WEBVTT - Hallucinogenic Honey, Squid Brains, and Why Hot Food Is So Satisfying 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.000 Welcome to host toff Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum, 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:10.160 a researcher and writer. Here at host Works eight. Every 0:00:10.160 --> 0:00:12.600 week I'm bringing you three stories from our team about 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:15.800 the weird and wonders advances we've seen in science, technology, 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:20.120 and culture. This week, new research into squid brains shows 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:24.119 how different cephalopods really are from humans and explains how 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:28.160 they pull off some of their most amazing feats and unrelated, 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:31.400 we answer one of those burning questions, why does hot 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:35.400 food seems so much more satisfying than cold food? But first, 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.800 staff editor Christopher Hassiotis and our freelance writer Laurie L. 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:43.040 Dove explores a strange bit of food history. Ancient armies 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:51.240 sometimes waged war using hallucinogenic honey. In two thousand eight, 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:53.880 a middle aged couple decided to improve their sex life, 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:56.160 so they spent a week eating raw honey gathered from 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:59.520 near Turkey's Black Sea. But then they ended up in 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:03.320 a hospital with symptoms that mimiced heart attacks. The culprit 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:06.760 mad honey poisoning a little known destroyer that has brought 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:10.360 down ancient armies and in modern times been rumored to 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:14.000 have a hallucinatory effect that increases sexual performance. Mad honey 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:16.560 is produced by bees that ingest the nectar of Rhododendron 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.920 ponticum and other poisonous plants that grow in Japan, Nepal, Brazil, 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:23.959 parts of North America and Europe, and the Eastern Black 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:28.240 Sea region of Turkey. The naturally toxic syrup reportedly tastes 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:31.360 more bitter than normal honey, and the toxicity is stronger 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:34.440 and fresh honey gathered in the springtime, when rhododendrons are 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.200 among the first plants to bloom. Mad honey can go 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:40.280 from intoxicating to lethal in just a few tablespoons, and 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:43.280 because potency varies from hive to hive, there's really no 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:46.240 surer way to tell when enough is enough. In the 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:48.720 case of the couple who wound up in the emergency room, 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.600 increasingly large doses of the toxically tinged honey caused acute 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:57.720 inferior myocardial infarctions, adding to the dizziness, hypotension, and loss 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.720 of consciousness they may already have experienced from their first taste. 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:04.040 The honey is so potent that ancient armies used it 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:08.640 as a weapon, and quite effectively too. According to Adrian Mayer, 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.920 a research scholar in classics and a historian specializing in 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:16.120 ancient biological and chemical warfare. This goes back awhile the 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.239 ancient Greek commander Xenophon led an army of ten thousand 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:21.720 soldiers from Persia back to Greece in the year four 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.040 o one b CE. He prided himself on choosing healthy 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:27.840 and safe campsites for his soldiers while in hostile territory, 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:30.600 and set up shop in Pontus on the Black Sea 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:35.000 coast in northeast Turkey. He noted nothing unusual, but did 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.920 make note of an extraordinary number of swarming bees, and 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.320 so that his men soon discovered the hives and gorged 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.639 themselves on the sweet treat of wild honey. Xenophon recorded 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:47.280 his thoughts for posterity and was quote appalled when his 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:51.120 soldiers suddenly behaved like crazed madmen and collapsed en mass. 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:55.040 His entire army was paralyzed and incapacitated for days, totally 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:58.880 vulnerable to possible enemy attack. Although Xenophon's army recovered before 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:01.800 they were discovered and slam sane, the Roman general Pompey 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:04.320 was not so lucky. According to Mayor in the year 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.280 sixty five b c E. During a war against King 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:10.680 Mithradates of Pontus, Pompey and his troops traveled through the 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:13.960 exact same area where Xenophan's army had eaten that mad honey. 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:18.400 His soldiers dined on honeycombs, unaware they were actually trapped 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:21.560 set by their enemies along the route. One thousand Roman 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:24.480 soldiers were ambushed and killed after being rendered inert by 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.120 the toxic honey. In addition to being a trap, there 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.600 are also instances of mad honey being used in mead 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.480 as a way of stalling encroaching forces. Mead or honey wine, 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:36.360 is made by fermenting honey with water and then flavoring 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:39.920 the mixture with fruits and spices. Two notable occurrences of 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:41.839 mead made with mad honey took place in the same 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:44.280 region where the armies of Xenophon and Pompey once stalled. 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:48.360 In the year ninety six, the Russian foes of Olga 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.280 of Kiev fell to a similar ruse when they accepted 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:54.839 several tons of mead to drink from Olga's allies. All 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.720 five thousand Russian soldiers were massacred where they collapsed wheeling 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.080 and delirious, and in fourteen eighty nine in the same region, 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.440 a Russian army slaughtered ten thousand Tatars who had drunk 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.160 many casks of mead the Russians had deliberately left behind 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.080 in their abandoned camp. So that was then, But what 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:14.240 about now? Mad honey still poses a threat to outsiders 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.520 unfamiliar with its potency, though it's treated differently by locals 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:21.160 who use it medicinally. In Turkish culture, mad honey is 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:23.200 seen as a type of medicine known as deli bal, 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:27.240 and is used in small amounts to treat hypertension, diabetes, mellotists, 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:31.400 and stomach diseases. In Nepal, the indigenous Guruon community uses 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.200 mad honey not only for medicinal purposes, but also for 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:37.560 its hallucinogenic properties as well in ritual. The curious and 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:40.200 determined have purchased mad honey from Internet sites or from 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.960 shopkeepers and eight piaries who surreptitiously sell the substance in 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:47.560 regions where it's produced. Mad honey these days reportedly cost 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:50.640 nearly a hundred and seventy dollars per pound, made more 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:54.880 expensive both by its active ingredient grayanotoxin, which causes paralysis 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.000 and breathing stoppage, and by the difficulty of obtaining it. 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.920 In Nepal, for instance, this hallucinatory honey is harvested by 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:05.360 people who repel down craggy cliffs while chanting calming words 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:08.560 to keep away swarms of bees. Although honey and meat 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.440 were among the only natural sweets and antiquity as irresistible 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:14.880 as candy, today's soldiers are presumably well supplied with candy 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.680 bars and able to forego the temptation of found hives. 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.200 But then again, it's easy to envision a scenario where 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:23.960 soldiers might accept gifts of food or drink from seemingly 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:28.159 friendly hosts secretly allied with enemies waiting in ambush. Sounds 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:31.560 like a delicious but deadly trojan horse. Uh, make that 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:39.359 trojan bee. Next up, our audio producer Dylan Fagin, along 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:42.960 with freelance writer jescely and Shields, explain how physiology and 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:47.040 nostalgic combine to make hot food seem more cravable than 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:52.279 cold food. You know that ravenously hungry feeling you get 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:54.400 after going swimming. It feels like you could go to 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:56.599 an all you can eat buffet and make them rethink 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:59.760 their business strategy. Even though a salad, granola bar, or 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.200 even in a nice smoothie would probably satisfy you, a 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:05.040 voice echoing out of the deepest recesses of your brain 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:08.320 commands you defeat. It's something hot, the entire large pizza, 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.680 perhaps a whole side of rose hog, thirteen plates of 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:14.840 spaghetti covered in butter and parmesan cheese. There could be 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:17.040 a lot of reasons we create warm foods when we're 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:19.599 especially hungry, but one of them probably has to do 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:22.440 with the link between smell and taste. We talked with 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.800 doctor Stephen Secor, an associate professor in the University of 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:30.000 Alabama Department of Biological Sciences who studies the physiological design 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:33.000 of digestive systems. He pointed out that hot foods give 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:36.320 off far more airborne particles than cold foods, and because 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:38.920 our sense of taste actually involves a lot of input 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:41.480 from smell, hot foods give us more to love than 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.719 cold foods. Do. Just consider how quickly the smell of 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.000 meat or vegetables cooking on the barbecue can make you 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:49.719 feel hungry. You might have not been ready for lunch before, 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.960 but now you shure us that cold gaspacho simply doesn't 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:56.000 stimulate the senses like a warm minestrone. So even though 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:58.279 we intellectually know that cold soup is going to be 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:01.840 tasting and fill us up, our factory apparatus hasn't yet 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:04.760 been apprised of the situation that makes it hard to 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:06.839 get all the parts of our brain on the gaspacho 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:09.800 Bandwagon smell may not be the only reason we create 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:12.080 a hot meal more than a cold one. Heating food 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:14.720 unlocks calories and nutrients that we wouldn't be able to 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.080 get eating the food raw, and our big old brains 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:20.120 are very calorie needy. Our preference for hot meals might 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:22.480 have something to do with our brains steering us towards 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:25.400 the most potential calories possible in the moment of hunger. 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.240 According to Richard Ringham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard an 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:32.400 author of Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human, the 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.200 important comparison is between foods that are cooked and differ 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.720 only in temperature. Ringham says that hot food very likely 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.480 gields more energy gain than cold food, partly because of 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:45.200 the changes in digestibility. One example is that starch becomes 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:49.080 increasingly refractory after hot bread cools, which could be one 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:51.560 reason why we like hot toast. In the case of 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.320 lipid rich foods, the closer of fat is to its 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.520 melting point when eaten probably the easier it is digested. 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:00.520 According to Sea corps Well, it's possible we crave a 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:02.960 warm meal because it makes it easier to digest and 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:06.480 get the calories more quickly. He doesn't necessarily agree that 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.480 we crave hot food because it's more nutritious, he said, 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:11.960 a cooked hamburger that is cold or hot would probably 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:14.280 provide an equal amount of calories and take the same 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.080 amount of effort to digest. So while there might be 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.680 some selected drive hidden in our behavior to crave cooked 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.880 food for nutritional gains, the craving is very likely driven 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:24.560 by a nice memory of the taste and smell of 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:35.040 burger right off the grill, or your mom's macaroni and cheeks. Finally, 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:38.120 this week, Managing editor Alison louder Milk and MS. Jescelyn 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:42.160 Shields dive into new research into one of my favorite topics, 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.720 the eld rich and evasive inner workings of squid and 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:54.079 other cephalopods. Cal Tech physicist Richard Feynman once said, if 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:58.439 you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics. 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:02.440 The same could be said about cephalopods, those invertebrates that 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:07.120 include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish. The last ancestor we shared 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:09.800 with one of these animated jello salads was probably a 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:13.560 worm of some kind. So our DNA is basically nothing 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.959 like their's, not that they care. They didn't really do 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:20.160 evolution the same way we did, but nevertheless managed to 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:25.640 independently evolve into uncannily clever camouflage artists with large, complex brains, 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.560 close circulatory systems, and camera style eyes just like ours, 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:34.280 well not just like ours. The thing about cephalopods is 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:37.520 they've had five dred million years of independent evolution to 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.120 figure out how to do things their own way. Any 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:44.160 test you can create to measure something in a human intelligence, say, 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.120 isn't gonna work for an octopus, which is why neurobiologists 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:51.360 studying cephalopods are kind of like electricians figuring out the 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:56.199 electrical grid on an alien planet. Here's evolutionary biologists. Dr 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.760 Sabrina Panky on cephalopods. We've known for fifty years that 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:03.360 the cephalopod brain is easily the most complex among invertebrates, 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.800 and also that there dazzingly intricate body patterning behavior is 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.400 controlled by motor centers in the brain. Figuring out the 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:13.280 neural bases of complex behaviors is inherently difficult in any animal, 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:15.720 but trying to figure out how a squid can completely 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:19.600 change its body patterning in a matter of milliseconds is 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:23.959 a sticky wicket. One hypothesis has been that body coloration 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:28.400 is organized in the cephalopod brain somatotropically. That means one 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:31.920 specific part of the central nervous system is solely responsible 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:34.600 for controlling the patterning in a distinct patch of skin. 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:37.720 After all, that's how it works in our mammalian cortex. 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:42.160 But a news study published in the Journal of Neuroscience 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:46.760 shows again cephalopods aren't like us, very not like us. 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.040 The research team proposes that the oval squid, also known 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:53.040 as the big fin reef squid, achieves its skin patterning 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:57.880 through mosaic organization. That the squid actually use multiple motor 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:00.000 centers within the optic lib of their brain to pretty 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:04.680 a single skin pattern like stripes, bands, or spots. The 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:06.920 fact that several parts of the brain work together at 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:10.680 once to create a single display allows for greater complexity 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.199 and the resulting pattern. It'd be like using multiple keyboards 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:16.320 to write the same document all at the same time. 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.320 We vertebrates just don't do things that way. Researches at 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.880 Taiwan's National Chingwa University think that because several different areas 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:25.880 of the optic lobe can be used to display a 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:29.280 single skin pattern in a specific body part, a dark 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:32.920 mantle stripe, the tentacles poke it up fins. The squid 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.120 are able to flash up to about fourteen distinct patterns 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:40.800 in the blink of an eye. Fourteen distinct patterns. We 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:43.880 tend to think of redundancy as inefficient, but cephalopods have 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.720 overlapping parts of their brains to create specific patterns on 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.560 specific body parts, meaning if one part of their brain 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.600 is busy, they can still flash information onto their bodies 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:56.840 with awe inspiring quickness. Just think if you had a 0:11:56.840 --> 0:11:58.679 bunch of different parts of your brain in charge of 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:03.040 remembering a single word, your word recall skills would be amazing. 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:06.320 Dr Chow, one of the lead researchers involved in the 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:09.079 squid study, told us the squid's ability to quickly switch 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:11.720 different body patterns and visual communication a sort of like 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:16.520 an alphabet visual language. The researchers think the color patterns 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:18.839 displayed by the squid are not only used as a 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:22.319 communication signal to the same species, but also used to 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:25.400 hide or warn off other potential predators a prey. This 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:28.439 research also highlights the fact that though we vertebrates tend 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:30.520 to think we've got the best systems for doing everything, 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:34.040 cephalopods might be onto something, at least when it comes 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:42.440 to efficient communication. That's our show for this week. Thank 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:44.840 you so much for tuning in. Further thanks to our 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:48.920 audio producer Dylan Fagin and our editorial liaison Alison louder Milk. 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:52.320 Subscribe to now Now for more of the latest science 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:54.640 news and send us links to anything you'd like to 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:57.760 hear us cover plus a favorite quote of yours. Doesn't 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.000 matter what it's about. You can send us an email 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.960 at now podcast at how staff works dot com, and 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:05.560 of course, for lots more stories like these, head on 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:08.439 over to our home planet now dot how staff works 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:19.400 dot com.