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 and Julie.
Speaker 1: I've I've always noticed when I'm watching these these cartoons,
Speaker 1: especially things like Futurama and in the simpstance, um, and
Speaker 1: even I think like Mickey Mouse, you'll you'll you'll look
Speaker 1: at their hands and instead of five fingers, they'll have four. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's odd, it's odd. I mean sometimes you'll see someone
Speaker 1: add in that fifth finger, and you know it'll look
Speaker 1: a little cramped. And I think that's the reason. Is
Speaker 1: that is that if you're if you're drawing a cartoon character,
Speaker 1: if you add all five appendages to the hand or
Speaker 1: philanges right, um, then then it looks a little cramped.
Speaker 1: So it's better just to knock one of those fingers
Speaker 1: off and the viewer will get over it pretty fast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard that, and I've heard that especially in the
Speaker 1: days of hand drawing, like with Mickey Mouse, if you
Speaker 1: had to do an extra digit, then you had to
Speaker 1: do that fifty thou times more. So you might as well,
Speaker 1: like save some energy and I've also heard that um
Speaker 1: that that the four finger or the three fingers and
Speaker 1: a thumb are modeled more off of paw prints, which
Speaker 1: is another interesting thing. Interesting, but it got us thinking
Speaker 1: about why why do we have these five digits hanging
Speaker 1: out on our hands? Anyway, Indeed, it's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: And and initially I was just kind of taken by
Speaker 1: the question of, hey, what is how did this develop? Why?
Speaker 1: Five one up, six one four and uh? And it
Speaker 1: turns out there's a lot there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: uh meat to this one once you really start digging
Speaker 1: into bones and bones and and I mean that's why
Speaker 1: it basically comes down to the meat and the bones.
Speaker 1: And and it turns out the five fingers, for the
Speaker 1: most part, is deeply ingrained invertebrate and not an enemy
Speaker 1: and in also in our embryonic development. And there's no
Speaker 1: like easily identified adaptive or functional explanation, like you can't say,
Speaker 1: I mean you just think of all the things you
Speaker 1: use your your hands for. It's hard to make an
Speaker 1: argument for for like something in the wild where you'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, well, you totally need five fingers to
Speaker 1: pick up a rock, and and the bash in the
Speaker 1: head of some sort of a you know, primeval grasslands
Speaker 1: dwelling her before right, Yeah, I know, I mean they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily need that, right. So it's the question again
Speaker 1: is why why do we have this? Why why is
Speaker 1: it the perfect design for us? Because because you also
Speaker 1: see uh, you know, differences. You also see things like
Speaker 1: hitting ways polydactyl cats where they have six toes. Yehody
Speaker 1: goodbye is fine, they're thriving on that little island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course Honey would have a bunch of six
Speaker 1: fingered cats. Totally makes sense. An ambulan, it was rumored,
Speaker 1: had a six digit This is still a rumor, though
Speaker 1: it is not terifiable. Well. Um, reggae artist Jimmy Cliff
Speaker 1: had an extra finger in each hand. Hat have him removed? Um,
Speaker 1: and he turned up great Liam Gallagher, lead vocalists of
Speaker 1: O A. Uh, he has six toes on his left foot.
Speaker 1: And of course the fictional Hannibal Elector had six fingers
Speaker 1: on one of his hands. Yes, of course, yeah, so
Speaker 1: we know it happens, and you know it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of like a mutation. I guess you would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but um, but it also begs the question of like,
Speaker 1: what can you imagine a world where we didn't have
Speaker 1: five fingers on a regular basis, you know, on each
Speaker 1: hand and um on each foot. I mean we have
Speaker 1: really a like a five fingered economy if you think
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, Like right now, whatever you're doing, listener,
Speaker 1: unless you're driving a vehicle, you know, by all means uh,
Speaker 1: fold in one of your one finger on each hand
Speaker 1: and just try to continue doing it. Notice how how
Speaker 1: strange it may feel. It's awkward, right right, And think
Speaker 1: about this too, Like our base number systems are in five, ten,
Speaker 1: and twenty or one hand to hands and two hands
Speaker 1: and two feet right right, that's how that that equates,
Speaker 1: right in Our entire economic system is predicated on our
Speaker 1: fingers on counting. Yeah, so I think it's often referred
Speaker 1: to as a vertebrate vertebrate economy, Yes, a vertebrate economy.
Speaker 1: And just in case you think we're mad in Greenland,
Speaker 1: the word for seven translates a second hand too, so
Speaker 1: it's assumed the first hand is already up right, so
Speaker 1: second hand to two digits, I will seven. I was
Speaker 1: really fascinated, you know what you're talking about, how it's
Speaker 1: like all of our number systems are based on five
Speaker 1: tens or twenties, but it's greenland right where it's based
Speaker 1: on a twenty system, like one place where I can
Speaker 1: never imagine someone taking off their boots to do a
Speaker 1: little mathematics, like so what if someone knows I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear an explanation on on that. I guess you
Speaker 1: you can still count. It's hard. I'm trying to count
Speaker 1: with my toes through my shoes, and I really don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of control over like piggish three through four.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe it's a way to stave off frost bite,
Speaker 1: you know, like you keep your toes warm by moving
Speaker 1: them and counting them. Do you do your outer tables.
Speaker 1: I'm not a math person. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm not either.
Speaker 1: I am not an athlete. But this was something when
Speaker 1: we were Another thing that speaking of math and fingers,
Speaker 1: the other thing that comes to mind instantly, which you
Speaker 1: said you had you had not heard of, this was
Speaker 1: the on your multiplication tables, your nines, where you can
Speaker 1: say you want to do what's three times nine? You
Speaker 1: hold your fingers up and you put down your third
Speaker 1: finger for three, and then you have two on one
Speaker 1: side of the folded finger and then seven fingers on
Speaker 1: the other to take it seven and you can go
Speaker 1: across the board with it like you want to see
Speaker 1: eight by eight times nine. You put down your eight
Speaker 1: finger and you have seven on one side and two
Speaker 1: on the other, which I think is brilliant. I wish
Speaker 1: I hadn't known about this growing up, right, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: because it almost feels like cheating. Well it does. And
Speaker 1: the curious thing is, over the weekend, I was talking
Speaker 1: with one of my sisters about it, and and she
Speaker 1: reminded me that it was the janitor at our school
Speaker 1: that taught everybody that he would come up to you,
Speaker 1: like while you're in the cafeteria line. He'd be like, hey, kids,
Speaker 1: come here, I'm gonna I'm gonna clue you in. You're
Speaker 1: gonna get ahead in life. Um, which is the you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff you get from the janitor and uh.
Speaker 1: And he showed us the trick with the fingers for
Speaker 1: the for the the nine center multiplication table. And it
Speaker 1: was I mean, granted, I learned this and went on
Speaker 1: to learn very little else about mathematics, So I don't
Speaker 1: know if it works. Maybe it was a handicap that
Speaker 1: actually held me back, but or maybe you completely rocked
Speaker 1: like grade school mathematics, you know, thanks to the janitor.
Speaker 1: But it but it does underline just how integrated it
Speaker 1: is in our inter mathematical systems, right, right. It's something
Speaker 1: we take for granted, right, the fact that we've got
Speaker 1: all these fingers. So the question is again why just
Speaker 1: five um? And you talked about the limb development and
Speaker 1: it's governed by the hots gene expressions, right, which divide
Speaker 1: the embryonical limb but into five sectors of the anterior
Speaker 1: posterior access and essentially mapping where the digits will land, right,
Speaker 1: so automatically. I mean the reason why we we normally
Speaker 1: have five and we don't have an commutation of six
Speaker 1: or seven is because it's it's it's those coordinates have
Speaker 1: already been plotted for us. Yeah, it is. It is
Speaker 1: really hardwired into our system. It's a and it basically
Speaker 1: comes down to evolutionary laziness or or evolutionary contingency at
Speaker 1: some point the ancient past. And we're going to get
Speaker 1: into some of the details on that in a second.
Speaker 1: You uh, this stuff five digit system would rolled out
Speaker 1: and natural selection has never changed the underlying floor plant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been like the gold standard. Yeah, it never tinkered
Speaker 1: with that. It's kind of like the neighborhood that I
Speaker 1: live in. You have all these bungalow houses, and it's
Speaker 1: clear that when they first built these, uh you know,
Speaker 1: several decades ago, they were all basically the same house. Now,
Speaker 1: over time, individual owners have changed them. So you have
Speaker 1: some some very nice editions that are made onto some
Speaker 1: some very crappy editions that are made onto others. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and and all sorts of alter alterations have
Speaker 1: have happened. But if you walk into any one of
Speaker 1: those houses, you'd instantly be able to tell, oh, this
Speaker 1: is the same house. I can see the same floor plant.
Speaker 1: You drive down the street and you can see the
Speaker 1: same house after the same house, even though evolved over
Speaker 1: the decades. Yeah, you're right. It's like, hey, there's that
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties blue print from Sears and Robots. To get
Speaker 1: rid of the basic system there, you'd have to doze
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Likewise, to get rid of the five
Speaker 1: fingered um evolutionary discount, you would have to just go
Speaker 1: you'd have to go back to a very ancient point
Speaker 1: in our development and and just rewrite all vertebra history
Speaker 1: from there on, right, and you'd have to have good
Speaker 1: reason to do so. Yes, I'm you know, I mean
Speaker 1: you use your time machine responsibly. That's hard to argue
Speaker 1: that that's a good use of the technology. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's go back in time then, um. Scientists think
Speaker 1: that the five fingered system emerged sometime before modern amphibians
Speaker 1: split from birds, mammals and reptiles. And this is approximately
Speaker 1: three forty million years ago. Is this is the this
Speaker 1: is the Devonian period, right, Devonian days, and based on
Speaker 1: tetrapod fossils from roughly six three sixty million years ago,
Speaker 1: Scientists that believe digits first evolved uh in principally aquatic animals,
Speaker 1: and we merely took them with us when we made
Speaker 1: the transition from finn to limb. In fact, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a particular species we look at, uh. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: called the Acinstega canstega a can tostega. Let just see
Speaker 1: if I coul say it three times, um, which is
Speaker 1: like a fish like salamander um. Again from the Devonian period,
Speaker 1: and it was actually a game changer, and how we've
Speaker 1: come to understand the evolution of our own digits. Um.
Speaker 1: But this little sucker is probably one of the most
Speaker 1: primitive examples of a tetrapod that you could find, and uh,
Speaker 1: it revealed that it had a believe eight fingers is
Speaker 1: this correct? Yeah? And so it kind of first of
Speaker 1: all that that startled everybody and thinking, what it's not five?
Speaker 1: What's going on here? That eight fingers? Yeah, So that
Speaker 1: that was sort of a world rocking thing um for
Speaker 1: anthropologists at the time. And then the other realization that
Speaker 1: they have when they looked closer, in close, for at
Speaker 1: the fossils, is that it didn't exactly develop this these
Speaker 1: uh eight digits to crawl out of the water and
Speaker 1: onto land. Yeah, there's this there's this common mistake we make,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of it comes back to
Speaker 1: the whole um. You know, you're you're in grade school
Speaker 1: and you you're learning about evolution, and you have this chart.
Speaker 1: Of course, you have the one where it's the eighth
Speaker 1: the ascent of man, where the eighth is slowly becoming
Speaker 1: the man in sequence, and then you also have the
Speaker 1: one showing the fish crawling up on the ground under
Speaker 1: the shore, sprouting legs and then turning into something like
Speaker 1: a large prehistoric skunk. Uh, and and it it's very
Speaker 1: useful in understanding how evolution works. But it also it
Speaker 1: also has this this subtle um message to that that
Speaker 1: this is the goal. That this fish was was was
Speaker 1: old and busted and the skunk creature is the new hot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like this this manifest destiny idea of becoming bipedal. Right,
Speaker 1: like we just assume that all creatures just you know,
Speaker 1: they all they sprouted these limbs and then like you say,
Speaker 1: they just they called out became skunks. Yeah, what are
Speaker 1: you doing. Get out of the water, come on land
Speaker 1: where it's happening with some legs, developed some hands, and
Speaker 1: start building cities and beating yourself with stones. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: they started that should started to look at the fossils
Speaker 1: in the context of their environments, and they figured out
Speaker 1: that they were monkeying around the bottom of lagoons with
Speaker 1: their eight fingers. Um, and that these eight fingers came
Speaker 1: off a poorly designed wrist and paleontologist Dr Jenny Clark
Speaker 1: so the design was quote like using a table knife
Speaker 1: as a pillar with the blade on the ground. Ut.
Speaker 1: So this is one of the many clues that they
Speaker 1: that touch pods weren't necessarily evolving solely to crawl out
Speaker 1: of the water, right, they needed to use these these
Speaker 1: appendages more effectively in the water. Yeah, yeah, exactly, And
Speaker 1: they figured out, well, they actually have been on the
Speaker 1: water for a really long time evolving like these finally
Speaker 1: tuned legs what would become finally tuned legs for us,
Speaker 1: and using them there. Um. You know, we thought at
Speaker 1: first that you know, they would they'd be using their
Speaker 1: elbows to prop themselves up and get out of the water,
Speaker 1: but in fact, they would use their elbows to stick
Speaker 1: their head out of the water, you know, for a
Speaker 1: moment and breathe air. Um. And they would also use
Speaker 1: their their limbs to grasp onto things that would help
Speaker 1: them loyally propel out and like ambush a prey or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're basically talking about fish with hands, which which to
Speaker 1: me instantly brings the mind of like a shark holding
Speaker 1: a shotgun. But um, which would be which would be
Speaker 1: kind of awesome, that would really watch this this year's
Speaker 1: Shark Week for that. But but no, there are a
Speaker 1: number of number of basically fish with hands species today.
Speaker 1: There's a batfish, there's a hand fish, and there's a
Speaker 1: frog fish, and again they use these these limb like
Speaker 1: fins to sneak up on prey, to move around in
Speaker 1: tight spaces and the ga and navigate rocks and an
Speaker 1: anchor against strong currents. So hands can become very, very
Speaker 1: useful in the water without even any dream of ever
Speaker 1: getting out of out of the water and crawling around.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's this kind of stuff that suggests
Speaker 1: something called pre adaptation, which it's conditions in which there's
Speaker 1: no predictable outcome of an evolutionary development. In other words,
Speaker 1: Anna Cathstega, our little fish frint became a terrestrial creature
Speaker 1: out of chance. That's that's the idea behind this discovery.
Speaker 1: UH Discovery magazine's article Coming onto Land explains this by
Speaker 1: using the example of bone, which they say could have
Speaker 1: developed as a place where animals could store extra phosphorus,
Speaker 1: and only later did it come to support bodies. So
Speaker 1: it's not like that bone in the scenario developed simply
Speaker 1: so that we we become vertebrates and we'd be able
Speaker 1: to stand upright and support all of our muscles and
Speaker 1: flesh and so on and so forth. It's that's that
Speaker 1: it could have been an accident of our evolution, which
Speaker 1: is really fascinating to think about. Yeah, there's a biologist
Speaker 1: by the name of Michael Coates, um whose article was
Speaker 1: my first introduction to this topic. And and he argues
Speaker 1: that the reduction to five digits from you know eight
Speaker 1: or so. Um it, it moves along the same lines
Speaker 1: with the development of complex risks and ankle joints, because
Speaker 1: in using these uh is it begin is an animal
Speaker 1: against you use these digits in these stins to do
Speaker 1: more more things underwater, it's putting weight on them, um
Speaker 1: and and putting and that means increased weight on the
Speaker 1: wrist and ankles. So it goes back to the whole
Speaker 1: idea of the knife being used as a pillar with
Speaker 1: a blade down and the limb has to adapt to
Speaker 1: to be able to stabilize vetteran and to have pressure
Speaker 1: on the wrist and ankle areas. Yeah, and so there's
Speaker 1: there's this idea of preadaptation, of all this tinkering going on,
Speaker 1: so to speak. And it just happened that that it
Speaker 1: all developed in a way of course, over you know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of years hunting, you know, in this case,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about through hundred fifty million years ago
Speaker 1: um to eventually support what would become us, right, which
Speaker 1: is really simplistic way of talking about evolution, but it's
Speaker 1: it's an interesting again paradigm shift away from saying, here's
Speaker 1: this fish and it had to become man, and so
Speaker 1: it develops some fingers. No, it's more like the serious
Speaker 1: is fish and it develops some fingers for an entirely
Speaker 1: different project and then at some point realized, hey, actually
Speaker 1: I can crawl up on land with these. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: simplifying things a good bit, but that's basically yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's just spare you like a ninety minute talk on
Speaker 1: on that one point. This presentation is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. Now, we have some species
Speaker 1: that have have also developed a false thumb, which is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Moles and panda's amazingly because a panda isn't
Speaker 1: an animal that I generally don't respect all that much,
Speaker 1: because there it is at the zoo, taken up valuable space,
Speaker 1: costing all this money, and it's just setting there on it. Oh,
Speaker 1: you think it's coddled. Yes, I know it's coddled. The
Speaker 1: worst was and I love the zoo here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: But they had a you know, your forced to market
Speaker 1: with it, like the panda becomes this huge marketing instrument.
Speaker 1: And they actually had this campaign where they showed various
Speaker 1: very interesting animals of the zoo, various zoo animals, and
Speaker 1: they were wearing panda mask remember that it was it
Speaker 1: was kind of like like, these animals are okay, but
Speaker 1: it would be even better if they look like pandas
Speaker 1: put a panda mask on them and maybe we'll get
Speaker 1: people excited. And there was this guy, oh, come on, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really demeaning. I have to say it was
Speaker 1: effective in getting your attention there, right, yes, it was.
Speaker 1: So it's an effective at campaign. And and but then
Speaker 1: the thing about Pandas, and we could probably do a
Speaker 1: whole podcast on this, they're actually far more interesting than
Speaker 1: they give them credit. And one of those that those
Speaker 1: things is that they have this false thumb pseudo digit, right, yes,
Speaker 1: and it's basically a remodeled wrist bone and uh and
Speaker 1: moles have it as well, so it's not a true digit,
Speaker 1: and that it's sprouting out from the wrist bone is
Speaker 1: part of the wrist bone. But this is a case
Speaker 1: though that that it actually helps us an adaptive mutation
Speaker 1: because if they're they're grasping a bamboo, So it's not
Speaker 1: just some sort of random mutation that came a long right,
Speaker 1: And it's not like the hemming wats cats where they
Speaker 1: really have no reason to extra maybe not back of whiskey,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, or you shoot a lion on safari, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Yeah, um so yeah, touch apolo. They
Speaker 1: rarely maintain a polydactus six digit because it would have
Speaker 1: limited evolutionary use unless it was formed for a distinct
Speaker 1: purpose like the pandas and their pseudo digit. Right. So again,
Speaker 1: that's why we're seeing this, this culling back of digits
Speaker 1: to five, because it really does seem to be the perfect,
Speaker 1: at least for us right now, in this day and age,
Speaker 1: way to get about, which begs the question, you know,
Speaker 1: what are we what are we going to look like?
Speaker 1: Because we are you know, in the future, because we
Speaker 1: already know that tool use has shaped the way that
Speaker 1: our hands are modern hands work today. Right. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: throwing things, you're you know, like the basic the movement
Speaker 1: that you make when you when you throw it dart,
Speaker 1: like that's utilizing a lot of the what's going on.
Speaker 1: It's really important in your wrist and a lot of
Speaker 1: the evolution that's taking place to get us, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to where we have hands like luck we do today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And actually this is from the Journal of Anatomy. It's
Speaker 1: an article by Professor Richard W. Young who called Evolution
Speaker 1: of the Human Hand. Excuse me. The article is called
Speaker 1: Evolution of the Human Hand, the role of throwing and clubbing,
Speaker 1: and he posits that had our male and female hominid
Speaker 1: ancestors would have been more apt to survive if they
Speaker 1: were successfully wielding a club against their adversaries. Uh, if
Speaker 1: they and that would allow them to dominate other hominids
Speaker 1: and essentially ensure that their club happy DNA were passed
Speaker 1: on club happy DNA. Yeah, and hence this this more
Speaker 1: perfected wrist motion right or grasping two of clubs. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: the fossil record indicates the adaptation for throwing and clubbing
Speaker 1: to influence hands structure at or very near the origin
Speaker 1: of the hominid lineage continued for millions of the years thereafter.
Speaker 1: And then just to go give a little bit ahead
Speaker 1: of this quote, he says, two unique hand grips were
Speaker 1: thereby produced called the power in Prison grips. So we know,
Speaker 1: you know that obviously we were not done evolving. It
Speaker 1: continues to tinker. We've we've got our handy little um
Speaker 1: risks and fingers so adept partly because we could use
Speaker 1: tools and we could club other people and things. It
Speaker 1: makes it instantly I think of baseball where you go.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're the main centerpiece. There is the throwing
Speaker 1: and the swinging, throwing of a ball and the swinging
Speaker 1: of basically a large club. Yeah yeah, yeah there. I
Speaker 1: mean that's how the club evolved, right, Which is nice
Speaker 1: to quit clubbing people and start make it into a
Speaker 1: sport involving balls instead of heads um. But it did
Speaker 1: make me think, like, what are we gonna look like? Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know a thousand years from now. I mean
Speaker 1: obviously that the iPad has a great influence server us
Speaker 1: right now, and the iPhone does, and if it were
Speaker 1: to continue with us for a thousand years, you know,
Speaker 1: would our current hand structures changed so that we were
Speaker 1: have like stylist pen like little pendages at the at
Speaker 1: the I guess our fingers because when you first mentioned
Speaker 1: to me, I instantly I was thinking keep board because
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, I've just been using a keyboard,
Speaker 1: so I'm like, oh, I guess we'll have more fingers
Speaker 1: so we can we can type more. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: with the with things like the iPad, we're already getting
Speaker 1: into situations where where you don't need all those fingers
Speaker 1: to operate an iPad. And and uh, and we've talked
Speaker 1: before about the more that we the more we develop
Speaker 1: a human machine in our actions, we're getting into a
Speaker 1: situation where we're fingers and limb limbs won't even be necessary.
Speaker 1: Um so right, and and and specifically we're talking about
Speaker 1: like brain computer interfaces, right, so you know, eventually one
Speaker 1: day we'll be able to Google in our brain without
Speaker 1: even having to enter anything with our fingers. And then
Speaker 1: we'll have our handy dandy Exo skeleton arms that are
Speaker 1: super strong lifting things just for fun. Well, why would
Speaker 1: we lift things? We have the robots bring us, right,
Speaker 1: we don't even like thinking like maybe we'd have fingers
Speaker 1: just enough to open our sun drop cans while we
Speaker 1: use our brain computers. But now we probably have a
Speaker 1: cute robot that's going to come over and open our
Speaker 1: sun drop for us. There you go. For now we
Speaker 1: could admire our fingers, look at them, because you're not
Speaker 1: always going to be with us in the in the
Speaker 1: same way they are. Now. Yeah, sorry, I know you
Speaker 1: you were literally looking at your finger. Well there you go. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well hey, you know, it looks like we have a
Speaker 1: little listener mail here. I almost say if you were
Speaker 1: mailed that that means I don't think anybody's actually watching.
Speaker 1: I don't see anybody under the table today. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll check again, just make sure, okay, all right, Well
Speaker 1: we have a mail here from Ah you can have
Speaker 1: from under there. Um, we have mail here from Adam,
Speaker 1: and Adam actually writes them about robots distinction robots, so um,
Speaker 1: he says. Enjoyed the podcast Online Robots and especially the
Speaker 1: mention of my favorite sci fi author, Isaac asimop. I
Speaker 1: was surprised that you mentioned Little Lost Robot from I
Speaker 1: Robot but didn't bring up the highly um applicable liar
Speaker 1: also in I Robot by way a quick summer, It
Speaker 1: is about a robot that is accidentally able to read
Speaker 1: minds programmed to not be able to harm humans. The
Speaker 1: robot's brain gets fired after he can see in the
Speaker 1: minds of humans, the harm that would be created by
Speaker 1: telling either the truth or by telling a lie in
Speaker 1: a certain situation. It's probably my favorite story in an
Speaker 1: already fantastic book. Enjoy. I have to say, it's been
Speaker 1: a while since I read Um, I Robot, and I
Speaker 1: really don't remember that's sort of at all, so maybe
Speaker 1: I skipped it. I don't know, but it sounds cool.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to pick up my copy. And we
Speaker 1: also heard from Beth. And Beth writes to us on
Speaker 1: her iPhone and says, yeah, and her maybe maybe or
Speaker 1: her stylus evolved finger if she's writing this from the future,
Speaker 1: which is not indicated by the sent date on this email,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, Um. She writes it and says, hey,
Speaker 1: Julian Robert, I wanted to write because I just listened
Speaker 1: to your Defeat Your doppel Ganger's podcast. I have actually
Speaker 1: seen my doppelganger. A manager at work when I was
Speaker 1: in college brought in a photo of her niece and
Speaker 1: showed it to me, explaining that it was taken at
Speaker 1: a Renaissance festival. I told her that I had never
Speaker 1: been to one, and that I had no clue where
Speaker 1: this was or when she had gotten gotten it. I
Speaker 1: thought the girl in the photo was me, even down
Speaker 1: to the freckled face, her hair in a bun with
Speaker 1: a clock flip and a man shirt T shirt on.
Speaker 1: She looked just like me. It was really weird experience
Speaker 1: to be told that was not me in the photo.
Speaker 1: Keep up the great show. I love it. So that's
Speaker 1: that's really Yeah, that's very creepy and cool. Now, you
Speaker 1: didn't get to tell the story in the actual Doppelgangers episode.
Speaker 1: But didn't you have a doppelganger in college? Oh? Yeah
Speaker 1: I did, but um, and my hair at the time
Speaker 1: was pretty pretty blonde, like bleach blonde, So who knows.
Speaker 1: I think. I think it's more like an archetype that
Speaker 1: I was fitting. But for a year solid people would
Speaker 1: just come up to me and said, I love your band, good,
Speaker 1: buy a drink. Okay, you had like a rock star doppelganger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cool, it was cool thanks toppelganger. Well, hey, if
Speaker 1: you have anything you want to share with us, um,
Speaker 1: be it related to your fingers or to your doppelganger,
Speaker 1: your toast or your toes, or various sci fi references
Speaker 1: that I've made or failed to make uh. Feel free
Speaker 1: to let us know. You can find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook as blow the Mind, and you can also
Speaker 1: drop us a line at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
Speaker 1: learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
Speaker 1: in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
Speaker 1: stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
Speaker 1: on iTunes.