Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature, the show where we look for
Speaker 1: the animals lurking inside people and the humanity hidden in animals.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology at Harvard,
Speaker 1: and I pretend to be a bird on Twitter. Today
Speaker 1: on the show The Dead Walk the Earth, We'll be
Speaker 1: talking about some of the strangest circumstances surrounding death, forcing
Speaker 1: us to rethink the line between the living and the dead.
Speaker 1: Let's take a look at some truly bizarre funerary rituals
Speaker 1: in the human and animal world, and at the scientific
Speaker 1: evidence for real life zombies. Discover this and more as
Speaker 1: we answer the age old question can you hypnotize a chicken?
Speaker 1: One of the most difficult aspects of being a living
Speaker 1: creature is that life inevitably ends. Some lifespans are incredibly short.
Speaker 1: After molting for their larval stage, female Dolania americana may
Speaker 1: flies live for only five minutes, just long enough to
Speaker 1: mate and lay eggs before dying. And I'm sorry to say,
Speaker 1: but humans aren't even close to earning the title for
Speaker 1: longest lifespan, even among vertebrates. The greenland shark of the
Speaker 1: Arctic in Atlantic ocean have a lifespan of three hundred
Speaker 1: to five hundred years. Glass sea sponges, which are actually
Speaker 1: classified as animals even though they're less genial than the
Speaker 1: bob variety, can live for over ten thousand years. Impressive,
Speaker 1: but we're not done yet. Hydras are a genus of
Speaker 1: tiny aquatic animals that are only a few millimeters long,
Speaker 1: and they help the misfortune of being shaped like a
Speaker 1: wiener with tentacles. The saying age before beauty takes on
Speaker 1: a different meaning for hydras because as far as scientists
Speaker 1: can tell, they don't age. They're biologically immortal, meaning they
Speaker 1: do not grow old and die, and they only perish
Speaker 1: because of predation or other environmental factors. The cells of
Speaker 1: hydras are able to infinitely self renew, so theoretically they
Speaker 1: could live forever. Researchers have not yet found out how
Speaker 1: to make a special sauce out of hydras for humans
Speaker 1: to drink and become immortal, so unfortunately, we'll have to
Speaker 1: continue to cope with our temporary existence. It's ironic that
Speaker 1: the only animal that need not fear death lacks the
Speaker 1: brain capacity to fear. Litt alone comprehend dying. An understanding
Speaker 1: of death is considered to be one of the defining
Speaker 1: aspects that separates mankind from animals. We think we're uniquely
Speaker 1: burdened with an awareness of our own mortality. But while
Speaker 1: it's true we may have a superior understanding of death
Speaker 1: when we compared to our animal cousins, are we actually
Speaker 1: alone in our ability to grief? Some animal behavior seems
Speaker 1: to indicate we may not be as isolated in our
Speaker 1: grief as we thought. With me today to talk all
Speaker 1: about death is Cody Johnston, host of the show Some
Speaker 1: More News and the podcast Even More News. So, Cody,
Speaker 1: you're ready to go onto own to Imagineation station really
Speaker 1: very much too. Next stop our own our own Brains
Speaker 1: Imagination Show. So imagine you have a kid child. Alright,
Speaker 1: that's not the scary part yet, Okay, okay. Um, So
Speaker 1: you take you take her to a daycare center. Um
Speaker 1: it's a nice family run business, and you feel pretty
Speaker 1: safe leaving your child in their tender love and care. Um.
Speaker 1: So one day, when you arrived to pick up your
Speaker 1: little girl, you stop to chat with the owner of
Speaker 1: the daycare about this and that and uh. Out at
Speaker 1: the corner of your eye, you notice your kid playing
Speaker 1: with a large baby doll. So the daycare center owner comments, oh,
Speaker 1: isn't that sweet? Your daughter is being such a good
Speaker 1: little mommy to my sweet Timmy. So you're a bit
Speaker 1: confused and you ask, oh, it's that the doll's name Timmy,
Speaker 1: and the owner looks at you quizzically and goes, no,
Speaker 1: Timmy's my dear departed son, God rest his soul. In horror,
Speaker 1: you rush over to your daughter only to find that
Speaker 1: the quote unquote doll is the preserved mummy of a
Speaker 1: dead baby. Let's doesn't sound safe, very healthy. Well, bad news, Cody,
Speaker 1: because this is a reality for animals. That's very bad news.
Speaker 1: So it's what do I call the cops in this scenario?
Speaker 1: To you? Like, is that illegal? It's not not illegal
Speaker 1: to do that, you know, I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 1: a lawyer, I'm not a doctor. Got a dead baby, lawyer,
Speaker 1: golden and golden dead baby lawyers, got a dead baby.
Speaker 1: We got solutions. So chimps will do this thing where
Speaker 1: chip mothers, when their little babies pass away, they carry
Speaker 1: them around for long periods of time, so sometimes for
Speaker 1: up to sixty eight days. That's a really long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you can imagine at that point the babies
Speaker 1: aren't looking so great, so it's it goes beyond just
Speaker 1: maybe Oh, they don't recognize that they're dead. They don't understand.
Speaker 1: They think it's sleeping. Yeah, after a few days, that
Speaker 1: would become very clear. Yeah, because they essentially become like
Speaker 1: this beef jerky. Yes, yeah, like corps and so live
Speaker 1: baby chimps will cling to their mothers. But a dead
Speaker 1: baby can't do that unless it died in the middle
Speaker 1: of hugging. Why would you, I mean, I don't scenario.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, um, yes, if it died in the midst
Speaker 1: of hugging the yeah, it'd be stuck there. But I
Speaker 1: think typically that doesn't happen, so they have to painstakingly
Speaker 1: carry it, keep it close to them. Flies and maggots
Speaker 1: and all just all nestled up in there. And juveniles
Speaker 1: will play with the dead babies. So so these are
Speaker 1: young chimps, and often young young chimps, young primates will
Speaker 1: play with other babies. Kind of it's almost like they're
Speaker 1: learning how to become parents eventually. But it's just so
Speaker 1: weird to see them playing with you know, these this
Speaker 1: dead this mummy flinging it around like a stretch armstrong doll.
Speaker 1: Is it the same kind of playing or is it
Speaker 1: a different kind of playing? If it's a corpse, it's similar.
Speaker 1: But I think they can be a little rougher on
Speaker 1: it because they don't necessarily get chided for flopping it around,
Speaker 1: and you can't, like with a live baby, there's going
Speaker 1: to be some resistance to rough housing or right right.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is not all chimps are on board
Speaker 1: with this dead baby playing reasonable up there. Well, there's
Speaker 1: this really interesting video where it's a chimp that's a
Speaker 1: mother to a live baby and a different chimps baby
Speaker 1: had died and the dead baby's mother kept the baby around,
Speaker 1: and so this other chimps child her baby, you know
Speaker 1: that I don't know, like young her kiddo um is
Speaker 1: playing with the dead baby and uh gets a little
Speaker 1: too close to her, you know, kind of flings it
Speaker 1: in her direction. She does this double take at it,
Speaker 1: and then like jumps up and kind of has her
Speaker 1: hands you know that like little like hand waby do
Speaker 1: like get it away from me. It's so gross. She
Speaker 1: does that kind of and it's really it's like she's like,
Speaker 1: oh that's yeah, like recoiling like a kind of like, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: that seems like a normal reaction. Yeah. And uh, if
Speaker 1: you think this is only found in animals that have hands,
Speaker 1: you would be wrong. Cody. Yeah, why would I think that? Dumb?
Speaker 1: So recently an orca made the news for tragic reason.
Speaker 1: It's always tragic reasons. Yeah, yeah, I think this is
Speaker 1: one of the most depressing shows. And it was just like,
Speaker 1: Cody is going to be perfect for it. Good, thank
Speaker 1: you for thinking. Um. So, for seventeen days and over
Speaker 1: one thousand miles, grieving killer whale was observed pushing the
Speaker 1: dead body of her baby along as she swam. So
Speaker 1: the calf had died only minutes after it was born,
Speaker 1: and because the baby was so young, didn't have any blubber,
Speaker 1: So it's basically it would sink like rock without any help,
Speaker 1: so the bereaved mother would push it with its head
Speaker 1: up towards the surface. And it's not This isn't a
Speaker 1: common behavior where you know, all orca's will carry around
Speaker 1: they're they're dead, but it has been documented at least
Speaker 1: once before, and it's hard to constantly observe orcas, so
Speaker 1: this was the second time that this has been Potentially
Speaker 1: there could be other at the time it's been observed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there could be other times, but it seems like there's
Speaker 1: probably been other times, right, Yeah, yeah, Yeah. It really
Speaker 1: was an extreme example of taking care of a dead
Speaker 1: baby because it's like she can't naturally carry it, so
Speaker 1: it must take a lot of effort to kind of
Speaker 1: continually sort of get afloat. And I mean, I was
Speaker 1: wondering about this, like if it means the orca understands
Speaker 1: death and is grieving as a lot of people would
Speaker 1: have somewhere, if she's trying to do this thing where
Speaker 1: like when a baby orca calf is born, the mother
Speaker 1: and sometimes other members of the pod will try to
Speaker 1: kind of help push it to the surface to take
Speaker 1: its first breath because it, you know, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a mammal, it has to breathe. But babies are pretty
Speaker 1: small and weak, so you can help it a little bit.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if that's worse or better if
Speaker 1: she didn't understand, right, because like even like elephants and
Speaker 1: cats and stuff like, there's a process after birth that's
Speaker 1: like all right, I'm going to get you going, yes,
Speaker 1: And just the idea that if it had did have
Speaker 1: if it died like a minute or two after it
Speaker 1: was born. Then maybe she's like, oh, you're just You're
Speaker 1: just one of those whales that needs to be dumb babies,
Speaker 1: one of those stupid limp babies. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: is the sadder version though, Yeah, because I almost wonder.
Speaker 1: I mean, in my opinion, and this is it's hard
Speaker 1: to know. I can't be in the brain of an orca,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's this must be this really
Speaker 1: uncanny area between total understanding and not understanding where she
Speaker 1: must sense something's wrong because she's had a I think
Speaker 1: this this organ has had a calf before, so she
Speaker 1: knows what the normal behavior is. So she's probably why
Speaker 1: isn't the baby breathing? Why isn't it swimming on its own?
Speaker 1: And maybe this is something where she doesn't quite understand death.
Speaker 1: But it's just like such a strange thing where it's
Speaker 1: like this really uncomfortable sense of like something's wrong and
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. And that seems almost
Speaker 1: more heartbreaking. It's absolutely because then you're ye just pushing
Speaker 1: this along for literally a thousand miles, thinking like okay, well,
Speaker 1: eventually it'll get to the point where my other calf
Speaker 1: got didn't require me to do this for so long.
Speaker 1: And I almost wonder if that's part, like that's not
Speaker 1: that different from human grieving, because even if we have
Speaker 1: this met a cognition where we understand death, there's must
Speaker 1: be part of us that doesn't really you know that
Speaker 1: that kind of can't really wrap our minds around it.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why we do a lot of
Speaker 1: things like kind of hold on to a dead body
Speaker 1: for longer than you know you you have like an
Speaker 1: open casket funeral, or you make these preparations and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh so, like you know, the traditional Irish wake,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to leave the body alone. There's all
Speaker 1: this caretaking where it's not to be left unattended until
Speaker 1: the time of the burial. Women wash the body and
Speaker 1: lay this deceased on a table or bed, and so
Speaker 1: all these things as if the body would have some
Speaker 1: kind of awareness or sensation, right, keeping keep your actively,
Speaker 1: like keeping it comfortable, yes, like treating it like, oh well,
Speaker 1: you just need to be pushed to the surface to
Speaker 1: breathe a little bit. Yeah, yeah, like in a in
Speaker 1: a coffin, we have it. It's plush, you know, it's
Speaker 1: really comfortable if you've ever tried one out. I have not,
Speaker 1: but it looks comfortable. Casper Coffins hasn't sent me a
Speaker 1: free coffin that um, but yeah, as if the person
Speaker 1: is gonna be more or less comfortable there, and since
Speaker 1: they know the right or like, they'll wake up and
Speaker 1: they're like, at least I'm comfy here, right, right. And
Speaker 1: so there's just a couple of things about the Irish
Speaker 1: Wig that are pretty funny. So clocks are stopped to
Speaker 1: prevent bad luck, but I think it's also to stop
Speaker 1: people from like checking the clocks and being rude. The
Speaker 1: other way they stopped it's like the time of death,
Speaker 1: because that would be like symbolic at least. I think
Speaker 1: they're just stopped to be like like, don't check the clock, okaye.
Speaker 1: In the yeah, yeah, and this is the best one.
Speaker 1: The mirrors were covered or turned towards the wall so
Speaker 1: the spirit of the deceased would not become trapped in
Speaker 1: the room and classic, yeah, I don't ghost move. It's
Speaker 1: like they think ghosts sur laser pointers or something where
Speaker 1: it's like just like bunks into a mirror and like
Speaker 1: look stuck a right, you get stuck in a loop
Speaker 1: back and forth. They have no an agency over that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and then I imagine nowadays they say, like,
Speaker 1: put your phone away and you can take like photos
Speaker 1: and that'll trap the ghost in your phone. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't have that. That's why the snapchat thing is a ghost. No,
Speaker 1: that's just a filter. You're just putting a filter. So
Speaker 1: you know how that chimp was carrying around it's dead
Speaker 1: baby until it turned into a sort of creepy mummy doll.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean that thing that'll stick with me for
Speaker 1: the rest of my Yes, yes, that's been seared into
Speaker 1: your memory and until the day you die, and then
Speaker 1: I'm carried around. Yes, I remember continues. So it's really
Speaker 1: interesting because you have all of these funerary rituals that
Speaker 1: you have the body around. But I've never seen anything
Speaker 1: quite like this because in Indonesia, the bodies of dead
Speaker 1: loved ones are carefully kept intended to for weeks or
Speaker 1: even years. That's too long though, Um, So they're not
Speaker 1: just kind of left out to like rotten decay. They're
Speaker 1: very carefully dressed and treated as if they're living people,
Speaker 1: like to the point of rather given dishes of food.
Speaker 1: They're washed lovingly dressed, but they don't need I don't
Speaker 1: think it's quite to the point of like weekend at
Speaker 1: Bernie's like pretending they're alive. Um, I mean then I'd
Speaker 1: be fine with it, I think. So this is interesting.
Speaker 1: Poor families can only afford to keep the body for
Speaker 1: a few weeks, but if you're wealthy, you can keep
Speaker 1: it around for years, presumably, because then you can like
Speaker 1: use these sort of clan seeing things to keep it
Speaker 1: from smelling and keep it from decaying in a gross way.
Speaker 1: If you're rich, you can do you can do it
Speaker 1: anything like that, right, you can do it to yourself.
Speaker 1: You can do it to you You can be a
Speaker 1: be Walt Disney and freeze your head exactly. That's totally unconfirmed.
Speaker 1: Who knows, Disney, don't sue me. Um. It's really interesting
Speaker 1: because it's not as if they're not a little bit
Speaker 1: upset by this. They're they're not just like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: dead body, but so they are like disturbed by like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like they're totally unaffected by it, obviously, but
Speaker 1: one Morner says that our love for our ancestors is
Speaker 1: greater than our fear. So it's it's a really interesting
Speaker 1: thing where it's like they're sort of confronting death really
Speaker 1: head on, even if it's uncomfortable, where As I think
Speaker 1: in a lot of cultures, even in the US, there's
Speaker 1: sort of this thing of like you keep death kind
Speaker 1: of tucked away in a corner and a vault in
Speaker 1: your head so you don't have to really think about it. Sanitized. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you keep it nice and nice and tidy in away. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: but it's not over even once they kept the body
Speaker 1: around and it's been a few weeks or if you're lucky,
Speaker 1: a few years um, and then they entombed the bodies
Speaker 1: in a in a family plot. But every several years
Speaker 1: they'll return to clean care for the body and even
Speaker 1: put new clothes on it. Like there's this picture of
Speaker 1: this guy, and at first you're looking at it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's some some old guy with like a hat on
Speaker 1: and some sunglasses. And then you look a little closer
Speaker 1: and it's definitely a dead person, just kind of propped
Speaker 1: up in a family photos. You literally just described a bit.
Speaker 1: It's maybe I mean wearing a hat and sunglasses. That
Speaker 1: is true. It's that he did rip off Bernie's fabulous style.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because Weekend that Bernie's is. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: part of this trend of like the idea of keep
Speaker 1: a dead body around in pop culture, like you know
Speaker 1: in Psycho Yeah the dead the dead mother, he keeps
Speaker 1: her around talks to him. Yeah. I mean, like, how
Speaker 1: could a movie like Weekend of Bernie's exists unless there's
Speaker 1: a deep fascination, right, It's like a weird manifestation of
Speaker 1: something because we don't do that, like the Weekend of Bernie.
Speaker 1: You don't do that, but like America, Like it's not
Speaker 1: even a touchstone of how Americans deal with death, but
Speaker 1: it's still manifests itself in two films at least two,
Speaker 1: but I guess three because we can Bernie's too. Also,
Speaker 1: how did so how did a sequel get made if
Speaker 1: nobody watched the first of a movie that like nobody
Speaker 1: connected to on an emotional level, that not many people
Speaker 1: saw it. It's just like a movie that we all
Speaker 1: know exists and can reference. I like the idea of
Speaker 1: like a film studio, like are you sure we've explored
Speaker 1: everything about Bernie? Like is there more we could sort
Speaker 1: of unveil in the second in the sequel that we
Speaker 1: didn't really get to unpack. And the first one is Bernie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't. We understand who Bernie is, but we didn't
Speaker 1: understand who he is. Why Bernie? Why is Bernie? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know if they explored that the second one.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what the second one is about.
Speaker 1: I assume it's they're just like, we got to go
Speaker 1: to a party. Let's dig up that corpse again. How
Speaker 1: long is like, what period of time is this happening over?
Speaker 1: Because I imagine Bernie is not looking sidad. I mean
Speaker 1: it's a weekend, right, that's true. You know you can
Speaker 1: hang out. That's right there. You know who it's about,
Speaker 1: you know how long it takes. It's the time, the
Speaker 1: main subject and the place also only one. That's some
Speaker 1: efficient titling. Maybe that's why everyone knows it. Uh sorry, cutty.
Speaker 1: It's four if you count Swiss Army Man with Daniel
Speaker 1: Radclip and Paul Daniel Daniel Daniels Yeah, directors Daniels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like it's Daniel radclup is a corpse that cast
Speaker 1: away be friends and the only thing I really know
Speaker 1: about the plot is that he farts a lot and
Speaker 1: it turns into like a boat. Yeah, it's a fart boat.
Speaker 1: That's also all I know about that movie. Daniel Radcliffe
Speaker 1: like his byline is just fart boat. Um. I was
Speaker 1: fart boat in my school's production to Swiss Army Man.
Speaker 1: I like the idea that he's like a method actor
Speaker 1: and he's like, it's just like I have to become
Speaker 1: a dead fart boat. Like, yeah, you get in the
Speaker 1: tub of ice and just sort of eat beans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually five though. Because of that, there was that
Speaker 1: it was like it's like Kate McKinnon and I don't
Speaker 1: know whom else, but like a stripper dies and they're
Speaker 1: like like bachelorette party and they go they go out
Speaker 1: on the town, still still dumping on sex workers. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: at least it's a males. Um. No, I haven't seen
Speaker 1: that one. So they just pretend he's like alive or
Speaker 1: I'm going to assume that that's what happens, because otherwise
Speaker 1: the story is that a stripper dies at their bachelortte
Speaker 1: party and they call the police. In the movie, just
Speaker 1: make a movie about that. Yeah. Yeah, they go to
Speaker 1: the police, they explain the situation, they take the body,
Speaker 1: and then they continue their bachelorrette party and a lot
Speaker 1: of forms. Maybe just called it a night though, because
Speaker 1: that's that's stressful. That's pretty heavy. Yea, yeah, just a
Speaker 1: movie about responsible adults, yeah, not having a great time, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then going to bed early. So there's this thing
Speaker 1: where you can get ashes turn into diamonds. That sounds
Speaker 1: unnecessary or like like just like gems are like yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: it's not just like this big ashy diamond like flaking off. No,
Speaker 1: it's like they I guess they compress it into like
Speaker 1: a cubic zironium and like then you can wear it.
Speaker 1: That's not no, it's it's I think it divorces it
Speaker 1: enough from like the dead person thing. Unlike um animal
Speaker 1: taxidermy where you get your pet stuffed. It's there's not
Speaker 1: a single one of those that really works. Like like
Speaker 1: I've never seen a taxidermy pet where I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that looks that just looks like a dog. No, they're
Speaker 1: always disturbing. Yeah, it's always the eyes are a little
Speaker 1: too far apart, like the mouth doesn't look right, like
Speaker 1: we're just like dead eyes. You can tell with pets,
Speaker 1: I mean, at least with like dogs or something like
Speaker 1: there's personality in life in their eyes. Yeah, and once
Speaker 1: you get rid of that, yeah, well, you know a
Speaker 1: solution to that is put some sunglasses on your on
Speaker 1: your dead eyes. Yeah, put wheels on its feet, sunglasses
Speaker 1: and just like roll down the street. Yeah, WEKENDARKI I
Speaker 1: smell a squeak. Will It's inevitable that owners will mourn
Speaker 1: the loss of their dogs, but can dons also feel
Speaker 1: the loss of a deceased human owner. There are many
Speaker 1: viral videos of dogs wailing at funerals, resting their heads
Speaker 1: on caskets, or waiting at grave sites. But even though
Speaker 1: this is really sad, it doesn't necessarily show an understanding
Speaker 1: of death. It does show distress, so maybe the dogs
Speaker 1: are picking up on the sadness of the human mourners
Speaker 1: or drawn to the smells of their owner. There's a
Speaker 1: timeless example of a dog showing loyalty extending beyond death.
Speaker 1: It's the story of Hatchko. Hatchiko was a dog who
Speaker 1: lived in Japan during the nineteen twenties. His owner was
Speaker 1: a professor who would arrive home by train every day.
Speaker 1: Hatchko learned to travel to the train station in time
Speaker 1: to greet as returning owner but the professor passed away suddenly,
Speaker 1: and Hatchiko continued to walk to the train station right
Speaker 1: on time to breathe the train that once carried his
Speaker 1: beloved owner. He continued this routine for nine years. Hatchiko
Speaker 1: may not have understood death or that his owner could
Speaker 1: never return, but his behavior seemed to indicate a persistent,
Speaker 1: tenacious memory and perhaps a hope of being reunited. As
Speaker 1: much as we may want to go back in time
Speaker 1: to give Patchiko a hug, it's touching to note that
Speaker 1: some dogs are given the job of offering comfort to
Speaker 1: human mourners. There are Greek therapy dogs who are trained
Speaker 1: to offer cuddles and affection to console those coping with loss.
Speaker 1: Studies have shown the dogs are able to detect when
Speaker 1: humans are crying and respond with nuzzles and lips. It's
Speaker 1: good to know that there's research to explain why my
Speaker 1: dogs six are smelling tongue in my face whenever I'm
Speaker 1: watching a Pixar movie. Just so you don't get too depressed,
Speaker 1: Etchca's story was published in a national newspaper, and in response,
Speaker 1: people provided them lots of hugs and treats and kissas
Speaker 1: and all that crap. We'll be back to be emo
Speaker 1: about more deathbacks after a few quick messages. People fake
Speaker 1: their own death for a variety of reasons, insurance scams,
Speaker 1: evading the law, getting out of family obligations, and so on.
Speaker 1: As we'll discuss. Animals fake their own death too, but
Speaker 1: it's typically to escape danger, to trick their predators into
Speaker 1: moving on or letting their vigilance slip just enough to
Speaker 1: allow the prey to spring back to life and escape.
Speaker 1: It seems like a rudimentary trick, but it's been saving
Speaker 1: animal lives for ages and apparently the humans as well. Recently,
Speaker 1: it was reported that exiled Russian journalists are Katie Babchenko
Speaker 1: was killed in his home in Kiev, Ukraine. He was
Speaker 1: found face down in a pool of blood, cleared dead
Speaker 1: and taken to the morgue. So it was a big
Speaker 1: surprise to his family and friends when he showed up
Speaker 1: alive and healthy on television the next day. The trick
Speaker 1: his assassin really was asked to murder Babchenko, but instead
Speaker 1: of carrying out the plot, he went straight to the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian security Service. They, along with Babchenko, decided to stage
Speaker 1: the journalist's death to trap the man who hired the assassin.
Speaker 1: This staged murder accomplished two things, saving the journalist's life
Speaker 1: and trapping the man who tried to kill him. It
Speaker 1: may seem like the sophistication and double purpose of this
Speaker 1: ruse would be unique to the intelligent planning of humans,
Speaker 1: but as we'll discuss, animals go to elaborate links to
Speaker 1: play dead, not only to evade poundation, but even for
Speaker 1: nefarious purposes. Uh so, Cody, you ready to take a
Speaker 1: stop at imagination station again? I'm more ready than I've
Speaker 1: ever been. Nice. So, imagine waking up in the hospital
Speaker 1: and you can't move. Come on, Katie, no, I really
Speaker 1: want you to be there. Are you there, Cody, get there,
Speaker 1: go there, and good good. You're completely paralyzed, and you
Speaker 1: hear the doctors talking over you, saying things like time
Speaker 1: of death and such a shame at such a young age.
Speaker 1: You want to call out to them that you're still alive,
Speaker 1: but you're frozen. You feel yourself being placed in a
Speaker 1: plastic bag and you're zipped up. Then you find yourself
Speaker 1: on a slab in the morgue. With horror, you watch
Speaker 1: helplessly as a mortician starts up a saw to cut
Speaker 1: open your chest. M hmmm from there? All right, did
Speaker 1: you ever watch A Dead Like Me? The show? So
Speaker 1: I didn't watch the whole thing because um I started
Speaker 1: watching it. And so it's about this this young woman
Speaker 1: who becomes a grim Reaper and she dies, she gets
Speaker 1: a new body on earth to be to be a
Speaker 1: grim Reaper person, and she doesn't want to do it
Speaker 1: because she doesn't like killing people. But like she finds
Speaker 1: out that it's not that she's killing people, that she's
Speaker 1: like taking their souls out of there. And there's a
Speaker 1: scene where like she refuses to reap this guy and
Speaker 1: he's like he wakes up in the morgue and like
Speaker 1: it's just from his perspective going like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm alive. I'm alive, and like they're like like certain
Speaker 1: because like in the autopsy they like cut you open
Speaker 1: stuff and it's just like gave me so many nightmares.
Speaker 1: It's the worst thing. Just like I'm so afraid of
Speaker 1: locked in syndrome. I'm afraid of all that. Uh any
Speaker 1: sort of like a paralysis and like being fine, So
Speaker 1: why would you do this to me? Well, because uh,
Speaker 1: this is a real thing. Um, it's called tonic immobility
Speaker 1: and animals, and it's both lifesaver and a nightmarish curse
Speaker 1: as our most most things in the animal kingdom. So
Speaker 1: it's mother nature is a real uh, real sarcastic bit sometimes. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's a hypnotic catatonic state induced by lying on
Speaker 1: the back or being startled. Um. It's found in a
Speaker 1: lot of animals, typically more like reptilian is ish animals.
Speaker 1: So like so you want it's like barred grass snakes,
Speaker 1: Burmeister's leap frog specifically that one gotta call out, um,
Speaker 1: the common swift and sharks. Um. Yeah, sharks is a fish,
Speaker 1: not a reptile. So you can induce catatonian sharks by
Speaker 1: rolling them over on their backs, and scientists do this
Speaker 1: to tag check up on the shark's health. Um, But
Speaker 1: like orca is, do it just to evil or they're
Speaker 1: real assholes, like shamoo is just like he's a huge dick.
Speaker 1: Probably has reasons for that, right, well, Shammou does, but
Speaker 1: the rest of them haven't. But in sharks, um, great
Speaker 1: white sharks need to move to keep water flowing through
Speaker 1: its skills. So there's been stuff where it's like oh no,
Speaker 1: like the thing where sharks have to move to live
Speaker 1: as a myth, or other people saying no, it's true.
Speaker 1: It's a combination. Um, it's if it was on Snopes,
Speaker 1: would be like mixed truth. But then like I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to read it because it's like you got to
Speaker 1: read that after the false conclusion. I just want yeah,
Speaker 1: nuances dumb, it's nerds. Um so, uh, great white sharks
Speaker 1: need to move because they are obligate ram ventilators. Sounds
Speaker 1: really cool, good collection of syllables. Yeah it is. It's
Speaker 1: it sounds so fancy. So like makos and great white
Speaker 1: sharks are like that. Um, but not all sharks. So
Speaker 1: if these little sharks, little great white sharks stay in
Speaker 1: tonic for two cute cute little boo pupple noses, so
Speaker 1: they can actually die because like they they can't move,
Speaker 1: they're paralyzed. So it's not a great thing for the shark. Um.
Speaker 1: But uh it's uh so they're just like lying they
Speaker 1: were like where these jerk orchids are probably laughing at them.
Speaker 1: They're like, can't move. My one weakness I asked you
Speaker 1: specifically to not do this to me, Like my one
Speaker 1: thing is like not to be flipped over, Like I
Speaker 1: can't work when you flip me over. I'm like a room,
Speaker 1: but I don't care. Yeah, or don't give a fuck.
Speaker 1: Did you know you could hypnotize chickens? No, it's cool
Speaker 1: you can so, um you hoole it's head down on
Speaker 1: the ground. That doesn't sound like hypnotizing that. It's just like, well,
Speaker 1: all right, I mean it's a little dirt. You shove
Speaker 1: it in the dirt, and you call it a nerd
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, hypnotize, hypnotize, yeah, see, hypnotize it. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you draw a line. I mean it's gently
Speaker 1: yet firmly keep its head on the crew and then
Speaker 1: draw a line from its beak outward, like with a
Speaker 1: piece of chalk, or like if it's in the dirt,
Speaker 1: you can draw it with like a stick or your finger,
Speaker 1: but like there has to be like a physical line
Speaker 1: from its beak, not on its beak, but like from
Speaker 1: its beak outward. And then like you do it kind
Speaker 1: of quickly, and then the chicken just stares at the line,
Speaker 1: and you can let go of the chicken and it
Speaker 1: remains there staring at the line. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: So easy to hack animals brains it is. It's weirdly easy. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's the tonic immobility. And then there's um a
Speaker 1: a different type of this called thanatosis, which is specifically
Speaker 1: feigning death for the purpose of um boarding off predators
Speaker 1: that have got you. So it's unclear whether tonic immobility
Speaker 1: is always advantageous if it's always because like the idea
Speaker 1: of the chicken hypnotism is that they feel threatened by
Speaker 1: this ominous line on the ground, like it's like it's
Speaker 1: like snake related or like who knows, like maybe they
Speaker 1: see it into them. It's something coming at them, like
Speaker 1: they can't like it looks like motion coming at them,
Speaker 1: like this line the perspective of it, because they're little
Speaker 1: dumb chicken brains can't figure it out. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know why it would be useful for sharks. It seems
Speaker 1: just like a little bit of an oversight. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: seems like a pain in the ask, Like we should
Speaker 1: try to evolve past this, especially for the sharks that
Speaker 1: need to move to right, like it's one thing that
Speaker 1: they need. Yeah, it's a pretty big bug there, guy,
Speaker 1: because even like yeah, most you know, animals, like all right,
Speaker 1: you're paralyzed a bit on your back, but like you
Speaker 1: can still breathe over time, you'll be fine if you
Speaker 1: literally need to keep moving. Very cruel, dumb sharks, Yeah,
Speaker 1: stop being sharks. Um, But like, uh so, you know,
Speaker 1: playing possum is a real strategy, and it's useful for
Speaker 1: like like the predators like whoa, you've been dead awhile, yeah,
Speaker 1: humans do it, like we all have yeah reaction to
Speaker 1: There's this idea that fainting at the side of blood
Speaker 1: could be like a strategy in combat where it's like, whoops,
Speaker 1: I'm dead, now leave me alone. Now realized that everyone
Speaker 1: around me is getting blood into death. So I also yeah, like,
Speaker 1: oh I'm dead, right, please don't move along, move along
Speaker 1: nothing fight done. I did beat me right. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because like I think men suffer from the it's
Speaker 1: called the vase of vagal response um as much if
Speaker 1: not more than women, So it kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: from that. But you know, it's with anything in evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say whether that's really the case. It's
Speaker 1: just a theory. Um. So, like possums don't just roll
Speaker 1: over on their backs, they actually like emit a foul
Speaker 1: odor from their anal gland and a nice, nice butt
Speaker 1: juice that smells like death. Yeah, the parasympathetic nervous system
Speaker 1: does control things like butt juice and which it controls
Speaker 1: like your heart rate and an other sort of like
Speaker 1: non conscious aspect of your body's functioning. So it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: it makes the heart rate drop by half and respiration
Speaker 1: by a third, and body temperature drops by half a
Speaker 1: degree celsius, which is a lot significant. So it's like
Speaker 1: they're not just like whoops, like rolling over like a
Speaker 1: dog playing. It's like their bodies are like you're pretending
Speaker 1: to be dead, right, if we're all on we're all
Speaker 1: on board. Yeah, my dad found, like he found a
Speaker 1: possum in our backyard and we were pretty sure it
Speaker 1: was dead, Like we knew about the possum playing dead,
Speaker 1: but it was like it smelled bad. It was like
Speaker 1: rigor mortis were like, no, this is certainly a dead possum.
Speaker 1: Like it it's we know they play possum, but like
Speaker 1: so he like took a shovel and like dropped it
Speaker 1: in the canyon because we have a lot of coyotes
Speaker 1: and stuff and they take care of all stuff. But
Speaker 1: then like as soon as he dropped it like rolled
Speaker 1: back on his feet and just like strolled away, and
Speaker 1: I was just like what, Yeah, I didn't really that's
Speaker 1: so cool. Yeah that like, yeah, they're literally like our
Speaker 1: bodies are playing dead, right, yeah. Yeah, it's not just
Speaker 1: like coyotes are so dumb that they're like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: on its back, it's not moving, all the systems are yeah,
Speaker 1: like it smells dead, um and then uh, the hog
Speaker 1: nosed snake plays dead by rolling over, letting its tongue
Speaker 1: hang out, and again a foul older is released from
Speaker 1: its anus um. And I tried to find out if like,
Speaker 1: because you know, sometimes people like you know, they do
Speaker 1: a duty in their pants and they're scared. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find anything that would suggest that would that's like intentional,
Speaker 1: but it could be. Yeah. Yeah. It's also like that
Speaker 1: sort of goes hand in hand with like sort of
Speaker 1: freezing and like I'm so terrified I can't move and
Speaker 1: like I just shipped myself right. Like the actual scientific
Speaker 1: reason is that I think that like you're all of
Speaker 1: your resources are getting diverted to other things like fight
Speaker 1: or flight poops. That is that's a that's like in
Speaker 1: the Journal of poop. A spooks make poops? Chapter four,
Speaker 1: Chapter four, What spooks make what poops? Which kind? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is interesting that maybe, I mean it could
Speaker 1: be just like an effect that happened, like maybe with
Speaker 1: these animals. At first it was just like relieving themselves
Speaker 1: because all of their bodies stuff was going to something else.
Speaker 1: But then it kind of evolved into this more sophisticated
Speaker 1: type of anal secretion, right, because like, yeah, humans have
Speaker 1: the next step, the next step in our evolution because
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't need to do that. We have
Speaker 1: a society and so we're not all like playing ted
Speaker 1: and shipping ourselves to protect each other. Might have to,
Speaker 1: we might have to. We'll see, we'll see how things
Speaker 1: go like that. Yeah, but like, yeah, if possum like
Speaker 1: over many many many many many many many millions of years,
Speaker 1: like that's a thing that they developed that did the
Speaker 1: anal secretion. Yeah, it's proven to be effective art right, Right, So, Cody,
Speaker 1: can I take you to the visualization Nation? Yes? I
Speaker 1: love I love living there, living there in imagination Town,
Speaker 1: soaking it all up. Ye, living living that so dead life, Cody,
Speaker 1: you watch a lot of zombie movies. I'm familiar with
Speaker 1: zombie movies you have heard of. I've seen several zombie films.
Speaker 1: I am familiar with the concept that it's dead people
Speaker 1: who roam the earth and cause all sorts of mischief. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you've seen like The Walking Dead or h So
Speaker 1: there's this idea I have that I can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: Where what if like in twenty eight days later in
Speaker 1: The Walking Dead, which when you think about it, don't
Speaker 1: really make a whole lot of sense that you would
Speaker 1: just have this like zombie virus take over the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it requires a lot of magical thinking and right, Um,
Speaker 1: so like like, how do zombies keep walking after their
Speaker 1: muscles and tendons rot away? Like they're not producing a
Speaker 1: t P? Cody, how can they be producing a t
Speaker 1: P if their sells are dead? Um? How do they
Speaker 1: digest human brains if they don't have guts? And why
Speaker 1: aren't they eating each other? Cody? Again, I didn't make
Speaker 1: the rules or something. So I feel like, what if
Speaker 1: we're mistaken about what's going on in these movies and
Speaker 1: TV shows? Instead of this unrealistic, unfathomable zombie virus that
Speaker 1: somehow wipes out all of humanity, it's a virus that
Speaker 1: only afflicts a few people, infects their brains and causes
Speaker 1: them to become delusional. And so the quote unquote survivors
Speaker 1: are actually the only infected people, and they're hallucinating that
Speaker 1: the world is full of decaying monsters because like you
Speaker 1: can't have like a decaying thing walking around, but you can't,
Speaker 1: like there is observable viruses that can infect you and
Speaker 1: makes you become delusional or crazy, like rabies in Ti
Speaker 1: Gandhi I that can have an effect on the brain.
Speaker 1: So I'm like really into this idea. Yeah yeah, So
Speaker 1: like but then think of like shows like The Walking
Speaker 1: Dead and look at it like in that way, like
Speaker 1: the that that's why all those swat teams, you know
Speaker 1: how like in especially like video games like Left for Dead,
Speaker 1: you have all these swat teams and policemen or people
Speaker 1: in has matched suits like coming at you, but they're
Speaker 1: all zombified. How does someone in a hazmat suit become
Speaker 1: a zombie? They wouldn't. It's because they're trying to protect
Speaker 1: themselves and they're approaching You're trying to quarantine the sars,
Speaker 1: and that's why they're police and swat teams. Like in
Speaker 1: full swat because they would be able to shoot the
Speaker 1: zombies if they really zombies and you were in a
Speaker 1: swat team, right, you would be fine, She'd be fine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so that's why you and your flannel and torn
Speaker 1: jeans are okay quote unquote Okay, where's a swat team
Speaker 1: is not? Okay? Yeah? Wait, it's not because I'm a hero,
Speaker 1: big cowboy hero. You're you're you're a cowboy hero. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, you get you get one free one. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like the survivors are just killing innocent regular people who
Speaker 1: are trying to go about their daily business. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: like taking over prisons and like killing all the prisoners
Speaker 1: and then yeah, and that's why, like why when you
Speaker 1: they break into a car, all these zombies come running
Speaker 1: towards them. It's not that they're like angry at car alarms.
Speaker 1: It's because they're like, hey, don't steal that car, right,
Speaker 1: they're being good citizens. I'm I'm on a live police officer.
Speaker 1: Hey you stop that. Ye put your hands up. So
Speaker 1: I remember. Um, I didn't actually watch a lot of
Speaker 1: The Walking Dead. I was pretty upset by some of
Speaker 1: the mature themes. Well it's not very good, but like
Speaker 1: So there's this thing where Rick Grimes is in like
Speaker 1: he's a crime. He's in a parking lot and there's
Speaker 1: this little girl in like her pajamas and remember that,
Speaker 1: and it is supposed to be this scene. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this show is so edgy. It goes places that other
Speaker 1: shows don't. And she's like roaming around and she drops
Speaker 1: her teddy bear and she picks it back up and
Speaker 1: then he's like, hey, little girl, you're you okay? And
Speaker 1: she turns towards him and like half her face is
Speaker 1: missing and it's super growdy and he's like oh and
Speaker 1: and he's he had like called out to her. So
Speaker 1: she's like wandering towards him, but she's just kind of
Speaker 1: like shambling towards him, like shuffling, and then he shoots
Speaker 1: her in the face. Right like so like if this
Speaker 1: is like just a virus that affects Rick Grimes and
Speaker 1: he's delusional and he sees this thing that is impossible.
Speaker 1: You can't a corpse can't walk around, it's just biologically impossible.
Speaker 1: Then he he's like rabid and like those friendly little
Speaker 1: girls like I just picked up my teddy bear, you know, right,
Speaker 1: Because like in the in the reality of the show
Speaker 1: as they present it, Like a zombie is wandering around
Speaker 1: with teddy Bear drops it slowly shuffles. Why would a
Speaker 1: zombie pick up a teddy bear? Like, why would a
Speaker 1: zombie be like or drop mon teddy Bear. You know
Speaker 1: it's not going to do that. It's gonna like, you know,
Speaker 1: ignore that, you don't, I mean, don't some zombie films,
Speaker 1: uh say that, like, oh, well, like a piece of
Speaker 1: a piece of the person is still left, which doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense in terms of bulls actual bullshit, because that's
Speaker 1: not what would happen to deteriorating. Well, you can't listen, guys.
Speaker 1: A t P is dina triphosphate and it's the building
Speaker 1: box of life and if your cells are dead, it
Speaker 1: can't process that and you cannot create energy. It sounds
Speaker 1: like you should write a letter to the show. Can
Speaker 1: you actually an episode? All of them? Well? Actually, thank
Speaker 1: your biology. It's true though, well also your idea is
Speaker 1: way better. Thank you. Thank you. I like I like
Speaker 1: that you said that to me, You get one. If
Speaker 1: I like, I would watch I would start watching the
Speaker 1: show Againe with revealed and then we like, yeah, that
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be like, I'm you know, twists are out
Speaker 1: their passing. Now you can't do twists, um, but I
Speaker 1: think that would be legitimately yeah, yeah I can do it. Well.
Speaker 1: I also like, I'm really like, I think twists obviously, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like they're old and tired. But if it's if
Speaker 1: you like dedicate like eight seasons and then you fundamentally
Speaker 1: change your show you get going, you would make Will
Speaker 1: so mad it would be great. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like and and then the show is really interesting and good.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's it. That's how Lost should have ended. That
Speaker 1: they were all that they were there. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I feel like that would be really interesting. Just
Speaker 1: like you think you have like this scientifical scientifical scientific
Speaker 1: impossibility or improbability replaced by something that we actually have.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no there's no specific virus that makes
Speaker 1: you see dead people. But rabies can make you hydrophobics,
Speaker 1: so you don't want to drink water because it's bad
Speaker 1: for the virus to come into contact with water. So
Speaker 1: it makes you afraid of water. It makes you avoid water,
Speaker 1: which could help you, and it makes you aggressive and
Speaker 1: kind of like turn on people, and it can make
Speaker 1: people like become delusional and and sort of psychotic, which
Speaker 1: is really scary. It's a really terrifying idea that the
Speaker 1: virus can just hijack your brain, yeah, and like control
Speaker 1: your fears, yeah, and make you actively reject a life
Speaker 1: saving thing like water because it's not good for the virus.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, right, So yeah, they're like if contact with
Speaker 1: humans who don't have the virus is bad for the
Speaker 1: virus or something like that, and then like, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: going to fear anyone who's not in your delusion with you,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, Like like somehow the virus doesn't want
Speaker 1: to be you know, it wants to go and reproduce it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't want to be trapped by, you know, the
Speaker 1: swat team, which is maybe why rabies makes you aggressive,
Speaker 1: because it allows the virus to be transmitted through biting
Speaker 1: and through saliva. So it's it's kind of like you've
Speaker 1: become aggressive of because you've basically become a slave to
Speaker 1: the rabies which is making you and it wants to
Speaker 1: multiply and spread on its own terms, right, And so
Speaker 1: like the zombree be the technical term, the scientifical term zombbies,
Speaker 1: like it could make you become aggressive by making you
Speaker 1: see other people it's like scary monsters, right and then yeah,
Speaker 1: and then uh, you know whether it's like okay, well,
Speaker 1: then you're going to gravitate towards people who are infected.
Speaker 1: And then if there's some sort of like way that
Speaker 1: it multiplies by just like being around other infected people
Speaker 1: and create like a community. Right, You're you're drawn to
Speaker 1: other people like how t gandhi I which, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a virus that infects rat brains and makes them unafraid
Speaker 1: or attracted to cats that like it completes its life
Speaker 1: cycle with other cats. So like your your zombre abies
Speaker 1: patent painting, Uh, we'll make you drawn to other people
Speaker 1: with the virus like yeah, together petri dish of Yeah,
Speaker 1: to protect to each other. I like it. Yeah, movie
Speaker 1: exects d m me. So imagine that this virus is real,
Speaker 1: but instead of hallucinating that other people are zombies, you're
Speaker 1: hallucinating that you yourself are a zombie. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that bad news, Cody, because it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: I know you gonna be so excited for this idea. Um. So,
Speaker 1: there is a psychological illness called cotard delusion, in which
Speaker 1: sufferers believe they are dead, have lost their soul, are
Speaker 1: missing internal organs, blood or other body parts, or this
Speaker 1: is the weirdest one, that they just don't exist at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they never existed, like they're they that they just
Speaker 1: don't Yeah, it's not a logical thing. It's like they
Speaker 1: don't exist. They don't recognize their own existence. So like,
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine what that feeling is like, Right,
Speaker 1: if you're having those thoughts, then you exist. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like this is covered by Decarte. You guys, we already
Speaker 1: we did this a long time. Um. It's called a
Speaker 1: nihilistic delusion, which comes with this feeling of self negation.
Speaker 1: So the common theme with all the iterations of the
Speaker 1: delusion is that you're dead, you don't exist, You're you're gone,
Speaker 1: there's part of you missing auh. And it's co morbid,
Speaker 1: meaning it occurs with severe depression or psychosis often, So
Speaker 1: it's it's a I mean, it's so it's so hard
Speaker 1: to wrap my head around like what it would feel
Speaker 1: like to be like, no, I'm I'm dead. Yeah? Is
Speaker 1: it like does it just sort of happen? Is it
Speaker 1: like a slow sort of deterioration and you sort of
Speaker 1: like start to notice things or just like suddenly it's
Speaker 1: like I'm dead. Well, I think it's not. It's not
Speaker 1: quite like super sudden, because I think you would have
Speaker 1: depression or psychosis preceding it. Um. But it isn't like
Speaker 1: you think you're slowly becoming dead. It's like you you
Speaker 1: do kind of have this onset of like no, i'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm dead, or like a sort of realization like oh,
Speaker 1: that's why I've been dead this whole time, right, And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's because then you'd still be interacting with people, like
Speaker 1: you'd still be able to talk right people. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because like it doesn't matter if family
Speaker 1: members are trying to convince you that no, no, you're alive,
Speaker 1: like they'll argue with right. Well. I mean I imagine
Speaker 1: that's also part of it. The I know that like people,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're really entrenched in this idea and
Speaker 1: someone's like arguing against you, like no, no no, no, this,
Speaker 1: and they use that as proof they're actually correct. I
Speaker 1: guess one way to think of how it would feel is,
Speaker 1: you know, deja vu um. It's that feeling that like
Speaker 1: it's not just that, Oh, I think maybe this has
Speaker 1: happened before. It's this very specific feeling that everything that's
Speaker 1: currently happening in all its specificity has happened before in
Speaker 1: exactly that same way, which is very unlikely. Um. So
Speaker 1: the idea is that it may be sort of this
Speaker 1: misfiring in your brain where you're sort of like recording
Speaker 1: a memory but also playing it at the same time,
Speaker 1: so you have this sense that all of these specific
Speaker 1: things are lining up, but they've happened before, even though
Speaker 1: you can't point to a certain memory, and even understanding
Speaker 1: that that is probably like a brain goof up. When
Speaker 1: I experienced it, I'm like, new, don't know this, this
Speaker 1: is this time, it's real, like right, there's no arguing
Speaker 1: with yeah, right when you actually feel it, your brain
Speaker 1: is telling you otherwise exactly where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm eating an apple and a bird flies by and like,
Speaker 1: you know, my left arm kind of hurts. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: this exact thing has happened before, which it probably hasn't,
Speaker 1: probably not because you would probably remember it, remember saying
Speaker 1: like whenever it's having to me, have been like but
Speaker 1: I don't remember it, right right, feel like right, I
Speaker 1: remember it, right, right, right? And so I think it's like,
Speaker 1: even if they're being given all this evidence that no,
Speaker 1: you're not dead, their brain is so strongly telling them
Speaker 1: that they don't exist, that they are dead, that there's
Speaker 1: some of this like missing part of them, they can't
Speaker 1: help but feel that, right, right, Yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I just don't know how that would feel, because then, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just like, well, no, I'm dead. I can't I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to you and I hear what you're saying,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't change how I feel right now, right,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It's kind of an interesting different version of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about earlier, where like if someone else dies,
Speaker 1: you can hold these two uh conflicting ideas at once.
Speaker 1: One is that they're gone, they're dead, they're no longer here.
Speaker 1: The other is I want to take care of and
Speaker 1: protect them, even though their body doesn't really contain them.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to, you don't quite accept it,
Speaker 1: but you still have these feelings and these instincts to
Speaker 1: take care even though you know it's uh not doing
Speaker 1: anything for them, right. And then yeah, I have this
Speaker 1: this feeling that I'm dead, even though intellectually I hear
Speaker 1: what you're saying, Yeah, that makes all logical sense, but
Speaker 1: right you feel it's so strongly that like you hold,
Speaker 1: like rationality just kind of slips away from you. So
Speaker 1: I can imagine that if you have Cotard delusion, like
Speaker 1: you may have some kind of sense of like, well,
Speaker 1: now I wouldn't be dead and and still breathing and stuff,
Speaker 1: but then that kind of like slips away from you,
Speaker 1: and I think and like in some of these case studies,
Speaker 1: people will go to weird lengths to kind of justify it.
Speaker 1: Like one woman said that she could smell herself to Kaying,
Speaker 1: so she had the understanding that if she was really
Speaker 1: dead there would be visible signs. But instead of that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of destroying the delusion, she just invented things,
Speaker 1: not not intentionally. This is not she's not trying to
Speaker 1: justify it, but she's her hallucinations are adapting to her
Speaker 1: reasoning ability. So so she's having this oldfactory hallucination that
Speaker 1: she smells like she's rotting because maybe part of her
Speaker 1: brain is sort of saying like, oh, no, would you
Speaker 1: really be you, you'd be smelling bad, which I can
Speaker 1: totally kind of understand because I remember in high school
Speaker 1: there's this traumatic thing where we were dissecting fetal pigs
Speaker 1: and it was pretty upsetting because cute animal but also
Speaker 1: cute smart animals, little little mud puppies. Um. But like
Speaker 1: the smell of formaldehyde was so strong and Fromalehide's not
Speaker 1: a good chemical for you, so like it makes sense
Speaker 1: that you're kind of repulsed by it because it's not
Speaker 1: not great. But I could smell it like for days afterwards.
Speaker 1: Like I would smell a piece of clothing and think
Speaker 1: I smelled it on that piece of clothing, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, my my mom would be like, no, this
Speaker 1: doesn't you're you know, but like I had some kind
Speaker 1: of such a strong association with this like really kind
Speaker 1: of like traumatizing feutal pig dissection, that like that smell
Speaker 1: became attached to that shirt. And then I had this
Speaker 1: like sort of like mild like olfactory hallucination where I
Speaker 1: thought this shirt was permanently smelled of formaldehyde even though
Speaker 1: it didn't write. Because it's so linked to memory, Like
Speaker 1: you if that sounds like a very strong memory for
Speaker 1: you that was that has still stuck with you. Um,
Speaker 1: And yeah, if you're have that sort of traumatic experience
Speaker 1: then your brains to dip back into it. Even like
Speaker 1: when you're thinking about it, you smell it because you
Speaker 1: are replaying that memory and it sort of creates that
Speaker 1: again for you. Yeah, like you can you can kind
Speaker 1: of call upon your brain to create an odor even
Speaker 1: if you're not exactly smelling it. Like if you think
Speaker 1: about that smell of freshly baked cookies, you can kind
Speaker 1: of get this sort of phantom smell, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Like you're you're not literally, you know, inhaling and smelling it,
Speaker 1: but you're remembering what it smells like and then sort
Speaker 1: of creating the sense to a certain point. Right. And
Speaker 1: it's the same thing with like you can hear someone's voice,
Speaker 1: you can see someone, you know, So with hallucinations, it's
Speaker 1: just that but create like created, and it's entirety like
Speaker 1: you you're actually smelling it. Yeah, Well, like during brain surgery,
Speaker 1: often the patient will be conscious an ethnetized, you know,
Speaker 1: but conscious, um, so that they can let the brain
Speaker 1: surgeon know everything's okay, that you know, they haven't suddenly
Speaker 1: gone blind or something. Um. But but like when they're
Speaker 1: when they're kind of poking around in the brain, the
Speaker 1: patient can experience things like smells or like flashes of
Speaker 1: color because like you're you're sort of stimulating these the
Speaker 1: parts of the brain, and it's just so interesting that
Speaker 1: you can you can create a smell out of just
Speaker 1: like digital manipulation of brain tissue, so I can. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's almost like you have this like mad
Speaker 1: scientist brain surgeon inside your head controlling what you think
Speaker 1: to the point where you're like, oh man, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a dead person and I can literally smell my body
Speaker 1: to king and that just sounds awful. It's real bad. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's going to be like that's the future
Speaker 1: of you know, like VR and stuff. You hook up
Speaker 1: to a thing and then pretend to be a dead person,
Speaker 1: like that really fun game that we all want to play.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like you know, you go to the this
Speaker 1: game takes place at the beach, and so it creates
Speaker 1: the sensation in your brain. They're smelling the ocean and
Speaker 1: you feel a breeze and you do smell it and
Speaker 1: you feel the breeze because it's smelling that like kelp stink.
Speaker 1: It's really nice. Yeah, yeah, that that kelp Stink that
Speaker 1: we all want to play. A video game. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I just think it's so crazy that you
Speaker 1: would be in a situation where you can't escape your
Speaker 1: brain's own delusion to the point where you have some
Speaker 1: really like maladaptive behaviors, like you're this one guy picks
Speaker 1: my heart. He uh showed up to a graveyard because
Speaker 1: he was like, oh, you know, I feel like more
Speaker 1: comfortable around here because you know, these are also dead people,
Speaker 1: just like, oh my god, buddy, all right, your brain
Speaker 1: is making me. Yeah, And it's not like other delusions
Speaker 1: where it's like I'm I'm Napoleon, where it seems, you know,
Speaker 1: like not constantly horrifying. Yeah, just because that just sounds
Speaker 1: like dread all the time and despair all the time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like like if you've ever died in a dream or like,
Speaker 1: you know, just it's so it's spooky. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: that prank. Have you seen this where it's like this
Speaker 1: I think I was going to bring this up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's the prank where you pull it on your
Speaker 1: younger brother or something where you pretend they're invisible, but
Speaker 1: you go to the like the one I saw they
Speaker 1: had taken a photo take a photo beforehand beforehand. So
Speaker 1: so you set it up so like say your little
Speaker 1: brother is sitting on the bed and then you have
Speaker 1: your spirit or other douchebag sister sitting next to him,
Speaker 1: and you pretend to take a picture, but beforehand you
Speaker 1: had taken a picture of just the sister sitting on
Speaker 1: the bed with her arm like the same right, And
Speaker 1: then so like you you show the picture to the
Speaker 1: little ten year old and although you should be she's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty pretty onto it. Yeah, But the ones I've
Speaker 1: seen have been like the entire family isn't on it.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so mean. Yeah, and they're like they're all
Speaker 1: playing along and they all freak out and like the
Speaker 1: kid like touches the mother and like she's like, oh
Speaker 1: I just felt something. Like they take it to the extreme.
Speaker 1: It is sociopathic. That's very upsetic. Can you imagine like
Speaker 1: just that, because that's like inducing Cotard delusion and like
Speaker 1: you don't exist and the kids get like, I'm so upset.
Speaker 1: I saw one the one I saw, the kids starts crying.
Speaker 1: Everyone i've seen the kid starts crying because it's like
Speaker 1: it's their whole family, like their mom and their dad
Speaker 1: is in on it and they're all like, they're all
Speaker 1: like so upset that they're invisible. It's I hate them.
Speaker 1: What happened to pranks Like where you like put shaving
Speaker 1: cream on someone's hand and their nose itches or something,
Speaker 1: you know, Or like you put like a rubber band
Speaker 1: around like the sprayer at the sink so you turn
Speaker 1: the you know, like you pull the hose out and
Speaker 1: you can like spray your dishes or whatever. So you
Speaker 1: put a rubber band around it. So when they turn
Speaker 1: the water on, they expected to come out of the faucet,
Speaker 1: but because the rubber band is holding down the thing,
Speaker 1: that's raised them a little bit. It's not like a
Speaker 1: nice prank. They get a little wet, but it's better
Speaker 1: than like psychologically starring your child with your entire family. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'd rather get a little wet than have my existence
Speaker 1: negated by my closest family. Yeah, it's like, don't do that.
Speaker 1: Come on, there's gotta be other fun thing you can do. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know when the good old days when pranks were
Speaker 1: like you go to like a neighborhood and you like
Speaker 1: shove someone down and they get mad, and you're like
Speaker 1: it's just a prank. Bro Oh, Yeah, that good old days.
Speaker 1: Yeah reminds me where I certainly was the one doing
Speaker 1: the pushing and not not the one being pushed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you were good prankster. I was real
Speaker 1: good and popular. Have you ever played The Last of Us?
Speaker 1: It's a zombie survival horror video game, and it's one
Speaker 1: of my personal favorites because of a key detail in
Speaker 1: the game. The zombification process occurs not through a virus,
Speaker 1: but due to a parasitic fungus that infects the brain
Speaker 1: of the host, causing aggression and behaviors that allow the
Speaker 1: fungus to thrive and create spores to spread. This is
Speaker 1: one of the more realistic conjectures about how a zombie
Speaker 1: apocalypse might occur, and it is no small part due
Speaker 1: to where the game creators drew there in spurretion from
Speaker 1: a real parasitic fungus called Ophio corteseps, which is a
Speaker 1: scourge of ants who live in the forests of Thailand.
Speaker 1: In Brazil, a foraging ant may encounter one of the
Speaker 1: many spores of the fungus. Once the spore has made
Speaker 1: its way inside the ant's body, it gets to work
Speaker 1: breaking down the little guy's exoskeleton, causing convulsions that drop
Speaker 1: the ant from its tree to the forest floor. The
Speaker 1: crazed infected ant is then driven by the fungus to
Speaker 1: climb up a plant and grasp a leaf with its mannibles.
Speaker 1: In the literal death grips, the ant parishes as the
Speaker 1: fungus grows all the back of its head into a
Speaker 1: long stop with the fruiting body at the end that
Speaker 1: will eventually release more spores. Ophio corteseps is no joke,
Speaker 1: has been responsible for the destruction of entire ant colonies.
Speaker 1: That's what makes The Last of Us extra creepy. In fact,
Speaker 1: the game developers name their zombie fungus corteseps after the
Speaker 1: ant infecting variety. So the next time you stop at
Speaker 1: the idea of a zombie apocalypse, those tiny little picnic
Speaker 1: crashes have been dealing with it for millennia. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Guys. Death sucks. It's truly the worst. So
Speaker 1: it's no wonder we all fantasize about immortality. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: there's like lots of cautionary tales about being careful what
Speaker 1: you wish for, how living forever would be lonely and boring,
Speaker 1: But come it sounds like sour grates. Obviously, it would
Speaker 1: suck to be the only immortal person. But what if
Speaker 1: humanity didn't have to die? You may say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we'd run out of space. I'm sorry, but like, once
Speaker 1: we have the technology to become immortal, don't you think
Speaker 1: we'd master pocket dimensions or at least colonize a few
Speaker 1: new planets. Not having to cope with death would be awesome.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to be whimsically wise about how
Speaker 1: death is all part of life. It's not. It's the
Speaker 1: ending of life. It's like the literal opposite of being alive.
Speaker 1: With that said, I do want to talk about forms
Speaker 1: of immortality that would actually be terrifying. Sure death is
Speaker 1: really bad and it'd be great to avoid it, but
Speaker 1: there are certainly fates worse than death and creepier. Still,
Speaker 1: this is not mere hypothetical conjecture at this point. As
Speaker 1: Cody and I will reveal, there are some real current
Speaker 1: scientific advancements that post some truly unnerving philosophical and psychological questions. So, Cody,
Speaker 1: if you die, would you want to freeze yourself like
Speaker 1: they say that Walt Disney did? Um Probably not, I
Speaker 1: would say It actually kind of might depend on where
Speaker 1: we're at a in the world and like how how
Speaker 1: we're all doing um as a species, but also where
Speaker 1: technology has has gotten right. To be clear, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure there's any evidence to suggest that Walt Disney froze's head. However,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence to suggest he did not freeze his head.
Speaker 1: That's why I believe it is a fact. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it seems like something he'd do. Yeah, he's had his
Speaker 1: Frisden in the Disney vault with all the DVDs. I
Speaker 1: feel like Elon Musk is going to do that for sure.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think at first I was going to say,
Speaker 1: maybe Steve Jobs, but he was really like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm only going to eat fruit kind of guy, So
Speaker 1: I don't know, pretty spiritual despite his actions, and like wow,
Speaker 1: he like his company, but he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: he did a lot of acid stuff and was pretty
Speaker 1: like we're all connected in a way, but like, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna some were connected to like maybe it has
Speaker 1: to do with how much money they have and like
Speaker 1: but but like cool man, I like the idea that
Speaker 1: like say this works, like you can freeze yourself, like
Speaker 1: future generations are just going to think that past generations
Speaker 1: are full of douchebags, because it's only going to be
Speaker 1: rich douche and they're all going to be like demanding
Speaker 1: pants and like you know, give me a robot body
Speaker 1: and like not like they won't just be happy with
Speaker 1: like being waken up. They'll demand things. But it's not
Speaker 1: it's not it's not like a Philip situation. There is
Speaker 1: amazing like oh, you're you you think that, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: on the level right right, Like that Twilight Zone where
Speaker 1: they like freeze themselves and then the they it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of crooks that steal gold bars and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: how do we escape the heat. It's like, well, we'll
Speaker 1: freeze ourselves. And then in the future they'll forget to
Speaker 1: stop to chase us. They won't know who we are,
Speaker 1: and it all kind of works, you know, there's some
Speaker 1: murder involved, and then like they they're like killing each
Speaker 1: other over this gold and stuff, and then it turns
Speaker 1: out future people don't need gold, don't need it. It's
Speaker 1: just common commonness. Clay's a pretty rare element. Well, in
Speaker 1: the future times, it won't be for reasons for reasons,
Speaker 1: well maybe yeah, maybe they've met like fusion and fish
Speaker 1: like creating gold. Even if you could, the energy required
Speaker 1: to make the gold would be more of them. The
Speaker 1: gold is all right, all right. But by then, also
Speaker 1: you assume that they have harnessed solar power pretty effectively. Yeah,
Speaker 1: things have been draining that sun. Yeah, that sun juice,
Speaker 1: like sun juice from but juice to sun juice. Also,
Speaker 1: if I feel like instead of freezing, at some point,
Speaker 1: it'll be closer, Like I know one of the companies
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk is heavily invested in, and I think
Speaker 1: it's his company. But like with like neural networks and
Speaker 1: like and being able to sort of link your brain
Speaker 1: two machines in manipulating machines, so like you just use
Speaker 1: your brain waves to affect. But I feel like it's
Speaker 1: leading towards like, oh, I just want to put my
Speaker 1: my brain that's dying into a robot and that comes
Speaker 1: on as opposed to I want to freeze my self
Speaker 1: and hope that right, we can fix it later. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I mean it's effectively just freezing your brain,
Speaker 1: but in a different way. Yeah, we just don't understand
Speaker 1: quite what consciousness is. I do think it's funny because
Speaker 1: like these rich people that are freezing themselves, like the
Speaker 1: budget way is to freeze your head. I mean you
Speaker 1: still have to be really rich and a little bit delusional,
Speaker 1: but like you know, it's just like, man, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to pay for my whole body. They'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: But I mean, like, I don't know, like waking up
Speaker 1: after being frozen for so long, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: a good time. I know, like the Futurama funness of
Speaker 1: like you wake up, you have a fun, fun friends
Speaker 1: and a crabman and you only go on adventures. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but I feel like, I mean, so you know that
Speaker 1: would be like Encino Man, we're brandan freezing so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where he wakes up and he's like a sexy idiot caveman.
Speaker 1: That's not like us now freezing ourselves. That's like a
Speaker 1: caveman accidentally frozen, right right, mas Yeah, and he like
Speaker 1: I forgot how that movie I watched a long time ago.
Speaker 1: But like they're like, we're going to civilize you, and
Speaker 1: they dress them up as like a nineties teen and
Speaker 1: like take him to malls and like all the girls
Speaker 1: think he's hot and he has these like very neat
Speaker 1: and nice dreadlocks. So like, um, but like, uh, I
Speaker 1: mean like I feel like that would be the best
Speaker 1: case scenario. As you wake up, everyone's way smarter than
Speaker 1: you and they view you as like this oddity, but
Speaker 1: hopefully you'll be like found by some rascally teenagers. So
Speaker 1: would frogs actually do this? Pretty well, they go through
Speaker 1: a process of freezing themselves completely, like their rock solid frozen.
Speaker 1: They're not just like oh I'm cold. You could smash
Speaker 1: them with a hammer and they would shout out to
Speaker 1: a million frog pieces, like even inside like they're insides
Speaker 1: or well, it's a little more complicated, but I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: they're insides are frozen, but on the cellular level, uh,
Speaker 1: they're kept hydrated, so their cells are not completely frozen.
Speaker 1: Everything else is, but it's like, um, it's frozen, but
Speaker 1: there's like sort of like this uh anti freeze kind
Speaker 1: of thing in their cells that keeps them from because
Speaker 1: the one of the problems with freezing is that the
Speaker 1: little ice crystals burst cells and destroys the cells um
Speaker 1: or like they become desiccated. Yeah, so um, what they
Speaker 1: do is as winter comes on and the frogs are like, well,
Speaker 1: I can't go on and where I'm a frog. Um,
Speaker 1: so they like, so they start to freeze and then
Speaker 1: rethought like over and over again until the glucose levels
Speaker 1: in their cells rise to an abnormal degree. Um. So
Speaker 1: then when they do go into the real freeze, Uh,
Speaker 1: they can remain frozen for months at temperatures as low
Speaker 1: as zero degrees fahrenheit, which is pretty cold. Um. And
Speaker 1: the high levels of glucose that they had started building
Speaker 1: up from the thawing refreezing thawing refusing process protects their cells. Uh.
Speaker 1: It keeps the water inside the cells, and it keeps
Speaker 1: the cells from bursting, and so they are sort of
Speaker 1: alive and instance spended animation. And it's funny because like
Speaker 1: I saw a video of one of these frogs, like
Speaker 1: someone pushed it. I hope it wasn't the documentary makers
Speaker 1: because that'd be mean, but hopefully another animal just pushed
Speaker 1: it and then like tumbled down. It's just like frozen solid.
Speaker 1: It looked like a fake like a frog statue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know in Austin Powers, how like after being
Speaker 1: frozen for so long, like the first thing he does
Speaker 1: is like pe a lot. That's what the frogs do
Speaker 1: they pe out all of the excess glucos and then
Speaker 1: hop off to the nearest like to go shag some
Speaker 1: some other frog. It's like sex. Yeah immediately it's been
Speaker 1: long enough. Yeah, I think I've been frozen for months. Firstly,
Speaker 1: I just really need to pee. Then I'm going to
Speaker 1: get some So then this happens every year, like they
Speaker 1: just go through the cycle of like all right, time
Speaker 1: again to freeze. Yeah, every every winter. I don't know
Speaker 1: how long these frogs live, but probably a couple of winters.
Speaker 1: They've seen two winters. But it's like a repeatable sort
Speaker 1: of action. It's not like you froze yourself once no more, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. It's like the process they go through
Speaker 1: is just like they're not damaging their little bodies that much.
Speaker 1: There are other ways to keep yourself in suspended animation.
Speaker 1: So one of my favorite animals are the little water bears. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little tartar grade. They're also called moss piglets. I
Speaker 1: like that name, moss piglets. Like that, it's cute. They've
Speaker 1: got so many cute names. I know, tart Grade is
Speaker 1: kind of a cute name. It is, and they are
Speaker 1: sort of cute. Depends on like the photograph taken of them.
Speaker 1: Some of the photographs are like the electron microscope imaging
Speaker 1: of them. It's really cute. They just like look like
Speaker 1: chubby little like bear worms. They have a lot of
Speaker 1: legs and stuff, but they're sort of chub z and stuff.
Speaker 1: And but some of it like a close up of
Speaker 1: their faces, like because their mouths look like little butt
Speaker 1: holes the aspect but hole for a mouth. Um. So
Speaker 1: they're microscopic animals. Um. They are less than a millimeter
Speaker 1: big and they can just barely be seen with the
Speaker 1: human eye. Um. So the tartar grade turns itself into
Speaker 1: a mummy. It dehydrates itself uh and does like a
Speaker 1: self embalming on its internal cells, organelles and membranes because
Speaker 1: this is a tiny but it is an animal, so
Speaker 1: it has a little organelle um. And it coats them
Speaker 1: in a special sugar gel called trahelos. And it is
Speaker 1: effective enough that labs have revived tart grade samples up
Speaker 1: to forty years after they have gone through this self
Speaker 1: mummification process. Reportedly, I don't think this has been replicated
Speaker 1: in the lab, but like samples of dehydrated tartar grades
Speaker 1: were taken from one year old museum moss, and we're
Speaker 1: successfully revived. Must be a real like Jumanji situation for
Speaker 1: these these little moss picklets are like what do your is?
Speaker 1: I guess they're not socializing much with like modern moss
Speaker 1: picklets and all their iPads and their twitters. They're just
Speaker 1: all these old moss picklets on this moss. So maybe
Speaker 1: they're like the Amish to other moss picklets, where it's
Speaker 1: like you just suddenly have this whole society of antiquated
Speaker 1: tartar grades. So Cody, it's time to go to Imagine
Speaker 1: Nation station all board for a fun time. So would
Speaker 1: you become a brain in a jar? We're kind of
Speaker 1: touching on this earlier with the whole like preserving the
Speaker 1: just the brain space typically, but just like just the brain,
Speaker 1: not even your whole body, just your brain. There's like
Speaker 1: this idea that like if you can preserve the brain,
Speaker 1: that's essentially what you are. It's just like the brain.
Speaker 1: So like maybe you could be put in a robot body,
Speaker 1: or like if you can keep it alive, you know,
Speaker 1: then like you can get put in the next Frankenstein. Right,
Speaker 1: there might be some sort of preservation of intelligence and
Speaker 1: consciousness that it can be transferred, right, if you can
Speaker 1: preserve it well enough, I would consider it. I got
Speaker 1: to hold a human brain. It was donated for learning.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I assume assume that you got it through
Speaker 1: some sort of legitimate channels. Yes, I have not done
Speaker 1: brain crimes. That's that's what someone innocent of brain crimes
Speaker 1: would say. It was weird brain and steal a brain.
Speaker 1: Come on in my hands, come on, powerful, for I
Speaker 1: held the entirety of a person in my hands. I
Speaker 1: didn't like it, I believe you. When I held the
Speaker 1: reesless monkey brain, it was a different how many I
Speaker 1: held a lot of weird stuff. I've held deep sea anglerfish. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's not a brain fish. I've held a fish.
Speaker 1: A great story. I have held dead birds and brains. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the reesless monkey brain was less creepy. It was more like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is interesting. It was also smaller and like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this is like an animal brain, like
Speaker 1: a human brain is like that's gotta feel very creepy,
Speaker 1: and I don't like it. Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: weird because it's like you're like, well, obviously this isn't
Speaker 1: the person now, Yeah, and it just feel it feels weird.
Speaker 1: It's like I don't like it's like sort of like firmish.
Speaker 1: That's what the texture. Well, it was preserved in formaldehyde
Speaker 1: for a long time, so it's like different texture than
Speaker 1: brain actually is. Obviously it's lost all the color because
Speaker 1: like a live brain is really colorful. It's like red
Speaker 1: and pink and purple veins and blue veins. Like it's
Speaker 1: pretty in a way, I guess if you ignore all
Speaker 1: the context um, but like the human brain is beautiful.
Speaker 1: So imagine that your brain is kept alive but without
Speaker 1: your consent. I have not agreed to this. You have
Speaker 1: not agreed to this, and your brain is totally preserved
Speaker 1: and kept alive, and your you can't do anything, like
Speaker 1: you can't like flagellate your brain. Still, you can't communicate,
Speaker 1: flick their hands away, and just how even if you
Speaker 1: weren't using experiments, which would probably be terrifying. It's probably
Speaker 1: why they have my brain. But like even if you're
Speaker 1: just left alone, like that would almost be worse because
Speaker 1: you have no connection to the outside world. You have
Speaker 1: no sensory information, you can't feel your body. Maybe you
Speaker 1: have some like phantom limb going on, because that does
Speaker 1: happen when you lose a limb. You just wouldn't experience
Speaker 1: any external thing and you'd just be kept on limbo.
Speaker 1: And if you were being experimented on, maybe that would
Speaker 1: be something of a relief even because you'd be feeling something,
Speaker 1: although you'd have no sense of like why it's happening
Speaker 1: when it's happening, and you wouldn't have, yeah, the ability
Speaker 1: to like perceive or react to anything or have a
Speaker 1: sense of even time. Right, Like you're completely at the
Speaker 1: mercy of what they decided to do with you. And
Speaker 1: I just hate that, Like I'm not breathing right now,
Speaker 1: I should breathe. That sounds terrifying. And if you get
Speaker 1: an it's right on your brain. Their brain doesn't have
Speaker 1: any nerves, so you wouldn't wouldn't, but they they'd be
Speaker 1: like poking, prodden you and like sending currents through your
Speaker 1: brain and pain essentially like occur in your head, like
Speaker 1: you have nerves that are communicating to your brain and
Speaker 1: saying how this hurts, and then your brain tells you,
Speaker 1: like you feel hurt now right, that is bad? You
Speaker 1: You shouldn't touch that fire, stop it right now, which
Speaker 1: I do a lot, Like I'll touch a hot pan
Speaker 1: and I'm like, my brain is, like we've been through
Speaker 1: this before, you know, one of the first lessons I
Speaker 1: tried to teach you. Yeah, this is like the first
Speaker 1: thing we went over and I told you it was
Speaker 1: bad and you keep doing it? How many years has
Speaker 1: it been. We'll just we're just gonna take your brain
Speaker 1: out and put that because otherwise, um, but I just
Speaker 1: it really creeps me out. Yeah, I think, uh I would, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would hate that because I wasn't even thinking like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'd be like conscious, right. I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, put my brain in whatever, and like I'll
Speaker 1: just like exist, but like it would be you'd exist, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like how much of your conscious like how much
Speaker 1: of it would be you? And like, even if it's
Speaker 1: not entirely you, it's still an awareness since I don't, well,
Speaker 1: good news good this sea and I say goodness is
Speaker 1: badness and just trying to trying to sugarcoat it a
Speaker 1: little bit, like at this point, do you need to
Speaker 1: We've gotten this far just like off, we've broken you down. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it is becoming more of a reality than it
Speaker 1: used to be because scientists have successfully kept alive the
Speaker 1: disembodied brains of pigs. Um. So it's not just like
Speaker 1: happening in the basement of you know that really quiet
Speaker 1: guy where he's like, he seemed like a nice guy
Speaker 1: and he's just really quiet and goes down to his
Speaker 1: basement with a bunch of pigs, keeps to himself les. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: this is a Yale neuroscientist nead system. The pig brains
Speaker 1: were retrieved from a slaughterhouse, so they didn't kill the
Speaker 1: pigs to get their brains. They just like, like, you
Speaker 1: guys aren't using those brains, are you? Um uh? And
Speaker 1: they are pumped with artificial blood. Brain X, come on,
Speaker 1: could you try a little harder to sound less like
Speaker 1: the evil company in a horror movie like we we've
Speaker 1: invented brain X cut to zombies everywhere, Brad Pitt looking
Speaker 1: stern um. So they brought the pig brains back to
Speaker 1: life for up to thirty six hours, and so the
Speaker 1: researchers reported that there was no evidence the brains had
Speaker 1: regained consciousness. But there's no test for consciousness, Like, there's
Speaker 1: no definitive I mean, you can kind of do things
Speaker 1: like you know, searching for electrical signals. But it's not
Speaker 1: foolproof because like there was this guy, Martin Pistorius, who
Speaker 1: I think he may have gotten meningitis or terrible illness
Speaker 1: that affected his brain, and they said, oh, he's effectively
Speaker 1: a vegetable. He's not conscious, and he slowly regained his consciousness,
Speaker 1: so it was true. He had lost consciousness for a
Speaker 1: good you know, he was in a vegetative state, but
Speaker 1: then he started to regain and but his body was paralyzed,
Speaker 1: so he's like locked into his body. Everyone thinks he's
Speaker 1: not aware, like not conscious, and it took a long time.
Speaker 1: He was in that state for years, and then he
Speaker 1: finally had a nurse who was like, I don't buy
Speaker 1: that he's not in there, Like she felt like there
Speaker 1: was certain eye movements that he did, certain like things
Speaker 1: in response to her. It's like, really sad because often
Speaker 1: you'll think that's happening with someone, but it's sort of
Speaker 1: just your own interpretation. But in this case, he really
Speaker 1: was there. He was and he was trying to communicate,
Speaker 1: and eventually he was able to find a way to
Speaker 1: communicate with the nurses, and then they were able to
Speaker 1: develop tools for him and he's like gives talks now,
Speaker 1: like he like uses one of those, Like I think
Speaker 1: it's eye movement to text things. And it's just really
Speaker 1: creepy to me because like you could like have a
Speaker 1: brain and be like, well, it's not conscious, it's not alive,
Speaker 1: and then like what if it regains its consciousness eventually
Speaker 1: or like because you're presumably not constantly monitoring it for
Speaker 1: electrical activity, like there could be brief moments or like
Speaker 1: minutes where it's back in there. But if you think
Speaker 1: this is only a problem for pigs, hold onto your brains,
Speaker 1: but Cody, I of course do not think that that's
Speaker 1: where it ended. The researchers say this technology could be
Speaker 1: adapted to human brains and are hopeful that it could
Speaker 1: be used to study diseases like Alzheimer's, which cannot be
Speaker 1: studied from dead brains. I have thoughts and feelings about
Speaker 1: this because like, on the one hand, like my grandma
Speaker 1: had um dimension, I know how awful that is, And
Speaker 1: of course I want there to be research into Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: and dementia because it's just a devastating thing. But also
Speaker 1: don't want a human brain to be tormented. We can't
Speaker 1: be sure it won't be Yeah, what, like what's the
Speaker 1: line there, and like what what are you doing to
Speaker 1: the brain and how is that? Because if you're if
Speaker 1: it is not a dead brain, because you can't study
Speaker 1: dead brains for this, then it's alive and then it's
Speaker 1: some form of consciousness. So you have, like you were
Speaker 1: describing that terror of being like just a brain is
Speaker 1: alive and conscious and experiencing these tests in some sort
Speaker 1: of way, one would assume because it's not brain dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the counter argument would be, like, we can
Speaker 1: keep individual cells in the brain alive, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean the synapses are firing. That doesn't mean that what
Speaker 1: makes that consciousness is still there. But I would feel
Speaker 1: a lot more comfortable if we had a better working
Speaker 1: definition of we're getting there. But it's just like I
Speaker 1: still don't know, and yeah, even this guy who like
Speaker 1: slowly woke up over time, like you aren't safe for
Speaker 1: sure that the tests you're doing are not not on
Speaker 1: a person that can sense these things, right, And I
Speaker 1: feel differently about this versus like say taking someone off
Speaker 1: life support, because in that case it's like, well, you
Speaker 1: know the family's decision and hopefully you've talked about it
Speaker 1: with your family member, and you're doing it according to
Speaker 1: their wishes and your wishes, and I don't think you should.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, if there's a tiny chance they're alive,
Speaker 1: you cannot like take them off life support or something.
Speaker 1: I think that should be very personal decision. But it's
Speaker 1: different when you're like forcing someone to be alive. That's
Speaker 1: almost more responsibility because you're potentially forcing them to exist
Speaker 1: in a situation that's horrifying. Yeah, it's arguably worse. Even
Speaker 1: if you consent to it while you're alive. You would
Speaker 1: never be able to like be like hey, actually this sucks,
Speaker 1: stop it right. Yeah, there's there's no like clause of
Speaker 1: like I changed my mind or like this is I
Speaker 1: can't indicate that I don't. That's why, like earlier, when
Speaker 1: we're talking about like would you freeze your brain? Would
Speaker 1: you want to even transfer your brain to like a
Speaker 1: robot or whatever, which sort of leads to like the
Speaker 1: concept of like just like you could be alive forever,
Speaker 1: like your consciousness could continue forever if you want, but
Speaker 1: having some sort of kill switch seems necessary for that, like,
Speaker 1: because the forever is the terrifying part. I would maybe
Speaker 1: want to try it if I had like an out
Speaker 1: like nope, I'm out right, like yeah, a nope button
Speaker 1: and then maybe like twenty years later it flips back
Speaker 1: on You're like still no, you know, okay, you're gonna
Speaker 1: shut you down again because it was a black mirror
Speaker 1: like that or something, yeah, where yeah, consciousness was sort
Speaker 1: of kept in these little hard drives. Didn't like that
Speaker 1: an uplifting one though, it's one of the few. I think.
Speaker 1: I think was that the Black Museum one. No, uh
Speaker 1: sanin peril Oh that one, Yeah, that was nice. That
Speaker 1: was nice. No, I'm thinking of the one where you're
Speaker 1: trapped in a inanimate object and it's awful and I
Speaker 1: hated it. That was so. There is a philosopher and
Speaker 1: neuroscientist named Antonio Dimi Massio who warns that the experience
Speaker 1: of a reanimated brain could be deeply disturbing. As we
Speaker 1: m that makes a lot of sense, and he he
Speaker 1: says that without the feedback loop between the brain and
Speaker 1: spinal cord and signals from the body, a normal conscious
Speaker 1: experience may not be possible. So he's even going beyond
Speaker 1: just like the horror of being like kind of stuck
Speaker 1: in your brain. He's saying, like, there's like part of
Speaker 1: your brain is kind of in your spinal cord and
Speaker 1: in your nerves and your body. Like a lot of
Speaker 1: the processing your consciousness isn't just a floating brain. It's
Speaker 1: like feedback the rest of your body and experience. The
Speaker 1: equals consciousness as opposed to Yeah, and like even if
Speaker 1: you're like visually impaired, hearing impaired, you can still have
Speaker 1: a happy consciousness. Or if like say you're paralyzed, you
Speaker 1: can still have a normal consciousness. Like even if you're
Speaker 1: very impaired, some of your sensory organs are impaired, there's
Speaker 1: still some connection to the outside world, Like there's something there.
Speaker 1: But without like a spinal cord, without that kind of
Speaker 1: like feedback, it's just yeah, without those systems and the
Speaker 1: back and forth, it would kind of probably make you
Speaker 1: go insane a little bit. Yeah, I mean, like the
Speaker 1: Martin Pistorious, the guy who was like locked in his
Speaker 1: body for years and couldn't communicate. He talked about how
Speaker 1: like he was very depressed for a long time. Of
Speaker 1: course she would be like, my god, but he just
Speaker 1: describes it as something very unpleasant. But for him there's
Speaker 1: like a light at the end of the tunnel where
Speaker 1: like the promise of actually being able to communicate, because
Speaker 1: even that was he was connected to the world anyways.
Speaker 1: Like it was just like I can't really communicate, but
Speaker 1: you still have things around you and people that you
Speaker 1: recognize and are trying to communicate, which is also terrifying.
Speaker 1: Like being locked in your body is terrifying, but this
Speaker 1: is like being locked in. Like it's different, and it's
Speaker 1: very very disturbing. I get a sleep, which is not
Speaker 1: a good time. It's not great. It's not great. It's
Speaker 1: like where you kind of wake up and you're getting
Speaker 1: sensory information but you can't move. Yeah, and kind of
Speaker 1: put that do that not like on purpose, but like
Speaker 1: you but like it's like a step for for lucid dreaming.
Speaker 1: You can kind of put yourself in that mindset like
Speaker 1: and it all it does take is just lying on
Speaker 1: your back hand like arms by your side and just
Speaker 1: look up and close your eyes and just stay still.
Speaker 1: That sounds not fun. It's not. I've tried it a
Speaker 1: couple of times. It's very not fun. It's sort of
Speaker 1: in between sleep paralysis and dreamlike state. Like your dream
Speaker 1: is that you're exactly where you are, and I want
Speaker 1: to dream things like I can fly and punch people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a step towards that, but that first
Speaker 1: step is very unpleasant. Yeah. Maybe, like if you were
Speaker 1: a brain in a jar, you could just do lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming to the max because you would have no external
Speaker 1: stimuli to wake you up from your wonderful dream where
Speaker 1: you can fly and punch people. That's true. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: it's just a really fun dream constantly that you can
Speaker 1: never escape. Before we go, there's one more tale of
Speaker 1: mad science, but this one leaves me a little more optimistic.
Speaker 1: U C. L A has developed a biomaterial gel that
Speaker 1: is showing some promise in helping mice regrow their brains
Speaker 1: after a damaging stroke. The brain, though able to make
Speaker 1: continuous new neural connections throughout our lives, can't regenerate like
Speaker 1: other tissues when it's damaged by stroker injury. The afflicted
Speaker 1: areas can't regrow. Often, recovery from stroke means that other
Speaker 1: unaffected parts of the brain are picking up the slack,
Speaker 1: owing to the pretty adaptive nature of the brain, but
Speaker 1: in severe stroke, when damage affects key areas or is extensive,
Speaker 1: this may not be possible. That's why the news of
Speaker 1: this brain gel is so exciting. It's been shown to
Speaker 1: actually allow for the both of neuronal connections and scarred
Speaker 1: damaged areas of the mice brains. But as intriguing as
Speaker 1: it is, it also raises a question. If you could
Speaker 1: regrow your brain after extensive damage, would you still be
Speaker 1: you or would this new brain be a unique individual.
Speaker 1: I think we'll start finding some very strange but important
Speaker 1: answers to the nature of consciousness once science advances to
Speaker 1: the point of regrowing damaged brains. Well, So, Cody, you
Speaker 1: got anything else to plug, sure, watch my show if
Speaker 1: you like it. It's about the good news. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: called some More News on YouTube the podcast you mentioned
Speaker 1: Even More News. My Patreon is a thing that we do.
Speaker 1: It's just patreon dot com slash Cody Johnston. UM. If
Speaker 1: you want to support us to make more often longer shows, UM,
Speaker 1: that would be great. And I don't know my Twitter
Speaker 1: it's dr mr Cody's d R M I S T
Speaker 1: E R C M D Y and I hate it,
Speaker 1: but it's not gonna I like your rants. I know
Speaker 1: they're probably not good for you, but we all benefit
Speaker 1: from them, that's what I hear. Yeah, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: have help in that capacity. Well, that's that's great. And
Speaker 1: I've I've seen, of course the some more news and
Speaker 1: even more news, and they're both great. Highly recommend you
Speaker 1: guys go through stuff so we don't have to shaving
Speaker 1: years off our lives. Um and you can follow me
Speaker 1: at Katie Golden on the Twitter or at pro bird
Speaker 1: writes uh And I would definitely suggest the latter because
Speaker 1: it's more fun being a bird than a human sometimes
Speaker 1: it really is. The Oh yeah, our twitter is some
Speaker 1: more news on twitter Twitter account as well. That's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: terror from the person, But you've got to compartmentalize a
Speaker 1: little bit. That's the takeaway from this episode. Compartmentalized, shove
Speaker 1: it in their lock it tight, don't think about death,
Speaker 1: ignore the stuff that bothers you do it. Good job, everybody.
Speaker 1: M