Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wasn't the stuff to well your mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Deklas, And
Speaker 1: on this podcast we discussed a lot of topics that
Speaker 1: get down to the heart of what we are, What
Speaker 1: are we as human beings? And who is who is
Speaker 1: the we in that sentence? Who is the I in
Speaker 1: any different sentence? You know, we do a lot of
Speaker 1: naval gazing, and we have a nice naval gaze only
Speaker 1: topic for you today because it does get down to
Speaker 1: the heart of what are we? What are we really
Speaker 1: and and of the the hypothesis that we're looking at
Speaker 1: in this episode hold true. Uh, the answer is is
Speaker 1: far different than what we have thought, even in the
Speaker 1: very recent past. Yeah, because we have talked about the
Speaker 1: role of the microbiota in the past here, but now
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about something called the hola genome actually
Speaker 1: just hollo genome um that furthert the idea that we
Speaker 1: are all just sort of like skin wrappers and there's
Speaker 1: a punch going on um that determines our biological and
Speaker 1: in some ways are our mental fates um. And it's
Speaker 1: not just genes here. So that's the big story with
Speaker 1: the hologenium. Yes, and that skin wrapper description is pretty
Speaker 1: accurate because when you get down to the cells in
Speaker 1: our body, the gens and our body, it all adds
Speaker 1: up to about ten of us. Yeah, because we're out
Speaker 1: number ten to one by these bacterial cells. So there's
Speaker 1: so much more going on um at the surface and below.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's this idea that evolution itself may
Speaker 1: be driven by bacteria, which would make sense, I mean,
Speaker 1: just on a very basic level, because again, ten percent,
Speaker 1: only ten percent of us is us And that's a
Speaker 1: ridiculous sentence to to make because then as we evolve,
Speaker 1: then surely, I mean, then that other n has at
Speaker 1: least some sort of voting rights, if not equal voting rights,
Speaker 1: then at least some sort of voting rights. It would
Speaker 1: just stand to reason, right, it would stand to reason.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about what the micro biome, which is
Speaker 1: made up of all this differing bacteria, has been up
Speaker 1: to and do a quick little recap of the microbiome
Speaker 1: project UM. This was funded by the National Institute of Health.
Speaker 1: We're talking about two scientists, eighty institutions around the world
Speaker 1: that sequenced the genetic material of bacteria, taking from two
Speaker 1: d fifty people eleven thousand samples that came out of this,
Speaker 1: and what we found out is that each human contains
Speaker 1: up to eight million bacterial genes in contrast to just
Speaker 1: twenty two thousand human genes. So again outnumbered, outnumbered. And
Speaker 1: this is according to Michael Pollen in his article some
Speaker 1: of My Best Friends are germs, he said that bacteria
Speaker 1: can swap jeans and pieces of DNA with itself. This
Speaker 1: is so crazy to me. Um he says, it's an
Speaker 1: incredibly important adaptation that allows a microbiota which could be
Speaker 1: exposed to a toxin or a new food, to swiftly
Speaker 1: come up with precisely the right genes needed to fight
Speaker 1: something or eat it. So we you've talked about this
Speaker 1: is actually a lot in the past that the gut bacteria,
Speaker 1: you know, without it, we just couldn't exist. It's breaking
Speaker 1: down food for us. It's allowing us to get the
Speaker 1: nutrients out of it and also to take the stuff
Speaker 1: that's a little dicey in jettis in it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: at the very least we have an extremely symbiotic relationship
Speaker 1: with all of this bacteria that in the same way
Speaker 1: that that we depend on on fire and cooking to
Speaker 1: externalize part of our digestion. We've also in effect brought
Speaker 1: in outside workers to help with the with the digestion
Speaker 1: of the food. So it's a so so Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has this huge effect on our ability to actually consume
Speaker 1: the nutrients we need to survive. Yeah. And we also
Speaker 1: have talked about how newborns are slathered in a new
Speaker 1: sort of microbiome for themselves via vaginal births, but it
Speaker 1: turns out that the bacterial life of newborns are actually
Speaker 1: seated before they're even ejected out into the world. Wow.
Speaker 1: So even before they get to go through the birth
Speaker 1: canal and just pick up all these new and exciting
Speaker 1: bacteria to become a part of who they are, they
Speaker 1: are they are already to use. Like a prior way
Speaker 1: of of looking at it, you would say that they're
Speaker 1: already infected, they're already tainted by the bacteria. But but
Speaker 1: as we're discussing in this episode, it's it's wrong to
Speaker 1: even think of it in terms of of of a
Speaker 1: taint or a staining of the of the individual, because
Speaker 1: there isn't really this pure, pristine individual. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can do that. You can remove the micro biota from
Speaker 1: a from an individual's member of a species, from an
Speaker 1: individual organism, but with often dire results. Right. I think
Speaker 1: the old view in the past was that any sort
Speaker 1: of bacteria is bad. But now we've come from our
Speaker 1: understanding of it, and it is really interesting to know
Speaker 1: that a fetus is being seated via the placenta or
Speaker 1: the cord blood, because you know that gives us this
Speaker 1: idea that you cannot be separate from it, You cannot
Speaker 1: be this pristine individual who is born completely germ free,
Speaker 1: that this is part imparcel of us. In fact, Joseph
Speaker 1: Knew he is a University of Florida pediatrician. He actually
Speaker 1: examined the first stools out of infants that were just
Speaker 1: born and found that yes, indeed, uh their guts had
Speaker 1: been active and had been seated to create all these
Speaker 1: different bacteria that he found in their stools. And he
Speaker 1: said that we might provide mothers with a microbial cocktail.
Speaker 1: This is his idea that it's so important that we
Speaker 1: may be able in the in the future to give
Speaker 1: mothers who are just dating some sort of microbial cocktail
Speaker 1: that would really help to ensure that that infant was
Speaker 1: born with the optimal bacterial profile. Wow. Yeah, I keep
Speaker 1: coming back in my mind as of reading about this
Speaker 1: topic to a new ship constructed in a shipyard. And
Speaker 1: then when it's time to put that ship out the sea,
Speaker 1: you can't just slide it out and let it float
Speaker 1: off to nowhere. It's got to have a croup. It
Speaker 1: has to have uh, individuals aboard the ship to make
Speaker 1: it function, to to to make it seaworthy. And then
Speaker 1: over time, of course you're gonna have rats and stow
Speaker 1: aways living on it as well, or or you know,
Speaker 1: luxurious passengers who don't actually contribute to the overall health
Speaker 1: of the ship at least in any way. That that that,
Speaker 1: you know, the people of shoveling coal would understand. But
Speaker 1: but but certainly you have to have at least a
Speaker 1: skeleton crew when it rolls out into the water. I
Speaker 1: like that. I like that idea that I've got a
Speaker 1: crew inside of me right now. Yeah, it's like you're
Speaker 1: the starship Julie, and you have a certain um microbacterial
Speaker 1: crew that is in effect kind of running the show.
Speaker 1: I mean, with some certain you know, it's like the
Speaker 1: Star Trek Enterprise there's a computer system that's doing other
Speaker 1: stuff that you have the genes, you have, you have
Speaker 1: the cells, but then you have also this rich, uh
Speaker 1: diverse alien crew that is making everything function at optimal levels.
Speaker 1: I was thinking more like I was a rap star
Speaker 1: rolling in with your crew. Yeah, yeah, okay, well that's
Speaker 1: good then, all right, so how could bacteria inform evolution?
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break, and when we get back
Speaker 1: we will dive into that. All right, we're back, we are,
Speaker 1: and we are going to talk about the case of
Speaker 1: the parasitic wasp in order to get into this material
Speaker 1: about gut bacteria specifically and how it might be driving sea.
Speaker 1: But first, yes, we're talking about the process by which
Speaker 1: news species evolved. When we've all seen seen trees of
Speaker 1: of of different organisms of branching out, you have one
Speaker 1: life form and then it ends up dirty into two
Speaker 1: separate life forms and they stem from each other and
Speaker 1: it becomes this grand tree of evolution spreading across millions
Speaker 1: of years. But how does that break up occur? How
Speaker 1: does how does that that divide happened between this species
Speaker 1: and that. Yeah, and that's what we're going to get into,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, we're what we are talking about
Speaker 1: is a particular species, these that developed different genetic characteristics
Speaker 1: to the point where they cannot mate with the original
Speaker 1: species and producer fertile offspring. So a good example of
Speaker 1: this are horses and donkeys. Right, they descended from a
Speaker 1: common ancestor, but their genetic makeup diverged in their offspring.
Speaker 1: A mule isn't fertile. So what I talk about in
Speaker 1: Assonia wasps, Well, it turns out that there are four
Speaker 1: very closely related species in it, and when these species interbreed,
Speaker 1: they make what's called a hybrid. And sometimes these hybrids die.
Speaker 1: So the question becomes why do hybrids die between closely
Speaker 1: related species? And to try to answer this, Seth Bordenstein,
Speaker 1: he's a co author of research on microbiota and speciation.
Speaker 1: UM looked at these wasps and tested a hypothesis that
Speaker 1: a new species of animal can arise through changes in
Speaker 1: gut bacteria or the gut microbiome, which is amazing sort
Speaker 1: of new lens to look at this whole idea of evolution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like his breakthrough here with that if you if you
Speaker 1: remove the microbiome from the equation with these wasps, then
Speaker 1: the hybrid offspring will survive to a certain extent, it
Speaker 1: is supposed to just being doomed from the get go.
Speaker 1: So it's showing that it's not just the genetics at play,
Speaker 1: it's also the microbiomes of each species. So even though
Speaker 1: they're it's kind of like with with two individuals, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: they're physically compatible, but then they have no emotional compatibility,
Speaker 1: you know, etcetera. There, you know, any number of examples
Speaker 1: you can, you can, you can make up with people
Speaker 1: where on one level everything lines up, but on another
Speaker 1: more important level, they don't. And and here for these uh,
Speaker 1: these two species to really successfully breed and produce a
Speaker 1: viable offspring, not only did the genetics have to be
Speaker 1: uh at least interlockable, but also the microbiome, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty big news because we're talking about the
Speaker 1: diet and talking about the crew that occupies the ship
Speaker 1: and uh, and you can't necessarily combine the cruise without
Speaker 1: there being a lot of unrest. I think there's a
Speaker 1: whole Battlestar Galactica episode about that. I think so. And
Speaker 1: you know, let's talk about cruise rolling too, right, one
Speaker 1: crew rolling against another Exactly, there's gonna be uh, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be unrest, there's gonna be mischief, all right. So
Speaker 1: this leads this idea of the holo genome. So what
Speaker 1: is the hologenome. It's basically made up of um, you know,
Speaker 1: within the organism a cell's mitochondria, the cells DNA along
Speaker 1: with microbiota, and Richard Jefferson and Eugene Rosenberg they came
Speaker 1: up with the description of this theory. And Rosenberg actually
Speaker 1: stumbled upon a nine paper by Diane Dodge, who was
Speaker 1: then a post doc at Yale University, and she found
Speaker 1: that changing the diet of a fruit fly could alter
Speaker 1: the flies mating choices after just two generations, which made
Speaker 1: Rosenberg kind of scratched his head and wonder if he
Speaker 1: could do the same thing in his lap. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: basically his findings for it. If you take take this
Speaker 1: single species, you split them into two different populations, you've
Speaker 1: given each and individual diet, then the microbiome is going
Speaker 1: to change, and eventually these individuals are going to they're
Speaker 1: gonna no longer be compatible with each other. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: What they did is they took the single species that
Speaker 1: they split and they give me two different types. They
Speaker 1: brought them back together, and they found that they would
Speaker 1: not mate with each other because they then had different
Speaker 1: gut microbiomes. So that brings up this question of why
Speaker 1: I kino as a vegetarian. If I start eating big Max,
Speaker 1: is my husband going to back away from me because
Speaker 1: you are both vegetarians. We're both vegetarians. If I change
Speaker 1: my gut bacteria and I don't tell him, let's just
Speaker 1: say let's throw that in the mix. For a week,
Speaker 1: I eat this, I don't tell them, Um, you know
Speaker 1: my gut microbiome changes, will he begin to sort of
Speaker 1: find excuses, you know, to get out of the house.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that if you eat like a
Speaker 1: big mac a day for a week after being a
Speaker 1: vegetarian all this time, he's going to know, because because
Speaker 1: your body is going to going to let everyone know
Speaker 1: that there's a problem. Well, it's it's true. I think
Speaker 1: that there would be some really big signs um, and
Speaker 1: I won't go into what those signs might be. But
Speaker 1: Seth Borden's team was was faced with this very same question,
Speaker 1: what if what humans did this um with with the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing happened, And he said, well, probably not,
Speaker 1: but we do know that microbes affect the way we smell,
Speaker 1: and and if individuals choose to date or find that
Speaker 1: partners based on their smell, then that is a form
Speaker 1: of discrimination that's occurring. If it happens to the population
Speaker 1: or species level, the new species will be arising. So well,
Speaker 1: anything is possible in biology. I doubt that humans will
Speaker 1: be splitting into different species, yeah, because I mean the
Speaker 1: other thing is that humans have a lot of additional
Speaker 1: complexity layered on top of their smell related choices, So
Speaker 1: they're not just going to necessarily be like, oh, well
Speaker 1: she's she's really interesting and uh and I'm very attracted
Speaker 1: to her, but uh, you know, she she eats a
Speaker 1: little more garlic than I would like or or I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a true vegetarian and she's a what's
Speaker 1: the what is it of your vegetarian? But he eat
Speaker 1: eggs your ovo lacto edgetarian? You know, guess or you're
Speaker 1: not vegan? Yeah, I guess. You know that. I can
Speaker 1: imagine that their varying degrees to which people are hardcore
Speaker 1: enough about their diet where it would be a problem.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I know people. I know one person
Speaker 1: who is you know, pretty hardcore vegan and her husband's
Speaker 1: not and they seem to get along. Fine, it happens,
Speaker 1: you're right, there are examples, yeah and there, and they
Speaker 1: have a child, so they're not like two different species,
Speaker 1: and they can they can actually breed, So there you go.
Speaker 1: It's true. Alright. So yeah, with humans, it's not acting
Speaker 1: honest at that level. But it's fascinating to see these flies,
Speaker 1: essentially the same species diverging from each other just based
Speaker 1: on the gut bacteria. Now, of course we should mention
Speaker 1: holo genome theory is a theory, and it's one that
Speaker 1: people like to fight about, especially with evolutionary biologists, who
Speaker 1: are not necessarily on board in all cases with this theory,
Speaker 1: with this new way of looking, because evolutionary theory is
Speaker 1: all about competition, survival the fittest, right, And we'll have
Speaker 1: more on that in a minute. But the reason I
Speaker 1: mentioned it here is that I was looking at a
Speaker 1: study of involving killer whales, and this is a a
Speaker 1: study that was connected by Andrew Foot and evolutionary biologists
Speaker 1: of the University of Copenhagen. Now why is he looking
Speaker 1: at at killer whales because he's interested in uh, sympathetic speciation. Okay,
Speaker 1: now this is the idea that you have the speciation
Speaker 1: we're talking about two. You have one particular organism, one species,
Speaker 1: and over time it diverges into two. And uh. Killer
Speaker 1: whales have been a particular interest to people because of
Speaker 1: sympathetic speciation. This is occurring without a geographic barrier. They're
Speaker 1: in the same area, but there you have just a
Speaker 1: two different groups of the same species engaging in different
Speaker 1: diets and UH, and then different behaviors to pursue that
Speaker 1: particular prey animal. And then eventually the argument is they're
Speaker 1: going to become two different species. And we see that
Speaker 1: to a certain extents happening already with killer whale populations
Speaker 1: in the North Pacific and Antarctic, where you have multiple
Speaker 1: genetically distinct populations. They haven't been formally described as separate species,
Speaker 1: but they pray they have different prey prefaces. So one group,
Speaker 1: one pack of killer whales, they are mammal eaters. They're
Speaker 1: eating the seals and that's all they eat, so they
Speaker 1: have specific patterns for hunting those seals that they pass down.
Speaker 1: And then you have another group that eat fish and
Speaker 1: they have specific patterns for for pursuing those prey, and
Speaker 1: these two packs do not intermingle, and they have different
Speaker 1: ways their their communication is even a little different. So
Speaker 1: they're they're arguably well on their way to becoming two
Speaker 1: different species. So, um, it's a it's a possible example
Speaker 1: of of this, uh, this holo genome effect on sei. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you bring that up because it does
Speaker 1: kind of mixed sort of our our more traditional views
Speaker 1: a speciation, which sometimes have to do with populations being
Speaker 1: isolated or not being isolated or just geographically in different areas,
Speaker 1: and how that might affect um the species, and then
Speaker 1: you have the diet in that mix as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I want to I just want to mention this
Speaker 1: is a two thousand and thirteen study just from August
Speaker 1: and Food again as an evolution Biotyes, so he's not
Speaker 1: pursuing this, uh, this holo genome theory as as an
Speaker 1: explanation for what's happening with the killer whales. But but
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a very strong possibility here because
Speaker 1: we're looking at diet effects in a given population. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that makes a very interesting case there. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break and when we get back.
Speaker 1: We are going to look more at the criticism leveled
Speaker 1: here at the hologenae theory and how it might or
Speaker 1: might not square with evolution. All right, we're back again.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the holo genome. We're talking about looking
Speaker 1: at the aggregate genome of an organism. We're looking at SELLS, mitochondria, sells, DNA, microbiome,
Speaker 1: all of it together, and the to to basically constitute
Speaker 1: the total genome of a particular organism. Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: hologena Again, this is a very new concept. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: Jefferson Rosenberg and to some degree Diane's do they all
Speaker 1: contributed to this idea. Then you have Seth board and
Speaker 1: seem really sort of trying to run with it a
Speaker 1: bit more. Um. And I did want to point out
Speaker 1: that Seth Boordenstein really engages people on this topic quite
Speaker 1: a bit. He does this through his blog which is
Speaker 1: called Symbiontisum, and he also does it through his Twitter
Speaker 1: feed and hologeno hashtag hologenome of course, and I did
Speaker 1: want to read a couple of things that he wrote.
Speaker 1: Someone said, I'm not getting how hologenome is different than
Speaker 1: co evolution systems with correlated inheritance, i e. Body lice,
Speaker 1: and his his explanation was, because you can live without
Speaker 1: parasites like lice, but you can't live without your microbiome.
Speaker 1: So again he's making the case that this is part
Speaker 1: imparcel of this sort of operating system that we have.
Speaker 1: And just think back to Michael Pollan's example of how
Speaker 1: some bacteria can swap d NA to respond to the environment. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: the ship runs just fine without the rats, not so
Speaker 1: much without the crew. Yeah. And you know, I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this paired with epigenetics, and I will not
Speaker 1: get into that, but you know, that's the idea that
Speaker 1: you have this extra bit of information glommed on um
Speaker 1: to your DNA, and you know, depending on what's going
Speaker 1: on with the person's immune system or their external conditions
Speaker 1: like famine for inst environment as their situation, uh, flipping
Speaker 1: on or off individual games. Right, we're talking about generations
Speaker 1: after that that are actually affected by that person's experience.
Speaker 1: So nothing has cut and dried here. So back to evolution.
Speaker 1: You know for us that has always seemed um, you know,
Speaker 1: fairly straightforward at this point we're talking about variation, selection
Speaker 1: and heredity. But now you do have this bacterial component,
Speaker 1: or perhaps we have it, and I wanted to just
Speaker 1: mention that there's there's one other little layer here in
Speaker 1: the example of mice and how their brains develop, and
Speaker 1: this is a two thousand and eleven experiment that showed
Speaker 1: that mice need their gut flora for the brain to
Speaker 1: really develop normally because germ free mice with no microbiotics,
Speaker 1: ones that were removed showed severe deformities in their brain
Speaker 1: structured and that ending hates that the brain and the
Speaker 1: nervous system is dependent upon this proper gut microbiotic being
Speaker 1: in place. Yeah, and that I mean that is obviously
Speaker 1: huge because a lot of what we've talked about in
Speaker 1: the past, just on the show, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the information is generally out there. You know, it's easy
Speaker 1: to get behind the idea, Oh, well, your gut back here.
Speaker 1: It's good for you. It's good to have. It's good
Speaker 1: to have around because it will help you digest, it
Speaker 1: will help Yeah. Yeah, you know, you go on some
Speaker 1: antibiotics for a U T I and then you you
Speaker 1: end up taking a bunch of probiotics to sort of
Speaker 1: balance the ship again. But but here we're seeing you know,
Speaker 1: examples of severe brain deformities. So obviously it's not just
Speaker 1: a matter of it's good to have, it's necessary to have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely right. And then then the question is to what
Speaker 1: extent is that you know inform other species of how
Speaker 1: their brains and their gut bacteria work in tandem. So
Speaker 1: again this gives us the idea that genes are not
Speaker 1: the blueprint that we thought they were in the past.
Speaker 1: And this is from science to point oh gerhard at him.
Speaker 1: He said, whatever else we may think, it is clear
Speaker 1: that viewing an organism and natural selection from the pure
Speaker 1: perspective of genes is incomplete. Therefore, it may be more
Speaker 1: precise to say that genes provide the basic environment, while
Speaker 1: microbes manipulate and refined to produce a working ecosystem. As
Speaker 1: a result, as goes their success, so goes ourship crew ownership.
Speaker 1: But then you have someone like Andy Gardner of the
Speaker 1: University of Oxford, and he sort of counterpoints us by saying,
Speaker 1: I would be less inclined to bundle all these cells
Speaker 1: together as a single integrated organism. And this is an
Speaker 1: excellent point because sometimes the microbial cells will be doing
Speaker 1: things that aren't good for the host. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: see microbes in a new light in which we see
Speaker 1: them in a more beneficial light. But it is true
Speaker 1: that disease and illness are a result of bad bacteria,
Speaker 1: not to call them bad or good, but yeah, but
Speaker 1: of course the same thing can be said about genes,
Speaker 1: that can be said about immune functions. There's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a complicated chip, and there's a lot that can
Speaker 1: go wrong, both in the hardware of the ship and
Speaker 1: in the crew members, the stow aways, the rats, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh again, here we have boarding scene saying, look,
Speaker 1: I don't know about this hologenome yet. Basically he's saying
Speaker 1: dogma and linear thinking. It could also be wrong, but
Speaker 1: a hypothesis is not wrong until tested. So it's out there.
Speaker 1: It's out there for people's consideration. Um isn't going to
Speaker 1: become the sort of you know, unified theory of everything
Speaker 1: for the human body. We don't know, but I think
Speaker 1: it definitely adds to the whole conversation of how our
Speaker 1: bodies are actually responding to their environments, to their genetics,
Speaker 1: to what we put in them. Yeah, and that's really
Speaker 1: what these guys are pushing with the hologenome thing. And
Speaker 1: they're not saying, all right, we have it. Here's the
Speaker 1: answer to everything. They're saying, we think there's something to this.
Speaker 1: We think this is a really important theory. We want
Speaker 1: other people to explore this, uh in regards to other organisms,
Speaker 1: other species, and of course the human body itself. You know,
Speaker 1: I am participating in the u biome UM. This is
Speaker 1: the sort A and UM science projects, and this week
Speaker 1: I am shipping off my microbiotics samples. I can't wait,
Speaker 1: going to get it back, going to find out what
Speaker 1: my crew is doing there. Excellent, Ya in an envelope?
Speaker 1: Is envelope? You just put it all in? UM? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just basically it's just a couple of Q tips.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's much more elaborate than that. And they
Speaker 1: want to know obviously, like what your diet has consisted of,
Speaker 1: and you report all of that along with the samples
Speaker 1: that you provide. Excellent. Are you going to share the results?
Speaker 1: I am yeah. Now, another criticism that some people level
Speaker 1: with this is that it's just kind of a a
Speaker 1: rehashed version of the Lamarchian model UM. And this, of course,
Speaker 1: it goes back to nineteenth century Jean Baptiste Lamark, who
Speaker 1: had this theory of evolution that incorporated the then popular
Speaker 1: idea that organisms could pass on adaptive traits that they
Speaker 1: acquired you're in their life times. The classic example of
Speaker 1: this is a giraffe is trying to eat the leaves
Speaker 1: of the top of the tree, restrains his neck, and
Speaker 1: then the offspring that those giraffes have then has a
Speaker 1: longer neck because the parent organisms strained their neck. It's
Speaker 1: it's a little more involved than that, but it was
Speaker 1: a popular theory for a while, and then came Darwin's
Speaker 1: theory that is similar but a bit more nuanced and uh,
Speaker 1: and then Lamarck faded into the background. It's true, although
Speaker 1: Lamark has enjoyed a resurgence as of late. So you know,
Speaker 1: to me, it's just reconsidering it, not reconsidering. You know,
Speaker 1: evolution is saying, let's throughout the baby with the bathwater.
Speaker 1: I think it's just saying what other things are going on? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I I also want to add that I think
Speaker 1: understanding the hollo genome. Having a thorough understanding the halo
Speaker 1: genome is of course what we're going to need if
Speaker 1: we're gonna ever tell port people across the room or
Speaker 1: across the planet, ordered another to another world. Right, because
Speaker 1: because you've seen the fly, the whole deal there is oops,
Speaker 1: he accidentally got his DNA splice with the fly d
Speaker 1: n A and then monstrous consequences occur in Cronenberg's wonderful film.
Speaker 1: And and even remember at an early age watching it
Speaker 1: and knowing, well, you know, we have like, you know,
Speaker 1: things living in our eyebrows, and then later on, well,
Speaker 1: we have all these things living in our gut. And
Speaker 1: then when you start looking at this, this this fact
Speaker 1: that we are only ten percent of us, it really complicates.
Speaker 1: You'd have to teleport not just this one organism, but
Speaker 1: all of these organisms and have it all come out
Speaker 1: on the other side completely intact and working order, without
Speaker 1: any sailors, you know, stuck in sense in part of
Speaker 1: the ship in the walls. It's right, you want you
Speaker 1: want the ship to be fairly intact and not have
Speaker 1: appendages sticking out. Ye now I'm drawing in other teleportation
Speaker 1: sci fi films, but anyway, you get my point. It
Speaker 1: really it complicates and changes what we think about, uh,
Speaker 1: when we think about who we are. I just like
Speaker 1: that I went to the place of you biom and
Speaker 1: you went to that place. That's how it goes, right, Hey,
Speaker 1: before we close out, let's call the robot over. We
Speaker 1: haven't really been doing much listener mail, and then we
Speaker 1: we try to make it up to him with a
Speaker 1: whole epis so, but we really need to have regular
Speaker 1: interaction with the robot if we if we want to
Speaker 1: maintain a healthy relationship with our technology. Yeah, and put
Speaker 1: that oil can away exactly all right. We heard a
Speaker 1: lot from listeners on our Uncanny Music episode about the
Speaker 1: science of uncanny music. Wind Is scary or creepy or weird?
Speaker 1: Music have this effect on us? Is it cultural? Is
Speaker 1: it's something in eight and uh, here's just one of
Speaker 1: the responses. This is b from Boston Writing and says,
Speaker 1: high blow your mind team, you're talking about why music
Speaker 1: gives us chills? Brings to mind a little no neurological quirk.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of people who, despite loving music and
Speaker 1: feeling emotionally stirred by it, never experienced actual chills. I've
Speaker 1: been a musician my whole life, but I always assumed
Speaker 1: that when people said the music gave me chills, it
Speaker 1: was a melodramatic figure of speech. I've been brought to
Speaker 1: tears by music before and felt completely rocked by powerful passages,
Speaker 1: but never once I've felt a tingle. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: stumbling on articles about the phenomenon that I learned that
Speaker 1: these claims of chills are real. Meanwhile, my boyfriend was
Speaker 1: shocked to think that music could be experienced without these sensations.
Speaker 1: Since this discovery, I've done a few impromptu surveys of
Speaker 1: friends and co workers. In all of these environments, the
Speaker 1: vast majority of people do get chills, but a steady
Speaker 1: ten percent ish have shyly conceded that they have also
Speaker 1: never felt them. The brain is a funny thing. I
Speaker 1: have no idea what makes some of us chill haves
Speaker 1: and have nots, but I would love to learn more
Speaker 1: about it. Did you see anything about this side of
Speaker 1: things in your research? Love the show and thanks for
Speaker 1: all you do. Actually, they did not pop up in
Speaker 1: the in our research, but it does make me want
Speaker 1: to explore the chills as as a singular topic at
Speaker 1: some point in the future. Like, really get into goose flesh,
Speaker 1: really get into chill bumps, really get into pins and needles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get pins and needles is different but it's the
Speaker 1: still I think it's the same sensation, right, you're on
Speaker 1: pins and needles, your your goose flesh, you're you're alert. Um.
Speaker 1: It is a very interesting question as to why we
Speaker 1: would all of a sudden look like chickens. Um. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to it, obviously, they're there's some
Speaker 1: holes in the research. People aren't exactly sure why. But
Speaker 1: that's a good topic to cover and we've got so
Speaker 1: many good emails about that that episode. Um. People send
Speaker 1: us a lot of great links to two movies that
Speaker 1: have been recut with scary music, like Mrs Doutfire, Yes, um,
Speaker 1: Mary Poppins of course, Yes Poppins one where it turns
Speaker 1: it into a horror film by just changing around the
Speaker 1: music and the scenes, which is easy to do with
Speaker 1: that movie because if you look at it now that
Speaker 1: it actually you know, because it's like Foggio London, or
Speaker 1: it has this sort of ominous feeling to it, just
Speaker 1: in the tones of the great towns. Well. I love
Speaker 1: the argument that she was actually a timelord, you know,
Speaker 1: like the doctor doctor who Yes, um, so yeah, there
Speaker 1: are many different ways to recast things given the boat
Speaker 1: context of the music. All right, well, hey, if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this, you can find
Speaker 1: us in a number of places. First and foremost, go
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That is
Speaker 1: our website. All the podcast show up there, all the
Speaker 1: podcast not just the ones that are on iTunes, but
Speaker 1: the backlog going back through the centuries, the hidden ones
Speaker 1: and uh and then that's where we do our blog
Speaker 1: posts or video show up there. Everything we do. That's
Speaker 1: the mother ship. But you can also find us on
Speaker 1: social media Facebook, we do a lot their Twitter, you
Speaker 1: can find us there as well, Tumbler. We're always feeding
Speaker 1: that thing, and of course you can find us on
Speaker 1: YouTube as mind stuff ships. And if you want to
Speaker 1: share your thoughts with us about today's episode or really
Speaker 1: any other episodes, you can't always drop us a line
Speaker 1: and you can do so. Blow the mind at discovery
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does It How stuff works dot com