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Speaker 1: from House Stuffworks dot com? Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I've got a big brain, Chuck has a big brain.
Speaker 1: Mine is smaller than yours. It's true. You know who
Speaker 1: had an average sized brain? I do? Albert Einstein? Fantastic.
Speaker 1: So we've got our segue. Let's talk about Einstein's brain, Chuck,
Speaker 1: that's a good idea. All start apparently, all right, you're ready. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Einstein was very well aware of his renown, right as
Speaker 1: I don't think he may have been a hyper intelligent person,
Speaker 1: but I don't think he had a big head. But
Speaker 1: he was aware of the kind of cult of personality
Speaker 1: that the world loves, right, he was aware of his
Speaker 1: own fame. Yeah, and he didn't want to end up
Speaker 1: just some you know, venerated saint of mathematics, so he
Speaker 1: asked that he his body be cremated upon his death
Speaker 1: in yeah, April eighteenth nifty five, the day the year
Speaker 1: the Earth stood still. Um and uh, he said, specifically
Speaker 1: didn't want people to come worship at his bones. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was kind of taking I thought that sounded a
Speaker 1: little cocky, but a little but again, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think he was a very cocky fellow. I don't want
Speaker 1: people to worship with my bones either, so it's something
Speaker 1: we have in common. I could live with that. Actually,
Speaker 1: you could be fine. You want people to worship your bones. So, Um,
Speaker 1: Einstein's wish was nine percent fulfilled if we're speaking weight wise,
Speaker 1: because the brain actually makes up about two percent of
Speaker 1: the body weight on average. So it sounds to me
Speaker 1: like you're saying he's buried without his brains. Yes, he was,
Speaker 1: my friend. Did you know that? I did. Of course
Speaker 1: you did, so, Chuck. This guy, who was, as far
Speaker 1: as I could tell, a pretty standard pathologist, UM, working
Speaker 1: at Princeton University's hospital, was charged with doing the autopsy
Speaker 1: on Einstein, and I guess he was kind of struck
Speaker 1: with this moment of inspiration where he realized that he
Speaker 1: was holding Einstein's brain and that surely this brain had
Speaker 1: some sort of secrets to some value to be each part. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: there had to be something here. This guy, I mean,
Speaker 1: Einstein was just as as big as it gets. He
Speaker 1: he you know, so many other physicists had come before
Speaker 1: him and we're we're just UM had gotten all of
Speaker 1: their their genius out very early on. Newton did it,
Speaker 1: and Einstein did it to a certain extent. But he
Speaker 1: he also did continue working, you know, longer than was average. UM.
Speaker 1: And this guy just wanted to know. He just couldn't
Speaker 1: bring himself to cremating the brain of the smartest man
Speaker 1: of the twentieth cent I might have been with him there,
Speaker 1: you know. Thomas Thomas Harvey and Thomas Harvey. Thomas Harvey
Speaker 1: stole Einstein's brain. No one can sue us for that
Speaker 1: because it really happened. Oh it did it did so
Speaker 1: Harvey basically takes Einstein's brain I imagine, throws it in
Speaker 1: some fromale hide in a jar, and Um holds it
Speaker 1: hostage until he gets permission from one of Einstein's sons
Speaker 1: to study it. Right. I saw a head in a
Speaker 1: bucket once. Tell me about ever tell you that story
Speaker 1: a little sidebar. Uh, Yeah, it was when I was
Speaker 1: working in the film industry in Los Angeles and I
Speaker 1: was doing some work at I guess I won't mention
Speaker 1: the hospital. They might not might frown upon hearing this broadcast,
Speaker 1: but a hospital in l A. We were doing a
Speaker 1: job there, and one of the researchers pulled me a
Speaker 1: signs and, hey, man, you want to see a head
Speaker 1: in a bucket? And I said, yeah, I'd love to
Speaker 1: see a head in a bucket, no doubt. Took me
Speaker 1: in a room, brought out a bucket and it had
Speaker 1: this you know, elderly man's head floating in it. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't in a jet glass jar. It was an
Speaker 1: open bucket with no lid. And I looked down into
Speaker 1: it to this head. Was he looking up at you? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: he wasn't. That is the most amazing thing that anyone
Speaker 1: I knows ever do. I just wanted to get that
Speaker 1: out there. That is very, very surreal. That's yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: bet it was slightly. It doesn't haunt me, but I
Speaker 1: can picture it in my mind's eye still. And that was,
Speaker 1: you know, probably five years ago. Easy. How's he looking,
Speaker 1: milky eyes? He looked like an old guy with you know,
Speaker 1: without a body in a bucket. Wow, everybody else, no idea. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well's brain doesn't seem nearly as cool, right, Um, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess we'll just talk about it anyway, right, So, um,
Speaker 1: Harvey's got Einstein's brain in a glass jar. And now
Speaker 1: he's secured permission to study it. So he cuts it
Speaker 1: into like twos as far as I understand, and he
Speaker 1: encases him all he preserves him in ste lloydn right. Well,
Speaker 1: he waited first. First he did a few um measurements,
Speaker 1: just to make sure photographed, you're right, yeah, And and
Speaker 1: heavily photographed, just to make sure that there was nothing
Speaker 1: that stood out and nothing did it weighed about the
Speaker 1: Sam's and the other brain. He also, I think, did
Speaker 1: a study first of the the brain cells. They were
Speaker 1: they were average sized, there was an average amount of
Speaker 1: and by by all rights, Einstein's brain looked pretty average.
Speaker 1: But you know, Harvey quickly became obsessed with the notion
Speaker 1: that Einstein's brain was not average, that there was something
Speaker 1: fundamentally different about it that we could point to. And
Speaker 1: who knows, I mean, maybe if we can figure out
Speaker 1: how Einstein's brain was different, we can start, you know,
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um. So Harvey cuts the thing
Speaker 1: into pieces after he's catalog did and documented it, and
Speaker 1: he starts sending it to researchers whose work he finds interesting.
Speaker 1: These are people around the world. Each one, I imagine
Speaker 1: was contact at first, I don't think. They just got
Speaker 1: a piece of Einstein's brain and the mail and they're like,
Speaker 1: what the hell is this? You know? Um, So he
Speaker 1: contact him and say, I think your works interesting. I've
Speaker 1: got Einstein's brain. I want to send you some pieces
Speaker 1: to study and compare it using your of the view
Speaker 1: of your work. Yeah. I bet he didn't get a
Speaker 1: lot of people that decline that opportunity. No, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: think so. Yeah. So, um, he's expecting very quickly that
Speaker 1: Einstein's brain is going to give up its secrets, and
Speaker 1: the waiting game began. It didn't we have still to
Speaker 1: this day. I'm gonna go ahead and cut to the end,
Speaker 1: the big finish. We're still not entirely certain how how
Speaker 1: Einstein's brain worked. But um, yeah, we'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a minute. Harvey, under this obsession basically turns into
Speaker 1: something of a weirdo actually, kind of the Howard Hughes
Speaker 1: of pathology of brain. Yeah. Every once in a while
Speaker 1: a reporter would um would look him up because he
Speaker 1: basically just disappeared with the brain. UM. And one guy
Speaker 1: found him living in Kansas, UM, and the brain was
Speaker 1: in a jar in an old cider box behind a
Speaker 1: beer cool Right. So this guy Harvey's probably you know,
Speaker 1: taking orders from his cats, and Einstein's brains just sitting there, chilling,
Speaker 1: waiting to, you know, be studied again. Finally, thirty years
Speaker 1: after Einstein's brain is stolen by Harvey, Uh, he finds
Speaker 1: out about the work of this um woman named Dr
Speaker 1: Marion Diamond. You want to talk about Dr Diamond, Chuck? Right.
Speaker 1: Dr Diamond worked at cal Berkeley and uh studied the
Speaker 1: plasticity of the brain of rats brains and she rat,
Speaker 1: I don't um. She found out that rats um that
Speaker 1: had more enriching environments had more robust brains. Uh, specifically
Speaker 1: the glial g l I A L. Someone pronouncing glial cells? Yes,
Speaker 1: is that correct? Yeah, you're right, no, neurosis surgeon, I
Speaker 1: think it's glial. Yeah, so we'll call it glial cells. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they had more glial cells and aasition to their
Speaker 1: other neurons. And so she thought, let me take a
Speaker 1: look at Einstein's brain and see if the same thing holds. Now.
Speaker 1: Glial cells are basically um they they clean up this uh,
Speaker 1: these potassium ions. Potassium is actually discharged by a neuron
Speaker 1: when it fires right, So after time, the potassium kind
Speaker 1: of builds up. It's a waste product. And if it
Speaker 1: builds up enough and neuron camp fire properly shuts down.
Speaker 1: If you have enough glial cells to keep the neurons clean,
Speaker 1: then they should be able to fire properly. And by logic,
Speaker 1: the more glial cells you have, the more um, the
Speaker 1: smarter you should be, because the cleaner your neurons are. Exactly,
Speaker 1: and this is actually what she found was that Einstein
Speaker 1: had a higher ratio of glia cells uh to other
Speaker 1: neurons and uh. She basically hypothesized that this means that
Speaker 1: he had, you know, more rapidly firing neurons and other
Speaker 1: people However, yeah, asked and answered no, not quite answered
Speaker 1: because she wasn't exactly comparing against like brains. Um, Einstein
Speaker 1: was older than the other brains, and glial cells divide
Speaker 1: over the course of your life, right, So Einstein was
Speaker 1: what seventy when he died, and she was comparing the
Speaker 1: average age of the brain that she was comparing Einstein's
Speaker 1: brain to sixty four. So that right, there is terrible methodology.
Speaker 1: That's not the end of it. That's not the end
Speaker 1: of it. Um, so in theory, he would have more
Speaker 1: glial cells just because he's twelve years older than these
Speaker 1: other brains. And she didn't take into account i Q
Speaker 1: score either. Well, she didn't even know whose brains these
Speaker 1: were as far as I know exactly, so she had
Speaker 1: no idea what kind of brain intelligence level that she
Speaker 1: was comparing Einstein too. And even worse than that, apparently
Speaker 1: there's twenty eight ways to measure glial cells, and she
Speaker 1: threw out any measurement that didn't support her hypothesis. So
Speaker 1: I don't understand how this woman had funding. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: was at UC Berkeley too. I mean she wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: like the Mexico City upstairs medical clinic. This is like
Speaker 1: what I did in my in my seventh grade sign
Speaker 1: it's fair project. If the results studying glial cells, will
Speaker 1: know But if the study, if whatever I was doing,
Speaker 1: if the results didn't match up, I just didn't use them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, yeah, sure, yeah that is that's seventh
Speaker 1: grade science fair project stuff. So yeah, this this comes out,
Speaker 1: and um, Harvey, I imagine it's a little dismayed by this,
Speaker 1: and I it probably ruined Dr Diamond's career. Um, but
Speaker 1: Harvey was a very patient, obsessed man, as we've said,
Speaker 1: and he continued to wait. And then finally about ten
Speaker 1: years after the diamond thing, and this was hullabaloo. I
Speaker 1: mean this is huge, Like it was touted in newspapers
Speaker 1: all over the place, news media. Everybody was like, We've
Speaker 1: got Einstein's brain figured out. And then it came out
Speaker 1: like her methodology wasn't holding up. So you know, there's
Speaker 1: a real high and then you know there's an equal
Speaker 1: low um. And then about ten years after that, another
Speaker 1: woman's work. This this woman's name was Dr Sandro Whittleson,
Speaker 1: Britt Anderson. No, Britt Anderson turned Harvey onto Whittleson's work.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, britt Anderson, just for the second time I
Speaker 1: cut you out of the podcast. I wanted to mention, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Britt Anderson at a University of Alabama, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: you go ahead with britt Anderson. Well, britt um was
Speaker 1: studying the size of men and women's brains are in
Speaker 1: the differences, and yeah, you're right. He turned him onto
Speaker 1: this other doctor so right, whose name was Dr Sandra Whittleson.
Speaker 1: She's at McMasters University in Ontario. Our fair neighbor to
Speaker 1: the north. And um, she basically she had a bunch
Speaker 1: of brains. Yeah, a nice collection of like brains, and
Speaker 1: she had data on all of them. She knew whether
Speaker 1: the people were insane, she knew what their IQs were. Um,
Speaker 1: she she had a lot. Yeah, she had a lot
Speaker 1: of good data and some good brains to study to
Speaker 1: compare Einstein's brain to um, and actually she had quite
Speaker 1: a breakthrough she did. Um, there's this thing called the
Speaker 1: Sylvian fisher and it's breaks your parietal lobe. Right. Your
Speaker 1: parietal lobe is responsible for mathematical skills, spatial reasoning, three
Speaker 1: dimensional visualization, all of which would come in handy for
Speaker 1: a guy like Einstein. He was pretty much the master
Speaker 1: of all those. So if the Sylvan Fisher is absent
Speaker 1: or not pronounced as Dr Whittleson found, Einstein's was, Um,
Speaker 1: the parietal lobe would be bigger. You could pack more
Speaker 1: more brain cells in there and wider than Yeah. Sure exactly,
Speaker 1: which is assuming a lot because neither of us have
Speaker 1: been autopsy yet. True. So Um, basically what Dr Wilson
Speaker 1: said was, Okay, we now know that uh, Einstein had
Speaker 1: a fifteen percent wider parietal lobe than the average person
Speaker 1: that could account for it. We don't know. Basically, what
Speaker 1: she's done is set a benchmark um where brain research
Speaker 1: is going to have to catch up to to either
Speaker 1: prove or disprove, because we don't have the technology to say,
Speaker 1: or we don't have a fundamental understanding of the brain
Speaker 1: yet to say whether that's what it was or not.
Speaker 1: But it's nice to know what's out there exactly the
Speaker 1: physical difference. Yeah, there definitely was. Dr Whittilson basically said,
Speaker 1: whenever you guys can catch up to it, here's what's
Speaker 1: different about Einstein's brain disproved. Um. But our our Steam
Speaker 1: colleague Molly Edmonds brought up I thought what I thought
Speaker 1: was a very interesting point, um, and that is that
Speaker 1: it's is it dangerous to study things like physiological abnormalities? Um?
Speaker 1: She she brings up. You know, if you really look
Speaker 1: at Einstein's brain, the parrietal lobe, especially with a lack
Speaker 1: of understanding of what it's exactly doing, um, then one
Speaker 1: could make the argument that a physician would have told
Speaker 1: Einstein's mother that her son's brain was damaged, which could
Speaker 1: have limited him for the rest of his life. He
Speaker 1: may never become a mathematician. She may not even put
Speaker 1: him in school exactly why bother you know. So I
Speaker 1: thought that was a really interesting point in one worth discussing, right,
Speaker 1: because well, Einstein also had a delayed speech development, and
Speaker 1: so coupled with that a parent might have been, you know, concerned. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: apparently he used to um write his address down in
Speaker 1: his arm every day, so when he inevitably get lost, UM,
Speaker 1: he just kind of look and asked somebody if they
Speaker 1: could take him there. Right, He was a hell of
Speaker 1: a guy. Yeah, And just a nice little bow on
Speaker 1: the end of this gift to our listeners. Uh. The
Speaker 1: Harvey actually returned the brain before he died to Princeton Hospital,
Speaker 1: which I thought he died in nineteen nine, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: two thousand seven at the age of ninety four, and
Speaker 1: he returned the brain back to Princeton. He did. He
Speaker 1: actually kind of bequeathed it to the resident pathologist at
Speaker 1: Princeton University Hospital, UM, who basically now is shackled with
Speaker 1: this thing totally around. UM. An extra little aside which
Speaker 1: I thought was pretty interesting, A guy named Michael Paternity
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Driving with Mr Albert. Michael paternity.
Speaker 1: That's the way I took it. That's a great name. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book called Driving with Mr Albert, I believe,
Speaker 1: and it is about driving on one of the many
Speaker 1: cross country trips that Harvey took with Einstein's brain. Apparently
Speaker 1: he did it a lot. Sounds like a movie in
Speaker 1: the works. I I think so too. It's gonna beat
Speaker 1: Tuesday with more. I can tell you so. Stick around
Speaker 1: because it is correction time, and today we have a
Speaker 1: correction for me. This is not Chuck. Actually, Chuck argued
Speaker 1: against what I said. I was right for a change.
Speaker 1: Chuck is supported by yet another person who mistakenly thinks
Speaker 1: my first name is Brian. My name is Josh. Chuck's
Speaker 1: last name is Brian. But thank you anyway, Misha Bailey.
Speaker 1: Misha Bailey pointed out in a podcast, Well we'll play
Speaker 1: the clip. It's from how China's pollution sniffers work. Uh,
Speaker 1: listen this. You know, have have you ever eaten jellybelly?
Speaker 1: Jelly beans? I'm not a jelly bean guy. These things
Speaker 1: are not jelly beans alright. Anyway, if you get a
Speaker 1: bag of this on the back, it says like, you know,
Speaker 1: two blueberry plus one. I think toast of marshmallow creates
Speaker 1: like the flavor of like a blueberry muffin. So there's
Speaker 1: different recipes. You come up with your own. It's very fun.
Speaker 1: Are these the ones that are kind of nasty tooth like?
Speaker 1: They have a booger andros I think you're confusing a
Speaker 1: Harry Potter with reality Again. Well, uh, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: Chuck I was wrong, right, Jelly Belly does indeed make
Speaker 1: a booger flavored jelly beans. I knew I hadn't imagined
Speaker 1: that in some fantasy that I had, So basically, um,
Speaker 1: there's a special edition called bean Booze Old, and Jellybelly
Speaker 1: is going to the trouble of making identical looking jelly
Speaker 1: beans with radically different taste like black licorice, which is
Speaker 1: bad enough. Um is also there there's another one that
Speaker 1: looks like the Black Liquors one, but it's a skunk spray. Um.
Speaker 1: And specifically there's one that's juicy pear and in other
Speaker 1: cases it's Booker flavored favor. They have ten different flavors.
Speaker 1: Thank you Jelly Belly, and thank you Misha Bailey for
Speaker 1: proving me wrong. If you want to prove either one
Speaker 1: of us wrong, or tell us you know what you think,
Speaker 1: what's on your mind, give us what for? Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have a man crush on one or both of us.
Speaker 1: You can send an email to stuff podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And speaking of podcast, Chuck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to give a just a quick mention to
Speaker 1: one of our other podcasts called brain Stuff from the
Speaker 1: founder of our awesome company, Marshall Brain actually his real
Speaker 1: last things. Yeah, he has his own podcast called brain
Speaker 1: Stuff and there's a really cool one up there now
Speaker 1: called what are hot Dogs Made from? Fascinating? So before
Speaker 1: you get go to the next ball game and we'll
Speaker 1: fown that hot dog. You should listen to this. Either
Speaker 1: that or if you really want to eat a hot dog,
Speaker 1: you should probably wait until after work. I would recommend that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can check that out like our podcasts on iTunes,
Speaker 1: and you can learn even more about Albert Einstein's brain
Speaker 1: by typing in a combination of those words in our
Speaker 1: search bar on how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
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