Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: But you know these things because if you've been listening
Speaker 1: to our podcast for the last three years, then this
Speaker 1: is the way we always start our episode. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: throw in a curious nickname or two for yourself, but
Speaker 1: otherwise the info is pretty much always the same, straight
Speaker 1: for it. But today it's a little bit different. You
Speaker 1: guys can't see here in the studio, but it is
Speaker 1: just brimming with balloons that have fallen down from the ceiling.
Speaker 1: And do you know why, I hope that you noted
Speaker 1: the day? No, what is the day? It's our anniversary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been three years since we started this, this little
Speaker 1: cabusive podcast. Yeah, and at the time we didn't know
Speaker 1: how it would go, but it seems to have gone,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty well well. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: let's there's know this, but um, we did not pick
Speaker 1: the name for this podcast. It was it was given
Speaker 1: to us. So when we first started it kind of
Speaker 1: felt huge and looming, but ultimately we thought that we
Speaker 1: could grow into it. Since we're both curious types and uh,
Speaker 1: we are very interested in science. Yeah, of course the
Speaker 1: original podcast was Stuff in the Science Lab and that
Speaker 1: evolved into this podcast. And and at the time, our
Speaker 1: our boss Connell said, uh, such about your mind. That's
Speaker 1: that's gonna be the title, and uh and and we're like,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll run with it. We trust you. You
Speaker 1: you come up with some great ideas. So let's we'll
Speaker 1: see if we can make this work. Because on one hand,
Speaker 1: we weren't sure. Is it kind of cheesy sounding maybe?
Speaker 1: And then also is that a lot to deliver on?
Speaker 1: Like we can actually blow my And it's kind of
Speaker 1: silly that we were even thinking about it at the time.
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, what if it's not a what
Speaker 1: do we do an episode and it doesn't blow people's minds?
Speaker 1: What if it's not really like crazy awesome in your face,
Speaker 1: like stoner science that we're throwing at at at you,
Speaker 1: like what happened? When it's just kind of that that's
Speaker 1: kind of neat. But I mean, in some episodes are
Speaker 1: more mind blowing than others. There are some episodes we've
Speaker 1: done that I feel, even researching them kind of shake
Speaker 1: me to my core and make me just reevaluate either
Speaker 1: myself or the universe though the world I live in,
Speaker 1: the culture that I'm a part of, and in there
Speaker 1: are other episodes where they are just a little bit like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's kind of neat. I never thought about that, But
Speaker 1: I feel like that's just all building up on the
Speaker 1: narrative that we have when we discuss certain themes. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously that's what we're going to talk about a bit today,
Speaker 1: is you know, in our research force to flill your mind?
Speaker 1: How has this influence for our lives because obviously this
Speaker 1: is a very intimate part of our lives, even if
Speaker 1: this is for work. And um, I wanted just to
Speaker 1: quickly say that we want to thank everyone who has
Speaker 1: stuck with us from the beginning and those of you
Speaker 1: who have just stumbled upon the podcast. Um, it's largely
Speaker 1: the conversation that we have with you guys that's helped
Speaker 1: the direction of the podcast and oftentimes really added new
Speaker 1: layers to it. So and we've really been fortunate with
Speaker 1: our listeners because there are a number of podcasts here
Speaker 1: in in the How Stuff Works suite of podcasts. I mean,
Speaker 1: you got uh stuff, you should know stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know stuff Mom never told you, stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in history class. All all these different brands,
Speaker 1: and we hear about other people's listeners, and there are
Speaker 1: great listeners, great fans for all of the podcasts. Though
Speaker 1: I feel like we have less in the way of
Speaker 1: like evil listeners or band listeners or or negative listeners.
Speaker 1: You know. We we get we occasionally catch some flak
Speaker 1: for this, that or the other, but but I feel like, uh,
Speaker 1: we've got a really good crew. We do. We we
Speaker 1: often get if we get criticism, is it's thoughtful and
Speaker 1: it's couched in a way that's helpful. UM. But we
Speaker 1: also most of the time get feedback that were really
Speaker 1: actually blows my mind, that makes sort of takes the
Speaker 1: conversation that we're having together and takes it to another
Speaker 1: level because you guys have gone away with with some
Speaker 1: of the thoughts of your own on these topics and
Speaker 1: really spun them. So it's been a very nice experience.
Speaker 1: And so we just wanted to talk a bit today
Speaker 1: about the different ways that we've digested this stuff. And
Speaker 1: by the way, we would love to hear from you
Speaker 1: guys to um, you know, if if there are certain
Speaker 1: things from the podcast that have affected your lives, A
Speaker 1: certain bits of information that have made you sort of
Speaker 1: rethink what's going on in your world. Yeah, indeed, I
Speaker 1: should also want we have heard from We're always hearing
Speaker 1: from listeners who play us in the background during their
Speaker 1: artistic creation. So they're they're painting or they're they're building
Speaker 1: something and uh. And that's always just really great to
Speaker 1: hear that we, in some way, and even in just
Speaker 1: some small way, maybe contribute to their creative process, be
Speaker 1: it art or science. Indeed, all right, you want to
Speaker 1: take the first way in which this podcast has changed life? Well, influenced? Yeah,
Speaker 1: influence because change tends to you know, it makes you
Speaker 1: think like you gave up all your your belongings, you know,
Speaker 1: became Buddha or something. No, no, no, so one thing.
Speaker 1: I would think. It's it's not so much that change
Speaker 1: something about me, but I feel like it often strengthens
Speaker 1: qualities that are already there because for instance, um, when
Speaker 1: it comes to feminism, uh and uh and the subject
Speaker 1: of the ladies and and you know who women are,
Speaker 1: why that what their role is in the species? Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like I I have always been sympathetic to
Speaker 1: feminist issues. But in the in the course of the
Speaker 1: podcast we've discussed for this Ladies not Implanet Earth was
Speaker 1: an early episode where we talked about such issues as
Speaker 1: you know, the the idea that that females are the
Speaker 1: species and that males are merely a mutation necessary for
Speaker 1: sexual reproduction. We looked at examples, especially the insect world,
Speaker 1: where males have been face doubt. We've looked at some
Speaker 1: of the theories regarding the destructive aspects of the patriarchy
Speaker 1: versus matriarchy and culture and uh. We've also discussed witchcraft,
Speaker 1: witchcraft persecution, the ways in which male dominated culture have
Speaker 1: persecuted women. So it really forced me when I when
Speaker 1: I encounter stereotypes, when when I encounter other attitudes regarding
Speaker 1: regarding sex and gender. Um, I have all of this
Speaker 1: science that I bring to my evaluation of it, and
Speaker 1: I'll think, well, okay, well that person is viewing the
Speaker 1: world in this way, and here's why, and uh, and
Speaker 1: and here is maybe what it's more like from a
Speaker 1: from from an organism level. That's interesting that you say that,
Speaker 1: because um, all of the episodes that you mentioned were
Speaker 1: of interest to me in the ways that we paint gender.
Speaker 1: But I think that for me, the bulk of it
Speaker 1: um in terms of gender has been our research into
Speaker 1: the subconscious and symbols and how we create world of
Speaker 1: symbols that we moved through and um So my suspicion
Speaker 1: has always been that to a large degree we perform
Speaker 1: our gender. Um. I know there, I say a large
Speaker 1: degree of leaving some room there, But for the most part,
Speaker 1: I feel like men and women are just equally capable
Speaker 1: of moments of atrocities and moments of grace, you know,
Speaker 1: both physically and mentally. So I think back to Elizabeth Spelki,
Speaker 1: who is the cognitive psychologist who responded to Lawrence Sumner's
Speaker 1: that then Harvard president, who said that there was a
Speaker 1: shortage of women in science or the physical science is
Speaker 1: because perhaps they did not have the sort of um rigor,
Speaker 1: the sort of intellectual rigor that allowed them to do well.
Speaker 1: And she actually looked at decades of her research into
Speaker 1: infants and children, and she took that data and she
Speaker 1: found that there was nothing, There was no evidence of
Speaker 1: differences between girls and boys on basic number skills, a
Speaker 1: bunch of different things that she was looking at, and
Speaker 1: so she said her position is that the null hypothesis
Speaker 1: is correct, there's no cognitive difference and nothing to say
Speaker 1: about it. And she actually debated uh, Dr Stephen Pinker
Speaker 1: in a fascinating bit their friends, and so they both
Speaker 1: differed on this, this topic of gender differences in the
Speaker 1: physical sciences. And if anybody has, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: two hours to kill anyone. You want to look at
Speaker 1: a transcript of this. It's online, but it's it lays
Speaker 1: out very interesting arguments on this. And I think that
Speaker 1: that Dr Spucky does a great job of attacking this
Speaker 1: in the way of saying, let's not overlay gender stereotypes
Speaker 1: and have them stand in for real data. And now
Speaker 1: what about you? What's what's a way in which working
Speaker 1: on this podcast has influence store changed your life? Ah,
Speaker 1: this consciousness stuff, that's really uh, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the tail wagging the dog problem of death in the
Speaker 1: afterlife for me, and I did not think that that
Speaker 1: was something that would happen, that that that this um
Speaker 1: preoccupation with consciousness would bring up these questions not so
Speaker 1: much actually, you know, about what happens after we die,
Speaker 1: because for me that's fairly simple and straightforward. The lights
Speaker 1: kind of go off in the brain and that's it
Speaker 1: for me. It brought it more um in terms of
Speaker 1: what happened before. So this question of consciousness, I feel
Speaker 1: like it is very much related to the beginnings of
Speaker 1: the universe. So how do I don't know how to
Speaker 1: explain this um. It's troubling to me because that, to me,
Speaker 1: that's the great void of knowledge. So if we know
Speaker 1: that we're inherently tied to the universe through chemicals, the
Speaker 1: chemical imprint, so like hydrogen, helium, and carbon and oxygen,
Speaker 1: those are the most common elements in the universe, and
Speaker 1: we know that hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen are the top
Speaker 1: three ingredients for life on Earth. And then we look
Speaker 1: at our bodies, ourselves, and we know that hydrogen, carbon,
Speaker 1: and oxygen account of the atoms and the human body,
Speaker 1: and you know, it begins to make this case of well,
Speaker 1: of course, you know this is this is something that's
Speaker 1: tied into something that we can't understand at this point.
Speaker 1: And we can't also understand consciousness. We can't point to
Speaker 1: the area in our brain that says this is me,
Speaker 1: this is what makes me me and makes me understand
Speaker 1: my place in the world, just like we can't point
Speaker 1: to the beginnings of life in the universe and say
Speaker 1: that's where it began. And see what you're underlying here
Speaker 1: is something that's always been part of our our mission statement,
Speaker 1: you know, to to take listeners and ourselves to that
Speaker 1: aha point, to the edge of human understanding. And when
Speaker 1: you reach that point and then you're just staring off
Speaker 1: into the void, you're staring staring down into where knowledge
Speaker 1: drops off into the abyss. And that's that means an
Speaker 1: amazing and at times fright main place to be. It is,
Speaker 1: and I'm actually pretty astounded that as humans that we
Speaker 1: have come this far to understand our our chemical fingerprints
Speaker 1: in our bodies and in the universe and tied them
Speaker 1: all together. But that still leaves this gaping whole and
Speaker 1: logic and uh and understanding as well. So again it's
Speaker 1: not for me necessarily a really just toned um conversation
Speaker 1: with myself about what it all means. It just is
Speaker 1: this question of consciousness that has wrung out some of
Speaker 1: these more troublesome aspects of how it all began. So
Speaker 1: do you feel like you have more existential dread now
Speaker 1: than before? Yes? Yes, and no, yes and no. And
Speaker 1: I actually wrote down this this little bit from theoretical
Speaker 1: physicist Lawrence Kraus and his Cosmic Connections lecture, because it's
Speaker 1: always given me a measure of comfort. And he said,
Speaker 1: and every breath you take their an average of at
Speaker 1: least ten oxygen ms from the dying breath of Caesar
Speaker 1: when he said aboute every time you breathe, you're breathing
Speaker 1: in atoms of everyone who has ever lived. So when
Speaker 1: the universe feels immense and like there's no beginning and
Speaker 1: no end, I think about that quote and I think
Speaker 1: about how we just essentially in the day, I have
Speaker 1: this sort of snow globe existence that we just kind
Speaker 1: of shake up around while the little elements uh on
Speaker 1: the earth that are that are surrounding us. I think,
Speaker 1: for my own part with the existential dread, I feel
Speaker 1: like maybe I might have the same level of existential dread,
Speaker 1: but I understand it a little more and then, and
Speaker 1: maybe in the same way that you know when you're
Speaker 1: practicing meditation and mindfulness, it's about it's realizing when you're
Speaker 1: angry or when you're letting your when you're sad, realizing
Speaker 1: what your emotional state is and that being conscious of
Speaker 1: it is the first step in managing it. So maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I am maybe I have a little less existential
Speaker 1: dread in in the fact that I am more conscious
Speaker 1: of how it's working line feeling that way. Well, it's
Speaker 1: when you bring that up, because I had also thought
Speaker 1: that one of the byproducts of working on this podcast
Speaker 1: is that there's a meta awareness of my thoughts because
Speaker 1: we talk about this all the time that you know
Speaker 1: that if you can identify your thoughts and identify what
Speaker 1: is motivating them, then you can oftentimes really get to
Speaker 1: the root of a problem, or you can you can
Speaker 1: correct your responses. So we've even talked about if you're angry,
Speaker 1: you know, count to five, because it takes a little
Speaker 1: bit for your prefrontal cortex to get in line with
Speaker 1: your magdala to make sure that you don't do some
Speaker 1: sort of crazy thing or say something crazy. So there's this,
Speaker 1: there's a sort of wisdom to being able to slow
Speaker 1: down your thought process and um and figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on now you said crazy. Uh. That is another
Speaker 1: thing that has has really hit me over the course
Speaker 1: of these three years is enforcing a pronounced appreciation with
Speaker 1: the thin line between sanity and insanity, way normal and
Speaker 1: paranormal in the human experience. And when we've looked at
Speaker 1: that in terms of the human brain, all the different
Speaker 1: elements that make consciousness what it is, that make memory
Speaker 1: what it is, and how fallible all of that is,
Speaker 1: How how fallible memory is, How the slightest changes in
Speaker 1: the in the brains of structure or chemistry alter the
Speaker 1: way that we perceive the world, how we interact with it.
Speaker 1: How so many of the things that we see as
Speaker 1: paranormal experiences be at an alien abduction and encounter with
Speaker 1: elves in the woods, uh, and angelic visitation, the voice
Speaker 1: of God, in anything from from the from the grand
Speaker 1: list of of of the strange and and the powerful
Speaker 1: and the holy, they can they can almost universally, all
Speaker 1: be explained by looking at the way our mind works,
Speaker 1: that the way our our perception and interaction with the
Speaker 1: real world works. And uh and and and it's not
Speaker 1: something that I feel diminishes the magic of reality at all,
Speaker 1: you know. It's not something like, oh, there aren't really angels,
Speaker 1: isn't that doesn't that suck? No? No, it's more that
Speaker 1: it's it's more exhilarating to think that that our existence,
Speaker 1: in our in our experience of the world is such
Speaker 1: a behind line. It's such a narrow thing, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a tight rope walk. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this last night. I thought I was drifting off to
Speaker 1: sleep because I was seeing images, and I thought, really,
Speaker 1: this is my brain hallucinating because it doesn't have any
Speaker 1: stimuli right now. You know, it's it's dead quiet, and
Speaker 1: it's dark, and it has nothing to chew on. So
Speaker 1: it's going to start the dream cycle and start hallucinating
Speaker 1: for me. Uh, you know, to recreate maybe the events
Speaker 1: of my day or just to float off into different
Speaker 1: areas of exploration. So it really is fascinating. You're right
Speaker 1: there that line between what is mental order and mental disorder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because it at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you're you're encountering the the idea that the brain is
Speaker 1: the most complex structure that we know of. It's this
Speaker 1: intense creation machine, creating, spending off ideas, uh, spenning off
Speaker 1: the whole imagined worlds and uh and we we are
Speaker 1: yet and we are at the center of it all right.
Speaker 1: So comfort So you fall on the line of comforting
Speaker 1: or discomforting, I would say, I would say comforting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least for me, because I'm still able to enjoy
Speaker 1: all those other things too. You know, I still can
Speaker 1: really get into the idea of, you know, of Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 1: or you know, or some horror movie with demons in
Speaker 1: it or something, because it doesn't it doesn't disappoint me
Speaker 1: to to know that those are creations of the mind,
Speaker 1: and it just shows out baculous the mind is, and
Speaker 1: it just comes back out in on itself like that. Cool.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we get back, we are going to discuss the deep
Speaker 1: dirt secrets of our lives. All right, we're back. So,
Speaker 1: so what else in three years of stuff about your mind?
Speaker 1: What else has this changed about you? How has how
Speaker 1: has Obviously the Julie Douglas that exists now is different
Speaker 1: from the Julie Dougles that existed then. Core elements still there,
Speaker 1: You're right. I've got some new cells, new cells, and
Speaker 1: in a different brain structure. Actually, I do have a
Speaker 1: very I think I have a very different brain structure.
Speaker 1: And I say this because, um, we have mentioned before
Speaker 1: I quit drinking alcohol. Um, I don't know a year
Speaker 1: and change your sixteen months ago or something. And the
Speaker 1: reason is because I began to have foreign of an
Speaker 1: awareness of addictive behavior. And so if you have an
Speaker 1: addiction or a dependency on something like I do with alcohol,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to sit back and do research on
Speaker 1: how the brain responds to substances when they're pushed up
Speaker 1: against the anxieties of life and then not see the
Speaker 1: patterns of your own behavior in this light. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think the thing that was most striking to me
Speaker 1: is that when we were doing research on you know,
Speaker 1: whether it was alcohol or drugs, or just talking about
Speaker 1: the reward system and dopamine for instance, UM, I began
Speaker 1: to see that these habits that we create for ourselves
Speaker 1: are really just sort of well trod circuitry in our brain,
Speaker 1: this thing that we keep doing over and over again.
Speaker 1: And for a long time I have wanted to stop
Speaker 1: drinking and and I didn't really I wasn't able to
Speaker 1: understand it in a way that I could. But when
Speaker 1: I got frustrated enough that I had created essentially a
Speaker 1: chemical feedback loop, UM, I began to understand that this
Speaker 1: was something that I might be able to reverse. And
Speaker 1: this was another chilling thing to me, is that learning
Speaker 1: how memory was affected by alcohol, because if you talk
Speaker 1: about the hippocampus, which is involved in memory making, and
Speaker 1: you look at self that are bay and alcohol, what
Speaker 1: you will see is that they lose the ability to
Speaker 1: connect and communicate with other brain cells and they either
Speaker 1: aren't going to make any connection and you're not going
Speaker 1: to have that memory, or your brain actually has to
Speaker 1: create a sort of plan B for memory. And so
Speaker 1: what I thought to myself is, not only have I
Speaker 1: got these chemical feedback loops I don't want um and
Speaker 1: I've sort of fallen victim to that, but I have,
Speaker 1: you know, I have memory stores that maybe are working
Speaker 1: or not working in the way that they should be.
Speaker 1: And that really was something that was troubling to me.
Speaker 1: So I will say that through the research and just
Speaker 1: the constant sort of flow of information about how the
Speaker 1: brain works, I was able to address that. Okay, So
Speaker 1: in a sense, did did the research provide you sort
Speaker 1: of the scientific backup to force the change? Is that
Speaker 1: what you're saying, Yeah, I mean the awareness when you
Speaker 1: think about how bit that you have you don't normally
Speaker 1: research or habit to the degree that you are understanding
Speaker 1: the inner mechanisms of how that habit is playing itself
Speaker 1: out because in a way, sometimes our habits have they
Speaker 1: almost have a mind of their own, They almost have
Speaker 1: a defense mechanism in place to protect themselves from you. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a story that we tell whenever we're engaging in
Speaker 1: the habit. So I'm not gonna go I don't want
Speaker 1: to go into you know, addiction too much. But you know,
Speaker 1: I will say that this is a truthful account of
Speaker 1: of having worked on the podcast over the last three
Speaker 1: years and doing research on the brain and on memory
Speaker 1: and on um, you know, various substances, and then coming
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that you know, there's there was something
Speaker 1: you know, awry in my own personal space that I
Speaker 1: needed to address. Cool you what's your deep dark serian? Well, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have anything is as powerful
Speaker 1: as that. Now, I will say that, Um, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: Are you sure that working on stuff to bow your
Speaker 1: mind your mind did force me to give up eating cephalopods, which, grant,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not putting that out there like I've
Speaker 1: what I've done is super noble because I'm still probably
Speaker 1: a huge hypocrite because even though I do not actively
Speaker 1: seek out pork, I still I don't think I've yet
Speaker 1: to oppose it on moral grounds to say I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna eat that, because pigs are smart and wonderful and
Speaker 1: I respect them as intelligent beings, whereas with cephalopods of
Speaker 1: kind of chosen my battle there and said, you know,
Speaker 1: in the past, I've really enjoyed eating pretty much any cephalopod,
Speaker 1: especially the squid and also the octopi. But now that
Speaker 1: I know more about their brains, you know about how
Speaker 1: fabulous they are as organisms in general, but also how
Speaker 1: how intelligent and octopus can be, and how arguably it's
Speaker 1: it's conscious, how arguably it's it's in the same neural
Speaker 1: zone is my cat. And I don't want to eat
Speaker 1: my cat. I can't bring myself to eat the octopus either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And a lot of this came up when we were
Speaker 1: talking about the book Um, some we eat, some we
Speaker 1: love and saying we kill, and is that right? Some
Speaker 1: eat love and kill? I think so. The follow up
Speaker 1: to Eat Praying, Love and and it was talking about
Speaker 1: our weird relationship with animals and the way that we
Speaker 1: regard them, and that really was, you know, I think
Speaker 1: something that brought up this sort of idea of personhood.
Speaker 1: And then we did the of course, the episode on personhood,
Speaker 1: and we talked about these higher cognitive functions and some animals,
Speaker 1: you know, could they were they conscious? Did they have
Speaker 1: uh complex social relationships? Yes? And yes, and so it
Speaker 1: sort of makes that area even a little bit murkier
Speaker 1: in terms of well is this a food source it's
Speaker 1: And like I say, I realized I'm a hypocrite by saying,
Speaker 1: you know, no notice cephalopods, But I'm still okay with
Speaker 1: with you know, poor could be forced on me and
Speaker 1: you know, chicken and whatnot. I we don't eat a
Speaker 1: lot of meat in our household. We tend to lie
Speaker 1: on the on the vegetables, but we will will still
Speaker 1: have you know, a little chicken or or fish here
Speaker 1: and there as as need be. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can. I sometimes I think though that
Speaker 1: I'll maybe reach the point where I'll say no to
Speaker 1: all the meats and hopefully find a goat that I
Speaker 1: can have a consensual arrangement with where the goat will
Speaker 1: will give me it's it's milk, and maybe the goat
Speaker 1: will make the milk into cheese for me, because I
Speaker 1: feel like that's the big hurdle to me is that
Speaker 1: it is the cheese factor. I don't know how I
Speaker 1: could give up the cheese meat. I feel like it
Speaker 1: can ultimately take a leave in the long run. But
Speaker 1: have you heard about this product called beyond Meat? No,
Speaker 1: but it sounds scary, So what is it? It is?
Speaker 1: It's a one of the you know, samelackrums of meat
Speaker 1: products that have come out recently that apparently like gotten
Speaker 1: the sponginess of meat, so the texture and the flavor
Speaker 1: and the color right and and people are going nuts
Speaker 1: over this stuff. So anyway, my point is is that
Speaker 1: this may not even be a concern in fifty years
Speaker 1: when you have these um you have these stand ins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then of course then all the itemals that have
Speaker 1: gone extinct anyway, so well, and there's that. Yeah, most
Speaker 1: of the things in the sushi bar are no longer
Speaker 1: with us. So send in the fake meat beyond meat
Speaker 1: in your grocery store somewhere. Is it really? Yeah? Actually
Speaker 1: it is. I'm not well whole foods Okay, So if
Speaker 1: you want to go into a grocery store with really
Speaker 1: nice lighting, I think you will find it there right now.
Speaker 1: But I think the idea is to stock it in
Speaker 1: every single grocery store eventually. Yeah. Well, I say put
Speaker 1: it in fast food, you know. I mean we're already
Speaker 1: using things that are not really meat, but they come
Speaker 1: from meat, So why not just go ahead and go
Speaker 1: the extra mile. I mean, it's all deep fried anyway,
Speaker 1: cost my friend cost. Yeah, but we'll get to that
Speaker 1: eventually too. Um. One other thing that I was thinking
Speaker 1: about is the fact that we and we talked about
Speaker 1: the all the time, that we tend to create this
Speaker 1: blueprint in our mind and we rely on that instead
Speaker 1: of actually seeing things for what they are. And we
Speaker 1: have to do that because every time we enter a room,
Speaker 1: we can't take the mental energy to completely recreate it
Speaker 1: from the ground up. We have a memory of this room,
Speaker 1: a blueprint of this room, a map, and so in
Speaker 1: a way, we limit ourselves with the very tools that
Speaker 1: allow us to move through the world in an efficient way.
Speaker 1: And so I thought, that's something that's really come um
Speaker 1: to my attention. And and again it comes back to
Speaker 1: this awareness you were talking about earlier, awareness of thoughts
Speaker 1: and trying to slow down and really see things as
Speaker 1: they are. And then I thought, this is completely underscored
Speaker 1: my appreciation for and all of people working in various
Speaker 1: fields of science who are in the labor or in
Speaker 1: the field and going through mountains of data and trying
Speaker 1: to find those those those bits of amazing things in
Speaker 1: the road every day and having those breakthroughs in our understanding,
Speaker 1: that sort of recast how we see the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we kind of get to come in at the
Speaker 1: end of the process and how awesome it is. But
Speaker 1: we weren't there in the kitchen to see and be
Speaker 1: part of all the hours that went into preparing the
Speaker 1: dish or you know, Marie Cree, like going through the
Speaker 1: pitch and finding the radium. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the sacrifice, the real sacrifice of science. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that that definitely has been something that is uh, the
Speaker 1: forefront of my mind, and as well as all the
Speaker 1: great science writers who have been able to talk about
Speaker 1: this in very meaningful ways, you know, bringing up actual
Speaker 1: scientific sacrifice. It also makes everything I've said even more
Speaker 1: hollow when I say, oh, well, in the course of
Speaker 1: this podcast, I gave up eating some squid and uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, as maybe a little more in touch
Speaker 1: with how the world works. And meanwhile, while you know
Speaker 1: someone else is like, well, I have cancer now because
Speaker 1: of radiation, because of my research, well I know, and
Speaker 1: that's when I started to think about that, like what
Speaker 1: what are the sacrifices of going through? Of course, now
Speaker 1: we know much more about the elements and so presumably
Speaker 1: conditions are much safer. But you know, there is there's
Speaker 1: a sort of um trade off with obsession that people
Speaker 1: sometimes in those fields find themselves. Will you swallow a
Speaker 1: shrew to see what right are you dedicated? So there
Speaker 1: you have it. There's just a little inside into what
Speaker 1: the podcast has meant to us and uh and how
Speaker 1: it has changed us and how it I mean really
Speaker 1: it comes down to it. We put down two episodes
Speaker 1: a week pretty much every week. The show pretty much
Speaker 1: permeates every aspect of my life. Um, you know, if
Speaker 1: i'm you know, no matter what I'm doing, there's a
Speaker 1: good chance that I might realize, hey, maybe this would
Speaker 1: make a good podcast. I wonder if there's something what's
Speaker 1: the science of this that's going on? You know, be
Speaker 1: it you know, spending time with my my son or
Speaker 1: you know, traveling somewhere or eating something weird, or suddenly
Speaker 1: realizing that I have no idea how a gadget in
Speaker 1: my house actually works, I might think, huh, I wonder
Speaker 1: if if that's something we can or should cover for
Speaker 1: the podcast. It's true, and I think that both of
Speaker 1: us feel like we wish we had more many more
Speaker 1: hours to actually um put into this. But already, you know,
Speaker 1: we are pretty dedicated to trying to bring to you guys,
Speaker 1: um the information that we think is really cool and important,
Speaker 1: and as you say, um, you know, thinking about it
Speaker 1: at all hours. In fact, both of us tend to
Speaker 1: send emails at odd hours like hey, I was just
Speaker 1: looking at this and this seems really cool. So um
Speaker 1: so yeah, and that's a source of joy for me.
Speaker 1: So um, this has been great to work on this podcast,
Speaker 1: and uh look forward to even more very cool stuff.
Speaker 1: And again this is definitely a conversation. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the micro crimera episode that we covered was actually suggested
Speaker 1: by listener SHAWNA, which I did not mentioned at the
Speaker 1: top of that episode, and I completely should have shame
Speaker 1: on me. But this is a great example of someone
Speaker 1: who's like, hey, you've got to cover this. This is
Speaker 1: an incredible territory. So thanks to you guys for for
Speaker 1: keeping us uh apprized of all. Yeah, you continue to
Speaker 1: help us populate a great list of topics to come
Speaker 1: and topics that we've covered before and we'll cover again.
Speaker 1: That's a great thing about science. It's ah, we're never
Speaker 1: going to run out of topics, never, never, never, just
Speaker 1: try it, alright. So hey, in the meantime, you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, you wanna talk with
Speaker 1: us about any of this, or maybe you just want
Speaker 1: to complain, but you can find us online. Stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind dot com. That's the mother ship. That's
Speaker 1: where our videos are, podcast blogs, et cetera. Everything we
Speaker 1: do winds up there in one way or another. We're
Speaker 1: also on social media Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and if your
Speaker 1: old fashioned you want to use good old email to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us as a way to do
Speaker 1: that as well. Or if you're not old fashioned in
Speaker 1: your total futurists, but you use email, you can do
Speaker 1: that and you can send us an email that below
Speaker 1: the mind at this Discovery dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. H