Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Christian Sager and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Mccormickin Today, we're back with another listener mail episode.
Speaker 1: It's been so long since we've done a listener mail episode.
Speaker 1: That is our bad, not yours, But it does mean
Speaker 1: that there's gonna be a lot of great listener mail
Speaker 1: we've gotten from you all over the months since our
Speaker 1: last episode that it isn't going to make it in.
Speaker 1: Please don't take that as an insult, but we we
Speaker 1: thought we'd pick some messages coming in in the past
Speaker 1: month or so from some recent episodes and and read
Speaker 1: them back to you, share with you what you've shared
Speaker 1: with us. Right, and so we have to introduce once
Speaker 1: more our mail bought Carney, who has emerged once more
Speaker 1: from his ubiliette, to to share the mail with us
Speaker 1: so that we may share it with you. That might
Speaker 1: explain why we've been told recently on Facebook that all
Speaker 1: of our episodes are very dark and about what somebody
Speaker 1: I think though that it's because Carney is coming out
Speaker 1: of a Nubian I think that person who said everything
Speaker 1: we we did was evil was confusing what we post
Speaker 1: on Facebook with our actual episodes. So what we post
Speaker 1: on Facebook is evil? No, I'm not sure of that either,
Speaker 1: but I think they were saying, like, you keep posting
Speaker 1: stuff about torture, and well, you know, depends on it's
Speaker 1: in the eye of the beholder, man. We cover a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of ground and uh and in
Speaker 1: doing so, we we touch on a lot of the
Speaker 1: darker aspects of reality and human nature. But we also
Speaker 1: cover a lot of pretty fun and uh off kilter stuff,
Speaker 1: I think. But also as we will as as we
Speaker 1: will discuss in this episode, many animals thrive in darkness,
Speaker 1: So I think we should get right into it. If
Speaker 1: you guys have no objection, let's do it. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: Carney is now spitting out an email that comes to us.
Speaker 1: We're actually going to get into a few about the
Speaker 1: Uncanny Valley episodes that Robert and I did. So this
Speaker 1: first one is from our listener, Vicky, and Vicky says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: love your show. Half the time that I listen. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of the topics, but they're always really interesting.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Vicky. Vicky says, I just finished the episodes
Speaker 1: on the Uncanny Valley, and that's, of course where we
Speaker 1: talked about this concept in robotics and c g I
Speaker 1: a character animation where the original understanding of it is
Speaker 1: as characters become more realistically human, as they look more
Speaker 1: and more like a real human, that be actually become
Speaker 1: more disturbing when they get close to the finish line. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so we discussed how that might actually be too simple,
Speaker 1: how the evidence for and against that existing other ways
Speaker 1: of interpreting it, And we discussed what happens when you
Speaker 1: go beyond the Uncanny Valley, what happens when you can
Speaker 1: create c g I characters that are so good they're
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from real humans Stepford Wives? Is that c g
Speaker 1: I characters or robots? Okay, yeah, but there wasn't. There's
Speaker 1: certainly an uncanny nous to them intended once they have
Speaker 1: been turned into robots. Totally. So anyway, Vicky says, I'm
Speaker 1: a Star Wars fan, but not obsessively. Ask me about
Speaker 1: Star Trek. I know tons about that. Oh boy, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that Peter Cushing was deceased or that they
Speaker 1: used technology to recreate his character here. She's referring to,
Speaker 1: of course, in Rogue one, the character of Grand mof Tarkan,
Speaker 1: who was played by Peter Cushing, who is now deceased.
Speaker 1: They brought him back from the dead using the powers
Speaker 1: of c G I. Uh but but Vicky says, I
Speaker 1: thought they did some anti aging technology magic on him.
Speaker 1: Obviously at the ending I knew something was up. Uh.
Speaker 1: My question is about possible ethical issues and using this technology,
Speaker 1: Hollywood can make any actor perform in any movie, and
Speaker 1: if they're deceased, they could be putting these actors into
Speaker 1: movies they would not be a part of. For example,
Speaker 1: before they had agreed to kill off Hans Solo to
Speaker 1: persuade grumpy Harrison Ford to be in The Force Awakens,
Speaker 1: they could have used this technology to put him into
Speaker 1: twenty seven more Star Wars movies. And even if they
Speaker 1: couldn't get away with it while he was alive, who
Speaker 1: would stop them from doing it once he passed. As
Speaker 1: amazing as this technology is, I think it has kind
Speaker 1: of bizarre and questionable implications. What are your thoughts? Again?
Speaker 1: Love the show, keep up the great work. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you very much, Vicky. And this is a big question. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's in fact not just theoretical about the future.
Speaker 1: I mean that there have already been uses of actors
Speaker 1: after they died. Apart from Peter Cushing, I think that
Speaker 1: wasn't There's some commercial a while back that used Fred
Speaker 1: ash Stare or something like that. And yeah, I do
Speaker 1: think this is a big question. Now. On one hand,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, once you're a public figure, once
Speaker 1: you're in the public domain, people are going to be
Speaker 1: calling upon your likeness without your consent all the time.
Speaker 1: For example, fan fiction can be written about you personally
Speaker 1: or about characters you played, and you have no control
Speaker 1: of that whatsoever. Right, and then there's of course the
Speaker 1: right of parity, yeah as well. But but but then
Speaker 1: when you get down to say a character like Elvis Presley,
Speaker 1: It's one thing to have parody related to to representations
Speaker 1: of Elvis, but his estate is so locked down. You're
Speaker 1: you're only going to see if there's c g I
Speaker 1: Elvis is around, like official c g I Elvis is,
Speaker 1: you can you can be pretty sure those are going
Speaker 1: to be uh, you know, officially authorized by the estate.
Speaker 1: It's just that not everybody's a state uh is as
Speaker 1: buckled down or will be as buckled down as the
Speaker 1: press ley Est state. Yeah. I mean, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys covered this in the
Speaker 1: episode or not, but I'm pretty sure Peter Cushing's a
Speaker 1: state gave the legal go ahead for that to be done.
Speaker 1: R Yeah, they did so. I mean, what we're asking
Speaker 1: here really is a question of like actor contracts or
Speaker 1: really any public figure contracts. We we should really look
Speaker 1: at our contracts, guys, well, whether or not people can
Speaker 1: bring us back from the dead. No, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the question is like, should this be like what
Speaker 1: are what are your rights to your likeness? If it
Speaker 1: is something that you have it's not like footage that
Speaker 1: you shot being there in person, but somebody completely recreating
Speaker 1: your likeness from the ground up, should you be able
Speaker 1: to I mean, how much rights do you have over
Speaker 1: somebody drawing a picture of you? And is a c
Speaker 1: g I simulation of you that's indistinguishable from real just
Speaker 1: an advanced version of somebody drawing a picture of you.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things about this is that is
Speaker 1: we're considering this, We're we're saying, all right, your likeness
Speaker 1: will digitally, uh continue on after you were dead and
Speaker 1: you can have certain terms and legal uh contracts that
Speaker 1: represent what your wills and wishes would be. In a sense,
Speaker 1: you're beginning to create a program for your identity. You're
Speaker 1: beginning to create a digital version of your will to
Speaker 1: live on with the digital version of your appearance. And
Speaker 1: so we're kind of seeing like a form of digital
Speaker 1: immortality that emerges out of the need and the like
Speaker 1: the commercial application of your likeness and the desire to
Speaker 1: control it after death. That's interesting. Yeah, So, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: if there are high quality digital simulations of people who
Speaker 1: have died, you could maybe have a situation where you
Speaker 1: write a will that says I would agree to having
Speaker 1: high quality digital simulations of me do X, Y and Z,
Speaker 1: but they can't do a B and C. So you'd
Speaker 1: almost be you'd be like creating an idealized version of
Speaker 1: you that lives on. That's sort of what you're saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of almost like a limited ghost of yourself, but
Speaker 1: it's a ghost that's not concerned with with haunting individuals,
Speaker 1: but rather just one that's interested in just tending to
Speaker 1: your reputation. After that, I will only be featured in
Speaker 1: baked beans commercials. Okay, well, interesting thoughts. Thanks Vicky. Should
Speaker 1: we look at another one from the Uncanny Valley episode?
Speaker 1: I know we got some correspondence from our frequent listener
Speaker 1: Peter right. Oh yeah, Peter cron Of or p K
Speaker 1: of King de Luxe Records. He is a long time
Speaker 1: friend of the show and writes him quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Uh And he wrote in and shaired quite a bit
Speaker 1: on the Uncanny Valley because he's, among other things he's
Speaker 1: involved in in virtual reality interests in the creation of
Speaker 1: a virtual reality space station. The my understanding is is
Speaker 1: going to be like a uh space for art and
Speaker 1: performance in the digital realm. It's not going to be
Speaker 1: like that ship and event horizon. I don't know, it
Speaker 1: might be what is that but performance art. We'll actually
Speaker 1: get into an example of that in a bet. But
Speaker 1: Peter wrote in and said, great episodes on the Uncanny Valley.
Speaker 1: It's one of my biggest interest as trying to help
Speaker 1: create characters and avatars in virtual reality involves a lot
Speaker 1: of playing around with these ideas, and for me it's
Speaker 1: a very real thing, not just with humans, but I
Speaker 1: feel like there's an effect like this when you get
Speaker 1: close to anything, This sort of mismatch, as you guys mentioned,
Speaker 1: So he's saying there's an uncanny valley not just for
Speaker 1: human faces, but for likeness toward reality in any domain. Yes,
Speaker 1: he says, although the effect is stronger with humans because
Speaker 1: we're so intimately familiar with faces, but also, as mentioned,
Speaker 1: you can get used to it kind of. Although being
Speaker 1: in a three D space in VR with an avatar
Speaker 1: feels different to the brain than seeing it from the outside,
Speaker 1: which was also brought up. I believe, I think you
Speaker 1: said being there in person, and that's what it feels like.
Speaker 1: In VR. You have a more emotional connection with the
Speaker 1: character and that can override some of the uncanny nous
Speaker 1: I believe, because your resources are focused on their emotional state. However,
Speaker 1: it can also exaggerate the awkwardness I found, so that's
Speaker 1: sort of mitigating against There was one author we talked
Speaker 1: about who wrote an article saying, you know, I had
Speaker 1: looked at some humanoid robots on video and thought that
Speaker 1: they were really creepy. I had the uncanny Valley effect,
Speaker 1: but then when I went and saw those robots in person,
Speaker 1: they didn't bother me. And other people attest that you
Speaker 1: can get used to things that cause the uncanny Valley
Speaker 1: effect at first, But it sounds like Peter sort of
Speaker 1: weighing in on both sides of that. Yes, I believe
Speaker 1: so Marvel movies are an example of the uncanny Valley.
Speaker 1: In another way, I think I don't find the newest
Speaker 1: hulk creepy per se, but it looks worse than some
Speaker 1: older hulks more c G I, despite the amount of
Speaker 1: work and technology that I'm sure went into it, as
Speaker 1: it gets closer to imitating muscle movements and facial expressions,
Speaker 1: it looks worse and worse. Although I'm positive will get
Speaker 1: over this hump, at which point we'll have to worry
Speaker 1: about stuff like, like you discussed any episode applying expression
Speaker 1: to video, not just to make faulty evidence, but things
Speaker 1: like playing for witnesses re enactments that rewrite their brains,
Speaker 1: whether they like it or not, implanting new memories. That's
Speaker 1: really interesting. Uh So, I sort of agree with Peter
Speaker 1: about how, in a lot of cases, the as c
Speaker 1: G I gets better, it's somehow does sort of look worse. Uh,
Speaker 1: not just in the Uncanny Valley sense, but also in
Speaker 1: the sense of like adding more details to things makes
Speaker 1: it look more unreal somehow. You remember the Transformers movies,
Speaker 1: when like the Transformers to be transforming and they'd have
Speaker 1: all these moving parts. They'd say, okay, let's have eight
Speaker 1: million moving screws and widgets and stuff on Optimus Prime
Speaker 1: as he transforms through this freeway battle scene, and it
Speaker 1: just looks so busy. It looks unreal. It looks crappy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you want to go back to Tarkin. When I
Speaker 1: find me watch Rogue One, which was just a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, he didn't really bother me as much,
Speaker 1: perhaps because I was prepared for it, but there were
Speaker 1: a few moments where if I had to say what
Speaker 1: bothered me about it, I'd say it was it was
Speaker 1: like he was over articulated, like he was a puppet
Speaker 1: in the puppeteer was just going all in. I would
Speaker 1: say the c G I Tarkan in Rogue one had
Speaker 1: too many pores for me, Like they were trying to
Speaker 1: give his face real human texture by giving him all
Speaker 1: these pores and crags and stuff. And I know that's
Speaker 1: hard to do, so again we're not knocking the work
Speaker 1: done by these animators. It's very difficult, but he had
Speaker 1: so much texture on his face. It was too much texture. Also,
Speaker 1: when you think about Peter Cushing, right, like the movies
Speaker 1: that he was well known for, we're not shot in
Speaker 1: high definition, right, so we think of our memory of
Speaker 1: Peter Cushing is sort of blurrier than rogue one's memory
Speaker 1: of him, right, Like, like it was like being up
Speaker 1: close and personal with him if you're seeing all these
Speaker 1: pores and facial crags and stuff like, like like trying
Speaker 1: to imagine an HD Peter Cushing is like trying to
Speaker 1: imagine a color. Charlie Chaplain, Yeah, Christian, you got an email. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We did uh an episode on the Doomsday Clock a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. For those of you not familiar,
Speaker 1: this is the clock that calculates humanities countdown to annihilation.
Speaker 1: Is calculated by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and we
Speaker 1: took a look at it and tried to figure out
Speaker 1: what it all goes into that that brings us closer
Speaker 1: to the theoretical Midnight on the clock. And in the episode,
Speaker 1: I brought up that I had just recently seen a
Speaker 1: T shirt that somebody was wearing on an airplane. It
Speaker 1: was a Lotus flower with two machine guns in it,
Speaker 1: and on it. It said piece through Superior firepower and
Speaker 1: what I When I looked it up, it said it
Speaker 1: had come from Aliens and I wasn't aware of that.
Speaker 1: So our a listener, Rich wrote into us about this.
Speaker 1: Actually we had multiple people wrote into us about it,
Speaker 1: but Riches really hits something on the head here. Apparently
Speaker 1: it is a phrase that comes through the American millitary
Speaker 1: from well before Aliens. He says, I just finished the
Speaker 1: Doomsday Clock episode. It's another great podcast. I've got three comments. First,
Speaker 1: piece through Superior Firepower is older than Aliens. I was
Speaker 1: in the U. S Air Force in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: and that phrase was the unofficial slogan of the Strategic
Speaker 1: Air Command or s a C. I assumed because they
Speaker 1: controlled a lot of the nukes and conventional bombs. I've
Speaker 1: seen unofficial US Air Force s a C patches with
Speaker 1: that slogan. I don't know how old the phrases, but
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt speaks softly but carry a big stick was similar.
Speaker 1: So we I was kind of wondering, like where this
Speaker 1: had come from? Uh, And it seemed at the time
Speaker 1: that it was something that was was written for the movie.
Speaker 1: It was on one of the characters uniforms, but clearly
Speaker 1: it has origins in the real world. Then he addresses
Speaker 1: the actual doomsday clock, and he says the fear of
Speaker 1: nuclear annihilation, regarding that I was born in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: and I think I saw fallout shelter signs in my
Speaker 1: elementary school. However, we never had drills of hiding under
Speaker 1: our wooden desks like our older siblings. I heard those stories,
Speaker 1: and while I was concerned with nuclear annihilation a bit
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties, I always assumed the fifties
Speaker 1: were worse, so I didn't worry about it too much
Speaker 1: throughout my life. This is something Robert and I talked
Speaker 1: about in the episode. Us being children of the eighties,
Speaker 1: the sort of specter of the Cold War was always
Speaker 1: hanging over us as little kids. But uh, it sounds
Speaker 1: like what Riches proposing is that maybe it was worse
Speaker 1: than the fifties. And I can imagine too, if that's
Speaker 1: you know, you're a decade after the war, there's probably
Speaker 1: a lot of scares in the air about potential warfare.
Speaker 1: And then his third comment is about climate change, which
Speaker 1: so one of the things we learned in that episode
Speaker 1: was that they calculate climate change as a part of
Speaker 1: moving the doomsday clock, even though originally it was mainly
Speaker 1: based on nuclear weapons. So he says climate change should
Speaker 1: be included in the doomsday clock along with any other
Speaker 1: probability of ending the world, and then he ends it
Speaker 1: with saying asteroids question mark, maybe we should take a
Speaker 1: look more rich No, something we don't I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Oh. I think what he means is
Speaker 1: the the apocalypse that comes when we all get locked
Speaker 1: into playing asteroids so much that we stopped eating and breeding. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I really want to thank him for clarifying the thing
Speaker 1: about the piece through superior firepower, because I had no
Speaker 1: idea what that was. And when I saw it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it was probably maybe a month
Speaker 1: after the election, and I was just like, well, this
Speaker 1: is kind of freaked me out a little bit. But
Speaker 1: you know, apparently that's just my sensitivity. This is something
Speaker 1: that goes back a good forty years. Well interpreted his
Speaker 1: point about asteroids being, of course that at the risk
Speaker 1: of near Earth objects hitting the Earth, which is something
Speaker 1: I would I always think about this that pretty much
Speaker 1: anytime I look up into the sky. But since my
Speaker 1: son is he's about five now, and he's super into dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: so he's he's I'll often ask not only about dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: but about uh, the risk of meteors and meteorites and
Speaker 1: comets and asteroids. You know, ask why this happened and
Speaker 1: will it happen again? And the answers that you have
Speaker 1: to give are not always that reassuring. It's kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, for the most part, we keep track of
Speaker 1: it the you know, we we have we have organizations
Speaker 1: that watch the skies and and he says, well, what
Speaker 1: if one's gonna hit the earth? Was so, well, we
Speaker 1: have a few different plans in place that might do
Speaker 1: the trick if we catch it early enough. But it's
Speaker 1: not quite it's not quite as reassuring an answer as
Speaker 1: I would like to give. Sitting Down for a double
Speaker 1: feature of Deep Impact and Armageddon. Oh man, which of
Speaker 1: those movies is worse? That's a good question. That's an
Speaker 1: episode for another day. Well, I mean, what you should
Speaker 1: I think the way you should frame it to your
Speaker 1: child is well, statistically, on a time scale of X
Speaker 1: number of years, we know that it will happen again. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing that takes the uncertainty just
Speaker 1: you know, it's some it's a dice roll. Sometime in
Speaker 1: the next hundred thousand years, there's going to be a
Speaker 1: large impact. It's gonna happen. Will we be prepared for it,
Speaker 1: Will we have the the collective will that the collective
Speaker 1: effort in place to deal with it? And you know,
Speaker 1: there are times where I think, yeah, we're totally we're
Speaker 1: getting there. Well, we'll totally be there, And in other
Speaker 1: times where I think, now it's gonna it's gonna lose
Speaker 1: its importance to people. Uh, people are gonna stop watching
Speaker 1: the skies. They're gonna be busy, you know, staring into
Speaker 1: each other's hearts like we always do. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: arguing about stuff on Twitter when it's looming. Here's my
Speaker 1: cynical worldview. We can't even get the roads to work
Speaker 1: right here in Atlanta. How are we gonna take care
Speaker 1: of any falling objects from the sky. The highways collapsed
Speaker 1: twice in the last three weeks. Well I think one
Speaker 1: of them was technically a buckling, which is even better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're really taking care of our infrastructure. Okay, you guys
Speaker 1: ready for another one. Let's do it. Here we got
Speaker 1: some feedback on our Chinese immortality episode Robert and I
Speaker 1: did this. We were discussing various Chinese mythical figures, including
Speaker 1: one who attained this state of immortality or near immortality,
Speaker 1: but lived in an altered state which entailed a diet
Speaker 1: of only air and do and an apparent loss of
Speaker 1: some male sex characteristics. Now in the episode, I used
Speaker 1: this as a springboard to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: studies that have suggested a connection between longevity. First of all,
Speaker 1: between longevity and caloric restriction and animals, and second between
Speaker 1: longevity and castration and men. And our listener Pat wrote
Speaker 1: in with a response about the alleged benefits of castration.
Speaker 1: So Pat says, Dear Robert and Joe, First of all,
Speaker 1: love your work and everything you guys do. Your podcast
Speaker 1: has been a staple of mind for quite some time,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate all the research and critical analysis that
Speaker 1: goes into every episode. Please read this email from a
Speaker 1: constructive view rather than as a critique of the wonderful
Speaker 1: work you guys do on the podcast and subsequent publication.
Speaker 1: Well you're you're too kind, Pat, Before you set us
Speaker 1: up to swat aston Now I'm instantly flinchtioned because I
Speaker 1: know he's going to come out. Okay, So two notes
Speaker 1: regarding the recent podcast on Chinese immortality, Elixirs and Enlightened Beings,
Speaker 1: both stemming from my research regarding male hypogonadism induced by
Speaker 1: androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer treatment, of which I'd
Speaker 1: be happy to discuss further if interested. Um, although the
Speaker 1: two studies you discussed, and those were Hamilton's, Hamilton's and
Speaker 1: Gordon and men at All purported the castration of men
Speaker 1: increased life expectancy, both are quite questionable in terms of methodology.
Speaker 1: Hamilton's and Gordon's paper is in a population that in
Speaker 1: no way can be compared to the broader population sample.
Speaker 1: That population, by the way in Hamilton's and Gordon's paper
Speaker 1: was institutionalized men. Uh And then second pat says men
Speaker 1: at All study relies on a methodological process I cannot
Speaker 1: believe past peer review in a scientific journal. And by
Speaker 1: this he's referring to relying on historical records of unix
Speaker 1: life expectancy from the seventeen hundreds. Uh. So hat continues,
Speaker 1: It's undoubted, undoubtedly confounded by the time period in which
Speaker 1: the data was observed, Whilst fascinating, neither provide what I
Speaker 1: would consider robust evidence that this phenomenon is presented in men.
Speaker 1: In fact, evidence suggests the opposite, In that hypogonadle men
Speaker 1: are at greater risk of mortality. For further reading, see
Speaker 1: the following and Pat lists several papers that seemed to
Speaker 1: show an association between increased mortality and UH and loss
Speaker 1: of male sex characteristics. Pat continues, I appreciate there's a
Speaker 1: large amount of heterogeneity amongst trials. However, claiming that men
Speaker 1: can benefit from castration or being quote less manly is oversimplified,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, not in line with current current scientific knowledge. UH,
Speaker 1: and I would I would say, well, I would certainly
Speaker 1: agree with pat on that while the studies we cited
Speaker 1: are real, I hope it came through that the thread
Speaker 1: connecting them to the topic of the episode was primarily
Speaker 1: a humorous one because an advocating for people to go
Speaker 1: out and become you know, I was advocating castration is
Speaker 1: a proven life extension technique. However, Various is your favorite
Speaker 1: character on Game of Thrones, right, Various is a good character. Actually,
Speaker 1: he's he's surprising. I like him yeah, I think if anything,
Speaker 1: we were promoting uh dallast alchemy, that's a lifestyle choice.
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, the the elixirs are where it's really
Speaker 1: the castration is that that's only a side product. However,
Speaker 1: I do want to say, despite that, I really do
Speaker 1: appreciate Pat's note about the potential methodological flaws in the
Speaker 1: two studies I did mention in the episode. I'd take
Speaker 1: both of those points pretty strongly. I think those are
Speaker 1: good things to consider. Uh And also for pointing out
Speaker 1: the studies that are going in the other direction, saying
Speaker 1: there might be a connection between hypogonadism and connection to mortality.
Speaker 1: So to reinforce, no matter how much you think you
Speaker 1: want more life if you are male, self castration is
Speaker 1: not a scientifically proven way to get it. Remind me again,
Speaker 1: what are the name of crab? Gonads? Go nopods go
Speaker 1: no pods. That's the crab equivalent of a penis. But
Speaker 1: back to Pat's email, this is something we've discussed off
Speaker 1: air a lot. Back to pods, Pats email, No came up.
Speaker 1: I didn't think so. Back to pats email. Another point,
Speaker 1: a very minor one, but you noted that one study
Speaker 1: I think it was the second one in which you
Speaker 1: discuss monkeys and caloric restriction. Observed a quote very slight increase,
Speaker 1: albeit not statistically significant. Although you don't overly run with
Speaker 1: this finding, it would generally be stated as finding no
Speaker 1: difference rather than a very slight, non significant increase. This
Speaker 1: one might be me being a little picky, but I
Speaker 1: know I've been pulled up on this one by supervisors
Speaker 1: and pure view in the past, so I ensure I
Speaker 1: only mentioned direction when statistics are there to support. And
Speaker 1: Pat's right about this. I mean generally in science, if
Speaker 1: you see an increase but it doesn't meet the statistical threshold,
Speaker 1: it means, you know, this is possibly within the margin
Speaker 1: of error, so you you shouldn't really cite that as
Speaker 1: a meaningful increase. And I don't think we did try
Speaker 1: to cite it as a meaningful increase. It just you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's But but what Pat saying is if the
Speaker 1: increase is not statistically significant, it's not even worth mentioning
Speaker 1: that there was an increase, which you can make that argument. Finally,
Speaker 1: Pat mentioned a book we might be interested in, known
Speaker 1: as The Emperor of All Maladies by said Arthur mccergee
Speaker 1: and I took a look at this. It does look
Speaker 1: very interesting, so I want to check it out. But
Speaker 1: it's it's about cancer. Uh. And Pat suggests potentially doing
Speaker 1: an episode on cancer treatments in the future, wonders if
Speaker 1: his email will end up on a future mail Bot episode. Well,
Speaker 1: here we go. I would recommend going back and listening
Speaker 1: to our second episode about m d m A we
Speaker 1: talk a lot as being cancer treatment possibility. Yeah. Finally,
Speaker 1: on another follow up email, Pat says that he enjoyed
Speaker 1: our episode about radiation Life after Radiation, including the stuff
Speaker 1: about the fungus that might be an eater of rad's.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the eater of Rad's episode. This is the
Speaker 1: one where we talked a little bit about Godzilla, uh,
Speaker 1: and then a lot about Chernobyl like. It was one
Speaker 1: of these where we we we went in thinking that
Speaker 1: Godzilla would be more of the hook, but the episode
Speaker 1: was far more serious, so we ended up backing off
Speaker 1: from the a lot of the Godzilla branding on that one.
Speaker 1: I think we ended up talking a decent amount about
Speaker 1: Godzilla in the Facebook live we did. Did you guys
Speaker 1: say let them fight? No, we did not, just a
Speaker 1: missed opportunity. Which one is that from that's from the
Speaker 1: latest Godzilla movie, the latest American Gonzilla movie and watah,
Speaker 1: yes nice. Alright, we you know, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back, we have some
Speaker 1: more listener mail related to episodes that we've covered in
Speaker 1: the past, some in the distant past. Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to share an email here. This was
Speaker 1: an interesting one because it's uh, someone who has has
Speaker 1: listened to a lot of the back catalog as well.
Speaker 1: And uh, her name is Ainslie. She wrote in on
Speaker 1: Facebook and she in about the mixology episode that Joe
Speaker 1: and I did together. Uh, and she had some tidbits
Speaker 1: about cannabis flavored vodka. Yeah. But she also referred to
Speaker 1: an older episode, uh that that touched on suspension bondage,
Speaker 1: the idea of you know, suspending oneself on hooks placed
Speaker 1: in the flesh, and uh, this was from from years back.
Speaker 1: But she said that that in it, we we kind
Speaker 1: of were doubtful, the hosts were kind of doubtful that
Speaker 1: you could have just a single hook in a person
Speaker 1: and serving as the suspension, that you would need to
Speaker 1: have more than one. But she says Oh no, you can.
Speaker 1: You can suspend on just one so really yeah, So
Speaker 1: I at this point I was like sold Jim Rose
Speaker 1: Circus stuff over. Yeah, indeed. And so at this point
Speaker 1: I realized, Oh, well, she's she has some experience in this.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm gonna ask her about it. I would love
Speaker 1: to hear, you know, straight from someone who's engaged in
Speaker 1: suspension work. You know what it consists of. And she responded,
Speaker 1: so this is what she said. Yes, I've been a
Speaker 1: practitioner for a handful of years now and have been
Speaker 1: a afforded a number of opportunities to perform publicly with
Speaker 1: some really fantastic people. I love performing. I love the
Speaker 1: shock factor and the energy. I love the confused looks
Speaker 1: of awe and disgust from the crowd. But when I
Speaker 1: took my first hooks, I was about nineteen, full of
Speaker 1: angst and rage. I wanted to feel something intense, anything
Speaker 1: at all. But what happened changed my life forever. Suspending
Speaker 1: for that first time was indescribable. It was like like
Speaker 1: I had relaxed my tense muscles for the first time
Speaker 1: in my life, like I had overcome my mind and
Speaker 1: shrugged off the long accustomed sticky sense of self doubt.
Speaker 1: Really I can't find the words, but I fell in love.
Speaker 1: I was allowed to feel and bleed and openly respect
Speaker 1: the process of each It was a whole new world
Speaker 1: for me. Suspension became my life anyway. I always sent
Speaker 1: a few pictures of some of my favorite flesh suspensions
Speaker 1: and flesh polls, and I'll point you in the direction
Speaker 1: of suspension dot org. Hopefully they're still running their design.
Speaker 1: Hook Life links should be at the bottom of the homepage.
Speaker 1: Hook Life features some beautifully written firsthand accounts and photograph
Speaker 1: and she also recommends a book titled Learning to Fly
Speaker 1: Cool that actually sounds like my experience with a sensory
Speaker 1: deprivation tank, because it was very similar that like the
Speaker 1: floating sensation. They actually tell you this before you you
Speaker 1: get in them, but like your muscles start to relax
Speaker 1: so much that you realize that there's like you're feeling
Speaker 1: muscles for the first time that you didn't really know
Speaker 1: we're there. It's pretty fascinating. I couldn't imagine that you
Speaker 1: would get the same experience from suspension, but that sounds
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah, And I said, uh, suspension bondage earlier.
Speaker 1: I think the more correct terms just hook suspension but
Speaker 1: cut any rate, or just suspension in general. So that
Speaker 1: was that was my misstep there. But I found this
Speaker 1: really interesting to hear from from her, and she sent
Speaker 1: some pictures of showing her engaging and suspension, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of these things where you see pictures
Speaker 1: of it or footage, and especially if it's on TV,
Speaker 1: it's really played up for the shock value, and you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have enough in site into how this person
Speaker 1: is interacting with the experience, like what the role is
Speaker 1: is it? You know, how how does pain factor into it?
Speaker 1: Is it pleasure? For like what's going on here? So
Speaker 1: I really appreciated her words and I thought she expressed
Speaker 1: it rather nicely there. I think for a lot of
Speaker 1: people that might be surprising that some people who do
Speaker 1: this seem to approach it from a kind of performance
Speaker 1: art point of view. I mean, to to be blunt,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would look at that
Speaker 1: and just consider they think it's some kind of sex
Speaker 1: act or something. Well, and also I think like probably
Speaker 1: in pop culture, the go to for this is that
Speaker 1: movie The Cell where oh yeah, the guy who does
Speaker 1: it is like a serial Killer. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, most people just assume that it's got
Speaker 1: negative connotations or or just sexual connotations to it. But anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: really interesting. So it just goes to show again that
Speaker 1: we have we have such great fans out there, and
Speaker 1: and some of them are engaged in so many interesting areas,
Speaker 1: be it's something at the academic or you know, performance oriented,
Speaker 1: or or something experiential that is uh, you know, beyond
Speaker 1: what what we generally have the scope to relate to directly. Here,
Speaker 1: Hell raiser is in the best way. Okay. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to look at a couple that came in about
Speaker 1: the episode Robert and I did about the London underground mosquito.
Speaker 1: So in that episode, one of the things I mentioned
Speaker 1: was that I was wanting to come across an animal
Speaker 1: that was a cave dwelling albino bird. Wouldn't that be great?
Speaker 1: Like an albino vulture with red eyes that lives exclusively
Speaker 1: underground be terrifying? And Laura writes in about this, Laura says, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: in the podcast on the London underground mosquitoes, you said
Speaker 1: in passing it would be cool if an underground adapted
Speaker 1: bird species arose. Whilst not quite an albino man, a
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners right in with whilst good grammar
Speaker 1: better grammar than I do, I think that just indicates
Speaker 1: a British listenership. But wilst not quite an albino red
Speaker 1: eyed vulture, the oil bird is adapted to spending much
Speaker 1: of their lives and caves. The avian answer to the
Speaker 1: fruit bat. They do leave the cave at night to
Speaker 1: find and eat fruits, but spend the rest of the
Speaker 1: time in caves as large colonies as an adaptation to
Speaker 1: their dark abode. They echo locate like bats, but in
Speaker 1: the audible range for humans, so their caves must be
Speaker 1: very loud. They also have good night vision and bristles
Speaker 1: on the face for navigation. Caves are rarely rich enough
Speaker 1: in small mammals lizards are carrying for carnivorous birds to
Speaker 1: specialize in this food source only will still retaining wings.
Speaker 1: Flightless birds tend to live in rich forest floors or
Speaker 1: places where running helps, so it's unlikely that your dream
Speaker 1: of an albino vulture will ever become an evolutionary reality. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you Laura for writing this in because I looked
Speaker 1: up oil birds and these things are cool. They have
Speaker 1: Wilfred Brimley mustaches like Cocoon Wilfred Brimley or Ewok movie
Speaker 1: Wilford Brimley. I've never seen Cocoon or the e Walk
Speaker 1: movie all the way through. I'm in a bad what
Speaker 1: did you? What did you back out on thee I
Speaker 1: think the only parts of the e Walk movies I've
Speaker 1: seen in the parts you made me watch for trailer talk.
Speaker 1: So that was something about giant spiders, and the giant
Speaker 1: spiders are in the first one. Wilford Brimley's in the second,
Speaker 1: and that's the one. It's got works in it and
Speaker 1: evil which e Walk's child massacre. Yeah, oh no, that's horrible.
Speaker 1: That's how it begins. Horrible. Yea. Anyway, so yeah, Laura
Speaker 1: writes in about oilbirds. You listening at home, look up
Speaker 1: an oilbird. This is a good thing to look up.
Speaker 1: They've got really funny mustaches and apparently all of these
Speaker 1: crazy traits Somewhat what I was asking for, but not
Speaker 1: quite there to be an albino monster. Hey, at least
Speaker 1: Nature's meeting me halfway on this one. But do you
Speaker 1: mind if I take another quick look at an email
Speaker 1: we got about the London Underground Mosquito episode if Carney
Speaker 1: will allow it. Yes, looks like Carney has given the
Speaker 1: green light. So this one comes from our listener, David. Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: I've recently started into your podcast and have been enjoying
Speaker 1: your addition to my podcast library. I particularly liked a
Speaker 1: recent episode far Below the London Underground Mosquito and had
Speaker 1: a comment and a super cool and relevant link to share. First,
Speaker 1: the comment from a biologist perspective, one pretty well versed
Speaker 1: in both evolution and entomology. It was kind of funny
Speaker 1: to hear you initially asked the question, what if a
Speaker 1: species becomes trapped in the underworld, can it become a
Speaker 1: different species altogether, to which the answer is not just yes,
Speaker 1: it's possible, but assuming the species actually survives and doesn't
Speaker 1: just die out, the answer becomes necessarily yes. Mutation and
Speaker 1: natural selection virtually guarantee that a persisting segregated population will
Speaker 1: become a different species than its original species given enough generations.
Speaker 1: Even some of the most successful ancient forms like dragonflies
Speaker 1: and sharks, have evolved and diversify since their ancient fossilized ancestors,
Speaker 1: and those were very successful in stable forms not trapped
Speaker 1: in a particular habitat. Evolution is only accelerated by having
Speaker 1: a drastically different new habitat and the presence of a
Speaker 1: tantalizing new man made niche begs for something to fill it.
Speaker 1: Insects are like tiny evolution machines, especially with those rapid
Speaker 1: reproductive cycles. It is not surprising that an underground population
Speaker 1: of subway mosquitoes is diverging into a new species. It
Speaker 1: just makes sense. Second, given the topic of underworld segregation
Speaker 1: making weird new species, you have to read this BBC
Speaker 1: article if you haven't, about a Romanian cave filled with
Speaker 1: a bizarre, unique invertebrate ecosystem after being isolated from the
Speaker 1: surface world for five point five million years. Consider it
Speaker 1: the London underground on steroids, with ample amounts of time
Speaker 1: for evolution to occur. Any who, you might not have
Speaker 1: finished reading this. I did, but I wanted to pass
Speaker 1: it along anyways, and there's always the possibility of not
Speaker 1: being ignored. Hey, don't sell yourself short, David, this was
Speaker 1: a good email. He ends by saying, stay science, e David.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate this email. I went and I read
Speaker 1: the BBC article on the Movile cave in Romania, which
Speaker 1: is fascinating. Have you guys read anything about this? No? No, oh,
Speaker 1: you should check this out. It is so cool. So
Speaker 1: it's a cave system sealed off from the surface until
Speaker 1: it was broken into by some Soviet scientists in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, I think maybe nine seventies. It hasn't been
Speaker 1: open to the surface all that long. And it's toxic
Speaker 1: in there. It's full of gases, full of carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: and a sulfitic environment. And there are these organisms down
Speaker 1: there that are these albino translucent scorpions and spiders and leeches,
Speaker 1: and there are these bacterial mats that float on the
Speaker 1: surface of the water in the cave that are described
Speaker 1: as being like wet tissue paper. You can sort of
Speaker 1: pick them up and peel them apart, all made of bacteria.
Speaker 1: This sounds awful. That sounds like the worst vacation in
Speaker 1: the world. This sounds like your home, Christian. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know your house. I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean it sounds it sounds fitting to your personality. Come on,
Speaker 1: it's dark, it's got scorpions and spiders in it, and
Speaker 1: you can swim and wet tissue paper water scorpions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it's and it's totally dark down there, and
Speaker 1: it's it sounds so cool, you should you should go
Speaker 1: look this up. It's called the Movile Cave in Romania.
Speaker 1: Really really worth a look. But also I wanted to
Speaker 1: comment on what David was saying about the the our surprise,
Speaker 1: or at least our questioning of the evolution of the
Speaker 1: new species of mosquito in the London underground. One of
Speaker 1: the things that's really interesting to me is that you
Speaker 1: could have a new species evolve when there's not an
Speaker 1: impenetrable barrier. You know, it's not like an island chain
Speaker 1: that's separated and nothing's really going back and forth. You
Speaker 1: can always iagine that mosquitoes should be sort of coming
Speaker 1: up and going back down into the London underground. Right.
Speaker 1: There are openings, there are doors, there are events, there
Speaker 1: are shafts. So I sort of wonder why didn't cross
Speaker 1: breeding can continue to occur enough to to keep this
Speaker 1: from really diverging. But um, yeah, I guess there must
Speaker 1: be a good reason. It's because scorpions can't mate with
Speaker 1: tissue paper. So guys, I'm looking over at Carney Carney
Speaker 1: is starting to smoke a little bit. We need to
Speaker 1: let him cool down. So we're gonna take another quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're gonna jump right back
Speaker 1: into the mail. All right, we have returned, you're ready
Speaker 1: to jump into the mail. We So I got a
Speaker 1: piece here that is about our episode on flesh bound books.
Speaker 1: We did a book an episode called Books of Flesh
Speaker 1: Anthropodermic Biblio Peggy. This is about libraries that claimed that
Speaker 1: they contain books that are bound in human flesh, and
Speaker 1: so we were looking into like whether or not they
Speaker 1: actually exist or not, and how to scientifically actually categorize
Speaker 1: these books. And we talked about a specific example in
Speaker 1: that episode, and Matt wrote in and he said, I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed the episode about the flesh bound books. I
Speaker 1: have been listening for a while now and I love
Speaker 1: the show. Have thought about writing a few times, but
Speaker 1: never had enough to say until now. In this episode,
Speaker 1: you mentioned Junior out of college had a flesh bound
Speaker 1: book that was tested and was really sheep skin. We did. Indeed,
Speaker 1: my grandma worked in that library years ago and is
Speaker 1: still friends with the entire department. So I called her
Speaker 1: and I got her to set up a walkthrough of
Speaker 1: their treasure room. They happen to have a lot of
Speaker 1: amazing books in the treasure room. The person who takes
Speaker 1: care of the treasure was not there when I went in,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't able to see the flesh bound book,
Speaker 1: but I did get to see the rest of the collection,
Speaker 1: which includes a Bible printed in fourteen seventy eight. They
Speaker 1: are a set of the first Bibles printed in America
Speaker 1: in German. Here are some pictures I took, so he
Speaker 1: attached a bunch of photos from this and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: The printing press is from the early eighteen hundreds of
Speaker 1: the late seventeen hundreds, and it's a wooden printing press
Speaker 1: that still works. They tested it a few years ago,
Speaker 1: which they said is very difficult to set up. I
Speaker 1: will be going back sometime in the future when they
Speaker 1: find where the flesh bound book is, but it's only
Speaker 1: abound in sheep flesh. But yeah, that's super cool. Thanks
Speaker 1: for sending that in, Matt. I always love when our
Speaker 1: episodes lead to field trips for people. Oh yes, now,
Speaker 1: speaking of trips, I have one here and this comes
Speaker 1: to our listener, shah Hit, who is an economist, and
Speaker 1: he writes in in response to our episode on the
Speaker 1: black Stone of Mecca, which is a really fun episode
Speaker 1: where we talked about the the the history of the
Speaker 1: black Stone, both the historical history, the sort of religious history,
Speaker 1: as well as what scientists can at least theorize about
Speaker 1: its cosmic history, right because obviously they can't take it
Speaker 1: to their labs to test it right, and that's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen anytime in the foreseeable future. Uh So, But
Speaker 1: in the said we said, hey, we looked to hear
Speaker 1: from any uh Muslim listeners we have out there who
Speaker 1: might have, you know, their own take on how we
Speaker 1: handled the topic or if they had you seen the stone,
Speaker 1: And we actually heard from a couple of people I
Speaker 1: believe on Twitter who had seen the stone or or
Speaker 1: had a family member who had gone gone on the hodge.
Speaker 1: Uh So, this listener rights and it says a longtime
Speaker 1: listener here, I just wanted to say that I thoroughly
Speaker 1: enjoyed listening to y'all's episode on Alhajir al Haswad. As
Speaker 1: a Muslim. It was really great to hear y'all go
Speaker 1: through the painstaking process of being understanding and I can
Speaker 1: only imagine the difficulty that comes with tackling a religious topic,
Speaker 1: especially on a different religion. As always, I appreciate the
Speaker 1: interesting podcast, especially while at work here where I deal
Speaker 1: with the dryness of economics on a daily basis. If
Speaker 1: you guys may need some insight on the topics of
Speaker 1: Islam or economics, feel free to reach out and I'd
Speaker 1: be more than glad to be of assistance. Please take
Speaker 1: care and have a wonderful day. Well that was really
Speaker 1: great to hear, But I don't think it was two
Speaker 1: painstaking process. I don't know. No, I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's like any exploration that we we take into,
Speaker 1: you know, another cultural or another religion, you know. Certainly,
Speaker 1: I think we always take a great deal of care
Speaker 1: and so that we're understanding it as best we can
Speaker 1: while respecting what we can't understand, you know. And it's
Speaker 1: gonna be mindful of the limits of our perspective. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and you know we and I think we always approach
Speaker 1: these topics with an enthusiasm and and and a desire
Speaker 1: to understand it as much as possible. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I'm sure we'll get into some more We've
Speaker 1: certainly cover topics that involve economics from time to time,
Speaker 1: so it's good to have an economist in the rolodex.
Speaker 1: But also I would love to do another topic in
Speaker 1: the future on on something related to Islam, and so
Speaker 1: it'll be nice to have somebody we can potentially throw
Speaker 1: a question out to there. Yeah, so thanks for getting
Speaker 1: in touch I had. I've actually got one here that's
Speaker 1: somewhat related to that. Uh, this is another kind of
Speaker 1: feel good listener mail that we received. So Robert and
Speaker 1: I did two episodes in one week that we're a
Speaker 1: little touchy, and we felt like we had to be
Speaker 1: careful about how we presented them. The first one was
Speaker 1: about fertility and ovulation and consumer decision making. We're looking
Speaker 1: at research that was done by a marketing researcher into
Speaker 1: how ovulation affects decision making when it comes to buying
Speaker 1: things and politics, and how companies are taking advantage of
Speaker 1: that by basically using targeting information to try to advertise
Speaker 1: at women who are ovulating. And the same week we
Speaker 1: did our episode on sexpots, where we talked about some
Speaker 1: controversial stuff around sex robots and specifically how they're used
Speaker 1: for for therapy for Surrogates. We received this email from
Speaker 1: Julie and she said, what a pair of episodes this week.
Speaker 1: I typically respond with heaps of anxiety to discussions of
Speaker 1: the topics you all covered. I e. Ovulations, effects on behavior,
Speaker 1: and sex spots. As an ovulator, I fear the possibility
Speaker 1: that people will reduce my own behaviors to my hormone levels,
Speaker 1: and as someone in a female body, I get really
Speaker 1: creepy Crawley when I see sex spots, fearing that they
Speaker 1: represent forms of existence to which men wish to reduce
Speaker 1: my person. I'm sure you get it. Point. Being at
Speaker 1: the top of both episodes this week, I was not
Speaker 1: sure I'd make it through anxiety. Headaches commenced pulses raced,
Speaker 1: breathing in shallowed, and yet I pressed on through your
Speaker 1: thought provoking, even handed discussions, and afterward I realized that
Speaker 1: my persistence was because I trust you all, And thanks
Speaker 1: to my trusting you all to present information and a
Speaker 1: carefully considered, intellectually open and humane fashion, I knew you
Speaker 1: wouldn't leave me curled up in a blubbering mass of
Speaker 1: feminist anxiety. Thank you. A further note on pairing the
Speaker 1: episodes as a social scientist, I'm used to viewing research
Speaker 1: findings as information, not evil in themselves, but useful insofar
Speaker 1: as they're interpreted through a properly critical lens. Cultivate use
Speaker 1: of that lens in the populace, and we can trust
Speaker 1: others to interpret and apply research fairly. Now, thanks to
Speaker 1: the fact that your sex spot episode followed the ovulation
Speaker 1: research episode, I'm beginning to wonder if I can abandon
Speaker 1: my usual pearl clutching response to sex bot technology in
Speaker 1: favor of a similar stance. Technology is an inherently evil
Speaker 1: I must work on trusting its consumers, especially when all
Speaker 1: those therapeutic uses of it are involved. This is fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: Thanks for bringing me around to it. Awesome. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's always well, I mean, it's always great to
Speaker 1: hear that we handled something with the appropriate to of care.
Speaker 1: Like certainly that's what we try to do. And yeah,
Speaker 1: anytime we can we can help somebody look at a
Speaker 1: topic in a slightly different light. I mean, that's that's gold.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of the experience of putting together
Speaker 1: the show is that we, at least in my experience,
Speaker 1: I'm always going into a topic thinking I'm more or
Speaker 1: less have a handle on it and then finding some
Speaker 1: some new perspective. Uh that that changes though the way
Speaker 1: I view it more and more lately, I keep coming
Speaker 1: back to the idea that maybe our two word tagline
Speaker 1: should be there's more there always is. That. That's what
Speaker 1: I find out in almost every time we do an episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, in these two topics, I was genuinely pretty
Speaker 1: nervous about covering them, but I felt like they were
Speaker 1: necessary to cover for. We talked about it in the
Speaker 1: episode as to why, but uh so it's I do
Speaker 1: want to share a story. Like like maybe a week
Speaker 1: after they published, I just happened to be talking to
Speaker 1: some random people and they were asking, hey, well, what's
Speaker 1: your show doing this week? And I said, oh, we're
Speaker 1: talking about sex robots and they went, oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: I was like, well, it's actually not like that. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's actually like they're used for therapeutic
Speaker 1: purposes to help people and come on broth, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: The response and it was like, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: when you look at like Playboy for the letters, Am
Speaker 1: I right? And I was like, no, no, that's not
Speaker 1: And then I like it really hit me. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: we really did everything we could to not not be that.
Speaker 1: I imagine that is what listeners, like Julie we're fearing,
Speaker 1: you know, that there would just be like these kind
Speaker 1: of like dudes in a spa like slapping each other
Speaker 1: on the back, talk about spots. Wait a minute, what's
Speaker 1: where's the spot? Don't you go to the dude spot?
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. Have I been
Speaker 1: locked out of the dude spot? Is this why I
Speaker 1: don't understand dude culture? Carney and I go all the
Speaker 1: time and slap each other on the back. No, But
Speaker 1: like you know, it just made me feel like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: Like I I feel like maybe we really did give
Speaker 1: that the care that was necessary for And then Julie's
Speaker 1: email came in right after that. It really made me
Speaker 1: feel a lot better. All right, well, let's not pat
Speaker 1: ourselves on the back too much. Now we're total scumbags.
Speaker 1: I do like how Carney has that bit of of
Speaker 1: actual human flesh on his back slapping purposes, but it's
Speaker 1: really nice. It gets sweaty, especially in the spot. It
Speaker 1: makes a nice sound like throwing a piece of meat
Speaker 1: down on a cutting board. Yeah, alright, Well to shift
Speaker 1: to another one. We got a couple of emails in
Speaker 1: response to our episode on the science of guessing. Now.
Speaker 1: Robert and I talked about the method of firmi estimation,
Speaker 1: which is a really cool trick you can use to
Speaker 1: try to come up with numerical guesses based on very
Speaker 1: little starting information, And this was the topic I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. But we also talked about the idea
Speaker 1: of guessing being a skill, how there are some people
Speaker 1: who are just better at guessing than others. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the episode, one of the things I
Speaker 1: talked about was wondering if there is such a thing
Speaker 1: as as as sort of athleticism of guessing in the
Speaker 1: same way that when you are shooting hoops in basketball,
Speaker 1: you're doing math. You're not consciously doing math, but your
Speaker 1: body is somehow doing maths. You're trying to calculate perfect
Speaker 1: arc trajectories. And I wondered if some people might be
Speaker 1: good at guessing even without knowing tricks like fermi estimation
Speaker 1: or knowing much information. They're just good at doing some
Speaker 1: kind of intuitive, unconscious math that helps them get to
Speaker 1: the right answer more often than other people do. And
Speaker 1: our listener Jonathan writes in about that subject, Jonathan says, Joe,
Speaker 1: you were so close to acknowledging a phenomenon that I
Speaker 1: once wrote about after your excellent episode on P versus
Speaker 1: n P. And that was when we did last year.
Speaker 1: If you want to go check it out. This isn't
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. No, it's not. It's a different Jonathan this,
Speaker 1: Jonathan writes in fairly often, or at least we've gotten
Speaker 1: several emails from him. What if only our colleagues wrote
Speaker 1: us letters We never knew it the whole time. The
Speaker 1: last person was Julie. That could have been Julie Douglas. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Letters from our colleagues would contain
Speaker 1: way more complaints about how nasty our desks are. All right, So,
Speaker 1: Jonathan says, uh, this is not currently a fashionable concept,
Speaker 1: But how about just as a hypothesis to consider it?
Speaker 1: There exists in higher animals, especially in humans, a mode
Speaker 1: of cognition that is distinct from intelligence. It may be
Speaker 1: identical or similar to the method of how a foul
Speaker 1: shot is executed, as you used in an example, or
Speaker 1: even something beyond that. At the very least, it could
Speaker 1: be an instantaneous synthesis of perceptible information that was accumulated
Speaker 1: largely unconsciously. On the more extreme end, it could be
Speaker 1: a sensitivity to information in our environment that is more
Speaker 1: subtle than science in ten can detect. This sounds like
Speaker 1: I'm shading off into magic, but consider phenomenons such as
Speaker 1: how birds may migrate by sensitivity to Earth's magnetic field.
Speaker 1: It's not inconceivable that humans can detect environmental information that's
Speaker 1: currently not measurable and synthesize it in a process that
Speaker 1: feels unconscious, since the conscious part of the mind isn't
Speaker 1: privy to its generation, may feel random, sort of colloquially
Speaker 1: called using your right brain. Great podcast, as always, and
Speaker 1: then he also recommends to us a weekly podcast by
Speaker 1: the BBC called no such Thing as a Fish. So
Speaker 1: maybe we'll take a look at that. Sounds good, But yeah,
Speaker 1: what do y'all think about what Jonathan's suggesting here? It
Speaker 1: sounds plausible to me. I mean, I think that there's
Speaker 1: like lots of aspects of how cognition works that we
Speaker 1: are barely just scratching the surface of now Totally. There's
Speaker 1: a lot about how the mind works that we don't
Speaker 1: understand and and I do take very seriously that the
Speaker 1: idea um you said is something distinct from intelligence. But
Speaker 1: maybe one way you could put it is that there
Speaker 1: are many multiple kinds of intelligence, and that some forms
Speaker 1: of intelligence are not conscious. You don't think about thinking
Speaker 1: through them to reach the conclusions you do, and yet
Speaker 1: they do reach conclusions that influence your behavior. Is very
Speaker 1: much related to the episode you and I did on
Speaker 1: animal intelligence a couple of months ago. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: could be the multiple different kinds of intelligence and intelligences
Speaker 1: that may not be understandable to their own owners, intelligences
Speaker 1: that may not be understandable from the outside. I'm actually
Speaker 1: I'm into that. I'm more skeptical of the idea that
Speaker 1: there's environmental information that is influencing our brains that uh
Speaker 1: I think you might have put it that science in
Speaker 1: seventeen can't measure. I'm totally open to. Of course, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a whole lot we don't know scientifically about
Speaker 1: the world yet. But I would think if there are
Speaker 1: some kind of energetic influences that are acting on our brains,
Speaker 1: they'd be measurable in some way. We might not understand
Speaker 1: what they are or what they're doing. But I would
Speaker 1: I would find it hard to believe they would be
Speaker 1: not detectable in any scientific way, because if they're acting
Speaker 1: on the brain, they're doing something, and by doing something,
Speaker 1: that should mean they're detectable. Joe, you just don't want
Speaker 1: to believe you're the Scully. Uh well, I mean I
Speaker 1: take that as a compliment. I do love Scully, but um,
Speaker 1: we need more Scullies. I'm the Scully who does want
Speaker 1: to believe. Plus that you're like Scully postseason five? Is
Speaker 1: that is that when it happens? That sounds kind of
Speaker 1: like after the movie. I think is where she starts
Speaker 1: like being more open to the idea of the paranormal.
Speaker 1: I'm the Scully that's in The Fall, that's depressing. How
Speaker 1: about the Scully that's in Hannibal that's exciting. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: still haven't made it to that. All right, we just
Speaker 1: have a couple left here. This next one comes to
Speaker 1: us from Jim, who Jim is is pretty o G.
Speaker 1: He's been writing for quite a while, always, always great emails.
Speaker 1: Has he been writing since Allison was I think he
Speaker 1: may have even before me and Allison back in the
Speaker 1: proto day when it was just Carney. It was just Carney,
Speaker 1: and then Carney brought in two piles of a sentient
Speaker 1: goop and those were the original hosts. And then that's
Speaker 1: what the listeners say when they always say it was
Speaker 1: better with the other hosts. They would better with the goop.
Speaker 1: Bring back the sentient goop. Okay, I guess I should
Speaker 1: take it personally, all right. This one again comes from
Speaker 1: Jim Jim Wrightson and says, Hi, guys, I listened to
Speaker 1: your luck Guessing podcast this morning. This is the FIRMI
Speaker 1: estimation bodies we've been talking about. Uh, I know, I'm
Speaker 1: a bit behind. I had a few thoughts. It reminded
Speaker 1: me of two sayings. First, the harder I work, the
Speaker 1: luckier I get. And then second, luck is when preparation
Speaker 1: meets opportunity. The first one is kind of like, what
Speaker 1: is it they say? God helps those who help themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: As for lucky people, is it really luck or just chance?
Speaker 1: Would you consider someone who could flip a fair coin
Speaker 1: heads thirty times in a row lucky? What if you
Speaker 1: gave everyone on the planet a coin and asked them
Speaker 1: to flip as long as they got all heads. Since
Speaker 1: there are about seven billion people, on the planet, about
Speaker 1: seven or eight people should do it. We don't know
Speaker 1: who those seven to eight people would be. They won't
Speaker 1: have any special talent, but they will appear well outside
Speaker 1: of the norms. This sort of goes back to something
Speaker 1: we did on I think maybe the first episode I
Speaker 1: ever did of Stuff to Blow your Mind, which was
Speaker 1: about the science of coincidence, where we're talking about how
Speaker 1: many things that appear to be these great coincidences are
Speaker 1: not in fact all that remarkable. For example, if there
Speaker 1: are lots of trials you're not conscious of. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: the law of large numbers is something you watch somebody
Speaker 1: flip heads thirty times in a row. It's like, that's impossible,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. But if they're the only person who did
Speaker 1: it this year or something, then you know somebody had
Speaker 1: to do it. I run into this a lot with
Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons. You know, it's it's if if someone
Speaker 1: has an advantage and they were like two twenties in
Speaker 1: a row, which you know is the critical hit, everyone's
Speaker 1: just floored. Uh, And then you start thinking, well, there's
Speaker 1: synchronicity going on here, there's something deeper at play. But
Speaker 1: you've rolled so many times and not done that. I've
Speaker 1: actually played games where people start to get paranoid where
Speaker 1: they think that they're dices somehow like poorly made or
Speaker 1: loaded their own way, because it's it's constantly rolling a
Speaker 1: natural one, which leads to automatic failure. I think I've
Speaker 1: seen of a meme online where people have like done
Speaker 1: done dice shaming in the same way that you would
Speaker 1: have a dog hold not hold a sign, but a
Speaker 1: dog with a sign around its neck that says, you know, I,
Speaker 1: you know, pooped on the floor whatnot, Well, they would
Speaker 1: shame the dice like I I rolled a one on one.
Speaker 1: My my character was trying to to swing on a
Speaker 1: vine across the never n care or something. But also
Speaker 1: Jim later in his email talked about this thought experiment
Speaker 1: Robert and I did, or we tried to do a
Speaker 1: piece of FIRMI estimation some rough estimation to come up
Speaker 1: with the answer to the question in the United States
Speaker 1: how much hair in total gets cut off of people's
Speaker 1: heads every year. I liked how we had another listener
Speaker 1: who I don't have their name, but they they commented
Speaker 1: that it was clear that neither of us had ever
Speaker 1: had very long hair. They sent our estimate estimates regarding
Speaker 1: care something mass. Our estimate could have been way off,
Speaker 1: but I think Jim only comes off with about one
Speaker 1: order of magnitude different. So let's let's hear what Jim
Speaker 1: has to say. He says quote, I have another idea
Speaker 1: about the weight of hair. I would do the estimate
Speaker 1: based upon the following assumptions. One, people tend to keep
Speaker 1: their hair roughly the same length overall, even if they
Speaker 1: vary how often they get it cut. Two hair tends
Speaker 1: to grow about six inches in one year. And three
Speaker 1: we could estimate how much six inches of hair on
Speaker 1: one head would be. I think a six inch ponytail
Speaker 1: would be about right, as in the kind that are
Speaker 1: donated for the real hair wigs for cancer patients. I
Speaker 1: don't have any to way, but let's assume they are
Speaker 1: about two ounces. That times three million Americans gives me
Speaker 1: thirty seven million pounds are almost nineteen thousand tons. I
Speaker 1: don't remember your estimate. Using another estimate technique for the
Speaker 1: same problem tends to reinforce estimates. I don't remember where
Speaker 1: I read this, but it was about estimating how much
Speaker 1: water flows through the Mississippi River in a year using
Speaker 1: two techniques. One choose a location on the river and
Speaker 1: estimated the the amount of water through that section based
Speaker 1: upon the rivers with depth and speed. The other estimate
Speaker 1: was based upon the size of the Mississippi River Bay
Speaker 1: sit in rainfall. Both estimates were pretty close to each other,
Speaker 1: and the assumption was that two approximations confirmed each other.
Speaker 1: This is interesting because this is another thing we talked
Speaker 1: about in the episode, how multiple different estimates can help
Speaker 1: average each other out. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: firm the estimation relies upon is that if you're if
Speaker 1: you're coming up with rough guesses for numbers to calculate
Speaker 1: some unknown number, even if you're wrong on one number,
Speaker 1: it might help balance it if you're wrong in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction for a different number. So maybe you overestimate
Speaker 1: how much the average amount of hair ways, but you
Speaker 1: underestimate how much of it gets cut off and each
Speaker 1: given haircut or something like that. Uh So if you
Speaker 1: if you have enough of these things competing against each other,
Speaker 1: they should help sort of average you toward the correct answer.
Speaker 1: Jim also points out in his email this interesting problem
Speaker 1: in game theory known as the sheriff's dilemma, which is
Speaker 1: essentially a problem where you use a game theory payoff
Speaker 1: mate riecks to determine whether or not you should shoot
Speaker 1: somebody based on little information. You just pitched this as
Speaker 1: a story recently, I did. I took Jim's idea. If
Speaker 1: it's going to get picked up, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: hope so they make an article out of it. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of playing Werewolf, which of course involves some
Speaker 1: of these uh these these these ideas. Wait what the
Speaker 1: payoff to payoff matrix for shooting somebody? Um werewolf for
Speaker 1: Mafia of course, the social game where oh I see
Speaker 1: where somebody's a werewolf for somebody. I don't really like
Speaker 1: the Mafia version. I don't think it really holds up well.
Speaker 1: And maybe I just prefer I did not know the
Speaker 1: werewolf version. This is I've only ever heard of Mafia,
Speaker 1: and I used to be a pretty serious Mafia player.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good, Okay. So Jim came up with thirty
Speaker 1: seven million pounds of hair, and we came up with
Speaker 1: a hundred and twelve million pounds of hair getting cut
Speaker 1: every year. So our estimates, our estimates are just one
Speaker 1: order of magnitude apart. That's not too bad, uh, and
Speaker 1: your guests. Of course, Jim's guests might be better than ours.
Speaker 1: So I told Jim, I like your methodology, but I
Speaker 1: didn't know that figure that hair grows an average of
Speaker 1: six inches a year. Yeah, I heard that, and I
Speaker 1: immediately thought, my hair grows way more than that. I've
Speaker 1: never heard this, so I don't know how accurate it
Speaker 1: is or anything. But I think also, Robert, you and
Speaker 1: I could have gone wrong by seriously overestimating the mass
Speaker 1: of the average head of hair. I think we guessed
Speaker 1: about a quarter of a pound, which in retrospect sounds
Speaker 1: really high. And I'm thinking I fell victim to the
Speaker 1: availability heuristic. That's where you, you know, make a bad
Speaker 1: choice based on some particular example in your mind that's
Speaker 1: easily retrievable. And when I was guessing the average head
Speaker 1: of human hair, I had in my mind a picture
Speaker 1: of a man with what looks like five pounds of dreadlocks.
Speaker 1: So that was probably edging my average estimate too high.
Speaker 1: And looking back, maybe maybe we should say two ounces
Speaker 1: of hair instead of a quarter pound. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but anyway, one other way we could reinforce as if
Speaker 1: this number really mattered all that much is to average
Speaker 1: our estimates with Jim. So the the the average between
Speaker 1: Jim's estimate and hours to be somewhere around seventy million
Speaker 1: pounds of hair getting cut every year. I also mentioned
Speaker 1: to Jim that when I got his email, I had
Speaker 1: just gotten my hair cut the other day and I
Speaker 1: forgot to ask my barber if if she had any
Speaker 1: input on this information. You're going to ask your barber
Speaker 1: to wear your hair without explaining anything, wouldn't that be
Speaker 1: great a scale? Yeah, I need you to weigh my hair.
Speaker 1: Oh man, this is great because I'm I'm often in
Speaker 1: need of of small talk when I go to get
Speaker 1: my hair cut, and it can be awkward. Huh. And
Speaker 1: theys are going to the wrong barber because that's part
Speaker 1: of the gig. Man, They've got to keep the conversation flowing. Well,
Speaker 1: not talk at all and not make you feel any pressure. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they need to know when you are not interested in talking.
Speaker 1: I generally, I generally go into a meditative state during
Speaker 1: my hair cut, like there's something vidic stage No, no no,
Speaker 1: not kind of tonic, but just very I get very relaxed.
Speaker 1: It's kind of what it's like a sensory deprivation tech. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the it's like a SMR. It's it's very much
Speaker 1: like that, like very much like a SMR. Like I
Speaker 1: just kind of doze out. I'm probably the worst person
Speaker 1: to I mean, I'm easily moved into different positions, um,
Speaker 1: but but I'm not a great talker because I just
Speaker 1: zone out completely. Your head's lolling back and forth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But one of the first a SMR videos I ever
Speaker 1: saw was somebody pretending to cut your hair. I think
Speaker 1: that's a big one, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, totally works
Speaker 1: on me. By the way, I know the audience is
Speaker 1: probably going, what the hell's a SMR. We've done brain
Speaker 1: stuff videos about this in the past and then stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind videos in the past. But there's
Speaker 1: an older podcast episode about Okay, so yeah, I had
Speaker 1: an over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com
Speaker 1: um or how stuff Works. I think they may have
Speaker 1: a straight up episode there, if not videos, and you
Speaker 1: can type in SMR and see what happens. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: totally fascinating. All right. I got one more here, and
Speaker 1: this is from our recent episode about the demon Haunted Mind.
Speaker 1: And this is the episode where Robert and I took
Speaker 1: a look at a recently published academic paper that found
Speaker 1: a correlation between people who believe in demons and negative
Speaker 1: mental illness. So this comes from I'm actually gonna leave
Speaker 1: this name anonymous, but they say as a psychology professional
Speaker 1: and having an amateur interest in religion. I am a
Speaker 1: nonden denominational Christian. This episode was super interesting to me.
Speaker 1: On one hand, I can agree with what the study said,
Speaker 1: On another, I completely disagree with it. Religion is definitely
Speaker 1: something slightly different to all people. I've been around demonic possessions,
Speaker 1: what you could call exorcism, spiritual healing is another term,
Speaker 1: depending on the circle, and enough strange things that science
Speaker 1: definitely could not explain. That being said, I have rarely
Speaker 1: seen or heard from myself much that has happened. Most
Speaker 1: has been right before or right after I was present,
Speaker 1: only to be corroborated by multiple witnesses. I have never
Speaker 1: sought demons and don't need to see demonic presences to
Speaker 1: know the spiritual world exists. This is important to keep
Speaker 1: in mind. I believe the Bible gives a decent explanation
Speaker 1: of this, and I have heard other people explain it
Speaker 1: in this way, if you go looking for something, you
Speaker 1: will find it. The Bible says seek and ye shall find,
Speaker 1: and that's in Luke eleven nine. And then he also
Speaker 1: quotes an evil in adulterous generation seeks for a sign,
Speaker 1: which is in Matthews sixteen four. This verse outlines those
Speaker 1: that go looking for a sign specifically as proof they
Speaker 1: will find it, but generally in a negative way. The
Speaker 1: reasoning is a little complicated for email, but the basics
Speaker 1: looks something like this. In psychological terms, demons are not
Speaker 1: seen as academic. In almost every case, they are evil
Speaker 1: and are a belief. Therefore, by making the decision to
Speaker 1: look for them, the negative infects your mind. It has
Speaker 1: been well documented what focus on negative issues can do
Speaker 1: to people. In some cases, this could be so extreme
Speaker 1: as to produce multiple mental issues. I have my own views,
Speaker 1: religious and personal on this, but I won't share them here.
Speaker 1: This is just a basic idea that seems to be
Speaker 1: true in my personal and professional life. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I think what I'm hearing outside of what this person's
Speaker 1: actual belief system is lines up with the study to
Speaker 1: me from what like I remember from their correlations that
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually that like demons were influencing you somehow,
Speaker 1: but that it was that because you were prone to
Speaker 1: having a cynical world view, you were subsequently attracted to
Speaker 1: the idea of demons and negative mental health as a
Speaker 1: maybe totally obvious or too obvious to state thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously having demon obsessed ideation could lead to the belief
Speaker 1: that someone is possessed by demons. Yeah. Well, one of
Speaker 1: the things that's interesting about this study is that they
Speaker 1: also showed that just like the belief in demons may
Speaker 1: correlate with mental health problems, but that doesn't mean necessarily
Speaker 1: that mental health problems correlate with the belief in demons.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, uh, though, I mean, I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to sell short the influence of this person's religious beliefs.
Speaker 1: Reading this email, I strongly get the sense that this
Speaker 1: person believes demons are real. Yeah, they said at the top,
Speaker 1: they said amateur interest in religion, but it certainly sounded
Speaker 1: a lot more in depth than what I would think of. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm also amature. I'm also reminded of the episodes that
Speaker 1: we did about Incubined subcuby and and and and I
Speaker 1: think we've touched on on witchcraft persecution in other episodes
Speaker 1: as well, but they're There are a few theories in fact,
Speaker 1: one from the author Walter Stevens who wrote this book
Speaker 1: Demon Lovers that we refer to, and he makes an
Speaker 1: argument that a lot of what was going on in
Speaker 1: the persecution of which is is this this desire in
Speaker 1: a time of of a faltering faith, uh, this desire
Speaker 1: for there to be a proof of the supernatural that
Speaker 1: like carnal proof, like physical proof, like this is where
Speaker 1: the supernatural realm touches us and improves its reality. And
Speaker 1: if demons are real, then God is real as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so demons aren't. It wasn't just strongly religious people trying
Speaker 1: to act out their religious fervor, but it was people
Speaker 1: who were afraid that God might not exist and thinking
Speaker 1: that if demons, if you can show demonic possession, you
Speaker 1: can know that God is real. And so yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really interesting. One thing I would pick up on this
Speaker 1: email is UH trying to reason about the presence of
Speaker 1: demon possession or the reality of demon possession from the
Speaker 1: idea of UH seeing things that science definitely could not explain.
Speaker 1: I'm always like, I don't, how do you know you
Speaker 1: hear people say that about things that can't be publicly investigated,
Speaker 1: but whenever it's something that can be publicly investigated, suddenly
Speaker 1: it gets way less uh deterministic about whether science can't
Speaker 1: explain it. I think future pronouncements that this science will
Speaker 1: never be able to explain this thing I saw. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a good basis for saying that. Well,
Speaker 1: I do want to point out to the outside of
Speaker 1: this letter, we received a lot of listener mail about
Speaker 1: this particular episode, and a lot of you shared your
Speaker 1: personal experiences with us, and you know, unfortunately, because of
Speaker 1: how much time we have for these listener mail episodes,
Speaker 1: we couldn't read them all. This one was interesting to
Speaker 1: me primarily because it was from a psychology professional. Um,
Speaker 1: but we did hear from I would say at least ten,
Speaker 1: if not more, people about their personal experiences both with
Speaker 1: the belief in demons and with mental illness and how
Speaker 1: the two connected. Uh so, yeah, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know necessarily from like I see exactly what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I can see how from like a subjective standpoint, it
Speaker 1: feels like science couldn't explain something that you've seen, but
Speaker 1: like you could say the same thing, and that's not
Speaker 1: to take away from the power of it and your
Speaker 1: personal experience or in your life. Yeah. Absolutely, um, But
Speaker 1: then like you could have said the same thing about
Speaker 1: I don't know astronomy a thousand years ago, right, So um,
Speaker 1: I'm not quite so sure. But I also like this
Speaker 1: person seems to have like an interest in the empirical
Speaker 1: but also in the spiritual that like are sort of
Speaker 1: rubbing up against one another. That's probably why this episode
Speaker 1: clicked for them. And I do want to mention that
Speaker 1: we've mentioned this before, but anytime we discuss supernatural experience, uh,
Speaker 1: we never We're never doubting the the experience, the and
Speaker 1: and the the feelings that are associated with it, the
Speaker 1: the you know, trauma or you know serious a sensation
Speaker 1: of enlightenment like that, that is all valid. It's it's
Speaker 1: what is causing the experience. Uh. And And I feel
Speaker 1: like most of the time, if not all of the time,
Speaker 1: you can point to some very valid explanations that are
Speaker 1: that are very much in keeping with our understanding of
Speaker 1: the natural world and in the human mind. But I
Speaker 1: would also say that even going beyond that, not being
Speaker 1: aware of a current valid explanation rooted in natural science.
Speaker 1: Also is not a proof that you have experienced a
Speaker 1: demon or a ghost. I did want to say something
Speaker 1: else that this this email was interesting to me in
Speaker 1: multiple ways, so I really appreciate the person who wrote
Speaker 1: it writing in but the idea about warnings against investigation
Speaker 1: of the demonic, like that seems a very interesting and
Speaker 1: intellectually fertile soil as well, like the idea of uh
Speaker 1: interpreting certain Bible verses to say that if you go
Speaker 1: after looking for evidence of the demonic, if you want
Speaker 1: to try to investigate it in this academic way, you
Speaker 1: are asking for trouble. Yeah. Um, that that's something that
Speaker 1: we came across in the Exorcism Addercism episode as well.
Speaker 1: Depending on like what particular religious beliefs you have, there
Speaker 1: are that that's in line with some of them that
Speaker 1: it's like you just shouldn't think about this, don't look
Speaker 1: behind the curtain. But I mean that's also you could look.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that the person writing the this email
Speaker 1: has this motive in mind, but you could also say
Speaker 1: similar things to just discourage investigation of a phenomenon that
Speaker 1: would ultimately make it look mundane. Yeah. Well, and That's
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things too about that study was
Speaker 1: that it was one in a long line of studies
Speaker 1: that had shown correlations between religious beliefs and mental health.
Speaker 1: And there are positive ones too, as we mentioned in
Speaker 1: the episode, like belief in the Loving God or belief
Speaker 1: in prayer, things like that lead to positive mental health. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just interesting kind of like looking at
Speaker 1: how they all weigh together, Like which things do you
Speaker 1: choose to think about? Which things do you not? And
Speaker 1: I don't know if you decide that based upon what
Speaker 1: the the canonical writings or your religion are or or
Speaker 1: something else. I'll just say this, do not look into
Speaker 1: the world of demons. Do not investigate the world of
Speaker 1: demons unless you want to discover so many wonderful films,
Speaker 1: pieces of literature, uh, compositions, music, so many wonderful pieces
Speaker 1: of art. Um, it's all of Robertspidy and the campaigns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Denis and Dragons has so many devils and demons. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's so much wonderful stuff out there. I can't imagine, uh,
Speaker 1: my life if I had not decided to to look
Speaker 1: into them. And as we talked about in the episode,
Speaker 1: when you were a little kid, you and I had
Speaker 1: the same thing where we would be like Sunday School
Speaker 1: and you would say, hey, I want to know more
Speaker 1: about this revelations. It says like all these demons and
Speaker 1: legions are gonna come to show up. And the people
Speaker 1: would be like, don't don't worry about that. Let's let's
Speaker 1: get more to the caring part. And that's I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of valid advices. There's always in Sunday School
Speaker 1: a little bit of steering you to the parts of
Speaker 1: the Bible they want you to focus on. Al Right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's go ahead and close it up.
Speaker 1: We'll leave everyone out there to either pursue the demons
Speaker 1: or the caring, whichever one you want to do. Hopefully
Speaker 1: you'll make room for both in your life. Um, as usual,
Speaker 1: head on over to Stuff to Well your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mother ship. That's what we'll find all of
Speaker 1: the blog post, podcast videos, and links out to our
Speaker 1: various social media accounts. That's right, And if you want
Speaker 1: to write us the old fashioned way, you can get
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Well more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com lia I think they
Speaker 1: try to start about the proper part far F