find truth and absolutes. But yes,
Speaker 1: so many of the things that I thought would work
Speaker 1: out a certain way, more than half didn't. And I've
Speaker 1: had to go all right, well what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Like I thought I was going to come, I was
Speaker 1: going to figure out. So my main thing, I think
Speaker 1: you remember, but is around this thing called meta accuracy,
Speaker 1: which is trying to understand how other people perceive and
Speaker 1: experience you. And my thing was looking at could we
Speaker 1: train it, could we teach it? Is it a skill?
Speaker 1: Is that a trait? Can we measure it? All of
Speaker 1: these things are still pretty much unanswerable. Like even in
Speaker 1: the even when you say, well, let's look at all
Speaker 1: the research on how the different people, the different researchers
Speaker 1: and you know, teams that across different contexts and fields
Speaker 1: and have measured meta accuracy, there's no consensus. Like it's
Speaker 1: like there's not well, look we've done all this and
Speaker 1: here's the best protocol, Like there isn't one. And you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to spend five and a half years and
Speaker 1: really not add a lot to the pool. You know,
Speaker 1: but it's great, it's you know, you it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's another grain of sand in the beach of knowledge
Speaker 1: or drop of water in the ocean of knowledge. But
Speaker 1: it's very much a drop of water. That's it.
Speaker 2: That's that's one of the things I actually enjoy about science,
Speaker 2: even though the piece of the puzzle you might be
Speaker 2: traying to fiddle with is incredibly small in the grand
Speaker 2: scheme of things, you know, because there's only so many
Speaker 2: hours in a day and science is hard and so on.
Speaker 2: But it's still extremely rewarding knowing that you had a
Speaker 2: hand in placing one small bit of the puzzle into place,
Speaker 2: you know, or at least telling someone that, hey, that
Speaker 2: puzzle piece doesn't belong there after all, that's valuable too.
Speaker 2: And just to appreciate, you know, you get the sense
Speaker 2: of all when you're involved in science and you see
Speaker 2: things from I think a different perspective, and how incredibly
Speaker 2: complex the world really is. Everything from you know, our
Speaker 2: bodies to psychology, the mind, to outer space. I mean,
Speaker 2: everything is just so much more complicated than we appreciate.
Speaker 2: And our puny, little stone age brains don't want to
Speaker 2: go there. You know. They were like really simple, black
Speaker 2: and white solutions, and that's just not how the world
Speaker 2: works in most cases.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Me, I find that thrilling because that means there's just
Speaker 2: an endless, you know, list of questions we can go
Speaker 2: out there and address. Roll up our sleeves do the experiments.
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's a really wonderful thing that
Speaker 2: humans invented something like the scientific method, because, as you
Speaker 2: alluded to earlier psychology being messy, at least now as
Speaker 2: opposed to when the field was in its infancy, there
Speaker 2: are efforts to apply real scientific metrics to these ideas,
Speaker 2: and you know, to reproduce them too. There's a strong
Speaker 2: case to get all these studies reproduced so that they
Speaker 2: can be verified independently, and that's a really important step
Speaker 2: in science. What we have to realize is that we're
Speaker 2: trying to get to the truth. We're trying to discover
Speaker 2: how reality actually functions. And that's not an easy thing
Speaker 2: to do because we come at it with all of
Speaker 2: our built in human biases, our brain, heuristics, and you know,
Speaker 2: different ways of looking at things. But if you know,
Speaker 2: science remains our best tool that we've ever invented, anyone
Speaker 2: can do it. So that's important because if you outline
Speaker 2: an experiment and discover X, you really get confidence that
Speaker 2: it's true. If someone else in the world can do
Speaker 2: the same thing and reach the same conclusion, you know,
Speaker 2: that's that's really good evidence that you're closer to the
Speaker 2: truth than you originally were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I agree with all of that. The
Speaker 1: other thing I think about, too, is like when we
Speaker 1: talk about the truth, the like capital T the truth,
Speaker 1: then you go into some kind of areas of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, research, where you go, well, look, for some people,
Speaker 1: this protocol is optimal, and for some people it's going
Speaker 1: to kill them. You know. It's like me coming my
Speaker 1: background is xise science, right, so I go, well, this
Speaker 1: program is great for doctor Bill based on doctor Bill,
Speaker 1: you know, based on his chronological biological age, his current state,
Speaker 1: his injuries, he's medical issues, he's you know, his lifestyle,
Speaker 1: he's da da da da da, his goals, he's all
Speaker 1: of these things. Based on all of that, I design
Speaker 1: an exercise program for you, which, for the bloke that
Speaker 1: you sit next to at work, would be the worst program,
Speaker 1: even though it's an identical protocol and you're both sixty
Speaker 1: year old males or whatever it is, right, I don't
Speaker 1: know how old you are.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he's sixty yet, but sorry, fifty.
Speaker 1: Five year old male. You know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's that's the thing, like I
Speaker 1: when I was twenty years old, I could drink a
Speaker 1: glass of milk. In fact, I drank lots of milk
Speaker 1: because I grew up in the country. And now, because
Speaker 1: I guess my body produces less lactase, the enzyme that
Speaker 1: breaks down lactose, I can't drink hardly any milk. So
Speaker 1: what worked for me at twenty doesn't work for me
Speaker 1: at sixty, you know. And I might eat a handful
Speaker 1: of peanuts and I have an anaphylactic reaction and fall
Speaker 1: on the ground. And you have a handful of peanuts
Speaker 1: and go, they were great. I'm going to have more,
Speaker 1: you know. So even amongst all of the I guess
Speaker 1: the general accepted truths and principles, there's this individual variability
Speaker 1: of how people how different people will respond to the
Speaker 1: exact SIME protocol or stimuli.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you actually with that statement, Craig, you came
Speaker 2: full circle with how I like to wind down and
Speaker 2: blow off stress. I go out for a run. So
Speaker 2: I just we have this wonderful network of trails very
Speaker 2: close to our house. I go out there, I take
Speaker 2: my tunes and just run for an hour or something
Speaker 2: like that. And that to me is one of the
Speaker 2: greatest stress relievers and it's also a wonderful idea generator.
Speaker 2: So you know, if ever I get stuck intellectually on
Speaker 2: a scientific problem or I have writer's block, going out
Speaker 2: for a run almost always gets me over that hurdle. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that might sound counterintuitive to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: How do you relax? Well, I go out for a run.
Speaker 1: But that's but that I mean, that's my point. And
Speaker 1: like one of the things, like I grew up, as
Speaker 1: I said, in the country, and part of that was
Speaker 1: riding motorbikes. And so from when I was ten until now,
Speaker 1: I've ridden motorbikes. And you know, if I go out,
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the time it'll be on a bike
Speaker 1: and ten percent in a car. And if I'm on
Speaker 1: a motorbike, I'm having fun. I'm relaxed, I'm more calm
Speaker 1: and more confident on a bike than in a car. Now,
Speaker 1: if I put someone on the back of my motorbike
Speaker 1: who loves motorbikes, they're gonna be having a great time
Speaker 1: and producing all the biochemistry that reflects that great time,
Speaker 1: as you know better than me. And then if you
Speaker 1: put someone else on the back, we do the same
Speaker 1: thing on the same bike, and we go on the
Speaker 1: same trip with the same rider on the front, and
Speaker 1: they're terrified the exact same stimulus will produce the opposite effect.
Speaker 1: Like that always fascinates me. Where I've had people who've
Speaker 1: come for a motorbike or I'd never done it, and
Speaker 1: then and we get back and they want to go again,
Speaker 1: like straight away, they want to go for another ride.
Speaker 1: That was the best thing I've ever done. And other
Speaker 1: people we're one kilometer down the road and they want
Speaker 1: to stop and get off and walk home. Right, you
Speaker 1: know me, absolutely, everybody's such an individual thing. Yeah. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of individual you were telling me before about this
Speaker 1: amazing woman that you've written an article on. I find this.
Speaker 1: I heard about this, I think, but I don't really
Speaker 1: know any of the story. But do tell doctor Bill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the story has gotten press in years past because
Speaker 2: it's been developing for I guess the past ten or
Speaker 2: fifteen years. But like you said, I have an article
Speaker 2: that should be coming out sometime this week. The link
Speaker 2: to it will be up at my website, author Bill
Speaker 2: Sullivan dot com when it's published if people want to
Speaker 2: read more. So we're kind of giving folks a little
Speaker 2: sneak preview. But I was really drawn to this story
Speaker 2: because it's just a fascinating aspect of you know, like
Speaker 2: you said, Craig, some of the differences that we all have.
Speaker 2: So there's a woman out there who was born seventy
Speaker 2: five years ago who can smell Parkinson's disease. She can
Speaker 2: smell this disease on Parkinson's patience. Now there's a really
Speaker 2: fascinating story behind this. You know, how did she know
Speaker 2: that she was smelling Parkinson's disease? And is there a
Speaker 2: way that science and medicine can capitalize on this very
Speaker 2: strange and unique ability. So that's basically what I've been
Speaker 2: researching to write this article. I just became engrossed with
Speaker 2: it because you know, as you know, in my book
Speaker 2: Pleased to Meet Me, I wrote about the differences that
Speaker 2: people have in smell and taste, and most of that
Speaker 2: is genetic in origin. And there are people out there
Speaker 2: who are hype sensitive to smelling. And this can actually
Speaker 2: be a really bad thing because not only do they
Speaker 2: are not only are they hyper sensitive to smelling like
Speaker 2: chocolate chip cookies, but they're hyper sensitive to smelling trash
Speaker 2: and then bad odors. So the condition is very rare
Speaker 2: and it's called hyperosmia, and it's a real heightened sense
Speaker 2: of smell, and we're not talking about specific sense. We're
Speaker 2: talking like across the board. They smell everything much more intently.
Speaker 2: And this is probably genetic related to the number and
Speaker 2: type of all factory receptors that line the nasal cavity.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's not completely understood, but that's the
Speaker 2: most probable explanation. So you know, being able to smell
Speaker 2: these odors is a real interesting phenomenon. And you probably
Speaker 2: heard stories about animals being able to sniff out disease
Speaker 2: in people. There are well documented reports of certain dogs
Speaker 2: being able to sniff out cancer. They can sniff out diabetes.
Speaker 2: I think rats or maybe dogs too, are able to
Speaker 2: sniff out tuberculosis. And we really don't know what the
Speaker 2: causative agent, what the mechanism is behind all this phenomenon,
Speaker 2: but apparently people with certain diseases their body odor changes,
Speaker 2: and that's the black box. We don't know exactly how
Speaker 2: that happens, but the bottom line is their body odor changes,
Speaker 2: and an animal or even a person with hyperosmia can
Speaker 2: detect the differences in the chemical composition of their body
Speaker 2: odor that normal people like me and you with a
Speaker 2: normal sense of smell, it just doesn't cross our radar.
Speaker 2: So that's what this woman joy film can do. So
Speaker 2: let me tell you a little bit about how she
Speaker 2: discovered this ability. She first she first realized that she
Speaker 2: had the ability to smell better than other people very
Speaker 2: early on in life.
Speaker 1: You know, she was a.
Speaker 2: Young girl and she would complain about how people smelled
Speaker 2: even though they've smelled perfectly fine to everybody else. So
Speaker 2: her mother had to take her aside and said, you know,
Speaker 2: we have this trait that runs in our family. You know,
Speaker 2: more evidence that it's genetic, because it's hereditary that makes
Speaker 2: us super smellers. We can detect odors that most people can't.
Speaker 2: So you know, she had to be taught as a
Speaker 2: small girl. You know, even though someone might smell bad
Speaker 2: to you, don't say anything, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But like you know, God lover her. She went on
Speaker 2: to become a nurse. And if I don't know, I know,
Speaker 2: if I had a super sens sensitive OS, I would
Speaker 2: not want to go be a nurse because the smells
Speaker 2: of a hospital for someone who can smell like that
Speaker 2: aren't always going to be pleasant. And in fact, they
Speaker 2: were going to be pretty rotten most of the time.
Speaker 2: But what she noticed as she was a nurse was
Speaker 2: that when she was around people with different diseases, they
Speaker 2: smell different to her. Okay, they smell different than normal people,
Speaker 2: and different diseases produced different sense. And she really didn't
Speaker 2: say anything, just kind of dismissed it as this unusual quirk,
Speaker 2: didn't think much of it. Nevertheless, she married a doctor.
Speaker 2: His name was Less and when he turned thirty one,
Speaker 2: Joy noticed that he started smelling differently. Okay, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to read you the sentence that she said, his
Speaker 2: lovely male musk smell, which I guess is what most
Speaker 2: males smell like. Okay, we got this musky, manly scent, right,
Speaker 2: his lovely male musk smell. Had got this overpowering, sort
Speaker 2: of nasty yeast smell. Wow, which I guess would have
Speaker 2: been like bad bread or bad dough or something like
Speaker 2: that would have been unpleasant. Yeah, and she just kind
Speaker 2: of lived with it, you know. His body odor changed.
Speaker 2: Really didn't know why, and she really, I guess, didn't
Speaker 2: think much of it in way of disease. She didn't
Speaker 2: think it was something alarming, but he definitely smelled different
Speaker 2: than other people, and he smelled different than when they
Speaker 2: first met and got married. So it turns out when
Speaker 2: he turned forty five, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
Speaker 2: So what this was signaling to her, what we know
Speaker 2: she connected the dots here, was that she was smelling
Speaker 2: Parkinson's disease more than ten years before he developed the
Speaker 2: first visible symptoms. So, for those who don't know, Parkinson's
Speaker 2: disease is a neurodegenitive degenerative disorder, and in the US
Speaker 2: it affects about one million people, so it's pretty sizable
Speaker 2: in terms of a neurodegenerative disorder. I think it's only
Speaker 2: second to Alzheimer's with respect to the number of people
Speaker 2: who are afflicted, and I think the number grows up
Speaker 2: to ten million when you go worldwide. So very significant disease,
Speaker 2: and there's no cure for it. You can slow it
Speaker 2: down and earlier diagnosis is crucial, but there's no cure. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: it's a poorly understood disease. We don't understand why these
Speaker 2: dopaminergic neurons are dying in Parkinson's patience, but as they
Speaker 2: do die, they lose control of their motor skills, they
Speaker 2: develop tremors, and as the disease progresses, they actually have
Speaker 2: virtually no control over bodily movements. They have difficulties swallowing,
Speaker 2: which is one of the common causes of death of
Speaker 2: Parkinson's patience is when food and lung food and fluids
Speaker 2: enter the lungs because they can't swallow properly. They die
Speaker 2: from falls because they have lost their coordination, and there's
Speaker 2: cardiovascular issues related to some of the nervous system disorders
Speaker 2: that is associated with Parkinson's. So really nasty disease, and
Speaker 2: unfortunately her husband developed it, but it did allow her
Speaker 2: to connect the dots that that yeasty smell that she
Speaker 2: noticed was actually this Parkinson's and you know, she smelled
Speaker 2: it long before he first exhibited any symptoms. Now, being
Speaker 2: a doctor, Less figured that it was really important that
Speaker 2: they contact a scientist or a researcher with this observation,
Speaker 2: because he suspected, as Joy did, that they may be
Speaker 2: able to study Joy's unusual sense of smell and do
Speaker 2: something beneficial for Parkinson's patience. So they started going to
Speaker 2: a lot of Parkinson's support group's charities, and Joy noticed
Speaker 2: that all the people with Parkinson's smelled like her husband did.
Speaker 2: They did not smell like a normal person.
Speaker 1: That is, that is, I would not want to make
Speaker 1: Joy nervy.
Speaker 2: That well, yeah, that brings up a really interesting philosophical conundrum,
Speaker 2: doesn't it. If you had this superpower and you smelled
Speaker 2: someone who wasn't trembling, and you suspected they were going
Speaker 2: to get Parkinson's, should you tell them good question. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's an interesting tangent. You know, I didn't think
Speaker 2: about that. So So anyway, at one of these public
Speaker 2: lectures in in twenty twelve, they met a scientist who
Speaker 2: was giving a talk on Parkinson's. And after a little
Speaker 2: bit of convincing, because at first he was like, get
Speaker 2: out of here. You can't smell Parkinson's. That's ridiculous. But
Speaker 2: after a little convincing, you know, arguing that hey, animals
Speaker 2: can smell disease. Humans are animals. You know, this shouldn't
Speaker 2: be dismissed too lightly. So to his credit, this doctor
Speaker 2: til Kunath actually came around and said, all right, well
Speaker 2: let's put it to the test, okay. So he designed
Speaker 2: this experiment and basically what they did was they got
Speaker 2: like several people who had Parkinson's and several people who
Speaker 2: did not. Those who didn't have Parkinson's would be the
Speaker 2: so called control group. Yeah, and he had them wear
Speaker 2: T shirts for like a day, and then he gave
Speaker 2: Joy these T shirts, but she didn't know who was
Speaker 2: wearing which one. That was her job just to try
Speaker 2: to assign it. Yeah, it's a really good experimental design,
Speaker 2: very easy to do, very inexpensive. So Joy got every
Speaker 2: single one of them right except one. So she correctly
Speaker 2: identified all the T shirts that the Parkinson's patience were wearing.
Speaker 2: But there was one in the control group, you know,
Speaker 2: someone who didn't have Parkinson's, and she said, this shirt
Speaker 2: smells like Parkinson's. Lo and behold, one year later, that
Speaker 2: guy got Parkinson's.
Speaker 1: That is bloody amazing.
Speaker 2: Isn't that insane? Yeah, it's just mind blowing.
Speaker 1: And so so initially they would have gone, well, look
Speaker 1: it's you're pretty accurate. You're not completely accurate, but and
Speaker 1: isn't it isn't it funny that? Wow? Okay, yep, okay, god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would have been impressed with like
Speaker 2: ninety percent accuracy. So what you missed one? You know,
Speaker 2: that's probably a flu. But then you know, a year later,
Speaker 2: this poor man develops Parkinson's. So she was right all
Speaker 2: along and it's further evidence that she's predicting. Her nose
Speaker 2: can predict this disease long before visible symptoms appear. So
Speaker 2: that was just like her husband less, you know, So
Speaker 2: what this really excited the scientist, you know, this experiment
Speaker 2: was really paradigm shifting, and he got another investigator involved,
Speaker 2: Perdita Baron, and all this was taking place in the
Speaker 2: UK universities in the UK because she was Scottish, and
Speaker 2: they again pulled her into the lab and basically what
Speaker 2: they wanted to do was use her nose as like
Speaker 2: a diagnostic tool to maybe help them develop a new
Speaker 2: test for Parkinson's disease that anyone can take, even people
Speaker 2: who don't have Parkinson's, right, Yeah, so what they were doing,
Speaker 2: you know, basically, Joy told them the smell of Parkinson's
Speaker 2: is strongest on the forehead and kind of on the
Speaker 2: back neck. That's where she could smell it the most,
Speaker 2: and that means, you know, the scent is coming from
Speaker 2: not just body odor, but something even more specific. It's
Speaker 2: a substance called sebum, and this is an oily substance
Speaker 2: that glands in our hair follicles secrete onto our skin
Speaker 2: and it forms like this waxy barrier on our skin.
Speaker 2: It's protective. So these subacious glands in the hair follicles,
Speaker 2: the sebum that they're secreting must be changing. So the
Speaker 2: rest of this is pretty straightforward science. The researchers can
Speaker 2: just take a swab and you know, running across the
Speaker 2: forehead of someone with Parkinson's and someone without, and put
Speaker 2: the material into what we call a mass spectrometer. This
Speaker 2: is basically going to tell you what chemicals are in
Speaker 2: that substance. Yeah, and then you do enough patients, you know,
Speaker 2: you do enough people with Parkinson's, enough without, you start
Speaker 2: to get statistically significant results pointing towards molecules that are
Speaker 2: specific to Parkinson's patients and they lo and behold. Like
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen they published a paper about two or
Speaker 2: three of these molecules are highly enriched in people with Parkinson's,
Speaker 2: And now instead of using Joy's nose, they can develop
Speaker 2: a very simple diagnostic kit. Okay, something you can do
Speaker 2: the swab, put it into a little test tube, you know,
Speaker 2: and after a while you can see if they have
Speaker 2: those molecules or not. So that's where they are with
Speaker 2: this technology. These molecules are so called biomarkers for Parkinson's now,
Speaker 2: and anyone who exhibits an enrichment of these Parkinson's biomarkers,
Speaker 2: whether they're trembling yet or not, they're probably going to
Speaker 2: develop Parkinson's.
Speaker 1: That is, I mean, that is really cool interesting science.
Speaker 1: I mean that is, that is like the intersection of
Speaker 1: for me, entertainment and curiosity and awesome research. I wonder,
Speaker 1: like when you think about, like you and me looking
Speaker 1: at somebody with all the physical, obvious, overt neuromuscular symptoms
Speaker 1: to shaking whatever of Parkinson's, Like you and I could
Speaker 1: look at twenty people in a room, ten who have
Speaker 1: got Parkinson's, ten who haven't, and obviously we goll what's
Speaker 1: very apparent, right, But for her it's probably just as clear,
Speaker 1: you know, through that like, because she didn't get it
Speaker 1: wrong at all. So it's funny that that is such
Speaker 1: a unique skill. And I wonder skill ability whatever I wonder.
Speaker 1: So let's say that we know, you know, like she
Speaker 1: smelled it at thirty one, when her husband was thirty one,
Speaker 1: and he was diagnosed at forty five. That's fourteen years.
Speaker 1: I mean that seems mind blowing. So let's say that
Speaker 1: we know doctor Bill, maybe a decade before somebody's going
Speaker 1: to get symptoms, we know that in advance, Then how
Speaker 1: does that advance knowledge serve us?
Speaker 2: Right? And that's a great question. So, like I said,
Speaker 2: there's no cure for Parkinson's, but there are medications that
Speaker 2: Parkinson's patients can take that slow the progression of disease.
Speaker 2: And the sooner they get on these drugs, basically el dopa,
Speaker 2: they replenish the dopamine that Parkinson's patients are losing. So
Speaker 2: if you can restore that earlier on, you can probably
Speaker 2: slow the progression of the disease even more and extend
Speaker 2: the life of Parkinson's patients and extend their quality of life.
Speaker 2: You know, in theory, the earlier you start treatment, the
Speaker 2: later the tremors will start to appear. So it could
Speaker 2: be a real breakthrough. Given that we don't have a cure.
Speaker 2: This is the best we can currently do. If we
Speaker 2: can use this diagnostic test and just like incorporate it
Speaker 2: into everyone's annual physical and if it turns out positive,
Speaker 2: to start people on these drugs, you may be able
Speaker 2: to delay the onset of Parkinson's symptoms, thereby increasing the
Speaker 2: quality of life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's incredible. Yes, I just purely coincidentally. I need
Speaker 1: to find that. I've got it somewhere in my phone.
Speaker 1: This is not great for a pluck, but somebody sent
Speaker 1: me a reel, you know, an Instagram reel of a
Speaker 1: guy who I'm pretty sure it was Parkinson's And he
Speaker 1: was sitting in looked like a consulting room with the
Speaker 1: doctor and they were looking and very very very extreme shaking,
Speaker 1: and he asked him to pick up a glass which
Speaker 1: was a plastic drink glass and it had nothing in it.
Speaker 1: But he couldn't, you know, he couldn't even nearly hold
Speaker 1: it still. And he couldn't there was zero chance that
Speaker 1: if it was full of water that it wouldn't go
Speaker 1: everywhere and he wouldn't get any and he'd get any
Speaker 1: of his mouth right, And then they had this I
Speaker 1: think it was like some deep brain stimulation thing where
Speaker 1: they turned they adjusted it and his I'll find it
Speaker 1: to you and send it to you in WhatsApp because
Speaker 1: I'm massacring this. But the tremors went away. Have you
Speaker 1: heard of that?
Speaker 2: I have not. I mean I've heard of brain stimulation
Speaker 2: being used as a treatment for a variety of neurological disorders,
Speaker 2: so I guess it's not terribly outside the realm of possibility. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, they must be stimulating the brain or a
Speaker 2: different section of the brain to increase dopamine. Because when dopamine,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's basically mimicking the same effect that el
Speaker 2: dopa would if doctors are prescribing that as a treatment.
Speaker 2: So I'm assuming it would achieve basically the same effect
Speaker 2: because you can you know, no one posts the real
Speaker 2: of this, I suppose, But when a trembling Parkinson's disease
Speaker 2: patients take their el dopa, you know, in a short
Speaker 2: amount of time, those tremors are going to be gradually reduced, Yes,
Speaker 2: you know, in early Parkinson's, to the point where they're
Speaker 2: not even noticeable by most people. That's how good el
Speaker 2: dopa is. The problem is Parkinson's patients develop a little
Speaker 2: bit of resistance to that drug. You know, They're body
Speaker 2: starts to tolerate it, and they need more and more
Speaker 2: of it. And when you get to excessive levels, el
Speaker 2: dopa starts to have other effects on the body. It
Speaker 2: increases risk taking behavior, it lowers inhibitions. It can have
Speaker 2: some adverse effects that are almost just as bad as
Speaker 2: Parkinson's itself. So that's why we really do need a cure.
Speaker 2: But that's where Joy can also be helpful. Now that
Speaker 2: these scientists have isolated some of the molecules that Parkinson's
Speaker 2: patients are increasing, Yes, we can kind of reverse engineer
Speaker 2: the disease, right. We can try to apply science to
Speaker 2: figure out why are Parkinson's patients increasing these chemicals, and
Speaker 2: if we stop that process with another type of drug,
Speaker 2: we might have a new treatment for Parkinson's.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. I wonder how many I wonder how many
Speaker 1: other special abilities like that we're unaware of in other
Speaker 1: people who have certain like I know it's very rare,
Speaker 1: but in a world of billion people, I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: a lot of I'm sure there's at least another one
Speaker 1: hundred Joys or two or three or four hundred or
Speaker 1: thousand Joys who can smell in inverted commas or potentially
Speaker 1: smell other diseases.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, And when I was researching this story,
Speaker 2: I came across that very thing, because as soon as
Speaker 2: Joy went public with her story, several other people wrote
Speaker 2: to the newspapers or the TV station saying Hey, I
Speaker 2: have this ability too, and I've noticed that my diabetic
Speaker 2: mother smells really funny, so you're absolutely right. There may
Speaker 2: be other people out there. And Joy herself, working as
Speaker 2: a nurse, has gone on record saying that folks with diabetes, Alzheimer's,
Speaker 2: tuberculosis all have a distinct odor about them. So this
Speaker 2: this might just be the beginning, Craig Parkinson's just might
Speaker 2: be the gateway that allows further diagnostic tests based on
Speaker 2: Joy's ability or other people with her supercharge smelling abilities
Speaker 2: to develop new tests for diabetes, Alzheimer's and maybe infectious
Speaker 2: diseases as well.
Speaker 1: Such a bloody, fascinating story, doc, So so we are
Speaker 1: what are we now? It's Monday now. I think this
Speaker 1: is going to be maybe tomorrow, which will be either tomorrow,
Speaker 1: Tuesday the twenty second, or Wednesday the twenty third. This
Speaker 1: will go live in Australia anyway. So when is the
Speaker 1: article coming out and how can people access it?
Speaker 2: It'll come out sometime this week. I don't know the
Speaker 2: exact date because I probably still have some editorial changes
Speaker 2: that I will be required to make, yep, but it'll
Speaker 2: come out this week and people can go to my website,
Speaker 2: Author Bill Sullivan dot com. You can read this article
Speaker 2: when it comes out, and you know, a whole bunch
Speaker 2: more than I've written over the years.
Speaker 1: And of course everyone doctor Bill's book is pleased to
Speaker 1: meet me jeans, germs, and the curious forces that make
Speaker 1: us who we are. He's an award winning professor at
Speaker 1: the Indiana University of Medicine, where he studies genetics and
Speaker 1: infectious diseases and appears once a fortnite or month or
Speaker 1: is it fortnightly or monthly? Monthly?
Speaker 2: Fortnitely we do monthly monthly.
Speaker 1: Lucky us. Thanks for doing it.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you can handle more than that.
Speaker 1: Are you sick of it yet?
Speaker 2: No, not at all. Like I said before, I always
Speaker 2: enjoy coming on your programs. It's a delay to talk
Speaker 2: about science. You have very insightful questions, and I love
Speaker 2: the audience feedback we get on Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. So and to that everyone, if
Speaker 1: you've got we should do a Q and I. We've
Speaker 1: spoken about it, but we haven't done it, but we
Speaker 1: should do a Q and I episode. Your questions listener
Speaker 1: questions for Doctor Bill why don't you give people some
Speaker 1: context to that? So if people did want to ask
Speaker 1: you questions, what's kind of the areas that you would
Speaker 1: be most not comfortable with? But I guess, like, what's
Speaker 1: what kind of questions? What areas should they be asking
Speaker 1: them in or relative to?
Speaker 2: Well, basically anything about biology. You know, I'm really a
Speaker 2: student of the human body. I love to learn what
Speaker 2: makes it tick. That overlaps a lot with psychology as well,
Speaker 2: and that basically is my book, as you mentioned, So
Speaker 2: anything that's related to what makes human beings work, why
Speaker 2: we do the things we do. I can dress that
Speaker 2: from a genetics standpoint, epigenetics, you know, from an evolutionary perspective,
Speaker 2: and of course my background and day to day work
Speaker 2: is an infectious disease. Love to answer questions about that
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: I've got a very specific question that's popped into mind
Speaker 1: as you're explaining all of that's completely a complete left
Speaker 1: turn to everything we've spoken about. So here's my last question.
Speaker 1: Don't roll your eyes everyone, I want the science behind this.
Speaker 1: So when I look at Donald Trump talking and I
Speaker 1: hear him and this is not a pro or an
Speaker 1: anti everyone, just this guy who clearly is hated and loved.
Speaker 1: Some people hate him, some people love him. And there's
Speaker 1: been you know, there's praise, there's criticism, there's that guy
Speaker 1: seems to be I'm sure he isn't. But I've never
Speaker 1: me as a student of human behavior and psychology and
Speaker 1: you know, watching people who communicate for a living, and
Speaker 1: I've never seen anyone who's se seems to be less
Speaker 1: affected by the fucking avalanche of shit that he's always
Speaker 1: in the middle of. What are your thoughts, like he
Speaker 1: just it's I mean, water off a duck's back comes
Speaker 1: to mind. What are your thoughts around how he just
Speaker 1: seems to deal with all that? I would have been
Speaker 1: dead five years ago just from the stress.
Speaker 2: Oh you're asking how Trump deals with it?
Speaker 1: Yes, Like how was he?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Yes, he's obviously he got voted in as president, so
Speaker 1: a lot of people must like him, and again no
Speaker 1: opinion about that. Also a lot of people somewhere between
Speaker 1: don't like him and despise him. Right, how does he
Speaker 1: deal with Like? Is that his genetics? Is he just
Speaker 1: wired that way?
Speaker 2: Wow? Well that's like that's like the million dollar question,
Speaker 2: isn't it. I don't think it is controversial that Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is a nist. He only really cares about himself, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, you're the psychologist, and you've seen him speak
Speaker 2: and maybe you've read some of his social media posts.
Speaker 2: To me, it's abundantly clear he's a narcissist. So to
Speaker 2: answer your question, given that personality profile, I don't think
Speaker 2: he cares what other people think about him. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: if you have that attitude, then I don't think you're
Speaker 2: going to have the stress that normal people feel, you know,
Speaker 2: when other people don't like them, if they receive criticism
Speaker 2: or negative feedback, even if it's presented in a constructive
Speaker 2: or fact based manner. If you're a narcissist, you just
Speaker 2: don't care. And to me, in terms of a leader,
Speaker 2: that's really dangerous to have.
Speaker 1: Well, I think about this stat. I mean, the number
Speaker 1: of the alleged number of schship paths in our society
Speaker 1: varies on research whose research is between one and five percent.
Speaker 1: But even if we go absolute rock bottom one percent,
Speaker 1: that's one in one hundred. Well, that's give or take
Speaker 1: three and a half million sociopaths in America. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of fucking people. And and in Australia that's you know,
Speaker 1: we're sitting at a whopping twenty seven million, so it's
Speaker 1: like a quarter of a million social paths based on
Speaker 1: the one percent number. I mean, yeah, it's a wonder
Speaker 1: we survive with those numbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, it is, that's yeah, I never really
Speaker 2: appreciated the numbers to that extent.
Speaker 1: Well, when I have even one percent of Americans, that
Speaker 1: is millions of people.
Speaker 2: That's right, and you would think most crime might be
Speaker 2: committed by those folks, but in fact it's not unless
Speaker 2: we're just doing more about it. So and I have
Speaker 2: I have heard I'm preferred to as a as a
Speaker 2: psychopath and a sociopath. You're probably in a better position,
Speaker 2: given your expertise, to evaluate the validity of those remarks.
Speaker 2: But yeah, some of the things he says and does
Speaker 2: really do raise eyebrows on the for lack of the
Speaker 2: better word, the sanity. You know that, you know that
Speaker 2: he must have. I mean, it's just boggles the mind
Speaker 2: that he is able to get away with some of
Speaker 2: the things he says and does, because when I was
Speaker 2: growing up, if any politician did such things, they would
Speaker 2: have been read out of Washington, d C. A long
Speaker 2: time ago. And there's just a disturbing level of acceptance
Speaker 2: and normalization right now that that could really damage the
Speaker 2: United States and maybe the world as well.
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember when he was campaigning first time around,
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff came out about, like a
Speaker 1: recording of him talking about some very unsavory stuff about
Speaker 1: him and a woman, right, And he was talking and
Speaker 1: the stuff that he said was fucking terrible. And I
Speaker 1: heard that. I heard the recording and I went, oh, well,
Speaker 1: there's his political career. It's like, well, he had a
Speaker 1: good go at it, I mean, but this is out now,
Speaker 1: I mean, and things come out that are nowhere near
Speaker 1: as bad as that, that have destroyed many careers. But
Speaker 1: he was literally saying like some very very vulgar, very inappropriate,
Speaker 1: very horrible shit, right, And I heard it, and I
Speaker 1: went ah, because I was kind of curious about what
Speaker 1: would happen. I went, oh, well, now we know it's
Speaker 1: never going to get across the line. And he's done.
Speaker 1: And then five minutes later his presidence, I'm like, what,
Speaker 1: how on earth did that stuff not totally won derail
Speaker 1: his campaign and his endeavors. And two like, obviously I
Speaker 1: wouldn't do that or say that, but if that came
Speaker 1: out about me. I had have done that or said that,
Speaker 1: I would have just like pulled him my head in
Speaker 1: and gone off into the mist. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you raise a good point. If he was
Speaker 2: in any other profession, Okay, in a business or a school,
Speaker 2: or the things he says and does would have gotten
Speaker 2: him fired in a heartbeat. But for some reason, in
Speaker 2: politics he's cheered on. And you know, fifty two percent
Speaker 2: of Americans are scratching their head and saying, what is
Speaker 2: going on here? It's like we've lost We've taken leave
Speaker 2: of our senses. This is a serial abuser. Okay, he's
Speaker 2: obviously a bully, he's a revenge seeker. He's terrible to women,
Speaker 2: he's terrible to minorities. He's cheated on all three of
Speaker 2: his wives. Okay, and he's a convicted felon twice, impeached.
Speaker 2: I just you know what more can happen?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean? But he literally said himself that he could
Speaker 2: murder someone in cold blood and he would get away
Speaker 2: with it. Yeah, that's not inaccurate.
Speaker 1: Wow, he in his own way, he is.
Speaker 2: You know, he should get an honorary PhD in psychology.
Speaker 2: I think he really knows how to mess with people's minds,
Speaker 2: and he's used that to his advantage as a narcissist
Speaker 2: to try to create this Well, he's trying to like
Speaker 2: rewrite history now, you know, with calling the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: election of fraud. And you know what he's done with
Speaker 2: our our our healthcare pages, our medicine pages, and our
Speaker 2: science foundations is just absurd. I mean, he is like
Speaker 2: trying to rewrite history as he sees it, you know,
Speaker 2: is in his worldview, and his worldview does not always
Speaker 2: align with objective reality. And this is what scares me
Speaker 2: to death, Greg, because people are buying what he says,
Speaker 2: you know, lock stock and barrel. They will not question it.
Speaker 1: It's like a cult.
Speaker 2: And if you don't question what one person is telling you,
Speaker 2: you don't have a democracy anymore. You have a dictatorship.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing, yeah, I agree with you. And
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is that so by the way, you know, schiopaths,
Speaker 1: sockerpath they're not the same thing, but they get kind
Speaker 1: of used interchangeably. But obviously a sociopaths and narcissists can
Speaker 1: be the one human, right. But the thing about a
Speaker 1: lot of sociopaths slash nists is that they are often charismatic, charming,
Speaker 1: have a high ich you obviously incredibly manipulative, and they
Speaker 1: don't always initially seem like you know, over time people
Speaker 1: kind of find out, but initially like and I've I've
Speaker 1: met some people in my life where I initially was enamored.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, this person's amazing, and then
Speaker 1: the year or two or three, lady, you're like I was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are. They're charming, they're funny, they can they've got
Speaker 1: a great vocabulary, they can read the room, they can
Speaker 1: build rapport and can they can do all of these
Speaker 1: things that make it seem like they're an awesome human.
Speaker 1: But it's all strategic and it's all self serving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very disappointing when when you see that late.
Speaker 1: You know, hey, mate, it's been great once again, everybody.
Speaker 1: Doctor Bill's book is called Please to Meet Me Jeans,
Speaker 1: Germs and the Curious Forces that make us who we are. Also,
Speaker 1: his article is going to be out this week, so
Speaker 1: have a read of that. We'll say goodbye off air,
Speaker 1: but for now, thanks mate, I appreciate you as always.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's always a pleasure to come on and chat
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: Craig, Thanks buddy,