Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you, as always so much Ridiculous Historians
Speaker 1: for joining us. Let's hear it for the man the
Speaker 1: myth our super producer mister Max Williams Imax. All right, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're getting some snapping fingers. This is part two of
Speaker 1: a continuing exploration. The guy who just said Imax is
Speaker 1: mister Noel Brown, none other than.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks buddy, You're welcome, Buckeroo.
Speaker 1: They called me Ben Bullen in this part of the world,
Speaker 1: and Noel, if we could do a previous on Ridiculous History,
Speaker 1: the smoke Monster was bullsh wasn't anything, well, it was
Speaker 1: the thing. It was the man in Black, it was
Speaker 1: you know, that's the show Lost, which dated references.
Speaker 2: But that's what we're here for. No, it's true.
Speaker 3: We did previously on Ridiculous History talk with the brilliant
Speaker 3: and lovely doctor Jorge at Sham, who helped us navigate
Speaker 3: the universe a little bit, from the Big Bang to
Speaker 3: the singularities to AI and the way that artificial intelligence
Speaker 3: may well be close to, if not already at a
Speaker 3: place where it resembles the human brain.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is true. And Noel, as you know, I'm
Speaker 1: really proud of you and Maxim myself for being quite
Speaker 1: transparent and forthright with the fact that we are ourselves
Speaker 1: not experts.
Speaker 2: Folks.
Speaker 1: We know everybody enjoyed the first part of our conversations
Speaker 1: with doctor or a Champ, and believe it or not,
Speaker 1: we were able to get Orgey back for another episode
Speaker 1: or Hey, welcome, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4: Hey, super fun to be here. Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 3: Of course, of course you're helping us out as well.
Speaker 3: We love a good two part, especially one that we
Speaker 3: decide on in advance.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this will be the Empire Streks back of podcasts.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's the film. It's a universe.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the history of what we call the
Speaker 1: Big Bang in our previous exploration, which led us to,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, Noel, an exploration of so called
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, the nature of reality, the observable universe. And
Speaker 1: we tease just a bit episode two. This is our
Speaker 1: exploration of the ridiculous history of a thing that studies
Speaker 1: itself the science of the human brain. So real quick
Speaker 1: I could if we could open it up this way, Orgey,
Speaker 1: just small talk, What is the human brain.
Speaker 4: Was this little about sixty eight pound organ that you
Speaker 4: have in your head. And it's just another organ in
Speaker 4: your head.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It's a lump of fleshy stuff that basically makes who
Speaker 4: you are happen, Like your conscious experience, all your memories,
Speaker 4: how you feel, that's all happening in that little gelatinous
Speaker 4: blob inside your skull.
Speaker 3: I've always felt calling the brain an organ was selling
Speaker 3: it short just a little bit. When I think of
Speaker 3: an organ, I guess I think of just like guts.
Speaker 3: You know, it's important. But the brain is a very
Speaker 3: peculiar and powerful and incredible organ.
Speaker 4: It is it is. People say it's the most complex
Speaker 4: organization of matter that we know about in the whole universe.
Speaker 2: And it's also the biggest erogenoist zone.
Speaker 4: In the human we go. It's the biggest everything zone.
Speaker 4: Basically hunger, heye, love, it's all happening in your head.
Speaker 1: Now, this is fascinating. I love that phrase because we
Speaker 1: also have to acknowledge an inherent dilemma. We're asking a
Speaker 1: thing to research and explain itself, to measure itself. Could
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about the philosophical quandaries
Speaker 1: involved with that like because ordinarily, you know, if you
Speaker 1: asked if you asked a duck its opinion about ducks,
Speaker 1: you would get a weird you know, not completely objective.
Speaker 4: Right, right, right, and everyone knows are just a bunch
Speaker 4: of quacks. Now it's a super interesting philosophical conversation, right,
Speaker 4: because right, there's eighty six billion neurons in your head,
Speaker 4: and so the idea that eighty six billion neurons could
Speaker 4: ever really really understand what's happening in eighty six billion neurons,
Speaker 4: even if somebody else's eighty six billionaires, it's sort of impossible, right.
Speaker 4: It's sort of like a car understanding a car, or
Speaker 4: you know, a switch understanding a switch. So it's probably
Speaker 4: not possible for the human brain to really understand everything
Speaker 4: that's going on in your brain, like down to the tee.
Speaker 4: But you know, we have science, and so we can
Speaker 4: make kind of generalizations, we can make certain rules, we
Speaker 4: can understand the general structure and organization of the brain,
Speaker 4: but like totally understanding the brain and predicting what it's
Speaker 4: going to do, it's probably impossible for our brains. But
Speaker 4: you can imagine, like maybe aliens who have four hundred
Speaker 4: billion neurons, you know them, we might be like, oh,
Speaker 4: look at these cats, you know, running around, We can
Speaker 4: totally understand what's going on in their heads.
Speaker 1: So this leads us to the ridiculous history of neuroscience
Speaker 1: or brain science. Could you tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about the first I guess there was a moment in
Speaker 1: human civilization, or a series of moments more accurately, wherein
Speaker 1: people realized this gelatinous blob in their head was doing something.
Speaker 1: We're under the impression that for a lot of human history,
Speaker 1: various cultures believed that the soul or the consciousness maybe
Speaker 1: resided in other organs, like the heart or the I'll
Speaker 1: say it, sorry, substitute teachers, genitalia.
Speaker 4: Was there a lot of it? A lot of our
Speaker 4: actions do come.
Speaker 2: From it's like a second brain.
Speaker 1: So what was there any sort of inflection point or
Speaker 1: crossroads in history of humans where they started to look
Speaker 1: at the brain as a seat of consciousness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, now, yeah, it's a pretty interesting history because,
Speaker 4: as you mentioned, probably for most of human history, we
Speaker 4: had no idea what was going on inside of our bodies.
Speaker 4: How though our bodies work, much less how our brains
Speaker 4: worked or what it did Aristotle back in the ancient
Speaker 4: Greek era. Uh, basically agree with what you just said,
Speaker 4: which is he thought that everything that makes us who
Speaker 4: we are is in our hearts, like in our chest.
Speaker 4: And he thought that the brain was really just like
Speaker 4: a radiator, like a brain just there to like cool people. Yeah,
Speaker 4: jes United has all these like lumps and wriggles like
Speaker 4: that would make sense, right kind of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, maybe dissipute the heat like coils like coils in.
Speaker 4: Area, Yeah, yeah, like increasing the surface area.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And if you think about it, it kind of makes sense, right,
Speaker 4: Like if you are designing a human being, Like, why
Speaker 4: would you put the most important part on this little
Speaker 4: like appendage sitting at the top, you know, exposed to
Speaker 4: Yeah it's exposed. Yeah yeah what did you put it?
Speaker 4: Like in the chest right protected by ribs and organs
Speaker 4: Like that would make a little bit more sense. But no,
Speaker 4: it's like it's sticking up in our hands. It's a
Speaker 4: little peninsula on the box. Yeah yeah, so easy to
Speaker 4: knock or or chop off. So he didn't quite have
Speaker 4: it right, But people think that maybe the Egyptians knew
Speaker 4: a little bit more about the brain. So there's this
Speaker 4: famous papyrus papyrus scroll, yeah, that they found made by
Speaker 4: the ancient Egyptians where they kind of like documented medical cases.
Speaker 4: It's called the Edwin Smith Papyrus.
Speaker 2: Yes, like the thought yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh that's another brain game right there. So we know,
Speaker 4: like the Addigus catalog all these medical things like oh,
Speaker 4: if you break an arm, this is what happens. If
Speaker 4: you sever your spinacle, this is what happened. And there's
Speaker 4: like an entry number twenty in this squirrel that says,
Speaker 4: you know, if you get hit in the head card,
Speaker 4: we know that sometimes you can lose the ability to talk.
Speaker 4: So like in their heads they're thinking, oh, your brain
Speaker 4: is good for things like talking. So that's kind of
Speaker 4: like the earliest we think kind of a record of
Speaker 4: people humans kind of understanding what the brain is doing.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: And this this also reminds us clearly of a similar
Speaker 1: practice indicative of recognizing the importance of the brain as
Speaker 1: an organ, which is the practice of trepan nation, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: trepanation being.
Speaker 2: The demons.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, venting relieving pleasure, yeah, drilling a
Speaker 1: physical hole somewhere in the cranium. I think for a
Speaker 1: lot of us lay for the primary amazing thing about
Speaker 1: the practice of trapanation is that people survived somehow.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, Yeah, it's wild. Basically, there's not much activity
Speaker 4: going on like understanding the brain up until about the
Speaker 4: eighteen hundreds, and that's when people really started to record
Speaker 4: things like hey, if you open up your skull and
Speaker 4: you dig a hole through here, this can happen. Or
Speaker 4: if you open up this part of the brain and
Speaker 4: you kind of like mess around with it or apply
Speaker 4: electricity like that, your arm will move and so yeah,
Speaker 4: so that's one of the things that people did in
Speaker 4: the eighteen hundreds, which which opened up your brain and
Speaker 4: pok it. And it's sort of dubious to us.
Speaker 2: Now that's not to say.
Speaker 3: Syram that gave us that information, but which is often
Speaker 3: the case with early discovery, it's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: you gotta break a few eggs to make a science online.
Speaker 4: Be a little bit of a mad scientist. Yeah, but
Speaker 4: it taught us a lot, Like it started to kind
Speaker 4: of piece everything together. People started to figure out, oh,
Speaker 4: like the brain has parts. You know, it's not just
Speaker 4: like one giant computer chip. It's got like a little
Speaker 4: processor for this over here and a little processor for
Speaker 4: that out over there, and so that's kind of how
Speaker 4: it started, really kind of ramping up the history of
Speaker 4: brain science.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking the eighteen hundreds at this point, which
Speaker 1: means from what Noel and I understand, this means this happens,
Speaker 1: this great scientific inquiry occurs in the same sort of
Speaker 1: historical milieu as a lot of quack science. Right, I
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about phrenology a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well it's it's sort of a it's
Speaker 4: a bit of a sketchy thing to delineate between quack
Speaker 4: science and really thought right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Like back then, it's like it's like accusing a cavement
Speaker 4: of not being good scientists. You know, they just didn't know,
Speaker 4: and so they were just trying all these different theories.
Speaker 4: They had all these ideas. They were going on vibes
Speaker 4: basically vibes, and yeah, it's a Phrenology was a huge
Speaker 4: deal in the eighteen hundreds. People thought that, you know,
Speaker 4: there was this idea that the brain is mapped, like
Speaker 4: there's areas that do different things. But so people would
Speaker 4: just guess, like, oh, the part of the back part of
Speaker 4: your rank, that's where that's where your love is located
Speaker 4: and the front part is where your egoism is located,
Speaker 4: and so they just if you look it up phrenology,
Speaker 4: there's all these like maps. I think most people have
Speaker 4: probably have probably seen them, just like a human head
Speaker 4: with like areas kind of like a like a meat
Speaker 4: diagram and a cow for one little.
Speaker 2: Regions where the tenderline is exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And that was informed, unfortunately by a lot of confirmation bias,
Speaker 1: we could argue from Western Europe at the time, wherein
Speaker 1: people would say, oh, we've made this rough Butcher's diagram
Speaker 1: or topography of a cranium, and based on this bump,
Speaker 1: this guy is going to be good at what's a
Speaker 1: silly thing to be good at?
Speaker 2: In the unicycle.
Speaker 1: This guy's great at unicycles. Yeah, look at the other bump,
Speaker 1: you know, right there by the temple. This is our
Speaker 1: unicyclist juggler phrenology.
Speaker 2: Jorge.
Speaker 1: Was it widely accepted in its day.
Speaker 4: I think it was, you know, as accepted as like
Speaker 4: you know, somebody selling tonics, you know, going from town
Speaker 4: to town in the Old West selling tonics to rejuvenate
Speaker 4: your vigor or something like that. You know, it's something
Speaker 4: that people weren't quite sure it was true or not,
Speaker 4: and some people claim that they were starting up it
Speaker 4: and you know, people rolled the dice.
Speaker 3: Not a far jump from things like the humors, you know,
Speaker 3: the idea of leeching and blood letting in order to
Speaker 3: balance out these supposed you know, materials within the body.
Speaker 3: And then honestly, I'm not trying to poop anybody's beliefs here,
Speaker 3: but not too too far off from things like chakras
Speaker 3: and meridian lines in some you know, Eastern medicine that
Speaker 3: some people think is quackery and some people swear by.
Speaker 3: So I mean, it's just interesting the way some of
Speaker 3: that stuff is still around and believed in or not
Speaker 3: believed in depending.
Speaker 4: No, no, that stuff is quackery.
Speaker 2: No okay, Oh the.
Speaker 1: Professor came out on that one.
Speaker 4: No fense to the Crystal fans.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, we just being diplomatic.
Speaker 1: We are being diplomatic, and we we share the same pursuits,
Speaker 1: which is always going to be hopefully the collective, objective
Speaker 1: interrogation of the world around us and within us. One
Speaker 1: thing we were talking about a little bit off air.
Speaker 1: It pertained to some some just phenomenal and again, as
Speaker 1: you said Jorge. Ethically, dubious learnings that came. You mentioned
Speaker 1: the earlier realization from humanity that certain parts of the
Speaker 1: brain function in certain ways right and excel in certain things.
Speaker 1: And at the end of our first conversation we introduced
Speaker 1: a patient who for a long time was simply known
Speaker 1: as HM, and HM, as we find, is pivotal to neuroscience,
Speaker 1: perhaps because of well, gosh, can we tell can we
Speaker 1: tell the story? Yes, super fasting story. This was a
Speaker 1: little bit later. This was in the nineteen thirties that
Speaker 1: this man came about. His name was Henry Malaysan, but
Speaker 1: for a long time people didn't know his name because
Speaker 1: when you become a medical subject, they kind of make
Speaker 1: you anonymous. So for a long time, for many years,
Speaker 1: he was just known as patient AHM. And so this
Speaker 1: was a guy who had a lot of seizures as
Speaker 1: a kid. Some people think it maybe happened after he
Speaker 1: had like a bike accident and then he knocked his head.
Speaker 1: Some people think he was just kind of he just
Speaker 1: had these seizures for no reason. So it's not quite
Speaker 1: clear how or why he got these features, but they
Speaker 1: were like super intense, like he couldn't really function it
Speaker 1: would really kind of make him not able to have
Speaker 1: a job or go to school or things like that.
Speaker 4: And at the time, as you said, the doctors were like, oh,
Speaker 4: I know how to cure it this. I'll just poke
Speaker 4: a hole in your head and mess around with it.
Speaker 4: And so a common procedure back then was basically a lobotomy,
Speaker 4: Like they would just kind of stick this long needle
Speaker 4: kind of through your eye socket, did you like move
Speaker 4: your eye a little bit out of the way, and
Speaker 4: then you stick it in there and then kind of
Speaker 4: mess around. And what they did for him specifically was
Speaker 4: they destroyed most of his hippocampus, so like deep inside
Speaker 4: your brain you have this little these little lumps called
Speaker 4: the hippocampus. And you know, his seizures were so severe
Speaker 4: that this doctor called Williams Coville thought that he needed
Speaker 4: to take out both his hippocampus, and so he did.
Speaker 4: And the amazing thing is it sort of worked, like
Speaker 4: his seizure stopped. But unfortunately it had a bad side effect,
Speaker 4: which is that Henry Molaysan was not able to make
Speaker 4: new memories. So like he remembered his whole life, his childhood,
Speaker 4: you know, his early adulthood, right up until the day
Speaker 4: he had his surgery. But after that he couldn't remember
Speaker 4: more than thirty minutes at a time.
Speaker 1: He couldn't encode information.
Speaker 4: Right, Like if you met him and you said hey,
Speaker 4: and he like, he could tell you where he grew up,
Speaker 4: who his mother was, and everything, but thirty minutes later
Speaker 4: he would totally forget he met you, Or thirty minutes later,
Speaker 4: he couldn't tell you how he got to where he was,
Speaker 4: what he had for breakfast, you know, any he couldn't
Speaker 4: tell you anything beyond thirty minutes ago.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, we've all met executive producers and before you see.
Speaker 4: A botimized Oh.
Speaker 1: So this this is a moment of tremendous significance to
Speaker 1: the history of neuroscience when and first off, him's existence
Speaker 1: at this point is cursed. You mentioned earlier that this
Speaker 1: was this was a primary source for the film Momento.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Christopher Nolan film The When He Got kind
Speaker 4: Of I got famous for initially Memento. It was this
Speaker 4: guy who basically lived this life, but in our modern
Speaker 4: world right now and so he couldn't remember more than
Speaker 4: thirty minutes ago, and so and so that movie's kind
Speaker 4: of told backwards in time. It's like he's you're sort
Speaker 4: of living the movie like he is living in It's like, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm here, Why am I here? I don't know why
Speaker 4: I'm here? And then you flash back to like thirty
Speaker 4: minutes ago to figure out how he got there, and
Speaker 4: then you keep flashing back thirty minutes at a time.
Speaker 4: That's the movie. And this guy like actually lifted. He
Speaker 4: just woke up every day and thirty minutes the world
Speaker 4: was brand new to him.
Speaker 2: That's a good yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I don't know if that's like terrifying or
Speaker 3: kind of awesome, but now I think it's terrifying.
Speaker 2: I don't think it would a good way to experience
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 4: Well, it wouldn't make you useful for pretty much anything
Speaker 4: except subject There's.
Speaker 3: There's something to be said about, like, you know, if
Speaker 3: we could just wipe our memories or do a little reset.
Speaker 2: But no, I'm sorry not making life.
Speaker 3: This is a very very serious condition, but one that
Speaker 3: shut up lot of light on some things that didn't
Speaker 3: require people to go necessarily digging around in people's brains, right.
Speaker 4: Right, right, yeah. In particularly, she had a lot of
Speaker 4: light on how memory works in our brain, so, like
Speaker 4: before this patient, mostly people thought that memory was something
Speaker 4: that was spread across your brain, Like people thought your
Speaker 4: brain was used to giant kind of a computer ship
Speaker 4: and you had just like you know, you store memories
Speaker 4: in a little bit here, a little bit there, a
Speaker 4: little bit everywhere. It's just kind of like evenly spread out.
Speaker 4: But what was fascinating about patient HM is that he
Speaker 4: could remember his childhood, his early adulthood. He couldn't make
Speaker 4: me memories, but you could teach him motor skills like
Speaker 4: he could. Yeah, Like you could teach him how to
Speaker 4: play tennis, and the first day he would be terrible
Speaker 4: at it, but if he kept practicing, he would get
Speaker 4: better at it, but he wouldn't remember having practice.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So every time this guy, for example, plays tennis, he's
Speaker 1: just a little bit better, right, but he doesn't know why.
Speaker 2: He's just really good at it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like you know, by session thirty, I imagine, right,
Speaker 4: this is hypothetically because I don't think they really has
Speaker 4: them to play tennis, But like by session thirty, he'd
Speaker 4: be like, you know, hitting aces and returning loves and
Speaker 4: he'd be like, oh my god, I had no idea
Speaker 4: I could play tennis. That was basically his experience.
Speaker 1: I hope he has a I hope he has a
Speaker 1: lived perception that he is a virtuoso. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean, because it's always the first thirty minutes that
Speaker 1: he's played tennis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right right, But then in the next session if
Speaker 4: he doesn't play tennis, he has no idea he's good
Speaker 4: to play tennis.
Speaker 1: Al true periodic victory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, real conundrum.
Speaker 3: So what did this teach us though about the brain?
Speaker 3: That there are certain things that could not be recalled,
Speaker 3: but yet certain things had a bit more of a
Speaker 3: sense memory perhaps.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Mainly what it taught people is that there are
Speaker 4: different kinds of memory. Like I think most people who
Speaker 4: are listening to about short term memory long term memory.
Speaker 4: So those are two separate things in your brain. But
Speaker 4: for a long time, we didn't know that, and we
Speaker 4: didn't know there was such a thing as motor memory.
Speaker 4: Like when you like your signature, you can do you
Speaker 4: write your signature without thinking about it. It's just in
Speaker 4: your muscle memory. Or some people can play the piano
Speaker 4: with is your muscle memory. So that's in a different
Speaker 4: part of your brain than the long term. The short
Speaker 4: term even your verbal and language all that is just
Speaker 4: in separate areas. It's still in areas, but it's a
Speaker 4: little bit more spread out of the brain. And so
Speaker 4: that's kind of what it unlocked for scientists is like,
Speaker 4: oh wait, memory is not just this like one hard drive.
Speaker 4: It's like a whole bunch of little hard drive and
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of different ways that memories gets stored.
Speaker 1: So that teaches us as well about that reminds us
Speaker 1: of things like what is it called broksophasia or something?
Speaker 1: So patient HM was capable of retaining and speaking the
Speaker 1: language she had learned in his childhood. What we're talking about,
Speaker 1: we talk about brocos of phasia is of course the
Speaker 1: breakdown of as you said, Jorge, a different version of
Speaker 1: the hard drive, right, the one that controls linguistic aptitude.
Speaker 1: Did he I don't know the answer. I'm asking honestly,
Speaker 1: did sense memory impact anything?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Could he the same way he was hypothetically taught to
Speaker 1: be good at tennis? Could he be taught to and
Speaker 1: we're breaking tons of ethical experimentation laws on this, but
Speaker 1: could you possibly teach this patient to be avoidant of
Speaker 1: or attracted to, say, a certain stimuli like a smell
Speaker 1: and then wait for that reset in the brain function.
Speaker 1: You know, is this guy? Is it possible to make
Speaker 1: a world where this guy is waking up experiencing lucidity
Speaker 1: every thirty minutes and now he just hates the No,
Speaker 1: what's a good smell to hate? Oh, my gosh, the
Speaker 1: smell of coffee, like coffee, coffee, coffee is a great one.
Speaker 1: Is it possible to uh, would it be possible to
Speaker 1: teach sense memory in an olfactory way or what does
Speaker 1: that take? Right?
Speaker 4: I think the idea is that he couldn't make long
Speaker 4: term memories, so and I'm not sure that like our
Speaker 4: associations with certain smells, I'm not sure quite sure where
Speaker 4: that is in the brain. So it might some of
Speaker 4: it might be in our long term memory, in which
Speaker 4: case he couldn't. You couldn't train that in him. But
Speaker 4: some of it might be automatic, in which case you
Speaker 4: probably could.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That is fascinating, and it occurs in step with we
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about this with another pivotal moment
Speaker 1: in neuroscience understanding and and folks, by the way, I
Speaker 1: feel like we've been very very clear about this. Do
Speaker 1: not try this at home, no matter how mad you
Speaker 1: are at your sibling. Do not try this at home.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There is another case that occurred in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: so a little bit prior to HM, the infamous Phineas Gauge.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, railroad tie.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: So Finished Gage was a railroad worker. He's just a
Speaker 4: regular dude in eighteen mid eighteen hundreds up there in Vermont,
Speaker 4: and you know, by all accounts, he was a nice guy,
Speaker 4: you know, lived his life, worked hard. One day, he
Speaker 4: was like installing these long metal rods on a rock
Speaker 4: to make way for like a railroad. And what they
Speaker 4: do is they pack some dynamite in there, they stick
Speaker 4: the rod, and then they light the fuse and then
Speaker 4: that blows up the rock. What could go wrong? Right,
Speaker 4: thing exploded on him and this meter long iron rod
Speaker 4: basically went through his head. So he kind of went
Speaker 4: in through his left cheek, kind of up and above,
Speaker 4: kind of behind his eyeballs, through the front part of
Speaker 4: his brain, and then it came out the top. Gar
Speaker 4: He did not. He survived, that is the fascinating thing.
Speaker 4: And so he got better and everyone's like, oh, oh
Speaker 4: my god, that's amazing. He's a miracle. I guess the
Speaker 4: brain is not that important. For take away. Yeah, for
Speaker 4: a long time, he was basically used as an example
Speaker 4: of like, oh, the brain is like, you know, just
Speaker 4: one big amorsive most mass, and if you lose a
Speaker 4: little bit, it's like, you know, you lose a little bit,
Speaker 4: but whatever, your brain has the risk of itself to
Speaker 4: like make you who you are. And so he's revived.
Speaker 4: People thought he was fine, but literally little people sort
Speaker 4: of realized there was something a little off about him,
Speaker 4: like he quite wasn't quite himself like he reportedly, he
Speaker 4: just had like a he kind of basically became an
Speaker 4: a hole.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can say that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a he had a market change in
Speaker 1: his temperance, right he was he was now seen as yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said, a whole and thank you for keeping
Speaker 1: it a family show.
Speaker 4: But he was not a nice guy. Not a nice guy.
Speaker 2: Oh by all accounts.
Speaker 3: Before that though, he was a perfectly nice fellow, a
Speaker 3: hard worker, like you said, and in fun and fine
Speaker 3: to be around, jovial. And then after this people started
Speaker 3: noticing that something in his personality had shifted.
Speaker 4: You know, Yeah, his personality had shifted from being like
Speaker 4: a nice guy to like being very ill tempered, like
Speaker 4: he just grumpy all the time. But and then beyond
Speaker 4: his personality, he also kind of had a little bit
Speaker 4: of ADHD now, like he could he find it hard
Speaker 4: to focus, He couldn't really concentrate, and so he's just
Speaker 4: he was just kind of like a frustrated person all
Speaker 4: the time. And you know, people who knew me were like,
Speaker 4: this is not the same person. And so only later
Speaker 4: when the people realize, like, oh, this is perfectly explained
Speaker 4: because the front part of your brain, that's kind of
Speaker 4: where your personality is and where your ability to focus is.
Speaker 4: So that was another big part of kind of like
Speaker 4: mapping the brain and figuring out that there are parts
Speaker 4: to it that do different things and which parts do
Speaker 4: different things.
Speaker 3: I gotta say, there's a really great episode of our
Speaker 3: sister podcast, Stuff You Missed in History Class, all about
Speaker 3: Phineas Gage back in the Archives. I remember back when
Speaker 3: I produced that show, that was the first time I'd
Speaker 3: heard of him, and I thought it was super fascinating.
Speaker 3: So do check that one out for a deep dive
Speaker 3: on this fascinating character.
Speaker 1: Also fascinating to borrow that word there. It's also fascinating
Speaker 1: that his treating physician was a guy named jam Horlow
Speaker 1: and jam Harlow, like many Western physicians of his day,
Speaker 1: held in abiding interest in phrenology. So maybe if you are,
Speaker 1: if you are a boffin or a doctor of the day,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not the fact that this meter long rod
Speaker 1: went through the front part of this human brain, it's
Speaker 1: that it altered the shape of the cranium. So now
Speaker 1: he doesn't have good guy bumps.
Speaker 4: Well, what's interesting is that, you know, this idea sounds crazy, right,
Speaker 4: like you could judge how a brain works by how
Speaker 4: well brain is good at something by its shape. But
Speaker 4: that's actually something they found kind of in the nineties
Speaker 4: early two thousands, was that they looked at brain scans
Speaker 4: of taxi drivers in London.
Speaker 2: The knowledge, yeah, the knowledge of this, the way it
Speaker 2: sort of changed the pathways, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So they studied the brains of taxi drivers
Speaker 4: in life then, and they talk about the knowledge, right, like,
Speaker 4: you know, if you're brand new at driving a taxi
Speaker 4: in London, you're clueless. You have no idea where anything
Speaker 4: is if you've ever been there, there's like alleys everywhere
Speaker 4: with all these it's impossible to navigate. But once you've
Speaker 4: done it for a while you know, the whole day
Speaker 4: of the land, you can take anyone anywhere. They studied
Speaker 4: the brains of these people, and they found that people
Speaker 4: who've been doing it for a long time, that part
Speaker 4: of your brain that stores like locations and spatial memory
Speaker 4: that's actually bigger, like it grows.
Speaker 2: The mind is shriveled. Y'all. I'm so bad at directions.
Speaker 2: I have no sense of geography.
Speaker 3: It's really bad because yeah, because maybe it was, it's
Speaker 3: been bad even since before, you know what. It's just
Speaker 3: funny though, I will say this, I have recently been
Speaker 3: trying to actively not use maps, and I have found
Speaker 3: that it improves my sense of direction overall.
Speaker 2: So I think it can be almost relearned or you know, improved. DuPont.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: My wife just talked to a coworker who said he's
Speaker 4: taking his son out for walks just to teach him
Speaker 4: how to go on walks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's and it's not always inherent, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Because he's going out to college and you know, kids
Speaker 4: do they basically maybe don't have that ability to walk around.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I haven't had to uh be lost in the woods,
Speaker 1: right like our four bears. Uh Yeah, It's funny. It's
Speaker 1: funny you say that because we we've talked in the
Speaker 1: past about these arguments regarding you know, regarding the advent
Speaker 1: of offloading uh, some sort of process right from the
Speaker 1: human machine to an external machine. And I love that
Speaker 1: you're bringing up the knowledge because that was a revolutionary
Speaker 1: study in neuroscience. It reminds me as well of a
Speaker 1: study I want to say it was in Why You
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, admittedly small sample size, but
Speaker 1: they studied people who meditate, Buddhist monks in particular, and
Speaker 1: they found something similar similar to the similar to how
Speaker 1: the use of the part of the brain that is
Speaker 1: occupied with spatial positioning appropreception. You could argue, similar to
Speaker 1: how their continued practice of knowing where they are and
Speaker 1: where they're going literally became mind over matter and increased
Speaker 1: the I believe the argument is not just the increase
Speaker 1: in size, but the increase in density of synaptic connections.
Speaker 1: The study in eight with Buddhist monks found, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to sound so pops, I hear, and I apologize,
Speaker 1: it found that the part of the brain position toward
Speaker 1: or associated with things like empathy and compassion was actually
Speaker 1: denser and larger and exhibited more activity in those Buddhist
Speaker 1: monks versus a sample size of you know, jerks like.
Speaker 4: Us, non Buddhist monks, not.
Speaker 1: Enlightened, not yes, not enlightened, perfect diplomacy. So this brings
Speaker 1: us to I think I think the general umbrella term
Speaker 1: for this concept is neuroplasticity. Is that what we're kind
Speaker 1: of talking about? What is neuroplasticity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of this idea that your brain is
Speaker 4: not static, like at all, Like your brain is constantly
Speaker 4: kind of rewiring itself, kind of constantly tuning itself. And
Speaker 4: it's not like you're necessarily growing new neurons, but these
Speaker 4: neurons are making new connections between themselves. And also kind
Speaker 4: of more importantly is that these the connections that they have,
Speaker 4: they're constantly kind of recalibrating themselves. And actually that's kind
Speaker 4: of what's happening. That's how like ais learn. You know,
Speaker 4: if you look at these neural net models, basically what
Speaker 4: they're changing when they're learning stuff is the weighing of
Speaker 4: the synaptic connections. So like how strong priority wise or
Speaker 4: yeah kind of priority wise. Yeah, Like each neurons is
Speaker 4: connected to like let's say a hundred other neurons, and
Speaker 4: like it's getting all these inputs, so which ones do
Speaker 4: you ignore? Which ones do you listen to? And so
Speaker 4: that happens at what are called synapses, which is kind
Speaker 4: of where like you know, the little branches of two
Speaker 4: neurons kind of mean.
Speaker 2: And firing, right, firing synapses.
Speaker 4: Firing, yeah, firing synapses where that gets transmitted from one
Speaker 4: to the other. So that's that's where that's happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And when you look at a brain scan or
Speaker 3: an MRI, if I'm not mistaken, you can literally see
Speaker 3: this activity right lighting up in different regions of the brain.
Speaker 4: Kind of these these are like almost like molecule size.
Speaker 4: They're like super super tiny, so you can't see them
Speaker 4: like an MRI, but you can see kind of like
Speaker 4: when you're looking at MRI, what you're looking at is
Speaker 4: like the oxygen consumption of your neurons. So you can
Speaker 4: tell like, oh, these neurons are being active because they're God, drinking.
Speaker 2: Up a lot makes a lot of sense. So it's
Speaker 2: an indicator, got it. Yeah, Yeah, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: So now we have learned that in given that the
Speaker 1: universe observable according to Big Bang theory is about fourteen
Speaker 1: billion years old. Humans are real up and coming fad overall.
Speaker 4: Right, we're the latest it beings. Yeah we are, We
Speaker 4: sure are, and for long. That's how fads work.
Speaker 1: And and we we also learned in that very brief
Speaker 1: span of time that we call humanity. Uh, people went
Speaker 1: from totally thinking the soul was in the most protected
Speaker 1: part of the body, the torso right to figuring out, oh,
Speaker 1: that fatty thing in your head does something. Right after
Speaker 1: we figured out just how to stop eating each other's brains. Uh,
Speaker 1: just gonna throw that in there, and and and then
Speaker 1: from there we see this, this vast series of at
Speaker 1: times problematic innovations, sometimes based in accident, sometimes based in
Speaker 1: confirmation bias or as you said, quack science of phrenology
Speaker 1: or hate. Where does the exploration of consciousness and neuroscience
Speaker 1: go in the future, By the way, just going to
Speaker 1: put this out there for posterity. Jorge, Noel Max and
Speaker 1: I are recording this on Monday, June twenty third, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, So no pressure, Orge. Next thousand years, where
Speaker 1: are we at.
Speaker 4: No set, assuming we survived the next I don't know months,
Speaker 4: Oh my god, existence here you know. I think these
Speaker 4: things are like Pandora's blogs. You know, once you open them,
Speaker 4: you can't go back, you know. And so I think
Speaker 4: we're going to be understanding the universe a lot more,
Speaker 4: We're going to be understanding things at the quantum level
Speaker 4: a lot more. And who knows what's going to happen
Speaker 4: with AIS. You know, it's quite I think possible that
Speaker 4: within I don't know, twenty years, there'll be a conscious
Speaker 4: AI who is smarter than us.
Speaker 3: I think can That is the term that gets thrown
Speaker 3: around a lot, is singularity in terms of AI. But
Speaker 3: then we also in talking about the Big Bang that's
Speaker 3: referred to as a singularity event, and maybe the terms
Speaker 3: are sort of used loosely, But can you kind of
Speaker 3: talk about that term and how it applies to both
Speaker 3: of those different things. Is it really just kind of
Speaker 3: like an it moment where a big thing happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So consciousness is one of the most debated things in
Speaker 4: like neuroscience psychology. Like if you ask any scientist like
Speaker 4: what is even consciousness? You'll get one hundred different answers.
Speaker 4: Some people think it's like totally kind of biologically based,
Speaker 4: like it's you know, a dog can have some kind
Speaker 4: of consciousness and can have a little bit of a consciousness,
Speaker 4: you know, machine can have a consciousness the material materialist philosophy. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: And some people think there's something kind of special and
Speaker 4: almost supernatural about it, you know, even scientists sometimes think
Speaker 4: that when it happens, it's like this kind of indescribable
Speaker 4: thing that happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Promethean lighting in a bottle. Yeah, And this is
Speaker 1: where we get to the vast precipice, some would say,
Speaker 1: or the vast horizon, depends upon your interpretations of as
Speaker 1: you said, Nol, singularity or transhumanism and future futurism. Nolan
Speaker 1: and I were talking off air or at length about
Speaker 1: the concept of AI, artificial intelligence large language models. We
Speaker 1: touched on it naturally a little bit in part one,
Speaker 1: but perhaps we close out chapter two of our conversation
Speaker 1: on the history of brain science by exploring the nature
Speaker 1: of AI just a bit further. Now you have you have,
Speaker 1: through your work explore human human computer interaction in depth,
Speaker 1: right and yeah, and so where do you see the
Speaker 1: future of human interaction with AI going? You already said,
Speaker 1: you know, there is a horizon where this kind of
Speaker 1: thing exists. What will that tell us about the human brain? Oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, small dog. Well, it kind of depends on
Speaker 1: where you land about how special the human brain is.
Speaker 1: You know, like I personally am an engineer by training,
Speaker 1: and to me, brains are really just like meat machines.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like it's mechanical, there's chemicals, involves some
Speaker 1: people think like quantum physics and quantum and certainly plays
Speaker 1: a role in like those little tiny synapsis that we have,
Speaker 1: in which case, you know, there is maybe some magic
Speaker 1: to how the human rain works.
Speaker 2: I think we're all made of star stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, if the Big Bang is true, then technically that
Speaker 1: that's also true, right.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, we arose from something like that, right, and
Speaker 3: we had to have.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, well most of our the atoms and our
Speaker 4: bodies were made inside of a star. Yeah, because the
Speaker 4: universe at the beginning was just all hydrogen, and so
Speaker 4: anything other than hydrogen was basically made by a star
Speaker 4: and usually starts dying.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this podcast brought to you by hydrogen. So
Speaker 1: we're saying then that the nature of consciousness is still
Speaker 1: something that the world's smartest people past, present, and possibly
Speaker 1: future have debate, have debated, right, the materialist view of
Speaker 1: this one thing in this one case, these physical processes,
Speaker 1: these mechanics, and these chemical interactions, and then there's the
Speaker 1: larger question is there something bigger? Right? Is an individual
Speaker 1: consciousness only a node for a larger system which gets
Speaker 1: little It's a lot of my old professors hate that idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's this idea like humans are the way that
Speaker 4: the universe understands itself kind of. Is that what you're
Speaker 4: talking about a little bit, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Because you're talking about we're talking about now what we
Speaker 1: would call Homo sapiens exceptionalism, right, yeah, right, the idea
Speaker 1: that although one can observe perhaps emotions in a pet,
Speaker 1: or what seems to be emotions in a pet, even
Speaker 1: on the strength of various cognitive diagnostics, you could observe
Speaker 1: maybe the way an octopus dreams, or the the functions
Speaker 1: of certain higher order mammals.
Speaker 3: To take what we're talking about metacognition here, right, like
Speaker 3: the fact that humans are uniquely built to think about thinking,
Speaker 3: to analyze themselves, sometimes into oblivion, which is why maybe
Speaker 3: sometimes I'm jealous of the guy that can't remember anything
Speaker 3: for more than thirty minutes, because it can be a
Speaker 3: awaking nightmare at times what we do to ourselves in
Speaker 3: terms of like thinking about thinking and all of the possibilities,
Speaker 3: and it can be really exhausting, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And they're fascinating cases in the history of
Speaker 4: brain science to the kind of speak to consciousness. So
Speaker 4: one fascinating case that is pretty recent are conjoined twins.
Speaker 4: So there's a pair of famous twins called the Hogan twins,
Speaker 4: and these are two girls who were born conjoined were
Speaker 4: they basically share a brain, or they share parts of
Speaker 4: the brain, and specifically they share like this part called
Speaker 4: the thalamus, which is kind of like a kind of
Speaker 4: a hub inside of your brain kind of relays information
Speaker 4: and so it's too definitely to people, like you can
Speaker 4: talk to one of them, you can talk to the
Speaker 4: other of them. But they sort of share their consciousness
Speaker 4: almost in a way like like one of them can
Speaker 4: sense what when the other person. Sometimes one of them
Speaker 4: can sort of sense what the other person is thinking,
Speaker 4: and they can sort of each control different parts of
Speaker 4: the other person's body kind of like one of them
Speaker 4: controls the left leg of the other one, the other
Speaker 4: one controls the right arm of the other one. I
Speaker 4: forget the exact details, but it's kind of like, like
Speaker 4: you said, kind of like we sometimes think being conscious
Speaker 4: the only way to be conscious is to be conscious
Speaker 4: like humans are right now, But there are other ways
Speaker 4: that we can be conscious.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, even other non conjoined twin studies yield
Speaker 3: some pretty interesting results, like in terms of potentially some
Speaker 3: kind of link, you know, where there's at the very
Speaker 3: least a what's the word I'm looking for, a kind
Speaker 3: of intuition, you know, in terms of like that would
Speaker 3: you know, surpass normal intuition maybe between regular siblings. I've
Speaker 3: met known in my life multiple sets of identical twins,
Speaker 3: and there's something to it.
Speaker 2: It's very fascinating.
Speaker 3: I would say that is a different kind of consciousness
Speaker 3: in some ways where you are. Maybe it's a product
Speaker 3: of sharing the same space so much and you know,
Speaker 3: spending so much time around each other. But I have
Speaker 3: seen something, some things that have a hard time explaining
Speaker 3: in terms of the way twins can kind of know
Speaker 3: what each other are thinking and feeling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a role for intuition there,
Speaker 4: and you know, it doesn't have to be physical consciousness,
Speaker 4: Like you know, I kind of personally think that we
Speaker 4: all kind of share as a human species some sort
Speaker 4: of consciousness.
Speaker 1: You know, through the collect it's unconscious, Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: young and super consciousness, right right, Like that just.
Speaker 2: Adds to that. You're right.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry I didn't interrupt, but that's a really good point.
Speaker 3: The Internet is, in and of itself, a super scaled
Speaker 3: version of that just contributes to what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just really all depends on how you define
Speaker 4: this word consciousness.
Speaker 2: Mm.
Speaker 4: Like if it means, like, you know, being able to
Speaker 4: write poetry and understand Shakespeare, that's one you might not
Speaker 4: get very far there. But you know, I've talked to
Speaker 4: scientists basically, just define it as our sense are as
Speaker 4: one of our senses that keeps track of our internal state.
Speaker 4: So like you have a visual sense that tells you, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm in the room, there's a door over there, that's
Speaker 4: an apple over there. You have kind of an inner
Speaker 4: looking sense that just tells you like, oh, I'm feeling
Speaker 4: this way, I'm thinking about this, I'm having this memory
Speaker 4: of the apple eight this morning. It's just kind of
Speaker 4: like something that tells your body, Oh, this is what's
Speaker 4: going on inside your brain.
Speaker 3: Well, the key word there also is I you know,
Speaker 3: and this idea of identity and this idea of consciousness
Speaker 3: revolving around.
Speaker 2: Who we are and when who we are.
Speaker 3: Being ultimately a collection of experience is that are in
Speaker 3: many ways influenced by the society we live in and
Speaker 3: you know, and if you want to take it further
Speaker 3: than them people trying to achieve enlightenment, the idea is
Speaker 3: sort of disconnect from all of those aspects and like
Speaker 3: truly experience the spiritual part of what it is to
Speaker 3: have me have a soul or to like, you know,
Speaker 3: what it means to be part of the universe, rather
Speaker 3: than this identity, this construct that we sort of you know,
Speaker 3: force upon ourselves or is forced upon us oftentimes.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating. Obviously I'm super into this.
Speaker 4: Well did this gets We just did an episode about
Speaker 4: this on Signed Stuff, the podcast on and about near
Speaker 4: death experiences.
Speaker 2: Oh, we just.
Speaker 3: Talked to an incredible podcast creator and friend of the show,
Speaker 3: Dan Bush on stuff that I want you to know
Speaker 3: about his incredible podcasts Alive Again. That is all about
Speaker 3: interviews with folks who've experienced your experiences.
Speaker 1: I'm going to connect you with those folks. You guys
Speaker 1: should hang out can you tell us just a bit
Speaker 1: of a tease as we wrap up what you found
Speaker 1: in your explorations on ND or near death experiences in
Speaker 1: science stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it kind of goes back to this idea
Speaker 4: of what consciousness is and because you know, a big
Speaker 4: part of near death experiences is this out of body experience.
Speaker 4: People feel like they're outside their body, and what we
Speaker 4: found was that it can it can all be explained
Speaker 4: by science by how your brain works, and but whether
Speaker 4: that's actually what's going on, like you know, scientists can't
Speaker 4: answer that because you know, we can't test someone while
Speaker 4: they're having it experience. But basically all of these phenomena
Speaker 4: near thats you know, feeling outside of your body, having
Speaker 4: weird visions, talking to people who are already dead, there
Speaker 4: are brain processes that you can say, Okay, I think
Speaker 4: that's what's going on there, and that we can replicate
Speaker 4: that in the lab. If I give you, you know,
Speaker 4: a hallucinogen, well in a control environment, you're also going
Speaker 4: to have these experiences. If I take i'm achine that
Speaker 4: disrupts this part of your brain, I can make you
Speaker 4: feel like you're stepping outside your body.
Speaker 1: Or experiencing divinity like the famous god helmet experiments, and
Speaker 1: and also very well done doctor cham to note that
Speaker 1: we cannot ethically pursue some direct experiments that would lead
Speaker 1: to breakthroughs there because it would require doing kind of
Speaker 1: evil things to innocent people, even if they signed up.
Speaker 1: You know, we've all seen flatliners. Yeah, classic Julia Roberts movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, that was joy, that was yeah, young Sutherland,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah. And uh, you know, I've got to
Speaker 1: be honest. Uh, it's a super up to date pop
Speaker 1: culture reference, I'm sure, but I remember seeing flatliners and
Speaker 1: being convinced that this is why people join med school and.
Speaker 2: So they can do the flat so they can do flatliners.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Luckily, Luckily, my uncle, a very nice, very learned man,
Speaker 1: assured a young Ben Bullen that it would still be
Speaker 1: illegal to quote unquote flat line people to quote unquote
Speaker 1: see what happens.
Speaker 2: Well, And speaking of other cinematic masterpieces, we were talking
Speaker 2: a little earlier about the idea of Vibes, and I
Speaker 2: have to take this opportunity to recommend the movie Vibes.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's one of your favorites, Ben. I
Speaker 2: actually recommended it to a friend the other day.
Speaker 3: Seminole Ghostbusters slash Indiana Jones mashup slash Ripoff that everyone
Speaker 3: should see, starring Jeff Goldbloom and Cindy Love Hare, No
Speaker 3: True No Vibes. Well, get you to a cinema or hey,
Speaker 3: hopefully they're doing a revival screening of Vibes somewhere in
Speaker 3: your neck of the woods.
Speaker 4: I think I missed that seminal moment in neuroscience.
Speaker 2: It's okay, Yeah, it explains a lot. It's a real breakthrough.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the Police Academy four of its time.
Speaker 2: It's probably contemporary with Police Academy. It probably is. Actually
Speaker 2: I've come out the same year with that.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Orgee for spending time with us
Speaker 1: and making this Orgey and Science Stuff Week. Where can
Speaker 1: people learn more about your explorations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so right now my big project is sign Stuff.
Speaker 4: It's a new iHeart podcast. You can find it anywhere
Speaker 4: you get your podcasts. Search for sign Stuff one word
Speaker 4: and look for the purple icon. That's us. And we
Speaker 4: asked her awesome questions like do animals understand death? Or
Speaker 4: do they like to get drunk? Or what's inside of
Speaker 4: a black hole? Or oh, grow limb Yeah, that's the
Speaker 4: one that was super fascinating recently. Why can't we regrow limbs?
Speaker 4: There are animals who, like you, cut up their arm,
Speaker 4: don't just grow a brand new one. Why can't we
Speaker 4: do it? And we find out the answer is maybe
Speaker 4: we can.
Speaker 1: And while you are on the internet, please do check
Speaker 1: out one of our favorite aspects of Doctor Chimp or Hey.
Speaker 1: In addition to being one of, if not the smartest
Speaker 1: people on the history of this show, definitely in this episode.
Speaker 1: You are not just a mechanical engineer Stanford graduated. You
Speaker 1: did not just attend Georgia Tech, one of the most
Speaker 1: difficult schools of its caliber. You are also the creator
Speaker 1: of a comic strip called PhD Comics. Could you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, PhD Comics. You can find out a PhD Comics
Speaker 4: dot com. It's a comic strip I started when I
Speaker 4: was in grad school, and it's all about what it's
Speaker 4: like to do science, what it's like to be an academic.
Speaker 4: It's kind of people describe it as the Dilbert of academia.
Speaker 2: I don't know this, guys. I'll have to check it
Speaker 2: out next trip in my life.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and so I was super lucky to be
Speaker 4: able to do that for many many years on the internet,
Speaker 4: huge amount of support for people out there, and then
Speaker 4: that translated to me doing movies and then a TV show.
Speaker 4: Recently you can find that one on PPS Kids. It's
Speaker 4: called Eleanor Wonders Why. And I've also gone in to
Speaker 4: write and draw a lot of books. So my probably
Speaker 4: my most famous one I've worked on is called We
Speaker 4: Have No Idea, which is a guide to everything we
Speaker 4: don't know about the universe. And now the most popular
Speaker 4: one is something called Oliver's Great Big Universe, which is
Speaker 4: for kids. If you have a kid who's really curious
Speaker 4: and like science but also likes, you know, far jokes
Speaker 4: and really fun, fun middle school middle grade stories, please
Speaker 4: check it out.
Speaker 3: A polymath and renaissance man, indeed, doctor Horte Sham, thanks
Speaker 3: again for joining us on Ridiculous History.
Speaker 5: For Hoorte Sham week, oh thank you, and well well
Speaker 5: well bully for us, congratulations and tally ho Wecei Thury, Yes,
Speaker 5: Noel we once again, my friend, uh.
Speaker 1: We managed to speak with a world class expert uh
Speaker 1: in science, and I think we post some interesting questions.
Speaker 3: I think so, I think we held our own with
Speaker 3: doctor cham Jorge to his friends. I'd like to think
Speaker 3: that we walked away from these recordings as friends. He said,
Speaker 3: like said, he wanted to come back on again, and
Speaker 3: that we made him laugh and smile.
Speaker 2: That made us feel really good. That's true.
Speaker 5: Our neurons were firing, were they which whichever part is associated.
Speaker 1: With learning and with us?
Speaker 2: And joy?
Speaker 1: And joy? That's the word we were looking for. Uh
Speaker 1: we I don't know. No, this guy is so close
Speaker 1: to getting a cool ridiculous history, street name, a nickname,
Speaker 1: an operator name.
Speaker 2: You know it's doctor horget riverside Champ. Oh, that's true,
Speaker 2: he made his own.
Speaker 5: There we go.
Speaker 3: Now we can do better, we'll workshop that one, but
Speaker 3: for now. Huge days to you, Ben. That was a
Speaker 3: fun exploration of all things heady and universal.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to you know, huge thanks to our super producer,
Speaker 1: mister Max Frictionless. Williams got a nice haircut there. Also,
Speaker 1: big big thanks to aj Bahama's Jacob's Jonathan Strickland aka
Speaker 1: the Twister. Okay, yep, big thanks to him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, of course. Sure, the rude dudes over a
Speaker 2: ridiculous crime.
Speaker 3: We've got Chris Praciota's and Eve Jeff Coates here and
Speaker 3: Spirit you know what, I think.
Speaker 4: We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3: For more podcast from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.