Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Pauled, Mission controlled decand most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here that makes this the stuff they don't
Speaker 3: want you to know. We are returned. We are made
Speaker 3: whole stuff.
Speaker 4: That don't want you to know. The return.
Speaker 3: Yes, please do call it a comeback forget ll cool Jay.
Speaker 3: Here's a question to start tonight. Who doesn't want to
Speaker 3: be more intelligent? Do you think anybody would a local question? Yeah,
Speaker 3: on this question, who who would ever be given the
Speaker 3: opportunity to say have an intuitive grasp of quantum mechanics
Speaker 3: and respond by saying, nah, I'm good.
Speaker 5: Maybe it's not your thing, I think there could be,
Speaker 5: or just maybe it's too much power, too much pressure
Speaker 5: to know all these things about the universe.
Speaker 4: I give it a pass.
Speaker 2: I totally see what you mean. Like I think, I
Speaker 2: think overall everybody would love having a little more of
Speaker 2: an edge on whatever it is they're doing, right, whatever
Speaker 2: it is is making them money or making their family
Speaker 2: prosperous in the future of that kind of thing, Well.
Speaker 5: That's more general. I'm talking about quantum mechanics specific, but yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, well, yeah, or even that superpower level kind of thing, right,
Speaker 2: We've seen that associated with super human movies, right.
Speaker 3: Sure, Limitless for instance, is.
Speaker 4: That the one where He's limitless?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm gonna make that joke every time it's from
Speaker 5: the office, but I love that.
Speaker 2: But there is something to this I think that we
Speaker 2: should ponder as we go throughout. Often some of the
Speaker 2: most genius human beings that have lived ride that line
Speaker 2: between madness and genius, right where maybe knowing more and
Speaker 2: more and more could make you either more depressed or
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 3: All right, Yeah, no, I hear you.
Speaker 2: I think it's a balance.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's sort of the more money, more problems,
Speaker 5: or the intellectual or spiritual version of that, like, the
Speaker 5: more you know, the more problems you see, then the more.
Speaker 4: Like insane things make you because you know what's possible.
Speaker 2: You know, the more complicated everything becomes.
Speaker 4: In real time.
Speaker 3: The more you know, the more you know, and those
Speaker 3: are not necessarily a good end result. Right, so we
Speaker 3: arrive at this question. It's funny, this kind of idea
Speaker 3: of a Faustian bargain. Uh, the majority of human beings,
Speaker 3: I will posit would, up to a certain level, make
Speaker 3: some sacrifices for the idea of easily acquired acumen, expertise,
Speaker 3: or knowledge. You know, if someone said, Uh, if someone said,
Speaker 3: would you would you give up the ability to speak
Speaker 3: aloud if it made you good at math? Not everyone
Speaker 3: would say yes. But if if they said, if they said,
Speaker 3: for instance, would you sacrifice your left pinky toe to
Speaker 3: any instrument? Because at least.
Speaker 5: Important to yeah, the instruments that require the use of
Speaker 5: your left pinky toes.
Speaker 3: That's where the monkeys has a finger curled out tonight.
Speaker 3: In tonight's episode, we are continuing conspiratorial exploration of a
Speaker 3: very controversial thing known as the modern dietary supplement industry,
Speaker 3: and we are focusing on this idea of improving a
Speaker 3: thing people still can't define the nature of intelligence, the
Speaker 3: idea that the ingestion of certain substances can improve the
Speaker 3: function of your brain. Right now, these things collectively are
Speaker 3: known as new tropics in oo tropics. Get ready, folks,
Speaker 3: it's a weird one. Here are the facts, all right.
Speaker 3: People have always been trying to sort of get better, right,
Speaker 3: or get good as we say, in the world of gaming.
Speaker 5: Man, I had a really fun conversation with our buddy
Speaker 5: Frank the other day about how like the human ear
Speaker 5: or like the human hearing abilities is represented by a
Speaker 5: certain range, and he positive that what if there were
Speaker 5: a thing you could do to make your brain perceive
Speaker 5: a larg arger range of sound, Like is it a
Speaker 5: question of the equipments, you know, limitations, or is it
Speaker 5: a question of the programmings limitations like firmware updates, you know,
Speaker 5: on a piece of hardware.
Speaker 4: I don't know the answer.
Speaker 5: I do think maybe the human ear mechanics is limited
Speaker 5: to a certain age.
Speaker 4: There are other things that maybe we have the abil.
Speaker 5: The potential to be able to do, but there's not
Speaker 5: the programming, not the you know, the software ware.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, that's because the brain is in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, it is hardware, right, but it is software based.
Speaker 2: Because if you think of language and all of these things,
Speaker 2: we'll get into it. Because the language hasn't always been around, right,
Speaker 2: Humans have been around for a long time, and they've
Speaker 2: been trying to improve since they started, since we started.
Speaker 3: I'm a fan of man hashtag new Devil's Advocate. I
Speaker 3: am a fan of the human.
Speaker 5: Strive, you know, Like I thought you said, I'm a
Speaker 5: fan of man, like I like the soft drink Fana
Speaker 5: the best.
Speaker 4: That's my best. I thought you were doing a thing.
Speaker 4: But I'm a fan of man as well.
Speaker 3: Who you carry those bricks for, Kevin. Human history has
Speaker 3: been a study and self improvement since the first time
Speaker 3: they domesticated fire, and we got to get this out
Speaker 3: of the way. Modern humans, to your point, Matt, predate
Speaker 3: what we recognize as documented history, Like you go back
Speaker 3: far enough so the average Like if you're listening to
Speaker 3: this and you're human, then your Homo sapien Esque or
Speaker 3: whatever early mixtape it goes back to. It goes back
Speaker 3: to three hundred thousand years or so, basically, and documented
Speaker 3: human society is a very small portion of that. So
Speaker 3: a great deal of human invention, innovation, trial and error.
Speaker 3: It is lost, it is gone, It is restricted to
Speaker 3: myth and legend. If you look back post by cameral
Speaker 3: mind argument, then we'll see that the human ancestors were
Speaker 3: just as intelligent as the modern humans today, and people
Speaker 3: still don't know what intelligence is. Like it's easy for
Speaker 3: us to look back in twenty twenty four with the
Speaker 3: benefit of retrospect, and we have to realize that as
Speaker 3: you are listening to this now, you are standing on
Speaker 3: the shoulders of ancestors, the vast majority of whom are dead.
Speaker 3: And all the modern benefits, all the things that make
Speaker 3: humans seem quote unquote smarter, now they're a result of
Speaker 3: a lot of people screwing up, you know, and maybe
Speaker 3: one out of just cocktail math here, maybe one out
Speaker 3: of one hundred thousand figured out something cool.
Speaker 5: I guess that's part of my question or my point
Speaker 5: maybe is like about the nature of human physiology over time,
Speaker 5: Like certainly we've developed parts of our brains that over
Speaker 5: time have gotten bigger, you know, because of certain tasks
Speaker 5: we no longer had to do, and then parts of
Speaker 5: the brain that no longer need to do that thing
Speaker 5: can evolve to do another thing, and etc. So I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm not a brain scientist, but I know that there
Speaker 5: are studies that look at the development and the evolution
Speaker 5: of the human brain. But the majority of that stuff
Speaker 5: is caused by ideas and exchanges of ideas and concepts
Speaker 5: and things that are learned behaviors.
Speaker 3: Right, the modern human benefits from things like better control
Speaker 3: over the environment, better access to education, progress towards the
Speaker 3: eternal struggle for sanitation and public health. Like you know,
Speaker 3: let's be honest, if you were hearing this now, fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realist, please please understand, you would not be some crazy,
Speaker 3: awesome wizard if you traveled back in time. And that's
Speaker 3: not a ding on an anybody. It's just noting that
Speaker 3: most of us today as individuals do not understand the
Speaker 3: breakthroughs from which we benefit. We would be hard put
Speaker 3: to replicate those breakthroughs and innovations if we like, if
Speaker 3: you travel back before the invention of steel.
Speaker 1: Do you know how to do that?
Speaker 3: Do you know how to make steel? Right? I mean,
Speaker 3: I think we just civilization maybe looks down or looks
Speaker 3: as scance on people of the past. And it's especially
Speaker 3: rich when we understand we do not have actionable definitions
Speaker 3: for intelligence or consciousness. We do know some people appear
Speaker 3: to have knacks for certain genres. We could call them
Speaker 3: of intellect, Like some people have innate musical talent right now,
Speaker 3: as you're listening, We're very privileg to have some real
Speaker 3: titans here. Like, no, Matt, I'm not blowing smoke. You
Speaker 3: guys are incredibly talented musicians. You're super good at it
Speaker 3: to a level that not everybody can attain realistically.
Speaker 5: Even that's a nature nurture question too, because I mean,
Speaker 5: I grew up with musician parents and I was constantly
Speaker 5: surrounded by it. But I mean, I don't know your situation,
Speaker 5: but you know you certainly made choices early on to
Speaker 5: improve those abilities. Maybe you had some of it innate,
Speaker 5: but then you got good at it by repetition and
Speaker 5: by like being in the jazz band and then playing
Speaker 5: drums and being in bands and stuff.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, a lot of those kinds of skills end
Speaker 2: up being, like you said, a choice to improve. But
Speaker 2: I I would just say, anybody who is skilled in
Speaker 2: those things deals with the same things that are also
Speaker 2: innate to all these humans that follow that trail all
Speaker 2: the way back. Things like boredom, like mental boredom, physical stress,
Speaker 2: and like being tired, right, and like being exhausted and
Speaker 2: worn out, and all of the things that you know,
Speaker 2: we could if we could improve right, not getting bored,
Speaker 2: not getting tired, those kinds of things that you could
Speaker 2: use drugs for. There could be major, major benefits to
Speaker 2: anyone's trying to improve in one thing or another, whether
Speaker 2: that's music or you know, understanding mathematics more or whatever
Speaker 2: the pursuit is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great point, Matt. Also, some people seem to intuitively
Speaker 3: understand math. In colloquial I guess Western society they call
Speaker 3: it having a knack for a thing. We also know
Speaker 3: the human animal is out of all the animals living.
Speaker 3: The human animal is the thing that said, I don't
Speaker 3: have to spend millions of years evolving and create tools.
Speaker 3: The human is the great artificer. The human says, I
Speaker 3: will build things to better my experience. The human is
Speaker 3: the machine that seeks to hack evolution. It is a
Speaker 3: machine that is built to improve upon itself, which hadn't
Speaker 3: happened before improvable history. And you know, humans have spent
Speaker 3: a lot of time on this endeavor, on this hustle.
Speaker 3: You know, there are efforts like eugenetics, which is problematic
Speaker 3: deep stain or racism and pseudoscience, and then there's stuff
Speaker 3: like you know, humans always figure out how to do
Speaker 3: more with less remote work is an example of that.
Speaker 3: Drone warfare and mass surveillance are examples of that. Social
Speaker 3: media manipulation, certain chemical substances. Humans love a chemical substance.
Speaker 3: They're not alone in that one. Dolphins get high, you know,
Speaker 3: elephants get drunk.
Speaker 4: Is.
Speaker 3: Humans are figuring out some really weird stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Speaking of the music side of things, I actually
Speaker 5: had a really interesting interview when I was traveling into
Speaker 5: this music festival and these two really incredible producers, Guy
Speaker 5: ag Cook and the sud goes By Sego Bodego. We're
Speaker 5: having this really cool conversation about their creative process.
Speaker 4: And Sego Bodega, who's.
Speaker 5: This uh thing, he's Irish producer whose name, real name
Speaker 5: I don't remember. He was saying, like, you know, a
Speaker 5: lot of what inspires him as this idea of why
Speaker 5: do we have to sleep? Like the question of why
Speaker 5: can I supply myself with all the nutrients that I
Speaker 5: need to subsist and be supposedly, you know, have enough
Speaker 5: death of calories or whatever to keep me going, and
Speaker 5: yet no matter what, eventually, inevitably I am going to
Speaker 5: have to sleep. And people take drugs like amphetamines and
Speaker 5: uppers and even energy drinks to try to not sleep
Speaker 5: as long as possible, but inevitably that bill comes due
Speaker 5: and the human machine to power down at some point.
Speaker 5: So that's the whole limitless idea is what if we
Speaker 5: could do something like get rid of the need to
Speaker 5: sleep entirely.
Speaker 4: Think about how much more productive we'd be, you know?
Speaker 2: Or if you could remember absolutely everything that you read?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Right?
Speaker 2: Can you? Can you take a substance that gives you
Speaker 2: a more photographic memory?
Speaker 4: Ah?
Speaker 3: And here we get to the crux of it. We're
Speaker 3: not talking about substances like LSD or you know, synaesthesia
Speaker 3: producing whose synogenics. We're not talking about recreational drugs. It
Speaker 3: might alter your mind state in an enjoyable way that
Speaker 3: makes you maybe feel a little better at things than
Speaker 3: you actually are. We're talking about a group of compounds
Speaker 3: that could, in theory, make that you a better you,
Speaker 3: higher executive functions like you're talking about matt better attention,
Speaker 3: better listening skills, and ability to focus, to retain, to
Speaker 3: synthesize information, perhaps even onto the idea of ediotic or
Speaker 3: graphic memory. This brings us to new tropics and attempt
Speaker 3: to fix processes or improved processes the humans do not
Speaker 3: yet fully understand. So tonight's question, can a pill really
Speaker 3: make you limitless? Will pause for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. I guess it defined. I
Speaker 3: guess it depends on what we mean by fix fix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have seen new tropics defined as in a
Speaker 2: bunch of different ways. We've got a couple here that
Speaker 2: it's pretty much what been described right before we went
Speaker 2: to the break. These are substances, an umbrella term for
Speaker 2: substances that purport to boost creativity and memory and cognitive
Speaker 2: abilities of all sorts, any brain function basically, or anything
Speaker 2: you could tie to your brain having power over whatever
Speaker 2: it is. New tropics might and probably would fit under that.
Speaker 2: And they're supplements, by the way. They they're not drugs.
Speaker 2: There's some of them, there are few, but most of
Speaker 2: them are just supplements you get over the counter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the question is, uh, what the question? People miss
Speaker 3: In a lot of these excited pieces of ad copy
Speaker 3: and these weird Silicon Valley ted talks, they're conflating cognitive function,
Speaker 3: which we do understand, with intelligence, which we do not.
Speaker 3: Cognitive function is best to find as a series of
Speaker 3: distinct abilities and the measure of those abilities in your brain.
Speaker 3: So new tropics are often called on the street. Smart
Speaker 3: drugs are memory enhancing substances or cognitive in answers. I
Speaker 3: would like to give a very special shout out to
Speaker 3: our long running shadow producer. One of my favorite new
Speaker 3: tropics caffeine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, wait really so yeah. When I'm talking about
Speaker 5: like the ability to stave off sleep or to sharpen
Speaker 5: our mental acuity a little bit, I guess my initial
Speaker 5: go to is something like caffeine or nicotine or you know, cocaine.
Speaker 5: You know, I mean stuff that like like the soldiers
Speaker 5: would take so they could go, go go and like
Speaker 5: never have to back down.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it's always a blitz, right, it's always Halloween
Speaker 3: in America.
Speaker 2: Well, and for me, jumping in with caffeine is stuff
Speaker 2: like vitamin B six and B twelve, nice riboflavin. I'm
Speaker 2: not really sure why.
Speaker 3: Tarn hauene would be another ye.
Speaker 2: Chromium that sound dangerous?
Speaker 5: Could you shoot some chromium right into my neck? It
Speaker 5: sounds like apptop. You know B twelve people get that, like,
Speaker 5: you know, touring bands for example, like rock and roll lifestyle, Right,
Speaker 5: they'll have a doctor on staff that'll shoot their ass
Speaker 5: up full of B twelve when they're flagging a little bit.
Speaker 3: Scientology will force you to ingest superhuman amounts of niocin. Also, uh,
Speaker 3: the active I think the real kick people get from
Speaker 3: things like five hour energy drink is a composition of
Speaker 3: vitamin bees and vitamin bees. Makes me think of ingesting
Speaker 3: just bees. These folks don't eat bees. Let them make
Speaker 3: the honey.
Speaker 5: Eat the honey. That's very unpleasant thought bees called me
Speaker 5: in the morning. You never it might sting a little
Speaker 5: going down, but I promise it's worth it perfect.
Speaker 3: Uh. Neo Tropics are Nootropics are again, as you were saying, Matt,
Speaker 3: they are a dangerously vague umbrella tur The term includes
Speaker 3: prescription medications, but also it also includes a lot of
Speaker 3: supplements that have no sort of oversight whatsoever. They are
Speaker 3: in general going to be called nootropics if they again
Speaker 3: purport to improve some aspect of your cognition, your thinking,
Speaker 3: your memory like Saint John's will make you in a
Speaker 3: good mood, et cetera, your attention, your creativity, your motivation.
Speaker 3: And we know that by far the most common nootropic
Speaker 3: substances are at this point stimulants and the ones that
Speaker 3: are prescription their FDA approved. The Federal Drug Administration in
Speaker 3: the United States is currently on board with a bevy
Speaker 3: of neotropics as long as they are aimed at improving
Speaker 3: attention DEFICI, hyperactivity disorder, and symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer's.
Speaker 3: Those are the only ones that are kind of real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want some amphetamine salts, you can get
Speaker 2: those if you get a prescription, which is harder and
Speaker 2: harder to get nowadays.
Speaker 3: For like I would, but I keep napping, Matt Man,
Speaker 3: Chris slacking off, dude, get to it.
Speaker 2: Get limitless every two hours, like you take twenty minutes
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 5: It adds up, right, How people attempted things like that,
Speaker 5: or like there's like, you know, kind of hogwash lore
Speaker 5: about CEOs that only nap five minutes in the time
Speaker 5: or something like that.
Speaker 2: Well, I know we dabbled in it, Ben, I think
Speaker 2: you went harder on the paint than I did. I
Speaker 2: tried for a little while back in the day doing that.
Speaker 2: I forget who we learned about. It was somebody really
Speaker 2: famous that we learned about. Did it pretty effectively.
Speaker 3: Talking about polyphasic sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not for me.
Speaker 3: Man, Genetically, I am one of the folks who doesn't
Speaker 3: doesn't jibe with the eight hour every twenty four hour formula.
Speaker 3: So you know, yeah, we'll see how it works out.
Speaker 3: But the only time will tell. Only time will tell.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: The issue is that outside of the prescribed stuff, outside
Speaker 3: of those you know, like the Adderalls, the Riddlins and
Speaker 3: so on, there are a lot of self proclaimed new
Speaker 3: tropics that make some pretty bold assertions and a lot
Speaker 3: of the Even though a lot of the prescribed stuff,
Speaker 3: a lot of the stuff the FDA and other regulatory
Speaker 3: bodies agree to, they still encounter what we'll call off
Speaker 3: label use. Maybe we talk a little bit about off
Speaker 3: label use, most famous example recently being no zembic.
Speaker 5: I mean, I've had a lot of experience with off
Speaker 5: label use everything from like this is sort of a
Speaker 5: thing for this but it kind of works like a
Speaker 5: type to pressant.
Speaker 4: It seems to be really positive for some users.
Speaker 5: And you know, I think I've been open about the
Speaker 5: fact that I tried, like, what's a compounded version of
Speaker 5: one of those zepic.
Speaker 4: Type drugs that it didn't work. Wasn't for me.
Speaker 5: I read too much about it, and it freaked me
Speaker 5: out and I discontinued very quickly.
Speaker 4: But I'm shocked.
Speaker 5: I went through a period of sleeplessness many years ago
Speaker 5: where I had really bad insomnia and the doctor was
Speaker 5: more than willing to prescribe me something off label that
Speaker 5: would help with my insomnia.
Speaker 4: It didn't at all, But it was shocking to google.
Speaker 5: It and realize what it was originally for, and they
Speaker 5: seemed completely unrelated, and just I don't know, goes to
Speaker 5: show that it's really is kind of practicing medicine.
Speaker 4: What are you loving?
Speaker 2: Look at? Ben was given just this really interesting Oh
Speaker 2: I know, I know. I'm sorry you were so concerned
Speaker 2: about like like, oh my god.
Speaker 4: Those pastors tried to judy you know.
Speaker 5: That's the thing and I've talked about I recently talked
Speaker 5: about to like, you know, my father, institution of him
Speaker 5: being prescribed stuff off label for certain you know, psychologics.
Speaker 4: I just don't care for it. It's like, that's what
Speaker 4: I'm getting at. It seems very improvisational. This is what
Speaker 4: I'm going is what I'm implying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's medicine. The space for jazz Ooh.
Speaker 4: Yes, maybe it moves to the beat of jazz.
Speaker 5: It's a real cosmic gumbod.
Speaker 2: I was just watching Rewatching the Righteous Gemstones, and there's
Speaker 2: a moment where Jesse Gemstone is like celebrating and he
Speaker 2: goes behind his desk and he's like, all right, baby,
Speaker 2: I'm a popin Adderall. But like as though it's just
Speaker 2: a drug that he has that he's not using for
Speaker 2: actually what he is supposed to be using it for.
Speaker 2: It's just he's going to celebrate with it.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, yeah, Adderall, when you're here your family, Yeah, sorry, Adderall.
Speaker 3: Is also, of course, I love that we're alluding to this,
Speaker 3: the the historical weaponization of these substances in times of war, right,
Speaker 3: like methamphetamines obviously played a huge role in World War
Speaker 3: Two for sure and in later wars. And spoiler you
Speaker 3: don't have to write in if you don't want to, folks,
Speaker 3: but we have it on good authority. There are still
Speaker 3: some US Air Force and US Navy folks who are
Speaker 3: prescribed amphetamines for some long range.
Speaker 2: Flights or something very similar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, something not quite there, But these medications. When we're
Speaker 3: talking about off label, what we're saying is some of
Speaker 3: these stuff that is used to treat dementia and ADHD.
Speaker 3: It's improving a what is seen as a problem or
Speaker 3: a misstep. Yet in the off label use, these medications
Speaker 3: can also be used by healthy adults as an attempt
Speaker 3: to boost mental functioning beyond what they see as its
Speaker 3: normal baseline. We go to the history is nuts, all right.
Speaker 3: So there's a guy named c Georgia. Georgia pronunciations it's great, No,
Speaker 3: it does see Italian or Romanian. Perhaps it sounds like
Speaker 3: us saying Georgia the state with Georgia.
Speaker 4: I'm a fan of mia from Georgia.
Speaker 3: Who you're carrying all those bricks for Georgia. This guy's
Speaker 3: a Romanian chemist. He's a psychologist. He's often called the
Speaker 3: father of neotropics because he developed something called parasitam, one
Speaker 3: of the first known and proven cognition enhancing drugs. It's
Speaker 3: part of a group called race tam And this stuff
Speaker 3: is developed originally to treat motion sickness. Kind of like,
Speaker 3: how what was it? Viagra was originally meant as some
Speaker 3: sort of cardiovascular medication.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's about blood flow, life.
Speaker 4: Flow, Yes, sir, improving it. Give me all the blood
Speaker 4: flow you got and.
Speaker 2: Then damn it it up in one very.
Speaker 3: At all these guys, all the people in those uh
Speaker 3: in those early studies who died, they died with the
Speaker 3: best boners of their lives. Uh.
Speaker 5: If you want to use the scientific word pri episms, yes,
Speaker 5: like trotten that one out.
Speaker 4: I like that word.
Speaker 3: A troubling erection, a direction that lasts more than what
Speaker 3: is it.
Speaker 4: Stats? I just do know that is the scientific word
Speaker 4: for a for a boner.
Speaker 3: It's the boner that doesn't stop. It's the marathon.
Speaker 5: Yeah, which again, you know a lot of people that
Speaker 5: don't have a rectile dysfunction take those pills as a
Speaker 5: sex enhancer, like it's a big thing. And in certain
Speaker 5: communities it's it's considered a party drug, you know, in
Speaker 5: a way it's like poppers and boner pills, y'all.
Speaker 2: Huh do you like my erection selection? That quote? That's
Speaker 2: fair you can find it.
Speaker 3: Yes, famous friend of the show, that Paul Rudd, connoisseur
Speaker 3: of erections. Also also young forever by the way he's
Speaker 3: getting into acting here, I love alright, So uh.
Speaker 5: Neotropics ageless though, speaking of New tropics, was that guy
Speaker 5: got going on bathing and children or something?
Speaker 3: Everything was a.
Speaker 4: Rumor, I know, but I know it was.
Speaker 5: But it's alright, it's you got some people though, how
Speaker 5: they just look young forever?
Speaker 4: Is it just clean living? Is it, you know, genetics?
Speaker 5: Is it a combination of the two or these people
Speaker 5: just have the best suit, secret spy doctors that are
Speaker 5: giving them all the good drugs behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: Okay, come, and we can say that the etymology of
Speaker 3: new Tropic comes from the Greek. So this Romanian doctor
Speaker 3: figures out parasitam and says this is a whole new
Speaker 3: type of drug. The Greek word is noose for mind
Speaker 3: and trippyn for to bend. In other words, this literally
Speaker 3: translates to mind and drugs.
Speaker 4: That's so cool.
Speaker 5: So Georgia said that no tropic drugs should have these
Speaker 5: following particular qualities, these characteristics, and you're gonna hear a
Speaker 5: lot of the things we've already been talking about in
Speaker 5: this list, things like enhancing of ability to learn and memory,
Speaker 5: also enhancing the ability to I guess reject negative learned behaviors.
Speaker 5: So I guess this would be maybe in terms of
Speaker 5: like breaking addictions or you know, patterns of things that
Speaker 5: are you know, not beneficial to us as humans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, breaking those also protecting the brain against various physical
Speaker 3: or chemical injuries, such that if you got a real
Speaker 3: wallop on your cranium, the new tropic could perhaps help
Speaker 3: you bounce back a bit better.
Speaker 2: Whoa, And also chemical injuries. So it kind of reminds
Speaker 2: me of those specific PB pills that we learned about
Speaker 2: that were taken or at least given to soldiers to
Speaker 2: prevent neurological effects of neurotoxins.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting and fascinating, if ambitious part of the classification.
Speaker 3: Also talking about the ethic increasing the mechanics of certain
Speaker 3: regions of the brain, different mechanisms like tonic cortical control mechanisms.
Speaker 2: What the hell is that?
Speaker 3: It's We're very fun at parties. Tonic cortical control is
Speaker 3: the idea that your brain can it can improve the
Speaker 3: self regulation of certain things while other chemicals intrude into your.
Speaker 5: Usual program, So maintaining stasis in the face of uh,
Speaker 5: maybe outside stimuli, right then maybe yeah, in drug form
Speaker 5: even right.
Speaker 3: They should also yeah, to your point, no, they should
Speaker 3: also not include the adverse effects of other established what
Speaker 3: we call psychotropic substances.
Speaker 5: Wait a minute, they should be all good, positive stuff
Speaker 5: that makes you better with none of the side effects.
Speaker 5: This sounds made up, guys, I don't know. I think
Speaker 5: there is usually a push pull in these things. If you,
Speaker 5: you know, get improvement in one thing, then something's coming
Speaker 5: down the line to kick you in the pants later.
Speaker 4: I don't absolutely not.
Speaker 5: I don't mean to pooh pooh this stuff, but it
Speaker 5: does feel a little too good to be true. That's
Speaker 5: how I feel about the hole ozempic thing. And you're
Speaker 5: starting to hear it with people that are like, oh no,
Speaker 5: and now my stomach's digesting itself and I can't eat
Speaker 5: cupcakes anymore or else like, you know, want to vomit wildly.
Speaker 5: That's a side effect, y'all. I hate to tell you
Speaker 5: that is a side effect.
Speaker 2: And just to point out here, it's listed that sedation
Speaker 2: as in, you know, a lot of the actual over
Speaker 2: the counter substances that we get prescribed will make you
Speaker 2: a little more sedate in order to do something like
Speaker 2: improve your body's ability to repair itself or fight off
Speaker 2: infections or things like that, right, or motor stimulation adderall caffeine,
Speaker 2: you know, all these other drugs that would be kind
Speaker 2: of considered nootropics at least have been considered Neotropics are
Speaker 2: gonna do that thing where maybe you're a little more jittery,
Speaker 2: or maybe your body is your heart is beating a
Speaker 2: little faster.
Speaker 3: That's true. A great example, Prestem is not approved by
Speaker 3: the FDA here in the US, but in the United
Speaker 3: Kingdom it is a prescription drug primarily used for condition
Speaker 3: called mile clonus, which is a little twitchy, well like
Speaker 3: the muscle regular muscle twitching.
Speaker 4: Wow, But yes, I mean that thing you're just describing, Matt.
Speaker 5: You know, that dormant that you're making you a little
Speaker 5: sedate so that your body can go into sort of
Speaker 5: a standby mode and repair itself.
Speaker 4: What does that remind you of a sleep? Maybe? You
Speaker 4: know it's another stand.
Speaker 3: In for the nearly high road.
Speaker 2: But I'm sorry, I thought you were going to say, like,
Speaker 2: just turn turn us off and then turn us back on.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, three starts.
Speaker 4: I mean even computers need it every now and again.
Speaker 4: That's where there's out the cobwebs.
Speaker 2: That's where the blood flow medication comes in.
Speaker 3: Right there we are, And so as we're noting this
Speaker 3: is original uh specific criteria, but the term new tropics
Speaker 3: now refers to three large groups uh entirely comprised of
Speaker 3: any quote natural or synthetic substance end quote that may
Speaker 3: have have a positive effect on mental skills. If you're
Speaker 3: looking for the three categories, they are dietary supplements, synthetic compounds,
Speaker 3: and prescription drugs. Favorite sponsor this show Just Rug, Just
Speaker 3: just drugs.
Speaker 5: Brought to you by I think guys, I've got a
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Speaker 4: Drugs. Just take them.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: They're good for you.
Speaker 3: Drugs doing real, useful, good rapid.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, we're gonna pause for sponsors, and we've returned.
Speaker 3: So let's go to some of the experts. John Hopkins Medicine.
Speaker 3: You know they got a lot of offins ledagg heads.
Speaker 3: One of them Barry Gordon, I mean, MD, PhDs, the
Speaker 3: director of the Cognitive Neurology neuropsych Cology Division there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, awesome, No, I'm joking. It's amazing. It's amazing. Smart
Speaker 4: people are amazing.
Speaker 3: He strikes me as education is non intelligence. He strikes
Speaker 3: me as a very humble, very very well thought out dude.
Speaker 3: And he says, there is he said in a very
Speaker 3: diplomatic way. He advances the idea that this may be
Speaker 3: a bit of a gilded turd in some situations. He says,
Speaker 3: there's no strong evidence that supplements being sold now right,
Speaker 3: the first of our big three categories, there's no strong
Speaker 3: evidence that their supposed powers of efficacy are helpful. And
Speaker 3: he says further, there's not even a lot of science
Speaker 3: showing us that those are safe in the massive amounts
Speaker 3: in which they could be consumed. You know, like if
Speaker 3: you are if you are looking at provable, provable efficacy
Speaker 3: for these sorts of substances, then you are looking generally
Speaker 3: at things that are mitigating what we would call human
Speaker 3: cognitive dysfunctions treating ADHD. Right, if you don't have ADHD
Speaker 3: and you take adderall, then you're kind of taking speed.
Speaker 2: Absolutely just infetamine salts. Maybe that's what they do.
Speaker 4: Conjacks you up.
Speaker 5: But I've always thought it was bizarre, mean to your
Speaker 5: point about off label stuff, right, Even that term to
Speaker 5: me disas to exist constantly.
Speaker 4: With quote finkers.
Speaker 5: But like, how come if you genuinely have this condition,
Speaker 5: this stuff calms you down, but if you don't, it
Speaker 5: just does the exact opposite. I've always found that fascinating
Speaker 5: and bizarre.
Speaker 3: And here in the United States, new tropics are a
Speaker 3: lot like other dietary supplements. They seem to promise a
Speaker 3: great many things, but they don't have any consequences for
Speaker 3: lying to the customer. You know, it's not prescribed medicine.
Speaker 3: There's not formal testing nor verification by reputable independent entities.
Speaker 3: Just a few years ago, the FDA and the FTC
Speaker 3: said hey, everyone in the world, please watch out. There
Speaker 3: are frauds and scams afoot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, just as we talked about with supplements before,
Speaker 2: the FDA will generally or you know, the FDA doesn't
Speaker 2: regulate right, but generally you can get away with putting
Speaker 2: whatever you want on your supplement as long as it's
Speaker 2: not crazy, right, as long as it's not super out there,
Speaker 2: and you can have a study, let's say, a clinical
Speaker 2: study that shows one particular component in your specific neotropic
Speaker 2: drug had some effect on some mice in one study
Speaker 2: at one time with brain cells. There were maybe mice
Speaker 2: brain cells that were taken out putting it into a
Speaker 2: petri dish. This substance, maybe amongst others, was applied to
Speaker 2: that Petrie dish and something good happened. So so Now
Speaker 2: what was it, Matt?
Speaker 4: What was it? What could happen?
Speaker 2: Well, there's an article in GQ written in twenty eighteen
Speaker 2: by this guy, Jay Willis that took a bunch of
Speaker 2: different new tropics and tried them all, and he just
Speaker 2: pointed out that you can you can write on these
Speaker 2: bottles or these packages stuff that sounds great, like improves memory,
Speaker 2: and just tie it in some way or another to
Speaker 2: some you know, one off study. And as we've learned
Speaker 2: in this show, one off studies generally don't mean jack
Speaker 2: unless you can do it over and over and over
Speaker 2: and over again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like longitudinal studies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, studies.
Speaker 5: Yes, No, it's true. It's it's basically like a sample
Speaker 5: size of one.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like, oh, if.
Speaker 5: This it just I think you said it best, Matt.
Speaker 5: It absolutely, it's absolutely meaningless. But also a lot of
Speaker 5: these supplements, while they are regulated by the FDA, they
Speaker 5: don't receive the same scrutiny and need for like clinical
Speaker 5: trials and anything like that as something that would be prescribed.
Speaker 5: And in the United States, it feels like the line
Speaker 5: between those things sometimes really blurs too, because some of
Speaker 5: the stuff think is prescribed starts to feel a little
Speaker 5: more like pie in the sky, you know, kind of sorcery.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, Well, and if you don't have to label.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna keep harping on that it means mad.
Speaker 2: Well even if just think, if you don't have to
Speaker 2: do a double blind, placebo controlled study, then your substance.
Speaker 2: All it has to do is fifty percent of the
Speaker 2: time make somebody feel like their memory is better for shadow, right, sorry,
Speaker 2: as low.
Speaker 3: As thirty percent.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, just if it has just an uptick a
Speaker 2: little bit in your whatever studies you did internally, then
Speaker 2: you're good to go write it on there and think
Speaker 2: about how much people want the stuff we've been talking
Speaker 2: about today.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm so solution oi, And I'll tell you what
Speaker 3: if this startup, if this startup just needed me to
Speaker 3: only sleep two hours out of twenty four hours, then
Speaker 3: we would get all the venture funding capital we need.
Speaker 5: Think about cocaine, So listen, he's gonna look kind of
Speaker 5: like an anthropomorphic sperm and have little Olympic rings around
Speaker 5: his tail and have giant cartoon eyes and oversized sneakers.
Speaker 3: Sell it.
Speaker 4: What about the torch.
Speaker 3: The torch doesn't do flames.
Speaker 4: It does stars.
Speaker 3: We're so smart we're talking about the nineteen ninety six
Speaker 3: Olympic Atlanta mascot.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and also they're giant robots, but they're also
Speaker 2: cars and they're aliens. It's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 3: Well, I got a question. How many explosions are there?
Speaker 3: Let's up the explosions. Get the numbers up. So anyway,
Speaker 3: should be no surprise that new tropics are a cause
Speaker 3: celebrate in Silicon Valley new tech world overall. There was
Speaker 3: this great Atlantic article by Olga cousin credit where it's due,
Speaker 3: that has a profile of a guy who founded a
Speaker 3: company that distributes new tropics. It's called New True in
Speaker 3: oo tro of course, is really cute.
Speaker 4: New tropics already sounds goofy as hell.
Speaker 5: It sounds like, I don't know, it sounds like a
Speaker 5: cream or something you would put a rejuvenation rejuvenating cream.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they they haven't sold the cream yet. But
Speaker 3: the topical application of neotropics is a very interesting field.
Speaker 3: You may be the first to post on this one.
Speaker 4: Oh jeez, always on the cutting edge.
Speaker 3: So Eric Motzner, he is, he's it's twenty eleven and
Speaker 3: he is running a one man startup. Basically, he's doing
Speaker 3: all the code. He's right, n ad copy, he's teaching himself.
Speaker 3: He's taking calls with you know, angel investors and whatnot.
Speaker 3: And by his own admission, he's dependent upon prescription amphetamines
Speaker 3: and then later anti narcolepsy drugs. And he has this moment,
Speaker 3: this revelation, Paul, can we get an epiphany? Sound perfect?
Speaker 3: He says, I don't need to just stay awake for longer.
Speaker 3: I need to be able to learn more quickly, to
Speaker 3: retain and to synthesize information.
Speaker 4: Well like freaking about it.
Speaker 5: Almost called him Johnny namonk like Neo in the matrix
Speaker 5: you know, or is that he knows kung fu.
Speaker 4: Just download that right into my brain.
Speaker 3: Yes, a way to help him instantly memorize and synthesize
Speaker 3: new information and furthermore, to encode that in long term memory.
Speaker 3: So Kazan notes that he switches to good old Georgio's
Speaker 3: hit Parasitam, and then he notices he says, look, my
Speaker 3: attention SPAN's improving, I'm better at listening, my reaction time
Speaker 3: is better, and so he starts going deep into like
Speaker 3: the wetwear biohacking forums. So we've talked about previously and
Speaker 3: he says, I want to make a better stack. A
Speaker 3: stack is the A stack is.
Speaker 4: A full stack, baby.
Speaker 3: A stack is what we call the regimen of substances
Speaker 3: that people ingest in an attempt to improve their cognitive function.
Speaker 4: All this stuff really too makes me.
Speaker 5: I know, it's highly influenced by the matrix and a
Speaker 5: lot of this kind of cyberpunk writing. But the game cyberpunk,
Speaker 5: you know, it's all about these implants and these wetwear
Speaker 5: and how can we you know, jack them up and
Speaker 5: add more implants to allow us to be limitless, you know,
Speaker 5: to have and only the wealthy can have the higher
Speaker 5: quality implants. They're always kicking the asses of the poor kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It also goes back to the art and science
Speaker 2: of coding rights like coding, because if you think about
Speaker 2: the term stack in that realm.
Speaker 4: It's what I was saying, full stack.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's a.
Speaker 2: Series of pieces of software you were going to use
Speaker 2: to build out.
Speaker 4: Your code, exactly right.
Speaker 2: And if we're thinking about these substances as literally changing
Speaker 2: our software to improve I guess our hardware, it makes
Speaker 2: so much sense.
Speaker 5: So we were saying all this at the top of
Speaker 5: the I mean, it's absolutely yes, it's so interesting, terrifying,
Speaker 5: and then the whole gatekeeper aspect of it becomes part
Speaker 5: of the conversation.
Speaker 4: Now, who can afford it? Who gets the best drugs.
Speaker 5: It's becoming the case already with things like Ozeenpeic so
Speaker 5: expensive insurance won't pay for it. You're starting to see
Speaker 5: all these celebrities taking it, but like your average person
Speaker 5: that maybe are morbidly obese and could benefit health wise,
Speaker 5: not just aesthetically, can't afford it, or they don't have
Speaker 5: the right diagnosis to get insurance to pay for it.
Speaker 4: It's just a tip of the iceberg with this kind
Speaker 4: of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes, agreed, unfortunately, and it does. Look when this guy
Speaker 3: launches New True he is motivating.
Speaker 4: Sounds like he is.
Speaker 3: Motivated by what he feels is his personal lived experience,
Speaker 3: and if you listen to the speeches he's made, if
Speaker 3: you read the interviews, he wants to bring this to
Speaker 3: the people. And twenty fourteen he launches this company, he
Speaker 3: relocates the San Francisco Home of great Ideas. Anyway, these
Speaker 3: businesses are operating in a gray area, and a lot
Speaker 3: of them obviously are being run in good faith. These
Speaker 3: folks are not necessarily trying to sell harmful snake oil
Speaker 3: or fake panaceas. But in this gray area between dietary
Speaker 3: supplements and prescription drugs, business is booming. It's a very
Speaker 3: young industry. It is no surprise that not all these
Speaker 3: claims up to scientific scrutiny.
Speaker 4: Guys.
Speaker 5: I have another good tagline for San Francisco. It's where
Speaker 5: ideas go to kill us All.
Speaker 2: I like it?
Speaker 3: Sorry, yeah, San Francisco. Can you believe it was on purpose?
Speaker 4: Things about it that are cool? Boy is it been overrun?
Speaker 5: And boy is it this like it's this gold rush
Speaker 5: on these kind of half baked, biotechy, implanty not you.
Speaker 4: Know, AI kind of not fully thought out ideas. It's it,
Speaker 4: can I.
Speaker 2: I want to be real with you, guys. I've never
Speaker 2: watched a documentary on San Francisco. I've never looked that
Speaker 2: deep into I guess.
Speaker 4: The vitory of it as a city, well, the.
Speaker 2: Major movement out there as Silicon Valley, right, I think
Speaker 2: of maybe maybe a little bit, but I can't recall
Speaker 2: any of it. I need some new tropics, guys. But
Speaker 2: it strikes me as a super interesting place because of
Speaker 2: the climate there, because of the weather there, it's a
Speaker 2: little bit colder, and especially when you're thinking about having
Speaker 2: giant server arrays or something where you don't have to
Speaker 2: spend so much money on all the cooling. I mean
Speaker 2: you do, but not in the same way as if
Speaker 2: you were in a giant you know, la great affection.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's sweat in the air conditioning. Just yeah.
Speaker 5: I think it's more about the marketplace of ideas for
Speaker 5: whatever reason, they converged there at some point. You know,
Speaker 5: because if you've ever watched that show Halt and Catch Fire,
Speaker 5: which is excellent, sort of like a fictionalized version with
Speaker 5: some real stuff thrown in alternate history, I guess there
Speaker 5: was a Silicon Valley of Texas.
Speaker 4: It was the Silicon Prairie.
Speaker 5: And then there was the Silicon Valley, you know, out
Speaker 5: in out west and and you know obviously how West one.
Speaker 5: But I don't really know either, Matt, what led to
Speaker 5: San Francisco be becoming such a ground zero for that.
Speaker 5: Maybe you have to having to do with the program
Speaker 5: at an institution. Then you think it'd be mit, you
Speaker 5: think it'd be somewhere like Boston, which also is a
Speaker 5: huge you know for that kind.
Speaker 4: Of stuff with Boston dynamics and all of that.
Speaker 2: I just need to learn more and I need a
Speaker 2: substance that will help me do.
Speaker 3: It, Yes, or a substance that will help you feel
Speaker 3: that you are doing better at the thing.
Speaker 2: I'll take it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There's a literature review in Nutrients, which is a
Speaker 3: great scholarly journal, and a literature review is just when
Speaker 3: well educated or well read on experts look at all
Speaker 3: the stuff and then say, what's the skinny. It's an
Speaker 3: executive summary, right, which tech bros love and I do
Speaker 3: want to say before we continue that I find Eric
Speaker 3: Matzner quite impressive. I think his mind is in the
Speaker 3: right place. I don't think he's trying to be a
Speaker 3: con man. It's important to remember that. But in this
Speaker 3: scholarly review in Nutrients, what they found is the evidence
Speaker 3: for long term safety and effectiveness of many things called
Speaker 3: new tropics science is just not there. It's not saying
Speaker 3: they're bad for you, it's saying we don't know whether
Speaker 3: they actually work. And this brings to mind the ever
Speaker 3: present implications of the placebo effect. You haven't thought about
Speaker 3: the implication placebo means placebo's means I will please. In
Speaker 3: Latin drugs that purport to treat a condition. The story
Speaker 3: of them is pretty interesting. The name comes from basically
Speaker 3: hiring people to pretend to be sad at funerals, and
Speaker 3: the mourners were fake, and the term then like it
Speaker 3: made you feel that your loved one was actually loved
Speaker 3: and was being grieved.
Speaker 2: It makes you feel less weird about grieving openly.
Speaker 3: Probably right now you are one of several what a
Speaker 3: good person has passed, and this eventually came to be
Speaker 3: applied to fake drugs.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then there's the lesser known but equally and oppositely
Speaker 5: fascinating no cebo effect, which is a situation where a
Speaker 5: negative outcome happens because of belief that the drug or
Speaker 5: intervention will cause the negative outcome.
Speaker 4: Irrelevant, I think it's interesting. Just woted to throw it in.
Speaker 2: Just read The Secret, you'll get all of this.
Speaker 3: And if you haven't read The Secret, you're not thinking
Speaker 3: in the right way to attract that book. It's a
Speaker 3: secret just to know about it anyway, So yes, Secret,
Speaker 3: the fight Club of metaphysics. Whatever. So I love your
Speaker 3: pointing out no cibo effect. Check out our earlier episode.
Speaker 3: Is the placebo effect getting stronger? What we know is
Speaker 3: that physicians do use placebos, typically in the form of
Speaker 3: vitamins that are not necessarily going to be bad for
Speaker 3: you in moderate amounts.
Speaker 2: And literally just sugar, right or just.
Speaker 3: Yeah, blue skypills, just sugar pills. We do know, going
Speaker 3: back to the earlier port, that placebos acquired what we
Speaker 3: would call a meta efficacy because in double blind studies
Speaker 3: they are useful for proving whether or not an actual
Speaker 3: drug works. Do we want to explain what the double
Speaker 3: blind study is.
Speaker 5: It's kind of like the yeah, like the pepsi challenge,
Speaker 5: right basically, but give.
Speaker 4: It to them with scientific terms.
Speaker 2: Matt, Oh, well, yeah, you have a group of people
Speaker 2: that you're going to be testing this new drug on.
Speaker 2: You give half of them your actual drug, you give
Speaker 2: the other half sugar pills, let's say, and you don't
Speaker 2: tell anybody who's got the real drug. And then everybody
Speaker 2: reports their findings how this drug is making them feel.
Speaker 2: And you've got on your little secret list which which
Speaker 2: of these folks actually took the drug and those are
Speaker 2: the ones that you well, actually write it all down
Speaker 2: and then you have to compare right well, and.
Speaker 5: It's you know, obviously an important method, but It also
Speaker 5: can suck because a lot of these things are clair
Speaker 5: trials where the people that apply to be part of
Speaker 5: the study really want the real drug, it's the one
Speaker 5: that could maybe cure their cancer or whatever, but they
Speaker 5: get the sugar pills, and that's that's the risk or
Speaker 5: the you know, the roll of the dice there. It's
Speaker 5: not inherently cruel, but the outcomes can be, you know,
Speaker 5: not great.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it depends what you're testing.
Speaker 3: But the band say, has never been a study of individuals.
Speaker 2: Fair enough, It's very true, and it's also been a
Speaker 2: little cold, just in a way it has it has
Speaker 2: to be. But the whole point is, in those double
Speaker 2: blind tests, your substance has to beat that placebo effect,
Speaker 2: to beat that sugar pill by.
Speaker 5: An order of magnitude, right, I mean like it's like,
Speaker 5: how do you even measure beating? I guess you're measuring
Speaker 5: lots of different metrics, and and you're comparing them all,
Speaker 5: and there's lots of different criteria for the comparison.
Speaker 4: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: And if it doesn't work out, just turn it into
Speaker 2: aspartame and put it in the.
Speaker 3: SODA's corn syrup. Had yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what if this engine oil is actually edible.
Speaker 3: You know, we were doing this, we were doing this
Speaker 3: research on this medication. Everybody got a boner, even the
Speaker 3: placebo guys a priapism.
Speaker 2: Wait what did you say?
Speaker 4: You mean.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna be billionaires? That is what you're saying.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, And as many as one third of
Speaker 3: all people respond favorably to placebos when they don't know
Speaker 3: their placebos. And this proves to us most importantly that
Speaker 3: the mind is a drug all its own again, one
Speaker 3: of the first machines that seeks to actively improve itself.
Speaker 3: So we see the shadows of limitless, we see the
Speaker 3: shadows of flowers for Algernon. It is possible that people
Speaker 3: may be spending money on the chemical equivalent of monkey shines,
Speaker 3: but they feel different. They feel their memory is improving,
Speaker 3: and perhaps through the act of practicing memory right, perhaps
Speaker 3: through the cognitive exercise of using the mind, you are
Speaker 3: in fact improving. But you didn't need the magic pill.
Speaker 3: It's like that old story about the magic ballerina shoes.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that was one of my favorites growing up.
Speaker 2: All right, Actually I don't know that one.
Speaker 4: I don't either. I'm joking.
Speaker 3: Well, the idea is this kid gets magic shoes and
Speaker 3: it turns out that the shoes weren't magic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, that old chestnut.
Speaker 2: Got it, got it.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm just saying, by simply repeating, repeatedly challenging the
Speaker 3: brain toward the accomplishment of mental exercises like puzzles, you
Speaker 3: improve your chances of avoiding certain types of cognitive decline.
Speaker 3: So if you were part of a test, right, if
Speaker 3: you're in a double blind study and you are taking
Speaker 3: the placebo, but part of the study is asking you
Speaker 3: to do puzzles, then by the nature of doing those puzzles,
Speaker 3: your name benefit, get the benefit, or get some sort
Speaker 3: of benefit.
Speaker 5: Do you think that any of this applies to like
Speaker 5: superstitious rituals that people do where they like, you know,
Speaker 5: baseball players wear the same pair of socks because it
Speaker 5: makes them believe that they're going to be.
Speaker 4: Better and therefore they are better.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I mean we need more science on it.
Speaker 4: This is a science on that.
Speaker 3: It's the pretty early stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: To be clear, I'm not saying we need to smell
Speaker 3: more baseball player socks.
Speaker 4: Science.
Speaker 3: That up science science. Oh this is for science, baby.
Speaker 3: But but we we do see certain substances do appear
Speaker 3: to make improvements in the way brains communicate, retaining, and
Speaker 3: synthesize information. However, we do not have a silver bullet
Speaker 3: for the humans like we don't We don't know what
Speaker 3: the ideal dosage is to mitigate dementia. We don't know.
Speaker 3: We don't know all the variables that are included in
Speaker 3: each little little recipe that is a human mind. It
Speaker 3: shows us there's an opportunity for grifters, but it shows
Speaker 3: us I think, pretty exciting and maybe maybe frightening horizon
Speaker 3: of possibility. Also, you know, it's like our earlier conversation
Speaker 3: about virtual reality. Humans are attempting to improve something that
Speaker 3: they don't fully understand from the beginning.
Speaker 5: Exactly with the eyes stuff too, I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: and it's these young money obsessed whipper snappers in Silicon
Speaker 5: Valley that are the ones, you know, pushing that agenda
Speaker 5: on the rest of the world and like pushing that
Speaker 5: technology out there while fully acknowledging often that they don't
Speaker 5: understand where it's going, and having people encouraging them, counseling them, no,
Speaker 5: maybe pull back a little bit, not jump right down
Speaker 5: this rabbit hole yet and that's okay, Well we'll deal
Speaker 5: with the outcome later. You know, let's push it, kick
Speaker 5: the can down the road. It's another example of that.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about one particular substance that was I think
Speaker 2: interesting to all of us, medophanol. I think is how
Speaker 2: you say it. This is this is the one where well,
Speaker 2: let's say the United States military and several other countries'
Speaker 2: militaries were using amphetamines to you know, what do they
Speaker 2: call them go pills and then the sleep. It was
Speaker 2: like uppers and downers. So when you're we talked about
Speaker 2: this before in one of our episodes where we talked
Speaker 2: about drugs and war. Amphetamines back in the day were
Speaker 2: to get you up when it was time to be
Speaker 2: on duty or be you know, in battle or something
Speaker 2: like that. Then you take the essentially a sleeping pill
Speaker 2: or a sedative to get you that downtime and sleep
Speaker 2: you need if you've only got let's say four hours
Speaker 2: six hours to be down before you have to go
Speaker 2: and do all that stuff again, or if you're a
Speaker 2: fighter pilot or flying a bomb plane, you know, halfway
Speaker 2: across the world to go drop bombs on somebody. They
Speaker 2: were using these drugs like amphetamines and sedatives. Let's say
Speaker 2: medophinil came in, and that was supposed to be the
Speaker 2: brand new thing that is not as addictive as an
Speaker 2: amphetamine would be, right, well, and it's but I mean
Speaker 2: theoretically it's supposed to be safer, and that's why it
Speaker 2: was developed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like oxycotton.
Speaker 5: Uh, yes, say it's it's fine, it's not addictive, it's better,
Speaker 5: it's good, go ahead.
Speaker 2: But it was a drug to treat other things. So
Speaker 2: we ben you you mentioned in the this I think
Speaker 2: we did. We talk about it in this episode already
Speaker 2: where it was for narcolepsy or it was one of
Speaker 2: those drugs that was to treat exactly.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: But then this thing took on a life of its
Speaker 2: own as basically the new amphetamine that militaries and only
Speaker 2: a few select militaries in countries still approve it and
Speaker 2: its use. But it's still there and pilots still use it,
Speaker 2: and it's still it's it's tried and tested basically in
Speaker 2: the minds of people who control a bunch of other
Speaker 2: human beings that are in militaries. What do you guys
Speaker 2: think about stuff like that where it's a drug that
Speaker 2: does seem to have positive effects. It does have negative.
Speaker 3: Effects, limited positive effects.
Speaker 4: It's a balancing act, as with anything.
Speaker 5: And to your point about the go pills up or
Speaker 5: downer thing, all of that still doesn't replace sleep, does it.
Speaker 5: It makes you go, go go when you're up and maximize,
Speaker 5: but then you're jacked up at the end of the
Speaker 5: day still because you've taken all these you know, goofballs
Speaker 5: that you got to take something to be able to
Speaker 5: get down, you know, and you're you're essentially supplementing and
Speaker 5: replacing systems that already exist within you, and you're kind
Speaker 5: of causing your your whole you know, mechanics of your
Speaker 5: brain to go haywire.
Speaker 2: But if you're a company that can synthesize a substance
Speaker 2: like this and then package it, give it a cool name,
Speaker 2: give it some cool advertising, then you are literally creating
Speaker 2: a billion dollar or billions dollar product.
Speaker 4: Pressing money my friend.
Speaker 2: Well, and you can just really see the as we
Speaker 2: talk about a ton on this show, the incentive for
Speaker 2: profit that exists here because it is fairly easy to
Speaker 2: say whatever you want if you're going the supplement route
Speaker 2: right and make a magic substance that's going to let
Speaker 2: everybody who sees your website or your YouTube ad or
Speaker 2: here's Alex Jones talk about you, or all the one
Speaker 2: the way, all of these different new tropics have been
Speaker 2: introduced to the world over the past what twenty years,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It seems like there's a ton of
Speaker 2: room for abuse.
Speaker 3: Agreed. Here's the other question. If you could take a
Speaker 3: pill every day of your life and in doing so
Speaker 3: save yourself from native decline, would you do it?
Speaker 4: I think that's a yes.
Speaker 5: Uh, more more so than the astrophysics question you posited
Speaker 5: at the beginning of the episode. I mean, that's something
Speaker 5: anyone could get behind. But then does is that the
Speaker 5: fountain of youth?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 4: Is that living forever or is it just going to.
Speaker 5: Keep you from dying, you know, not knowing what the
Speaker 5: hell's going on because you've got dementia or like some extreme,
Speaker 5: you know, version of mental decline. I think anybody would
Speaker 5: want that for their loved ones. But then again, it
Speaker 5: becomes a matter of who gets it first and who
Speaker 5: stockpiles it. And if everyone gets it and everyone's living longer,
Speaker 5: maybe it's not going to cause a burden on you know, resources.
Speaker 5: There's all kinds of questions about this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: I don't know to Another question, especially in that maybe
Speaker 3: this is the future episode the idea of military weaponization
Speaker 3: of drugs. We've talked about it in the past and
Speaker 3: previous episodes. Question for the group of those of us
Speaker 3: playing a little at home as well, how often do
Speaker 3: you think that military medical professionals have been out of
Speaker 3: supplies and given someone a placebo?
Speaker 4: That's an interesting question. I have no idea.
Speaker 3: If you know they're gonna die and the actual drugs.
Speaker 4: I see what you're saying. Yes, that's a good point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like why waste a morphine serrand if if you're
Speaker 5: if you know.
Speaker 4: That's rough because they're part of that.
Speaker 5: All these even in films, seems to be an act
Speaker 5: of humanity, you know, to to let your fellow man
Speaker 5: down easy, to let you know and not suffer in
Speaker 5: that final agonizing moment.
Speaker 2: But in the case of these drugs, it's more about
Speaker 2: making sure that individual is alert enough to know where
Speaker 2: fire is coming from.
Speaker 3: Right. You know, you're talking about raising awareness for limited time,
Speaker 3: the cost benefit ratio being that they the individual under
Speaker 3: the influence of those things will physiologically pay for it
Speaker 3: later if not cognitively. Yeah, and that still happens. That's
Speaker 3: a very good point. I'm glad you made it. The
Speaker 3: I think the most maddening question if you discovered something
Speaker 3: that could make any old Charlie Gordon Flowers from Algernon
Speaker 3: type into a Nikola Tesla, you know, even if just
Speaker 3: for a limited amount of time, even if it absolutely
Speaker 3: wrecked their brain within, you know, like over the long term,
Speaker 3: would you be allowed to propagate this to the public.
Speaker 3: Would you be allowed by the powers that be to
Speaker 3: put a genius drug out there knowing that it could
Speaker 3: up end civilization? It is just possible. As something like
Speaker 3: this exists. They're on the bleeding edge of science.
Speaker 2: And if you want to do your own research, there's
Speaker 2: a great place to start. Definitely not the end all,
Speaker 2: be all location, but if you head on over to
Speaker 2: the New Tropics subreddit that's reddit dot com slash r
Speaker 2: slashno t R O p I c S, they've got
Speaker 2: a beginner's guide that lists out most of the known
Speaker 2: new tropics that are out there. It's not all of them,
Speaker 2: but it talks about stacking. As we mentioned this episode,
Speaker 2: which wants to try. We do not recommend anyone take
Speaker 2: drugs ever, but if you are interested in this stuff,
Speaker 2: especially the supplement side, that's a good place to begin
Speaker 2: your search.
Speaker 4: Agreed.
Speaker 3: And while you are online, we would love to hear
Speaker 3: your experiences. Full disclosure, Folks, Paul, Matt Nolan and I
Speaker 3: may have differing personal experiences with this kind of let's
Speaker 3: call it gray market field, but we do want to
Speaker 3: end with this. We are not medical professionals. As Matt said,
Speaker 3: do your own research. Your brain for now is your own.
Speaker 3: In the meantime, while you are online, we would love
Speaker 3: to hear from you. We would love your thoughts in
Speaker 3: lieu of beaming them directly to us. Now, I'm try
Speaker 3: transcreenally to TCDs. I am a huge fan of that
Speaker 3: as well as TMS. I love tgif in lieu of that,
Speaker 3: find us online while people still use their hands to type, you.
Speaker 5: Can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we
Speaker 5: exist on Facebook or we have our Facebook group.
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 5: On YouTube, we've got videos coming at you every single week,
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Speaker 5: ask what are we, Well, we are conspiracy Stuff show mmmm.
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