Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three oh two,
Speaker 1: Episode two of D Like I Say, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This is where we take a deep dive into America's
Speaker 1: share consciousness. Thank you Katie for that. That was appreciated.
Speaker 1: It there, it is, it needs it. It is Tuesday,
Speaker 1: August twenty ninth, twenty twenty three. My name is Jack
Speaker 1: O'Brien AKA. I have an AKA here on my phone,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna bring it up.
Speaker 2: That's a weird one talk yeah one, I know.
Speaker 3: Stopping at the moon from Mars connection. We need moonlaw
Speaker 3: because we got none. We need moonlaw's cause we got none.
Speaker 3: That is courtesy of Blinky heck about the space.
Speaker 1: Race to control the ice in the South Poldma, And
Speaker 1: there's nothing saying who's gonna own it. It's just going
Speaker 1: to be somebody's who gets there.
Speaker 2: They can say, dibbs, we're gonna make a nice granite
Speaker 2: out of it. Granite.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the fuck that is, but.
Speaker 2: It's an Italian slusher, So Italian Mamma Mia.
Speaker 1: Well, who is that voice, that thick Italian accent that here?
Speaker 1: We're thrilled to be joined by a very special guest
Speaker 1: co host one of the funniest comedy writers doing it.
Speaker 1: You know her words from the birds rights activist account
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Some more news with Cody Johnson. You know
Speaker 1: her voice from podcast like Creature features Secretly incredibly fascinating.
Speaker 1: Please welcome, coming all the way from Italy. The brilliant,
Speaker 1: the talented Katie Golden.
Speaker 4: How does she.
Speaker 2: Mean when you're doing podcast? There is nothing to be said?
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: The song of the song of the season, song of
Speaker 2: the year.
Speaker 1: What is that song?
Speaker 2: It's the all of the dream? How does it mean? Okay,
Speaker 2: there's the rhythm. When the rhythm is glad, there is
Speaker 2: nothing to be said. That's right, danger and dance clapping
Speaker 2: the hands.
Speaker 1: Jack, I'm sorry, I'm not up on anything. We listened
Speaker 1: to John Williams music and the Hold at the current moment.
Speaker 2: My kids are We're going to play this for you
Speaker 2: after the episode. You have to. It's all the rage
Speaker 2: over all the internet right now.
Speaker 1: And I will play the finale from the end of
Speaker 1: Rise of Skywalker for you because it's really it's ten
Speaker 1: minutes long and it covers everything. Anyways, Katie, it's a
Speaker 1: full cracked reunion because we are thrilled to be joined
Speaker 1: in our third seat by the best selling author of
Speaker 1: books like John Dies At the end, Zoe punches the
Speaker 1: future in the dick if this book exists here in
Speaker 1: the wrong universe and the new Zoe is too drunk
Speaker 1: for this yestopia, which I believe you can pre order. Still. Yes,
Speaker 1: he is also one of the hosts of the podcast
Speaker 1: Big Feats, which, if I'm reading this Paris Review article correctly,
Speaker 1: is the only Mountain Monsters podcast officially endorsed by Big Feet.
Speaker 1: He's our former coworker at Cracked, co creator of the
Speaker 1: Cracked podcast. Welcome back to the show, Jason Pardon.
Speaker 5: Now, is it okay for me to do my fake
Speaker 5: Italian accent that I do? Sometimes I don't know. I
Speaker 5: realize there are some accents that are inappropriate to keep.
Speaker 2: That deeply as a one hundred percent non Italian person
Speaker 2: living in Italy, I'd be deeply offended.
Speaker 6: Okay, then I won't because it's one that's so much
Speaker 6: fun that I don't know if I'm doing an actual
Speaker 6: Italian accent or if I'm doing a Hollywood accent of
Speaker 6: actors who themselves were in no way Italian but just
Speaker 6: and did not have a language ghost here, it's like.
Speaker 4: Why what you breaking my balls?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 4: There it is there.
Speaker 2: It is the concept of Italian accent is immigrants from
Speaker 2: Naples who came to the US. And that's it.
Speaker 1: And Chris Pratt's interpretation of Mario. Those are the two
Speaker 1: kind of key texts, the cornerstones.
Speaker 2: He's a national icon in Italy. Actually people don't think that,
Speaker 2: but like Chris Pratt popular.
Speaker 1: All right, Jason, how are you doing? Where are you
Speaker 1: coming to us from? Undisclosed?
Speaker 5: Sure, I'm in the state of Tennessee. If you want
Speaker 5: to try to find me, I'm sure. There's there's one
Speaker 5: guy on TikTok who can locate anybody just from any
Speaker 5: photo they take. If you want to show up at
Speaker 5: my house, I'm sure you can do it, but it has.
Speaker 1: He do it. Like even if you're inside he can
Speaker 1: do it. Probably not.
Speaker 5: But if you're standing like just in your yard, he
Speaker 5: will take the sliver of sky behind you, he can
Speaker 5: identify exactly down to your address. And that's his whole
Speaker 5: So this whole bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy and terrifying. Katie is coming to us
Speaker 1: from Europe, not Italy.
Speaker 2: Though, this time from Barcelona.
Speaker 1: Hey, well well done. On the pronunciation kid.
Speaker 4: Failure.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, now that feels like it should be offensive.
Speaker 2: It probably is. Yeah, Okay, you know I'm in for it.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, we wanted to get together for this special, you know,
Speaker 1: Tuesday Evergreen one subject episode, to to talk placebos because
Speaker 1: they're kind of in the news. Like there I saw
Speaker 1: a thing fairly recently where somebody was saying that, like
Speaker 1: the placebo effects has actually been disproven. We did a
Speaker 1: podcast on placibas a long time ago, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to dig back in on like have they been disproven?
Speaker 1: Was all the stuff that we were talking about back
Speaker 1: in the day a complete bullshit? And yeah, it's also
Speaker 1: like it came up a lot in my thinking around
Speaker 1: the Havana syndrome. Havana syndrome even though it's not like
Speaker 1: that's not specifically a placebo, but it does have something
Speaker 1: to do with like how meaning affects the human body, Like, are.
Speaker 2: You telling me that's that? It was not a Cuban
Speaker 2: death ray.
Speaker 1: It was a sound ray. It was a Cuban sound
Speaker 1: ray that melted people's brains.
Speaker 2: A Cuban brain microwave exactly.
Speaker 1: They used sound that nobody else could hear right. Anyways,
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about all of that plenty more.
Speaker 1: But before we get to any of it, Jason, we
Speaker 1: do like to ask our guests, what is something from
Speaker 1: your search history that's revealing about who you are.
Speaker 5: I searched this like a week ago, fenyl efren FDA
Speaker 5: thinyl frind. If that word in that chemical is unfamiliar
Speaker 5: to you, I can almost guarantee you you have ingested
Speaker 5: it at some point, because it is the active ingredient
Speaker 5: in almost every over the counter cold and sinus medication. Tylenol,
Speaker 5: pseudo fed pe inning, he's got the letters PE on it.
Speaker 5: The active ingredient is finol efrin, and finol efron does
Speaker 5: not do anything. Scientists have known this for a while.
Speaker 5: What happened was when sudafed had to go behind the
Speaker 5: counter because it is obviously used for meth. They knew
Speaker 5: that would deter some customers from buying anything, so they
Speaker 5: released different versions of their products that could be sold
Speaker 5: out on the shelf, and those are all placebos, not
Speaker 5: intentionally so. I think they may have had data at
Speaker 5: some point that they relieve symptoms, but it has since
Speaker 5: been completely debunked. It does not outperform placebo even if
Speaker 5: you up the dosage bar four one hundred percent. Wow,
Speaker 5: so now you will. Still there are people listening right
Speaker 5: now saying, well, that's ridiculous. I take DayQuil or whatever
Speaker 5: the other ones are, any of them non drowsy, you know,
Speaker 5: sinus stuff, and it makes me feel better. But the
Speaker 5: thing about sinus and cold symptoms is one they are variable.
Speaker 5: For instance, for most people, it's worse in the morning
Speaker 5: and gets better as the day goes on, so invariably
Speaker 5: it will get better. And also your body naturally heals it.
Speaker 5: So it's like, well, yeah, I took it for like
Speaker 5: four straight days, boom, I was good as threat. It's
Speaker 5: like if you had also, your body would have done
Speaker 5: that anyways, yes, if you had taken tic tax for
Speaker 5: four straight days. And so this is why bringing this
Speaker 5: up obviously the theme of the episode. That's not a
Speaker 5: placebo in the sense that this stuff in the garbage
Speaker 5: aisle of the pharmacy where they've got all of the
Speaker 5: herbs that will increase focus by selling you some sort
Speaker 5: of you know, the root or flower something.
Speaker 1: Yes, focus, that's what I go into that section.
Speaker 2: For increased focus on focus below the waiste focus right.
Speaker 1: One laser guided focus.
Speaker 4: That stuff.
Speaker 5: I feel like there's an understanding among educated people it's like,
Speaker 5: well that stuff will see bo It's you take a powder,
Speaker 5: you put it in your tea, and then it gives
Speaker 5: you the confidence to get in erection when you're having sex,
Speaker 5: because and it works, like people will buy it again
Speaker 5: and again because it's like, yeah, it reduces their anxiety
Speaker 5: because like, I'm good, I've taken my my boner tea
Speaker 5: and then that actually does help them perform.
Speaker 4: But I don't I didn't.
Speaker 2: Realize confidence was sort of a key part of the erection.
Speaker 2: Like if you're just not confident enough, oh yeah, there
Speaker 2: is a dysfunction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so, Oh my god, we could do
Speaker 1: the whole episode about this. Yes, I'm and also like tea,
Speaker 1: like I feel like tea. Like you're also just not
Speaker 1: drinking enough tea. I think those are the two main things.
Speaker 1: Not enough confidence t.
Speaker 2: T gives you boners.
Speaker 1: I think gives you you just drink it with your
Speaker 1: hands cupped around the tea and give it a little
Speaker 1: while wearing a cart.
Speaker 2: Again, that's why the British we're super into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, confidence is definitely important.
Speaker 5: There's crippling performance anxiety to the point that it is
Speaker 5: like a physical symptom because men feel such pressure to
Speaker 5: do it right that that can Actually, we'll talk about.
Speaker 2: My little scorecards might have been overkill causing problems.
Speaker 1: I see play by play commentary, But the reviews you
Speaker 1: left later on whatever website where women lead disaster is disaster.
Speaker 2: Boner yelp, boner, yelp.
Speaker 5: That has to exist, right must Anyway, back on this sentence,
Speaker 5: I was finishing like four minutes ago. Most of us
Speaker 5: know that stuff is placebo. What a lot of us
Speaker 5: don't realize is how much of the stuff sold in
Speaker 5: the rest of the pharmacy is placebo. And I do
Speaker 5: not mean this in a I'm not from like the
Speaker 5: wellness corner of the Internet. It's like a Western medicine
Speaker 5: is nonsense. I mean literally the efficacy of like headache medicine.
Speaker 5: Headaches go away on their own eventually, the percentage of
Speaker 5: time when you took etcetera and the headache went away
Speaker 5: because the etceteran versus it went away on its own,
Speaker 5: or went away because you drank a cup of coffee
Speaker 5: and it was just caffeine withdrawal, causing your headache. You
Speaker 5: would be shocked at how many of the pills you've
Speaker 5: taken from the real medicine part of the pharmacy didn't
Speaker 5: actually do anything. Likewise, when I used to go to
Speaker 5: the doctor for flu, cold, sin of symptoms, they would
Speaker 5: give me an antibiotic. Antibiotics don't do anything against a virus.
Speaker 5: But the doctors know you will be mad if you
Speaker 5: don't walk out of there with something that's a placebo.
Speaker 5: We waste a lot of antibiotics on as the placebo effect.
Speaker 5: It works, It will work, but it worked because you
Speaker 5: were going to get better anyway.
Speaker 1: And they're also making the bacteria stronger and more ready
Speaker 1: for a.
Speaker 2: Back, like the bacteria thunderdome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2: The headache thing is really interesting because I've recently discovered
Speaker 2: this technique for headaches where it's like you think to yourself,
Speaker 2: like where is my headache? And then you ask yourself
Speaker 2: weird questions like what color is my headache, what shape
Speaker 2: is my headache? What flavor is my headache? And like
Speaker 2: you're like really focusing on your headache, and you're supposed
Speaker 2: to like actually answer those questions. As silly as they sound,
Speaker 2: you're supposed to imagine a shape for it, imagine what
Speaker 2: color it is, and it actually is fairly effective for
Speaker 2: me when I have, like not for a really powerful headache,
Speaker 2: but like you know, like a minor headache. And I
Speaker 2: think it's interesting because like part of it could be
Speaker 2: like your body's relaxing more because you're focused on a task.
Speaker 2: That's like not it's not a stressful thing to try
Speaker 2: to think about shapes and colors. It's also like making
Speaker 2: you kind of like think about your head in a
Speaker 2: weird way. It's very strange. It's super weird that it works,
Speaker 2: but it does actually work for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's super interesting. Yeah, I think like the
Speaker 1: thing that I ultimately the conclusion I ultimately came to
Speaker 1: from doing the research on this, and we'll get more
Speaker 1: into it as we go, but is that like there's
Speaker 1: just this massive like placebo is only a tiny portion
Speaker 1: of a much larger field that connects like what is
Speaker 1: like meaning and like what either social meaning or like
Speaker 1: personal meaning and like just language with like what is
Speaker 1: happening inside our body? And so it's yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know that the study that was like the placebo isn't real,
Speaker 1: the like I take the point that there's a reversion
Speaker 1: to the mean, But I do think that there's also
Speaker 1: something that is realer than common understanding when you say placebo, like,
Speaker 1: there's something realer than what happens in at least my mind,
Speaker 1: that happens inside the body during a placebo effect. But
Speaker 1: we will get into that. But so what is We
Speaker 1: also like to ask our guess, what's something you think
Speaker 1: is overrated.
Speaker 5: That's is not related to this subject. But I would
Speaker 5: say just the concept of streaming media because, for example,
Speaker 5: I decided I was going to go back and watch
Speaker 5: the show Westworld on HBO because I thought maybe I
Speaker 5: had judged it too harshly, maybe there's too much conversation
Speaker 5: around it, and found and found that it is gone
Speaker 5: from hbox. They when they canceled it, they pulled it
Speaker 5: from the library. So now if you want to watch it,
Speaker 5: you have to go pay for it, either episode by
Speaker 5: episode or by a season. To buy all four seasons
Speaker 5: is one hundred dollars. It's twenty five bucks a season.
Speaker 5: So to give you an idea of how skewed the
Speaker 5: streaming business model was, which is obviously this is relevant
Speaker 5: because of the strikes and the actors and writers all
Speaker 5: trying to get new deals, and you have all the
Speaker 5: studios saying, well, our streaming services are losing billions with
Speaker 5: what money? They're losing billions because they set up a bad,
Speaker 5: intentionally bad business model that basically rendered physical media all
Speaker 5: but obsolete and what turned out to be a very
Speaker 5: bad deal for consumers because they are not going to
Speaker 5: keep these libraries. Your subscription to HBO doesn't guarantee you
Speaker 5: any access to anything that they choose to pull next week.
Speaker 5: And it's yeah, but that's what dispute was about.
Speaker 2: There was some series called Willow. I never watched it,
Speaker 2: but apparently they like released it and then completely obliterated it,
Speaker 2: like memory hold it after like a month.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was just it was it was wiped from the
Speaker 2: face of the earth. Everyone who had watched it had
Speaker 2: their memories pulled from their brains.
Speaker 1: They were actually put in prison, right, Yeah, we're made
Speaker 1: to forced to undergo oh horrifying psychological.
Speaker 2: They were lobottomized.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Willow being the show that was like an expansion
Speaker 1: of the Willow cinematic.
Speaker 2: Universe, right right, exactly, the w w C which we
Speaker 2: were all, yeah, we were looking for so what is
Speaker 2: something you think is underrated?
Speaker 5: Jason, I'm going to say just physical media, which, by
Speaker 5: the way, I don't own any DVDs or Blu rays
Speaker 5: any what ones I had I gave away. But when
Speaker 5: Netflix had their DVD rental program, they had one hundred
Speaker 5: thousand titles they rent they mailed to people. Netflix streaming
Speaker 5: service has about six thousand. Yeah, so they lost ninety
Speaker 5: four percent of their library for this little incremental gain
Speaker 5: inconvenience of well, what's on the man? I just set
Speaker 5: in my chair and turn on. It's like you gave
Speaker 5: up ninety four percent of your access for not having
Speaker 5: to deal with a disk. I find that fascinating. But
Speaker 5: that business model, the move from like physical media to
Speaker 5: streaming has been bad in almost every possible way, except
Speaker 5: for the frequency with which you have to get up
Speaker 5: out of your chair to change the disk in the machine,
Speaker 5: which we will now not tolerate doing, never will. I
Speaker 5: will be damned if I'm going to walk all the
Speaker 5: way across the room and put a thing inside the thing.
Speaker 5: I want to be able to pull up the show
Speaker 5: with my remote from my chair, and for that I
Speaker 5: will lose I will lose everything, Right, do you.
Speaker 2: Remember the smell of VHS tapes because like the smell good.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: Smell burning dust is what I always assumed it was
Speaker 1: burning being heated.
Speaker 2: It smelled good enough that I think it killed some
Speaker 2: brain cells. But yeah, that was I do miss sort
Speaker 2: of just the mechanical sounds too. That came with, like
Speaker 2: you pop in a VHS and then you hear it
Speaker 2: working and doing the like, and then it's it's it's
Speaker 2: it's excitement. It's a you know, foreplay to be moving
Speaker 2: watching experience.
Speaker 5: There was also that moment when you started to feed
Speaker 5: the tape in and the machine would grab it from
Speaker 5: you and pull it the rest away in. Yeah, that
Speaker 5: was always great because the machine's like, no, I've gotten
Speaker 5: in charge.
Speaker 2: Now let me handle this for you.
Speaker 1: This is no longer your problem. But it is a
Speaker 1: little terrifying. It's like, what the fuck what's going on
Speaker 1: in there?
Speaker 2: So we need we need like robots whose job is
Speaker 2: specifically to get a VHS tape and pop it in
Speaker 2: for us, and that'll be the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, because we don't we don't like that
Speaker 1: out of control feeling of having the tape taken from us,
Speaker 1: like they've also gotten rid of the ATM machines that
Speaker 1: like pull your card in also, so maybe that's we're
Speaker 1: all just trying to avoid the feeling of like a
Speaker 1: mechanical object being like I get this from here. It
Speaker 1: is wild, Like I I guess I hadn't even really
Speaker 1: thought about the fact that there you could watch anything
Speaker 1: on on like when you had the Netflix DVD service,
Speaker 1: you could watch anything you want like that. That there
Speaker 1: wasn't like a, oh, does Netflix have this, or does
Speaker 1: like where where do I look for this? It was
Speaker 1: is just assumed basically that they were going to have
Speaker 1: almost anything that you wanted. But we've like slowly had
Speaker 1: that taken away from us, and and now it's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like now every time I google something,
Speaker 1: they're like, you be Youber has this if you want
Speaker 1: to like start your free trial for you bur and
Speaker 1: like get some ads from the Czech Republic in the
Speaker 1: middle of like this Michael Mann film that you want
Speaker 1: to watch.
Speaker 2: Like you were an actual one of them.
Speaker 1: Or no, I think it's a I think there's like
Speaker 1: voododoo to.
Speaker 5: Be verb yeah verbo, or that I think verbo is
Speaker 5: a vacation rental.
Speaker 1: Yeah verbos yeah, but see, this is this is the problem.
Speaker 5: Once upon a time you had cable channels that the
Speaker 5: word meant what it was like, this is classic movies
Speaker 5: turned classic movies like Boom.
Speaker 2: You know what you're getting that history channel.
Speaker 1: A right, Yeah, nope, it's free V. That's as close
Speaker 1: as we get to like it having a meaning, And
Speaker 1: that doesn't even really make sense. And even then, I
Speaker 1: don't know what which part is free? Is it that
Speaker 1: it's ad free or it has ads in therefore the
Speaker 1: content it's free? Yeah, I don't know. Nobody knows.
Speaker 2: Nobody can't.
Speaker 1: You can't find that out.
Speaker 7: Jason, if you're interested. The way you get around that
Speaker 7: is by having a flex server. Are you familiar with that?
Speaker 5: I have seen people on Twitter every time I bring
Speaker 5: this up. Tell me, Yeah, you can get a plex
Speaker 5: server and then you can put all of your physical
Speaker 5: media on there, and then it just looks the interface
Speaker 5: I guess looks just like a streaming service, right, like
Speaker 5: you can just take your movie.
Speaker 7: Yeah, my dad has like eighty thousand movies on his
Speaker 7: that will never go away, just so you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: See, if I and if I had any sense, I
Speaker 5: would have kept my old DV library because I used
Speaker 5: to have a bunch like everybody, you know, in the
Speaker 5: two thousands, I had shelves of DVDs. I had entire
Speaker 5: shows on there that I love that now, I you know,
Speaker 5: but again, I gave all that stuff away because it's like, nah,
Speaker 5: I'm not a boomer. Yeah, I'm I'm a modern man
Speaker 5: with you know, I'm not doing things the old way.
Speaker 7: Yeah, as a group of people who send him movies
Speaker 7: like the like they upload them themselves. They have a
Speaker 7: physical copy and they just give it.
Speaker 5: And the quality is higher. Like people don't realize that,
Speaker 5: Like Netflix doesn't broadcast in blubray quality. It's even what
Speaker 5: they're calling four K. They're not streaming. It's not the
Speaker 5: way it is off of a physical disk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, and with like the internet provider, good luck,
Speaker 2: Like even if it is a high quality stream, like
Speaker 2: good luck getting that without it stopping every like half hour.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that'd be like a twenty five gigabyte file. They're
Speaker 5: not going to stream that in real time. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I personally like the image quality of my movies
Speaker 1: to look like they've been water damaged in some way,
Speaker 1: So that's actually what I'm looking for. But I can
Speaker 1: see how people who want high fidelity could I like
Speaker 1: it by that.
Speaker 2: I like it when it freezes and other actors face
Speaker 2: emerges from the face as a frozen actor. That's always
Speaker 2: a cool effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll
Speaker 1: come back and we'll talk placebos.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 1: And so as we as we started talking about the
Speaker 1: placebo effect again, you know that there was I think, Jason,
Speaker 1: I saw you tweet about the congestion medication, and I
Speaker 1: saw somebody else tweet about how like a lot of
Speaker 1: the studies that assumed the placebo effect was real, we're
Speaker 1: just ignoring reversion to the mean, like you talked about
Speaker 1: like it you know, you will not Your body will
Speaker 1: naturally get better on its own. And so when people
Speaker 1: are responding well to a sugar pill, it might just
Speaker 1: be that they are responding well period, because the human
Speaker 1: body as good at healing itself. But I so the
Speaker 1: thing I've been thinking a lot about, like sort of
Speaker 1: this bridge between body and mind in like the past
Speaker 1: few years with regards to the Havana syndrome, because I
Speaker 1: think I was thinking a lot about the stuff we
Speaker 1: had covered before with placebo effect when when I was
Speaker 1: like kind of going through trying to understand what had
Speaker 1: happened and like how these people were having the experience
Speaker 1: that they were having, which was that they felt like
Speaker 1: they were physically being attacked by like a sound wave
Speaker 1: ray that left them debilitated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember this. I remember being very skeptical on
Speaker 2: the like onset of this story because I couldn't think
Speaker 2: of a ray that would cause such a thing that
Speaker 2: would have no physical signs. But there it's not like
Speaker 2: they were just kind of making it up for like
Speaker 2: they were. They seemed very much actually suffering, which was
Speaker 2: why I think it caused so much consternation, because it
Speaker 2: wasn't just like a prank. These were like right, you know.
Speaker 1: Those seem to be the two like that. I think
Speaker 1: that is just generally where the two ideas that take hold.
Speaker 1: When you hear like, okay, this sci fi technology that
Speaker 1: scientists say like couldn't really exist is attacking these people.
Speaker 1: You either go with like Okay, everything is what it
Speaker 1: seems there is this sci fi sound ray weapon that
Speaker 1: is attacking people, or these people are making it up.
Speaker 1: And I think, like that's why I was thinking about
Speaker 1: placebos a lot is because it had created this like
Speaker 1: third option, where like the meaning of the story that
Speaker 1: you're telling yourself is actually creating a physical reality, like
Speaker 1: an illness that inside your body that like is a
Speaker 1: as real as like the cold or the flu that.
Speaker 1: But by the way, a fun thing to do is
Speaker 1: to be researching a episode on the plassy bo effect
Speaker 1: and like the mind body connection and also coming down
Speaker 1: with a cold, which I have been for the past
Speaker 1: forty eight hours. Highly recommend it's a real mind fuck.
Speaker 2: I'm actually just coming out of a cold. So maybe
Speaker 2: I placeboed that like an inception onto you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I think the best description of like what
Speaker 1: I ultimately thought was going on and what I suspected
Speaker 1: before I read this was going on is still this
Speaker 1: like New York Times piece from twenty nineteen. So it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like people had it wrong for a long
Speaker 1: time and then only recently somebody got it right, Like
Speaker 1: this article was written, explained what it was, and then
Speaker 1: people continued on being like, so what are we going
Speaker 1: to do about the Savannah syndrome story? But I just
Speaker 1: want to read this, So they basically say it's a
Speaker 1: functional disorder. It's this meaning based experience that people are
Speaker 1: having where they actually feel the symptoms. The symptoms are real,
Speaker 1: it's just it is happening neurologically. It is not happening
Speaker 1: because they have been physically attacked, and so in the
Speaker 1: article they say for all their mystery. Functional disorders are
Speaker 1: not diagnosed simply after eliminating every possible normal disorder that
Speaker 1: might be causing a patient symptoms. Rather, neurologists look for
Speaker 1: signs and symptoms that are inconsistent, varying even during the
Speaker 1: course of an examination, and incongruent with what they expect
Speaker 1: to see in known objective disorders caused by physical injury
Speaker 1: or illness. One of the most remarkable aspects of the
Speaker 1: diplomat's illnesses the people who are suffering from Havana syndrome
Speaker 1: is that even if all of them experienced an actual
Speaker 1: blow to the head shortly before their symptoms appeared, which
Speaker 1: none of them did, most should have fully recovered in
Speaker 1: a matter of days, weeks, or months, as is standard
Speaker 1: following a minor head injury. Instead, many of them experience
Speaker 1: symptoms that remain steady or worse into over a period
Speaker 1: of months, and some continue to suffer chronic perhaps lifelong symptoms.
Speaker 1: So basically, if they'd gotten hit in the head with
Speaker 1: a bag of rocks or like a sonic weapon, as
Speaker 1: they claimed, they would have healed along a predictable timeline
Speaker 1: because the body is really good at healing itself, because
Speaker 1: it's a machine that is like designed to do that
Speaker 1: like over millions of years, and unless the problem is
Speaker 1: in the mind, in which case it gets complicated and
Speaker 1: it kind of it can linger longer than that.
Speaker 2: But I mean, someone might respond that the Cuban death
Speaker 2: ray just like put some kind of undetectable cancer inside
Speaker 2: their brain or some sort of like thing that is
Speaker 2: a chronic condition. But yeah, but they didn't find anything
Speaker 2: in MRI scans that would suggest any kind of like
Speaker 2: structural abnormality in the brain, right.
Speaker 1: They did find like an increasing gray mat like this.
Speaker 1: This story also like made me you know, I've seen
Speaker 1: this elsewhere where. It's like brain scans. Can you can
Speaker 1: get a lot of different interpretations out of brain scans. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a big story after this one came out that
Speaker 1: was like they say, there's an increased gray matter, so
Speaker 1: they were attacked, And everyone I saw was like, that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Speaker 2: Well, right, because the brain. Like also like if it's
Speaker 2: increased activity in parts of the brain that you're detecting,
Speaker 2: that is because your brain is your mind, and if
Speaker 2: you are having a psychological issue, that will actually affect
Speaker 2: your brain's functioning. So it's like your brain, your brain
Speaker 2: and mind is an organ. So it's it's kind of
Speaker 2: it's a weird thing to think about. But even though
Speaker 2: our mind feels very like non physical, very esoteric, it
Speaker 2: is a physical organ. So if your mind has some issue, right,
Speaker 2: like you have some kind of psychological issue, that is
Speaker 2: an issue with the organ that is your brain. So
Speaker 2: you will see things on scans potentially, like if you
Speaker 2: say you have depression or some other sort of psychological issue,
Speaker 2: like you would actually see evidence of that potentially, not always,
Speaker 2: but potentially you would see the functioning of the brain
Speaker 2: being different in scans.
Speaker 1: That gets to the heart of.
Speaker 5: The issue because we have many, many, many things in
Speaker 5: society that function the way Havana syndrome does. You have
Speaker 5: people who claim that they are allergic to Wi FI
Speaker 5: or five G and they can show where they break
Speaker 5: out and hide so or they have nervous disorder, they
Speaker 5: have tremors in their hands or headaches or whatever. And
Speaker 5: again we will our habit to say walts just all
Speaker 5: in their head. It's hard to overstate that. Like you said,
Speaker 5: they're not faking for attention, the same as people during
Speaker 5: witch hunts swore that the local witch cursed them, and
Speaker 5: ever since the witch gave them a dirty look, they've
Speaker 5: had I can't think straight, I can't sleep.
Speaker 1: I did da da da.
Speaker 5: It's like their symptoms are real, witchcraft is not. And
Speaker 5: I think the Western idea of the mind being a
Speaker 5: mystical thing that exists separate from the body, like in
Speaker 5: our body switching movies, where you're somehow two people's minds switched,
Speaker 5: but you're in somebody else's body. It's like, well, if
Speaker 5: you're if you went.
Speaker 2: Into someone else philosophy, yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, if you went into somebody else's brain, you
Speaker 5: would just be them. You wouldn't perceive any switch that
Speaker 5: happened because it's all it's all there, like it's just
Speaker 5: an organ. So I think that actually screws up the
Speaker 5: way we think of a lot of health conditions because
Speaker 5: if you say, well, it's just all on your head,
Speaker 5: it's like, well, you're saying there's magic occurring that somehow
Speaker 5: my mind can magic make me break out in hives.
Speaker 5: It's like, well, no, your brain's just another organ your
Speaker 5: body releasing whatever chemicals or hormones or whatever that cause
Speaker 5: you to break out or change color or become inflamed.
Speaker 5: It's all just a mechanism. It's gears. It's so it's
Speaker 5: like what you're saying, my mere thoughts can cause my
Speaker 5: body to do something weird. It's like, well, yeah, I
Speaker 5: have irritable vowel syndrome that we treat with an anti
Speaker 5: anxiety medication. There's no it's like, oh, so you're you
Speaker 5: tricked yourself into pooping your pants. It's like, no, your
Speaker 5: gut produces serotonin too. It's it's all part of that.
Speaker 5: That mechanism. You regulate serotonin, you're also going to regulate
Speaker 5: your digestion. There's a reason you feel anxiety in your gut.
Speaker 5: It's not it's not magic. It's just it's all just
Speaker 5: nerves and my body. When I aim under a certain
Speaker 5: amount of stress, my body takes blood flow away from
Speaker 5: the digestion and it doesn't digest very well. That's it,
Speaker 5: but trying to fix it is extremely difficult in science,
Speaker 5: anyone who's ever gone to the doctor for something like this,
Speaker 5: some sort of physical condition caused by they think anxiety
Speaker 5: or stress or whatever. It is a frustrating process because
Speaker 5: they do seem to just be throwing pills at you,
Speaker 5: and they do seem to be trying placebos, because you
Speaker 5: will run into people say, well, I've got I found
Speaker 5: this cinnamon t that is just it cures my ibs
Speaker 5: like nothing else. The thing is, it probably does, and
Speaker 5: it's not magic. It's not you know, and the same thing,
Speaker 5: this is terrible, treacherous territory, but what he prayed for
Speaker 5: me and that cured my ibs. I personally, my belief
Speaker 5: is it's the same thing that the belief that you did.
Speaker 5: You took action and you did something cured it. It's
Speaker 5: not magic. And I if you stop thinking of the
Speaker 5: mind as magical, this stuff makes much much more sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that the brain gut connection is incredibly strong.
Speaker 2: Like you have neural type cells actually like in your gut,
Speaker 2: and that sort of the relay between your gut and
Speaker 2: your brain is very very strong. It's like why when
Speaker 2: you get nauseous for some reason, you might feel anxious
Speaker 2: and then visa versa. So it's like maybe you have
Speaker 2: nausea for some reason, Like you have food poisoning, right,
Speaker 2: and it starts in your gut, You're gonna feel anxious
Speaker 2: from the nausea. It's going to cause this very strong
Speaker 2: reaction in your brain of like, oh my god, what
Speaker 2: is wrong? Like when I got food poisoning, I had
Speaker 2: a huge panic attack because I thought I was dying,
Speaker 2: and it was just because I had really bad nausea.
Speaker 2: And then vice versa. And when you're anxious, you can
Speaker 2: have very severe gut problems. And it's not like it's
Speaker 2: like you have the physical evidence, right, Like it's not
Speaker 2: that diarrhea is imaginary, it's real diarrhea, but it is
Speaker 2: that your brain is actually causing your gut not to
Speaker 2: function properly, and then you get diarrhea. So it's like
Speaker 2: it is an organ your brain. The organ is causing
Speaker 2: dysfunction in your gut, which it has a very strong
Speaker 2: connection with and then you know, voila diarrhea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some diarrhea is imaginary, but that's like just
Speaker 1: based in my mind. And we've talked about how I
Speaker 1: should stop talking about that on the show. This sort
Speaker 1: of materialist idea that like a medication is something that causes.
Speaker 7: Jason, if you're interested, The way you get around that
Speaker 7: is by having a flex server. Are you familiar with that?
Speaker 5: I have seen people on Twitter every time I bring
Speaker 5: this up, tell me, Yeah, you can get a plex
Speaker 5: server and then you can put all of your physical
Speaker 5: media on there, and then it just looks the interface
Speaker 5: I guess looks just like a streaming service, right, like
Speaker 5: you can just take your movie.
Speaker 7: Yeah, my dad has like eighty thousand movies on his
Speaker 7: that will never go away.
Speaker 5: Just yeah. See, if I, if I had any sense,
Speaker 5: I would have kept my old dv library because I
Speaker 5: used to have a bunch everybody, you know, in the
Speaker 5: two thousands, I had shelves of DVDs. I had entire
Speaker 5: shows on there that I love that now I you know,
Speaker 5: but again I gave all that stuff away because it's like, nah,
Speaker 5: I'm not a boomer. Yeah, I'm I'm a modern man
Speaker 5: with you know, I'm not doing things the old way.
Speaker 7: Yeah, as a group of people who send him movies
Speaker 7: like the like they upload them themselves. They have a
Speaker 7: physical copy and they just give it a duplicates of it.
Speaker 5: And the quality is higher. Like people don't realize that,
Speaker 5: like Netflix doesn't broadcast in blubray quality. It's even what
Speaker 5: they're calling four K. They're not streaming. It's not the
Speaker 5: way it is off of a physical disc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, and with like the internet provider, good luck,
Speaker 2: Like even if it is a high quality stream, like,
Speaker 2: good luck getting that without it stopping every like half hour.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that'd be like a twenty five gigabyte file. They're
Speaker 5: not going to stream that in real time.
Speaker 4: It doesn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I personally like the image quality of my movies
Speaker 1: to look like they've been water damaged in some way.
Speaker 1: So that's actually what I'm looking for. But I can
Speaker 1: see how people who want high fidelity could.
Speaker 2: I like it. I like it when it freezes and
Speaker 2: another actor's face emerges from the face as a frozen actor.
Speaker 2: That's always a cool effect.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: A chemical to go into your body and that chemical
Speaker 1: interacts with the chemicals that are already there to make
Speaker 1: you better or make you feel different in psychoactive drugs
Speaker 1: like like that That's how I've I came to think about,
Speaker 1: like when I thought about medicine or like the medical world,
Speaker 1: Like that's totally what I thought of, And I think
Speaker 1: that that is somewhat unique to our modern condition. Like
Speaker 1: what one of the articles that I read for this
Speaker 1: was talking about how Ben Franklin was like really fascinated
Speaker 1: by the subject of placebos, and he said, like one
Speaker 1: of the best doctors he knew told him that he
Speaker 1: like handed out bread pills and like food colored water
Speaker 1: much more than real medicine. But like not not to
Speaker 1: like prank people, like we said it was because he
Speaker 1: was a good doctor and was able like knew that
Speaker 1: there was a healing component to the belief that people held,
Speaker 1: and that the meaning that getting a medicine from a
Speaker 1: doctor who actually you know, has a career's worth of
Speaker 1: bedside manner and like confidence and reassurance like built up
Speaker 1: and like has a gift for this sort of specific
Speaker 1: interpersonal human connection. Like that all of that working together
Speaker 1: with a bread pill that allows you to like focus
Speaker 1: all of all of that meaning into something and like
Speaker 1: take it inside your body. Like that that works. But
Speaker 1: I feel like in the modern world, if a doctor
Speaker 1: went on a show and was like, yeah, I'm giving
Speaker 1: all these people bread pills and securing them like they
Speaker 1: would be you know, people would demand their medical license
Speaker 1: be taken away.
Speaker 2: Being bread pilled sounds like some kind of weird Internet
Speaker 2: ideology like yeah, can be red pilled, but you can
Speaker 2: be bread pilled, where you're like bread is better than
Speaker 2: dating people.
Speaker 1: It kind of is in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, god, bread is so good. I mean
Speaker 2: it's interesting because like it we're talking both about the
Speaker 2: placebo effect, which is like the bread pill, uh, and
Speaker 2: then the the like the Cuban brain wave is a
Speaker 2: no ciebo, so like no cebo is a type isn't
Speaker 2: a specifically an effect where it's actually negative, So like
Speaker 2: it's been a treatment that should have no effect actually
Speaker 2: has a negative effect, or an imagined treatment or something
Speaker 2: has an effect on someone, so like they've actually there's
Speaker 2: actually been research on the no cebo effect in terms
Speaker 2: of like when people take say a sugar pill or
Speaker 2: a dummy pill when they're testing medications, Like if they're
Speaker 2: told it has a specific side effect, there's a good
Speaker 2: chance they're going to actually feel that side effect. That recently,
Speaker 2: I mean somewhat recently, with like testing the COVID vaccine,
Speaker 2: there was like a review of the literature that found
Speaker 2: that like the no sebo effect of the sham covid vaccine.
Speaker 2: So this was like this was just essentially saline in
Speaker 2: a vaccine, Like over seventy percent of these participants, Like
Speaker 2: the negative reaction to the vaccine was accounted for by
Speaker 2: the no sebo effect for the sham vaccine. So a
Speaker 2: bunch of people were like, oh, yeah, I have my
Speaker 2: arms sore, like I feel bad, and it was after
Speaker 2: they got a completely fake inert COVID vaccine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've seen very dramatic videos of people show off
Speaker 1: their horrifying symptoms from what they thought was the vaccine.
Speaker 1: And we've seen social contagion of like people with eye twitches,
Speaker 1: like even before there was the vaccine conspiracy theory of
Speaker 1: like young people on TikTok like having weird twitchy reactions
Speaker 1: and like claiming, you know, not not really knowing where
Speaker 1: it was from. Not not as part of like some
Speaker 1: QAnon conspiracy, but just they're like, social contagion is real,
Speaker 1: and yeah, there's a long, long history of it. All right,
Speaker 1: let's say, let's take another quick break and we'll come
Speaker 1: back and finish this out. And we're back, and just
Speaker 1: a few things I wanted to hit, So like that,
Speaker 1: there is this one experiment where they figured out people
Speaker 1: who were particularly susceptible to placebos, and they then like
Speaker 1: during the course of a experiment, gave them a thing
Speaker 1: that like blocked the opioid receptors in the brain, and
Speaker 1: the placebo effect cut off, which means that's so cool.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's that's super weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird, but it's basically it makes sense when
Speaker 1: you realize when you think about the fact that, like
Speaker 1: the brain is like its own pharmacy. It's creating the dopamine.
Speaker 1: You know, the like add medication and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: or you know, they're illegal drugs that cause your brain
Speaker 1: to like make more dopamine that like make you feel
Speaker 1: even better. But your brain is creating its own dopamine
Speaker 1: on its own schedule.
Speaker 2: My brain is my favorite dealer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your brain is its own like drug dealer slash pharmacist.
Speaker 1: And you know that then doctors get involved when like
Speaker 1: it's not doing the job that it needs to do.
Speaker 1: But you know that what is happening in like that,
Speaker 1: This study would suggest that what's happening when people experience
Speaker 1: the placebo effect is that your brain is producing the
Speaker 1: actual chemical that the medication is supposed to be producing.
Speaker 1: It just didn't need the medication to actually be in
Speaker 1: the pill to get you to to get the brain
Speaker 1: to do the thing that your body kind of knows
Speaker 1: it needs in that moment. So I mean, from that perspective,
Speaker 1: like being susceptible to placebo is such is such an
Speaker 1: amazing like superpower where it's just like, oh, yeah, my
Speaker 1: body and brain can just like make these medications for.
Speaker 2: Me, right, And it's not I think it's important to
Speaker 2: note it's not like gullibility. It being able to get
Speaker 2: the effect of a placebo is not that like you
Speaker 2: are stupid or gullible. There's like a study on seeing like, oh,
Speaker 2: are people who are easily hypnotized also like susceptible to placebo?
Speaker 2: And there was no connection there either. It just seems
Speaker 2: to be a thing that like affects almost everyone in
Speaker 2: terms of being able to you know, benefit or suffer
Speaker 2: from the placebo or no cebo effect.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we understand. We understand so little of this because
Speaker 5: listen listening to what you guys say, think about how
Speaker 5: difficult it is to study this and how difficult it
Speaker 5: is to set up an effective trial that perfectly filters
Speaker 5: out every possibly confounding thing that could be some form
Speaker 5: of placebo or no cebo effect. This is why our
Speaker 5: mental health medications have barely improved in the last fifty
Speaker 5: years or something like that. It is unbelievably difficult to
Speaker 5: nail down the effectiveness of something like an antidepressantory anti
Speaker 5: anxiety because again, Pacibo's work really well for anxiety. When
Speaker 5: you have somebody telling you, well, my anti anxiety pills,
Speaker 5: I go work in my garden, they're not lying. Like
Speaker 5: repetitive motion, exercise, sunlight. Those are physical things that affect
Speaker 5: all of those biological reactions to anxiety. They're not being
Speaker 5: a hippie. And you know, I don't you sound like
Speaker 5: a scientologist. We start ranting about how ineffective these medications are,
Speaker 5: But the truth is you get about seventy five percent
Speaker 5: of the same effect from a pasebo for mild depression,
Speaker 5: because of course you do it. You know, if you've
Speaker 5: got some whatever fancy tea that's supposed to really you know,
Speaker 5: calm you down, just the ceremony of making it and
Speaker 5: give you a loaner, the ceremony of making it, sitting down,
Speaker 5: drinking something hot, drinking it slowly. There's yeah, that can
Speaker 5: have most of the effect of a medication without the
Speaker 5: terrible side of the issue is that is such an
Speaker 5: incredibly dangerous thing for people to hear because some people
Speaker 5: who have very severe symptoms who definitely need prescription medication,
Speaker 5: they tend to be the ones who's like, see, I
Speaker 5: don't need that voodoo. It is incredibly difficult to nail
Speaker 5: down the effectiveness of any of these because, as you
Speaker 5: just said, like that, we even now have doubts about
Speaker 5: exactly what's placebo and what's just no treatment at all.
Speaker 5: Depression is just like a lot of those things we
Speaker 5: mentioned earlier. It cats better and think about all the
Speaker 5: factors in a person's life that can improve their mood.
Speaker 5: It's like, we have three months, three months on these
Speaker 5: sugar pills, and my depression went away. Also, I got
Speaker 5: a different job and the boss that terrorized me is
Speaker 5: no longer in my life. And also my chronic knee
Speaker 5: injury stopped hurting, so I didn't have the chronic pain
Speaker 5: weighing on me. It's like, which of the four million
Speaker 5: factors in a human life caused your depression to go away?
Speaker 5: And us people who to sound smart, who like to say, well,
Speaker 5: it's all just brain chemicals it's all just serotonin or
Speaker 5: whatever that is that is boiling it down. That's simplifying
Speaker 5: it so much as to make it wrong, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like it's true that it's like all
Speaker 2: brain stuff, but your brain responds very well to your environment.
Speaker 2: So environmental things are going to have a massive effect
Speaker 2: on your brain. Like you know, your general habits, what
Speaker 2: your life is like, what you're eating, what you're doing,
Speaker 2: what you're thinking. All these things just kind of like
Speaker 2: form this like cyclone that can really affect your state
Speaker 2: of mind. It's also really difficult with the studies on
Speaker 2: medication for like say, depression, anxiety, et cetera, because the
Speaker 2: like everyone's brain is very different, so the heterogeneity effects
Speaker 2: in these studies are just very hard to compensate for.
Speaker 2: Like a medication that works really well for someone may
Speaker 2: not work at all for another person even though they
Speaker 2: both have depression, because one person's depression and another person's depression.
Speaker 2: It's not like a you know, simple like disease. It's
Speaker 2: not like a broken bone where it's like, okay, you
Speaker 2: can kind of like the procedure for healing a broken
Speaker 2: bone for one person another person is generally somewhat similar
Speaker 2: but for something like depression, it's like you have a
Speaker 2: totally different thing going on from one person to the next,
Speaker 2: given how complicated the brain is and how like broad
Speaker 2: spectrum something like depression is in terms of what's causing it,
Speaker 2: what's going on, And I mean the same can be
Speaker 2: said for a lot of like non psychological disorders as well,
Speaker 2: Like there are a lot of diseases where it's like, well,
Speaker 2: treatment for one person seems to work before another person
Speaker 2: does not work at all because their bodies are different
Speaker 2: and their systems are different. So it's like a huge
Speaker 2: challenge in medicine.
Speaker 5: Even if they were genetically the same, which they're not.
Speaker 5: Are their diets different, are their sleep patterns different? Is
Speaker 5: their home life different, is their social lives different? Do
Speaker 5: they have different numbers of friends? All those things can
Speaker 5: impact how your brain works exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, your brain structure changes over time based on
Speaker 2: your environment. It's not like you're born sort of with
Speaker 2: a baby brain and then it goes like it's genetically
Speaker 2: programmed to turn into an adult brain. Like you're born
Speaker 2: with the very plastic brain that responds incredibly sensitively to
Speaker 2: your environment and what happens to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the two examples that jumped out to me this
Speaker 1: time doing the research on the side of like just
Speaker 1: a straightforward plas ebo effect, like this is a pill
Speaker 1: causing you to do causing your body to do a thing.
Speaker 1: It's still like the pill color things is still like
Speaker 1: so mind blowing to me. Like they gave a group
Speaker 1: of medical students two new drugs, one a sedative and
Speaker 1: the other stimulant, and like they were given either one
Speaker 1: or two blue or pink tablets, and the tablets were
Speaker 1: all inert they were sugar pills, but the students' responses
Speaker 1: on a questionnaire indicated the red tablets or pink tablets
Speaker 1: tended to act as stimulants, while the blue ones acted
Speaker 1: as depressants, and two tablets had more effect than one.
Speaker 1: And it's not it doesn't really make sense, but like
Speaker 1: you can't boil it down to anything that is like
Speaker 1: happening other than with like meaning like pink or red
Speaker 1: means like hot or danger, and blue means like cool
Speaker 1: and quiet, and right.
Speaker 2: Blue means cool ranch stritos, Red means flame.
Speaker 1: And hot nacho cheese. Yeah, exactly. And that's why I
Speaker 1: wake up to get wake up in the morning, I
Speaker 1: eat nacho cheese and to go to bed and I
Speaker 1: eat cool ranch.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Giving an example even without an experiment. I know people
Speaker 5: who will drink an espresso or drink an energy drink,
Speaker 5: and while they're drinking it, we'll talk about how wired
Speaker 5: they are, like, oh my.
Speaker 4: Gosh, it's hitting me.
Speaker 5: Well, it takes forty five minutes for caffeine to enter
Speaker 5: the bloodstrein. Yeah, that's you. You drinking the red Bull
Speaker 5: and after two gulps is like, oh my gosh, I
Speaker 5: can feel it hitting me. It's like it's like you
Speaker 5: didn't inject it into your vein. You drink it. It
Speaker 5: has to be absorbed into your system. But that's paceibo effect,
Speaker 5: you know. And if you if you felt it that soon,
Speaker 5: you just told yourself. So think about did you need
Speaker 5: the energy drink at all? If you can talk yourself
Speaker 5: into bouncing off the walls because you thought that, oh
Speaker 5: my gosh, the whole eighty whole milligrams of caffeine has
Speaker 5: slammed into my system, which by the way, is not
Speaker 5: very much. And I personally believe making the can big
Speaker 5: and with a big, loud, stupid name like C four bomb,
Speaker 5: sickle and it's got like a stick a dynamite on it.
Speaker 5: I think that helps the policy. In fact, I think
Speaker 5: you drink a big, bombasty can of something. It's like, man,
Speaker 5: this is gonna hit me like a freight train. I
Speaker 5: think it can have it could be decaf, and I
Speaker 5: think it would hit you mostly the same way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want an energy drink that's just called brain
Speaker 2: bone or juice.
Speaker 1: Your brain is gonna fuck so hard. And then the
Speaker 1: other example that's kind of in the other direction was
Speaker 1: they looked at the cause of death between Chinese Americans
Speaker 1: and randomly selected group of white people in California, and
Speaker 1: it was found that Chinese Americans, but not the white people,
Speaker 1: will die significantly earlier than normal if they have a
Speaker 1: combination of disease and birth year, which Chinese astrology and
Speaker 1: medicine consider ill fated. And so it's you know, Chinese
Speaker 1: Americans whose deaths were attributed to lymphatic cancer and if
Speaker 1: they were born in Earth years and consequently were deemed
Speaker 1: by Chinese medicine like especially susceptible to diseases involving lumps,
Speaker 1: not nodules or tumors, had an average death age like
Speaker 1: four years younger than people who were not born in
Speaker 1: one of those years, and no such you know difference
Speaker 1: existed among the group of white people. So it's just
Speaker 1: and that that was true across Like I don't know
Speaker 1: the ins and outs of what Chinese medicine believes and
Speaker 1: like what the different year meanings are, but like it
Speaker 1: just it feels like very strongly determined by like meaning
Speaker 1: and like the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves
Speaker 1: and that like we like exist within and so I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's I find that one like kind of
Speaker 1: hopeful in a way because like you can I don't know,
Speaker 1: like tell yourself stories and like sort of free yourself
Speaker 1: from some of the stories that we tell ourselves that
Speaker 1: it can be damaging about ourselves. Like like what there
Speaker 1: was also a study where they told people the truth.
Speaker 1: They were like, this is a placebo effect study, and
Speaker 1: like the truth is that like placebo effects have been
Speaker 1: shown to like help people, and like that it had
Speaker 1: clear like positive results just by being honest, which I
Speaker 1: always thought like an important part of the policicibo effect
Speaker 1: would be the lying, but apparently not, which doesn't really
Speaker 1: make sense to me.
Speaker 2: But like, like rituals I think can really have a
Speaker 2: strong effect, like you put the pill in your mouth
Speaker 2: and you swallow the water, and even if you know
Speaker 2: it's a placebo, you've still done the ritual in your body.
Speaker 2: You may still have sort of this like connection to
Speaker 2: the ritual and feeling better. So it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: like if you've ever found like a calming routine, like
Speaker 2: some kind of meditation routine or calming routine that you do,
Speaker 2: like once you sort of get into the typical position
Speaker 2: that you're in, that it's like, well, I start listening
Speaker 2: to music, I sit on the couch or something. Once
Speaker 2: you practice it and do it a bunch, it works better,
Speaker 2: Like meditation or calming yourself down, like works better once
Speaker 2: you've practiced it, because once you start to do it,
Speaker 2: you make the association between like, well, once I when
Speaker 2: I light this candle or listen to this music, I
Speaker 2: start to feel calm. And then it's like, even though
Speaker 2: you know it's not like medicine, yeah, you've come to
Speaker 2: associate the ritual with feeling better, but yeah, with the
Speaker 2: with the that study on like the zodiac or wait
Speaker 2: is it zodiac?
Speaker 1: Yeah, che medicine like that right, It's it makes.
Speaker 2: Me think about when we when someone has a disease
Speaker 2: and they're given a timeframe for like how much longer
Speaker 2: they have to live. I've always had mixed feelings about that, because,
Speaker 2: on one hand, I think it's good right to like
Speaker 2: prepare people for like, hey, you know you have terminal cancer,
Speaker 2: so you might want to like prepare and get your
Speaker 2: affairs in order and all this. But having a time
Speaker 2: frame in a way also seems like you are kind
Speaker 2: of potentially negating any kind of like placebo effect of like,
Speaker 2: well if I can like you know, like maybe this
Speaker 2: thing will kill me eventually, But then if you feel like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm definitely going to die in like a year or
Speaker 2: X months, I wonder if that has an effect on
Speaker 2: like how long you actually have. It's not to say
Speaker 2: that the diagnosis is incorrect or that's something like terminal
Speaker 2: cancer you can just think your way out of, but
Speaker 2: there is something on the margins in terms of like
Speaker 2: how healthy you are and continue to be based on
Speaker 2: your mind frame. Right, So it's like I don't think
Speaker 2: you could beat a terminal diagnosis through some kind of
Speaker 2: placebo effect, but I could imagine your quality of life
Speaker 2: and your lengths of time left could be affected by
Speaker 2: whether you feel completely doomed or not within a certain
Speaker 2: period of time.
Speaker 5: Right, I think you stumbled on a big, big thing
Speaker 5: in our society, which is, for example, to me, it
Speaker 5: is not surprising at all the yoga cures all sorts
Speaker 5: of things. You're stretching, it's you've got you a room
Speaker 5: to see the silent or with white noise or with music.
Speaker 5: It's something you often do in a group where a
Speaker 5: bunch of people all doing something in sync. You know,
Speaker 5: we humans are social animals. That has its own benefit.
Speaker 5: It does not surprise me that that helps cure all
Speaker 5: sorts of things. None of us stretch enough and just.
Speaker 5: And it's also its exertion. You know, it's very strenuous.
Speaker 5: If you've never done yoga before, it will kick your ass.
Speaker 5: You don't. It's not just stretching like it's holding difficult positions.
Speaker 5: But part of yoga is that there's a religion around basically,
Speaker 5: and it's all of this stuff that I know is
Speaker 5: on scientific about Well, this stretch will release any financial
Speaker 5: stress in your life, because financial anxiety tends to store
Speaker 5: in your hips. Or you've got to realign your chakra.
Speaker 5: You've got the mystical spiritual energies and the body. Thetans
Speaker 5: have to be released through your spine. So the question
Speaker 5: is does the mythology make it work better? And once
Speaker 5: you apply it, think about yoga, you think about all
Speaker 5: of the other things in society where we tell people
Speaker 5: a story to get them to behave a certain way
Speaker 5: and the story is not true, but it is effective
Speaker 5: at healing that we're making them healthier. And what are
Speaker 5: the ethics of that? Because, for example, it is my
Speaker 5: understanding that studies has consistently found that placebos work better
Speaker 5: when they are expensive. Yeah, because you don't want to
Speaker 5: feel like you wasted your money. So the ethics of
Speaker 5: selling somebody a powder of ground up shark bones or
Speaker 5: something and this is going to cure you anxiety And
Speaker 5: it's like, well, actually, people don't just buy it once.
Speaker 5: They buy it for years because they swear, they swear
Speaker 5: by it it works. Yeah, I would like to accuse
Speaker 5: those people being thieves, but are they right?
Speaker 2: We should start like making it not like shark bones
Speaker 2: and stuff, because sharks are endangered in some cases and
Speaker 2: it's bad, but like animals that we hate, we should
Speaker 2: make up stories about their bones and blood and stuff
Speaker 2: being good like, hey, ground up mosquitoes are an aphrodisiac
Speaker 2: because like, who cares they kill a bunch of mosquitos,
Speaker 2: or like an invasive species of like you know, like hey,
Speaker 2: the crowd of the crowd of thorns, starfish. You know
Speaker 2: they're invasive, but if you grind them up, it'll give
Speaker 2: you a boner. Like let's let's let's like, let's start
Speaker 2: making shitty animals the ones that we turn into medicine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think a lot of supplements are
Speaker 1: mostly sawdust. By the way, Like when they tell what's
Speaker 1: actually in there, they're like, oh, this is.
Speaker 5: Well, yes, yeah, this is just things like saying because
Speaker 5: it's not regulated, that doesn't have to go through the FDA,
Speaker 5: and because it also doesn't do anything so who hears.
Speaker 1: But if you buy Saint.
Speaker 5: John's Word or Jen Singh or any of that stuff,
Speaker 5: you'll often find that the amount in a pill is
Speaker 5: somewhere between ten percent or four hundred percent of what
Speaker 5: it says in the label because they're not being precise
Speaker 5: about it, because you can't overdose on it because it's
Speaker 5: just just an herber or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also just like medicine is a relatively news science.
Speaker 2: I know we think of it as being very old,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't that long ago that we were like
Speaker 2: cutting holes in people's skulls and thinking that would like
Speaker 2: take the demons out.
Speaker 1: And it did sometimes, and.
Speaker 2: It sometimes trepening, sometimes worked. It's not to say, you know,
Speaker 2: like I don't think any of us well I don't
Speaker 2: want to speak for anyone, but I don't think any
Speaker 2: of us believes that like medicine is bs. Like I think,
Speaker 2: you know, if your doctor is like, hey, you need
Speaker 2: treatment for this thing, you shouldn't be like, yeah, right, jerk,
Speaker 2: like there are like medicine. Modern medicine is pretty incredible
Speaker 2: in terms of how it actually like we have actually
Speaker 2: figured out how certain proteins interlock with other proteins and
Speaker 2: that it affects your body, and that's incredible. But it's
Speaker 2: also I think there's this separation of like, all right,
Speaker 2: here's the real, hard, physical medicine, and then the brain
Speaker 2: the mind stuff, which is just kind of like you know,
Speaker 2: like hippie dippy brain stuff. It's not real. And I
Speaker 2: think that's I think that's a big problem. Like I
Speaker 2: think that a lot of things could be accomplished if
Speaker 2: we kind of didn't have this disconnect between like the
Speaker 2: body's health, the like the body and the brain, and
Speaker 2: this like separation of like, well there's real medicine and
Speaker 2: and there's like you know, like just sort of mind
Speaker 2: over matter, you know, silly stuff. And I think combining
Speaker 2: the power of modern medical advancement and the understanding of
Speaker 2: how the brain impacts the body can help in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, like you know, preventing like over medicalization
Speaker 2: of things, but also treatment of things that do need medicine,
Speaker 2: but could also use like the idea that you know,
Speaker 2: you treat just the thing that's happening in the body
Speaker 2: without addressing sort of the psychological impacts I think is
Speaker 2: kind of limited.
Speaker 5: I also think we have unrealistic expectations of medicine compared
Speaker 5: to where we are. But we think everything should be
Speaker 5: be able to have an instant diagnosis. Here's what it is,
Speaker 5: here's the pill that fixes that. Including things that are
Speaker 5: like well, I'm fatigued all the time. It's like, well,
Speaker 5: what else do you have going on your life? As like, wow,
Speaker 5: I work three jobs and I have a big right
Speaker 5: and I need you to give me a pill that
Speaker 5: will make my fatigue go away or you know this
Speaker 5: is Ask any therapist and they will have the patient.
Speaker 5: It's like, I'm depressed. I need the treatment for depression.
Speaker 5: It's like, oh, when did your depression star Approximately, well,
Speaker 5: when my wife died and then my dog died six
Speaker 5: months later, and then I lost my job because of
Speaker 5: my I was so sad about my wife dying, and
Speaker 5: now I got kicked out of my apartment. And it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: your life is a disaster. You want a pill that well,
Speaker 5: and I think that you know, it's not it's stupid
Speaker 5: to say we have too much faith in science. It
Speaker 5: is unfair to ask a pill to fix that. You
Speaker 5: have a long mountain to climb of getting things back
Speaker 5: in your but your body is telling you, you know, man,
Speaker 5: this sucks. It's not because your brain's producing too much
Speaker 5: of a chemical. It's because your life is a disaster.
Speaker 4: It just is.
Speaker 5: Your life is not as good as it was before,
Speaker 5: so it is part of it is. It's funny because
Speaker 5: you have part of the population who refuses to believe
Speaker 5: in science or vaccines, but then you have another part
Speaker 5: of the population that, for example, thought that the moment
Speaker 5: they invent a vaccine for a disease that are just
Speaker 5: vanishes overnight. It's like the truth is, these are inventions
Speaker 5: by humans. They're not magic. They're miraculous and since compared
Speaker 5: to what we were able to do three hundred years ago.
Speaker 5: But no, sometimes you're going to go to the doctor
Speaker 5: and the doctor's going to say we don't have a
Speaker 5: way to fix this yet, and usually patients do not
Speaker 5: take that as an answer. They demand a to walk
Speaker 5: out of there with a prescription, and lots of times
Speaker 5: they just gave you something to make you go away,
Speaker 5: right because it's like, we don't know how to fix
Speaker 5: this yet. It's just that's the situation.
Speaker 2: I've literally like felt, oh man, I'm so fatigued. Am
Speaker 2: I sick? And then I realized it's nighttime, it's bedtime.
Speaker 2: I have to go to sleep. I'm like, oh god,
Speaker 2: am I coming down with something. It's like, well, no,
Speaker 2: it's midnight, and I should.
Speaker 1: Go to bed this nighttime fatigue disorder.
Speaker 5: And I did the normal thing where I looked at
Speaker 5: my phone for four hours after I went to bed,
Speaker 5: and I woke up the next morning feeling like crap,
Speaker 5: I'm coming down with something.
Speaker 1: That's happened all right, Well, Jason Katie such a pleasure
Speaker 1: having you guys on the show, Jason, Where can people
Speaker 1: find you? Follow you? All that good stuff.
Speaker 5: Then the book that is up for preorder now is
Speaker 5: called Zoe Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia. It's part
Speaker 5: of a sci fi series and the Zoe Ash novels.
Speaker 5: Just look up that title and it will also show
Speaker 5: you the other books in the series if you want
Speaker 5: to read those. I am Jason K. Pargan on TikTok
Speaker 5: and all of the other platforms, including the stupid ones
Speaker 5: that nobody goes to, like the.
Speaker 1: Red You're everywhere amazing. Is there a work of media
Speaker 1: that you've been enjoying?
Speaker 5: Yes, I linked here for you. There's a muscular lumberjack
Speaker 5: on TikTok named Thor Bradley, and he just chops stumps
Speaker 5: for his videos and they get like one hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty million views. He's one of the most famous people
Speaker 5: in the world world apparently. And he's just a very
Speaker 5: muscular man who chops who chops stumps.
Speaker 2: With an axe just like an innuendo chopping stumps. Is
Speaker 2: this some kind of like sex thing that I don't
Speaker 2: know about?
Speaker 5: Oh no, watch the video you'll get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, chopping literal stumps.
Speaker 5: You'll get it immediately. He has he has many female
Speaker 5: fans and uh, but also it's many male fans. And
Speaker 5: there's just a big, muscular, sweaty man who chops wood
Speaker 5: for his videos. And you watch him until he finally
Speaker 5: gets through, you know, chopping the wood, and you feel
Speaker 5: a little bit better.
Speaker 4: He is a hero. Wow.
Speaker 1: It is nice once that once that stump finally chops. Fine,
Speaker 1: when once he finally splits the stump, Oh man, that
Speaker 1: was my favorite part.
Speaker 5: There are entire There are entire movies that I've watched
Speaker 5: that cost two hundred million dollars to film that did
Speaker 5: not provide me as much satisfaction as watching for chop
Speaker 5: his way through that stump.
Speaker 2: It makes me think about what the stump resents.
Speaker 1: I couldn't even begin.
Speaker 5: With Whatever you want, whatever obstacles in your life, if
Speaker 5: you just they keep at it, you can get through them.
Speaker 2: And he's I'm going to say that, I'm going to
Speaker 2: say it represents a sex but a sex but yeah,
Speaker 2: sex but some kind of sex but thing situation.
Speaker 1: Really interesting, take, really interesting read, Katie. Where can people
Speaker 1: find you as their working media you've been enjoying?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I have a podcast on this very
Speaker 2: network called Creature Feature where we talk about animals. I've
Speaker 2: actually had Jason on my show too, so yeah, we
Speaker 2: have good, good discussions about animal behavior and sometimes how
Speaker 2: it relates to human psychology. I just started a TikTok
Speaker 2: it is Katie Golden k A T I E G
Speaker 2: O L D I N. I'm doing some animal content
Speaker 2: on there, a game I play where I have you
Speaker 2: guess what animal noise and animals making it is. I'm
Speaker 2: brand new, I have like no followers, so if you
Speaker 2: check that out, I'd be very grateful. And I think
Speaker 2: I'm Katie Golden on other stuff too. But you know,
Speaker 2: like on the Musk site, which you know is becoming
Speaker 2: less and less usable every day. The media that I
Speaker 2: like is from the Musk site. It is from Twitter
Speaker 2: user pe Moskowitz, who writes for sale baby Shoes Never
Speaker 2: Worn is the saddest story ever told in six words,
Speaker 2: here's a sadder one in four baby died from exploding.
Speaker 4: That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: That story is actually kind of awesome though, unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can find me on the Musk site, Twitter at
Speaker 1: jack Underscore O'Brien and on threads at jack underscore, Oh, underscore, Brian,
Speaker 1: although I don't I haven't checked that in maybe a month.
Speaker 1: Tweet I've been enjoying. I liked p Puck just tweeted
Speaker 1: a collection of cute designs from the distant past, and
Speaker 1: it's just like really cute. Like one of them looks
Speaker 1: like a sad character from Bluie but it's from fourth
Speaker 1: century BC, like a, it's just adorable stuff. I don't know,
Speaker 1: so sometimes I, you know, like for the thinking about history,
Speaker 1: like doctors in history just being like, yeah, here's a
Speaker 1: blue pill that I just died, and like it makes
Speaker 1: you better. Like I tend to think of people from
Speaker 1: history being like stoic people who try to walk off
Speaker 1: a compound fracture and had no joy in their life.
Speaker 1: And this, this collection of cute designs from the past
Speaker 1: made me made me smile warm to my heart a
Speaker 1: little bit. And then I also enjoyed a tweet from
Speaker 1: the writer at Jason K. Pargan, who responded to a
Speaker 1: CNN tweet Say and Bob Barker, the beloved television picture
Speaker 1: who hosted The Prices Right for decades, has died. He
Speaker 1: was ninety nine, and Jason wrote the rumors that he
Speaker 1: was going one hundred and sixty miles per hour at
Speaker 1: the time of his fatal motorcycle accident are not confirmed
Speaker 1: and people should not be spreading them. Same with the
Speaker 1: rumors that he was swinging a flail at other drivers.
Speaker 1: Wait for confirmation. I've enjoyed that. Well done? All right?
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter at daily Zeigeist. We're
Speaker 1: at d daily Zeikeeist on Instagram. We have Facebook fanpage
Speaker 1: and a website Daily zeikeist dot com boy. We post
Speaker 1: our episodes and our footnote but where we link off
Speaker 1: to the information that we talked about in today's episode,
Speaker 1: as well as a song that we think you might enjoy.
Speaker 1: Super producer justin Welcome Back, is there a song that
Speaker 1: you think people might enjoy?
Speaker 7: Yeah, So there's this new artist who just popped up
Speaker 7: on my radar a couple weeks back. She's an amazingly
Speaker 7: talented singer songwriter with a very powerful voice and a
Speaker 7: real knack for writing songs that just get stuck in
Speaker 7: in my head all day. I played this track for
Speaker 7: Miles actually the other day, and he was commenting on
Speaker 7: how she kept finding interesting little paths in the melody
Speaker 7: where she didn't repeat herself too much, and I just
Speaker 7: really respect someone who can bring that kind of talent
Speaker 7: to the table. So this artist goes by the name
Speaker 7: of Annie Tracy, and this track, by far and Away
Speaker 7: is my favorite that I've heard from her so far,
Speaker 7: but all of her tracks are incredible. This one is
Speaker 7: called times It by two and it's got a really
Speaker 7: nice R and B vibe. It builds to something very
Speaker 7: powerful and I loved the message behind it. So this
Speaker 7: song is called times It by Two by Annie Tracy,
Speaker 7: and you can find that song in the footnotes.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, the Day lesaik As is the production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio ap Apple podcast or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. That's going to do it for us
Speaker 1: this morning, back this afternoon to tell you what is trending,
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you all then Bye.