Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcot the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. Mym is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
Speaker 1: The more we discuss the world and the way it
Speaker 1: works and the way we perceive it, the more labyrinthine
Speaker 1: it confused. Yeah. Yeah, the more layers that you feel away,
Speaker 1: the more layers you find underneath. Right, right, you look
Speaker 1: back on a time pretty much like the post War
Speaker 1: War two era, Like that was the time when it
Speaker 1: was all this optimism that we had things more or
Speaker 1: less figured out, that we were venturing into this age
Speaker 1: where everything's gonna make sense. Diseases, we're going to defeat space,
Speaker 1: we're going to travel. Everything was within our grasp. And
Speaker 1: then we started learning more and more and things become
Speaker 1: just more and more complicated. I mean, that's kind of
Speaker 1: a simplification, but but that's kind of the the story
Speaker 1: shaped version of it. And yeah, it seemed like science
Speaker 1: was emerging to the degree where we could really get
Speaker 1: a handle on things. And you know, psychologically we had
Speaker 1: Freud and Young and we're really trying to be introspective
Speaker 1: and say, ah, yes, this is what drives human beings, right,
Speaker 1: and it seems that humans were the lords of the Earth,
Speaker 1: that we this was our planet, we had it not,
Speaker 1: and we were going to be the poster children of
Speaker 1: this planet moving forward. But the topic we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about today really sheds a light on just one
Speaker 1: of the areas where humans are not the top dogs.
Speaker 1: The topic that really illuminates how the organisms that operate
Speaker 1: in the shadows, and at a much smaller level, it
Speaker 1: may just be the rulers of the planet, right, the
Speaker 1: organisms inside of us. And we've actually talked about this before,
Speaker 1: whether or not we actually have free will, And we've
Speaker 1: talked about this from a psychological perspective like, oh, did
Speaker 1: you know that a lot of people who are named
Speaker 1: Denise tend to be dentists or Dennists tend to be dentists.
Speaker 1: And this was in David Eagleman's book, right recent book Incognito,
Speaker 1: that talked about all these sort of subtle machination is
Speaker 1: going on that really informed our worldview and the decisions
Speaker 1: we make. But we've also talked about little critters and
Speaker 1: how how we may actually just be you know, walking
Speaker 1: transportation for these guys, so that we we can just
Speaker 1: spread critters among the earth. And this has become even
Speaker 1: more apparent recently with a recent article that's been in
Speaker 1: the news. I believe that the the name of it
Speaker 1: is how your cat is Making You Crazy? And this
Speaker 1: is by Kathleen Mcaliffe and this was in the March
Speaker 1: edition of The Atlantic. Yeah, this of course deals with
Speaker 1: good old taxo taxo plasma gandhi taxo plasmosis being the infestation. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: and this comes out up every year or two. I
Speaker 1: wrote a bunch about it for Animal Planet a couple
Speaker 1: of years back. Yeah, you you have actually talked about
Speaker 1: this before, but yeah, definitely, there's there's a driving force
Speaker 1: now though around the topic, because there are so many
Speaker 1: different studies that are beginning to support this idea that
Speaker 1: this our side is doing some really crazy Shenanigan stuff
Speaker 1: with not just animals but perhaps even humans. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a simplistic way to think of parasites, and I think
Speaker 1: this is a new way we often think. We we
Speaker 1: think in terms of oh, I have a leech on me,
Speaker 1: Oh I have a mosquito on me, or a gear
Speaker 1: tick or something, and and these are external parasites. But
Speaker 1: the model is simple. There's a weakness in my defense
Speaker 1: is something is stealing energy from me and then moving on.
Speaker 1: It's a blood sucker. Um And that's a that's a
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward con. But something like ke Gandhi. Here T
Speaker 1: Gandhi is playing the long con and and has and
Speaker 1: it's so intricate. I mean, this is like what was
Speaker 1: the Kaiser so say movie, Oh the Unsuspected really usual,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like that level of complex plot
Speaker 1: going on where when you begin to see the full
Speaker 1: life cycle of this organism and see the full scheme
Speaker 1: as much of it as we can understand, you really
Speaker 1: odd because it's not just a matter of something, Oh
Speaker 1: you've got a little room for me to live inside you.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna inside you where it's warm. No, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's far more. You're right. If T Gandhi was plain Vegas,
Speaker 1: it would be like the ultimate grifter move what we're
Speaker 1: about to describe. There would be a parasites. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well here we go. Okay, So let's talk about T.
Speaker 1: Gandhi Texi Plasmosa Gandhi, and let's talk about what it
Speaker 1: actually is and why it is so fierce. Yes, so
Speaker 1: Toxoplasmosa gandhi is a protozoan parasite and the only known
Speaker 1: definitive hosts for T. Gandhi. That's what we're gonna call
Speaker 1: it from here on out. Our domestic cats in their relatives,
Speaker 1: and that's that's why our feline friends have been in
Speaker 1: the news lately too, and a little bit demonized, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about later. The cats. Cats, Yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: in general they're kind of demon They steal your breath, right,
Speaker 1: that's what they say. But old T. Gandhi here makes
Speaker 1: the cat, the feline. It's primary host. This is where
Speaker 1: it reproduces. This is the the mothership for T. Gandhi,
Speaker 1: but it's life cycle takes it to other creek is
Speaker 1: as well. So this fantastic journey begins inside spaceship cat
Speaker 1: inside the mothership, all right, the new toxoplasma they multiply
Speaker 1: in the lining of an infected cats and testing. Right,
Speaker 1: so the cat eats something, picks up the parasite, right,
Speaker 1: get in the tummy. It reproduces in the cat. It's
Speaker 1: the primary host again, So that's what goes on here.
Speaker 1: And then the toxoplasma young, which are called ship out
Speaker 1: on the feces, okay, um, right, and this is a
Speaker 1: common practice among parasites. That's the outgoing highway from most organisms.
Speaker 1: And that's so if you need to get out, that's
Speaker 1: the way you gotta go. And this is shed for
Speaker 1: like one to two weeks or so, you know, in
Speaker 1: the feces of the cat. In any creature that encounters
Speaker 1: this stowaway laden waist is susceptible to accidental infection. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this means you know, everything from touching a litter box,
Speaker 1: walking around on barefoot, on infected soil, infected water, infected
Speaker 1: garden veggies, where there's poop, there's a way, right. And
Speaker 1: so if you think of a bird or a rodent
Speaker 1: trapesing across a pile of fresh cat poo, then obviously
Speaker 1: that that's a great way for the parasite to hit
Speaker 1: a ride now on say a rat, right, because that's
Speaker 1: what it needs to do. Ultimately, this parasite needs to
Speaker 1: return to a cat, all right, And it really like
Speaker 1: that the rat is very important here. This parasite loves
Speaker 1: the rat. Yes, so the rat also you know some
Speaker 1: some birds things that cats eat. That is it's it's
Speaker 1: ticket back aboard a cat. Somewhere. So now it's aboard
Speaker 1: the rat, the bird, whatever the intermediate host may be.
Speaker 1: And eventually what happens your pet cat corners this intermediate
Speaker 1: host um you know, in your cellar, in your backyard,
Speaker 1: in the neighbor's yard, wherever it happens to do. It's hunting.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen your cat with one of
Speaker 1: these animals, you know what happens next. It gobbles it down,
Speaker 1: or gobbles half of it down, and then leaves the
Speaker 1: other half for you to find on your computer day. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: puts its head on a steak. It says, like what
Speaker 1: I did. But when the cat eats this intermediate host,
Speaker 1: the cycle continues. Now the taxoplasma is in its system anew,
Speaker 1: it is returned to a primary host. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: this is the coolest thing about this or frightening or
Speaker 1: whatever your perspective is, is that it returns back to
Speaker 1: the cat where those ussis transform into taki a z o.
Speaker 1: It's after ingestion, and that's where it becomes the adult
Speaker 1: version of the parasite. And it's really the only way
Speaker 1: that it can fulfill this life cycle again through the
Speaker 1: cat right just on its own. I mean, the cycle
Speaker 1: is kind of cool, but it's not completely mind blowing
Speaker 1: because obviously cats eat mice and birds, so the circle
Speaker 1: is pretty simple. It's not completely crazy until you start
Speaker 1: getting into the times subtle manipulations that are going on
Speaker 1: inside the intermediate hosts. So when the cycle begins a
Speaker 1: new it's important though, to stress that more than birds
Speaker 1: and and mice are susceptible to this parasite will end
Speaker 1: up in humans. Little does the parasite. There's probably a
Speaker 1: little chance that once it ends up in a human
Speaker 1: that a cat will eat that human. I mean, it
Speaker 1: happens sometimes, but for the most part, feral cat hordes
Speaker 1: are not overwhelming humans on the train as far as
Speaker 1: we know. I don't know this because this could be
Speaker 1: a plot by the cats, you know, to infect a
Speaker 1: subtle defends out through they are, I guess. But but
Speaker 1: for the most part, this is kind of collateral damage.
Speaker 1: The parasite needs to return to the cat. It needs
Speaker 1: to get in a bird or a rat to do so,
Speaker 1: but it'll try pretty much anything. Yeah, So think about
Speaker 1: this parasite it's now taken up you know, home, and
Speaker 1: say like an animal um and the and the tissues
Speaker 1: of an animal usually in the muscle tissues, and these
Speaker 1: little cysts are there, So how can it infect a human?
Speaker 1: You will you could eat undercooked meat of an animal
Speaker 1: that has those those cysts in it. Because I mentioned
Speaker 1: the litter box thing is is an obvious but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are more subtle ways to yet yet litter box
Speaker 1: even just say stepping on people contaminated soil and then
Speaker 1: accionally like swiping your finger on it and then dipping
Speaker 1: it in your mouth. Right, so think about that. The
Speaker 1: next thing you see children running around barefoot in the
Speaker 1: yard actually kind of creepy. Right. Blood transfusion or organ
Speaker 1: transplantation and transplants centrally from mother to fetus. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that a lot of people have heard about toxoplasmosis
Speaker 1: in terms of pregnant women because that really is a
Speaker 1: concern in the medical community because if a to be
Speaker 1: mother actually were to have toxoplasmosis, she could then transport
Speaker 1: that via the placenta to the fetus, and that really
Speaker 1: can cause a lot of problems, anything from blindness to
Speaker 1: mental disabilities to brain damage. So it's that that's usually
Speaker 1: how people know of this. But okay, let's say that
Speaker 1: it does occupy the brains of a human who is
Speaker 1: not pregnant. And by the way, this is not as
Speaker 1: uncommon as you would think. And actually it is just
Speaker 1: going to hang out there for the rest of your
Speaker 1: life in your body, all right, it's kind of dead
Speaker 1: ended in spaceship human, but it's going to stick around
Speaker 1: very chance that a cat may eat you one day
Speaker 1: exactly that they they finally get the world dominancy that
Speaker 1: they are looking for. Yeah, it is buried in your
Speaker 1: muscle and nerve tissue. And this is not We're not
Speaker 1: talking about like a rare circumstance where oh, they just
Speaker 1: happen to have a cat parasite, because you do have
Speaker 1: some situations where a parasitic infestation in a human is
Speaker 1: kind of a rare occurrence and causes all these problems.
Speaker 1: But the U S inert for Disease Control Prevention estimates
Speaker 1: that twenty two point five of the United States twelve
Speaker 1: and older population currently carries the TOXO parasite and estimates
Speaker 1: run is high as nine in some parts of the world.
Speaker 1: So between thirty and sixty percent of the global population
Speaker 1: is infested. That is an incredible amount of humans infested
Speaker 1: with us, right and you know, just for comparisons sake,
Speaker 1: let me look at France and that's upward to like
Speaker 1: fifty five percent. And again it's a thought because in
Speaker 1: France it's much more common to have uncooked meat or
Speaker 1: you know, still uncooked the uncooked. But that makes it
Speaker 1: sound like they're the frenchmen are running through the fields
Speaker 1: like pulling down cows and horses and deer. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: with big fancy curly mustaches. But no, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: state tartar are some of the ways that the meat
Speaker 1: is prepared wherever there's a tradition of rare to raw
Speaker 1: meat consumption. So of stick tatar is big in a
Speaker 1: region and domestic cats are around, there's a chance that
Speaker 1: that's going to be higher, right, Or if you live
Speaker 1: in conditions where you're the soil is contaminated quite a
Speaker 1: bit and you don't have say the means to have
Speaker 1: access to clean water, of course, and infanstation rates would
Speaker 1: be much higher. Um. But okay, so there's all this
Speaker 1: data swirling around. Now you know the life cycle of
Speaker 1: texoplasmas gandhi, and do you understand that us humans are
Speaker 1: far more infected than we probably ever knew, Right, So
Speaker 1: what's the big deal. Well, the big deal is that, again,
Speaker 1: the cycle itself, the ideal cycle of cat to rat,
Speaker 1: the cat is pretty straightforward. But these guys trying to
Speaker 1: gain the process because they really once they're in spaceship rat,
Speaker 1: they really want to dock with the mothership again. So
Speaker 1: they essentially pilot this mothership a little and they don't
Speaker 1: completely take the controls. It's not the sort of a
Speaker 1: zombie thing, though, You'll definitely see that situation play out
Speaker 1: in some parasitic infestations, but in this one, it's more
Speaker 1: of a subtle tweaking of the design functions in the rat. Well,
Speaker 1: it actually changes the behavior of the rat. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about here's the rats fear response specifically to cats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the rat needs to return to the cats. So
Speaker 1: what can I do as a parasite to to set
Speaker 1: up this encounter to encourage my rat host to wind
Speaker 1: up in the belly of a cat. And indeed, the
Speaker 1: easiest thing is too, well, let's make this prey animal
Speaker 1: less afraid of its number one predator. Yeah, and actually
Speaker 1: let's take up residents and the rats and magdala where
Speaker 1: we know that you know, motions like fear are hanging
Speaker 1: out and let's do a little neural rewiring. Right, So
Speaker 1: this is like oceans eleven um parasites eleven. The they're
Speaker 1: sneaking into the into the control mainframe to try and
Speaker 1: mess with the security system. Okay, And so if you
Speaker 1: think that, we're completely nuts, so we just made all
Speaker 1: this up again that the article in the Atlantic is
Speaker 1: great in talking about this more specifically. And there are
Speaker 1: a ton of studies, one of which was conducted by
Speaker 1: Joanne Webster. She's a parasitologist at Imperial College, London, and
Speaker 1: she took it an enclosure with rats, and she treated
Speaker 1: one corner of each enclosure with the animal's own order
Speaker 1: odor excuse me, a second with water, a third with
Speaker 1: cat urine, in the last corner with the urine of
Speaker 1: a rabbit. Okay, so this is not a creature that
Speaker 1: prays on rodents, right. She said, we thought the parasite
Speaker 1: might reduce the rats aversion to cat odor. Not only
Speaker 1: did do that, but it actually increased their attraction. They
Speaker 1: spent more time in the cat treated areas, the cat
Speaker 1: urine areas, okay, And naturally they would have gotten one
Speaker 1: whiff of that and been out of there, right, so
Speaker 1: she and other scientists have repeated this experiment with the
Speaker 1: urin of dog and minks, which also prey on rodents,
Speaker 1: and the effect was so specific to cat her and
Speaker 1: she says that they call it the fatal feline attraction.
Speaker 1: In a sense, the parasite makes the rats sexually attracted
Speaker 1: to death by cat. Yes, they're creating suicide rats really,
Speaker 1: and again this is all pointing back to this disconnection
Speaker 1: of fear circuits, and neuroscientists Robert Sapulski and his colleagues
Speaker 1: found that T GANDHI disconnects these fear circuits in the brain.
Speaker 1: And again that's this isn't somewhat of an explanation for
Speaker 1: these rats losing their aversion to cat odor. Okay, now,
Speaker 1: if I if I might return to the parasites eleven
Speaker 1: analogy here, let's say we want to gain the process
Speaker 1: even further. Al Right, Okay, so we've sort of shut
Speaker 1: down security. But the rat is and or a bird.
Speaker 1: These are creatures that have evolved over millions and millions
Speaker 1: of years to effectively evade the predators that want to
Speaker 1: eat them. All right, so we tweet things so that
Speaker 1: they're attracted to the urine of their predator. But I
Speaker 1: wonder if we could do more. What have we made
Speaker 1: them clumsy? What if we messed with their motor skills?
Speaker 1: Their studies that suggested that this is exactly what happens.
Speaker 1: A little parasitic reprogramming of the brain, and they're able
Speaker 1: to impair the host motor controls. So the parasite cuts
Speaker 1: the host chances of avoiding the cat's jaws and claws
Speaker 1: and winding up in the belly, just gains it a
Speaker 1: little more. And only that, let's add to the mix
Speaker 1: that not only do you lose your fear response and
Speaker 1: your motor control slows down, but let's let's say that
Speaker 1: when you do get a whiff of that good time
Speaker 1: cat you're in, that your dopamine center in your brain
Speaker 1: starts to go nuts. It's like you've released something into
Speaker 1: the air events to sort of pacify the security patrol
Speaker 1: at this hypothetical casino. There you go and you're attracted
Speaker 1: to it, and what do you do? You walk right
Speaker 1: up to a cat and say, I just I just
Speaker 1: had a whiff of your cat. Peek, I like what
Speaker 1: you've got going on there? Why don't we hang out?
Speaker 1: And then the cat, of course, eats it because because
Speaker 1: the cat. In a little bit we'll discuss some possible
Speaker 1: sort of side effects for the cat of the taxo
Speaker 1: infesting it, but for the most part of the cat
Speaker 1: is unaffected. The cat knows what it's doing when it
Speaker 1: comes to killing things and then pooping things. So there's
Speaker 1: not really any need to tinker with that model because
Speaker 1: because if you have a cat, you know that it
Speaker 1: eats and poops very well. So we're too about cats,
Speaker 1: but they've got those two things down. It's like the
Speaker 1: four things they dig, but it's the prey animals, uh,
Speaker 1: in the cycle that they tweak. Yeah, that's right. And
Speaker 1: so as soon as that rat, who has lost all
Speaker 1: sense of fear, presents him or herself to the cat,
Speaker 1: then you know, the t gandhi inside are going. You know, Booya,
Speaker 1: is exactly what we wanted you to do. But what's
Speaker 1: fascinating about that is that that that parasite is in
Speaker 1: the rat's brain really tinkering with it so specifically you know,
Speaker 1: to cat urine and another animal urine that it's attracted to,
Speaker 1: or you know, losing the motor coordination. I mean that
Speaker 1: all of that is fascinating to me. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: turns our previous understandings of how the world works on
Speaker 1: its head, like the idea that at this small level,
Speaker 1: the creatures that we don't even think of as having
Speaker 1: intelligence are manipulating the whole show. You know. They're like
Speaker 1: they're like tiny gods, right, And now the situation is unfolding,
Speaker 1: and there's there's just one researcher, this one scientist who
Speaker 1: looks at this. It looks all these different cases of
Speaker 1: parasites changing behavior in insects and animals and says, m hm,
Speaker 1: you know, but I've been acting kind of strange lately.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I could be infested with something that's
Speaker 1: changing my behavior. And we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but when we get back, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: whether or not we are also controlled by unseen forces
Speaker 1: aka parasites. We're back, and like we mentioned before that
Speaker 1: the parasite he guaranty, wants to get inside a cat again,
Speaker 1: and it wants to do that by getting inside a
Speaker 1: rat or a bird. That's the cycle cat, the rat,
Speaker 1: the cat. But this journey will often lead it into humans,
Speaker 1: which generally is a dead end journey. But it is
Speaker 1: still going to use all of its skills to try
Speaker 1: and get that right and into the belly of a cat.
Speaker 1: It's still programmed to change the host and to manipulate
Speaker 1: the host towards its ultimate goal again the digestive system
Speaker 1: of a feline. So human infestation by T. Gandhi also
Speaker 1: appears to result in some mind puppeting. It appears, you know,
Speaker 1: the jury is still somewhat out, and there's quite a
Speaker 1: kerfuffle about it, but it seems to be some some
Speaker 1: pretty serious evidence that there's tinkering going on in the
Speaker 1: human mind. In fact, biologist Yaroslav Flagger in the n
Speaker 1: as I said before he had begun to suspect that
Speaker 1: a parasite was subtly manipulating his personality. For instance, he
Speaker 1: would cross the road in the middle of trafficked weapon
Speaker 1: without any fear, and in moments of panic he observed
Speaker 1: others freaking out while he remained oddly calm. He realized
Speaker 1: that he also didn't have much of an investment in
Speaker 1: his appearance. He seemed sort of unkempt, introverted, and and uh.
Speaker 1: He remembered learning about reckless ants whose nervous systems had
Speaker 1: been reprogrammed by flatworms, so he remembered this this instance
Speaker 1: in which instead of heading underground, which ants should do
Speaker 1: when the temperature drops, these ants would actually scale a
Speaker 1: blade of grass and chomp down on the top and
Speaker 1: just hang there in the wind until it was gulped
Speaker 1: down by a predator. And this was of course the
Speaker 1: tapeworm um the tapeworms doing so. He'd heard of a
Speaker 1: similar con job in the parasite world, and suddenly he realized,
Speaker 1: what if I'm being con What if the parasites are
Speaker 1: working through me uh in their their master plan? Yep,
Speaker 1: and so on a whim. In at Charles University, where
Speaker 1: his colleagues were searching for infected individuals to test out
Speaker 1: some new kits to see how fancy they were, they
Speaker 1: found that Flagger tested positive for the parasite. So his
Speaker 1: hunch was right. What that led to is this guy
Speaker 1: like doggedly trying to understand this parasite and how it
Speaker 1: behaves in humans, and a bunch of other people of
Speaker 1: late have you know, jumped on the ship to try
Speaker 1: to figure out what's going on as well. So he
Speaker 1: was a man with no fear, he was, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was a man with no fear. And so again, and
Speaker 1: you know looking at rats, and he he looked at
Speaker 1: rats too, and was looking at the same thing. This,
Speaker 1: this disconnecting of the fear center and wondering if his
Speaker 1: own crazy behavior and walking out in the middle of
Speaker 1: traffic was related. And he found in one of his
Speaker 1: studies that this had a direct correlation to people in
Speaker 1: traffic accidents. Yes, according to a two thousand and nine
Speaker 1: study from Charles University in Prague, toxoplasmosis infection could make
Speaker 1: one two point five times more likely to wind up
Speaker 1: in an automobile accident, specifically if you happen to have
Speaker 1: Reese's negative blood, which means you're missing a protein on
Speaker 1: the surface of your blood cells. And this comes around
Speaker 1: to the tinkering we were talking about earlier, that motor
Speaker 1: skills have been adjusted, the fear of death has been adjusted,
Speaker 1: and combine those two out on the road and you
Speaker 1: can make I feel like you can make a definite
Speaker 1: case that you're more susceptible to an automobile wreck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And the two Turkish studies have replicated his studies. Again,
Speaker 1: these are people who have been involved in traffic accidents
Speaker 1: and the accident victims blood was taken and again, it
Speaker 1: was found two and a half times more likely to
Speaker 1: be in traffic accident if you are infested with this parasite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: amazingly enough, the prog studies suggests that between four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand and a million of the world's annual road deaths
Speaker 1: might be due to toxoplasma. Okay, so that's where, of course,
Speaker 1: where people start to put up the red flag and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: don't worry, you can still drive a car. Let's try
Speaker 1: to get more data on this and truly understand whether
Speaker 1: or not it's a cat to that degree correlation, right, right.
Speaker 1: Then Flagger also sorted to say, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: wonder if humans, like rats also have a delay in
Speaker 1: response time, and he studied that. He found in one
Speaker 1: of his studies that there was a slight delay in
Speaker 1: response time for a group infected with two gandhi in
Speaker 1: comparison to their study counterparts. Both groups were asked to
Speaker 1: press a button when they saw a white square appear
Speaker 1: against a dark background. So yeah, the actually delay time
Speaker 1: is pretty subtle, but is very distinct that there was
Speaker 1: a delay in people with T gandhi. Fliger also noted
Speaker 1: that T gandhi men and women developed subtle personality changes.
Speaker 1: The men were more prone to be introverted, suspicious, and
Speaker 1: rule break, rule breakers as well as sort of unkempt,
Speaker 1: while women were more outgoing, trusting, rule abiding, and paid
Speaker 1: much more attention to their appearance. And he determined this
Speaker 1: by first giving them personality tests. Then he began to
Speaker 1: test the emerging data that came out of those personality tests. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, um he would test trust levels by saying, hey, here,
Speaker 1: drink this unidentified liquid, and again, the Ti Gandhi men
Speaker 1: were more likely to be very suspicious of this, where
Speaker 1: the whereas the Ti Gan women were like, hey, okay, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll have a sip of it. He also gauged the
Speaker 1: amount of time subjects spent with friends and how subjects
Speaker 1: valued their appearance. Another potential byproduct of infestation by T
Speaker 1: Gandhi is depression. There's some research into this from the
Speaker 1: Stanley Research Medical Institute of Maryland, and they found that
Speaker 1: people infected with toxoplasma are at greater risk of developing depression.
Speaker 1: There was even one case, and this was a study
Speaker 1: published in BMC Psychiatry that studied a depressed thirty two
Speaker 1: year old male who only responded to added pressence after
Speaker 1: being treated for toxoplasmosis. It's one of these cases where
Speaker 1: we're not sure this is actually part of the grand
Speaker 1: design of the parasite, because they've also there's some studies
Speaker 1: that they think that there might be some mild depression
Speaker 1: in cats when they have an acute infestation of T
Speaker 1: gandhi in their systems. But it's another reason to be
Speaker 1: I guess a little well. In the article also points
Speaker 1: out the behavioral differences among genders, and they wonder like,
Speaker 1: why could that be so very different? And one of
Speaker 1: the because it seems to make women more fun, right,
Speaker 1: I mean more spend more yeah, uh, and having a
Speaker 1: good time. They're they're more promiscuous living up, whereas the
Speaker 1: men become sullen, shut in men with bad attitudes and
Speaker 1: worse hygiene. Yeah, pretty much just sort of like a
Speaker 1: little bit retreating to their caves, I guess you could say.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean that the idea is that the
Speaker 1: T GANDHI relating to depression does increase anxiety in people,
Speaker 1: and that these are just sort of the coping mechanisms
Speaker 1: that come up when you're experiencing anxiety. I don't know
Speaker 1: that I've ever been really anxious and decided that I
Speaker 1: would just drop five bucks and then go out and
Speaker 1: be super social. But I don't know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: this is again this is a bit of the mystery
Speaker 1: behind T. Gandhi and how it's working in humans. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that was brought up in this
Speaker 1: article that's that's also pretty intriguing m is schizophrenia and
Speaker 1: hat fancying and how they all relate to T. Gandhi
Speaker 1: referencing the stereotype of the old cat lady, the crazy
Speaker 1: old cat lady, right, well, well lots of cats and
Speaker 1: is a little adult. It has been pointed out that
Speaker 1: schizophrenia didn't really come onto the scene until the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: about the same time that people began keeping cats as pets,
Speaker 1: and this became like a something that just spread throughout
Speaker 1: the world, became like really cool to keep cut to
Speaker 1: domesticated in that way, and your keep it with you
Speaker 1: in your house where you have obviously much more interaction
Speaker 1: with it. A ka feces on your hands sort of,
Speaker 1: I mean not directly all the time, but there are
Speaker 1: more opportunities for infection. Right. So, there's a psychiatrist by
Speaker 1: the name of E. Fuller Tori and he, along with
Speaker 1: Robert Yulkin, a neuro virologist at Johns Hopkins University, surveyed
Speaker 1: a subset of seventy epidemiology studies from the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: And these weren't just random papers. The study these they
Speaker 1: were pretty rigorous in terms of their scientific standards. And
Speaker 1: they found that schizophrenic patients with taxo are missing gray
Speaker 1: matter in their brains. Okay, and that sounds like what, um,
Speaker 1: you know, It's just it's a little bit more complicated
Speaker 1: than that, and subtle Torre and Yo can found that
Speaker 1: the mental illness is two to three times as common
Speaker 1: in people who have the parasite as in controls from
Speaker 1: the same region. Okay, so this is giving us some
Speaker 1: interesting evidence that t GANDHI could perhaps affect your brain
Speaker 1: and the reasons for depression or schizophrenia or anxiety. The
Speaker 1: thing is is that a lot of schizophrenia patients show
Speaker 1: shrinkage in parts of their cerebral cortex. Twelve of forty
Speaker 1: four schizophrenia patients who underwent m r I scans the
Speaker 1: team found had reduced gray matter in their brain. Okay,
Speaker 1: and the decrease occurred almost exclusively in those who tested
Speaker 1: positive for T gandhi. So what Flagler and a lot
Speaker 1: of people are starting to interpret those results as is
Speaker 1: that the parasite may trigger schizophrenia and genetically so uptible people.
Speaker 1: So the genetic part comes into play because what they
Speaker 1: think is that that this connection with schizophrenia running and
Speaker 1: people's families is connected to genes that may have been
Speaker 1: passed down with a deficient immune response to invaders like
Speaker 1: T gandhi. So it's not a situation where cats are
Speaker 1: just pooping out schizophrenia. Jesy, right, right, right, then this
Speaker 1: is a subtle distinction. I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: It's not just like, hey, humans infected. Now I'm going
Speaker 1: to have a kid, and I'm going to have a
Speaker 1: kid with T gandhi and schizophrenia. Now, it's more like,
Speaker 1: to use the parasites of leven analogy, the burglars are
Speaker 1: crawling through the duck work into the main frame. They're
Speaker 1: tweaking the security on the host, and then oh, you
Speaker 1: happen to have a switch over here for schizophrenia, and
Speaker 1: they hit it with their elbow. Yes, Because they know
Speaker 1: that genes that are most commonly associated with schizophrenia relate
Speaker 1: to the immune system. Okay, So all it means is
Speaker 1: that you could have had these genes passed down, which
Speaker 1: would give you a weekend immune respon to the parasite
Speaker 1: if you happen to be infected with it, which may
Speaker 1: relate to triggering schizophrenia. This is one of those things
Speaker 1: like you could not make this up if you tried, right,
Speaker 1: So this is what is rattling a lot of people's
Speaker 1: cages because we don't really quite have a complete understanding
Speaker 1: of how this works. Yeah, that we're beginning to understand
Speaker 1: the scheme that is playing out at the parasitic levels,
Speaker 1: and it can be intimidating and a little scary. Like
Speaker 1: when I first researched the topic a couple of years back,
Speaker 1: it kind of messed with my relationship with my cat
Speaker 1: for for like a couple of weeks, because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm suddenly looking at the cat like you. I thought
Speaker 1: you were my friend. I thought we were cool, but
Speaker 1: you may have a parasite that might be changing me
Speaker 1: into a frumpy, grumpy shut in. Uh, you know, destroying
Speaker 1: my relationship with my spouse, trying to get me in
Speaker 1: a car wreck, and ultimately in a cat's belly while
Speaker 1: while making my already suspect motor skills even sloppier. I
Speaker 1: felt kind of weird about it, and I was kind
Speaker 1: of I don't really know if I want you sleeping
Speaker 1: on the bed sleeping on the bed. But but we
Speaker 1: repaired things after that, and right there still needs to
Speaker 1: be a lot of research on these different aspects of
Speaker 1: t GANDHI and how it works in humans right to
Speaker 1: to nobody needs to really go off the deepend and
Speaker 1: get tested right now and be afraid of their cats,
Speaker 1: because it's easy to to self diagnose with any anything really,
Speaker 1: because it's something like this. You think, well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I haven't gone out and been social lately. Maybe I
Speaker 1: have a parasite. I'm not that good of a driver,
Speaker 1: maybe I have a parasite. It's right, it's easy to
Speaker 1: self diagnosed like that. But what I ended up telling
Speaker 1: myself I ended up looking at that figure, like, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty and six, between thirty and six in the global population.
Speaker 1: I started looking at the amount of time I had
Speaker 1: already lived around my cat or other cats, and and
Speaker 1: I ultimately had to decide, well, yeah, if I got it,
Speaker 1: I got it. If I don't. I don't. It's well,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if this is going to be comforting.
Speaker 1: But this sort of infestation and behavioral changes, uh, it's
Speaker 1: not really that uncommon. It's not just this parasite, right,
Speaker 1: It's not a case where oh, I am completely in
Speaker 1: charge of my own destiny and then it moves the
Speaker 1: parasite and changes things around. I think we've we've done
Speaker 1: enough podcasts on similar topics that I think long time
Speaker 1: listeners already have a good idea that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of There are a lot of burglars in the
Speaker 1: ductwork already, right right, there are other microscopic puppeteers, I
Speaker 1: guess you could say, because nothing of the own complexity
Speaker 1: of our own cognitive process, and how free will and
Speaker 1: subsurface cognition are already altering, well not altering, but dictating
Speaker 1: the way we perceive the world and perceive ourselves. Right,
Speaker 1: we already know that, you know, our bacterial cells out
Speaker 1: number are our cells, you know, tend to one. So
Speaker 1: we really are just the hosts hanging our own To
Speaker 1: that point too, let's look at the flu. Right, there
Speaker 1: are studies that say that perhaps the flu changes our behavior.
Speaker 1: There's one study at Colorado State University that showed that
Speaker 1: when subjects were given a flu vaccination, essentially stoking the
Speaker 1: subject's immune response, they doubled the amount of people they
Speaker 1: came into contact with during the time that they were
Speaker 1: maximally contagious. So these were introverted people in the first place,
Speaker 1: who you know. They started to keep tabs on um
Speaker 1: the behavior of these people who have been infected. I'm
Speaker 1: doing some air quotes uninfected um and and they did
Speaker 1: find that they were seeking out more and more people
Speaker 1: to commune with, which sort of leads us down this
Speaker 1: path of is the flu encouraging us to be more
Speaker 1: social so that it can spread itself. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: there is a woman named Janice Moore who is one
Speaker 1: of the Flu studies researchers, and she also looked at
Speaker 1: other human pathogens like AIDS, syphilis, and her peace. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the reason she did that is because at the
Speaker 1: end of stages of AIDS and the outbreak stages of
Speaker 1: syphilis and herpes, people report in intense craving for sex. Again,
Speaker 1: the idea is that the pathogen is rewiring the host
Speaker 1: to spread itself. It's not enough that the the life
Speaker 1: cycle is in place, but let's tweak the host organism
Speaker 1: in a manner to optimize it's spread to other host organisms. Again,
Speaker 1: I find a little bit of comfort and and just
Speaker 1: knowing that it's not just T. Gandhi that is, because
Speaker 1: that was a very comforting statement you made that all right, Well, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's all. That's a bit depressing. But
Speaker 1: what I guess my point is is in your point
Speaker 1: to is that there are a lot of other burglars
Speaker 1: bungling the duct work, as you say, and in their
Speaker 1: already yes, exactly. Yeah. And here's another thing too again,
Speaker 1: don't look at your cats suspiciously quite yet, um, Indoor
Speaker 1: cats pose no threat because they don't carry the parasite.
Speaker 1: They're not outside being infected by the parasite. In theory, yes,
Speaker 1: in theory. I've also seen some studies that are really
Speaker 1: making the case. Though. You would have to have had
Speaker 1: this cat in an impregnable fortress its entire life for
Speaker 1: it not to have the potential to be exposed. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so don't so don't suddenly free all my goodness, if
Speaker 1: my cat darts out the door, he's you know, he
Speaker 1: or she's going to be in toxo. No, no, no. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, as for outdoor cats, they shew the parasite
Speaker 1: just for a couple of weeks of their life, typically
Speaker 1: when they're young and they've just begun hunting, okay, and
Speaker 1: so that's just a pretty brief period. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things you could do is just make sure
Speaker 1: that you keep everything super clean during that time period
Speaker 1: if you do have a new cat, a new kitten
Speaker 1: that is out and about hunting around, and of course,
Speaker 1: you know, washing her hands, you know, handling catlet or
Speaker 1: all of that stuff is just common sense. Don't let
Speaker 1: them on the dinner table, scrub your vegetables, eat cooked meat,
Speaker 1: pretty well cooked. You know. I think it's the cat bowl.
Speaker 1: Don't have a picnic in the sandbox that all the
Speaker 1: neighborhood cats poo in, that kind of thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean common sense stuff. Yeah, don't make cat pooh popsicles, um,
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff like that. But here's the thing
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of interesting is that Martina Nava Latova,
Speaker 1: oh tennis player, famous tennis player. She's playing against Pam
Speaker 1: s Driver in the U S Open. She loses miserably
Speaker 1: and she turns around and says, you know what, this
Speaker 1: is the reason why I lost taxoplasmosis because she had it.
Speaker 1: She says that she ate cocktail nuts that were contaminated
Speaker 1: by a cat. Don't ask me how why that happened.
Speaker 1: I remember reading that too. I'm like, how did by
Speaker 1: a cat? Did you see the cat like peeing in
Speaker 1: the nuts? And then you like absent mindedly ate something
Speaker 1: like all crap, Maybe these are like coffee beans like
Speaker 1: and goats, the same sort of idea that you could
Speaker 1: get these super gore may nuts that they passed through cats, right,
Speaker 1: num first, I mean it sounds like a situation where
Speaker 1: I mean, if I screwed up or did something that
Speaker 1: I didn't think was in keeping with my normal behavior
Speaker 1: or performance, I could probably make a case. Oh I
Speaker 1: bet I have talks so and just based on the
Speaker 1: numbers we looking at early, there's what you know, thirty
Speaker 1: to six percent chance I'm right, and then I'll play
Speaker 1: and then I can have the medical reports say here,
Speaker 1: there you go, Taxa. That's the reason I was dogging
Speaker 1: it last week. I wonder if Martina Navratlova looks at
Speaker 1: this and says, yeah, I've been saying this for years
Speaker 1: now changed my behavior. I feel vindicated. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: that I had sour grapes from losing. There's a real
Speaker 1: problem here. And I totally remember that time period because
Speaker 1: I spent like ten thousand dollars going out all the time,
Speaker 1: trusting everybody whooping it up. Yeah, well, she just needs
Speaker 1: to be careful about about mixed nuts, is all, don't
Speaker 1: we all? All right, Well, let's let's call the robe
Speaker 1: it over here and collect a little listener mill. Here's
Speaker 1: one I received from Heidi. Heidi writes and it says,
Speaker 1: hello there. I love the podcast. It is one of
Speaker 1: my absolute favorites. I had to share a few incidents
Speaker 1: I've experienced that are related to your recent podcast on art.
Speaker 1: I am a classical musician, and I have had many
Speaker 1: opportunities to be overwhelmed by music, art, poetry, etcetera. When
Speaker 1: I was about twenty two, I visited the Buffalo Museum
Speaker 1: of Art and went to see the Picassos on exhibit.
Speaker 1: To my surprise, when I viewed the Cubist pieces, I
Speaker 1: was almost ill. I had such a visceral reaction to
Speaker 1: the work that I couldn't explain, and I still vividly
Speaker 1: remember it. Over twenty years later, I thought there was
Speaker 1: something wrong with me, or that I was just lacking culture.
Speaker 1: The second incident occurred when I visited the Sistine Chapel
Speaker 1: in Rome about ten years later. We decided to take
Speaker 1: the Long Museum tour. Big mistake. The artwork is mixed
Speaker 1: together and cramped in in there like a Victorian living room.
Speaker 1: By the time we hit the Raphaels near the end
Speaker 1: of the tour, I had my hands cupped on the
Speaker 1: side of my face to block out everything but the
Speaker 1: path ahead of me. I ran out of out of
Speaker 1: there because I couldn't stand another minute. Again, I thought
Speaker 1: I was insane. I'm so fascinated by this topic and
Speaker 1: it actually makes me feel better knowing that other people
Speaker 1: experienced similar strong reactions to art work. Anyway, I thought
Speaker 1: i'd share. You and Julie are great height think so, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's Stenhill syndrome is people feeling over welmed by
Speaker 1: the artwork in front of them. And I couldn't help
Speaker 1: but think about that secret room, the purported the secret Room,
Speaker 1: and the Sustaine Chapel with all of the naughty artwork.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's culture. I'm not up on this
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so it's supposedly that's all like the
Speaker 1: nefarious stuff. And you know, during the years, I think
Speaker 1: they've rotated things in and out depending on what the
Speaker 1: idea was of that particular sculpture, whether it was pagan
Speaker 1: or whether or not it just had naughty parts and
Speaker 1: lots of them. Um. But can you imagine if all
Speaker 1: that stuff was was rolled out, yeah, just and crammed
Speaker 1: next to each other on the wall. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'd like to think that the priest go in therey
Speaker 1: once while and just get a little Stenthall syndrome just
Speaker 1: looking at all of that amazing nefarious artworks. Here's another
Speaker 1: one that we received on the topic of Stindall syndrome.
Speaker 1: This one's from Kyle. Kyle writes in I wanted to
Speaker 1: write in about your Stendall Syndrome podcast. I can't say
Speaker 1: that I had an instance of losing it or going
Speaker 1: weak in the knees while looking at a piece of art,
Speaker 1: but I remember the first time I had that kind
Speaker 1: of experience. It was my first time in Europe. I
Speaker 1: was doing a study abroad program in Italy. Within a
Speaker 1: day of our arrival, we went to the Vatican and
Speaker 1: I saw La Patita de Michelangelo. Gotta do it right?
Speaker 1: So does that Italian? Enough? If if I tried to
Speaker 1: do the Italian, it would just sound Australian. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then it would it might lapse into a bad Russian accent.
Speaker 1: I remember vividly that I was just so taken with
Speaker 1: the piece when I saw it. I couldn't believe how
Speaker 1: realistic it was. Your podcast made me think about this moment.
Speaker 1: Because I had only been in Europe for less than
Speaker 1: twenty four hours and they had been walking through the Vatican.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that I was already under the influence of
Speaker 1: culture shock and overwhelmed by the size and grandeur of St.
Speaker 1: Peter's Basilica. I didn't have any real formal knowledge of
Speaker 1: the piece, and I do come from the Christian upbringing,
Speaker 1: and like everyone else on the planet, I had heard
Speaker 1: about the talent of Michelangelo for years as being a
Speaker 1: great artist, even if some of that knowledge was gained
Speaker 1: by a spark of interest drawing from the teenage mutant
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles. Anyway, I immediately bought the postcard of the
Speaker 1: statue at the gift shop, and I continue to have
Speaker 1: great appreciation for this and all of Michaelangela's work. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the great podcast. He's truly one of my favorites. Cool. Thanks, Kyle.
Speaker 1: Having been to Rome a couple of times, I do
Speaker 1: have to say like I am completely overwhelmed by that
Speaker 1: city from Georgia. Yes, no, rom Italy and uh. I
Speaker 1: often wonder like if you are a Roman born and
Speaker 1: bred there, would you completely freak out if you went
Speaker 1: to America and if you went to Rome, Georgia, Georgia.
Speaker 1: But on the flip side of the coin, like if
Speaker 1: you saw the void or if you saw like the
Speaker 1: amount of strip malls or something. I mean, these things
Speaker 1: just obviously don't exist to to a Roman, right, like
Speaker 1: a strip mall? What is that? Um? I mean because
Speaker 1: you know that I've got bits of crazy like eight
Speaker 1: hundred BC architecture in my backyard. Do they have something
Speaker 1: they're called like strip mall Syndrome? Uh? You know, I
Speaker 1: wonder if they do. I remember when I was first
Speaker 1: driving down to Atlanta on a SIMI regular basis, and
Speaker 1: I was driving from rural Middletonnessee. Yeah, yeah, rural middle
Speaker 1: Middletonnessee and uh and and I've been to some major
Speaker 1: cities a lot, but that then you know, it's necessarily
Speaker 1: looking out the window and really taking it in. But
Speaker 1: I remember just really looking at the sprawl, and I
Speaker 1: still get this, Like, I'll look at the sprawl around
Speaker 1: Atlanta and I'll think, who are all these people? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are they? And what do they do? And how Even
Speaker 1: if I'm downtown and the Midtown, I A, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at these buildings and I'm like, who lives here? Who
Speaker 1: are these people? And I get a sense of that
Speaker 1: everywhere I go. It's just kind of overwhelming at times
Speaker 1: to just just sort of stand back and try and
Speaker 1: understand these places that are folding out all around you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and you know, Atlanta has a really a very
Speaker 1: particular character too. It's a very wealthy city. So sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't know if you are struck with this all.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we like, who are all these captains of the
Speaker 1: industry and where are they getting all their money? What
Speaker 1: is daily life like for these people. Here's another bit
Speaker 1: of listener mail, this one calling back to our episode
Speaker 1: on spontaneous human combustion. This is from a listener by
Speaker 1: the name of Duty. Judy says, love the show. You
Speaker 1: make l a traffic enjoyable. Uh, that's that's the statement,
Speaker 1: that's the statement I had an experience with spontaneous combustion.
Speaker 1: We had painted the kitchen and awoke the next morning
Speaker 1: to find the floor and counters covered in a fine soit.
Speaker 1: A pack of matches had ignited and burned the counter
Speaker 1: as well. My father, an electrical engineer, fiorized that the
Speaker 1: paint fumes in the still room were ignited from a
Speaker 1: small spark generated by the refrigerator cycling on. Interestingly, the
Speaker 1: fire alarm had not been activated either. All right, So
Speaker 1: there you have it. If you would like to share
Speaker 1: something with us, you can find us on Facebook, and
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter. Facebook. We're stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. On Twitter, our handle is blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: Do let us know what you think about toxic plus moses,
Speaker 1: about your cap, about the parasitic infestations that maybe puppeteering
Speaker 1: our brain even as we speak. We'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. Yeah, and if you want to know the
Speaker 1: name of that article again, it is how Your Cat
Speaker 1: Is Making You Crazy by Kathleen mcculiffe. And that's the
Speaker 1: march to a twelve edition at the Atlantic. You can
Speaker 1: also go onto the CDC's website and check out more
Speaker 1: information about toxoplasmosa, and you can always send us your
Speaker 1: thoughts via email at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stup Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.