Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Trulie Douglas.
Speaker 1: We just finished recording an episode titled how to Think
Speaker 1: Like a Child, and now we're breaking into this idea
Speaker 1: that we are all scientists. And you're probably wondering, why
Speaker 1: aren't you guys hitting this information right now? Um, And
Speaker 1: certainly we've touched on some of these topics before in
Speaker 1: the past, and it's because we're hitting the road with
Speaker 1: this act. Uh. One week from now the time we're
Speaker 1: recording it, we're gonna be at the E four conference
Speaker 1: Excellence in Elementary Engineering in the Twin Cities, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna give a keynote when we're gonna talk about this
Speaker 1: idea that we are all scientists, because we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking to elementary school teachers who are who want to
Speaker 1: engage with children and and get them excited about science
Speaker 1: and engineering, and there's often this false idea that it's
Speaker 1: something alien to them, where it's kind of like, let's
Speaker 1: let's give some children into a room and let's teach
Speaker 1: them to love sardines and broccoli. You know, let's let's
Speaker 1: get them excited about asparagus. But no, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: something that they already have in them, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's ultimately more about about connecting with the inner scientists
Speaker 1: that is in all of us. Right, we're gonna make
Speaker 1: the case today that science is not a part of us,
Speaker 1: it is actually intrinsic to our nature. And I will
Speaker 1: say that having worked on this podcast, I feel like, uh,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting to look at science as something that
Speaker 1: is innate rather than, as I've mentioned before, looking through
Speaker 1: the windows of science, because I feel like this podcast
Speaker 1: has really informed my worldview on how it's not apart
Speaker 1: from us, how every gesture, word, thought can be pinned
Speaker 1: back to what you know. We've often talked about the
Speaker 1: magic of reality, and when I say the magic of reality,
Speaker 1: it's this idea that a single celled organism created an
Speaker 1: unbroken lineage extending fourth and time four billion years until
Speaker 1: we are sitting here before you guys, recording our voices.
Speaker 1: To me. That is amazing and it all points back
Speaker 1: to the fact that science has helped frame our understanding
Speaker 1: of how we came to be in this world. Um,
Speaker 1: as well as why things are the way that they are. So,
Speaker 1: as we discussed in the previous podcast about being like
Speaker 1: a child, one of the big things here is that
Speaker 1: as as we get older and as we become adults,
Speaker 1: we take on all these different world views. We take
Speaker 1: on all these preconceived notions of how what the world
Speaker 1: is and how it works, about who we are, how
Speaker 1: do we fit into the world, What is our group,
Speaker 1: what is our society? Who are the others? What laws
Speaker 1: are in place that we're obeying, What laws are in
Speaker 1: place that we are neglecting, What laws are in place
Speaker 1: that the other guys and gals out there should be obeying,
Speaker 1: but are not. All these complex, illusory ideas. We end
Speaker 1: up building this this fortress of ideas through which we
Speaker 1: try to understand the world around us. And we use
Speaker 1: a lot of labels, right like you begin to understand
Speaker 1: yourself as you're growing up, right and you people say
Speaker 1: that you're good at X, Y or z, and then
Speaker 1: it's a liberal, you're a conservative, You're you're in the model,
Speaker 1: You're you're creative or number minded, you're you're very sensible.
Speaker 1: You know. We end up taking on all these labels,
Speaker 1: pinning them to our jacket and and that's who we
Speaker 1: are and that's what the world is now. But I
Speaker 1: would argue that in addition to what other label or
Speaker 1: the many labels that we can put on ourselves, we
Speaker 1: are all inherently engineers. Right. Okay, Now, think you're probably
Speaker 1: like kind of know what you're talking about. I don't
Speaker 1: use blueprints, or maybe I do use blueprints, but I
Speaker 1: don't build things times. Yeah, but now think about your
Speaker 1: childhood and think about treehouses or building something. You don't
Speaker 1: have to build a treehouse, It could be at all
Speaker 1: the things that if you're a lego person like I was,
Speaker 1: and I am not an engineer, I have to check
Speaker 1: things two or three times when I do simple calculations
Speaker 1: with a Google calculator. You know, I'm that type of person.
Speaker 1: I'm more of a liberal arts person. But as a child,
Speaker 1: I had the out of legos and had build everything
Speaker 1: under the sun. You know, I'd see a helicopter, I'd
Speaker 1: have to build that helicopter. Then I have to crash
Speaker 1: the helicopter because we shut down by another one. That
Speaker 1: was the evil helicopter. But then I would build another one,
Speaker 1: and then it would be maybe I'd build build a
Speaker 1: building or a tank. I mean so even as as
Speaker 1: a child playing with blocks, or even if we're not
Speaker 1: playing with actual physical blocks, we're building things. We're building stories,
Speaker 1: we're building ideas, we're engineering something. When we're engaging in play, well,
Speaker 1: you're also learning how the world works, how gravity works, right,
Speaker 1: and if you don't stack those blocks in a way
Speaker 1: that can support weight, then whatever you're creating is going
Speaker 1: to fall or just not work out. So every kid
Speaker 1: wants to build a giant tower, but you quickly learned
Speaker 1: that you've got to You've got to figure out how
Speaker 1: the base is gonna work. You gotta build a broader
Speaker 1: base to make the tower go up all the way.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's just gonna be blocks falling over and making
Speaker 1: a loud no. Yeah, I see that. I've seen this
Speaker 1: so many times with kids, and kids can, by the way,
Speaker 1: with legos, and I know everybody knows this, but really
Speaker 1: they can create some of the most uh some of
Speaker 1: the coolest, most innovative buildings I've ever seen, because they
Speaker 1: will take these risks and put things where they're not
Speaker 1: really supposed to go. But then again they figure out
Speaker 1: how things are weighted. So again we don't think about it,
Speaker 1: but this is really the mind of an engineer at play.
Speaker 1: And by the way, kids are also born Euclideans. So
Speaker 1: when I say kids are this, that also means that
Speaker 1: we are Euclideans. And when I say Euclideans, I mean
Speaker 1: that we use geometric clues to navigate the world. Because
Speaker 1: you have bottom line, we are born into a world
Speaker 1: of numerous fixed and movable objects. We live in a
Speaker 1: in a world of space and time. As a creature,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a human and you're listening to this,
Speaker 1: this applies to you. If you're if you're a cat
Speaker 1: and you're listening to this, or a dog, this applies
Speaker 1: to you though in kudos for understanding the English language podcast.
Speaker 1: But you have to engage in this world that is physical,
Speaker 1: that has space, that has time, that has physical laws
Speaker 1: governing what goes on. So part of our our evolutionary
Speaker 1: advantage is our ability to understand in that world to
Speaker 1: interact with and to do that we have to have
Speaker 1: a certain amount of numbers, since a certain understanding of
Speaker 1: how physics work more or less inborn. We've discussed in
Speaker 1: the past their concepts such as say teleportation, you try
Speaker 1: and you try and sell a kid on the idea
Speaker 1: that teleportation exists. They're not gonna believe it because they
Speaker 1: already have it in them in their selves. They're inborn
Speaker 1: this disbelief in the in the idea that could even
Speaker 1: be possible, because it doesn't conform to reality. To believe
Speaker 1: in something like that, you have to painstakingly build this
Speaker 1: fortress of ideas and beliefs as an adult, and then
Speaker 1: you can make the impossible seem plausible. Right, Because even
Speaker 1: little babies know about object permanence, meaning that I could
Speaker 1: have two cups. In one cup, I could deposit two
Speaker 1: cookies in another cup, I could pretend to be depositing cookies,
Speaker 1: same motions and everything. They will always want them one
Speaker 1: with the actual cookies in it. They understand that that
Speaker 1: is mimicking, that that is not object permanence. Uh. In addition,
Speaker 1: kids using geometric clues, they're more likely to use the
Speaker 1: length of walls in a room to remember where toys hidden.
Speaker 1: And this is true of kids even at ages three
Speaker 1: and four, when they can name the color of the
Speaker 1: wall um to orient themselves, they still navigate rooms by
Speaker 1: length references. I also see this with my daughter at
Speaker 1: play with puzzles. You know. She she will be four
Speaker 1: in January, and she loves to put together puzzles using
Speaker 1: solely the shape. Now she can read and she can
Speaker 1: use the colors to try to piece together the clues
Speaker 1: of how they fit together. But always in this drives
Speaker 1: me crazy because to me, I'm oriented in the other
Speaker 1: way where I'm like, hey, that says that that's part
Speaker 1: of the North Carolina for the for the map um
Speaker 1: she will always try to see how it fits together.
Speaker 1: And this is really interesting. Kids that play with puzzles
Speaker 1: between the ages of two inform perform significantly better and
Speaker 1: spatial tests by ages five and six. And again this
Speaker 1: is this idea that they can mentally transform shapes, and
Speaker 1: this turns out to be a really big predictor of
Speaker 1: abilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. What we call stem.
Speaker 1: Another inborn ability that kids have that adults forget and
Speaker 1: then have to relearn is Bayesian logic. Beaesian logic is
Speaker 1: a branch of probability theory that allows one to model
Speaker 1: uncertainty about the world and outcomes of interest in that
Speaker 1: world related to common sense knowledge and observational evidence. So
Speaker 1: this is a concept that plays heavily into statistical evaluation
Speaker 1: of things such as ongoing elections, etcetera, any kind of
Speaker 1: situation where there's a there's a certain a group of
Speaker 1: chaos or unpredictability. It's also something that is key to
Speaker 1: our creation of aiyes of artificial intelligence, because we want
Speaker 1: to create something that thinks intelligently and can analyze the
Speaker 1: world and create believable recommendations on what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: So we're using Baisian logic to create the machines will
Speaker 1: solve the problems of the future. But Baisian logic is
Speaker 1: already present in children. Experiments have shown that when a
Speaker 1: child looks at the world, they're able to weigh the
Speaker 1: observational data in the statistical data that they have observed
Speaker 1: in a way that is free of the conflicting judgments
Speaker 1: that adult humans bring to the table. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: much like looking at a puzzle and seeing what fits
Speaker 1: and what doesn't. Bayesian logic necessitates that children use a
Speaker 1: pattern of co variation. Co variation meaning correlated variation of
Speaker 1: two or more variables. And we talked about this blicket
Speaker 1: machine in the last podcast How to Think Like a Child,
Speaker 1: and this blicket machine is something that is lit up
Speaker 1: when you place an object on it. This object can
Speaker 1: be vary shape, sizes, colors, and kids will again use
Speaker 1: this co variation correlated variation of two or more variables
Speaker 1: to realize that if they do this, then this happens.
Speaker 1: If you do that, then that happens. Now, by the way,
Speaker 1: these objects aren't static, meaning that you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just the red squares that make the machine go. You know,
Speaker 1: it could be the orange squares that have blue dots
Speaker 1: on them, or the triangle and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: So they are taking in a lot of data and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, you know, like the three types
Speaker 1: of shapes that are this color and this configuration stacked
Speaker 1: on top will make this machine go. That's actually pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 1: And as we mentioned last time in our podcast and
Speaker 1: how to Think Like a Child, kids are actually better
Speaker 1: in this exercise and figure out how certain toys work
Speaker 1: on the blicket machine. Then adults are, which brings us
Speaker 1: to mathematics. And this is a big one. As adults,
Speaker 1: so many of us, myself included, throw any kind of
Speaker 1: thing mathematical at us being and figuring out how to
Speaker 1: split a bill at a dinner party or trying to
Speaker 1: figure out I've got it down now, but for a
Speaker 1: while there, I didn't even understand how to properly figured
Speaker 1: tip before I figured out just generally that bad at math,
Speaker 1: and so we often fall into this idea that that
Speaker 1: we're born bad at math and then we just simply
Speaker 1: fail to learn it. And certainly there's a whole case
Speaker 1: to be made about what needs to be done to
Speaker 1: to engage children and the age students so more thoroughly
Speaker 1: in mathematics. I do want to mention too, that there
Speaker 1: is no gender difference in abilities in science and math.
Speaker 1: And this has been something of subject that comes up
Speaker 1: again and again. But if you want more information on it,
Speaker 1: check out Elizabeth Spelky spe l k E and her
Speaker 1: debate with Stephen Pinker on this point and the thirty
Speaker 1: odd years of research into child development in which she
Speaker 1: makes the case that this does not exist. This is
Speaker 1: some cultural garbage that we tend to heap on kids,
Speaker 1: because again, we all have to interact with the same world.
Speaker 1: We're all organisms that have all the equipment to interact
Speaker 1: with that world, and part of that is a number sense. Okay,
Speaker 1: so our brains naturally extract numbers from the surrounding environment
Speaker 1: in the same way that we identify colors. All right,
Speaker 1: we call it number cents, and our brains come fully
Speaker 1: equipped with it from birth. In fact, studies even show
Speaker 1: that while infants have no graphs of human number system,
Speaker 1: you know, and it doesn't know what five is, doesn't
Speaker 1: know what ten is, but they can tell the difference
Speaker 1: between five and ten on a on a non numerical
Speaker 1: level because they can tell identify change in quantity. Show
Speaker 1: a kid five cookies and a kid ten cookies, and
Speaker 1: they will know the difference they have. There is an
Speaker 1: inborn math that governs that that kind of quantity differential. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are essentially born accountants. And you will see this
Speaker 1: with babies who can estimate quantities and distinguish between more
Speaker 1: and less. For instance, and an experiment in which babies
Speaker 1: were shown an a ray of four dots and then
Speaker 1: an a ray of twelve dots, it turns out that
Speaker 1: they will pay attention to the four dots sequence when
Speaker 1: four sounds are played, okay, correlating that, and they will
Speaker 1: gaze at the twelve dots when the twelve sounds are played,
Speaker 1: even when the sounds are manipulated in terms of the
Speaker 1: note length. Kids still no babies still know that twelve
Speaker 1: noted song has to do with the twelve dots and
Speaker 1: that four noted song has to do with the four dot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can even drag in your own imaging research into it,
Speaker 1: and we found that when you when you look at
Speaker 1: an infant's brain, when they're say, looking at the five
Speaker 1: cookie tin cookie difference, they're actually engaging in logarithmic counting, alright,
Speaker 1: counting based on integral increases in physical quantity. And this
Speaker 1: is so apparently this is something that we move away
Speaker 1: from as we get older, this logarithmic thinking, because we
Speaker 1: think in different modes of mathematics. But again, route to
Speaker 1: the baby, route to children is this logarithmic thinking. So
Speaker 1: we end up taking on human number systems. But the
Speaker 1: thing is, again, the human number systems are even this
Speaker 1: is not something that's coming from the outside. It's it's
Speaker 1: something that's coming from within. At some point in our
Speaker 1: ancient past, prehistoric humans begin to develop a means of
Speaker 1: augmenting their natural number sense, all right, they started counting
Speaker 1: on their fingers and toes, and that's why so many
Speaker 1: numerical systems depend on groups of five, ten, or twenty,
Speaker 1: So based ten or decimal system stem from the use
Speaker 1: of both hands, while base twenty or vegicial systems are
Speaker 1: based on the use of fingers and toes. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: vegicimal systems, I think are really interesting. Larger numbers are
Speaker 1: simply multiples of ten, right, because that would be a
Speaker 1: base of ten system. For example, ten tens make and
Speaker 1: we're so used to our base ten system that it
Speaker 1: may seem like the only possibility. But the green Landic
Speaker 1: number system has a base of twenty and others have
Speaker 1: a base of five, and of all the number systems
Speaker 1: ever invented, five, ten, and twenty are the most common.
Speaker 1: So again, if you doubt that mathematics is something that
Speaker 1: is inherent to you, all you have to do is
Speaker 1: split down at your fingers. In fact, in Greenland, the
Speaker 1: word for seven, which is pronounced our punick marluk translate
Speaker 1: or something like that, translates as second hand to okay,
Speaker 1: So you put one hand up and then two fingers
Speaker 1: from from the next hand, and then thirteen is translated
Speaker 1: as first foot three, meaning both of your hands plus
Speaker 1: your first foot three toes. So again our digits are fingers.
Speaker 1: Just even think about the terminology have been the gold
Speaker 1: standard for how we itemize the world around us. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break on that note, and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna shift a little outside
Speaker 1: of the mathematical understanding the world and we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into a little something called storytelling, because, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: storytelling is science before we move on to storyteller. So
Speaker 1: that's just reminded as you were talking in that sponsortive
Speaker 1: message about mathematics and certain truths that they hold, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the Fibonacci numbers, which is that
Speaker 1: sequence of numbers, the golden ratio that we see again
Speaker 1: and again in nature. Yeah, it's like in a snail shell,
Speaker 1: it's in some cauliflower. You see this mathematical truth making
Speaker 1: it self evident just throughout the world and then in
Speaker 1: the cosmos and on your body, right, because even the
Speaker 1: ratio between your hand, the length of your hand and
Speaker 1: the length of your arm, and the length of your
Speaker 1: arms to the height of your body, or even the
Speaker 1: space between your eyes and your nose in your mouth,
Speaker 1: these are all predicated on the golden ratio. So again,
Speaker 1: inherent within the blueprint our numbers. Yeah, we haven't. A
Speaker 1: past episode we did about mathematics, we asked a question,
Speaker 1: is mathematics a human discovery or human invention? Where we
Speaker 1: really go into the philosophical deep end about this, because
Speaker 1: it's really fascinating question. Again, mathematics, as we've discussed, is
Speaker 1: something that comes from within. But is it something that
Speaker 1: is purely a human creation based on what is inside us?
Speaker 1: Or is it something that really permeates every aspect of
Speaker 1: the universe? Right? Is it the tail wagging the dog? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really really mind blowing stuff. But we're moving a
Speaker 1: little beyond mathematics at this point and we're getting into
Speaker 1: something called storytelling. Storytelling is of course, is old as
Speaker 1: human language. The idea that we can set down and
Speaker 1: we can tell a narrative, that we can talk about
Speaker 1: this character and what they did. Are these people and
Speaker 1: what they did, what challenge they overcame, how they came
Speaker 1: from point A to point B, And we naturally engage
Speaker 1: in it because the stories are linear. They have beginnings,
Speaker 1: they have metals, and they have ends, much like our lives,
Speaker 1: much exactly like our lives and exactly like our our
Speaker 1: experience of the world around us, so we naturally engage
Speaker 1: with stories well, and within this, I think about the
Speaker 1: neo cortex as part of our brains that was locked
Speaker 1: on is pretty much an upgrade, uh to the human brain.
Speaker 1: Scream ice cream style, swirled up high. It changed everything
Speaker 1: because no longer did we have just our reptilian brain,
Speaker 1: which was really concerned or is concerned with basic survival
Speaker 1: instincts like fear. But with the neo cortex, you have
Speaker 1: something that can manage so many different sophisticated, complex elements
Speaker 1: of life of modern life, from parenting to higher cognitive
Speaker 1: functions like number systems and the prietal loop which which
Speaker 1: governs these number systems, and abstraction. So when I think
Speaker 1: about number systems, I think about abstractions because really that's
Speaker 1: what they are. And uh, these obstractions are stories, and
Speaker 1: these stories really are data. We're taking data, we're organizing it,
Speaker 1: and we're making it into a pattern that makes sense
Speaker 1: to us that can help explain our world. So when
Speaker 1: you think about storytelling, you don't normally think about it
Speaker 1: is involving science, but really you're you're talking about some
Speaker 1: of the same basic principles at play. So again, storytelling
Speaker 1: us how we see the world. I mean, on a
Speaker 1: very basic level. I've talked about this before, and this
Speaker 1: is where especially adults get in get into trouble. And no,
Speaker 1: I mean even in an early age, you're you're engaging
Speaker 1: in your ego. You're creating a story about the world
Speaker 1: in which you are the central character. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so everyone's life unless you can you can force yourself
Speaker 1: to think beyond it. After a while, it becomes this
Speaker 1: this very limited novel with this one character engaging with
Speaker 1: other people with their surroundings, with various successes and disasters
Speaker 1: that that line the road to death and elegant and
Speaker 1: then an uplifting way of putting it. But I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what kind of what comes when you when you
Speaker 1: end up viewing the world that way. But we end
Speaker 1: up viewing the world that way. So telling other stories
Speaker 1: ends up being this interesting way of tweaking that worldview
Speaker 1: um in a way that can be both good and bad.
Speaker 1: There's a book called Tell the Wind, Connect, Persuade, and
Speaker 1: Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story by a film executive,
Speaker 1: Peter Goober, and he makes this argument that the stories
Speaker 1: function as trojan horses. All Right, we all know the
Speaker 1: idea of the trojan horse, right, So you have you
Speaker 1: have the city of Troy. The opposing army wants to
Speaker 1: get inside that besieged city. So how do you do it.
Speaker 1: You give him a gift, a fabulous wooden horse hitting away,
Speaker 1: and that horse's belly happens to be a small group
Speaker 1: of soldiers, and after after the lights go off, after
Speaker 1: the sun goes down, they're going to creep out of
Speaker 1: the belly of that horse, unlock the gates, and let
Speaker 1: the rest of the army in. So the idea here
Speaker 1: is that. And we've discussed this about the power of
Speaker 1: storytelling before. You know, when when you have a story
Speaker 1: that contains a different idea, a different way of seeing
Speaker 1: the world, it can kind of virally infect our worldview
Speaker 1: and we end up trusting an idea more if it's
Speaker 1: presented to us in the form of a story, which
Speaker 1: is why you see we've we've talked about the importance
Speaker 1: of sitcom's You're Just in popular history, um or or
Speaker 1: or novels as well. When you engage a new cultural
Speaker 1: idea in the form of a narrative, we're more likely
Speaker 1: to take it in to eat it than we are
Speaker 1: if someone says, hey, here's the way you should maybe
Speaker 1: view the world. Why don't you do this? And then
Speaker 1: people are gonna double down. They're gonna say, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not the way I view the world at all.
Speaker 1: Presenting a story, however, that's the spoonful of sugar on
Speaker 1: the medicine. Yeah, but I would I would actually argue
Speaker 1: that every single scientific paper that's ever been published has
Speaker 1: a trojan horse of sorts in the narrative. In other words,
Speaker 1: something that happens that's a surprise that turns our assumptions
Speaker 1: on its head, right, because because you've got to have
Speaker 1: conflict and story for to be good. Nobody wants to
Speaker 1: read a story about, hey, there's this person they marry
Speaker 1: and everything happened the way it needed to happen. It was.
Speaker 1: You know, you need some sort of conflict where suddenly
Speaker 1: something doesn't happen, there's a fall from grace, or there's
Speaker 1: a conflict that had or some sort of of enemy
Speaker 1: that has to be overcome. I mean, that's the stuff
Speaker 1: of great narrative. No one wants to read three long
Speaker 1: books about Bilbo setting at home, drinking tea and crumpets.
Speaker 1: This is true. This is true. Something has to happen,
Speaker 1: change has to occur in order for the reader to
Speaker 1: better understand him or herself in the greater world around them. Right,
Speaker 1: And this I think if you look at it, pretty
Speaker 1: much every publication of a paper, there's going to be
Speaker 1: something within it, even if it's something like in a
Speaker 1: paper that ended up in Ignoble, right, which we did
Speaker 1: a couple of podcasts. There's always a story. Like there's
Speaker 1: the story of the guy that said, hey, there's a
Speaker 1: dead duck outside my window, and then another duck came
Speaker 1: and started copulating with that dead duck and he had
Speaker 1: to make sense of it. So there's the study. There's
Speaker 1: the story there's a man and getting in encountering a
Speaker 1: mystery in the world, well something to overcome and have
Speaker 1: to solve it, having to an analyze it and learning
Speaker 1: something from it. Right. So that's what the basis of
Speaker 1: storytelling is about. You don't want learn. You generally, when
Speaker 1: you engage with a story, you want a character that's
Speaker 1: going to learn and grow, or on the optic, you
Speaker 1: want a character maybe that doesn't learn and grow, but
Speaker 1: that's that's still part and partial to who that person
Speaker 1: is and getting even know that. So I'm actually thinking
Speaker 1: about the paper that was published by the kids. We
Speaker 1: talked about this on how to Think like a Child
Speaker 1: and uh blato, who did the ted talk about it?
Speaker 1: And those kids were trying to find out whether or
Speaker 1: not humans and insects had things in common in terms
Speaker 1: of the way that they think, the way that they forage,
Speaker 1: that they organized. Is it possible that insects could have
Speaker 1: as complex thought processes as humans? And this was the
Speaker 1: story they were after, and they got their trojan horse
Speaker 1: because they found out that these bees were forging in
Speaker 1: ways that we had never known before, that that were
Speaker 1: really nuanced. You changed the conditions and they could adapt,
Speaker 1: and again you have a story about how a we're
Speaker 1: not that far from from the rest of the natural world.
Speaker 1: In other words, a lot of the blueprint of who
Speaker 1: we are comes from everything around us. Right that there's
Speaker 1: there's something intrinsic to bees that is intrinsic to us,
Speaker 1: and so you get this idea of how the natural
Speaker 1: world orders itself. But also that kids can think critically.
Speaker 1: That's the other part of this story that has to
Speaker 1: do with us published paper that kids can see through
Speaker 1: the mind of a scientist and in fact do so
Speaker 1: every day it is again something that is not apart
Speaker 1: from them. It is underscoring this idea that we are
Speaker 1: all inherently scientists. Robert Cowitch Coast of Radio Lab a
Speaker 1: great science podcast that we listen to it and I
Speaker 1: think a number of our listeners listened to as well.
Speaker 1: He gave a great keynote a few years back on
Speaker 1: the importance of storytelling to the scientific community, which is
Speaker 1: really really great talk, really inspiring tall whether you stand
Speaker 1: on the inside or outside of a scientific institution, because
Speaker 1: he was he was very much going with this idea
Speaker 1: of storytelling is a trojan horse. His whole thing was,
Speaker 1: if you're a scientist and you're engaging with with people
Speaker 1: and someone asks you what you do, which, what are
Speaker 1: you studying? What are you what's your research consisting of?
Speaker 1: Don't blow them off, Don't just say I you wouldn't
Speaker 1: understand it. Try and explain it to and trying to
Speaker 1: explain it as a story, because narrative is powerful. And
Speaker 1: if you if the scientists are not telling a story
Speaker 1: that makes sense, if they're not telling a story about
Speaker 1: how the world works, then there are gonna be other
Speaker 1: competing stories out there, stories that stem from myth stories
Speaker 1: that stem from religious or spiritual views of the world,
Speaker 1: stories that stem from just complete Internet generated quackery. We've
Speaker 1: all received emails like that about how Mars is going
Speaker 1: to be as big as the moon and the night sky,
Speaker 1: and other such nonsense, about how Satanist in your area
Speaker 1: are going to kidnap your cat on haw Halloween. The
Speaker 1: list goes on and on. But all the quack ideas
Speaker 1: out there, they already have narratives, and some of these
Speaker 1: these idea as are old. We've been telling some of
Speaker 1: these stories since the beginning of human history, and so
Speaker 1: science has to compete with those. So we need science
Speaker 1: that tells stories. We need to engage with students and
Speaker 1: with adults, people of all ages with a science that
Speaker 1: is wrapped inherentive. Yeah, and because you know, we we've
Speaker 1: talked about how in the past, the human storytelling has
Speaker 1: really revolved around mysticism, and we've defined ourselves in these
Speaker 1: in these ways. We think about mysticism more as the
Speaker 1: creative expression now, but there's still a bit of that,
Speaker 1: But that cannot be said for everyone in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still in the cultural fabrics. So um,
Speaker 1: I think if we can begin to understand ourselves in
Speaker 1: these different terms as these Euclidean space explorers, and looking
Speaker 1: down at our fingers and realizing that we have ordered
Speaker 1: an entire world around digits numbers. Again, we can begin
Speaker 1: to understand that this is not something in a separate
Speaker 1: from us. Yeah, we're born scientists, and that's something we
Speaker 1: need to cultivate, we need to nurture, and we don't
Speaker 1: need to learn to be something other than a scientist
Speaker 1: as we grow. All right, Well, on that note, let's
Speaker 1: call over the robit and get a little bit of
Speaker 1: listener mail. All right, this one comes to us from Pedro.
Speaker 1: Pedro writes and says, Hey, Julian Robert, I'm a truck driver.
Speaker 1: We have a number of those, so always nice to
Speaker 1: hear from the truckers out there. I'm a truck driver
Speaker 1: and recently started to listen to your awesome podcast. I
Speaker 1: literally have listened to most of your podcast to date
Speaker 1: in about a week. Wow. Anyhow, I finally got home
Speaker 1: and wanted to write to you guys and share a
Speaker 1: little story that popped into mind when I heard the
Speaker 1: Gigantism episode Julie mentioned on the topic of hissing cockroaches
Speaker 1: that she thought there might be flying cock roaches. Yes,
Speaker 1: I grew up in Puerto Rico and in my native town,
Speaker 1: Vega Baja. As a team, I moved to a more
Speaker 1: isolated part of town, near a farm close to the
Speaker 1: tree line of a jungle like part of the island. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was in the twilight hours and my father and
Speaker 1: I were standing on our porch when something hit me
Speaker 1: in the face, more like slapped me. My father kidded
Speaker 1: that it was a bat, which freaked freaked me out enough,
Speaker 1: But when we turned on a few lights, I was
Speaker 1: surprised by a whole bunch of huge, disgusting flying cockroaches.
Speaker 1: Not one of the selling points of my wonderful island anyway.
Speaker 1: I love the podcast, and I'm only disappointed in the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm almost up to date on him. All Right,
Speaker 1: so it's saying that these cockroaches are hitting cockroaches with wings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what he's saying, Okay, because I know about palmettos,
Speaker 1: and those suckers can get big even here in Georgia. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Put the hissing cockroach three or more inches with wings
Speaker 1: hissing at you as it comes in the lands in
Speaker 1: your ear cannut unless there was a kid out there
Speaker 1: in the shadows with a slingshot just pelting the porch
Speaker 1: with these things, but I doubt it. Alright, Alright, something
Speaker 1: to add to uh to the nightmares? Well, um, you
Speaker 1: can certainly add to our nightmares and you can add
Speaker 1: to the listeners nightmares by by connecting with us, sharing
Speaker 1: your stories about your scientific understanding of the world and
Speaker 1: how you engage in science and if you're a teacher,
Speaker 1: would love to hear your thoughts on engaging students in science.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook and you can find
Speaker 1: us on tumbler. We are stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: on both of those and you can also seek us
Speaker 1: out on Twitter, where our handle is blow the Mind
Speaker 1: and you can drop us a line at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at discovery dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com