Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. We're
Speaker 1: doing a couple of episodes here where we're really getting
Speaker 1: into the idea of genetic memory, which is the snazzier
Speaker 1: way of looking at if you want to get really technical,
Speaker 1: we are going to be talking about epigenetics. Don't be
Speaker 1: scared off by that. UM. I understand the temptation to
Speaker 1: be scared off by it because I've written about epigenetics
Speaker 1: before and uh. And it can be in a way
Speaker 1: a very dense topic because you are getting down to um,
Speaker 1: how the genome corresponds to the phenotype, how the contents
Speaker 1: of our genes is expressed, the phenotype is the expression
Speaker 1: of our genes. Um. So we can get a bit
Speaker 1: technical when you get into that, but ultimately we are
Speaker 1: talking about how the secrets written in ourselves, how thoseterialized
Speaker 1: as the person we are, both in terms of our
Speaker 1: our our body and in terms of our mind. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we ultimately really get into the conversation about nature
Speaker 1: and nurture concerning animals and humans. So we're splitting it up,
Speaker 1: we have this first episode about the animals. It's often
Speaker 1: a little easier to to look at the that something
Speaker 1: as uh as complex as this with the animals first,
Speaker 1: and certainly that's where most of the experiments are gonna
Speaker 1: taking place. And then after that we'll get into the
Speaker 1: human realm and the various human ramifications when we complicate
Speaker 1: things with all of our human baggage. Yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: here is we want to recast our ideas about evolution
Speaker 1: and also disease and how we can gain phenotypes the
Speaker 1: expression of these genes, uh, for for the better really.
Speaker 1: And in order to really get into this discussion, we
Speaker 1: have to talk about this guy named Gene Baptiste Lamarck
Speaker 1: or Gene eighteenth century French scientists and naturalists and and uh.
Speaker 1: He had some some very interesting ideas about how animals
Speaker 1: change over time, essentially about evolution, and he's most cited
Speaker 1: example is that of the giraffes. He argued that, okay,
Speaker 1: you look at the draft wanted to draft of a
Speaker 1: long neck. Well, Darwin's answer would be that they're all
Speaker 1: these various mutations over time, and some of those mutations
Speaker 1: involved longer necks. And since the longer necks were a
Speaker 1: better survival adaptation. Those are the ones that survived and
Speaker 1: flourished wanted on. The mutations with the shorter necks didn't
Speaker 1: pan out so well. Right, So longer neck naturally selected
Speaker 1: for taking a long time to be selected. Right. We're
Speaker 1: not just talking about one or two generations. Lamark's idea, though,
Speaker 1: is that you have this giraffe, imagine the short neck giraffe,
Speaker 1: and he looks up or she looks up at the call.
Speaker 1: Cindy looks up at the at the fruit in the tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Cindy's and Cindy's and her cohorts have already eaten all
Speaker 1: the low hanging fruit. They want the high hanging fruit, right,
Speaker 1: They want to reach up higher. So she's straining her
Speaker 1: she's looking up there. I want to eat those top fruit.
Speaker 1: And then Cindy's offspring have the same desire, and the
Speaker 1: offspring after that. There's this there's this need to reach
Speaker 1: the higher hanging fruit from generation to generation, and from
Speaker 1: generation to generation. The neck longands enough coffee this morning. Long,
Speaker 1: So already I'm thinking about Cindy from Brady Punch, whispering
Speaker 1: her desires to to reach the foliage length right, and
Speaker 1: then her offspring all lispening their desire to reach the
Speaker 1: foliage too and getting there. Because here's the Lamark deal.
Speaker 1: In his view, some giraffes managed to stretch their necks
Speaker 1: over out over the course of their lifetime, giving them
Speaker 1: an advantage of other giraffes, which then what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is passing on to their children. This is a
Speaker 1: really quick acquisition of traits here, and this is really
Speaker 1: what the story comes down to, acquiring traits versus genetic mutations.
Speaker 1: Now out with Lamarck right when he was talking about
Speaker 1: these droffs, well for a while, no, for he was
Speaker 1: dead wrong in this example. Yeah, I mean he was
Speaker 1: pretty much. This was considered the archaic idea, and we're
Speaker 1: not archaic, but an outdated idea that was that was
Speaker 1: it was far outperformed by Darwin's theory of evolution. So
Speaker 1: Darwin's theory becomes the predominant way that we make sense
Speaker 1: of these changes over time. But it does turn out
Speaker 1: that Lamarck was onto something um and his you know,
Speaker 1: his theory was dismissed for a long time as malarkey, Like,
Speaker 1: how I did that? Lamar Malarkey Lamarca malarkey. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: when epigenetics really came onto the scene in the seventies
Speaker 1: and more lately in the last ten years, people have
Speaker 1: been looking at Lamarky and evolution again because our better
Speaker 1: understanding of epigenetics makes what he was talking about possible.
Speaker 1: So epigenetics, Okay, you have genetics with the geno, and
Speaker 1: then you have this thing called epigenetic, which literally means
Speaker 1: in addition to genetics. Um, and this exists, and these
Speaker 1: changes exist between the genome and the phenotype. Now I
Speaker 1: like to think of this in terms of video games.
Speaker 1: It works for me, it'll work for some of you guys. Um,
Speaker 1: think of a flight simulator. Okay, you you put a
Speaker 1: load of flights that simulator up on the computer, right
Speaker 1: and uh, and you can go in there and you
Speaker 1: pretend to fly this airplane. Now, if you go in there,
Speaker 1: you go into the settings for this particular game, you
Speaker 1: can alter the realism of the flight experience. Okay, So
Speaker 1: think of it. Think of this way. The game engine,
Speaker 1: the game itself, This is the genome. Your actual game
Speaker 1: playing experience is the phenotype the expression right, and in
Speaker 1: between there you have epigenetics. You have the settings menu
Speaker 1: where you can where you can click on or click
Speaker 1: off all these little things like, oh, you don't want
Speaker 1: planes to be able to collide and there you don't
Speaker 1: want to ever run out of fuel. You want you know,
Speaker 1: unlimited uh, emma whatever. You can adjust those settings to
Speaker 1: have any anywhere between a highly realistic flight simulation and
Speaker 1: an arcade shoot them up, depending on how those settings
Speaker 1: are gamed. And so with an organism, you see a
Speaker 1: very similar thing. You have the you have the genome,
Speaker 1: which says this is what the organism is going to
Speaker 1: be like, this is what the phenotype is going to be,
Speaker 1: this is what the experience, the game experience that we
Speaker 1: live every day is going to consist of. And then
Speaker 1: you have all these various settings in between, these ways,
Speaker 1: these epigenetic changes that affect the way that the genes
Speaker 1: are expressed. That's right, because at the heart of epigenetics
Speaker 1: is really the study of these changes in gene activity
Speaker 1: that don't involve alterations to the genetic code, right, but
Speaker 1: they still get passed down to at least one successive generation.
Speaker 1: So again, think about the flight simulator that you just
Speaker 1: talked about, and think about um let me see it.
Speaker 1: Let's think about the genome is the hardware, and epigenome
Speaker 1: as the software. Okay, so you can load Windows if
Speaker 1: you want on your Mac. Okay, I think about it
Speaker 1: that way. So I think now about this epigenome, that
Speaker 1: extracellular material that is sitting on top of the genome,
Speaker 1: and it's these epigenetic marks or proteins that tell your
Speaker 1: genes to switch on or off. And it's through epigenetic
Speaker 1: marks that environmental factors like diet, stress and prenatal nutrition
Speaker 1: can make an imprint on those genes that are passed
Speaker 1: on from one generation to the next. So we're we're
Speaker 1: talking about this because this is really amazing stuff because
Speaker 1: what you can do is you could you can impact
Speaker 1: your your future offspring in a very significant way without
Speaker 1: changing your own DNA. And we essentially see Lamarckian evolution
Speaker 1: return in this or some semblance of the idea, only
Speaker 1: we call it transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. So it's the settings
Speaker 1: that to end up being put in place in one
Speaker 1: generation passing on to subsequent generations. UM. So it's like
Speaker 1: you know, a father had the realism settings on his
Speaker 1: flight simulator set to about and then that same those
Speaker 1: same settings pass on to the offspring, even if you
Speaker 1: know they're in a more arcade culture. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: stretching the metaphor, but I think you get what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: all right. So you're probably saying, well, how in the
Speaker 1: world does this happen? Anyway, what is the mechanism for
Speaker 1: delivering these changes? And that is something called DNA methylation. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's how you game gene expression, the phenotype, how
Speaker 1: a gene is expressed turned on or off in an
Speaker 1: epig genome. So it takes only the addition of a
Speaker 1: methyl group to change an epigenome. And a methyl group
Speaker 1: is a basic unit in organic chemistry. We're talking one
Speaker 1: carbon atom attached to three hydrogen atoms. And when a
Speaker 1: methyl group attached to a specific spot on a gene,
Speaker 1: this is what we call DNA methyl ish methylation, and
Speaker 1: it changes that genes expression, turning it on and off,
Speaker 1: dampening it, making it louder. The choices are all there, right,
Speaker 1: So think of methylate and as chemical bundles that enzions
Speaker 1: hitch a ride to DNA on and then they have
Speaker 1: the ability to manipulate jeans. You with me here, all right,
Speaker 1: You guys out there with us UM in the methylization
Speaker 1: patterns can be affected by again external environment and then
Speaker 1: get passed on to offspring because they are maintained through
Speaker 1: cell division. Yeah, they can change drastically in the course
Speaker 1: of a lifetime, but they can also as well discussed
Speaker 1: they can be said permanently during embryo development. So it
Speaker 1: depends on various factors and that affect the distribution of
Speaker 1: methyl groups. So we have an example here of um
Speaker 1: one sort of DNA methyl methylation in process in nature,
Speaker 1: and this is with mice. This is in a two
Speaker 1: thousand and three Duke University study by oncologist Randy Jurtle
Speaker 1: in one of his postdoc students, Robert Waderland. They tinkered
Speaker 1: with genetics using mice with a uniquely regulated a Goudy gene. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this a Goudy gene gives mice yellow coat and
Speaker 1: propensity for obesity and diabetes when expressed continuously. So what
Speaker 1: did they do to to these mice, Well, they gave
Speaker 1: them a one group of them a diet rich envitamin B,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about folic acid and B twelve. Another
Speaker 1: group they did nothing to. What they found is that
Speaker 1: the vitamin B acted as methyl donors. They caused methyl
Speaker 1: groups to attach more frequently to that Goudy gene, essentially
Speaker 1: dampening it, turning it off, altering its expression. So without
Speaker 1: even messing with the d NA, what happened is that
Speaker 1: those mice with the gouty gene produced healthy offspring that
Speaker 1: had brown coats. They were normal weight, and they were
Speaker 1: not prone to diabetes. Just with this one aspect of nutrition.
Speaker 1: There's another really cool example that is often sided involving
Speaker 1: water fleas in a predator heavy environment. The creatures developed
Speaker 1: these large defensive spines on their bodies, all right, because
Speaker 1: the world has become danger so they they load up,
Speaker 1: you know, they develop these spikes. It's a harsh world,
Speaker 1: so they they grow the weapons they need to defend themselves,
Speaker 1: and then the trait will pass on to the offspring,
Speaker 1: even if those offspring are raised in a predator free setting.
Speaker 1: So it's another example of to personify evolution a bit
Speaker 1: here and and personify genetic expression. The fleet, the water
Speaker 1: fleet body is saying, all right, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: bad world. Let's grow these spines, and then the offspring
Speaker 1: is gonna be born into what can only be presumed
Speaker 1: to be a bad environment as well, so it better
Speaker 1: have the spines right out of the gate. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I mean if La Mark was alive today, he would say,
Speaker 1: who's laughing? Now? Right? You know it's correct in some sense.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when
Speaker 1: we get back, we're going to talk about some very
Speaker 1: cool examples of this in round worms and uh, mice
Speaker 1: and wrap Okay, we're back. Uh. We're talking about genetics.
Speaker 1: We're talking about an expression in a large sense. We're
Speaker 1: talking about nature and nurture and how these these different
Speaker 1: genetic factors in different environmental factors effect who and what
Speaker 1: an organism happens to be in life. So we're looking
Speaker 1: at animals in this episode. In the next episode we'll
Speaker 1: get into humans. We're talking about a lot of the
Speaker 1: different organisms that we experiment on and then we analyze
Speaker 1: and attempt to understand the genetics better. And this brings us,
Speaker 1: of course to the roundworm. Yeah. This, Uh, These roundworms
Speaker 1: are of great interest to researchers because it turns out
Speaker 1: that they have a built in immunity to viruses or
Speaker 1: whether they can cultivate this built in immunity. So researchers
Speaker 1: at Columbia University found that these roundworms were able to
Speaker 1: develop a resistance to a virus and then they were
Speaker 1: able to pass along that immunity for successive generations UM.
Speaker 1: According to an ION nine article, they do this through
Speaker 1: r in a interference or are in a I. And
Speaker 1: this process is used by cell to mute certain genes
Speaker 1: and is often used to beat back viruses and other
Speaker 1: threats to the genome. This is really cool. This is
Speaker 1: like a defense system right here, sitting outside your your genome.
Speaker 1: UM RNA I destroys messenger RNA or mr rna, which
Speaker 1: is really important here because that's what's needed to communicate
Speaker 1: with various genes. So without their mr NA, genes basically
Speaker 1: shut down and become inactive. Yeah. And it was particularly
Speaker 1: interesting with study UH two thousand eleven Columbia University study
Speaker 1: because they set it up so that the roundworms couldn't
Speaker 1: gain immunity in the Darwinian fashion like they had they
Speaker 1: had to do. It was it was Lamarck or nothing
Speaker 1: if this is gonna happen, and they did and they
Speaker 1: actually observed this transgenerational process. So what's really cool here
Speaker 1: is that the researchers found that even a hundred generations
Speaker 1: at the initial effects infection, the round worms still carried
Speaker 1: the immunity acquired by their distant ancestor. Yeah, hud. Now,
Speaker 1: granted a hundred generations is a little different and around
Speaker 1: than in a human but still you can definitely see
Speaker 1: the survival advantage in ensuring that subsequent generations benefit from
Speaker 1: the same protection against a viral enemy that's still out there. Well,
Speaker 1: and you can also see why researchers would be chumping
Speaker 1: at the bit to study this more because how could
Speaker 1: you gain this for humans? Right? What what sort of
Speaker 1: defense system could we UH create for ourselves if possible?
Speaker 1: So of course it leads to more tinkering there. Um.
Speaker 1: And speaking of tinkering and UH studies experiments, we will
Speaker 1: have to of course go back to mice. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a tough University School of Medicine UH study
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. And what they did is they
Speaker 1: took some mice that they genetically engineered to have memory problems,
Speaker 1: and then they raised them in U an enriched environment.
Speaker 1: So there's an environment full of toys and exercise social interaction. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, so like working at Google or something. For
Speaker 1: these four mice, UH and they did this for two
Speaker 1: weeks during the adolescence for the for these animals, and
Speaker 1: they found that the animal's memory improved. Uh. And granted
Speaker 1: this is expected to a certain degree because we know
Speaker 1: that enrichment has been shown to boost brain function. That's
Speaker 1: why you you want to enrich young children, you want
Speaker 1: to enrich the lives of indoor pats. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's what enrichment is about. That's why we seek
Speaker 1: out knowledge as we're doing right now, right um. But
Speaker 1: what they found specifically is that the memory gene here
Speaker 1: that carried the mutation is called r A, S, g
Speaker 1: r F are the genes that regulate a signaling pathway
Speaker 1: that's involved in brain cell communication. So that's what was
Speaker 1: improved here. But the coolest thing is that the next generation,
Speaker 1: even though they had this gene, they had this mutated gene,
Speaker 1: they had better memories. So again, what we saw here
Speaker 1: is that DNA methylation process occurring, dampening the gene for
Speaker 1: the next generation. So we're not going to keep a
Speaker 1: running score for the nature versus nurture battle, but this
Speaker 1: one would certainly be victory for for nurture. So yeah,
Speaker 1: TuS University neuroscientists. Larry five had said that a striking
Speaker 1: feature of the study is that enrichment took place during
Speaker 1: pre adolescents, months before the mice were even fertile, yet
Speaker 1: the effect reached into the next generation. So that was surprising.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk a little a bit about that more
Speaker 1: with humans. UM, but we know that when UM, when
Speaker 1: an organism is going through its prenatal period, that what
Speaker 1: the mother does can't affect it. But what this is
Speaker 1: telling us here is that even before the mice were
Speaker 1: able to reproduce, that was affecting the genes of their
Speaker 1: eventual offspring. Yeah. I mean it makes sense again when
Speaker 1: you've stripped down all of our human expectations of life
Speaker 1: and get down to the basic genetic mission of any
Speaker 1: organism to spread its genes and pass it onto offspring,
Speaker 1: like right out of the gate. That is what it
Speaker 1: is here on earth to do. So we look at
Speaker 1: another aspect here of memory, and this is called long
Speaker 1: term potential ation, and again we look at it in
Speaker 1: mice and Larry Fogg's team did a secondary study on this.
Speaker 1: The same research group looked at this. They wanted to
Speaker 1: look at LPT, long term potential ation LPT strengthens communication
Speaker 1: between neurons and it increases memory. So again they had
Speaker 1: mice with a genetically faulty LPT expression and these, uh,
Speaker 1: this LPT was essentially fixed again when they were put
Speaker 1: in an enriched environment. So of course, what do we
Speaker 1: see happen with offspring? They turned out better even and
Speaker 1: this is the crazy part. The puffs demonstrated this improved
Speaker 1: the same improvemental process even when they were raised by
Speaker 1: memory deficient mice that had never had any of the
Speaker 1: or these are rich enrichment benefits. So in this you
Speaker 1: kind of see a little bit of the like the
Speaker 1: victory maybe not of nature but of nurtured nature, so
Speaker 1: a little bit of both. Yeah, you're right, both of
Speaker 1: them are definitely entangled here. But again, the big news
Speaker 1: here is that, um that this gene was switched off
Speaker 1: and game fixed it in one generation through enrichment and
Speaker 1: then bad parenting in the next generation didn't just automatically
Speaker 1: turn it off. So it's it shows that it's a
Speaker 1: little more complicated than that and also a little more
Speaker 1: fool proof. Now yeah, now these are all touchy feely examples, right,
Speaker 1: because we're improving things. What what if you're a researcher,
Speaker 1: and you want to see the opposite. You want to
Speaker 1: see what happens when you have rats that are abused, UM,
Speaker 1: that are raised by stressed mothers that neglect and physically
Speaker 1: abuse their offspring. UM. What will those offspring show in
Speaker 1: their epigenetic modifications. Well, sadly showed that the the abused
Speaker 1: my screw to be poor mothers as well and appear
Speaker 1: to pass down the same epigenetic changes to their offspring,
Speaker 1: which you know closely mirrors sort of the expected cycles
Speaker 1: that one sees, you know, even in humans. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the twist here too is that the offspring of the
Speaker 1: use of mothers was then raised by healthy mothers, and
Speaker 1: although that did help with some of some of their behavior,
Speaker 1: it didn't It did not dampen um the expression of
Speaker 1: that behavior as the other DNA effylation did and the
Speaker 1: other scene that we saw with mice. So it helped,
Speaker 1: but it did not fix it. Yeah, and it again
Speaker 1: underlines that we're talking about a complex interaction of nurture
Speaker 1: and nature. That it's it's not just oh well, nature
Speaker 1: is gonna went out in this case and they're just
Speaker 1: gonna went out in the other. It's epigenetics is is
Speaker 1: a little more involved, and I think that you know
Speaker 1: that's that's the idea that you carry away from this
Speaker 1: is that it's not just one or the other. It's
Speaker 1: not just nature versus nurture. It is definitely a nuance
Speaker 1: of both. But it's also not just Darwinian evolution versus
Speaker 1: Lamarchian evolution. These also work in tandem, because we're still
Speaker 1: living in a Darwinian world. We just have some Wamarki
Speaker 1: in expression. Yeah, there are various ways that our genes
Speaker 1: can be expressed in the final phenotype, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that is determined by environment, by the way we're
Speaker 1: brought up, by just whatever kind of situation that our
Speaker 1: bodies are and ourselves are put into. But of course this,
Speaker 1: this UH is all very exciting because what does this
Speaker 1: mean for humans When you have such stark examples in
Speaker 1: nature of the epigenome um and its ability to to
Speaker 1: be expressed differently in subsequent generations, what does that mean
Speaker 1: to us? Well, there are two ways to look at
Speaker 1: and we'll get into more of this in the next podcast.
Speaker 1: But on one hand, it does give you the option
Speaker 1: to freak out about every little thing in life in
Speaker 1: concerning your own upbringing. That you know that your your children,
Speaker 1: your children's children, you can really begin to to over
Speaker 1: analyze every little detail. Also, as we continue to map
Speaker 1: out the epigenome, it gives us an increased ability to
Speaker 1: potentially go in there and and adjust these settings uh
Speaker 1: as one potentially as one would the realism settings and
Speaker 1: flights and later instead of leaving it purely to environmental changes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really cool is that the Human Epigenome Project UM
Speaker 1: just like the Human Genome Project. They are trying to
Speaker 1: map it UM. Now that the Genome Project has done
Speaker 1: in the and the ability to do that is is
Speaker 1: um much more within grasp. The epigenome should be done
Speaker 1: fairly soon, and the kinds of stories that will come
Speaker 1: out of that will be I think of a mind
Speaker 1: blowing quality once they sort of passed through everything that
Speaker 1: they can unravel and everything that unfolds, and begin to
Speaker 1: apply it to us. Yeah, and and figure out what
Speaker 1: they can turn on and what they can't turn off.
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows what's in there because I've I've
Speaker 1: read the examples of being able to um. It's it's
Speaker 1: like toy with chickens, so that they're a little more
Speaker 1: like dinosaurs just by tinkering around, what's various epigenetic changes? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, granted they're they're probably would not be able
Speaker 1: to go in and just suddenly make spines growing grow
Speaker 1: out of our backs. But but we have spoken a
Speaker 1: good bit about some of the the various physiological things
Speaker 1: that that humans have left behind in their evolution, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I can't help but wonder, like which of them
Speaker 1: are still there, like the whole um, like the spiny
Speaker 1: penis thing that we discussed, Yeah, is that still on
Speaker 1: the table? I don't know, have genetics answer the question?
Speaker 1: I hope. So now I'm just thinking of urban chicken
Speaker 1: chicken coops and cities with with different phenotypes express and
Speaker 1: it's sort of like dinosaur chickens running around. You have
Speaker 1: a little velocity raptor chickens. Yeah, that's the future, folks,
Speaker 1: wrap it up right there. Yeah, So definitely tune into
Speaker 1: the next episode because that's gonna be the one where
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about some of the findings involving experiments
Speaker 1: about humans, about human epigenetics, how these various how these
Speaker 1: various environmental changes affect uh, the expression of of our
Speaker 1: of our genomes in the final phenotype. And we'll also
Speaker 1: do a little pondering to a little more a little
Speaker 1: more philosophical stuff there at the end of that pticular episode.
Speaker 1: So let's call the robot over here and uh get
Speaker 1: a little listener mail. Oh now, this one's pretty exciting. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's I find it exciting. We heard from Tim.
Speaker 1: Tim writes in in response to our nutmeg episode and says, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: my name is Tim, and I come from Dutch parents.
Speaker 1: Wanted to share with you something that I grew up with.
Speaker 1: My parents and grandparents used to put this stuff in everything.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you can even buy it in
Speaker 1: the States. They have it sent to them from a friend.
Speaker 1: It's a mixture of nutmeg and other things, and to
Speaker 1: be honest, it's excellent, wonderful of putting your hot chocolate
Speaker 1: or over Christmas drinks. Pick some up if you can.
Speaker 1: And he indeed sent a couple of photographs so that
Speaker 1: we might describe this product. It is called Let's let's see.
Speaker 1: The brand is Silvo and it's cook and speculous cruden,
Speaker 1: and its ingredients appear to be cattle cruden, Aguellen Newton
Speaker 1: musket gimber warter, carda mom which is maybe cardaman yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and white pepper so um which one of
Speaker 1: those was nutmeg muscott Do you think is nutmeg? That's
Speaker 1: what I was thinking. Yeah, but I think the crazy
Speaker 1: thing about that is uh. And why he says that
Speaker 1: he's not even sure if that you could buy that
Speaker 1: state side is because that is a massive amount of nutmeg.
Speaker 1: It's like a deodorant stickful of nutmeg. And as we know,
Speaker 1: nutmeg has hallucinery or hallucinogenic properties when ingested in large quantities.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that stuff on the street quite
Speaker 1: a dime. Well, you know, as we discussed Penny, because
Speaker 1: remember we talked about it's not really the consensus was,
Speaker 1: but it's not really worth anybody's time. No, no, no no,
Speaker 1: not not in large quantities. And large quantities, it's a
Speaker 1: nightmare and it's awful, But of course, in small quantities.
Speaker 1: On a regular basis, nutmeg has a number of positive
Speaker 1: health benefits. Lovely on your hot cocoa or latte. I've
Speaker 1: been having it on my coffee every morning pretty much
Speaker 1: since we did that episode because I like nutmeg and
Speaker 1: I'm and if there's any even remote chance that I'll
Speaker 1: have a health benefit from it, then why not. I
Speaker 1: even had a nutmeg infused root beer the other night.
Speaker 1: It was great. Did you brew the root beer yourself? No,
Speaker 1: it was like some brand, like they have a special
Speaker 1: Bavarian nutmeg version of their root beer. You get a
Speaker 1: big They have it at that little market in near
Speaker 1: your house, so check it out, all right, all right,
Speaker 1: And here's one from Trevor. Trevor writes and says hello.
Speaker 1: I live in a on a twenty five ft sailboat
Speaker 1: near downtown Seattle, more specifically Lake Union. I don't have
Speaker 1: cable or internet, and I rely on reading books and
Speaker 1: listening to your podcasts streamed through Stitcher on my iPhone
Speaker 1: for entertainment. I've avoided cabin fever and seasonal depression thanks
Speaker 1: to the information and knowledge I've gained through your podcast.
Speaker 1: Please continue your work because it's keeping me saying and informed.
Speaker 1: Most importantly saying that that was a lovely email to
Speaker 1: get there because or actually that was on Facebook, I think,
Speaker 1: because I mean in my job, in our job, we're
Speaker 1: kind of shackle to the internet somewhat, so I know
Speaker 1: that I sometimes feel like it wouldn't be nice to
Speaker 1: be able to just really step away from the Internet
Speaker 1: a bit, which I don't think I've really done. And
Speaker 1: close to a decade now, well, Trevor is definitely living
Speaker 1: my dream. I'm not kidding. Yeah, I mean, I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to live and this is gonna sound weird, but
Speaker 1: on a boat in a major city, so that you
Speaker 1: would have access to everything that a city provides, but
Speaker 1: you could just take off whenever. And here's a little
Speaker 1: weird thing is that I have had this fantasy in
Speaker 1: my mind for so many years that I mentally wanted
Speaker 1: to prepare myself and I would only use a pairing
Speaker 1: knife because I figured that if I ever lived in
Speaker 1: a boat and used the kitchen, I would only have
Speaker 1: one knife. You've been training for this for years and
Speaker 1: I didn't realize to what extent. And tell my husband,
Speaker 1: who is always like, why do you why there's a
Speaker 1: bevy of nine, and I finally fessed up. I was like,
Speaker 1: because one day I might live on a boat and
Speaker 1: I have to get used to just this one knife. Wow.
Speaker 1: I have to admit that early on I never really
Speaker 1: wanted that for myself. But occasionally I'll read a book,
Speaker 1: you know, they had someone living on a boat, like
Speaker 1: in the in Sutury mccorma McCarthy, he lives on a boat.
Speaker 1: And I was kind of attracted to that, and it
Speaker 1: made me think back, like why do I have the
Speaker 1: sort romantic idea about living on a boat that never
Speaker 1: goes anywhere? And it's because of that the Highlander TV show,
Speaker 1: Because in the Highlander TV show McLeod um whichever his
Speaker 1: first name was in that show, because it was different,
Speaker 1: Connor McCloud, Connel McCloud, I don't know, but he lived.
Speaker 1: He lived on a boat that was was there in Paris,
Speaker 1: I think, and so he was always coming, you know.
Speaker 1: And he's just this brooding loner with a samurai swort
Speaker 1: that lives on a boat in Paris. And I was like,
Speaker 1: that looks like the life for me. Amsterdam another place
Speaker 1: I would like to be boat bound. I wonder how
Speaker 1: many of you guys have these boat fantasy too. Maybe
Speaker 1: this is just particular to us. I know, I did
Speaker 1: get to go down the Thames. My wife and I
Speaker 1: um a friend of hers that she had she knew
Speaker 1: over the internet when we traveled to London years ago,
Speaker 1: and we he he had at a canal boat, and
Speaker 1: so we got to go go down the Thames a
Speaker 1: bit on that and that was delightful. And and when
Speaker 1: we spent the night in it too, so I could
Speaker 1: I could see where one would really fall in love
Speaker 1: with it. Maybe not so much the chemical toilet, but
Speaker 1: but the rest of it is fine. Well, thanks Trevor
Speaker 1: for writing in. Well, if you guys would like to
Speaker 1: share something with us, be it about epigenetics, be it
Speaker 1: about chemical toilets on your romantic boat, or be it
Speaker 1: about not Meg, we'd love to hear from you. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Tumbler.
Speaker 1: We are stuff to blow your mind on both of
Speaker 1: those and uh and we also have a Twitter account
Speaker 1: where we used to handle blow the Mind, and there's
Speaker 1: something a little bit acrossover. We're going to promote the
Speaker 1: show on all of those feeds. But then there's there's
Speaker 1: always gonna be something on the Twitter that's not on
Speaker 1: the Facebook. There's gonna be stuff on the Tumbler that's
Speaker 1: not uh not used on the other website. So so
Speaker 1: check them all out. There all pretty cool. Find the
Speaker 1: one that fits your your frame of mind best. And
Speaker 1: some people are more Twitter people, and then some people
Speaker 1: were well one over by the flashiness of tumblers, so
Speaker 1: you make a nice tumbler too. By the way, I
Speaker 1: enjoyed the tumbler, I shouldn't really digging it, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very cool. Um. You can also send us a
Speaker 1: line by emailing us a blow the mind at discovery
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other
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