Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: what do you want to happen to your brain when
Speaker 1: you die? Oh? You know what I would really love?
Speaker 1: What's that? I would love if someone would pack it
Speaker 1: away in tupperware and take it on a road trip.
Speaker 1: But only forty years after I'm dead and gone. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: because why not? I mean, my brain might want to
Speaker 1: see the Grand Canyon again, like purple ble tupperware like
Speaker 1: purple you know how they would do the like it.
Speaker 1: I mean I've just heard that back in the day
Speaker 1: when they would do like tple tup aware parties. Like
Speaker 1: one of the whole proofs that you would um that
Speaker 1: you would put the tup aware through is the typeware
Speaker 1: can be burped like somethingn do with like air escaping
Speaker 1: the tupperware where you kind of go like you make
Speaker 1: it open the lid like it's a little mouth and
Speaker 1: it goes somehow. That's very fifties and tomato aspect and
Speaker 1: burping tupperware very fifty stuff, because there's I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a good reason why we're talking about that, right, because
Speaker 1: we were talking about Albert Einstein's brain other. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: not only all the weird things that happened to it
Speaker 1: after it was done being Eidenstein, but also about some
Speaker 1: of the really interesting stuff that we've learned from it
Speaker 1: about everyone's brain, not just about his. Uh and you
Speaker 1: know what was unique about it, because ultimately it wasn't
Speaker 1: like super unique. It was a human brain. It's not
Speaker 1: like they cut open his skull and found like a
Speaker 1: little crab monster that flew here on a saucer and no, no,
Speaker 1: but his long strange journey of his brain actually ended
Speaker 1: up or it is contributing to the conversation about what
Speaker 1: is genius. It really did end up illuminating some aspects
Speaker 1: of Genius four, which is pretty exciting stuff because he
Speaker 1: was undoubtedly a genius. Man was brilliant, no doubt, kind
Speaker 1: of a klutz been in some respects, but but a genius.
Speaker 1: Love the lays, but what are you gonna do? So
Speaker 1: so yeah, he uh, after after he contributed so much
Speaker 1: to the world, Um, he died and he just wanted
Speaker 1: to be left alone in death, right, So yeah, supposedly
Speaker 1: that was his His big request is like, just cremate me,
Speaker 1: throw my ashes somewhere secrets, because I don't want people
Speaker 1: worshiping my grave. I don't want, you know, any didn't want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't deify me. I'm just Einstein. Um let me be.
Speaker 1: So he's seventy six. He dies of a burst ortic aneurysm,
Speaker 1: and the autopsy is performed by a guy, a pathologist
Speaker 1: by the name of Dr Thomas Harvey. Alright, so Harvey
Speaker 1: mostly kept to Einstein's wishes. He you know, he performed
Speaker 1: his duties. But he I guess he's looking down at
Speaker 1: that table and he's looking at that that big skull.
Speaker 1: He wasn't even that big, just that average looking skull
Speaker 1: of Einstein's, and he was like, you know, it is
Speaker 1: a shame to let a good brain go to wet
Speaker 1: and it's not uncommon to remove the brain during an outopsy. Right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, can see how it's sitting out there on
Speaker 1: the table and he just cannot help him. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I see him like about to put it back in.
Speaker 1: It's in his hand, you know, dripping, and he's like,
Speaker 1: this is this is an important I mean, this is
Speaker 1: his all argument is that this is scientifically an important brain.
Speaker 1: This is a specimen that needs to be preserved, not
Speaker 1: turned into ashes and hidden away. I should put this
Speaker 1: in a tuppleware um container and uh and and save
Speaker 1: it and and let allow it to be studied for
Speaker 1: the good of science, for the good of science. Of course,
Speaker 1: Einstein's family did not agree, but nonetheless, the Harvey's heart
Speaker 1: took it. Yeah, and he stuck to his guns, even
Speaker 1: though we got fired for it too, right. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there was apparently later our right rage when it was
Speaker 1: revealed that another person, presumably at the same the same location,
Speaker 1: removed removed Einstein's eyeballs as a souvenir, which is even
Speaker 1: creep here, and I think a little harder to justify. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I've seen those pop up on eBay that
Speaker 1: the eyeball. I can't say, you can't authenticate it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you do wonder what happened to those eyeballs. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is the beginning of what
Speaker 1: would be a very strange journey for Einstein's brain. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Weakened at Bernie's, except with just
Speaker 1: this dude in a brain in a tup aware driving
Speaker 1: around the country at one point and doing stuff like
Speaker 1: apparently Harvey's former neighbor was, uh, you know a famous
Speaker 1: writer of you know, like Naked Lunch and uh, you
Speaker 1: know William pretty well known heroin addict that William S Burrows. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so they went to see Williams Burrows. So it's
Speaker 1: like I'm pictured him like setting around like playing a
Speaker 1: backgammon or something, and it's it's william S Burrows Harvey.
Speaker 1: And then this tup aware with Einstein's brain in it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In just to back up a little bit, Thomas Harvey
Speaker 1: did try to do the right thing in in his
Speaker 1: mind right, and he uh, for for years, for something
Speaker 1: like forty years, he would send a little samples off
Speaker 1: to other neuroscientists because in mayonnaise jars, in mayonnaise jars,
Speaker 1: because he felt like there was something that could be found,
Speaker 1: and for years nothing was found. In fact, people were like,
Speaker 1: you know what, stop sending me this, because you know,
Speaker 1: what we're discovering here is that Einstein's brain doesn't look
Speaker 1: unique to us. In fact, it's a little bit smaller
Speaker 1: than the average brain. Um, they didn't see much that
Speaker 1: would tell them that that this, you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of markers of genius until he sent off in the
Speaker 1: Mannad's Jar, uh, four sections of Einstein's brain, the most
Speaker 1: that he had ever sent off to neuro researcher by
Speaker 1: the name of Marion Diamond. So she requested this and
Speaker 1: three years later, because you know, he's on it, he's
Speaker 1: he's on a road trip. It's going to take him
Speaker 1: a while, that the Manna's Jar arrived. And this was
Speaker 1: a really big moment um for for science really but
Speaker 1: still and we'll get to it um. You know, it
Speaker 1: didn't become abundantly clear at first how significant this brain
Speaker 1: to she was and what Marian Diamond found was so again,
Speaker 1: Einstein was a genius. But what is a genius? What
Speaker 1: makes genius is something you're you're born with the genius
Speaker 1: brain or do you or does it come from like
Speaker 1: having the right genius inspiring uh, you know nursery activity, Yes,
Speaker 1: it acquired or is that inherent? Um? And according to
Speaker 1: neuro researcher Douglas Fields, genius is kind of a grab
Speaker 1: bag of genetic and environmental factors. But then you you
Speaker 1: hear from people like Dean Keith Simonton and he says
Speaker 1: attributes like your mental energy and your openness to new
Speaker 1: experiences is genetic um. It's something you can cultivate, right,
Speaker 1: like the sense of being open to new experiences. But
Speaker 1: if if you're sort of born with this attribute, then
Speaker 1: you're a lot more predisposed to go out and explore
Speaker 1: new ideas and experiences. And we already know that when
Speaker 1: you do that, you're putting your brain through the paces
Speaker 1: and you're effectively increasing the white matter in your brain.
Speaker 1: And turns out white matter is is really important stuff, right,
Speaker 1: and uh, to to to settle exactly what he is
Speaker 1: white matter and what is gray matter, because that we've
Speaker 1: all heard gray matters used to just sort of a
Speaker 1: generic term for your brain, like like to start using
Speaker 1: your gray matter there, exercise your gray matter a little,
Speaker 1: and you never hear white matter, of right, and in
Speaker 1: fact white matter. Some people have made the analogy that
Speaker 1: white matter to scientists has been like dark matter to
Speaker 1: astrophysicists or a cosmologists, and that for so many years
Speaker 1: white matter just was completely unknown. We didn't really know
Speaker 1: what the deal was with white man. We know it's there,
Speaker 1: but we don't really know what it is. Just cottage
Speaker 1: cheese or what. Yeah, no, it turns out, is not
Speaker 1: cottage cheese, yogurt goat cheese. I wonder if the zombie
Speaker 1: would prefer the white or the gray or is it
Speaker 1: like is it like a white and dark meat in turkey? Well,
Speaker 1: it depends, it depends. Um, I've never heard this this
Speaker 1: this post before. That's a good question. Let's let's answer
Speaker 1: that at the end of this podcast. Let's perclate on that.
Speaker 1: Let's let's not steer completely off of course. Another way
Speaker 1: of thinking about gray matter that I ran across was
Speaker 1: a scientific American had had this a bit where they
Speaker 1: were comparing it to soil. They said, the gray matter
Speaker 1: is and this is you know where a mental computation
Speaker 1: takes plays, memories are stored. Um, this cortex is the
Speaker 1: top soil of the brain, all right, densely packed neuron
Speaker 1: all cell bodies, decision making making parts of the nerve
Speaker 1: cells or neurons. Underneath it, you have the bedrock and
Speaker 1: this is the white matter. And this feels nearly half
Speaker 1: the human brain. And and this is a really important
Speaker 1: thing that we'll discuss here in a minute, is that
Speaker 1: this is a far larger percentage than found in the
Speaker 1: brains of other animals like humans are really packing the
Speaker 1: white matter. If they are packing the white matter and
Speaker 1: the Yeah, the white matter consists of bundles of long
Speaker 1: nerve fibers and they conduct electrical signals between nerve cells
Speaker 1: and they connect different parts of the brain together. So
Speaker 1: it's really important to remember that because within the the
Speaker 1: white matter or something called glial cells, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that, but again, Einstein's brain contributed to our understanding
Speaker 1: today which is not even complete of what white matter
Speaker 1: is and what glial cells are and why they're really
Speaker 1: important to of genius or just even intelligent thought. UM.
Speaker 1: I did want to say that that Rex Young he
Speaker 1: is uh he is. I believe that he's a psychologist,
Speaker 1: and he said that highly creative people usually have less
Speaker 1: white matter integrity and less brain tissue in the frontal lobes.
Speaker 1: And this is important to remember because when they looked
Speaker 1: at Einstein's brain, they saw this correlated in there and
Speaker 1: they say this could be UM disinhibiting, causing a down
Speaker 1: regulation of the decision making judging center of the brain.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about this before in a podcast about creativity.
Speaker 1: Is that you kind of have to be able to
Speaker 1: shut off that part of your brain that is saying no. Basically,
Speaker 1: there have been some some situations where the the inhibiting
Speaker 1: section of the brain becomes injured or diseased, and you
Speaker 1: see at what may seem like a burst of creativity,
Speaker 1: but it's really sort of like the creativity is suddenly
Speaker 1: unchecked by this inhibition. So it's not it's like column
Speaker 1: A doesn't increase, but column B decreases. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And so it's important to know that if you have
Speaker 1: you know, white cells packed in one area, that's probably
Speaker 1: pretty great. Like Enstein had a ton of them in
Speaker 1: the area that correlates with mathematics, but not so much
Speaker 1: in the frontal loope. Right, So this allowed him to
Speaker 1: perhaps turn off that part of his brain that might
Speaker 1: have made him feel, uh, you know, preoccupied with other
Speaker 1: thoughts and allowed you know, this other part of his
Speaker 1: brain to to computate at crazy levels, like to to
Speaker 1: to just throw out like sort of genius stereotypes. Like
Speaker 1: if you have like the type of person who forgets
Speaker 1: to sleep or forgets to bathe because they're like so
Speaker 1: into figuring something out, Like that's a situation where the
Speaker 1: natural voice that comes in and says, hey, maybe we
Speaker 1: should put this away in bathe, or maybe we should
Speaker 1: put this away and get back to the other aspects
Speaker 1: of our life that are important, like that that voice
Speaker 1: is diminished. Is the laundry list choice? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And um, this was interesting. Some of this came out
Speaker 1: of a panel that I saw at in New York
Speaker 1: at the World Science Festival and was called the Enigma
Speaker 1: of Genius, and artist Julie Tamer was on the panel
Speaker 1: along with some of the other folks that we were
Speaker 1: talking about today. Described to me who Julie tam she
Speaker 1: is responsible for, like the Lion King, that's probably something
Speaker 1: you know on Broadway that a lot of people know.
Speaker 1: It's incredible puppetry, all of that. Um, what she's interpreted
Speaker 1: a lot of Shakespeare works. Um, Titus is one she
Speaker 1: you know for film and for for Broadway. But she
Speaker 1: has a very unique vision, and so she's gotten the
Speaker 1: MacArthur Genius Grant. She's someone who a lot of people
Speaker 1: feel like have has changed her field. Okay, cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think some of her lanking designs were on display
Speaker 1: at the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts a few years back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and she was sort of saying, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm hesitant to to, you know, call myself a genius
Speaker 1: or even define genius. But what she was saying is
Speaker 1: that in her own creative process, she finds that some
Speaker 1: of her best ideas come from early morning sleep. Um,
Speaker 1: and it was interesting. I think it was Douglas Fields
Speaker 1: who was on the panel, uh that the scientists who said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that is when in the frontal lobes are actually less active.
Speaker 1: So again we're seeing this correlation with frontal lobes disinhibiting
Speaker 1: and the percolating of ideas happening. And we're seeing that
Speaker 1: Einstein had this this low white matter in the frontal lobe.
Speaker 1: So that's why you inevitably have that dream that is
Speaker 1: either so awesome that you wish could keep going or
Speaker 1: it is so horrible that you're like, thank goodness, I
Speaker 1: actually woke up from that, Because that's the time when
Speaker 1: the inhibition shuts down in creativity is more likely to
Speaker 1: just completely slam you with something unbelievable. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: don't have this confirmed, but I have I've heard before
Speaker 1: that you tend to dream a lot more in the
Speaker 1: early morning hours anyway, so it makes sense that you
Speaker 1: know you would remember those dreams. But um, but again
Speaker 1: you know, frontal lobes dimmed down, so you can perhaps
Speaker 1: have your best ideas then, but we should probably get
Speaker 1: back to white matter any fales, right, Um, so sciences
Speaker 1: that you're my my white matter was just causing me
Speaker 1: to just go off and forget the time time table
Speaker 1: here and yeah, you're about to compose a high who
Speaker 1: I can tell it was all about like glial self.
Speaker 1: I saw you notating it there, um And so okay,
Speaker 1: back to Einstein's brain. It's been hanging out for forty
Speaker 1: plus years at this point. He quit traveling in UH
Speaker 1: nine five. He died in nineteen forty I think is
Speaker 1: when excuse me, forty years later he had his big
Speaker 1: road trip ninety six. Yeah, he moved back to New
Speaker 1: Jersey and he surrenders the remaining pieces of Einstein's brain.
Speaker 1: He the pathologist Thomas Hartrty to Dr Elliott Krauss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is because his road trip was was not
Speaker 1: really effective, because what he was attempting to do in
Speaker 1: this road trip is to deliver back the brain to
Speaker 1: Einstein's granddaughter Evelyn, who was not interested in it. So yes,
Speaker 1: it returned back to Princeton um and Thomas Harvey actually
Speaker 1: died in two thousand and seven ruling not even understanding
Speaker 1: you know that, but what he did indirectly did have
Speaker 1: some bearing on how we understand genius today. Well, he
Speaker 1: hung on the brain for that long. I suspect he
Speaker 1: really clung to the notion that what he was doing
Speaker 1: was a good thing. So yeah, absolutely did Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: So many scientists at this point they've tinkered with the
Speaker 1: tissue from mind sciins brain, and most of them have
Speaker 1: done it under a microscope, which isn't telling us a
Speaker 1: whole lot um And historically neuro anatomous found no clues
Speaker 1: to to his his brain right again, his brain to
Speaker 1: the naked eye look like everybody else's because this is
Speaker 1: the thinking to wear white matter. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it's doing, but gray matter. That's where the neurons, the
Speaker 1: neurons are. He doesn't have any more neurons than anybody
Speaker 1: else's what they're what they're looking at. And this is
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, and scientists still believe that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: at this point when they're tinkering around with it. Uh,
Speaker 1: scientists still believe the important work in the brain is
Speaker 1: done by neurons. Right. These are the powerhouses. These are
Speaker 1: the brains of the brain, and they're out there doing
Speaker 1: you know, specific things, um and mary and diamond. Again,
Speaker 1: she observes a disproportionately high number of brain cells. There
Speaker 1: are not neurons. They're there again what they're called glia,
Speaker 1: which means glue. Wow, And we will get to that
Speaker 1: glib right out this quick. Right. That's right. This presentation
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. All right,
Speaker 1: back to the glue, back in the glue goog. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this glue, this glia is found in regions of
Speaker 1: Einstein cerebral cortex, which is involved in complex reasoning, mathematics
Speaker 1: and imagery. And so she's seeing that like highly densely
Speaker 1: packed glial cells. And so this shifts the focus from
Speaker 1: neurons to glia, and it really upends the fundamental understanding
Speaker 1: of how the brain works because heretofore we thought that
Speaker 1: the glial cells were basically just the custodians of the brain.
Speaker 1: They were clearing away like dead matter essentially, which is
Speaker 1: like oversimplification of it um and they didn't seem to
Speaker 1: have any electrical impulses. And it's not entirely crazy to
Speaker 1: the idea to think that the brain isn't like a
Speaker 1: perfect design because I've heard it the you know that
Speaker 1: there might be something there that is kind of useless,
Speaker 1: Like because I've heard it proposed before that the brain
Speaker 1: is kind of like an evolutionary ice cream cone where, um,
Speaker 1: each level of evolution it's just a new scoop of
Speaker 1: ice cream cortex because evolution. Not to personify too much
Speaker 1: is kind of lazy. It's gonna work with what it's got.
Speaker 1: It's and it's not gonna I'm really personifying like nuts here.
Speaker 1: But but but you get the idea. It's the process
Speaker 1: is not going to go back and fine tune everything. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's not ridiculous to think that the
Speaker 1: white matter wouldn't be doing anything and at the time
Speaker 1: that that was flying right and it was okay, the
Speaker 1: white matter it must be helping out the neurotransmitter, right
Speaker 1: and and just keeping things clean. Um. But glial cells
Speaker 1: do communicate, not through synapses, but through gap junctions. That's
Speaker 1: found there's protein channels that connect one cell to one
Speaker 1: another like a spaceship talking at the mother station. Okay,
Speaker 1: but it's non electric communication. Well, they it's they still
Speaker 1: don't know everything about glia yet. UM, So I'm hesitant
Speaker 1: to to say that in any certain terms. UM, but
Speaker 1: I will say that, you know, in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: you had to two or excuse me, new techniques that
Speaker 1: emerged from the development of lasers and personal computers grafted
Speaker 1: it onto microscopes to better visualize the way that glia behave. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then that's when Douglas Fields and other folks began
Speaker 1: to describe the glia as the other brain at work,
Speaker 1: because they were seeing that these brain cells that actually
Speaker 1: were communicating with each other, and they were actually not
Speaker 1: just communicating with each other at eavesdropping on neural cells. Right, So, Uh,
Speaker 1: glia actually sense electrical activity in the neural circuits and
Speaker 1: they can control it. And Field says that if glia
Speaker 1: can do this, and it's not unreasonable to assume that
Speaker 1: they are one of the reasons for the extraordinary capability
Speaker 1: of the human brain, and ignoring them until now might
Speaker 1: help explain why the cellular basis for a genius has
Speaker 1: remained elusive. So what we're talking about here is that
Speaker 1: the glial cells are giving you the sort of supercharged
Speaker 1: um ability to communicate with the rest of your brain.
Speaker 1: So it's really it's sort of like the motor of
Speaker 1: the sort of like the engine of the car. It
Speaker 1: provides the processor speed for yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 1: in fields book The Other Brain, he says, here are
Speaker 1: cells that can build the brain of a fetus, direct
Speaker 1: the connection of its growing axons to wire up the
Speaker 1: nervous system, repair it after it's injured, release neurotoxic or
Speaker 1: neuroprotective factors, plug and unplug synapses, give birth to neowe neurons,
Speaker 1: communicate with the vascular and immune systems, insulate the neuro
Speaker 1: neural lines of communication, and control the speed of impulse
Speaker 1: traffic through them. And some people ask could these cells
Speaker 1: have anything to do with higher brain function? How could
Speaker 1: they possibly not? But it's just how he said it. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's important to us though, because what they've discovered
Speaker 1: is that glial cells are there, they continue to form
Speaker 1: until like greatly to a certain degree, until you're okay,
Speaker 1: So what is this point to that you need to
Speaker 1: use those You need to grow these cells when you
Speaker 1: have a chance. Yes, And that it's not it's not
Speaker 1: just that you are born with a brain and there's
Speaker 1: your brain. It means that your brain is developing rapidly
Speaker 1: still up until you're twenty. But essentially that everything, all
Speaker 1: the experiences, everything that you're doing until h twenty are
Speaker 1: really going to highly determine this sort of brain that
Speaker 1: you have for the rest of your life. But and
Speaker 1: it doesn't even stop there. But we're just saying that
Speaker 1: the bulk of the brain is being developed. Wow, So
Speaker 1: I dare say, are under twenty listeners are doing exactly
Speaker 1: the right thing by listening to this podcast right now? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean this that's the other thing. You know.
Speaker 1: I hope that you're playing chess. I hope that that
Speaker 1: your mathlete um, you know. I hope that that you're
Speaker 1: you're messing around with music, because these are again, all
Speaker 1: these things, all these paces that you're putting your brain through,
Speaker 1: all these new experiences, are really helping to shape what
Speaker 1: your brain is wants to be, yes, yeah, or what
Speaker 1: you wanted to be really yeah, just throw some stuff
Speaker 1: at it, see what sticks and d open to new exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's all about like I mean, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like beliefs. Try believing something new every day,
Speaker 1: you know, learn about learn about something new every day
Speaker 1: to find out about the different system and don't like
Speaker 1: close your mind off to different visions of you know
Speaker 1: what reality consists? Up? That's right, because I mean you
Speaker 1: can actually see it. Um you know this, this sort
Speaker 1: of this transformation take place in your brain. You see
Speaker 1: new pathways being created. How cool? Is that? Cool? Now?
Speaker 1: What happened now? After twenty though it's not necessarily it's
Speaker 1: not closes because I know that the over twenty listeners
Speaker 1: are like, well, great, what am I doing? Waste of
Speaker 1: my time? And they like switch off and go straight
Speaker 1: to I don't know whatever you listen to if you
Speaker 1: don't want to learn anything, Um, I don't. Yeah, just silent.
Speaker 1: That's just like Islands silence. No, I think it's not
Speaker 1: Kardashian Kardashians. Yeah, not to be conclude fused with Kardassians
Speaker 1: right from the start from Star Trek. No, yes, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I was talking with some people the other day,
Speaker 1: what if there was a show meet the Cardassians. Surely
Speaker 1: somebody has done a periody of that already. But anyway,
Speaker 1: for over twenty, white matter over twenty, Yes, hope for
Speaker 1: the future for people with brains that are older than
Speaker 1: twenty because white matter continues to develop into our forties.
Speaker 1: I get past forty, so you know, over the hill
Speaker 1: not so much. Recent studies showed up versus teaching juggling
Speaker 1: to healthy adults, showed that learning the new skill caused
Speaker 1: white matter changes. So just just juggling alone and healthy
Speaker 1: adults can can you know, so continue to exercise your brain,
Speaker 1: you know, because you can still beef it up, That's right.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about neural plasticity before too, and we
Speaker 1: just keep learning more and more about this, and I
Speaker 1: think this is the important takeaway with this well as well,
Speaker 1: is that we still don't know everything about the brain.
Speaker 1: We've talked about the Blue Brain Project, trying to map
Speaker 1: the human in brain, trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: the seat of consciousness, all these really exciting cool things
Speaker 1: that are happening. And just recently we saw an article
Speaker 1: about how they're using skin cells to turn into brain cells.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this was this is a pretty awesome idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and I mean basically what they're trying to do
Speaker 1: is treat Parkinson's with us. But I mean the the
Speaker 1: idea is that you could apply this to other areas
Speaker 1: in the brain and actually help to repair, as you know,
Speaker 1: parts of the brain that have been damaged. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it also really turns the whole question on its head
Speaker 1: that we've asked before, like what happens what's it like
Speaker 1: to have a three hundred, four hundred year old brain?
Speaker 1: And and if we could live to be nine, like
Speaker 1: we discussed in nine nine nine birthday candles, if you
Speaker 1: could live to be eight hundred years old, would you
Speaker 1: have like this cranky old eight hundred year old brain
Speaker 1: in your you know, your your nice young body? Why
Speaker 1: would I U? Why would I juggle your kids with juggling?
Speaker 1: And you know you just set on a bunch of
Speaker 1: money and hate everything. But non possibly not, because if
Speaker 1: you could continue to um to liven up the your
Speaker 1: white matter, um, you could continue to have this uh,
Speaker 1: this changing brain. You can continue to have near plasticity,
Speaker 1: you know, well into your eight hundreds at least, right,
Speaker 1: which makes that proposition a lot be all right? Right,
Speaker 1: when we talked about the downside about this is that
Speaker 1: you know, of course you've talked about all sort of becoming,
Speaker 1: you know, Charlie Sheen's at some point we're all too
Speaker 1: given to our demons like I will become a horrible
Speaker 1: person and live forever. No yeah, yeah, no, and he's
Speaker 1: going to pull through. Okay, But but I mean the
Speaker 1: point is is that, you know, if this technology bears
Speaker 1: some fruit, and even if it's you know, longevity of
Speaker 1: another fifty years, it's great to know that we have
Speaker 1: these things that are at our fingertips. They're strying to
Speaker 1: developed and actually help us live healthily, minded and literally
Speaker 1: at our fingertips. Because yeah, there you go, nicely done.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, Einstein's brain, um, which is not currently
Speaker 1: on the road, but hopefully it'll go on to her
Speaker 1: against it. Yeah yeah. And zombies, what do you did
Speaker 1: you ever make a decision on them about great gray
Speaker 1: meat versus white meat? I don't know. I just don't know.
Speaker 1: Generally they don't seem to be that concern. But I
Speaker 1: bet they're, like, I've explored the idea, there's some and
Speaker 1: they're going to be particular about it. Yeah, they'll sit
Speaker 1: around and critique the glia cells. Yeah cool. Well, I
Speaker 1: have some listener mail here. Um, let's see which one
Speaker 1: I want to read. You know these look good? Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: here's one from Timothy. He says, hello, stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind crew, that's us. During your iPod People podcast,
Speaker 1: you had mentioned briefly how repetitive music can help during writing.
Speaker 1: This used to be my experience during high school in
Speaker 1: college when I would pocket my discmand remember those and
Speaker 1: play trance music during chores. It would cause me to
Speaker 1: enter the altered state you described where I would tune
Speaker 1: out and go and go, and to quote autopilot, the
Speaker 1: real life would become a dream like background in my thoughts.
Speaker 1: I found that my most creative thinking would occur at
Speaker 1: these times, and I often find myself stopping to run
Speaker 1: off and scribble down my thoughts. Unfortunately, like a really
Speaker 1: good dream, the written version usually lost something in translation. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: at my current job as a digital artist, I've been
Speaker 1: known to have a similar experience during your your podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm a science and philosophy nuts, so I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear a podcast about cellular automata, the holographic principle, or
Speaker 1: the EPR paradox. Thanks, we will add those, sup, We'll
Speaker 1: check it out. Uh. Well, that's awesome. I love I mean,
Speaker 1: I especially love the idea that that people can listen
Speaker 1: to what we're discussing. If some of these ideas were
Speaker 1: bringing up and then turn that into something else, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, creatively. Uh oh yeah. I always feel like
Speaker 1: each podcast has, you know, possibilities with fiction, blank and age.
Speaker 1: You can't take you pretty much any of this. And
Speaker 1: I think there's actually is there a film or a
Speaker 1: book about Einstein's branding on the road. Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's nonfiction, but if if anybody
Speaker 1: hasn't been there is, there is a nonfiction version for sure.
Speaker 1: But for fiction, I don't know. I just keep thinking
Speaker 1: the idea of it, like being put into a robot
Speaker 1: like in RoboCop too, where they had the brain and
Speaker 1: the big machine that battles robocops. But but he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be battling robocot naturally, he'd be womanizing and working on relativity. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: well cool, let's see, do we have anything else to
Speaker 1: read here? Yes? Here's another one from Alex. Alex says,
Speaker 1: I was recently introduced to your podcast by my best
Speaker 1: friend as well as my sister, who both swore to
Speaker 1: me that if I had a podcast, it would be
Speaker 1: like this one. I travel a lot for work and
Speaker 1: haven't seen many of my friends and months and haven't
Speaker 1: seen my family since Thanksgiving, but in the last month
Speaker 1: I have downloaded well over a hundred podcasts podcasts podcast
Speaker 1: from you as well as your friends at How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works UH and Stuff Missed in History, and spent hours
Speaker 1: listening intently, a couple of times actually taking notes. Though
Speaker 1: none of you ever got to hear me responding to
Speaker 1: you in my car, hotel or my tiny coach seat.
Speaker 1: I get strange looks now more than ever. I feel
Speaker 1: like we would get along if you could uh. Though
Speaker 1: the majority of my time is spent alone and away
Speaker 1: from home, during the last few weeks, I've begun to
Speaker 1: feel like I have friends with me wherever I go.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for your company and your appreciation for
Speaker 1: obscure knowledge. Your friend Alex ps, you two have the
Speaker 1: best intro music. Look at that there was this great
Speaker 1: stuff for everybody with an ear shot. I know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah r music. Yeah, thanks Alex cool. So Hey, if
Speaker 1: you guys have stuff you want to share with us,
Speaker 1: especially if you have any thoughts. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you have a chunk of mine Stun's brain in your
Speaker 1: house in a Manna's jar of a lot of more
Speaker 1: sent out maybe you do, um, but no any any
Speaker 1: thoughts you have about the continued development of your own
Speaker 1: brain or the brains of those around you, UH let
Speaker 1: us know. You can share it with us on Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter. We are blow the Mind on both of those,
Speaker 1: and you can also drop us a line at blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.