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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: By name is Robert Lamb, I'm Christian Seger, and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back for part two of our

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Speaker 1: two part episode on the Ignoble Prizes of st If

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Speaker 1: you haven't heard part one yet, you should go back

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Speaker 1: listen to that first where we covered the first of

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Speaker 1: five prizes. We were discussing, Well, we covered five prizes.

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Speaker 1: Now we're going to cover five more. Yeah. Now, if

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Speaker 1: you're stuck in a vehicle and you can't download the

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Speaker 1: first one and this is the only one that's primed up,

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Speaker 1: and then just go ahead. Because it's also kept very

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Speaker 1: fairly modular. How about we give them just like a

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Speaker 1: like one to two cents description of what these are

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Speaker 1: the Ignoble Awards. They are are given out by Improbable

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Speaker 1: Research Group, and the idea is that they celebrate research

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Speaker 1: that makes people both laugh and then think. And I

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Speaker 1: guess I'm going to take the first prize that we

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Speaker 1: discussed today. I want to talk about their Peace Prize

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Speaker 1: for sixteen, which went to a piece of research on

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Speaker 1: BS and before I get into it, I I'm so

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Speaker 1: sad that I was not able to think of a

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Speaker 1: non profane and yet non euphemistic word do you use

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Speaker 1: for this subject? Bull roar? I think bull roar? Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: the subject is bull roar that that is not the

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Speaker 1: term they use, but bull roar as a psycho linguistic

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Speaker 1: phenomenon to take seriously and understand. And so the Peace

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Speaker 1: Prize went to Gordon Pennycook, James Allen Chain and Nathaniel Barr,

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Speaker 1: Derek Kohler and Jonathan fugeal Song for their scholarly study

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Speaker 1: called on the Reception and Detection of Pseudo Profound bull

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Speaker 1: roar our Substitution, published in the journal Judgment and Decision

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Speaker 1: Making in November. The second comment I want to make

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Speaker 1: is that I'm actually gonna give a kind of abbreviated

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Speaker 1: take on this prize winner, not because it's not interesting,

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Speaker 1: but because I actually want to come back and devote

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Speaker 1: an entire full episode to the subject of bull roar.

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Speaker 1: Uh and Robert. I hope you will join me for that.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, I'm always up for a little a little bs.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, this, this study, in its critics, would probably

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Speaker 1: be the centerpiece of that because I think bull roar

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Speaker 1: is a fascinating and honestly world changingly important phenomenon to

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Speaker 1: recognize and comprehend. But so how do you how do

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Speaker 1: you conduct research on bs or bull roar that just

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Speaker 1: seems kind of like it's a phenomenon of everyday conversation.

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Speaker 1: It's a little bit hard to quantify. But this study

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Speaker 1: looked into the factors associated with a person's acceptance of

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Speaker 1: a specific subset of bull roar that they call pseudo

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Speaker 1: profound bull roar and h The authors define this as

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Speaker 1: quote seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful,

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Speaker 1: but are actually vacuous. So are you like an outrageous

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Speaker 1: overstatement of the obvious? Would know that would not be

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Speaker 1: an overstatement of the obvious, would be a mundane statement.

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Speaker 1: A piece of pseudo profound bull roar is a statement

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Speaker 1: that actually contains no meaningful content, true or false, but

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Speaker 1: gives the implication of meaningfulness. I want to give you

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Speaker 1: a few a few examples of potentially profound statements. Let

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Speaker 1: me know if you think this is profound. Some of

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Speaker 1: these might be truly profound. Your desire fascinates intrinsic facts

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Speaker 1: that sounds meaningless to me? No, no, give it? Oh

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Speaker 1: wait yeah, okay, that's probably meaningless. No no, let's try

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Speaker 1: another one. Then. How about nature drives the progressive expansion

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Speaker 1: of destiny. That sounds like a flowery explanation of natural selection.

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Speaker 1: These are the fortune cookies. How about this your body

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Speaker 1: creates subjective mortality? That two sets. That's two sounds like

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Speaker 1: a true statement was translated into one language and back

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Speaker 1: into English. Yeah. How about perception illuminates ephemeral positivity. M Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess that could be theoretically true. But wait, what

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Speaker 1: does that mean? If that's true, hit me with it again.

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Speaker 1: Perception illuminates ephemeral positivity. So if you can perceive with

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Speaker 1: your senses in some way, but the positivity is ephemeral,

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Speaker 1: then how could you see it? Surprise? Surprise both? Okay, sorry,

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Speaker 1: both of you. None of these statements were written by

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Speaker 1: a human being for any express purpose. They're all auto

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Speaker 1: generated by a website that assembles random New Age buzzwords

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Speaker 1: into grammatically correct sentence. This is kind of like that

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Speaker 1: website that was going around a little while ago where

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Speaker 1: they took Man of War lyrics and generated lyrics from

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Speaker 1: Man of War songs that were never written. Yeah, just

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Speaker 1: taking a selection of vocabulary that you know is uh,

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Speaker 1: you know that a certain maybe uh rhetorical conversation group

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Speaker 1: is fond of ye and then just mixing them up

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Speaker 1: into nonsense. But I want to offer offer some real

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Speaker 1: proverbs for contrast. So there are such things as proverbs

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Speaker 1: short statements. How about this one. I found this Russian

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Speaker 1: proverb on the internet or purportedly. I mean, you're going

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Speaker 1: to do a Russian accent, No, I won't. It's do

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Speaker 1: not cross the brook for water, Okay, I thought that

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Speaker 1: for Yeah, that actually seems profound that that, like it

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Speaker 1: is making a point about not multiplying labor unnecessarily in

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Speaker 1: a kind of unthinking way. I have dirty feet, You're

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Speaker 1: making that water dirt and it retains a certain amount

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Speaker 1: of meaning cross language, across culture. Because I'm always encountering

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Speaker 1: little proverbs. What do you hear them and you're like,

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Speaker 1: there's something's off. Maybe I'm I'm just I don't get

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Speaker 1: the joke because I'm not in the culture. I want

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Speaker 1: to give you one that I think is actually really good.

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Speaker 1: Knowing is half the battle. Oh, yeah, I know that.

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Speaker 1: I think that's g I Joe. I think that's actually

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Speaker 1: a great proverb. That's the thing. You've got to understand

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Speaker 1: a problem before you can fight it. Yeah, it's like, say,

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Speaker 1: implicit racial bias, Like the first step to overcoming at

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Speaker 1: it all on a personal or institutional level is just recognized,

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Speaker 1: recognizing that it exists exactly. Uh so, Yeah, so there

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Speaker 1: are real proverbs that have meaning. Uh. There are statements

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Speaker 1: that you could say are Monday. You could also put

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Speaker 1: mundane statements in here. There aren't really profound, but they're

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Speaker 1: at least true and have content like pain don't hurt.

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Speaker 1: Account No, I'd say that might actually that's either truly

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Speaker 1: profound as a proverb, or that might be some some

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Speaker 1: bull roar pain don't hurt. That's a good one. No,

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Speaker 1: no, no no, that The straightforward mundane ones would be something like, uh,

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Speaker 1: babies require constant attention. That's an example they've given the study.

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Speaker 1: It's just it's not profound. It's just a statement of

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Speaker 1: a fact that seems pretty well true. It could be

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Speaker 1: profound depending on the context. Yeah, that's true in a

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Speaker 1: nurse ry, not profound on a on a fortune cookie. Maybe. Well,

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of these pseudo profound statements could

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Speaker 1: be profound in the right context, if you like, define

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Speaker 1: all the words in a certain way, you know, but anyway,

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Speaker 1: So to come back to the study, So while while

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Speaker 1: some of the philosophical study of BS has looked into

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Speaker 1: the behavior of the b S or this study actually

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Speaker 1: tries to understand the behavior of the b SC, what

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Speaker 1: makes a person receptive to this particular type of BS

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Speaker 1: that we've just been sharing here. The pseudo profound statements

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Speaker 1: statements that seem at first glance to suggest some kind

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Speaker 1: of importance or profundity, but then you start picking at

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Speaker 1: them and you they don't seem to actually mean anything.

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Speaker 1: I have a new name for this, uh, this theory,

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Speaker 1: the matrix theory. Right, it's at least the second and

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Speaker 1: the third matrix movie. Right. They seemed like they had

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Speaker 1: a profound meaning to them, but then ultimately when you

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Speaker 1: pull it apart, there's nothing there. Well, it kind of

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Speaker 1: comes back to lyrics too, because I think there are

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Speaker 1: plenty of examples who can think of where you have

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Speaker 1: like is part of a complete package. They'll have these

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Speaker 1: lyrics that you know, they're throwing some some cool words around,

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Speaker 1: some cool almost like you know, keywords for the song

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Speaker 1: and with the music, with the vibe, with the beat,

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Speaker 1: you kind of take it. Your brain takes it and

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Speaker 1: it forms its own logic out of info, so narrative

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Speaker 1: out it. And I think maybe that's part of it too,

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Speaker 1: because like, if you have this empty bit of like

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Speaker 1: new age BS that's coming at you, it's it may

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Speaker 1: just be un a fortune cookie, but it may be

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Speaker 1: presented by a charismatic person. Uh maybe in the context

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Speaker 1: of a you know, a sacred space, someone who has

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Speaker 1: some kind of institutional authoritative validation. Just by the fact

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Speaker 1: that that some major publisher has put out a book

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Speaker 1: with lots of statements like this in it. Don't Fear

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Speaker 1: the Reaper Baby, how's that one? I think that's actually

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Speaker 1: more really profound, like making a statement that has that

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Speaker 1: has content. But anyway, so so there are people obviously

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Speaker 1: who do get this feeling. They look at statements like

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Speaker 1: this and they find meaning in them. They say, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's profound in vacuous pseudo profound statements. So what these

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Speaker 1: people were looking at in the study was are their

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Speaker 1: personality factors correlated with people who find profundity in vague

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Speaker 1: nonsense in pseudo profound BS, And was the answer was yes.

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Speaker 1: They claimed to find some things though there there are

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Speaker 1: some critics of the study. I want to mention that

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Speaker 1: in a minute. But the people that they they might

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Speaker 1: be but we'll see. But so anyway, the experimenters ran

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Speaker 1: several tests where they ask participants to rate the profundity

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Speaker 1: of randomly generated sentence is just like the ones that

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Speaker 1: I was reading to you a minute ago, So they said, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, we are interested in how people experience the

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Speaker 1: profound below or a series of statements taken from relevant websites.

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Speaker 1: Please read each statement and take a moment to think

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Speaker 1: about what it might mean. Then rate how profound do

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Speaker 1: you think it is? Profound in this case means of

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Speaker 1: deep meaning, of great and broadly inclusive significance. But in conjunction,

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Speaker 1: so they're testing people saying how profound do you think

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Speaker 1: these vacuous statements are? But in conjunction with this, they

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Speaker 1: also did a battery of all these different types of

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Speaker 1: personality and intelligence tests. For example, one of their major

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Speaker 1: hypotheses was that people who find these types of statements

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Speaker 1: profound are people who tend to be intuitive or reactive thinkers,

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Speaker 1: as opposed to what would be referred to in psychology

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Speaker 1: as reflective thinkers. Reflective means like analytical using deliberate analytical skills. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: analytical thinking, um and uh. And so they tested for

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Speaker 1: plenty of their factors as well, and in the end

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Speaker 1: they claim to find some correlations. So I'm just going

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Speaker 1: to read a quote from their conclusion quote. Those more

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Speaker 1: receptive to bull roar are less reflective, so they didn't

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Speaker 1: think that they were more intuitive, less analytical, less reflective,

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Speaker 1: lower incognitive ability i e. Verbal and fluid intelligence numerous e.

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Speaker 1: Are more prone to ontological confusions that means, uh, having

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Speaker 1: trouble telling the difference between literal statements and metaphorical statements, um.

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Speaker 1: Conspiratorial ideation conspiracy thinking, and more likely to hold religious

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Speaker 1: and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary

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Speaker 1: and alternative medicine. Dear God, if you applied this to

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Speaker 1: the American election, So it's it's obvious already, right. This

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Speaker 1: is a minor hit on the internet, where any new

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Speaker 1: study that can be construed to show that other people

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Speaker 1: are dumb tends to play well. Uh. And So I've

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Speaker 1: read some really interesting criticisms of both the popular media

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Speaker 1: coverage of this study when it was released, because uh,

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Speaker 1: like there there were some media outlets that covered it

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Speaker 1: with headlines like do you love why sounding quotes? Surprise,

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Speaker 1: You're probably dumb. As you can tell from my description,

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Speaker 1: that's not really an accurate characterization of the study. And

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Speaker 1: on top of that, there there might be some reasons

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Speaker 1: to question the methodology of the study itself. But like

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Speaker 1: I said, I want to save that full discussion for

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Speaker 1: our future episode that we're going to do on bull

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Speaker 1: roar in all its glory. Um. But anyway, that that

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Speaker 1: is the paper. But why is it amusing? I'd say

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Speaker 1: a couple of major reasons. One because as a cuss

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Speaker 1: word in the title. Yeah, I'm surprised they got it

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Speaker 1: published with that. Oh, I don't know. I feel like

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Speaker 1: the concept of bull roar in its original linguistic form

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Speaker 1: is um is an accepted concept in philosophy, especially going

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Speaker 1: back to there's a really good essay If you haven't

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Speaker 1: read it, you should read it by Harry Frankfurt published

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Speaker 1: in two thousand five called on BS. That is is

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Speaker 1: a philosophical attempt to define BS and distinguish it from

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Speaker 1: other forms of communications such as lying. Uh So, it's interesting,

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Speaker 1: but they also I think it's also funny to people,

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Speaker 1: because it's just funny to mock people who seem to

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Speaker 1: find profundity and vacuous statements. And I, you know, I

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Speaker 1: don't want to be you know, elitist or whatever, but

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Speaker 1: I can't. I must admit I get a giggle when

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Speaker 1: I see people post like inspirational quotes and I'm like,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean anything. Surely, surely I'll share the su Yeah, yeah, no, no,

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Speaker 1: I was just it was making me think, because you know,

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Speaker 1: there's that there's that extra level. It's kind of like

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Speaker 1: a really bad movie, right where if you accept if

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Speaker 1: you love the bad movie, like on face level, almost

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Speaker 1: like it's not necessarily a good thing. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: love the movies you love. That's that's how I live

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Speaker 1: my life. But I think of the bad movies that

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Speaker 1: I can acknowledge that they're they're they're not rate, but

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Speaker 1: that I love them all the same. A lot of times,

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Speaker 1: I am I'm bringing additional readings into what's happening, and

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Speaker 1: I'm kind of I'm kind of spinning off and and

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Speaker 1: fan theorizing and and trying to stitch it all together

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Speaker 1: into a form that makes more sense. And has more

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Speaker 1: meaning to me. You're saying they're different ways to appreciate

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Speaker 1: Michael based Transformers films. Yeah, so don't you even go there.

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Speaker 1: You know, I cried at the first one, and you

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Speaker 1: saw the fourth one with me. I think saw is

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Speaker 1: a generous word. I sat in a room where some

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Speaker 1: lights were going on in front of me. It's amazing.

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Speaker 1: Mike Mark Wahlberg in that movie alscar worthy performance. Well, like, like,

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Speaker 1: here's an example of a of a just a quick phrase,

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Speaker 1: and this is actually like a Bible quote. Uh, my,

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Speaker 1: my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Right

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Speaker 1: on this. On the surface, it's a it's a basic analogy. Hey,

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Speaker 1: I've got this, uh, this thing for you, but don't worry,

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Speaker 1: it's going to be easy to carry and tow. Uh,

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Speaker 1: You're gonna this is gonna be easy going for you.

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Speaker 1: But anytime I see it, I always do ation a

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Speaker 1: different read on it. And I think of light as

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Speaker 1: in illumination, as in knowledge, as in revelation, and which

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Speaker 1: makes it this kind of frightening statement to say that, like,

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Speaker 1: if you enter into my burden is illumination. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: light that blinds me can consus me for you can

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Speaker 1: also blind me that sort of thing. So I like that. Man,

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Speaker 1: that's interesting. So I'm not saying I can do that

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Speaker 1: with everything, or that every b S statement is susceptible

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Speaker 1: to some sort of a different read. But I wonder

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Speaker 1: if that is sometimes the case with these b S

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Speaker 1: statements that get really picked up, like there's maybe I'm

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Speaker 1: dismissing them because I'm just judging them to face value.

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Speaker 1: So I have a question for you, Joe. One thing

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Speaker 1: our listeners may not know is Joe went to graduate

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Speaker 1: school to study poetry. So now I'm thinking about this

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Speaker 1: study in context of reviewing poetry, whether it's written by

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Speaker 1: the great poet of the world or by you know, um,

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Speaker 1: maybe your classmates or maybe the students that you're teaching, Right,

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Speaker 1: So does this apply to that the idea of there

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Speaker 1: being something profound in a poem when maybe there's not

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Speaker 1: and it's just vacuous. But yeah, maybe maybe that's a

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Speaker 1: good point. I mean, so if I read a poem,

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Speaker 1: A lot of great poetry contains intentionally like self contradictory

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Speaker 1: or kind of absurd, uh, statements that that are designed

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Speaker 1: to create an effect, but they're not necessarily designed to

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Speaker 1: communicate information that's true. So I mean it's a yeah.

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Speaker 1: Maybe some people participate with these profound New Age quotes

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Speaker 1: just they're interacting with them in the same way that

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Speaker 1: I would interact with the poem. I'm not expecting it

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Speaker 1: to tell me something that is an insightful, true statement

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Speaker 1: about reality, but I'm expecting to have an experience with language.

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Speaker 1: I think this would be a really interesting study to

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Speaker 1: subsequently apply to the field of poetry in some way,

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Speaker 1: you know, like what they're always telling you when you're

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Speaker 1: in a discipline, especially a discipline in the humanities, right,

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Speaker 1: like you have to take something that pre exists, that's

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Speaker 1: been studied before, and then you have to take it

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Speaker 1: to the next level. You have to add something new

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Speaker 1: to it. This seems like it could be a very

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Speaker 1: interesting way of studying certain types of language use. Poetry

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Speaker 1: immediately comes to mind. But I mean, you could say

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Speaker 1: it about anything. Are you really just suggesting that you

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Speaker 1: think poetry is BS? Well, no, but you I don't

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Speaker 1: think that. But you could. You could boil it down

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Speaker 1: and you could say all poetry is BS in the

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Speaker 1: same way that you could say all acting is lying. Uh, jeez,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I would agree with either of those. No,

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Speaker 1: I mean I would not agree with them, but you

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Speaker 1: could if you just boil it down, you strip it

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Speaker 1: away of all complex. You could say one actor is

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Speaker 1: just somebody who gets on a stage and lies about

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Speaker 1: who they are. Yeah, I guess I'm just imagining. Here's

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Speaker 1: an imaginary scenario, right, You've got a poetry professor who's

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Speaker 1: just doing it for thirty years. They've seen everything come

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Speaker 1: across their desk, and they're grading freshman poems and they're

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Speaker 1: coming through it and they're at home alone, they're drinking

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Speaker 1: a whiskey. Uh, and they're they're going through all these

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Speaker 1: with the red pen and they just go, oh, this

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Speaker 1: is just bs, this is vacuous, there's nothing here f

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Speaker 1: and then they flip it over. Well, I mean I

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Speaker 1: think most of the time, you know, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: maybe some professors do. I think most professors don't grade

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Speaker 1: poems as like you get a grade for how good

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Speaker 1: your poem was. But uh, but I don't know that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if it does not induce delight, or if

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Speaker 1: it does not make you feel anything that is worth feeling,

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Speaker 1: then it is not a good poem. Right, So I guess,

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Speaker 1: like That's That's where I'm going at with this thing, right,

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Speaker 1: is that, like both in the in the study and

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Speaker 1: practice of poetry, they're sort of subjective nature of what

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Speaker 1: it it's supposed to do or what it may do.

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Speaker 1: It seems like the same thing could be said of

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Speaker 1: some of these proverbs. I mean, not the like the

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Speaker 1: computer generated ones that you used earlier, like made me

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Speaker 1: feel anything, but they might for somebody. Well yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean with some of these statements that are generated by

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Speaker 1: the computer every now and then, i'd see one other thing.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, maybe I could. I could sort of make

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Speaker 1: sense of that if if I was trying, even though

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Speaker 1: you know, it's, uh, it's just random words. Yeah. What's

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Speaker 1: the what's the monkey? Uh? The infinite monkey theorem? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that one where you have an infinite amount of

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Speaker 1: monkeys in their hammering away on typewriters, and yet one

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Speaker 1: of them will eventually write what is it? Like the

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Speaker 1: Great Novel or something like that, or Shakespeare. But I

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Speaker 1: think that's given infinite time as a parameter. Yeah, okay, okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean it just goes to show you how language

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Speaker 1: is subjective in general. Wow, so we've tread, we've actually

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Speaker 1: tread into the library of babble. Now in this conversation.

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Speaker 1: Oh boy, Uh, sorry, I gotta say one more thing.

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Speaker 1: Then we're done with this. Uh. We can argue about

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Speaker 1: why it might be important or might not be important

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Speaker 1: as an individual study, but one thing I definitely will

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Speaker 1: stand up for is that the subject of BS or

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Speaker 1: bull roar uh, and the human propensity to be impressed

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Speaker 1: by bull roar is a truly profound important phenomenon in education, politics, culture,

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Speaker 1: and religion, advertising and so on. BS makes up a

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Speaker 1: significant portion of all human communication and everything from political

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Speaker 1: speeches to first state chatter, self help literature. It's all

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Speaker 1: over the place, and it is for that reason worth

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Speaker 1: our time and attention to understand its rhetorical function. It's

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Speaker 1: not just filling time. It's also making us do things

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Speaker 1: we need to understand. As a piece of rhetoric. It's

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Speaker 1: persuading people to either do things, or think things, or

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Speaker 1: believe things, but in a very strange and oblique way.

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Speaker 1: Because it's not necessarily communicating content and whether it's making

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Speaker 1: it's making impressions that influence our behavior in in indirect

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Speaker 1: ways that are hard to understand, but any we should

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Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, we

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Speaker 1: will hear about some more deceptive thinking in the Psychology

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Speaker 1: Prize for Lies and Liars. All right, we're back, Okay,

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Speaker 1: So this one's mine. This is the Psychology Prize from

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Speaker 1: the ig Nobles and it was published an Actor Psychologia.

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Speaker 1: In the paper is called from Junior to Senior Pinocchio,

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Speaker 1: A cross sectional lifespan Investigation of Deception. Basically, they're looking

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Speaker 1: at how people lie. Uh. The authors on this were

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Speaker 1: Gordon Logan, Evelyn dB Martin, Dave Shriver, Christina Sukotsky, and

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Speaker 1: Bruno Versure. Uh. Sorry, some of those were Belgian names

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Speaker 1: that I'm probably butchering. I apologize. Here's the gist of

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Speaker 1: this paper. Gordon Logan sort of like the lead on this.

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Speaker 1: He's professor out of Vanderbilt University. Uh, and he and

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Speaker 1: his colleagues they wanted to look into lying. They wanted

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Speaker 1: to study the active deception across the human lifespan, looking

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Speaker 1: for age related differences in the proficiency of lying and

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Speaker 1: how often we as human beings lie. So they sampled

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Speaker 1: over a thousand people between the ages of six and

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Speaker 1: seventy seven and they had them perform reaction time based

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Speaker 1: deception tasks to assess how proficient they were at lying.

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Speaker 1: So so we're six year olds the best at lying? Well,

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Speaker 1: you're about to find out they're pretty good, uh, as

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Speaker 1: with as Robert probably knows. Although Vastion's four now. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I honestly I'm not sure he's told to lie yet

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Speaker 1: in life with him like it like that. I think

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Speaker 1: I mentioned this in a previous episode. His lying ability

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have really come online yet. So it's

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Speaker 1: a magical time get to children start to lie, I'm

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Speaker 1: not certain off the top of my head. Well, these

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Speaker 1: people have a theory. Their theory and and the results

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Speaker 1: somewhat conformed to this is that with most age related

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Speaker 1: changes there's a U shaped pattern, but here it's specifically

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Speaker 1: with inhibition control and lying. Uh. So they think that

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Speaker 1: we start getting more accurate at lying during childhood, So

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Speaker 1: we start learning how to lie at six? Sorry, quickly,

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Speaker 1: what do you mean by accurate at lying? Like better

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Speaker 1: at convincing people of a lie? Okay? Uh? And we

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Speaker 1: excel at it in young adulthood and then we get

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Speaker 1: worse at it through adulthood. Now it seems to peak

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Speaker 1: in adolescence and decrease in adulthood. For the purposes of

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Speaker 1: their study, they define young adults as eighteen to twenty

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Speaker 1: nine years old. Young children were six to eight, so

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Speaker 1: you've got two more years before we start lying to either.

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Speaker 1: And the eldest participants were sixty over. Now the U

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Speaker 1: shape comes back around again, though, right, so when they

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Speaker 1: start getting into the sixty and over range, they seem

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Speaker 1: to start lying more. They're not necessarily better at it,

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Speaker 1: but for some reason there and this is based on

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Speaker 1: self reporting, they're saying that they lie more often now.

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Speaker 1: Their subjects were members of the public who visited the

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Speaker 1: Science Center NEMO, which is in Amsterdam, and they basically

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Speaker 1: pulled them in and they asked them to participate in

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Speaker 1: the study. The questions that they were giving were very simple,

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Speaker 1: general knowledge things like can pigs fly? Or is the

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Speaker 1: grass green? And they were supposed to give yes or

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Speaker 1: no answers. A skilled liar could answer yes very quickly

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Speaker 1: to can pigs fly, while a poor liar would delay

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Speaker 1: or accidentally give you the honest answer. While they're answering,

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Speaker 1: the participants would push a button if the stay it

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Speaker 1: was supposed to be true or false. They also had

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Speaker 1: a color flag that would pop up on a screen

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Speaker 1: in front of them, and that would instruct them whether

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Speaker 1: they were supposed to lie or tell the truth. So

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Speaker 1: they had like kind of multiple stimuli going on here.

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00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:16,120
Speaker 1: That was sort of a complex cognitive task. Yeah, exactly. Now,

427
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:20,000
Speaker 1: to measure their lying frequency, the researchers asked them to

428
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 1: self report on the number of times they had told

429
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:26,640
Speaker 1: a lie in the last twenty four hours. On average,

430
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:30,359
Speaker 1: these people reported telling two lies in the last twenty

431
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:35,119
Speaker 1: four hours. Again, this was you shaped teens lied the most,

432
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:37,960
Speaker 1: and then it dropped off in adulthood and then increased

433
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:41,360
Speaker 1: again in older age. So parents of teens in the audience,

434
00:25:41,440 --> 00:25:43,679
Speaker 1: is this the case, Yeah, we'd love to hear from you.

435
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:46,399
Speaker 1: So do you do you think your your adolescens are

436
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 1: lying to you more and more tell the truth all

437
00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 1: the time. I feel like I was at my most

438
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 1: deceptive when I was a teenage Yeah. Apparently the oldest

439
00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: group lied at the same frequency as the youngest participants.

440
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:03,399
Speaker 1: So they also wanted to test inhibitory control. So the

441
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:06,520
Speaker 1: researchers had the participants perform what was called they stop

442
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:09,640
Speaker 1: signal task, where they pressed a button to indicate as

443
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: fast as possible whether an X or an O had

444
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:17,600
Speaker 1: appeared on screen. Now of the time a tone would

445
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 1: sound to tell them that they had to cancel their response.

446
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 1: The later the tone sounded in the task, the harder

447
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:28,879
Speaker 1: it became for them to withhold their responses. So think

448
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:31,560
Speaker 1: about it like you're you're hammering the keys for X

449
00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 1: and O X and o X and no. You get

450
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 1: into a pattern, and then the later in that the

451
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:38,680
Speaker 1: tone sounds off, the harder it is to stop yourself.

452
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:45,800
Speaker 1: So the participants with greater inhibitory control, they found that

453
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:49,360
Speaker 1: they could usually cancel their response even when the signal

454
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:54,119
Speaker 1: was given very late. Now, this ability increased through childhood

455
00:26:54,119 --> 00:26:58,360
Speaker 1: and peaked in adults. Performance after that age remained stable,

456
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:03,560
Speaker 1: So basically adulthood onward. Yeah, your your ability to control

457
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:07,920
Speaker 1: your inhibitions kind of levels out. Now, what's important about

458
00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:11,800
Speaker 1: this is the performance on the stop signal tasks did

459
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:16,160
Speaker 1: not correlate strongly with the lying proficiency. Okay, so why

460
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: is this amusing? Well, ha ha, because it's all about lying, right,

461
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:21,919
Speaker 1: and how how good we are at deceiving one another

462
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:25,760
Speaker 1: or how often we lie. Old people and children lying

463
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:28,720
Speaker 1: is funnier than adults lying. Yeah, I guess I guess

464
00:27:28,760 --> 00:27:32,920
Speaker 1: that is yeah. Uh. This study also doesn't really tell

465
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 1: us anything about one person's ability and propensity to lie.

466
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:40,679
Speaker 1: It's just sort of broadly based on these people. And

467
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 1: then this is the funny thing. They even asked Logan

468
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:44,679
Speaker 1: this in one of the interviews I read with him,

469
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 1: and they said, well, how do you know your subjects

470
00:27:46,800 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: weren't lying to you? And he just said self reporting. Yeah,

471
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 1: and the self reporting and he goes, oh, we don't.

472
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:55,760
Speaker 1: So it's all like you know, it's all based on

473
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: self reporting, so who knows. Um, there are some important

474
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,439
Speaker 1: lessons to be learned year though. The first thing is

475
00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:03,360
Speaker 1: this is a quote from Logan. He says, I don't

476
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:06,480
Speaker 1: know why they selected this for the Ignoble Prize. It's

477
00:28:06,520 --> 00:28:09,479
Speaker 1: supposed to make you laugh, and then think he's referring

478
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:12,920
Speaker 1: to the Ignoble Prize. Maybe the laughing is quote why

479
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: would anyone study lying? And the thinking is because lying

480
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:22,760
Speaker 1: presents interesting cognitive challenges that liars must overcome. It confirms

481
00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:25,880
Speaker 1: our assumption, for instance, that young adults lie the most

482
00:28:25,920 --> 00:28:28,160
Speaker 1: and the best, so we get that out of it, right.

483
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 1: They also found that most people don't lie very often,

484
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: but a few people lie a lot. Their theory is

485
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: that this is all part of age related inhibitory control.

486
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:43,640
Speaker 1: But now going back to the actual results, when they

487
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: compared the lying results with the inhibitory control results, they

488
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: found that they didn't correlate right, so their their theory

489
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: was actually proven wrong. The researchers, however, kind of backpedaled

490
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: a little bit and they said, well, there are different

491
00:28:56,920 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 1: types of inhibitory control, and we might need to do

492
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:02,360
Speaker 1: some more studies and find some different way to measure that.

493
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: The results, I want to point this out to The

494
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 1: results are a little skewed. Half the participants reported that

495
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 1: they didn't tell any lies in the last twenty four hours,

496
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 1: so over fifty percent of the lies were told by

497
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 1: what they referred to as prolific liars, and only nine

498
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:25,959
Speaker 1: percent made up the total sample as prolific liars. So

499
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: it gets skewed because you get nine percent of these

500
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: people were just lying a lot according to yeah exactly

501
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 1: self reporting, and then said they weren't lying at all.

502
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:41,320
Speaker 1: So I don't know. Well, I mean, if I don't know,

503
00:29:41,360 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: if you're a prolific liar, would you also lie about

504
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 1: whether or not you had lied? Yes, yes, I would

505
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:51,000
Speaker 1: think so. I would I would think that, like it's

506
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 1: almost like addictive, right, based on what I've I've seen

507
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:58,400
Speaker 1: on television recently. This is that the show what is

508
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:03,080
Speaker 1: it called Just Liar? I don't know what you're about. No, no,

509
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:06,040
Speaker 1: I was talking about a different television series that I

510
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: think is the three part series this fall. I was

511
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 1: thinking of the Tim Roth TV show Lie to Me,

512
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: where like he can just like immediately tell whether somebody's

513
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 1: lying or funny story. Just last night, Robert on your recommendation,

514
00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:20,200
Speaker 1: Rachel and I, my wife Rachel and I have been

515
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:22,760
Speaker 1: watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time. Neither

516
00:30:22,800 --> 00:30:24,880
Speaker 1: of us had seen it before. It's on Netflix. We're

517
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 1: working our way through it now. It's uh cheesy in

518
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:30,520
Speaker 1: the first season, but also kind of delightful. And we

519
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,480
Speaker 1: just watched the episode called Lie to Me that's about

520
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 1: kids who want to become vampires. I don't remember this

521
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:39,840
Speaker 1: episode at all. Oh, it's pretty season one. Season two, okay,

522
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: that's when it started really picking up. Yeah, my favorite

523
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 1: so far is the horrible episode in season one about

524
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: the demon that gets on the Internet. I don't remember

525
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:52,760
Speaker 1: that one anytime in the nineties when somebody got on

526
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: the Internet that it's just it's ridiculous. Remember the X

527
00:30:56,040 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 1: Files episode when the Internet was like possessed, which was

528
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 1: the hell Raiser move where Pinhead goes online? Oh god, yeah,

529
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 1: it was like it was one of them. The several

530
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: they were like doing one directed video sequel a year

531
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:11,479
Speaker 1: where they brought in Doug Bradley for like one scene

532
00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 1: on each film. Okay, okay, I think it's time to

533
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: move on to the next study. How how about we

534
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:19,840
Speaker 1: talk about some horses. Oh yeah, let's uh, let's let's

535
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:21,880
Speaker 1: bring on the white Horse. Well, what do you a

536
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:25,600
Speaker 1: gentleman think of when I when I mentioned the white Horse,

537
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: you mentioned it earlier and I immediately said, wait, is

538
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: that a Patti Smith's song? But it turned out that

539
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:32,840
Speaker 1: it was. She just has an album called Horses. That's

540
00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 1: a great album by the way, I love it. But yeah,

541
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:39,280
Speaker 1: white why I think of what cocaine? Is that? Right? Yeah? Yeah,

542
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 1: I've been through the desert on a horse with her name. Wait, no,

543
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 1: that's Heroin? Right? Um? Was that about Heroin? I I

544
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 1: don't know horses usually, I mean just from my time

545
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 1: on the street, that's usually what people refer to Heroin

546
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 1: as well. There there is a song if you want

547
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: to ride ride the white horse, it's about about the

548
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:01,960
Speaker 1: white horse has drug culture we're not encouraging. But the

549
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 1: white horse, of course is also the white horse, the

550
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:09,160
Speaker 1: pale horse, what death rides in on. Correct, It's also

551
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 1: the steed of many a heroic night. Uh. Many of

552
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: the noble prints rides in on a white horse. We

553
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: like the image of the white horse. We've bred to

554
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 1: to to select white horses as much as possible. In

555
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 1: many cases, black horses are black beauties. Well they're beauties.

556
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:31,680
Speaker 1: I mean, all horses are beautiful, you know, dapples and grays,

557
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: pintos and bays, all of them. But but the but

558
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 1: the white horse has a particular status with us, you know,

559
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: both symbolically and as an actual animal. But with that privilege,

560
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 1: s that is Uh, there are a few negatives as well.

561
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, in the wild, white horses

562
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:53,600
Speaker 1: suffer from predation more stand out, and I imagine it

563
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 1: would makes sense. I imagine this probably makes the most

564
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,640
Speaker 1: sense in places that are not covered in snow. But yeah,

565
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:02,719
Speaker 1: it's going to draw the attention of predators more. Uh.

566
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:05,320
Speaker 1: And then another big thing is that they're highly susceptible

567
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:08,080
Speaker 1: to ultra violent solar radiation due to their coloring, so

568
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:13,520
Speaker 1: they frequently suffer from align skin cancer and visual deficiencies. Yeah.

569
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 1: But and this is where we get to our Ignobele

570
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:20,840
Speaker 1: Prize winner and the Physics Prize. As a two thousand

571
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: and ten Hungarian study published in the Proceedings of the

572
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: Royal Society be reveal white horses have one excellent advantage

573
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with how pretty we think

574
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: they are or what drugs they represent. Um white gray

575
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: like light gray, you know, and and albino horses are

576
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 1: far less susceptible to being uh to being fed on

577
00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 1: by blood sucking uh. Two banded flies, which are you know,

578
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: like a mini a blood sucking insect is a known

579
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: disease vector, so as they reveal in their studies. UH.

580
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:58,760
Speaker 1: In their study, the flies used reflected polarized light from

581
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:02,000
Speaker 1: a horse's coat at the signal to find a suitable

582
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: host to feed upon. So that means they're attracted mainly

583
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: to black and brown fur coats throwing a white fur

584
00:34:08,719 --> 00:34:10,880
Speaker 1: coat and they're not not going to be a drawn

585
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: to that animal and that the researchers learned this by

586
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:19,760
Speaker 1: conducting field observations followed by experiments that involve horse models,

587
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:24,720
Speaker 1: and then they measured the reflection polarization patterns of living

588
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:30,360
Speaker 1: horses with special optical equipment. Specifically, they investigated via polarimetry.

589
00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 1: This is the measurement and interpretation of the polarization of

590
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:39,719
Speaker 1: transverse waves, in this case light waves. So I have

591
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 1: to admit that that I didn't quite get the humor

592
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: on this. Yeah, I don't, right, because it seems seem yeah,

593
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if you're rearing animals, I mean,

594
00:34:49,920 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: parasite management is an inherent part of the process. Maybe

595
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 1: it's just funny because it's uh, I don't know, flies

596
00:34:56,080 --> 00:34:59,800
Speaker 1: on horses, I guess, I mean, but it's it's a

597
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 1: it's not a goat horses. Horses are not as funny

598
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:05,399
Speaker 1: as good But it seems like you're implying that there's

599
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:08,160
Speaker 1: a punch line somewhere down the road here in a

600
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:11,520
Speaker 1: in a sense. So this is one of those instances

601
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:14,720
Speaker 1: where the researchers were honored for not one, but two papers.

602
00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:18,719
Speaker 1: So there's the the white horses and their susceptibility to

603
00:35:19,800 --> 00:35:22,799
Speaker 1: the attention of blood sucking insects. But they also apply

604
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 1: their techniques to another issue that I imagine is not

605
00:35:26,120 --> 00:35:30,680
Speaker 1: close to anyone's heart, and that has dragonflies landing on

606
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:35,360
Speaker 1: gravestones in uh cemeteries. But is that like a bad

607
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:38,279
Speaker 1: luck omen in the Ukraine? No, I I don't think

608
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 1: at all. Like basically what happened is the researchers, you know,

609
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:45,719
Speaker 1: we're just hanging out near some Hungarian cemeteries and they noticed, hey,

610
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,279
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of dragonflies landing on those

611
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:54,759
Speaker 1: blood those specifically on those black shiny headstuffs. Yeah, they said, well,

612
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:58,120
Speaker 1: what's going on there? And they they found that, yeah,

613
00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:01,799
Speaker 1: that the insects were actually treating the gleaming head tombstones

614
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:06,319
Speaker 1: as if they were water. Okay, so and this, this,

615
00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:08,960
Speaker 1: this lines up with three different modes of behavior. They

616
00:36:09,040 --> 00:36:13,000
Speaker 1: perched persistently in the immediate vicinity of the chosen gravestones

617
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:17,640
Speaker 1: and then defended the perch against other dragonflies. Flying individuals

618
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 1: repeatedly touched the horizontal surface of the shiny black tombstone

619
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: with the the ventral side of their body and pairs

620
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:30,200
Speaker 1: in tandem position i mating um. They frequently circled around

621
00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 1: these black gravestones. So so our our grave markers are

622
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:41,160
Speaker 1: sex beacons for the dragonflies of the world. Ye uh so,

623
00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: so it would seem, and so that they busted out

624
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:47,840
Speaker 1: their polar ametry equipment again and they found that indeed,

625
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 1: the black gravestones, like smooth water surfaces, reflect highly and

626
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 1: horizontally polarized light under natural conditions. This means dragonflies detect

627
00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 1: water by means of the horizontally polarized reflected light. Now

628
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:06,239
Speaker 1: this is funny, of course, because could there be on

629
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: the surface of things, Could there be anything more absurd

630
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 1: than studying flies landing on a tombstone? Like what does that?

631
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:16,879
Speaker 1: How does that affect anybody? Yeah? Well, well, at least

632
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:21,960
Speaker 1: we get a better understanding of dragonfly relationships to their

633
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 1: ecosystem and water. Yeah. But but here's the thing, and

634
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 1: this is and I had to take the step of

635
00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:29,759
Speaker 1: reading this and then it's sun come for me. So

636
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:32,359
Speaker 1: dragonflies not only do they land on water, not only

637
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: do they land on it when they're tandem they're they're mating,

638
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:40,840
Speaker 1: they also deposit their eggs in water. So this is

639
00:37:40,880 --> 00:37:44,840
Speaker 1: where we get to the idea that gleaming tombstones could

640
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:50,240
Speaker 1: constitute a potential ecological trap. It's like discarded bottles stealing

641
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:53,319
Speaker 1: all of the mates for the Beatles exactly. Yeah, yeah,

642
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: the idea is that and there's not only there's not

643
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:58,080
Speaker 1: any data to backs up to say that these these

644
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:03,400
Speaker 1: headstones are definitely impact acting dragonfly reproduction and dragonfly population.

645
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 1: But it kind of serves as, Ah, it's interesting and

646
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:10,439
Speaker 1: potentially important because it serves an example of just a

647
00:38:10,480 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: wild accidental means, just one of many in which we

648
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:19,400
Speaker 1: are we are manipulating and disturbing um a natural organism's

649
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:22,560
Speaker 1: life cycle, you in ways we didn't even think of,

650
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 1: because they could conceivably be then laying their eggs on

651
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:30,319
Speaker 1: these tombstones and there you know, to with with no

652
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 1: you know, potential survivability. It's interesting because I guess I

653
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: just assumed that the dragonflies would land and through tactile

654
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:43,479
Speaker 1: sense by touching them, would go oh this isn't water

655
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:46,919
Speaker 1: and fly away. But but I guess it comes down

656
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:49,239
Speaker 1: to it's kind of like with with sea turtles, you know,

657
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: and depending on the light of the moon, and then

658
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: you throw in this artificial thing that that lines up

659
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:57,680
Speaker 1: with the expectations for moonlight and at least two key areas,

660
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:06,000
Speaker 1: that's all it takes. Hilarious, Yeah, the hilariteous is subjective

661
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 1: on this one. But but certainly I think the the

662
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 1: sort of the aspect of it definitely works. I don't

663
00:39:12,080 --> 00:39:13,640
Speaker 1: know about you, guys. I am going to have a

664
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 1: hearty chuckle the next time I see dragonflies in tandem

665
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 1: on a tombstone. So next up is the Chemistry Prize

666
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: from the Ignobles this year, which was actually given not

667
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:30,280
Speaker 1: to a scientific researcher but to an auto manufacturer, Volkswagen

668
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:35,040
Speaker 1: for quote solving the problem of excessive automobile pollution emissions

669
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:39,680
Speaker 1: by automatically electro mechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars

670
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:46,359
Speaker 1: are being tested. Yeah, no, it's not well, actually kind

671
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:49,400
Speaker 1: of is. I guess it's kind of funny, because I

672
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:53,520
Speaker 1: mean the effects are not funny. There was no study here. Obviously,

673
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:56,040
Speaker 1: it would be amazing if Volkswagen had some team of

674
00:39:56,120 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 1: chemists that came up with a way of carrying on

675
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 1: false fuel combustion and giving the same performance in the

676
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:07,560
Speaker 1: car while producing fewer emissions. But it didn't happen. That

677
00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: is not what happened. Instead, this is a joke prize

678
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:13,319
Speaker 1: going to Volkswagen for the fact that in they got

679
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 1: caught cheating, specifically and intentionally engineering their cars to cheat

680
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:24,760
Speaker 1: on emissions testing. I didn't know that, really, No, I didn't.

681
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:26,799
Speaker 1: I must have missed that news. Well, I think I

682
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: may have an explanation for this. Did you allow in

683
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:31,200
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, did you allow Volkswagen to

684
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 1: install any devices on your body? Oh? Yeah, the brain

685
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:37,360
Speaker 1: computer in face? That that was what it was was

686
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:40,920
Speaker 1: I was trying to share dreams with the Volkswagen and

687
00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:43,320
Speaker 1: that must be what it was. I just it filters

688
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 1: out any bad information, negative publicity about Volkswagen. I must say.

689
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 1: This is a very clever and ingenious way to get

690
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:54,879
Speaker 1: around the problem of automobile emissions. Yeah, so how did

691
00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 1: this work? How did they get around this? Well, modern

692
00:40:57,040 --> 00:40:59,799
Speaker 1: cars are very computerized. We all know that now. They're

693
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:03,640
Speaker 1: not dumb mechanical machines of the nineteen fifties. Uh. And

694
00:41:03,719 --> 00:41:06,759
Speaker 1: because they're so computerized, it is possible to alter their

695
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:10,520
Speaker 1: performance in response to pre specified sets of conditions. And

696
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:12,920
Speaker 1: this could mean, you know, some really nice, kind of

697
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:16,240
Speaker 1: sci fi seeming features to to present in future cars,

698
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:18,400
Speaker 1: Like maybe you could have a car that has sensors

699
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:21,560
Speaker 1: that automatically detect fog or I see roads, and when

700
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 1: it detects those conditions, the car shifts into a performance

701
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: mode called safety mode, where it changes certain things about

702
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:31,880
Speaker 1: how the car operates to be safer. Or it could

703
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:35,320
Speaker 1: mean that the car detects when it's having itself probed

704
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:39,399
Speaker 1: for emissions testing and automatically shifts the car's performance into

705
00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:42,719
Speaker 1: eco friendly mode. That's what I do whenever I'm being

706
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:45,439
Speaker 1: probed for eco friendly testing. It's kind of like if

707
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 1: right before you go to the doctor, you're really healthy

708
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:51,520
Speaker 1: the week, but you like, you stop eating all the

709
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:54,720
Speaker 1: junk food and you know, doing your drugs and everything,

710
00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 1: but doesn't seem illegal at all. So it was highly illegal.

711
00:42:00,320 --> 00:42:04,400
Speaker 1: Many diesel vehicles manufactured by Volkswagen were created with a

712
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:06,440
Speaker 1: function that does exactly this. It was known as a

713
00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:10,400
Speaker 1: defeat device that was designed to get around the emissions testing,

714
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:13,440
Speaker 1: and it was done entirely without the knowledge of the driver.

715
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:15,760
Speaker 1: I want to be clear about that. The drivers weren't

716
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 1: at fault. They thought that they I mean, they paid

717
00:42:18,200 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 1: a car that they thought was ecologically friendly exactly. So

718
00:42:20,840 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 1: these were diesel vehicles, and with diesel, it's not exactly

719
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 1: the same emissions profile that you would get with a

720
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:31,280
Speaker 1: normal like gas burning car. With diesel, the main problem

721
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:34,960
Speaker 1: in these emissions were nitrogen oxides or in O X.

722
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:38,240
Speaker 1: But anyway, so in the case of the Volkswagen cars

723
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:41,360
Speaker 1: in question, there were just functions in the computer that

724
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:44,520
Speaker 1: controls the car said, hey, when the cars being driven,

725
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:47,440
Speaker 1: you can just turn off all those pollution controls and

726
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 1: the car drive great. You know, it feels really zippy

727
00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:54,919
Speaker 1: peak performance. But then when the car detects, uh, I'm

728
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 1: feeling some pokeing and things are lining up, Yeah, it

729
00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 1: looks like it's time for an emission test. When the

730
00:43:01,080 --> 00:43:04,840
Speaker 1: car detects that a test is going on, it alters

731
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:08,399
Speaker 1: the performance to turn on pollution limiting features to make

732
00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:11,280
Speaker 1: it look like the car is an eco friendly, low polluter.

733
00:43:11,520 --> 00:43:15,759
Speaker 1: How much harder do you think it was to install

734
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 1: that device than to just make the car ecologically friendly? Oh?

735
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:22,880
Speaker 1: I think it was. This was the easy solution. No, definitely,

736
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 1: this solution was easier because the problem is that things

737
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 1: were you had design considerations in conflict, like you can't

738
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:33,880
Speaker 1: have a car at least with today's technology, nobody's figured

739
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 1: out a way to make a car that performs as

740
00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 1: well as they wanted the car to perform at the

741
00:43:39,719 --> 00:43:44,239
Speaker 1: same time having this lower emissions profile, and so their

742
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:48,359
Speaker 1: way around that was to cheat. And so why did

743
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: this happen? Obviously the design priorities I mentioned, but for

744
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: some of these vehicles it ended up with in o

745
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:57,880
Speaker 1: X emissions that were maybe like ten times or even

746
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 1: forty times what they were host to be. And yeah,

747
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 1: so that that obviously was very bad. They got caught.

748
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:08,839
Speaker 1: Investigators figured out this is what they were doing, and

749
00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: they have been cited by the US government for violations

750
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:16,799
Speaker 1: of the Clean Air Act. And so, yeah, why why

751
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 1: is this amusing? Why is the study amusing? I was

752
00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:20,919
Speaker 1: going to say, it's not a study. I guess why

753
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: is this R and D corporate R and D amusing?

754
00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:29,040
Speaker 1: Obviously because they're cheating. Their company's solution to a problem

755
00:44:29,120 --> 00:44:32,799
Speaker 1: in design was just too cut corners and cheat. I

756
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:35,840
Speaker 1: feel like I remember they the ignobiles did something similar

757
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: to this last year. Maybe this is like an annual

758
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:42,440
Speaker 1: part of the ceremony is that they choose something that's

759
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:44,319
Speaker 1: not an actual study and they just kind of make

760
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 1: fun and they occasionally fare times when no one is

761
00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:50,680
Speaker 1: going to accept the award because yeah, I'm wondering, Yeah,

762
00:44:50,719 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 1: there probably wasn't a representative from Volks You watched the ceremony.

763
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:56,480
Speaker 1: Did anybody show up to accept this? Watching it on

764
00:44:56,600 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 1: double speed and I definitely didn't see anybody from Volkswagen show. Yeah.

765
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:02,880
Speaker 1: So you know, here's one of the interesting things about it,

766
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: Like you can't help but think and the grant is

767
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:06,920
Speaker 1: not a one to one, but you can't help but

768
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: think of of of technology as as an evolution of

769
00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:19,359
Speaker 1: form and in in natural uh selection, nobody comes around

770
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 1: and says, okay, hold on all these um this particular

771
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 1: lightning bug that is um that is mimicking this other

772
00:45:25,719 --> 00:45:28,759
Speaker 1: type of lightning bug, deception, this against the rules, were

773
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 1: shutting it down? Right, That doesn't doesn't happen exactly like that.

774
00:45:33,440 --> 00:45:37,040
Speaker 1: But also in I mean in nature, it's just real performance.

775
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 1: Real performance is the only thing that's really tracked. There's

776
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:44,600
Speaker 1: no like way to cheat on a regulations test because

777
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 1: I guess nature has no regulation. But it's kind of

778
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:50,239
Speaker 1: a survival thing, right, like this is is it is

779
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:53,279
Speaker 1: the Volkswagen in question able to perform at a high

780
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:55,919
Speaker 1: enough level without being caught. You know what, it's it's

781
00:45:55,960 --> 00:45:58,480
Speaker 1: perverse incentives in a way or not perfect. I mean,

782
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 1: the problem is that the emissions test doesn't test the

783
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:05,480
Speaker 1: thing they're actually trying to test, which is, how is

784
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:09,440
Speaker 1: the car performing normally during most of its operating time.

785
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: It's impossible to test that without I guess, like having

786
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:16,080
Speaker 1: some kind of reporting device installed on the car that's

787
00:46:16,160 --> 00:46:18,840
Speaker 1: going to be always sending feedback to I don't know,

788
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 1: government agency or something. It sounds like that's something people

789
00:46:21,680 --> 00:46:24,759
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't want. That sounds like some communist stuff right there.

790
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:27,080
Speaker 1: But are you trying to suggest, yeah, you've got this

791
00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:29,719
Speaker 1: problem that if you if you can make a car

792
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:32,400
Speaker 1: that can figure out when the emissions are being tested,

793
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:37,440
Speaker 1: it can alter its performance accordingly. But also why is

794
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: the study important? Well, obviously this type of pollution has

795
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:43,239
Speaker 1: serious consequences. As I said. According to the EPA, the

796
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:46,640
Speaker 1: Volkswagen's actions were a gross violation of the Clean Air

797
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:49,919
Speaker 1: Act UH and could also be the cause of disastrous

798
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 1: secondary effects like as a pollutant, ino X has been

799
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:56,800
Speaker 1: linked to health effects like asthma attacks and other respiratory diseases.

800
00:46:56,840 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 1: I know, I've seen it implicated in emphysema, bronchitis, and

801
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:03,960
Speaker 1: ino X also contributes to ground level ozone, in particular

802
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:07,799
Speaker 1: matter concentration, which in turn has been implicated in premature

803
00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:13,000
Speaker 1: death from cardiovascular illness and respiratory effects. Yeah, this is uh,

804
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:15,680
Speaker 1: this is no good what they did. And uh and

805
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:18,439
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad they were caught there. I can't argue

806
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:20,959
Speaker 1: with that. Part of me just thinks, well, wait a minute,

807
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:26,400
Speaker 1: why couldn't Why wasn't the solution here just to uh,

808
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 1: you know, find a find an audience for the car

809
00:47:28,719 --> 00:47:32,040
Speaker 1: that doesn't care so much about performance. I don't know.

810
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:34,319
Speaker 1: I don't think about if I if I'm like in

811
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: the market for a car. Maybe I'm just not a

812
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:39,120
Speaker 1: car person. I'm not in the market for one that,

813
00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:41,240
Speaker 1: oh I want the one that feels like it really

814
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:45,880
Speaker 1: accelerates quickly and and oh my god, the torque. It's amazing.

815
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:52,279
Speaker 1: More communism, more communism. You clearly don't understand a car

816
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:55,279
Speaker 1: like a real American, does I guess I maybe don't.

817
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:57,560
Speaker 1: I don't know. We'll we'll have to. I mean, it's

818
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: a scot Off Scott Scott. Probably I wouldn't be surprised

819
00:48:01,560 --> 00:48:04,720
Speaker 1: with the car. Scoff car stuff. Guys did an episode

820
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 1: on this, well, actually, we did an episode of forward

821
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:11,520
Speaker 1: thinking on the Volkswagen scandal that Scott and Ben came

822
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:14,319
Speaker 1: as guest hosts on. Okay, okay, we we'll have to

823
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:16,280
Speaker 1: include a link to that episode on the landing page

824
00:48:16,360 --> 00:48:20,799
Speaker 1: for this episode. Yeah. But hey, we have one more

825
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: prize to discuss, and I believe it has something to

826
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:26,120
Speaker 1: do with dead flies. Yeah. So we're going from the

827
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: sublime to the ridiculous here, although I have an affinity

828
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 1: for this studying here. Uh So, this is the literature prize. Uh.

829
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 1: It goes to Frederick Schuberg and he wrote this has

830
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:42,719
Speaker 1: actually been out for a while now, but it's only

831
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:45,400
Speaker 1: recently been translated into English. He wrote a three volume

832
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 1: autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies. Uh, flies

833
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:54,280
Speaker 1: that are dead and flies that are not dead. The volume,

834
00:48:54,719 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 1: the first volume is called The Fly Trap, but the

835
00:48:57,160 --> 00:48:59,439
Speaker 1: three volume series is called The Path of the Fly

836
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:03,239
Speaker 1: Collector or a Flag Collector. Um. He attended the ceremony.

837
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: He's a Swedish writer and biologists and the award goes

838
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:11,440
Speaker 1: to all three volumes. So he lives on this sparsely

839
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:17,080
Speaker 1: populated island in Sweden and catches flies on them. That's

840
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:19,799
Speaker 1: just his thing. And he wrote these books about the

841
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 1: experience of that and just kind of being part of

842
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:27,400
Speaker 1: nature and hanging out and catching flies and collecting them. Um.

843
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 1: They're very popular in Sweden. They've sold hundreds of thousands

844
00:49:31,520 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 1: of copies there and in Germany, France, Russia and Norway.

845
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:39,720
Speaker 1: It's only recently been translated and released in Britain, Italy,

846
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:42,440
Speaker 1: Spain in the US. Now, the island he lives in

847
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: is called, I believe it's run Maru, small island that's

848
00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 1: part of the Stockholm Archipelago. He's lived there since nineteen

849
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:52,320
Speaker 1: eight six. And this, the whole thing is only fifteen

850
00:49:52,360 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: square miles. They get this. When his family first moved there,

851
00:49:56,800 --> 00:50:01,640
Speaker 1: they lived in a derelict house for ten without any

852
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: running water. They now they still live there, but they

853
00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: now live there in their own house that they've built there. Right,

854
00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 1: But like an interview I read with him, he was

855
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:13,319
Speaker 1: basically like, we wanted to live there, I wanted to

856
00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:16,680
Speaker 1: hang out with the flights, but we couldn't really afford

857
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 1: to build the home that we we could, So his

858
00:50:20,320 --> 00:50:22,720
Speaker 1: poor kids and his wife and him didn't have running

859
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:25,960
Speaker 1: water for ten years. So why is this amusing beyond

860
00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:29,360
Speaker 1: the running water situation, Well, people seem to see the

861
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 1: act of catching and cataloging hoverflies as useless. Uh. And

862
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:37,080
Speaker 1: they find it hard to categorize these books too, like

863
00:50:37,120 --> 00:50:39,840
Speaker 1: what are they? Are they natural history? Are they popular science?

864
00:50:39,840 --> 00:50:44,280
Speaker 1: Are they autobiography? Um? And here's the thing, they're certainly

865
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:48,719
Speaker 1: not being read by hoverfly enthusiasts. Uh, he himself. Well,

866
00:50:48,760 --> 00:50:51,840
Speaker 1: I mean they are, but it's not just them that

867
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:55,799
Speaker 1: are buying it. So like Schoberg, he estimates that in

868
00:50:55,880 --> 00:50:59,040
Speaker 1: all of Sweden there's like twenty five people who collect

869
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:02,440
Speaker 1: these flies, so they're not the only people that are

870
00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:05,280
Speaker 1: buying this book. It's like it's it's a popular culture

871
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:11,640
Speaker 1: phenomenon in Sweden. So it's not just the familiars of vampires. Yeah, exactly.

872
00:51:11,800 --> 00:51:13,880
Speaker 1: Well maybe he's a vampire and he's making all his

873
00:51:13,960 --> 00:51:16,560
Speaker 1: familures real. Who knows what he's learned from these flies,

874
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:19,480
Speaker 1: but he says this. He was very excited about the

875
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 1: the award. He said, the Ignoble Prize beats everything. At last.

876
00:51:24,239 --> 00:51:28,400
Speaker 1: I hope to become a rock star leather pants, dark sunglasses, groupies,

877
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 1: all that fun funniest thing from the Ignobles. I think

878
00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:37,040
Speaker 1: this guy. Uh. The Guardian described his book as being

879
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:41,400
Speaker 1: quote a bit like Dinner with a witty European intellectual ride,

880
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 1: digressive and packed with fantastically clipped observations. Uh. Everything I've

881
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 1: read about these these books makes them sound really interesting.

882
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:54,440
Speaker 1: And so I think about this one. Uh in contrast

883
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:57,279
Speaker 1: to the goat Man, Like, this guy goes out and

884
00:51:57,360 --> 00:52:01,360
Speaker 1: he's kind of become one with me. Sure, he's really

885
00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 1: obsessed with this one, very niche thing, but he's there's

886
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:09,319
Speaker 1: something to it, right, He's bringing something to people that's

887
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: beyond I wonder if you're responding to the fact that

888
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:14,880
Speaker 1: this guy sort of in a way has made this

889
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:18,959
Speaker 1: a life's work. The man took a you know, six

890
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:22,840
Speaker 1: day holiday exactly. Yeah, goatman took a six day holiday

891
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:25,080
Speaker 1: and dressed up in a costume and was like, look

892
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:27,440
Speaker 1: at me, look at me, look at me. And so

893
00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 1: I see this guy and he's like, he's made it

894
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:31,800
Speaker 1: his life's work to collect these fly There's something noble

895
00:52:31,840 --> 00:52:35,640
Speaker 1: about that he ever thought to try and become a fly? Well,

896
00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: you know what, he doesn't say anything about that, but

897
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:41,320
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that his family went without running

898
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:43,560
Speaker 1: water for ten years, it sounds like he got pretty close.

899
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 1: According to the New York Times book review, this the

900
00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 1: series of books are a quirky meditation on the pleasures

901
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 1: of collecting and an obsession with the natural world. And oh,

902
00:52:56,080 --> 00:52:57,480
Speaker 1: this is the other thing I wanted to mention. It

903
00:52:57,520 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: has two themes, the collecting theme, but then he also

904
00:53:00,760 --> 00:53:04,799
Speaker 1: wants to use them as an opportunity to recover the

905
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 1: forgotten outsider. So each book has a forgotten outsider that

906
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:12,360
Speaker 1: it focuses on. The first one maybe it's not the

907
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:15,680
Speaker 1: first one, but these are the three Swedish painter Gunnar

908
00:53:16,080 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 1: Wood Frosts, earthworm specialists, Gustaf Eisen, and the inventor of

909
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:25,400
Speaker 1: the gigantic fly trap, which many know as the Mega

910
00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:31,319
Speaker 1: Malaise Renee Malaise. Apparently Malaises trap is like very well

911
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:35,360
Speaker 1: known to the entomologic community, but he is not so

912
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:40,720
Speaker 1: u Schuberg used this these books as an opportunity to

913
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:44,200
Speaker 1: talk about Malaise and his work as it relates to

914
00:53:44,719 --> 00:53:49,440
Speaker 1: his modern obsession with collecting flies. Uh. Other people have

915
00:53:49,520 --> 00:53:53,400
Speaker 1: described it as a philosophical pleasure in the slowness of

916
00:53:53,520 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 1: quote self consciously useless activity of chasing flies and then

917
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:03,479
Speaker 1: fixing them with any pins. I'm thinking of Buffalo Bill now,

918
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:09,080
Speaker 1: like his little pins and his moths and everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

919
00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:13,040
Speaker 1: like the idea of of collecting insects, Like there's something

920
00:54:13,120 --> 00:54:16,960
Speaker 1: like inherently, I don't know the ritual of it, right,

921
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:20,360
Speaker 1: like the slowness and the deliberate nature of the ritual.

922
00:54:20,400 --> 00:54:23,120
Speaker 1: There's something too that apparently people are getting that out

923
00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:27,279
Speaker 1: of these books. Goodbye horses, Yeah, exactly. Maybe maybe on

924
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:30,000
Speaker 1: top of pretending to be a fly, he's also sung

925
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:33,400
Speaker 1: goodbye horses while he's out there catching them. Uh. He

926
00:54:33,800 --> 00:54:35,879
Speaker 1: wants to make it clear though, he's not really a

927
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 1: missionary for naturalism, though his books include defenses of nature's

928
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:44,439
Speaker 1: gardens and meadows. But he's, according to The New York Times,

929
00:54:44,440 --> 00:54:48,360
Speaker 1: at least, pretty unpretentious about how he celebrates them. Now,

930
00:54:48,840 --> 00:54:51,319
Speaker 1: the Guardian, they actually sent somebody out to go hang

931
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:53,920
Speaker 1: out with him on his island and catch flies. Cool,

932
00:54:54,040 --> 00:54:56,760
Speaker 1: and they said that he demonstrated all his weird ways

933
00:54:56,760 --> 00:55:00,239
Speaker 1: to catch flies, including uh, he has a device called

934
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:04,000
Speaker 1: a pewter, which sounds kind of like a straw that

935
00:55:04,080 --> 00:55:06,719
Speaker 1: he sucks on and it like sucks up one of

936
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:10,160
Speaker 1: these hover flies into it, and uh. And then the

937
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 1: other thing he uses and this one was crazy cyanide.

938
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 1: He's a signide to catch these flies and person from

939
00:55:16,520 --> 00:55:18,040
Speaker 1: the Guardian was like, are you supposed to have that?

940
00:55:18,080 --> 00:55:20,359
Speaker 1: And he's like, I don't know, it might be illegal. Um.

941
00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:24,359
Speaker 1: By catch, you mean he uses this to two poison flies. Yeah,

942
00:55:24,400 --> 00:55:26,720
Speaker 1: I mean it's not like he's keeping these flies alive.

943
00:55:26,840 --> 00:55:29,400
Speaker 1: He's like, he's spearing them through the body with these needles.

944
00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 1: This sounds like a harrogant and subtry kind of um.

945
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:37,880
Speaker 1: The person from the Guardian also described the book's themes

946
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:42,879
Speaker 1: as being natural literacy and again an appeal to slowness.

947
00:55:43,320 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: He sees his collecting as a relief from modern times.

948
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:51,839
Speaker 1: By limiting himself to this pursuit, it provides him with

949
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:54,560
Speaker 1: calmness by kind of getting away from the world at large,

950
00:55:55,120 --> 00:55:58,000
Speaker 1: just going out there, hanging out with the flies, sucking

951
00:55:58,040 --> 00:56:00,960
Speaker 1: him into a pooter, putting him in some cyanide, bringing

952
00:56:01,040 --> 00:56:05,040
Speaker 1: them back and very slowly affixing them to a board. So, yeah,

953
00:56:05,239 --> 00:56:07,319
Speaker 1: that was the Literary Prize. And he showed up. I

954
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:09,080
Speaker 1: saw him on the thing. He seemed he seemed like

955
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:13,640
Speaker 1: a cool guy. Uh, made some jokes and generally seemed

956
00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:19,600
Speaker 1: like enthusiastic about being there. So the theme, the overarching

957
00:56:19,640 --> 00:56:24,279
Speaker 1: theme for all of these awards was time. Okay, so

958
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:26,560
Speaker 1: we had do we see how that connects to all

959
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:29,080
Speaker 1: of them? I mean, I see it here right slowness.

960
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:31,520
Speaker 1: I guess it's it's kind of like, say, an episode

961
00:56:31,520 --> 00:56:34,480
Speaker 1: of This American Life that they have a theme. The

962
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:37,680
Speaker 1: first two episodes of the first two segments are going

963
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:40,120
Speaker 1: to hit that theme pretty hard, but then there's a

964
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:44,160
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of falloff. Man Robert Lamb going after the

965
00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:47,640
Speaker 1: number one podcast in America right now, I love This

966
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:50,759
Speaker 1: American Life. But that's the thing. Try to try to

967
00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:53,279
Speaker 1: pick a theme and sustain it over four segments. They're

968
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:55,920
Speaker 1: trying to do it over ten. So it makes sense

969
00:56:55,960 --> 00:57:00,200
Speaker 1: that time fits some of these um more easy lead

970
00:57:00,200 --> 00:57:02,239
Speaker 1: than others. Yeah, I don't see how it fits into

971
00:57:02,280 --> 00:57:05,800
Speaker 1: the one where those uh Japanese scientists were looking between

972
00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 1: their legs, yeah, or the the horse one not really

973
00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:11,720
Speaker 1: getting time off of that time, but they getting time certainly.

974
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:14,799
Speaker 1: I mean I can tell you from watching the ceremony,

975
00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 1: they certainly made use of the time metaphor. I mean,

976
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:22,480
Speaker 1: like I told you, there were three musical numbers about

977
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 1: time and clocks and tick talking, and then there was

978
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:29,760
Speaker 1: there were the people who stood on the side wearing

979
00:57:29,840 --> 00:57:32,360
Speaker 1: clock costumes that if you went over your limit, they

980
00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:35,040
Speaker 1: would grab you and pull you away. Oh, they always did.

981
00:57:35,080 --> 00:57:37,760
Speaker 1: They have the little girl. This time I didn't see.

982
00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:41,280
Speaker 1: I can't remember what her name was, but yeah, I

983
00:57:41,320 --> 00:57:43,960
Speaker 1: complained about her last year because there's always one and

984
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:46,120
Speaker 1: then they grow up. And last year they brought them

985
00:57:46,160 --> 00:57:49,040
Speaker 1: all back. What were they called? Does anybody remember? I'm

986
00:57:49,080 --> 00:57:51,240
Speaker 1: sure if we went back and listened to last year's episodes,

987
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:53,560
Speaker 1: they'd be on there. But yeah, there's always a little

988
00:57:53,640 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 1: girl who's like the one who what does she paces?

989
00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:02,080
Speaker 1: I'm board stop talking right? Uh? And they please stop?

990
00:58:02,200 --> 00:58:05,040
Speaker 1: I'm bored. They didn't have her this year. Maybe they

991
00:58:05,080 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 1: finally realized how obnoxious it was. They listened to that.

992
00:58:09,400 --> 00:58:10,880
Speaker 1: You know what they did. They listened to stuff to

993
00:58:10,880 --> 00:58:13,480
Speaker 1: blow your minds episodes on this last year, and they went, oh,

994
00:58:13,600 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 1: maybe we need to rethink that. Why don't we just

995
00:58:15,400 --> 00:58:18,920
Speaker 1: dress somebody up in a clock instead? Christian, you are

996
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:22,560
Speaker 1: single handedly changing the world just by complaining about everything.

997
00:58:23,360 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 1: Finally find me some justification. All right, Well, there you

998
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:34,040
Speaker 1: have it. The Ignoble Prizes covered winner by winner across

999
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:36,919
Speaker 1: two episodes. If if you want to check out both

1000
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:39,560
Speaker 1: episodes of this uh, this series. We want to check

1001
00:58:39,560 --> 00:58:42,760
Speaker 1: out last year's Ignobel Yeah episodes, then head on over

1002
00:58:42,800 --> 00:58:44,439
Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your Mind dot com. That's where

1003
00:58:44,440 --> 00:58:47,360
Speaker 1: we'll find all the podcasts. We'll find videos, blog posts,

1004
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:50,520
Speaker 1: and links out to our various social media accounts. That's right.

1005
00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:54,880
Speaker 1: We are on the Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumbler,

1006
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:59,000
Speaker 1: and we are on Instagram. You'll find pictures from these

1007
00:58:59,040 --> 00:59:04,320
Speaker 1: two episodes on Instagram, along with details explaining them and uh,

1008
00:59:04,480 --> 00:59:06,440
Speaker 1: you could reach out to us on all those platforms

1009
00:59:06,480 --> 00:59:08,200
Speaker 1: if you want to ask us a question. Maybe you

1010
00:59:08,240 --> 00:59:11,160
Speaker 1: want to find out more about the white horses, or Volkswagen,

1011
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:15,400
Speaker 1: or or how good we are at lying? Uh, Joe?

1012
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:19,720
Speaker 1: Where can they ask us those questions the old fashioned way?

1013
00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:32,080
Speaker 1: At blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com

1014
00:59:32,080 --> 00:59:34,520
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

1015
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:58,640
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com