Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: which makes this Stuff you should Know very nice. How
Speaker 1: are you doing? Oh, I'm great. You look like you're
Speaker 1: doing great. Chow, you look like you're doing great, Josh.
Speaker 1: Jerry looks like she's doing about like we're doing. We're
Speaker 1: all doing the same. That's what we're doing. So Chuckers,
Speaker 1: I got, as I said right before we started recording,
Speaker 1: I've I've got no intro for this, but this is
Speaker 1: a listener request times infinity or so yeah, I gotta
Speaker 1: I got an intro. Okay, let's hear. It just came
Speaker 1: to me. Okay, Josh, remember years ago when you were
Speaker 1: a young child watching NFL football, All in the quarterback
Speaker 1: for the Washington Redskins, Joe. Thisman horrifically broke his leg.
Speaker 1: Lawrence Taylor broke his leg. It's one of the great
Speaker 1: tragedies of my life that I missed that you did.
Speaker 1: I never saw it. You know, when you were watching
Speaker 1: any sporting event and you see a knee go in
Speaker 1: a direction it shouldn't go in Willis Mcgahey, okay, there
Speaker 1: you go exactly when it was flopping around. Uh did
Speaker 1: you feel a pain in your leg when that happened? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I felt some sort of discomfort. Okay, I feel a
Speaker 1: shooting pain when I see it's it's usually a bone
Speaker 1: or a leg going away. It's not supposed to go
Speaker 1: like a knife wound. Wouldn't bother me, it wouldn't make
Speaker 1: me grab my chest. But that always sends a shooting
Speaker 1: pain through my leg. And that, buddy, maybe a mild
Speaker 1: form of synaesthesia. Yes, it might be. It's my first intro.
Speaker 1: That's very good, Chuck. I think we should, uh, we
Speaker 1: should appropriately clap for that, Jerry. Yes, I cut for myself,
Speaker 1: so just be a two person lame slow clap. It
Speaker 1: was a good clap. It's a good intro, Chuck. And
Speaker 1: this is news to me. I had no idea that
Speaker 1: you were a synistet. Well, I don't know if that
Speaker 1: really counts. I kind of thought everyone felt a shooting
Speaker 1: pain when that kind of thing happened. But you know,
Speaker 1: but you sound like a developmental synistet born with it people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people who are born with synesthesia tend to think that
Speaker 1: this is a very normal occurrence that everybody feels as well. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the only time it happens though. It's just with
Speaker 1: leg injuries, well breaks and things like when limbs just
Speaker 1: do things that aren't supposed to they're not supposed to do.
Speaker 1: I don't see the number three is orange. We'll get
Speaker 1: to that later, but we definitely what but what you're
Speaker 1: talking about is mirror touch synesthesia. Yeah, the first one, Yeah, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: do you want to go into it? Yeah? Why not?
Speaker 1: What are you waiting for? That's one of that I
Speaker 1: just did the intro. I thought when you hand it over,
Speaker 1: so I'm handing it over. Yeah, this is all reverse
Speaker 1: and it's not like mirror reverse. It's all just confusing. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, mirror touch synaesthesia is a I don't
Speaker 1: know if you could call it a disorder, maybe a condition,
Speaker 1: we'll say conditions. It's a condition where a person actually
Speaker 1: experiences a touch or an injury, uh, that they're observing
Speaker 1: on someone else. And because it's mirror touch, if saying
Speaker 1: I'm facing you right, which you are right, and your
Speaker 1: left arm gets touched, I would feel it in my
Speaker 1: right arm right. And if I were standing next to
Speaker 1: you and your left arm were touched, I would feel
Speaker 1: it in my left arm too. This is not supposed
Speaker 1: to happen normally. No, pretty weird it is, And apparently
Speaker 1: for the the I guess, truly advanced mirror touch synisthts
Speaker 1: like you can't watch a horror movie because the the
Speaker 1: empathy involved is so extreme that they it's unbearable to watch.
Speaker 1: Like you feel like these things are happening to you,
Speaker 1: And there's no There's a lot of stuff we need
Speaker 1: to point out, but chief among them is there's no
Speaker 1: confusion here. These people aren't confused. They don't think they're
Speaker 1: really you know, Jack Nicholson getting hit in the head
Speaker 1: with a baseball bat by Shelley Duval, right, They don't
Speaker 1: think that's happening to them, but they still experience this, right.
Speaker 1: That's number one. Number two is this is not imagination, right, right, Like,
Speaker 1: these people aren't deluded, No, no, anymore than than say
Speaker 1: a person with mirror touch synesthesia feeling themselves being pinched
Speaker 1: when they want someone else being pinched. That's no more
Speaker 1: a delusion than you or I being pinched that experience, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're considered uh neurologically normal quote unquote, right. And
Speaker 1: we also know that they are having these real experiences
Speaker 1: because of our friend the Wonder Machine, which has been
Speaker 1: employed to UM investigate synesthesia in all forms, and it
Speaker 1: shows UM that the for example, I don't I can't
Speaker 1: come up with one from you or touching neuruns, but
Speaker 1: we'll we'll use the color grapheme. No, we'll use the
Speaker 1: sound color synesthesia. Okay, Yeah, there's all different types and
Speaker 1: and this is another one. Sound color is when you
Speaker 1: associate sound with color. Right. So if you have somebody
Speaker 1: who has sound color synesthesia and the m r I
Speaker 1: all right, and you play a musical note for them,
Speaker 1: the region of the brain that uh that that experiences
Speaker 1: or governs our understanding of musical notes is activated, as
Speaker 1: is the region of the brain that's associated with colors.
Speaker 1: So these people are experiencing both. There's no way to
Speaker 1: separate them, and it's not an association like, um, you
Speaker 1: were wearing a blue Evil Kinevel jumpsuit the first time
Speaker 1: you heard, you know, a particular box concerto, right, although
Speaker 1: it was you work and you may associate that, so
Speaker 1: you may have a visual image in your mind of
Speaker 1: that blue jump suit or even that shade of blue
Speaker 1: whenever you hear that concerto. This is not what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. This is a mixture of the senses in
Speaker 1: its most definitive form. Yeah. Oftentimes they say they will
Speaker 1: even be a projection of that color, a literal projection
Speaker 1: that they see. And it sounds cookie if you've never
Speaker 1: experienced it, but to them it seems completely normal. Well yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I think once that once they realize that they're cinis
Speaker 1: seats and that this isn't normal, Uh, it becomes tiresome,
Speaker 1: from what I understand. I was reading an interview with
Speaker 1: Dr Oliver Sacks, the Awakenings guy. He's been hanging with
Speaker 1: cinis seats for many decades now, so he's some something
Speaker 1: of an authority on it, and he was saying that
Speaker 1: a lot of them get kind of tired of it,
Speaker 1: like I really wish I could just listen to music
Speaker 1: without seeing all the colors. Well, a lot of people
Speaker 1: use it too, though, well yeah, cre creatively sure. Sure.
Speaker 1: Famous sinnisthetes have have remarked that it has helped them
Speaker 1: with their memory. I gotta study on that, which we'll
Speaker 1: get too later. But we're talking about Duke Ellington. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: slouch no, uh frowns Franz list YEP composer Nabokov, writer
Speaker 1: actually Nabokov. In his autobiography, he talks about how he
Speaker 1: started to um realize that he was syn aesthetic when
Speaker 1: he was a little kid. Um he was pointing to these, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess the alphabet and they were just colorless um letters.
Speaker 1: But he was talking about the colors of the letters,
Speaker 1: and his mother came over and agreed with them that
Speaker 1: the letters were indeed colored, but um, she disagreed with
Speaker 1: what colors the letters were. So he came to realize
Speaker 1: as he grew older that he and his mother were
Speaker 1: syn aesthetic, and actually, strangely enough, his wife turned out
Speaker 1: to be a synisty too. Well they do think it's hereditary,
Speaker 1: for sure, but get this. He also couldn't hear music,
Speaker 1: Like he could hear set the sound, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: hear music, so he couldn't hear a high or a
Speaker 1: low pitch, and he couldn't hear discordant. What we see now,
Speaker 1: he was a color graphyme synasty all right, so that's two.
Speaker 1: We'll go ahead and say the other two word taste,
Speaker 1: words associated with taste and taste, touch, And there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of groupings of these. It's not just those. Apparently,
Speaker 1: they can be paired in all sorts of ways. And
Speaker 1: I think they said it's rare, but some people even have, uh,
Speaker 1: involve three or more of their senses. Yes, I mean crazy, right,
Speaker 1: And there's no besides, you know, color graphemes synesthesia. It's
Speaker 1: not like you just have that. You can have different
Speaker 1: types of synesthesia, and you can also have them to
Speaker 1: different degrees, so much so that um researchers are are
Speaker 1: coming to believe that one out of it, every one
Speaker 1: dred or two hundred people have synesthesia, Yeah, to some
Speaker 1: to some degree, like you, right, And it's also specific
Speaker 1: to the person, so everyone's is their own, right, which
Speaker 1: is why three isn't always blue for every synasty, which
Speaker 1: is why Nabokov and his mother were arguing about why
Speaker 1: you know what colors were? What? Uh, there's another one
Speaker 1: I found too, called time space synesthesia. Did you see
Speaker 1: this this? Uh? They kind of referenced it in the article.
Speaker 1: As far as some people even see certain months and
Speaker 1: days as shapes. But this there's a psychologist named David
Speaker 1: Brang who his theory is that people can literally see
Speaker 1: time as a space. They see it as a spatial construct.
Speaker 1: So he found this one woman in a study who
Speaker 1: was able to see the year as a circular ring
Speaker 1: surrounding her body, and it rotated clockwise throughout the year,
Speaker 1: and the current month resided inside of her chest, in
Speaker 1: the past month resided on the front of her chest.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? And when I say crazy, I'm not
Speaker 1: being derogatory. Fascinating? Yes, right, well, yeah, of course we
Speaker 1: use those interchangeably around here, don't we. Well, um, that
Speaker 1: woman can probably tell you exactly what happened on a
Speaker 1: certain day of a given year, because one of the
Speaker 1: one of the benefits that the researchers believe um synists
Speaker 1: are bestowed with is uh better working memory. There's different associations.
Speaker 1: It's not just one association. It's you're using two regions
Speaker 1: of the brain to form memories or that are elicited
Speaker 1: as a response to music or a letter or something
Speaker 1: like that. While he died, he did two studies. You
Speaker 1: want to hear that I do. He took the same
Speaker 1: people the time space. Uh is it sin a sinists,
Speaker 1: sinists synist synistates. Yeah, he took the time space synist
Speaker 1: eats and he did a He asked him to memorize
Speaker 1: an unfamiliar spatial calendar and then reproduce it. And he
Speaker 1: then he got you know, normal people to do it,
Speaker 1: and the results showed that they could recall events in
Speaker 1: time like light years beyond the non synistates. And they
Speaker 1: found on average that they synistates have about a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty three different facts that they can call up
Speaker 1: about a specific event in our lives in their life,
Speaker 1: compared to thirty nine for your average Joe. So it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely doubling your pleasure with the memory. You're fun
Speaker 1: with synesthesia, Chuck. Um, you were talking about studies and tests. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dr Sax mentioned a pretty simple test for somebody with
Speaker 1: color grapheme synesthesia. Um, and it's brilliant and it's simplicity.
Speaker 1: But you just put a piece of paper in front
Speaker 1: of them with a scattering a random scattering of fives
Speaker 1: and ss and say pick out five siness is as
Speaker 1: fast as you can and for a synist because remember
Speaker 1: this isn't an association like they literally five it looks red,
Speaker 1: s looks with other numbers and letters. No, just five
Speaker 1: sinesses because they look similar. So the Cyneses should be
Speaker 1: able to pick out the five Sinesses and no time
Speaker 1: flat like because blue and red, because it's not just
Speaker 1: a black printed number letter that looks similar to want
Speaker 1: to know, it will clearly look like this one's red,
Speaker 1: this one's green, this one's red, this one's green, green, green, red,
Speaker 1: like a human highlighter pretty much, you know, that's why
Speaker 1: you use a highlighter so it stands out. But think
Speaker 1: about this. Can you imagine trying to study if do
Speaker 1: you remember back in like seventh grade, those fat pens
Speaker 1: that have four different color inks in them, and the
Speaker 1: girls with love notes with one letter for and when
Speaker 1: they really really liked you, like each letter would be
Speaker 1: a different um, a different color, and it was just
Speaker 1: a headache and nightmare and you're like, I don't like you,
Speaker 1: you know you with that that puffy bang thing that's
Speaker 1: all hairsprayed going on. Ye much later for me, seventh
Speaker 1: grade for me was that was still uh oh yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody j everybody's keeping on trucking, spiky jone jet hair.
Speaker 1: That's what was going on. Nice Chuck, this is appears
Speaker 1: to be genetic in origin. Yeah, that's what they think
Speaker 1: because usually more than one person your family has it
Speaker 1: at a time. Yeah. Old Jacob Silverman not to be
Speaker 1: confused with old Kirk Christiansen. Uh he uh. He wrote
Speaker 1: about UM a researcher named Sarah Jane Blake Moore who
Speaker 1: was delivering a lecture and mentioned, uh that she had
Speaker 1: heard of people who confused UM other people's touches for
Speaker 1: their own, right, she's talking about mirror touch synistats. And
Speaker 1: a woman in the audience, I guess during the Q
Speaker 1: and A session said, wait, I thought everybody felt that
Speaker 1: it was like, what is going on here? Sarah Jane
Speaker 1: Blakemore is like, let's go to your home, and they did,
Speaker 1: and she found out that eleven of her family members
Speaker 1: had some form of synis teach. So if they think
Speaker 1: it it does have a genetic basis, but check up.
Speaker 1: Writing an article on a skin condition called epidermal lisis belosa, okay,
Speaker 1: basically you get blisters really easy. Okay. Researchers have determined
Speaker 1: that ten genes are in order, are in play or
Speaker 1: mutated to have epidermalos epidermal lisis belosa. And that's just
Speaker 1: for a blister. Can you imagine the number of genes
Speaker 1: and have to be mutated in the specific combinations to
Speaker 1: form synesthesia? Crazy amounts? It is crazy and we mean fascinating. Uh,
Speaker 1: where should we go here? We got a mirror neurons? Well,
Speaker 1: hold on, let's talk about one other thing first. Um,
Speaker 1: we with synesthesia, there's two types. We talked about developmental
Speaker 1: synesthes who think that this everybody experiences this because they're
Speaker 1: born with it. Sure, um. And then there's acquired synesthesia.
Speaker 1: And this is most predominantly seen in people who lose
Speaker 1: their sight after a certain age, right, or if you
Speaker 1: have a brain injury or do lots of drugs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: drug use can can lead to I guess a kind
Speaker 1: of temporary synesthesia from what I've read. But like if
Speaker 1: you go blind, Um, apparently your your brain's visual center,
Speaker 1: after it's been trained to take in visual information, it's
Speaker 1: still hungry for it, so it starts. Apparently your synesthesia
Speaker 1: can just come in like gang Busters after you lose
Speaker 1: your site, even when you didn't have it before. And
Speaker 1: you remember that movie Mask who could forget? Of course
Speaker 1: you remember the part where Rocky Dennis is teaching his
Speaker 1: blind girlfriend what colors the coldest blue, hotest red? Right,
Speaker 1: he puts her hand under some cold water and this
Speaker 1: is blue and what he heated like a rock up
Speaker 1: in a camp fire and gave it to her to
Speaker 1: teach her red and teach her a lesson. And he
Speaker 1: smacked her in the face and said that's orange, right,
Speaker 1: get it right? O pain? Yeah, I think that's the
Speaker 1: I can't tell, and I don't know that a neurologist
Speaker 1: could tell you whether that was actually developing synesthesia? Right.
Speaker 1: That was Laura Dern, wasn't it. I think it was, yeah,
Speaker 1: a young Laura Dern. Yeah, and Rocky Dennis was Eric
Speaker 1: Stoltz and share with share Eric stolts in a lot
Speaker 1: of prosthetic makeup. Yeah, good move, great movie. I love
Speaker 1: that Sam Elliott too. Everybody was in that. John Travolta,
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise, Beck Beck was in it. Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: who can forget the cameo by Liberaci. I know it
Speaker 1: was blew me away. He was the mask he turned
Speaker 1: out to be, not even metaphorically like Rocky Dennis took
Speaker 1: his mask off and it was Liberaci. Yeah, what a classic.
Speaker 1: Are we a mirror neurons? We definitely if we're not
Speaker 1: wearing Big Trouble Buddy. Oh wait show No really? Yeah okay.
Speaker 1: Another pop culture references Uman Fantasia is commonly pointed to
Speaker 1: as about the closest a non SYNISTI could come to
Speaker 1: experire encing synesthesia short hallucinating. Interesting, Yeah, because the almost
Speaker 1: every motion and color and change in lighting is associated
Speaker 1: with Yeah that I can't get through that thing anymore.
Speaker 1: I can't think. When I was a little kid, I
Speaker 1: thought it was neat, but now it's just unsettling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's boring, alright, Chuck, I believe we have arrived at
Speaker 1: mirror neurons. So mirror neurons, Josh, I didn't realize this,
Speaker 1: but they were discovered only in in Maccaque monkeys by accident. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were these dudes in Italy, the neuroscientists at the
Speaker 1: University of Parma, and I will read their names because
Speaker 1: I love Italians. It was a Giacomo Rizzolatti was the
Speaker 1: first one, and Vittorio Galsi it's the second one. And
Speaker 1: the third one was Leonardo Foghassi. I like the last
Speaker 1: guy's name the most. Fagassi Yeah, he's good. So they
Speaker 1: make a mean pasta sauce too. So they were doing
Speaker 1: a little study on the premotor neuron dynamics. So they
Speaker 1: ran some electrodes into a macaque monkey, like you said,
Speaker 1: to the premotor cortex to monitor neural activity when the
Speaker 1: monkey like would reach for something. It's all going fine.
Speaker 1: They were learning whatever they were learning, eating some spaghetti,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, one of the guys, is
Speaker 1: how the story goes, at least, came into the room
Speaker 1: and like reached for a raisin I think they said
Speaker 1: it was. And the monkey was still hooked up, and
Speaker 1: they saw that his brain started firing the same as
Speaker 1: it did when he had actually reached for it, and
Speaker 1: they all went say, it's it's a punsy nice And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they had stumbled upon what one
Speaker 1: of them calls the biggest neuroscientific discovery of the decade.
Speaker 1: And he went on to say that mere neurons will
Speaker 1: do for psychology what DNA has done for biology. It's
Speaker 1: very funny, you know, provide a unifying framework. That's funny
Speaker 1: that he said that, because that that's a lot of
Speaker 1: foresight for that one single guy. Because that's exactly what
Speaker 1: it's done. Oh yeah, big time. I mean that basically,
Speaker 1: mirror neurons are how we learn to do everything right,
Speaker 1: Think about swinging a baseball back. You don't just walk
Speaker 1: up and go, oh, there you go. You learn it
Speaker 1: by observing other people. At the same time, you can
Speaker 1: make the case that culture, UM other kinds of acquired
Speaker 1: learning aside from swinging baseball batch um. The theory of
Speaker 1: the mind, where we can put ourselves in other people's
Speaker 1: situations to predict their behavior. All of this is accounted
Speaker 1: for by mirror neurons. A biological basis for empathy. Yes, crazy,
Speaker 1: it is crazy, UM. And I think also, uh, empaths,
Speaker 1: people who have severe empathy real empathy, UM, tend to
Speaker 1: have more active mirror neurons. And uh people with autism
Speaker 1: tend to not display any motor mirror neuron activities. You
Speaker 1: understand one and you might explain the other is what
Speaker 1: are thinking? Um? Also, chuck, the that was just mirror
Speaker 1: neurons were just observed in humans for the first time
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah U c l A. Yeah, and apparently
Speaker 1: there were have much more robust than even the monkeys do. Right,
Speaker 1: So they are you talking about? The study where they
Speaker 1: had brain electrodes already implanted in epilepsy patients awaiting surgery.
Speaker 1: That one. Okay, um, these are the guys who showed
Speaker 1: it directly before I'd been observed. Its activity had been
Speaker 1: observed like the m R I. But m R has
Speaker 1: falling a little out of favor these days, and rightly,
Speaker 1: so we just didn't Yeah, right, um. These guys had
Speaker 1: brain electrodes hooked up to the brains of epilepsy patients already,
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, let's test this out. So they
Speaker 1: had people watch others do grasping motions, and then they
Speaker 1: had the people do grasping motions themselves. Some neurons were
Speaker 1: fired when the person to the grasp grasping motion himself,
Speaker 1: and other urons fired when they watched it, but eight
Speaker 1: percent fired both times. Those are the mirror neurons. It
Speaker 1: was the first time, the first time they were ever
Speaker 1: directly observed in humans. And those are the sine sinist
Speaker 1: you know, they're just they're just regular everyday people. Let's
Speaker 1: go back to that sports metaphor. Okay, okay, all right, Chuck,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen somebody get hit by a pitch? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And did you recoil in your chair even though you're
Speaker 1: in no way in the line of that pitch a
Speaker 1: little bit. But have you seen other people do it?
Speaker 1: It's like, oh yeah, Like that's that's mirror neurons at work.
Speaker 1: You're anticipating that this other person is going to feel pain.
Speaker 1: You don't necessarily have to be a sinist for to
Speaker 1: have mirror neurons. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, although
Speaker 1: in sinist it's just tightened. It's they're much more active, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the theory. Uh. They also found through that
Speaker 1: and I love this. This is like brand new stuff
Speaker 1: here in the past couple of years, which I really love.
Speaker 1: They found that it's you don't actually even have to
Speaker 1: see it. You can hear it, like a piece of
Speaker 1: paper being torn, and they'll start firing like that. And
Speaker 1: when a Galassian Rizzolatti found that when they actually describe
Speaker 1: something happening in a sentence, the same mirror neurons are
Speaker 1: firing as if they are actually performing the action. So
Speaker 1: that's I don't know if that's getting through to people.
Speaker 1: The neurons at fire. If you would actually tear a
Speaker 1: piece of paper happened when you hear it being torn crazy.
Speaker 1: It is crazy. Um. And you were talking about the
Speaker 1: what was the Italian guy's name who made the prediction
Speaker 1: that it was going to be the biggest thing since
Speaker 1: the Beatles? Uh Ravioli, Okay Ravioli. When he said, um,
Speaker 1: that it was gonna be huge, he was absolutely right, Chuck. Yes,
Speaker 1: mirror neurons are at the center of what's being called
Speaker 1: the Fifth Revolution and humanity. I believe it. Will you
Speaker 1: will you allow me? Will you indulge me a moment?
Speaker 1: So there's has been four so far, and we're at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the fifth Revolution. The first revolution was
Speaker 1: Copernicus saying Earth is in at the center of the universe.
Speaker 1: The second revolution was Darwin saying men are just clever monkeys,
Speaker 1: even though he was seventy five years after what's his face? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's his face? I know you're talking about. Oh yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And then the third revolution was Freudian who suggested that
Speaker 1: we were nothing but a bunch of drives and desires
Speaker 1: that we were unconscious of and could control. The fourth
Speaker 1: was the genetic revolution, the d n A. Krick and
Speaker 1: Watson who showed like, hey, we're actually a bunch of
Speaker 1: genes and all that that implies, and Watson put it
Speaker 1: like there are only molecules. Everything else's sociology, and his
Speaker 1: his partner Francis Crick, said, huh, you know, that's really
Speaker 1: interesting that we came up with that. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and predict the fifth wave and the fifth Revolution
Speaker 1: is neuroscience and that's where we're at now, that we
Speaker 1: are nothing. But uh, this is how Crick put it
Speaker 1: in his book Astonishing Hypothesis. Even our loftiest thoughts and
Speaker 1: aspirations are mere byproducts of neural activity and mirror neurons
Speaker 1: are revealing that synesthesia reveals that. Because think about it, Chuck.
Speaker 1: If I watch you get pinched and I experienced the
Speaker 1: pinching just like I'm being pinched, that's my reality. But
Speaker 1: it's not reality. Is everybody sees reality or agrees that
Speaker 1: reality is, but it's still just as real. So it
Speaker 1: kind of, um, it kind of underscores just how feeble
Speaker 1: reality actually is. And this is well, this is what
Speaker 1: neuroscience is. This fifth Revolution is undermining our conceptions and
Speaker 1: our perceptions of reality. Wow, I have a question for you.
Speaker 1: There's a neuroscientist named vs. Ramash Chandron that's Okay, he
Speaker 1: has a question that he liked supposed to people, it's
Speaker 1: not his, but he bandies it about a lot. Chuck. Yes,
Speaker 1: if a neuroscientist could keep your brain in a vat
Speaker 1: of liquid and maintain your consciousness, so you had no idea.
Speaker 1: You were just a brain and a vat of liquid,
Speaker 1: apply electrical impulses, so that could make you the happiest
Speaker 1: form of yourself, combined with Gandhi, Hugh Hefner, Um Einstein,
Speaker 1: and Bill Gates, and you were just as happy as
Speaker 1: you could be. And then one day the neuroscientist says
Speaker 1: to you, Hey, I'm gonna give you a choice. First
Speaker 1: of all, your brain in a vat of liquid, and
Speaker 1: all of your experiences are just me applying electrical impulses
Speaker 1: like Futurama or like the matrix, or like the matrix,
Speaker 1: which was actually based on this this thought experiment. So
Speaker 1: you can either remain this happy eluded brain in this
Speaker 1: vet of liquid, or you can be your regular self,
Speaker 1: what you consider to be yourself, what you consider to
Speaker 1: be yourself right now, what would you choose? Blue pill
Speaker 1: or red pill? Basically, uh, I'd want to beat myself.
Speaker 1: What's the difference? No, but really it's true. And this
Speaker 1: was around before the Warshinski brothers, you know, cinema whatever Lebaski,
Speaker 1: before they cinematized it as the basis for the matrix systems.
Speaker 1: This is a philosophical experiment and it well, if you
Speaker 1: would never know, you're right, what's the difference, right? But
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not never knowing, Chuck. The point is,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on with us right now. That's our
Speaker 1: conception of reality. It's just a it's a neurological response
Speaker 1: to external stimuli. But that's that. None of it's real,
Speaker 1: And mirror neurons are kind of pointing that out as
Speaker 1: a big flashing light, like buddy, If somebody can feel
Speaker 1: someone else being hinched and you can actually see the
Speaker 1: brain activity going, they're not amaging it, then reality isn't real, right,
Speaker 1: And we're here to show you. Wow, I know I'm depressed.
Speaker 1: See I'm inspired. What does that say about us? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, that means we compliment each other. That
Speaker 1: you blew my mind literally into next Wednesday. I got
Speaker 1: a couple of more things. I want to hear them. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know how I was talking about the biological basis
Speaker 1: for empathy. They're also thinking that this is why yawns
Speaker 1: are contagious, laughter contagious and moods or contagious good and bad.
Speaker 1: We didn't do that when the yawning contagious doesn't make
Speaker 1: you empathetic. I don't think they knew as much even
Speaker 1: when we recorded that as they do now about me
Speaker 1: or her. Yeah, like you were saying, like this is
Speaker 1: cutting edge stuff. It's been advancing leaps and bounds, like
Speaker 1: over the last two years, right, leaps and bounds. And
Speaker 1: I got one more thing for you, speaking of that,
Speaker 1: have you seen that cute little lamb where's be the
Speaker 1: Confused Little Lamb on YouTube? No, but Cherry's like nodding
Speaker 1: like a year old adorable You mean, I just sit
Speaker 1: there and watch it like that. You'll you'll watch it
Speaker 1: ten times if that. As long as a little be
Speaker 1: the lambs around, I don't care what's real. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I could ever watch anything as much
Speaker 1: as I watched the Surprise cat kitten or the uh yeah,
Speaker 1: or the the shocked gopher groundhog or whatever they are
Speaker 1: around dramatic. Yeah, I can't remember what it's called. What
Speaker 1: about the weather guy? Pretty much everywhere. Arthur Arthur, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was good too. Boy, that was a nice little sidebar.
Speaker 1: Have you seen Keyboard Kitty? We should just do a
Speaker 1: whole show on YouTube stuff. I haven't seen keyboard Kitty.
Speaker 1: Uh Josh. Here's one of the one last thing. The
Speaker 1: mirror neurons. They think a more complex mirror neuron system
Speaker 1: developed in humans about five to ten thousand years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember. You know what else happened around five to
Speaker 1: ten tho years ago. We I've got everything I want
Speaker 1: to say. I can't say. It emerged roughly at the
Speaker 1: same time as modern communication and language beauty. So they
Speaker 1: think the mirror neurons, once they developed to that extent
Speaker 1: in early man, that crude pantomime gestures became more elaborate gestures, gestures.
Speaker 1: I'd like that. It's like a nod to just right.
Speaker 1: And then that became rudimentary language, and then it just
Speaker 1: snowballed from there. So we'll chuck think about this. We've
Speaker 1: talked about Mesopotamia being the cradle of civilization. We started
Speaker 1: living in cities around that time too. Yeah, and mirror
Speaker 1: neurons make us more empathetic, which is pretty much the
Speaker 1: glue that holds society together truly. The Fifth Revolution so interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: we should give a shout out just so we don't
Speaker 1: get a thousand million emails about Richard Psytowick. He yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he kind of says that he's the man. He wrote
Speaker 1: a book in You noticed Oliver Sex nodding to this
Speaker 1: guy too, Yeah, he, I mean he seems like the
Speaker 1: real deal. All that his website is m crude. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just you go to it and you're like, oh man,
Speaker 1: I thought you're all like it's professional and it's not
Speaker 1: dot org is it? But no, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: But he hasn't he he does have some books once
Speaker 1: called The Man Who Tasted Shapes. Yeah, that's I think
Speaker 1: that's the one from And then Wednesday is Intogo Blue
Speaker 1: discovering the Brain of Synaesthesia, and he proposes that it's well,
Speaker 1: we should say, there was another hypothesis that it's just
Speaker 1: crossed wires, and that we're born like that with our
Speaker 1: neurons cross and that almost all humans get it straightened
Speaker 1: out and becomes more complex around twelve months of age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that it's just just wires across. That's why, baby,
Speaker 1: if you stick your tongue out of a baby. They
Speaker 1: might stick their tongue out back. One other one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about exo echo praxia in um the Turette's episode,
Speaker 1: and that apparently it has to do with mere neurons
Speaker 1: as well. Um. And then one other school of thought
Speaker 1: for synesthesia is that synists are picking up on something
Speaker 1: that's actually there, So, like the wavelength of a piece
Speaker 1: of music also has some sort of light wavelength. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I'm going with the mere neurons. Well, I don't think
Speaker 1: we have any choice. Man, It's like evolution Freud. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I accept him as a revolution, but
Speaker 1: it's like evolution Copernicus. But don't you feel, Chuck that
Speaker 1: we are at this point where all the information is
Speaker 1: on the table, but we're just now starting to be
Speaker 1: able to put it together. So it's a really depressing
Speaker 1: point right now because our place in the universe is
Speaker 1: up in the airs. It's ever been, We've been, we're were,
Speaker 1: We've never been less sure about our importance or the
Speaker 1: meaning of our lives. It's entirely possible that once we
Speaker 1: put it all together, the meaning will be even bleaker,
Speaker 1: the reality will be even bleaker. But then we'll be
Speaker 1: able to grow from there. I think that we exist
Speaker 1: right now in one of the bleakest periods of humankind. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a nice way to leave things. Well, let's sit
Speaker 1: for a synesthesia. I think we've got more than just
Speaker 1: this one article on the site, but the one we
Speaker 1: were basing this off of is can people feel the
Speaker 1: pain of others? I think if you type synesthesia s
Speaker 1: y N E S T h E S I A
Speaker 1: into the handy search bar how stuff works dot Com,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get something pal something, maybe d L hugely.
Speaker 1: We never can talk, so chuck. It means it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail, right well, Josha Wood those listener mail,
Speaker 1: But I didn't prepare a listener mail today because we
Speaker 1: have just some things to talk about. T shirt submissions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've gotten some pretty cool ones. We've gotten some really
Speaker 1: cool ones and something aren't so great. But but we
Speaker 1: appreciate the effort, yes we do, but keep them coming.
Speaker 1: We don't have the details. Yeah, we just wanted to
Speaker 1: say that we archive all emails. We archive all the emails.
Speaker 1: I have a little folder called t shirts and I'm
Speaker 1: throwing all the all the ones in there. That people
Speaker 1: send in. That's so crazy. I thought of making a
Speaker 1: folder called t shirt leave it to me. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: that we're really getting some great ones though. I would
Speaker 1: want these t shirts. Oh there's one that I know
Speaker 1: we definitely can't produce that. I really want the magnum
Speaker 1: Pi one. Yeah. That was pretty dep Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: pretty cool. All right? Well yeah, so that okay, that's coming,
Speaker 1: and then we should we should plug Facebook and Twitter too,
Speaker 1: because there we're up and running. Now. There's a social
Speaker 1: media site called Facebook that you should check out, and
Speaker 1: then there's another thing called Twitter that people should check
Speaker 1: out too. And you can find us at stuff you
Speaker 1: should Know on the Facebook. You want to talk about
Speaker 1: our Facebook and Twitters and you can find us at
Speaker 1: s y ESK podcast on Twitter. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: follow us and sign up and become a fan. And
Speaker 1: I'm kind of digging being involved. We should put a
Speaker 1: subliminal obey and right here despair Yeah, oh yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for the despair Pennant, you know who you are, right,
Speaker 1: thanks for everything we've gotten recently. Yeah, we got a
Speaker 1: six pack of micro brew from a guy that was
Speaker 1: really nice. And the people send us things. Uh about
Speaker 1: that work at sers we've got like hats and T shirts.
Speaker 1: Turns out nine one one isn't a joke. No, it's not. Well.
Speaker 1: Thank you everybody for listening, at least those of you
Speaker 1: send an emails double thanks, and those of you who
Speaker 1: send an actual physical stuff triple thanks. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to contact Chuck or me or both of us
Speaker 1: and Jerry too, you can send us an email including
Speaker 1: T shirt submissions to stuff podcast at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
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