Speaker 1: I was once a happy carnivore, but after a visit
Speaker 1: from Lone Star, it's meat no more. Begrudgingly, I'm an herbivore,
Speaker 1: and while I miss steak tartar, it's not worth dying for.
Speaker 1: I tried to get some internal rhyme in there, and
Speaker 1: I don't think it would the way I imagined it would.
Speaker 2: No, I think you're basically the eminem of science. Okay,
Speaker 2: if alien brains are strange and quantum mechanical, could they
Speaker 2: see quantum effects? Or was Daniel being over dramatical.
Speaker 1: Up to eighty percent of women will have uterine fibroids
Speaker 1: by the time they turn fifty, but they're understudied. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: equal representation in medical research be nifty?
Speaker 2: Whatever questions are keeping you up at night, Daniel and
Speaker 2: Kelly's answers will make it all right.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Listener Questions, Episode Number.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist who thinks about aliens,
Speaker 2: and I'm the only co host who hasn't been invited
Speaker 2: to rap on someone's album.
Speaker 3: Hello. I'm Kelly Waiter Smith.
Speaker 1: I study parasites in space, and it is yet to
Speaker 1: be determined whether or not A that will happen or
Speaker 1: B that was a good decision on that person's part
Speaker 1: to invite me to do so.
Speaker 2: I think you have an awesome voice for rapping, Kelly.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah, thanks. I'm not sure the poems help
Speaker 1: make that argument, but that's okay. What is the most
Speaker 1: surprising thing you have found yourself doing as an adult
Speaker 1: where you were like, I just did not imagine I
Speaker 1: would ever be doing this because if I do the
Speaker 1: rap thing, that will be my answer.
Speaker 2: I've had some funny moments recording ads for the podcast
Speaker 2: in the past. I remember recording one for Starbucks Nitro
Speaker 2: cold Brew that Katrina listened to, and he convinced her
Speaker 2: to get a Nitro cold Crew one day. And now
Speaker 2: she says, every time she goes to Starbucks and she
Speaker 2: sees that drink, she hears my voice in her head
Speaker 2: nightdro cold Brew.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. That's kind of cute too.
Speaker 2: How about you, Kelly, You've ended up in some pretty
Speaker 2: funny situations in your science communication career.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I don't know if I wasn't limiting
Speaker 1: the question on purpose to science communication career. I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember donning a wet suit pretty soon after the
Speaker 1: ice had melted in northern Wisconsin and swimming around to
Speaker 1: monitor the behavior of male large mouth bass as they
Speaker 1: were guarding their nests, and one of them came over
Speaker 1: and slammed me in the face and knocked my goggles off.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's not that big, right.
Speaker 1: It was mostly just cute, but like he was defending
Speaker 1: his nest, like amazed because I'm so much bigger than
Speaker 1: he is. And then I ended up in the er
Speaker 1: for an ear infection and I was in the er
Speaker 1: for the third time and the woman was like, you're back.
Speaker 1: Why do you keep getting into the water. And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I'm studying the reproductive behaviors of male
Speaker 1: small mouth pass and it was like she was kind
Speaker 1: of listening, and she goes, oh, okay, that's interesting. And
Speaker 1: then it like once she processed what I had actually said,
Speaker 1: she said to you, that's interesting to you, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my goodness, I've suffering anyway. I think
Speaker 1: that was like that whole summer. I was like, I
Speaker 1: did not imagine that I would be in this situation.
Speaker 1: And people talk a lot about peeing in their wetsuits
Speaker 1: when they have that job, and I just remember thinking
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to med school.
Speaker 3: This is what a strange place I've ended up.
Speaker 2: But I'm getting face slapped by fish.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's right, that's right. So anyway, that was that
Speaker 1: was a surprising path. I also got slapped by a
Speaker 1: leather vackseat turtle and that hurt a lot.
Speaker 2: That does sound like it wouldn't be fun. Well, today
Speaker 2: we are slapping nobody, but we are answering questions that
Speaker 2: are interesting to you, hopefully, because everybody out there is
Speaker 2: interested in how the universe works. And we have the
Speaker 2: best listeners, the most curious listeners, ones who think about
Speaker 2: how things work. And sometimes those ideas don't click together
Speaker 2: just right, or bump up against each other in an
Speaker 2: uncomfortable way. People write in to help us sort it out.
Speaker 2: We love hearing from y'all questions at danielan Kelly dot org.
Speaker 2: And today we're answering three fascinating questions about biology and physics,
Speaker 2: two of them from people named Zach.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a Zachy sort of day, and so let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and hear our first question from our first
Speaker 1: Zach number one.
Speaker 3: Zach.
Speaker 4: Hey, they're extraordinaries. I've heard about a tick that can
Speaker 4: make you allergic to Meet. I'm allergic to pollen and
Speaker 4: avocados because my dad is allergic to pollen and avocados.
Speaker 4: It's genetic. So how the heck can you get an
Speaker 4: allergy to Meet from a tick? You're the parasitologist, Kelly,
Speaker 4: so I'm tossing this one to you. Thanks in advance.
Speaker 5: Wow number one, Zach.
Speaker 2: All Right, Okay, this is fascinating and terrifying. The idea
Speaker 2: that you could pick up an allergy to a very
Speaker 2: common food just by getting bitten by an insect death.
Speaker 1: Terrifying, absolutely terrifying. All No, ticks are not insects, but
Speaker 1: still terrifying. Nonetheless, they're a racknids, so we're like related
Speaker 1: to spiders and stuff. But what's really amazing to me
Speaker 1: is that we ever figured this out.
Speaker 3: Okay, so here's the deal.
Speaker 1: You get bit by a tick, and then some period
Speaker 1: of time after that can be weeks or whatever, you
Speaker 1: build up an allergy to meat, and then you eat meat,
Speaker 1: and three to six hours after you've eaten meat, you
Speaker 1: have an allergic reaction. So the fact that we were
Speaker 1: ever able to connect those dots is like mind blowing
Speaker 1: to me. But let's take a step back and talk
Speaker 1: about like how we figured this out. Yeah, so over
Speaker 1: a decade ago, a bunch of just we're getting reports
Speaker 1: from people who were saying I've developed an allergy to meat,
Speaker 1: and their initial response was like, uh, it's probably.
Speaker 2: Something else, because allergies to meats don't happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, allergies to meat are just very uncommon.
Speaker 1: It's not a thing that has been documented a lot
Speaker 1: in the past. And so I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people were like, Okay, well, you know you should avoid
Speaker 1: meat then, but this is very surprising and doesn't fit
Speaker 1: with what we know about allergies.
Speaker 2: So allergies in general, like I'm familiar with I'm allergic
Speaker 2: to a cat and it makes me sneeze or get hives.
Speaker 2: Or I'm allergic to grass and I get a rash.
Speaker 2: Or if you're allergic to foods like peanuts, then when
Speaker 2: you eat them, you're like throat can swell. Is that
Speaker 2: what's happening when you're eating meat and you're getting like
Speaker 2: a throat constriction or is it more like affecting digestion
Speaker 2: when you're vomiting it.
Speaker 1: It could be all of the above, So it sort
Speaker 1: of depends on who you are but so you can
Speaker 1: have you know, let's call it gastrointestinal distress. You can
Speaker 1: get covered in hives, or you can get anaphylactic shock,
Speaker 1: where essentially your throat starts to close.
Speaker 5: So it's very clearly analergy.
Speaker 3: Yes, very clearly analogy.
Speaker 2: Because gastro intestinal distress after eating meat could also be
Speaker 2: caused by like E. Coli or something else.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, sure, right, if you eat bad meat, you
Speaker 1: can get the runs or whatever.
Speaker 3: But this is like every.
Speaker 1: Time you eat meat, you reliably get this response, and
Speaker 1: so it's probably not a batch of bad meat. It
Speaker 1: is just the way your body responds whenever it encounters
Speaker 1: certain kinds of meat, meat from mammals in particular.
Speaker 2: This calls up some memory I have of my younger
Speaker 2: brother eating kemmeenber for the first time. I think he
Speaker 2: was like six, and I was like, wow, this is
Speaker 2: so delicious and creamy, and he was like creamy, this
Speaker 2: is spicy. And I was like, what spicy? What are
Speaker 2: you talking about. He's like, yeah, it's really spicy, and
Speaker 2: then I discovered, oh, he's having an allergic reaction. It
Speaker 2: was like stinging as he was eating it was spicy
Speaker 2: because he was only like six or seven, and so yes.
Speaker 2: Then at the er I had to relate this story
Speaker 2: to the doctor, and my parents were like, why didn't
Speaker 2: you say something anyway?
Speaker 3: What was he allergic to?
Speaker 5: Canmonberry?
Speaker 3: But just the cheese in.
Speaker 2: Some soft cheeses, Yeah, you know, because they all have
Speaker 2: different molds, okay, and so some people are allergic to
Speaker 2: like specific cheeses. So if you're eating a hamburger and
Speaker 2: it's not supposed to be spicy and it is, you
Speaker 2: might have this allergy.
Speaker 3: So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You usually don't respond at all for three to six hours,
Speaker 1: which is which is kind of weird. And so often
Speaker 1: when you have an allergy, your immune system has essentially
Speaker 1: decided that something you've consumed is bad even though it's
Speaker 1: not so. For example, there are proteins made by peanuts,
Speaker 1: and our bodies will produce immune cells that are constantly circulating.
Speaker 1: Whenever they see proteins from a peanut, they decide that
Speaker 1: there is an invader that must be attacked, and they're
Speaker 1: bringing along other immune cells, and when they find the peanut,
Speaker 1: those immune cells like burst open and create like a
Speaker 1: massive inflammatory response to try to destroy what they think
Speaker 1: is a harmful invader, but actually it's just you know,
Speaker 1: this thing that isn't really going to hurt you. Peanuts
Speaker 1: aren't going to start replicating and trying to like take
Speaker 1: over your.
Speaker 3: Lungs or something. They're just something that's there because you
Speaker 3: ate a peanut.
Speaker 2: Right, So, in general, an allergic response is your immune
Speaker 2: system responding to something that's benign.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, okay. So there was this cancer drug that
Speaker 1: came out called situm tuxaab.
Speaker 2: Matt, I want you to keep all of those attempts
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, come on, so tuxaab or something like that,
Speaker 1: and very unfortunately, there were some people that were taking
Speaker 1: the cancer drug and they would die, and they clearly
Speaker 1: were dying from an allergic reaction to the drug. So
Speaker 1: allergists were called in, and the allergists started like looking
Speaker 1: at the people who have allergic responses to this cancer
Speaker 1: medication and those who don't. And it turned out that
Speaker 1: this cancer medication had a sugar in it that we
Speaker 1: usually just call alpha gal and has a much longer
Speaker 1: chemistry name, but none of us want to hear that,
Speaker 1: least of all Daniels, so we're just gonna call it
Speaker 1: alpha gal.
Speaker 2: Alpha gal sounds like a teenage superhero.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no it's not. I mean it sounds awesome.
Speaker 2: Let's call Alpha gal to solve this problem.
Speaker 3: But now it's also become the name of the allergy.
Speaker 1: So if you have alpha gl syndrome, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have amazing superheroes who come to.
Speaker 3: Get you out of trouble.
Speaker 1: You get anaphylaxis when you have a Hamberger much less cool.
Speaker 5: That's not very cool superpower.
Speaker 1: No, no, And so they were trying to figure out like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this sugar is what's causing the allergy, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: cause the allergy in everyone.
Speaker 3: And so they started like laying maps of.
Speaker 1: Different like kinds of diseases from the United States over
Speaker 1: the maps of areas where people were getting allergic reactions
Speaker 1: to this drug.
Speaker 2: Such cool detective work. Yes, right, this is like Cholera
Speaker 2: episode all over again.
Speaker 1: I got, which was such I had so much fun
Speaker 1: researching that episode. And so so anyway, somebody, after looking
Speaker 1: at maps and maps and maps and maps of diseases,
Speaker 1: noted that the areas where people were more likely to
Speaker 1: get allergic reactions to this drug overlapped with areas where
Speaker 1: people were likely to get rocky mountain spotted fever, which
Speaker 1: is a disease that you get from ticks boo. And
Speaker 1: so they reached out to a bunch of people and
Speaker 1: they were like, do you remember getting bit by a
Speaker 1: lone star tick? And when they ask people, some of
Speaker 1: them were like, yeah, I got bit by a lone
Speaker 1: star tick, you know, a year ago. And then they'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, well, did you start also like responding
Speaker 1: strangely to meat because meat also has alpha gau sugars
Speaker 1: in it. And they'd be like, yeah, I get these
Speaker 1: hives now after I have a burger. And they were
Speaker 1: able to like create this correlation. I know, it was
Speaker 1: totally incredible.
Speaker 2: They must have been so skeptical of this connection when
Speaker 2: they first saw that, like what, how could it be this?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: But then you know, that's the thing about science, the
Speaker 2: data speaks right yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and so one of the amazing that this problem
Speaker 1: was solved concurrently by scientists in Australia and a scientist
Speaker 1: at the University of Virginia named doctor Platts Mills. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that he emphasizes in his career
Speaker 1: is that you need to be like open to things
Speaker 1: that are supper and so when people were like, I'm
Speaker 1: allergic to meat. You know, he admitted that he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: allergic to me. And then but he's like, but you know,
Speaker 1: I listened, and then a lot more people were like,
Speaker 1: I'm allergic to meat. And he I think he was
Speaker 1: part of the team that figured out this alpha gal
Speaker 1: sugar thing. And then it turned out that he went
Speaker 1: on a hike once and he walked through an area
Speaker 1: where lone star tics had been breeding and he picked
Speaker 1: up a bunch of baby loan star tics and now
Speaker 1: he has this disease. Oh no, And so he's been
Speaker 1: experimenting on himself. I found a quote where he said,
Speaker 1: I'm covered in biopsy scars from doing research on myself.
Speaker 1: So I think he'll like eat a little meat and
Speaker 1: then be like boop, biopsy a collect some data and
Speaker 1: he takes a little bit. It's a little sample of himself.
Speaker 1: So here's a couple additional things that are like surprising
Speaker 1: about this. So usually allergies are to a protein. Alpha
Speaker 1: gal is a sugar. That's weird. Usually you don't get
Speaker 1: allergies transmitted by organisms like tics. And to be honest,
Speaker 1: we don't know, oh why ticks are giving us this allergy.
Speaker 1: So we know that ticks sometimes when they're taking a
Speaker 1: blood meal, they definitely spit in you while they're taking
Speaker 1: the blood meal. To add insult to injury, what they're
Speaker 1: spitting in there is like anticoagulants and other things to
Speaker 1: make sure the blood flows nicely into their face. But
Speaker 1: when they essentially spit into you, they have this sugar
Speaker 1: and they're putting it into your bloodstream, and your bloodstream
Speaker 1: responds by creating this allergic response, but not always.
Speaker 2: So hold on a second. Ticks spit some stuff into you,
Speaker 2: I get it. But one of those things they spin
Speaker 2: into you happens to also be a sugar that's in
Speaker 2: like hamburgers. Is that coincidence?
Speaker 1: So we don't understand, right, So that's a great question.
Speaker 1: So this sugar is made by almost all mammals, but
Speaker 1: not humans and some of our close primate ancestors. We
Speaker 1: don't totally understand why we didn't make it. But this
Speaker 1: sugar is one of the reasons why it's hard to
Speaker 1: do transplants of pig hearts into people, because pigs do
Speaker 1: make this sugar, and our bodies, our immune systems respond
Speaker 1: to pig hearts, and so one of the things that
Speaker 1: people are doing when they're genetically manipulating pigs to try
Speaker 1: to make it so that their organs can go into
Speaker 1: people is they're removing the genes that cause the pigs
Speaker 1: to make this sugar.
Speaker 2: And so does that mean if you have this allergy,
Speaker 2: you can't eat a hamburger, but you could eat a
Speaker 2: people burger.
Speaker 1: Oh, I should have known our big cannibalism.
Speaker 2: I want to answer to my question for the point.
Speaker 1: The answer is yes, yes, you would not have anaphylectic
Speaker 1: shock if you eat a human burger a Daniel Berger.
Speaker 1: And also you won't get anaphylectic shock if you eat chicken,
Speaker 1: for example. And so because this is a protein that
Speaker 1: you tend to find in mammals, so pigs, cows, you know,
Speaker 1: bacon would would give you hives or something like that
Speaker 1: if you have this reaction.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't eat a lot of mammals anyway, and
Speaker 2: I'm not a big fan of eating mammals, So this
Speaker 2: is feeling less apocalyptic to me, but it's still a
Speaker 2: fun science puzzle.
Speaker 1: Well, I have some neighbors in my community who have
Speaker 1: this allergy because one of the hotspots is Central Virginia,
Speaker 1: where I live. And I have some neighbors who raise
Speaker 1: cows for like a living, and they have this allergy now,
Speaker 1: so they can't, you know, they can't eat the cows
Speaker 1: they raise. They have to like sell that meat to
Speaker 1: other people now, And so you know, for some people,
Speaker 1: it is a pretty big problem. Yeah, And apparently if
Speaker 1: you are the kind of person who itches for more
Speaker 1: than two weeks after you get a lone star tick bite,
Speaker 1: you are more likely to develop an allergy to meat.
Speaker 1: And I definitely have a tick bite that's manaching for
Speaker 1: more than two weeks.
Speaker 3: And so last night I went out to eat and
Speaker 3: I was like, do I have the burger? Do I
Speaker 3: not have the burger?
Speaker 1: And like, anyway, so I'm starting to worry that I
Speaker 1: will eventually have.
Speaker 5: This, And did you have the burger?
Speaker 1: I did have mammal meat, and I was fine, My
Speaker 1: back kind of hurts.
Speaker 2: That sounds so unappetized.
Speaker 3: It does sound unmal meat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, I'll have the mammal meat burger. I
Speaker 2: don't really care which one. Just throw in some mammals,
Speaker 2: just some.
Speaker 3: Mammal you can mix them all together. I'm fine whatever.
Speaker 5: A little raccoon burger, Oh.
Speaker 1: Never mind, all right. Okay, so there's a couple things
Speaker 1: we still need to figure out. Why is it that
Speaker 1: some people get bit by loan star ticcks and don't
Speaker 1: get the allergy. Yeah, we don't really know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess that's sort of similar to the question for
Speaker 1: why are some people allergic to peanuts and others aren't.
Speaker 2: But there's also lots of other immuno responses that we
Speaker 2: don't understand. You know, for example, like one percent of
Speaker 2: people get type one diabetes, but something like thirty something
Speaker 2: percent have the genetic disposition for it. There's some environmental trigger,
Speaker 2: and so there must be some combination of being bitten
Speaker 2: by tick and something else you also, like struck by lightning,
Speaker 2: or we're sick beforehand, or some other environmental combination.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean loads of job security if you
Speaker 1: work in the field of allergies.
Speaker 3: There's a lot we don't know yet.
Speaker 1: And it seems like there's some ticks whose bites are
Speaker 1: more likely to give you this allergy.
Speaker 3: It's not just loan star ticcks.
Speaker 1: There are ticks in Australia that do it, ticks in
Speaker 1: Europe and Africa that do it, but not every tick
Speaker 1: bite is equally likely to give you this allergy, and
Speaker 1: so trying to figure out what it is that makes
Speaker 1: some ticks more likely to make you allergic to meat
Speaker 1: is an open area of investigation. And so one of
Speaker 1: the things that I was wondering when I was doing
Speaker 1: this research is like, presumably this allergy has been around
Speaker 1: forever or like for a very long time, because like
Speaker 1: loan star ticks have been around for a very long time,
Speaker 1: but we didn't figure this out until more recently, right.
Speaker 2: But having tick bites been going up a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we think that tick bites have been going up,
Speaker 1: and we don't know one hundred percent why, but some
Speaker 1: guesses are because deer numbers have been going up and
Speaker 1: ticks lots of ticks have deer as like a very
Speaker 1: important host. And since we killed the predators of deer,
Speaker 1: and deer numbers are going up and they're encroaching in
Speaker 1: our habitats more, this might be why we are coming
Speaker 1: into contact with ticks like the lone star tick more often.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is like revenge of the Wolves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: We killed off the wolves and now we can no
Speaker 2: longer eat hamburger.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, Yeah, I mean this is some nasty stuff.
Speaker 1: So anyway, stay tuned to find out if Kelly can
Speaker 1: no longer have mammal burgers in the future and has
Speaker 1: to convert to cannibalism, and Zach did this.
Speaker 3: Slate your thirst for alpha gel info.
Speaker 4: Thanks Kelly for the dive into this weird allergy, which
Speaker 4: I feel is definitely owed a place and Ripley's believe
Speaker 4: it or not. I was especially intrigued by the history
Speaker 4: of its discovery and the way it took input from
Speaker 4: so many different areas of science allergology and oncology, epidemiology, parasitology.
Speaker 4: Given the usual way this allergy is framed like becoming
Speaker 4: allergic to a hamburger, I had the impression that it
Speaker 4: was somehow an outgrowth of industrial intensive cattle farming, but
Speaker 4: it sounds like it might be driven more by different
Speaker 4: human behavior, namely more contact with wildlife as we encroach
Speaker 4: on their habitats, and maybe climate change improving conditions for ticks.
Speaker 4: I'd be really curious to see if anyone has gone
Speaker 4: back in time to look for medical case studies on
Speaker 4: meat allergies, Has this happened before, or if other parasites
Speaker 4: can cause other kinds of allergies. Also, what purpose does
Speaker 4: alpha gal serve in mammals and why don't other taxonomic
Speaker 4: classes of animals have it? These are good things to
Speaker 4: ponder as I toss a dry brind ribbi steak on
Speaker 4: the grill this weekend while I still can, I hope
Speaker 4: by the time this airs you and Zach number two
Speaker 4: can still enjoy one too. Thanks again.
Speaker 1: Okay, next up, we have a question from a number
Speaker 1: two the seconds tier, Zach.
Speaker 3: Let's go.
Speaker 6: Hi, Daniel and Kelly. My name is Zach Wienersmith. I'm
Speaker 6: a seven year old girl from Indonesia. I was listening
Speaker 6: to your discussion on inner cosmos and you refer to
Speaker 6: this idea of an alien being able to experience quantum effects.
Speaker 6: And it was my understanding that once you're entangled with.
Speaker 7: Some system, you can't see quantum amplitudes. You can see
Speaker 7: like the effects of the interference, and you can use
Speaker 7: wave functions to predict them. But I did see. I
Speaker 7: didn't see how would be possible to have a a
Speaker 7: like sensory apparatus that couples to some system without eliminating
Speaker 7: quantum weirdness, Like if if you looked inside of Schrodinger's
Speaker 7: cat box that had two cats in it. Presumably the
Speaker 7: cats don't see each other as quantum, only you outside
Speaker 7: the system do. And and similar for the the Wigner's Friend.
Speaker 6: Vigner's friend thought experiment, love the pod.
Speaker 5: Thanks for answering my question.
Speaker 2: This Zach doesn't sound to me like a seven year
Speaker 2: old girl from Indonesia. What do you think? Are we
Speaker 2: being pranked?
Speaker 1: I you know, we might be being pranked, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to judge any seven year old girls for
Speaker 1: having deep voices.
Speaker 3: However, I do suspect.
Speaker 1: That maybe this is the Zach that lives at home
Speaker 1: with me.
Speaker 2: Well, here's hoping that Zach number two climbs in the
Speaker 2: rankings and one day reaches Zach number one status.
Speaker 1: Well it's a tough competition, but I wish him the
Speaker 1: best of luck.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, this is a great question from Zach,
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. And some background. What he's referring
Speaker 2: to is some speculation I've done in my recent book
Speaker 2: Do Aliens Speak Physics? Where I was wondering about how
Speaker 2: aliens might do science and if they think about the
Speaker 2: universe the same way, and with speculating that something that
Speaker 2: influences the way we think about the universe that we
Speaker 2: might not always be accustomed to confronting. Is our basic
Speaker 2: senses that the way we see and the way we
Speaker 2: hear and what we touch influences are sort of internal
Speaker 2: mental intuitive language and the answers we express about the universe.
Speaker 2: And so, for example, you know, when we see images
Speaker 2: from the James Webspace telescope, they're shifted into the visible range.
Speaker 2: Or when we talk about what is a quantum particle,
Speaker 2: we try to express it in terms that are familiar
Speaker 2: to us, and often that's not really possible. And so
Speaker 2: I was wondering if aliens could have a really alien
Speaker 2: experience in a way that couldn't be translated to our experience.
Speaker 2: And one way to imagine that is to think, well,
Speaker 2: we struggle to experience quantum effects, is it possible for
Speaker 2: there to be aliens to have such a different experience
Speaker 2: that they could, for example, interact with a quantum world
Speaker 2: in a different way and have a different kind of experience,
Speaker 2: a superposition experience where you're like seeing two states simultaneously.
Speaker 2: You know, imagine like a photon that might hit your
Speaker 2: left eye or your right eye, we see it hit
Speaker 2: your left eye or your right eye, But is it
Speaker 2: maybe possible for an alien to like experience both branches
Speaker 2: of that wave function?
Speaker 1: And I just want to interject to say that another
Speaker 1: thing I enjoyed about your book is that you talk
Speaker 1: about how animals experience the world differently, and how we
Speaker 1: can maybe use that to think about how aliens might
Speaker 1: experience the universe differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, since we haven't met any aliens yet, we're limited
Speaker 2: to what we can study.
Speaker 5: Here on Earth.
Speaker 2: And already here on Earth we see a huge variety
Speaker 2: of senses and likely experiences, but of course we can't
Speaker 2: really tap into that. And so Zach's comment essentially is like,
Speaker 2: hold on a second, is it possible to experience quantum weirdness?
Speaker 2: Maybe there's some constraint from quantum mechanics here that tells
Speaker 2: us already that Daniel's fanciful speculation is impossible, you know,
Speaker 2: And he says, once you're entangled with some system, you
Speaker 2: can't see quantum amplitudes.
Speaker 3: And is Zach wright or is Daniel right?
Speaker 2: The short answer is that since we're talking about experience,
Speaker 2: there's a consciousness aspect to this, which means that physics
Speaker 2: can't cover this whole question. And I'm going to drive
Speaker 2: a huge truck through that loophole at the end here. Okay,
Speaker 2: but let's back up and talk about you know, quantum
Speaker 2: amplitudes and seeing quantum stuff. What does that mean? What
Speaker 2: are we talking about here? Let's get the background to
Speaker 2: Zach's question. And I think the first thing to talk
Speaker 2: about is like, well, what do we mean when we
Speaker 2: say seeing right? We're experiencing the world somehow, And so
Speaker 2: simplify the whole thing from like the world and a
Speaker 2: person whatever, and just imagine you have like a photon
Speaker 2: that's the thing you're trying to see, and then you
Speaker 2: have the eyeball that's the sensor that's trying to see it. Okay,
Speaker 2: And so in physics when we say take a measurement,
Speaker 2: what we do is we try to use some sensor
Speaker 2: and we try to use the world to change its
Speaker 2: state so that we can read it out right. So,
Speaker 2: for example, I have this sensor that's my left eyeball
Speaker 2: and my right eyeball, and I shoot a photon that
Speaker 2: might go to the left to the right, and then
Speaker 2: I want the left eyeball to indicate if it hits
Speaker 2: the left, and the right eyeball to indicate if it
Speaker 2: hits the right right. Very basic, and so the idea
Speaker 2: is to correlate the sensor with the photon. Right, you
Speaker 2: want a correlation between the two. It's going to go
Speaker 2: to the left. You want the left sensor to zing.
Speaker 2: And so this is really quantum entanglement. We want to
Speaker 2: entangle the sensor with the photon. If the photon has
Speaker 2: a possibility to be left or right, then we want
Speaker 2: the sensor to be entangled with it, meaning that now
Speaker 2: we can think about them together as one quantum system
Speaker 2: with two states instead of it just being the photon
Speaker 2: that could be left or right. Now we have the
Speaker 2: whole system, the photon and the sensor, and this two states.
Speaker 2: One state is the photon went left and the sensor
Speaker 2: red left. You saw it in your left eyeball. The
Speaker 2: other one is the photon went right and your right
Speaker 2: eyeball saw it right. So you just align the sensor
Speaker 2: with the photon and you're entangled them because now the
Speaker 2: off diagonals are not allowed.
Speaker 1: By off diagonals. Do you mean you can't make type
Speaker 1: one or type two errors or you're.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, You've entangled them, which means that like photon
Speaker 2: going left but right eyeball seeing it is no longer
Speaker 2: allowed in the same way we talk about entanglement from
Speaker 2: like particles spin up and spin down. If one is
Speaker 2: spin up, the other one has to be spinned down.
Speaker 2: That's just a constraint, right, It's a constraint on the
Speaker 2: possible outcomes. And that's what entanglement is, and that's what's
Speaker 2: happening here. So the sensor measures it, meaning you've entangled
Speaker 2: the sensor with the system right with the photon, okay.
Speaker 1: And you can just say that you could be like
Speaker 1: and no mistakes, especially with human eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, we're here. We're imagining a perfect sensor. But
Speaker 2: you could definitely add off diagonal elements here from imperfect sensors. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: And so you know this isn't destroying quantum behavior. Entanglement
Speaker 2: itself is quantum behavior, right, This is all entanglement is.
Speaker 2: Entanglement seems fancy and spooky whatever, but it's just correlated
Speaker 2: outcomes essentially. And there's some subtleties there, because you can
Speaker 2: have quantum versus classical correlations, but right now we're just
Speaker 2: talking about correlated outcomes. And so the idea is the
Speaker 2: sensor and the eyeball are now in a superposition of
Speaker 2: both possibilities. They're connected and they're not independent. And so
Speaker 2: if you have a system like we've just described the
Speaker 2: photon and the eyeball, you can like see quantum weirdness.
Speaker 2: You can see interference effects between two branches of the
Speaker 2: wave function, like the double slit experiment, right, we see
Speaker 2: interference between the two branches. The photon could have gone
Speaker 2: to the left slit, could have gone to the right slit.
Speaker 2: Those two possibilities interfere with each other. We see weird
Speaker 2: quantum effects like interference, right, So that's what we mean
Speaker 2: by seeing weird quantum effects. So why don't we see
Speaker 2: those kind of quantum effects all the time?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Like why don't we see cats interfering with themselves or
Speaker 2: baseballs having interference patterns, et cetera, et cetera. And the
Speaker 2: answer is that you need more than just superposition in
Speaker 2: order to see interference. You need something else. In addition,
Speaker 2: these quantum wave functions are waves, right, they go up,
Speaker 2: they go down, they wiggle, just like waves in the ocean.
Speaker 2: And in the same way. To get those interference effects,
Speaker 2: you have to get those phases of those waves to
Speaker 2: be just lined up. They have to go up at
Speaker 2: the right time or down at the right time, so
Speaker 2: they cancel each other out or they add up together.
Speaker 5: In order to get like.
Speaker 2: Nice acoustic effects in a room, you need all the
Speaker 2: sound waves to be like coherent, so they like add
Speaker 2: up in the right way or cancel each other out
Speaker 2: in the right way. You have noise canceling headphones in
Speaker 2: your ear that cancels the sound by producing a coherent
Speaker 2: opposing wave. Right, it's like lined up just right. So
Speaker 2: you need these waves to be lined up just right.
Speaker 2: They need to not only for there to be multiple possibilities,
Speaker 2: but you need them to be like lined up just
Speaker 2: right to have the interference effect.
Speaker 3: Still with me, I think so?
Speaker 1: So does seeing quantum effects mean that you would also
Speaker 1: be able to like observe these waves in some way,
Speaker 1: because to see quantum effects, you sort of need to
Speaker 1: know why you're getting one answer and not the other.
Speaker 2: Well, in the case of these quantum amplitudes, you can't
Speaker 2: see them directly. You can only see the interference effects, right.
Speaker 2: The quantum amplitudes are hidden. But you can see the
Speaker 2: interference effects without out seeing the waves directly, which is
Speaker 2: why it's so cool, because that's one way that we
Speaker 2: reveal that there really is a superposition there is that
Speaker 2: we see the interference effects. All right, So to see
Speaker 2: quantum interference, what you need is a superposition. You need
Speaker 2: two possibilities at once, and then you need them to
Speaker 2: be coherent, not scrambled, like if you scramble the phases
Speaker 2: of one branch, then you wouldn't be able to see
Speaker 2: any interference because it would just all be randomized. And
Speaker 2: you have to bring them into contrast, or you have
Speaker 2: to bring those waves together and say okay, add up
Speaker 2: or okay, cancel each other route. And you know, this
Speaker 2: is how quantum computers work is they have a bunch
Speaker 2: of cubits which can be in a superposition of states,
Speaker 2: and then you operate on those. In the end, you
Speaker 2: make a measurement which brings them together. You have the superposition,
Speaker 2: you have the interference, you get some quantum state. And
Speaker 2: so you could take advantage of the superposition and all
Speaker 2: the quantum weirdness, and quantum computers definitely take advantage of
Speaker 2: all that quantumness. Okay, so why can't we see cas
Speaker 2: and baseballs and whatever doing quantum interference? Why can't Zach
Speaker 2: see quantum weirdness? In his everyday life. The answer is
Speaker 2: two reasons, right. So number one is Zach is big
Speaker 2: and messy.
Speaker 5: Right, So he is.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've all seen his office, we know about
Speaker 2: the Dorito's bag and whatever. But the device I described earlier,
Speaker 2: you know, the simple idea of an eyeball that either
Speaker 2: like indicates yes or no. I've seen a photon. It's
Speaker 2: a very simple device, and you can entangle that with
Speaker 2: a photon and keep everything crisp and see quantum effects.
Speaker 2: But in reality, an eyeball is big, and it's complicated,
Speaker 2: and it's connected to a brain which is big, and
Speaker 2: it's complicated, and you cannot describe it with one internal state.
Speaker 2: It's not like the eyeball can say yes or no.
Speaker 2: It's like a huge, messy system with lots of different
Speaker 2: internal states. And so the superposition is still there and
Speaker 2: the entanglement is still there, but it's spread out across
Speaker 2: so many internal states inside Zach's eyeball and inside his
Speaker 2: brain that you're never going to be able to bring
Speaker 2: these things together to contrast them in the way you
Speaker 2: need to see quantum interference. It's like washed out across
Speaker 2: too many different states. It's like if you have a
Speaker 2: teaspoon of salt. You can taste a teaspoon of salt
Speaker 2: you put in your mouth, it's very salty. But if
Speaker 2: you add it to like an enormous vat of beans,
Speaker 2: it's still there. Right, it's changed it a little bit,
Speaker 2: but you can't even really tell necessarily this salt in there.
Speaker 2: This is like adding a teaspoon of salt to a
Speaker 2: planet of beans.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: The quantum effects are small, and Zack's brain is really
Speaker 2: really big compared to a quantum system that it's essentially
Speaker 2: just lost. That information is still in principle there, but
Speaker 2: it's basically washed out. So this is called decoherence for
Speaker 2: those who want to learn more about it. When you
Speaker 2: have quantum effects but they're essentially unrecognizable and unrecoverable because
Speaker 2: they're averaged out over a big, messy system.
Speaker 1: So does that suggest that for an alien to be
Speaker 1: able to observe quantum effects they would have to have
Speaker 1: a very very very simple brain. Yeah, and they're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to tell you the secrets of physics.
Speaker 2: Well it does. We're going to get there in a minute.
Speaker 2: But essentially it suggests that you can't have.
Speaker 5: A human like brain okay.
Speaker 2: And so that's one reason why Zach can't see quantum effects,
Speaker 2: is decoherence. But there's another one that he raises, which
Speaker 2: I think is much more interesting, which is that he's
Speaker 2: inside the system. He's entangled with the system. Right, And
Speaker 2: he mentions this cool experiment, Vigner's friend experiment, And so
Speaker 2: Vigner's friend says, like, all right, you have a cat
Speaker 2: in a box, right, Shortener's cat. The cat is in
Speaker 2: the box. You don't know if the cat is alive
Speaker 2: or dead. Now, let's say that Zach is doing that experiment.
Speaker 2: He has the cat, he has the box, but Zach
Speaker 2: himself is inside another box. Oh no, okay, and Kelly
Speaker 2: is outside the box. Now Zach inside the box, he
Speaker 2: opens up his own box, and he can tell if
Speaker 2: the cat is alive or dead. Right, okay. But Kelly
Speaker 2: has not yet opened up the Zach box, so she
Speaker 2: doesn't know whether Zach has seen the cat alive or
Speaker 2: Zach has seen the cat dead.
Speaker 5: Okay, So, according.
Speaker 2: To Kelly, Zach himself is in a superposition. He's entangled
Speaker 2: with the cat. If the cat is alive, there's a
Speaker 2: version of Zach that has seen a live cat. If
Speaker 2: the cat is dead. There's a version of Zach that
Speaker 2: has seen the dead cat, right, but from Kelly's point
Speaker 2: of view, both Zach's still exist as possibilities. So this
Speaker 2: is Vigner's friend experiment, and it argues that like each
Speaker 2: of those individuals Zach's see a live cat or a
Speaker 2: dead cat, there is no Zach that sees the superposition,
Speaker 2: that sees like the sum of live and dead cats somehow,
Speaker 2: even though Kelly on the outside can see the superposition. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: So this is the big New's friend experiment that he raises,
Speaker 2: And the crucial thing to understand here is that the
Speaker 2: reason Kelly can see the superposition but Zach cannot is
Speaker 2: that Kelly's brain is not part of the quantum system, right.
Speaker 2: Zach's brain is inside the quantum system, and so he can't,
Speaker 2: for example, see the two branches of the wave function interfere.
Speaker 2: Kelly could like cause the two Zachs to interfere with
Speaker 2: each other and have like weird Zach interference effects. That
Speaker 2: would be pretty awesome. Zach can't do that because he
Speaker 2: can't coherently manipulate his own memory and brain state from
Speaker 2: the outside. While that brain is the thing doing the manipulating.
Speaker 2: You can't like use your memory as the instrument that
Speaker 2: reaches in and resuperposes your memory and also observes it.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: So the thing that makes Zach and Kelly different in
Speaker 2: this scenario is not that Kelly has like access to
Speaker 2: anything that Zach doesn't have. It's that Kelly's observation her
Speaker 2: memory isn't part of the system. Okay, So those are
Speaker 2: two separate things. One is like Zach's brain is too
Speaker 2: big and messy to keep quantum effects and recover them,
Speaker 2: And the other one is that Zach is inside the
Speaker 2: system and so he can't use his memory, which is
Speaker 2: also inside the system, to observe quantum effects by crossing
Speaker 2: the wave functions.
Speaker 1: Okay, So then is Zach's question essentially, wouldn't an alien
Speaker 1: be in the system?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And then so how could this possibly work?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Exactly.
Speaker 2: So Zach is saying, once you're entangled with some system,
Speaker 2: you can't see quantum amplitudes. And so I don't think
Speaker 2: I would agree with that statement exactly. I would say,
Speaker 2: you know, once the information has leaked uncontrollably into many
Speaker 2: degrees of freedom, like his brain interference becomes effectively impossible,
Speaker 2: but let's do this point by point. So point number one.
Speaker 2: But you're already alluded to like, okay, what about being
Speaker 2: big and messy and so yeah, the idea here is like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe aliens have a brain that operates completely differently, right,
Speaker 2: like maybe number one. Maybe it's very very small, right,
Speaker 2: because you have an ail and it's effectively like a cubit, right,
Speaker 2: and so it can be in a superposition with a
Speaker 2: photon without being big and messy, with keeping all of
Speaker 2: that coherence. But you know, if you want an alien
Speaker 2: to like experience that superposition, that's probably not going to
Speaker 2: do it, because I don't think cubits experience anything. But
Speaker 2: you know, already we're bumping up against what do we
Speaker 2: mean by experience? How sophisticated does the system have to
Speaker 2: be to be conscious?
Speaker 5: We totally don't know.
Speaker 2: And that's the direction I was gesturing towards in the book,
Speaker 2: which is like, look, this whole business about experience is
Speaker 2: totally unknown. What is an alien experience?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Anyway, we don't even know what an octopus experience is
Speaker 2: like with their multiple brains, And so that's the loophole
Speaker 2: I'm basically driving this.
Speaker 5: Entire thing through.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's also possible to imagine not just
Speaker 2: small brains that can maintain quantum coherence, but larger brains,
Speaker 2: like we are currently trying to build quantum computers which
Speaker 2: are larger and larger, and one of the challenges of
Speaker 2: that is keeping them coherence, keeping them from decohering by
Speaker 2: interacting with the environment. And we're getting better and better
Speaker 2: at that, And so you can imagine perhaps there's some
Speaker 2: alien out there who's got a brain that's effectively like
Speaker 2: a quantum computer, which can maintain these phases, and so
Speaker 2: you know it can somehow interact with a photon without decohering.
Speaker 2: But then you still have this question of like can
Speaker 2: that alien experience it? The second point of like your
Speaker 2: inside the system? Can you experience the system from the
Speaker 2: inside since your memory is also inside. And here again
Speaker 2: I'm just going to say, like, look, experience is a
Speaker 2: fuzzy thing. We don't know what it means to experience it,
Speaker 2: and our sense of experience means like you see it
Speaker 2: with your eyeball, your record, and your memory. You then
Speaker 2: call that up you think about it. What did I
Speaker 2: feel about seeing that photon or what did I feel
Speaker 2: about seeing that cat, and now we're speculating about what
Speaker 2: it's like to be an alien. And if you imagine
Speaker 2: an alien with like a quantum computer like brain that
Speaker 2: can maintain those super position, then you know it's not
Speaker 2: important that the alien can construct interference, that the alien
Speaker 2: can like bring the two sides the wave function into
Speaker 2: contrast with each other to create interference effects. We're just
Speaker 2: talking about experiencing the superposition. So maybe this alien brain
Speaker 2: can exist across these two branches of the wave function
Speaker 2: and there's some alien like experience. This is totally handwavy, right,
Speaker 2: This is not supported by physics. But I think it's
Speaker 2: also not a question quantum mechanic answers, because it depends
Speaker 2: on what does it mean to experience and whether it's
Speaker 2: possible to experience a superposition if your brain is very
Speaker 2: different and quantum mechanical coherent. So I would say, Zach,
Speaker 2: quantum mechanics doesn't say that's impossible, but it's not well
Speaker 2: enough to find. I think really it's the reason why
Speaker 2: there's a loophole there.
Speaker 1: Okay, One, clearly your writing process involves a lot of
Speaker 1: smoky banana peels. And two, so does this suggest that
Speaker 1: like if you track an org organism through evolution, like
Speaker 1: when it realizes it's observing something, it would lose the
Speaker 1: ability to observe it because based on what you said,
Speaker 1: it's like you kind of need to know what's going
Speaker 1: on and be like conscious of what's happening. So could
Speaker 1: bacteria on our planet that don't know what's going on
Speaker 1: observe quantum effects and we don't realize it because they
Speaker 1: don't know what's happening. But we can't because we're like
Speaker 1: too smart for that.
Speaker 2: It's possible, but again, like we don't know if bacteria
Speaker 2: experience anything. I mean, I can't even understand what it's
Speaker 2: like to be another human being, you know, not to
Speaker 2: mention a bacteria, And so saying anything concrete about the
Speaker 2: nature of another being's experience is all just extrapolation from
Speaker 2: their outward behavior, and so we don't know. And that
Speaker 2: was essentially the point I was trying to make with
Speaker 2: my book, is that, look, we want to make this
Speaker 2: sort of mental connection with aliens, we should be prepared
Speaker 2: for the fact that their internal experience could be so
Speaker 2: alien we might not be able to map not just
Speaker 2: our ideas about physics, but our ideas about you know,
Speaker 2: what it means to be alive and experience the world,
Speaker 2: the very basic nature of interacting with the world. They
Speaker 2: could have a very alien sense of that. And you know,
Speaker 2: this is just part of the argument of the Book
Speaker 2: of Like, I don't know what Alien's going to be like,
Speaker 2: but I suspect we haven't thought it through and it's
Speaker 2: going to be much weirder than we imagine, maybe in
Speaker 2: this direction, maybe in that direction. And so I was
Speaker 2: looking for, like, which parts of this are not crisply
Speaker 2: defined so that I can gesture vaguely in that direction.
Speaker 1: Well, this was a very complicated question for a seven
Speaker 1: year old. This little girl is going to take over
Speaker 1: the world one day, So let's go ahead and see
Speaker 1: what little Zachi Weenersmith had to say.
Speaker 8: Hello, this is Zach Weenersmith. I'm a nine year old
Speaker 8: girl from Austronesia and I just wanted to say I
Speaker 8: appreciated the answer to the question. I was talking to
Speaker 8: some other kids here in Austria about it, and what
Speaker 8: we were wondering is what happens if you do like
Speaker 8: a Daisy chain version of Wagner's Friend, where there's like
Speaker 8: eighty outer layers of observers. How is it that when
Speaker 8: the topmost observer starts observing everyone down, you have causality
Speaker 8: maintained the whole way down.
Speaker 6: How does the universe do that off?
Speaker 8: We thought that would be nice to know, And thanks
Speaker 8: again big fans of the show down here and as
Speaker 8: we say.
Speaker 5: Down in.
Speaker 8: Antarctica, good day mate.
Speaker 2: Hey Zach who's from Virginia but can seem to admit
Speaker 2: it on the pod. Great follow up question. But the
Speaker 2: key thing is that causality actually works the other way,
Speaker 2: bottom up rather than top down. So remember the setup here.
Speaker 2: We have an experimenter with a cat in a box.
Speaker 2: Until they observe it, the cat is in a superposition
Speaker 2: of alive and dead. Now you put that whole experiment
Speaker 2: inside another box with Wigner on the outside. So if
Speaker 2: the inner guy opens his box first, he gets entangled
Speaker 2: with the cat's alive or dead state, and for Wigner
Speaker 2: on the outside, the bigger box is now in a
Speaker 2: superposition of two states. One the cat is dead and
Speaker 2: the inner guy says it's dead, and two the cat
Speaker 2: is alive and the inner guy says it's alive. There's
Speaker 2: no cross term there where the cat is alive and
Speaker 2: the inner guy saw it dead. That's the crucial thing.
Speaker 2: The quantum evolution here is linear, so it acts on
Speaker 2: each term separately and can't mix them. When Wigner opens
Speaker 2: the outer box, he either sees a live cat and
Speaker 2: an experimenter saying it's alive, or a dead cat and
Speaker 2: an experimenter saying it's dead. So that's why causality goes
Speaker 2: bottom up. The correlation starts when the inner guy entangles
Speaker 2: with his box, and Bigner just joins a chain that
Speaker 2: was already consistent. You can do this eighty times and
Speaker 2: daisy chain them, but it doesn't change.
Speaker 5: The basic setup.
Speaker 2: Still two branches, just a lot more guys entangled. Okay,
Speaker 2: but maybe he does It depend on the ordering of
Speaker 2: the box openings. We describe the inner guy going first.
Speaker 2: What if you do with the opposite direction, Well, that's
Speaker 2: not as interesting. If Vigner opens his outer box first,
Speaker 2: he finds the inner experimenter sitting next to a still
Speaker 2: sealed box, just an ordinary guy with a superposition of
Speaker 2: alive and dead. Inside the box, the guy he sees
Speaker 2: is not in a superposition, and now Wigner is basically
Speaker 2: just part of the inner box experiment and whoever opens
Speaker 2: the cat box entangles them both, so there's no causality issues.
Speaker 2: Causality still works bottom up, all right.
Speaker 1: Our last question of the day is from Senia about fibroids.
Speaker 9: Dear Daniel and Kelly, thank you so much for an
Speaker 9: awesome podcast, and thank you for taking your time to
Speaker 9: looking into my question about fibroids. I just finished listening
Speaker 9: to your episode on perimenopause. I went to thank you,
Speaker 9: Kelly for being so open about your own situation and
Speaker 9: for talking about this important topic. I'm thirty eight years
Speaker 9: old and i have a uterus and ovaries, so I'm
Speaker 9: especially concerned about this topic. I have a personal history
Speaker 9: with uterine fibroids. I have had severe problems for seven
Speaker 9: years or more. I've had surgeries and homeown therapy, and
Speaker 9: I've seen a lot of different doctors. They all seem
Speaker 9: to give very different answers to my questions about why
Speaker 9: we get fibroids and how they might affect fertility. Fibrids
Speaker 9: seem to be very common to my understanding. It's estimated
Speaker 9: that seventy to eighty percent of women by the age
Speaker 9: of fifty we'll have fibroids, and that's just basically most
Speaker 9: women yet we seem to know so little about them.
Speaker 9: So like, did mother Nature plan for this condition? Or
Speaker 9: is there a relationship with our modern lifestyle? And how
Speaker 9: come we know so little about a condition that is
Speaker 9: so common. I would love to learn more about this
Speaker 9: if you have the time to investigate. Thank you again.
Speaker 2: Bye, all right, Kelly.
Speaker 5: What is a fibroid?
Speaker 1: Well, first, I would like to prudently start by reminding
Speaker 1: everybody that I'm not that kind of doctor.
Speaker 3: I do not have a medical degree.
Speaker 1: So if you are concerned about any of this for
Speaker 1: yourself or your loved ones after hearing this segment, please
Speaker 1: go talk to an obgyn or your family practitioner.
Speaker 3: Okay, so what are fibroids?
Speaker 1: So, fibroids are growths, and I think when most of
Speaker 1: us hear the word growth, we immediately think cancer. These
Speaker 1: are very, very rarely cancerous. But these are just places
Speaker 1: in the uterus where you start getting rapid growth of cells.
Speaker 1: And sometimes these growths they can be small. They could
Speaker 1: be like you know, poppy seed whatever, you totally don't
Speaker 1: notice you have it. But sometimes they can be as
Speaker 1: big as like grapefruits or even bigger grape fruits.
Speaker 2: Grape fruits yes, that sounds uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Yes, and sometimes you have one, but sometimes you have many.
Speaker 1: And by the time you are a woman who's fifty
Speaker 1: years old, about eighty percent of us have these, and
Speaker 1: the number is higher for African American women than it
Speaker 1: is for Caucasian American women. But yeah, these are very common.
Speaker 2: And so when you say they're benign, they're not cancerous.
Speaker 2: I understand cancer is sort of like a category, it's
Speaker 2: not a single pathology, and it has to do with
Speaker 2: cells growing out of control. And so here we have
Speaker 2: cells seem to be growing kind of out of control.
Speaker 2: What makes them non cancerous?
Speaker 1: So one, they're not going to metastasize and two, so
Speaker 1: I am not a cancer doctor. I'm guessing that a
Speaker 1: part of the issue is that if you have uncontrolled
Speaker 1: growth in something like your liver, it is likely to
Speaker 1: cause problems that could kill you, whereas if you have
Speaker 1: uncontrolled growth in your uterus, most of the time it's
Speaker 1: not going to cause problems. So a lot of us
Speaker 1: who have fibroids experience no problems from it. And so
Speaker 1: you know, it might be interesting to have a cancer
Speaker 1: doctor and oncologist on the show at some point, But
Speaker 1: to me, what's important is that one it's not metastasizing,
Speaker 1: and two it's probably not going to cause like a
Speaker 1: life threatening illness. It does sometimes cause problems. So if
Speaker 1: it gets too big, then it can, for example, push
Speaker 1: against your rectum and cause issues with constipation, or can
Speaker 1: push against your bladder and cause issues with urination. In
Speaker 1: very rare instances, it can cause infertility issues. I hear
Speaker 1: that that's not very common, but it does happen. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: It can increase period bleeding or increase the frequency of
Speaker 1: bleeding in between periods. And so some of these things
Speaker 1: are things where you can be like, well, that's annoying,
Speaker 1: I can ignore it. And then some of those are
Speaker 1: problems where you're like, I absolutely need to deal with this.
Speaker 2: And so this sounds like it's never good, but it's
Speaker 2: not always bad. It's just sometimes uncomfortable or there are
Speaker 2: some other issues. But if a lot of women have this,
Speaker 2: like seventy to eighty percent, then like, is there some
Speaker 2: benefit to them? Is there some reason we have them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So as far as I can tell from my research,
Speaker 1: I have never found a benefit. So I think what's
Speaker 1: happening is that in the uterus you have a lot
Speaker 1: of cells that have receptors for estrogen and progesterone. So
Speaker 1: these are hormones that we think of as being important
Speaker 1: for females. They're important for maintaining your menstrual cycle, your
Speaker 1: estrous cycle, so maintaining like the cycle of things that
Speaker 1: happen to the female body every month. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that your uterus does is at certain times
Speaker 1: of the month, it pretty uses a lot of uterine
Speaker 1: lining where you know, eggs can implant in this, and
Speaker 1: then it releases all of that once a month during
Speaker 1: your period. And so you have cells that are used
Speaker 1: to getting the message that it's time to reproduce, reproduce, reproduced, reproduce,
Speaker 1: make a lot more of me, and then they also
Speaker 1: get messages that it's time to stop doing that. And
Speaker 1: so I think what's happening is that some of these
Speaker 1: cells get the message that it's time to start replicating,
Speaker 1: and they replicate a little bit out of control. And
Speaker 1: that might explain why this is a problem that is
Speaker 1: typically not experienced until after you get your first period
Speaker 1: and stops being a problem after menopause, because your body
Speaker 1: stops like producing a lot of estrogen, for example, to
Speaker 1: induce these cycles.
Speaker 2: So is this something people have been dealing with like
Speaker 2: throughout all of human history? Do we have like records
Speaker 2: of it from ancient Egypts and stuff?
Speaker 9: Ah?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so I did not come across records of
Speaker 1: it from ancient Egypt. It is possible that this is
Speaker 1: a problem that we are dealing with more now because
Speaker 1: a a lot of the risk factors forgetting this are
Speaker 1: things that happen more in our modern life. So for example,
Speaker 1: if you have a higher body mass index, you are
Speaker 1: more likely to have fibroids, and higher body mass in
Speaker 1: disease were probably not a thing that was happening to
Speaker 1: our species thousands of years ago when food was much
Speaker 1: harder to come by, but is more common for people
Speaker 1: to be experiencing now earlier onset of menstruation, So the
Speaker 1: age that you get your first period as a predictor,
Speaker 1: and if you get your first period sooner, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to experience fibroids, and over time, young girls have
Speaker 1: been getting their periods earlier and earlier, so that might
Speaker 1: contribute to why we're seeing this in a lot of women.
Speaker 1: Late age from menopause as a contributor. But then there's
Speaker 1: also some like quintessential quote. Modern life issues that might
Speaker 1: be at play here, and one of them is that
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that we put into plastics
Speaker 1: has chemicals in it that mimic things like estrogen, and
Speaker 1: so it's possible that our receptors are getting bound by
Speaker 1: stuff more often and are getting the message hey replicate, replicate,
Speaker 1: replicate more often than they did in the past, because
Speaker 1: our environments are now sort of inundated by these chemicals
Speaker 1: that look like hormones but are not things that were
Speaker 1: made by our body to actually send a message about
Speaker 1: something that should happen. So, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: there's not a benefit to fibroids. For most women. Having
Speaker 1: fibroids is not a problem. You'll you may not even
Speaker 1: notice you have them. You may never have to get
Speaker 1: treatment for them. If you do need to get treatment,
Speaker 1: sometimes those treatments are things like, hey, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take some pain medications because I feel a little uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: or maybe they are like birth control pills to help
Speaker 1: deal with the problems of excess bleeding. Sometimes it'll be
Speaker 1: a surgery if the fibroid is big enough and it
Speaker 1: needs to be removed because it's causing problems, and in
Speaker 1: very extreme cases, you might end up wanting to get
Speaker 1: a hysterectomy, where you essentially take out your whole uterus
Speaker 1: so you don't have to deal with the problem anymore.
Speaker 1: But that means you can't have children anymore. So that's
Speaker 1: a pretty extreme option that a lot of folks decide
Speaker 1: to not go with unless they are done with their
Speaker 1: uterus and are ready to yead it into the sun.
Speaker 3: And I'm getting close, And.
Speaker 2: Has there been enough science about this? Could we study
Speaker 2: this as well as we need to?
Speaker 1: Like, no, no, we have not yes, right, So the
Speaker 1: last part of the question is like, why don't we
Speaker 1: know more about this? And the answer, unfortunately, is that
Speaker 1: women's health problems are very understudied. In fact, in general,
Speaker 1: when you study medical issues, it's much more likely that
Speaker 1: men are part of the experiment relative to women. For
Speaker 1: a long time, women were thought of as something like
Speaker 1: a complicating factor. Let's just study it in men, so
Speaker 1: we don't have to worry about the fact that women
Speaker 1: have cycles that you know, change over the course of
Speaker 1: the month, and we'd have to like control for that,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes women might be pregnant, so we don't
Speaker 1: want to be like testing drugs on them because you
Speaker 1: know what if we end up messing with the fetus
Speaker 1: in some way. And so for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: some of them nice, like trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: fetuses don't get exposed to chemicals we don't intend to
Speaker 1: suppose them to, and some of them just sort of
Speaker 1: overlooking women in general, which is not so nice. Is
Speaker 1: how we got to this place today. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: if I can make a book recommendation Invisible Women Data
Speaker 1: Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Creato Perez.
Speaker 1: This is a great book that goes through a variety
Speaker 1: of different places where data has essentially been collected for
Speaker 1: men and the thought that data on men will tell
Speaker 1: us everything we need to know about humans in general,
Speaker 1: and how this has sort of harmed women in a
Speaker 1: variety of ways. And she has a great chapter on
Speaker 1: how this has impacted women in medical settings, which is
Speaker 1: where I learned.
Speaker 3: You know that we are.
Speaker 1: Often even today, even today, when you do rodent studies,
Speaker 1: they're more often done on male rodents. Sometimes, even when
Speaker 1: they're related to questions about female reproductive health, you'll do
Speaker 1: them on male rodents. And so anyway, totally blows my mind.
Speaker 1: This book won the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and
Speaker 1: so it's got you know, like the science.
Speaker 5: Only the books.
Speaker 1: Oh that's not what I was going for, but thanks
Speaker 1: for saying it's anyway. So yeah, a lot of domains
Speaker 1: women are simply understudied relative to men, and that includes
Speaker 1: medical research, and so we don't know a lot about
Speaker 1: this issue that affects something like eighty percent of women
Speaker 1: around my age and a little bit older. So I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to be giving sort of a sad answer, but
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly what the listener expected when they
Speaker 1: sent this question. And let's go ahead and hear what
Speaker 1: Senia has to say.
Speaker 9: Hello again, Daniel and Kelly, thank you for looking into
Speaker 9: my question about the fibroids. Thank you for the book recommendation.
Speaker 9: I will look into that. But yes, it's more or
Speaker 9: less what I expected. We don't know so much. We
Speaker 9: haven't done much research. So I just tried to stay
Speaker 9: positive that we can talk about this problem and that
Speaker 9: there are gofund me campaigns and stuff like that to
Speaker 9: try and collect money to do more research. For instance,
Speaker 9: there's the project called Make Fibroids Count. I was curious
Speaker 9: to hear that there has been an earlier onset of
Speaker 9: the first period for young women. I wonder if that
Speaker 9: is also tied to modern lifestyle, or if there's some
Speaker 9: other reason for that. Yeah, thanks a lot. Your podcast
Speaker 9: keeps me thinking and challenging my ideas about the world,
Speaker 9: so please keep it up. Thank you, But all.
Speaker 1: Right, thank you so much to everybody who sent questions
Speaker 1: into us. If you have a question, you can shoot
Speaker 1: it our way at questions at Daniel and Kelly dot org,
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Speaker 5: We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Until next time.
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