WEBVTT - Ep114 "Would you eat a self burger?" 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:10.240 Would you eat a burder grown from human muscle cells? 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:15.000 And what does this question uncover about neuroscience and our 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:19.080 calculations of morality? And whether your children will have a 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:21.680 different answer, And what does this have to do with 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:27.400 endangered species or the sacred versus the profane, or brain plasticity, 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:31.520 or moral positioning or social belonging, or stepping on the 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:37.680 boundaries between moral categories or flesh copyrights or the future 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:42.640 of personhood, or what your food choices say about you. 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:49.720 Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagelman. I'm a 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.080 neuroscientist and an author at Stanford, and in these episodes 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:57.160 we sail deeply into our three pound universe to uncover 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:00.040 some of the most surprising aspects. 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:15.640 Of our life. 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:19.600 Today's episode is for sure the weirdest topic I've tackled. 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:23.039 But I found myself chewing on a question that is 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:27.080 hypothetical for now but will not be in a decade, 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:31.200 and I realized that asking the question serves as a 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:35.880 great lever to open up several issues about neuroscience and 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:39.880 our sense of morality. So let's begin with something familiar, 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.680 a hamburger, not the fast food kind of burger from 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:46.679 a cow that you're used to. This one you're holding 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:50.280 in your hand now was never part of an animal. 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:54.800 This one never mooed or clocked or ran through a field. 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:58.720 This burger started its life not on a farm, but 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.640 in a lab. This is the world of lab grown 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:06.040 meat that has been trucking along for years. The way 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:09.640 this works is you take a few little cells from 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:12.880 an animal. In theory, you could take just one cell. 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:17.200 This is a totally harmless, almost undetectable little biopsy. So 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:21.440 you pop off a cell from an animal's muscle. You 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:24.280 can also take it from the skin and reprogram that 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:26.600 into a stem cell and then differentiate it into a 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:28.840 muscle cell. But it's easier if you just start with 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:31.440 a muscle cell. Then what do you do with that 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:35.440 little cell. You put together the right cocktail of nutrients 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.040 and growth factors, and you stick it all in a 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:42.440 little petri dish or a bigger bioreactor, and that single 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:47.200 cell starts to divide and divide and divide, until eventually 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.639 you've got lots of cells. And what is that It's 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:54.160 a chunk of meat. That's all meat is, of course, 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:56.720 just a hunk of muscle tissue made of lots and 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:01.600 lots of little cells. Now, in practice people coculture some 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:05.040 fat cells in there too to get the marbling of meat. 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:09.359 And that's it. This is the stuff of burgers and 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:14.400 sausages and nuggets. This is real meat, just without the 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:18.560 animal who had to be raised and then killed. In 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.640 this case, the animal is still walking around out there, 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:26.119 totally unaware that it is a donor to the future 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:30.240 of human food consumption. In theory, with the right setup, 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.280 you'd never have to return to that animal again. You 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:37.560 could just keep those cells dividing, growing batch after batch, 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:43.840 a potentially infinite supply of burgers without killing a single animal. 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:49.000 Now that's pretty revolutionary. Part of the benefit is the ethics, 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:53.320 no more slaughterhouses, no more factory farms. And there's also 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:57.760 the environment too. Livestock is what gives fifteen percent of 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:02.920 greenhouse gas emissions. A cow is basically a methane factory 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.520 on four legs, and over a lifetime, a cow's water 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:11.720 usage is astronomical. So growing meat in a lab could 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:16.880 dramatically reduce our ecological footprint. Okay, so that all sounds great, 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:20.480 but the wrinkle for now is that it's very expensive. 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.120 The first lab grown burger was grown in twenty thirteen 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:28.640 and it cost over three hundred thousand dollars. Now prices 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:32.440 have been dropping since then, but it's still not fast 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:36.520 food cheap, and the energy requirements are huge. So for 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:41.200 the foreseeable future, this remains a kind of botique technology 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.400 with a lot of promise for the future. But what 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:48.520 I want to do today is think about the implications. 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:53.600 Because once you're growing meat from cells, you're not restricted 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:56.760 to cows or chickens or pigs. You can pop off 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:00.600 a cell and grow meat from anything. What if you 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:04.640 wanted a zebra burger you could do that. What if 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.680 you wanted a polar bear burger? Why not? What if 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:12.480 you wanted a falcon burger? It might be gamy, but 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:16.920 go for it. You could, without harming any animal, create 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.240 a burger from the cells of a cheetah or a 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:24.440 bald eagle or a panda bear. And that raises so 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:29.320 many strange questions now that there's no ethical issues. For example, 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.560 would you eat a burger made from an endangered animal 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:38.599 like an orangutan burger or certain types of rhinoceros. Again, 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:42.360 no animal is harmed here. You're not poaching a tiger 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:46.919 or hunting an elephant. You're cultivating a few cells, and 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:51.159 you could do this ethically and sustainably and harmlessly. So 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:55.200 is that okay? Is it less offensive? If no animal 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:59.600 is hurt? Does it change how we think about conservation 0:05:59.880 --> 0:06:05.320 or species sanctity? These are the opportunities that your grandchildren 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:07.880 will have when they go into a restaurant. These will 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.520 be their menu options. And then it gets even stranger 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:15.760 because for the past few decades we've been unlocking ancient 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:21.360 DNA from mammoths, from Neanderthals, from creatures that haven't walked 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:24.760 the earth in tens of thousands or millions of years. 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:30.160 So would you try a wooly mammoth meatball? How about 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:36.800 a Jurassic barbecue like pterodactyl buffalo wings or a velociraptor steak. 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:41.960 And then, because this line of reasoning has no natural endpoint, 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:47.320 we reach the real question. Would you eat a human 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:51.160 burger not carved from a human and not taken from 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:55.080 anyone against their will? Just a few cells, a few 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:58.599 muscle cells, and a few fat cells grown in a dish, 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:03.400 No pain, no death, no victim. The question is is 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:07.920 that or is that not cannibalism? If no one is harmed, 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:11.280 no one dies, You're not desecrating a corpse. Will the 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:15.840 taboo still apply in the future. Now, we're gonna ask 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:20.040 ourselves some crazy questions to probe our sense of the 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:24.560 morality and the weirdness here. And remember, while these questions 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:28.200 seem insane to us, they're not going to for our 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.040 near term descendants. Okay, So the first question is, how 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.280 would you feel about eating the burger if it's your 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:39.680 own cells? Would you eat a self burger? Would it 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:45.400 be an active curiosity of narcissism, of culinary self knowledge, 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.120 not just you are what you eat, but you eat 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:52.120 who you are? Okay? Would you feel better eating a 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:56.480 self burger or a stranger burger? Does it matter who 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.640 the donor is? Would you feel different about eating a 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:03.920 burger made from the cells of an Olympic athlete versus 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.280 a person who is homeless. Keep in mind these are 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:11.600 just muscle cells. The cells don't hold the properties of 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:15.080 the larger person. But does it feel different if the 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:20.320 burger comes from someone's society admires versus someone's society shuns. 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:23.680 How about a burger made from your favorite movie star 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:27.800 versus a prisoner? Because biologically it's the same. These are 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:31.520 just hunks of marbled muscle fiber. There's no memory, there's 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:35.360 no personality. These are just cells. I was recently bouncing 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:37.760 this idea off my friend Kevin Kelly, and he was 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.679 struck with an idea that lit him up. He imagined 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:44.280 that in the not so distant future, married couples might 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:47.280 celebrate their wedding not with a cake, but with a 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:51.600 we burger. This is a combination of both partner cells 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:56.520 grown and grilled and ceremoniously eaten together. Now, there's something 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:01.319 loving and something disturbing about that idea. There's something sacred 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:05.839 and something grotesque. And that's the point. Lab Drone meat 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:09.800 is going to force us to confront the boundaries of 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:14.320 our ethics and our imagination. It invites us to question 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.800 why we draw lines exactly where we do, and whether 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:24.440 those lines are drawn in ink or in pencil. Okay, 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:28.720 so let's slow down to examine our physical responses to 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:31.640 these questions. When I asked you if you would eat 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.480 a human burger, even if you were nodding along with 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:39.400 the science, following the logic and understanding that nobody is harmed, 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:43.600 something else likely happened in your body, a little tightening 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:47.439 in your stomach, maybe a physical recoil or a facial 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:50.480 expression you didn't mean to make. That all comes from 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:57.000 the neural circuitry of disgust. Disgust is a neurological alarm bell. 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:02.439 It's a deeply wired signal, usually for survival. When you're disgusted, 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.000 we see activation of a brain region called the insula, 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:09.840 specifically the anterior insular cortex. This is a region that 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:13.280 integrates information from your body like smells and tastes and 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:19.280 gut sensations, and helps to generate the subjective feeling of revulsion. 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:23.360 So if you're in a brain scanner like fMRI and 0:10:23.400 --> 0:10:27.040 you smell something rotten, or you see a gruesome injury, 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.400 or sometimes if you even just watch someone else react 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:34.200 and disgust, your insula lights up. But here's the thing. 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:40.600 Your insula also responds to moral violations. If you read 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.800 a story about someone betraying their friend, or cheating on 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:49.040 a test or committing a cruel act, this same brain 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:54.200 region is involved. Your body responds to moral pollution the 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:58.600 same way it responds to physical contamination, and that gives 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:01.480 us a clue that discussed is more than just an 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:06.160 evolutionary tool. For avoiding spoiled meat or dirty water. It 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:11.240 becomes the basis for our morality. It's how we police 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:15.200 the boundaries of what is acceptable, what is clean and unclean, 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:18.280 what is sacred and what is profane, or when it 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:20.880 comes to the way that we have traditionally eaten animals, 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.720 what has conscious feelings and experiences pain and what does not, 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:43.400 And this brings us to the idea of purity. Disgust 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:46.760 is most reactive not when something is dangerous, but when 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:51.880 something violates a perceived natural order. It doesn't have to 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:56.080 make sense logically, it just has to feel wrong. That's 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.360 why we shudder at the idea of incest, even when 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.160 it's hypothet me. This is why we gag at the 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:07.000 idea of drinking sterilized urine, even if it's scientifically safe, 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.320 and why for many people the idea of eating lab 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:15.559 drown animal meat trips that same internal alarm. My colleague 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:18.000 Jonathan Height did research on this some years ago and 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:22.040 found that in some situations, we don't build our moral 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:27.720 judgments from reason. We make snap decisions based on gut reactions, 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:32.120 and then we backfill with logic afterward. It's like our 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:36.080 brain has a courtroom, but the verdict is decided before 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:40.360 the lawyers even speak. In other words, we feel first 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:44.480 and we justify later. For example, in one study, Jonathan 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:49.280 Height and his student Scott Murphy presented participants with harmless 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:54.560 scenarios that were morally provocative, like a story about a 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:59.000 brother and sister who choose to have consensual sex just 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:03.000 once while on vacation, using birth control, telling no one, 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:06.520 and never doing it again. There's no direct harm in 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:10.360 the story, and yet most participants judged it to be 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:16.840 deeply wrong. When asked why, they struggled to articulate clear reasons. 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:20.800 They might mention genetic risk, which was controlled for by 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:24.800 the birth control, or emotional damage, which the story ruled out, 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.640 but these explanations were tacked on after the judgment had 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:32.360 already been made. In other words, people feel something is wrong, 0:13:32.760 --> 0:13:36.520 but they can't explain why. In describing this, Height wrote, quote, 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:41.240 judgments were based more on gut feelings than on reasoning, 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:45.559 and participants more frequently laughed and directly stated that they 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.959 had no reasons to support their judgments end quote. Now 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:55.319 this is fascinating because that instinctive disgust, that gag reflex 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:59.800 is not always aligned with harm. Consider this. Some cultures 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:05.200 have rituals of reverend cannibalism, eating the flesh of a 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:10.199 loved one as an act of mourning and remembrance and love. 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.480 Most other cultures find that horrifying. So which is it? 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:19.480 Is it honoring or violating? Obviously, disgust is in some 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:24.960 part shaped by your culture. In some countries they eat dogs. 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:28.040 I have a dog who I love, and that repulses me. 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:32.400 Some places eat horses, some don't. Here in America we 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.520 love to eat cows, but in the majority of states 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:39.200 in India, killing a cow is revolting and illegal. So 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:42.880 some amount of our reactions are culturally poured into us, 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.280 and once they're baked in, they're hard to shake. We 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:48.520 don't just say, well that food isn't for me. We 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:53.280 say that's gross. We react with our whole bodies. And 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:56.160 this brings us back to the human burger. No one 0:14:56.240 --> 0:14:59.120 is harm, no death, no trauma, just a few cells 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:02.400 grown in a dish. And these are just mammalian cells, 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.920 with very little difference between this and a McDonald's burger. 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:11.720 But psychologically these are worlds apart, because the human body 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:15.440 in almost all cultures is not just meat. It's a 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:20.600 sacred vessel. To consume it feels like a transgression. And 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.480 this is what lab grown meat forces us to confront 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:28.840 our narratives and when they might or might not require 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.440 an update. What is meat when it no longer comes 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:36.400 from a death? What is identity when flesh can be 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:40.840 copy pasted? What is taboo when the source of the 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:44.800 taboo is no longer present? Like harm or suffering? When 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.560 we think about the human burger, we find that we 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.600 often end up like Jonathan Hight's participants, who laugh and 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:56.040 shake their heads and can't articulate any reason why they 0:15:56.080 --> 0:16:01.080 thought something was disgusting or immoral. So discussed is a 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:05.200 powerful emotion, but it's not always a reliable guide. It 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.720 was honed to help us survive in the ancient savannah, 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:15.200 but not really to navigate bioengineered futures. As the world changes, 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:19.400 how flexible are our brains? Will we continue to have 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:25.440 moral decisions dictated by ancient alarms? Or are we able 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.400 to update the software running in our heads? I don't 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:30.480 know the answer to this, but this is why I 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:32.840 would love to freeze myself and come back in one 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:36.800 hundred years, because it will be fascinating to see how 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:41.080 generations down the line, born into a new world are 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:44.200 going to see these issues and whether they're going to 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:48.480 be issues at all, And maybe, just maybe we're going 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.760 to have to learn to distinguish between what is gross 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:56.760 and what is wrong. So let's return to the central question. 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:00.800 Would you eat human meat without harmony? A human being 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:04.680 just a few skin cells coaxed into becoming muscle tissue 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:09.440 in a sterile dish. Why does something feel wrong? Well, 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.160 let's zoom in on a notion from psychology, the notion 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:17.560 of the ontological boundary. This is the invisible line that 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:22.639 our minds draw between categories of being, between what is 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:25.760 alive and what is not, or what is human and 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:28.639 what is animal, or what is a person and what 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:32.640 is an object. We are constantly sorting the world into 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:37.760 these sorts of categories, and when something crosses those boundaries, 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:42.520 we get a visceral reaction. For example, a corpse looks 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:46.560 like a person, but it isn't one anymore, or a 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:51.080 lab grown human burger is made of human flesh, but 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.960 no one was harmed in taking it. These things sit 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:59.120 in a kind of category limbo. They don't fit neatly 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:03.400 into the boxes that our minds rely on, and when 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:07.359 something violates an onto logical boundary, it tends to provoke 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:12.560 a reaction like disgust, or fascination or fear. That's why 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:17.360 lab grown human cells feel unsettling, because it blurs the 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:21.880 line between food and person. Even if no harm is done, 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:24.800 the categories we use to make sense of the world 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:28.679 are being scrambled because, whether we're aware of it or not, 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:32.159 most of us carry the belief deep in our psyches 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:36.040 that the human body is special. It's more than just 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:40.080 carbon and calcium and protein. That there's something about the 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:45.120 body that shouldn't be violated or copied or consumed or commodified. 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:49.320 The body, in all human cultures is more than a 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:53.560 physical thing. It's a vessel of identity and memory and 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:58.080 history and personhood, sometimes even divinity. So when we talk 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:02.080 about lab grown human burgers, we're not just proposing a 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:06.159 new food. We're poking at a sacred object. I mean, 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:08.400 just zoom in on the way that every human culture 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:13.159 has rituals around the body. Look at how cultures bury 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:17.240 their dead or handle the remains. Some cultures wash and 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.040 dress the body with reverence. Others burn it or freeze 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:24.159 it or bury it or leave it for vultures. But 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.119 what they all share is the sense that what we 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:31.320 do with the body matters. It's more than just disposal. 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:35.120 It's a final act of communication with the person or 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:39.800 with the divine. That's what's being disrupted here. Lab grown 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:44.439 human meat scrambles this signal. It's not a body. It 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:47.600 never lived. But it feels like a violation because we're 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:51.960 so used to equating the flesh with the person. Now, 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:55.240 there are ways of getting around this category violation. Take 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:58.679 as an example Catholicism, where you have this ritual of 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:04.560 communion that involves eating bread and wine that's symbolically or 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:09.520 depending on your theology, literally becomes the body and blood 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:14.399 of Jesus Christ. It's an act of sacred consumption, and 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:18.439 no one flinches at it. Why because it's ritualized and 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.720 abstracted and sanctified. But what about eating the muscle tissue 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:26.280 of a stranger from a bioreactor. Suddenly we're not so sure. 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:29.880 The frame is gone. There's no ritual, there's no tradition, 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:34.640 it's just raw novelty. It's not that the act is immoral, 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:40.639 it's that it's unclassifiable. It steps all over this ontological boundary. 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:45.560 It doesn't fit our mental boxes. So we find ourselves 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:50.240 in this strange new territory where science gives us possibilities 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:55.960 that culture hasn't caught up with. So we've been talking 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:59.320 about how brains view bodies, but let's turn to the 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:03.040 other half of it, how do brains view food? Because 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:05.240 when you look across cultures, the thing that's clear is 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:10.760 that food is deeply ingrained into our cultural identity. Food 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:13.679 is how we say I love you without using words. 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:18.960 It's how we connect across generations. It's the childhood recipe 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:22.480 that your grandmother never wrote down but everyone remembers. It's 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:25.280 the thing that your partner cooks when they know that 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:28.480 you've had a hard day. It's birthdays, it's first dates, 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:31.800 it's funerals. Food is how we mark time. But it's 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:34.600 also how we define who we are and who we 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:38.080 are not. From a cultural perspective, food gives one of 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:42.439 the clearest examples of in group versus outgroup behavior. The 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:48.639 human brain is intensely tribal. We're wired for group membership, 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:53.280 for affiliation, for categorizing us and them. There have been 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:55.840 lots of studies in my lab and others about the 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:59.639 brain regions involved when we think about other people, especially 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:02.199 when we assess whether they're in our group or not 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:04.600 in our group, whether they are like us or not 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:07.960 like us. Please check out episodes sixteen and twenty for 0:22:08.080 --> 0:22:12.600 much more on that. Anyway, what someone eats is one 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:15.000 of the first cues that we notice. Think about when 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:19.760 someone tells you they are vegan or halal or paleo, 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:23.399 or that they only eat locally sourced food. That's not 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:28.800 just nutritional information. It's moral positioning. It's cultural identity, it's 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:33.200 a worldview. Even among people with similar values, food becomes 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:36.639 a way to fine tune social belonging. Think of the 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:42.080 complex subtribes just inside the category of ethical eaters. There's 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:46.720 the raw food movement, the regenerative agriculture crowd, the zero 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:51.200 waste Lokovores, the flexitarians who only eat meat on weekends. 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:55.240 Each group has different rules, different values, different aesthetics, and 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:58.440 they can instantly recognize who is in and who is out. 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:03.880 The neuroscientists Antonio Demasio talks about how somatic markers, which 0:23:03.920 --> 0:23:08.320 are bodily feelings linked to past experiences, how these guide 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:13.639 are decisions. Our preferences around food are often somatic. In 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:16.280 other words, they're not just tied to reason, but to 0:23:16.800 --> 0:23:22.600 emotion and memory and identity. So when lab grown meat 0:23:22.760 --> 0:23:25.919 enters the picture, it doesn't just disrupt the food system, 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:30.320 it disrupts the identity system. Say that you're at a 0:23:30.400 --> 0:23:33.520 dinner party and everyone has their own plate, someone's got 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:37.160 tofu someone else has grass fed steak, someone's trying oat 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:40.200 milk for the first time, and then you you brought 0:23:40.560 --> 0:23:44.640 the lab grown koala bear sliders. Now what have you done. 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:48.960 You've stepped outside the norm, You've broken the script. You 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:53.360 haven't just introduced a new food, You've introduced a new category. 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:58.320 Your koala bear slider isn't from the eucalyptus forest in Australia. 0:23:58.400 --> 0:24:02.240 It isn't from a factory. It isn't from tradition. It's 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:07.120 from the future. It's synthetic. It happens to be ethical, 0:24:07.160 --> 0:24:11.159 but it's deeply weird. And that changes how people see you. 0:24:11.680 --> 0:24:15.720 Because we don't just eat for ourselves. We eat with 0:24:16.000 --> 0:24:19.680 an audience in mind. Even when no one's watching, your 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:22.919 meal is part of your internal narrative. Your brain is 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:28.040 constantly simulating how others will perceive you. This involves a 0:24:28.119 --> 0:24:32.560 process called mentalizing, which is about understanding yourself in terms 0:24:32.560 --> 0:24:37.240 of other people's mental states. This kind of mentalizing is 0:24:37.280 --> 0:24:41.200 what allows us to predict social reactions or to feel 0:24:41.480 --> 0:24:46.440 embarrassment or pride. It's why people carefully curate what they 0:24:46.640 --> 0:24:49.720 order on a first date. So now I ask yourself, 0:24:49.960 --> 0:24:54.080 what are people mentally simulating when you bite into a 0:24:54.320 --> 0:24:58.840 zebra burger or a lab grown nugget of Albert Einstein. 0:24:59.280 --> 0:25:18.040 It's not about the nutrients, It's about the narrative. Something 0:25:18.040 --> 0:25:22.119 else to note is that food is also ritualized. So 0:25:22.280 --> 0:25:28.600 birthdays mean cake, Thanksgiving means turkey, Sunday dinner might mean pasta. 0:25:29.080 --> 0:25:32.080 We have particular things we do, and we have particular 0:25:32.160 --> 0:25:36.000 things we don't do. You don't serve sushi at a 0:25:36.040 --> 0:25:40.639 funeral or scrambled eggs at a wedding. We eat in 0:25:40.800 --> 0:25:45.240 patterns because it gives us structure, and because repetition gives 0:25:45.320 --> 0:25:50.320 us meaning. These food rituals are encoded in your brain's 0:25:50.359 --> 0:25:54.520 memory systems, like the hippocampus, but also more deeply, like 0:25:54.560 --> 0:25:59.280 in the basal ganglia, which governs habit formation. In other words, 0:25:59.600 --> 0:26:03.480 meal are engraved deeply in the system. They become part 0:26:03.520 --> 0:26:07.240 of how we structure time, how we mark transition, sometimes, 0:26:07.320 --> 0:26:09.399 how we know where we are in the week or 0:26:09.440 --> 0:26:12.560 the year or the life cycle. So what happens when 0:26:12.600 --> 0:26:16.679 you introduce a food that has no ritual context? What 0:26:16.880 --> 0:26:20.600 happens when you show up with a we Burger to 0:26:20.720 --> 0:26:25.920 your wedding or serve a lab grown Neanderthal brisket at 0:26:25.960 --> 0:26:31.479 your child's graduation? Presumably there's confusion and uncertainty because food 0:26:31.920 --> 0:26:37.480 carries symbolic gravity, and new symbols take time to stabilize. 0:26:37.720 --> 0:26:41.200 Until they do, they're going to feel strange. That doesn't 0:26:41.240 --> 0:26:44.400 mean they won't catch on. It just means our neural 0:26:44.600 --> 0:26:50.520 maps for meaning haven't yet caught up. So here we are. 0:26:50.680 --> 0:26:54.840 Scientific progress is handing us away to eat meat without death, 0:26:55.000 --> 0:26:58.399 a way to separate flesh from suffering, a way to 0:26:58.520 --> 0:27:01.679 pull burgers from a bio reactor instead of a body. 0:27:01.760 --> 0:27:04.760 And we've looked at disgust and culture and food. But 0:27:04.840 --> 0:27:09.840 now the societal questions begin, because even if something is 0:27:10.080 --> 0:27:14.080 physically safe, and even if it's technically possible, who gets 0:27:14.119 --> 0:27:17.399 to decide if it's okay? Who decides what you're allowed 0:27:17.440 --> 0:27:20.679 to eat, what cells can be used, whose body is 0:27:20.720 --> 0:27:24.760 off limits, what it means to own a piece of yourself, 0:27:25.200 --> 0:27:28.840 because in this future world of lab grown meat, we 0:27:28.960 --> 0:27:32.919 need to consider the implications through the lenses of law 0:27:33.119 --> 0:27:36.520 and power. So start with a basic question. If somebody 0:27:36.840 --> 0:27:40.639 swabs your cheek and grows a burger from it, do 0:27:40.800 --> 0:27:44.800 you own it? It's your DNA, your biological signature, but 0:27:45.000 --> 0:27:49.400 is it your property? Legally speaking? This isn't hypothetical. There 0:27:49.400 --> 0:27:53.280 have been many court cases where people's cells were taken 0:27:53.320 --> 0:27:57.119 without consent and used in research or commercial products. The 0:27:57.160 --> 0:28:01.000 most famous case is from Henrietta Las nineteen fifty one. 0:28:01.080 --> 0:28:04.080 She was a woman whose cancer cells were biop seed 0:28:04.400 --> 0:28:07.359 and then used without her knowledge. Those cells became the 0:28:07.400 --> 0:28:11.439 first immortal human cell line, known as HeLa cells, and 0:28:11.520 --> 0:28:14.600 ever since they've been used in everything from polio vaccines 0:28:14.640 --> 0:28:19.160