Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Tucklin. And
Speaker 1: this is a bonus episode. Just in case you're wondering, Hey,
Speaker 1: why why is there an episode here? I wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to go to download today. Well, it's a bonus episode.
Speaker 1: And since we don't have anything particularly planned for it, um,
Speaker 1: we thought we'd we'd we'd call the robot over here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know, after all, we we get to talk a
Speaker 1: lot and express ourselves. But Arnie, poor Arnie, the robot
Speaker 1: just kind of comes back and forth on his little
Speaker 1: wheels and that's about it. Yeah. So so co come
Speaker 1: on over here, Arnie. How's how's it going? Well? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, we we we haven't had as
Speaker 1: much time for the listener mail recently. That's what this
Speaker 1: episode is all about. So this time you're you can
Speaker 1: be more part of the episode, and you can you
Speaker 1: can share more of the listener mail. So so let
Speaker 1: us let us have some what have you got here?
Speaker 1: That's interesting? Arnie? You don't need to stand so close
Speaker 1: all This first one comes to us from Paul Paul writes,
Speaker 1: and it says, Hi, Robert and Julie, I'm a long
Speaker 1: time listener and have been wanting to write you guys
Speaker 1: for a long time and just never got around to it.
Speaker 1: I just listened to your Healing Power of Laughter podcast
Speaker 1: and I wanted to let you know how inspired it
Speaker 1: made me. I am a combat medic in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army and I am going through the process of getting
Speaker 1: medically retired. I am lucky enough to be doing this
Speaker 1: in a specialized unit called the Warrior Transition Unit. This
Speaker 1: unit is special because it allows soldiers to do whatever
Speaker 1: it takes to heal. One of the newest programs they
Speaker 1: have implemented is recovery through music, guitar lessons, piano, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So I know that they are willing to think outside
Speaker 1: of the box when it comes to healing. Your podcast
Speaker 1: pushed me to try to create a program that connects
Speaker 1: soldiers with comedians and teaches them to laugh and make
Speaker 1: others laugh. It's going to be complex and take some
Speaker 1: work to develop on my part, but I think in
Speaker 1: the end it will be a great program. I love
Speaker 1: your show and couldn't do this without your inspiration. I
Speaker 1: listen to you guys on my forty minute drive to work,
Speaker 1: and you make it fly by. Thanks Paul. Oh that's
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah. Oh, but and he was in the
Speaker 1: hundred airborne by the way, that is very cool and
Speaker 1: I love that he put that together. I do wonder
Speaker 1: if he is about to look into laughter yoga as well,
Speaker 1: which in this case, I would say, yes, I think
Speaker 1: laughter yoga would be very helpful. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that the great thing about the program, like
Speaker 1: you said, it's it's showing that they're willing to think
Speaker 1: out the outside of the box about healing, and it
Speaker 1: shows more of a focus on actually healing people instead
Speaker 1: of going through just a regimented process to be like
Speaker 1: all right, step one, two three, you should be healed
Speaker 1: by now, how you know, go out and live your life.
Speaker 1: It's it's more it seems more results oriented, which I
Speaker 1: think is great. Well, and you had brought up and
Speaker 1: we were talking about stress and stress being that paper
Speaker 1: tiger um that that puts us on all alerts, and
Speaker 1: how laughing is one of those things can that that
Speaker 1: can be that chemical release, that the way that you
Speaker 1: can return your blood pressure to normal, and the way
Speaker 1: that you can sort of vanquish all those chemicals that
Speaker 1: are building up the cortisol and so on and so
Speaker 1: forth in your body. So very cool stuff to hear about.
Speaker 1: And m Paul, please let us know how that turns out.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. All right, here we have another one.
Speaker 1: This one is from Chris and Baton Rouge, and Chris says, Hi,
Speaker 1: I've been listening to you guys for a while, and
Speaker 1: for my obligatory comment, you two have very soothing voices.
Speaker 1: And don't take this the wrong way, but I often
Speaker 1: listen to your podcast as I go to sleep. We've
Speaker 1: heard that from people before, which I I never take
Speaker 1: it the wrong way, but it does make me want
Speaker 1: to do a podcast where we talk softer and softer
Speaker 1: and softer and then either you're very sleepy right now, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and then start messing with them, either with
Speaker 1: loud noises or just nightmare inducing like I said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope nobody's sleeping right now and they just bolted
Speaker 1: up in their beds. Chris continues and he says, Anyway,
Speaker 1: recently I listened to your podcasts on the Dark Side
Speaker 1: of Creativity, and let me say mission accomplished. You successfully
Speaker 1: blew my mind. What you described was me exactly. The
Speaker 1: analogy of the flashlight view and the lantern view was perfect.
Speaker 1: This was especially important to me because I feel it's
Speaker 1: hard to explain to others my mind mindset, and often
Speaker 1: I get frustrated with others not trying to get all
Speaker 1: the facts or look at the whole picture. But I
Speaker 1: do envy other mindsets because they are sure and uh,
Speaker 1: and that they're better at shooting straightforward down a path
Speaker 1: to a destination. Well, I seem to be forever scheduling
Speaker 1: searching for the best destination, if that makes any sense. Sincerely,
Speaker 1: Chris and Baton Rouge. I think that's uh, that's really fascinating.
Speaker 1: I think it also. I mean, as we talked before,
Speaker 1: I mean you really need the different types of viewpoint
Speaker 1: in life. I mean the people who have the flashlight view,
Speaker 1: Arguably they might not it might not be the best
Speaker 1: view for like a full experience of the universe or
Speaker 1: you know, or what have you. But in terms of
Speaker 1: say getting done with the task on the other end
Speaker 1: of that flashlight that's great. Likewise, people with more of
Speaker 1: this lantern view of the universe, um, you know, that
Speaker 1: may be great for for bursts of creativity and whatnot,
Speaker 1: but maybe it means you can't focus as well on
Speaker 1: a given test, so nothing to trade off with both.
Speaker 1: Now the origins of those terms, um, I think we
Speaker 1: have to talk about Alison got Nick, and she is
Speaker 1: the child psychologist who who talks about how kids have
Speaker 1: this highly creative mind, in particular babies because they have
Speaker 1: that lantern view because they are more aware than adults
Speaker 1: and they're streaming all of this stimuli. And um, so
Speaker 1: that's kind of what we were talking about. We were
Speaker 1: talking about the dark side of creativity or not necessarily
Speaker 1: dark set of creativity, which is creativity in general. Is
Speaker 1: this ability to tap into that and to not let
Speaker 1: those details that are all around us at all times
Speaker 1: just fly by, to be able to consider these things
Speaker 1: and and um find sort of unique meaning in them. Yeah, alright.
Speaker 1: This next one comes to us from a listener by
Speaker 1: the name of Jim. Jim written to us before and
Speaker 1: he has a book recommendation for everyone. He says, Robert
Speaker 1: and Julie, about a year ago you did a podcast
Speaker 1: on whether mathematics was an invention or discovery. I wrote
Speaker 1: to you shortly after that that, placing myself mostly in
Speaker 1: the invention camp. I would like to update my position
Speaker 1: based upon a book I received for Christmas, The Joy
Speaker 1: of X by Steven Strogatz, an applied mathematic it's professor
Speaker 1: at Cornell. On page five, Dr Strogatz, who is a
Speaker 1: regular contributor to Radio ad right to following. Math always
Speaker 1: involves both invention and discovery. We invent the concepts but
Speaker 1: discover their consequences, as we'll see in the coming chapters.
Speaker 1: In mathematics, our freedom lies in the questions we ask
Speaker 1: and how we pursue them, but not in the answers
Speaker 1: awaiting us. So, uh, yeah, that sounds like a very
Speaker 1: interesting text. Well, I don't have to pick up the
Speaker 1: next time I get on a mathematics kick. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was talking to my friend Maria um over the weekend,
Speaker 1: and she is a mathematician and she actually she teaches
Speaker 1: in Germany now, but she teaches UM math to to
Speaker 1: physics students, and she was saying she was kind of
Speaker 1: talking about some of her interests in her field, and
Speaker 1: she was talking about infinity, and so I, who don't
Speaker 1: have a very large mathematics background, and said, look, don't
Speaker 1: strike me down for saying this, but a lot of
Speaker 1: what you're talking about releasing very philosophical, and she said, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that a lot of people don't realize that when they're
Speaker 1: talking about math, they are in a sense talking about philosophy,
Speaker 1: albeit in another language. All right, well, this one comes
Speaker 1: to us from Charles. Charles writes in, and uh and
Speaker 1: he isn't. He's writing in response to our Splendid Isolation
Speaker 1: podcast a while back, where we talked about how isolation
Speaker 1: affects us and about how there's with many of us,
Speaker 1: there's this desire for it, like, oh, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't have enough alone time in my life, and then
Speaker 1: if you have too much alone time, then you start
Speaker 1: going a little crazy sometimes. And we talked about it
Speaker 1: too in the context of Astronauts, right, yes, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: Charles writes in and says, Robert and Julie, I enjoyed
Speaker 1: listening to your podcast Splendid Isolation. I found the concept
Speaker 1: so intriguing that I decided I'd like to try it
Speaker 1: myself for a full year. In June two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: at the age of forty, I charted a boat to
Speaker 1: drop me off on an uninhabited island in Alaska with
Speaker 1: my dog, a goat and supplies. This was my first
Speaker 1: time to the island. I found a good spot to
Speaker 1: build and erected a seventy seven square foot cabin. I've
Speaker 1: encountered hurricane force winds, heavy snow, constant rain, and had
Speaker 1: to bear encounters while filming everything. Besides a few chance
Speaker 1: encounters with hunters and vacationers, I've been completely alone for
Speaker 1: six months. As of last Friday, I post updates on
Speaker 1: Facebook on the Alaskan Pioneer page and uh if you
Speaker 1: want to visit that, that's Facebook dot com slash Alaskan Pioneer.
Speaker 1: One word, he says. While I do have limited communication,
Speaker 1: the isolation has had some interesting effects on my cognition
Speaker 1: and emotions. It's increased my sleep, impaired my memory, and
Speaker 1: at times increases aggression and vigilance. My mood has remained
Speaker 1: consistently positive, however, and I've experienced no sense of loneliness.
Speaker 1: I've long wondered what it would be like to live
Speaker 1: alone in the wilderness for a full year, and now
Speaker 1: I am finding out. While I look forward to returning
Speaker 1: to society next summer, I suspect it will be difficult
Speaker 1: to leave. I look forward to sharing my footage of
Speaker 1: my time here when I returned. Thanks again for the
Speaker 1: fun podcast, Charles. Wow, indeed that I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: lot to take in, and that is amazing and and
Speaker 1: uh I I know I had talked about like living
Speaker 1: on a boat with one of my dreams, but that
Speaker 1: is sort of one of my dreams too, is to
Speaker 1: go off and to to be able to not like
Speaker 1: leave my family necessarily. But there's a fantasy in being
Speaker 1: able to go off and know what it feels like
Speaker 1: to rely on yourself and to be out in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: And that's just an amazing plug and everything. I think
Speaker 1: it's neat that he brought. He brought a dog and
Speaker 1: the goat. I'm assuming he did not eat these say
Speaker 1: that they're both alive, they're all doing well. But I
Speaker 1: feel like that would help enormously, like having some sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, a companion, even if it's not human. We've
Speaker 1: talked before about how how intense and how emotional our
Speaker 1: relationships with pets can be, and and goats have a
Speaker 1: lot of character. I love goats. Joe's Carol Oates has
Speaker 1: a short story about a lighthousekeeper in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and I believe at the point where the dog runs off.
Speaker 1: That's when his madness sort of give us into effect.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that that that's of course the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and Charles, you sound like you're having a wonderful time,
Speaker 1: and I really I think this is wonderful. I'm living
Speaker 1: vicariously through you. Um did he say the Facebook page
Speaker 1: is Alaskan Frontier, Alaskan Pioneer, Pioneer excuse me, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I definitely have to check that out. Oh and speaking
Speaker 1: of Joyce Carol Oates, real quick, have you been following
Speaker 1: her Twitter? I have. It's awesome. Yeah. I think she
Speaker 1: maybe the best Twitter account out there. I was telling
Speaker 1: someone the other day, like, if you just have to
Speaker 1: do one Twitter account and just mean besides ours, right, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, check it out because she always has something
Speaker 1: terribly interesting to say. It is it's it's always interesting
Speaker 1: and insightful, and I wish more more Twitter feeds were
Speaker 1: like hers. Alright, here we have a couple of emails
Speaker 1: regarding our recent Hallucinations episode. Now, this first one comes
Speaker 1: to us from Justin Justin Wrightson and says, Hi, Robert
Speaker 1: and Julie, I recently listened to the leprechn Hallucinations podcast
Speaker 1: and wanted to share something from my childhood. When my
Speaker 1: brother and I were younger, we would infrequently get what
Speaker 1: we called small vision. For a short time, everything in
Speaker 1: the world would seem to be smaller, further away than
Speaker 1: it really was. You could even put your hands in
Speaker 1: front of you and your arms would seem much longer
Speaker 1: than they should be. This would be accompanied by a
Speaker 1: slight pain pressure at the back of the head. I
Speaker 1: believe this is where the visual cortex is located. I
Speaker 1: have no idea why this happened, but it sounded a
Speaker 1: lot like Alice in Wonderland syndrome you described in the podcast.
Speaker 1: Until not now, I had never heard of anyone else
Speaker 1: experiencing something like this. Thanks for sharing the information with
Speaker 1: your listeners and giving me a little more perspective on
Speaker 1: my own experience. Wow, that's pretty pretty fascinating. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it does sound a lot like the Allison
Speaker 1: Wonderland UH syndrome about some of the lillipution of hallucinations
Speaker 1: we were describing, where it starts messing with the way
Speaker 1: you're perceiving the size of objects and distances. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so it's interesting that the visual cortex was brought up right,
Speaker 1: because just to root everybody back in that podcast for
Speaker 1: context we talked about is that when your vision is
Speaker 1: impaired um in a variety of different situations, your brain
Speaker 1: doesn't like, uh, the void and will begin to construct
Speaker 1: images for it. So that's why these hallucinations occur. And uh, yes,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting to hear about that account. There anything
Speaker 1: talking about the pain that accompanied it, which which brings
Speaker 1: to mind like a small like I haven't even I
Speaker 1: haven't researched this. Perhaps there's a there's a miracle blog
Speaker 1: post out there that explains at all. But we've all,
Speaker 1: at some point the other probably tried to bend spoon
Speaker 1: with our mind or move it with our mind. Have
Speaker 1: you done this, tried to do something psychically? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was probably. It was probably like when I was yesterday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But when you do it, did you you inevitably start
Speaker 1: to feel strain. You feel something straining, You feel like
Speaker 1: a slight I'm trying too hard? What what where is
Speaker 1: that taking place? What are we straining? I have a feeling.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just something as simple as we're we're straining
Speaker 1: our vision because we're kind of thinking hard, we're kind
Speaker 1: of squinting, but but I don't know. It got me
Speaker 1: thinking it's like if because if I can't do something,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't feel the strain of trying to do it.
Speaker 1: I wonder if your pupils dilate and tried to take
Speaker 1: in more light. I have a feeling it's eye related,
Speaker 1: But if anybody has any any feedback on that, I'd
Speaker 1: be interested to hear. Like I said, I haven't looked
Speaker 1: into it, but just thought about it the other day
Speaker 1: in the car Car Thoughts with Robert Lamb. All right,
Speaker 1: this one comes to us from Tony. Tony says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: love the podcast. Great topics to get me through my
Speaker 1: long walks on this very large campus of Michigan State
Speaker 1: and my long meals in the cafeteria Go meals. Fun fact,
Speaker 1: Brody Hall, an area of dorms on the northwest side
Speaker 1: of campus, actually houses the largest non military cafeteria in
Speaker 1: America and maybe the world. I'm not sure, but anyway,
Speaker 1: I was listening to your lepro Con Hallucinations episode and
Speaker 1: I actually experienced very bizarre and usually arguably terrifying hallucinations
Speaker 1: When I slip into a lucid dream. I think lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming is an interesting category of hallucination because you were dreaming,
Speaker 1: but you are aware of it, and in many cases
Speaker 1: you're able to control what goes on. Usually, when I
Speaker 1: dream lucidly, I like to take a back seat and
Speaker 1: let my mind unwind the story. But there are sometimes
Speaker 1: when things will pop up that are very jarring, and
Speaker 1: I typically undergo a fight or flight reaction in this
Speaker 1: dream dreamland, it stays asleep or wake up. I don't
Speaker 1: dream lucidly very often, maybe two to three times a
Speaker 1: month at most, but I've had some very bizarre encounters
Speaker 1: with interesting creatures popping up. For instance, about a week ago,
Speaker 1: I was dreaming that I was sitting in a room
Speaker 1: and there was a rain storm. It wasn't actually raining
Speaker 1: at the time, and I was really just enjoying my
Speaker 1: night in content. Then a very large thunderclap echoes through
Speaker 1: my mind, most likely a door slamming down the hall
Speaker 1: in my dorm, and the lights uh in my dream
Speaker 1: go out, but I can still see they various shapes
Speaker 1: and shadows. I then turn and look to the left
Speaker 1: physically and mentally and see a large dark shadows standing
Speaker 1: in the doorway which I am concluding is the dresser
Speaker 1: that is in the exact spot I was looking, So
Speaker 1: I immediately think wake up, but instead I slipped into
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis, which if you have ever never experienced, is
Speaker 1: extremely bizarre. When I experienced sleep paralysis, I am still
Speaker 1: able to move, but only very slowly, or so it
Speaker 1: seems from my perspective in the dream. I wonder if
Speaker 1: brain activity is so high or low that I am
Speaker 1: actually moving normal, but but the speed is perceived as slow.
Speaker 1: I am also able to open my eyes see the world,
Speaker 1: but not actually be awake. It's easily, easily the weirdest
Speaker 1: visual experience. So this dark figure appears, walks towards me,
Speaker 1: and my body feels like it feels like it's under
Speaker 1: immense pressure. I try to raise my arms, but it
Speaker 1: takes ten minutes. My eyes are open, but I still
Speaker 1: can't wake up. The figure is almost there, and then
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, I'm awake with the most intense body
Speaker 1: tingle and an elevated heart rate. Maybe it doesn't technically
Speaker 1: classify as hallucinating, but I think it does. Again, thanks
Speaker 1: for the cool topics, Love you guys. Tony. Well, that's
Speaker 1: that is fascinating because for the most part. What we're
Speaker 1: talking about there in an example isn't a hallucination, but
Speaker 1: it is. It is sleep paralysis, which we have talked
Speaker 1: about before in its relation to paranormal experience, which is
Speaker 1: also something that relates to hallucination experiences where something unreal happens,
Speaker 1: but but it feels real and it's observed as real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when first is used the concept at the beginning of
Speaker 1: that email, I wasn't quite sure that that it could
Speaker 1: be a hallucination. But in describing that, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: because you talk about sleep paralysis in the problem with
Speaker 1: that is that your brain has not quite come back
Speaker 1: online with your body. Because the idea is when you're dreaming,
Speaker 1: you may be throwing kung fu chops and kicks everywhere,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of like a simulation. You don't need
Speaker 1: to actually throw kung fu chops around, So your body
Speaker 1: is under lockdown, and when sleep prolysis occurs, your mind
Speaker 1: wakes up, but your body is still locked down. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you're receiving data again from your eyes visual
Speaker 1: cortex that isn't driving with the rest of your experience,
Speaker 1: then you know again the brain abhores avoid and it
Speaker 1: will fill in for you, So I do kind of
Speaker 1: like I said, I wasn't quite sure the beginning, but
Speaker 1: in the description of Chinese experience, I see how that
Speaker 1: is a possibility. Um, it would be very interesting to
Speaker 1: see some sort of mri I studies that could correlate
Speaker 1: with that. Of course, then you'd have to do someone
Speaker 1: into loosen dreaming and then sleep. But the graalsa the
Speaker 1: great thing here. It's Tony is applying critical thinking to
Speaker 1: an experience that in other cases might be perceived as
Speaker 1: something supernatural or abnormal. I mean it's still terrifying obviously,
Speaker 1: but he was able to afterwards realize, oh, well, what's
Speaker 1: going on. There's a scientific explanation for it, all right.
Speaker 1: Here's one from Michela Mickello writes in in a response
Speaker 1: to our PoCA episode, and she says, love the podcast.
Speaker 1: I had my own experience with PoCA during my second pregnancy.
Speaker 1: I craved I so strongly I started bringing cups of
Speaker 1: it to work with me from home to keep up
Speaker 1: with the demand. The weirder craving was was of a
Speaker 1: smell the a c in my car. I would sit
Speaker 1: in my driveway for fifteen minutes with my nose as
Speaker 1: close to the then as possible, breathing in the beautiful fragrance.
Speaker 1: This became increasingly increasingly hard is my belly group. Almost
Speaker 1: immediately after having my son, the smell all but disappeared
Speaker 1: from my radar. My doctor, although pretty surprised at this
Speaker 1: odd habit, attributed both of these to my anemic status
Speaker 1: during my pregnancy. All Right, that is unusual because again
Speaker 1: when we talk about pica, which I think we were
Speaker 1: saying pick up by the way, so we have to
Speaker 1: apologize for that, or I was when you think about it,
Speaker 1: more is is eating dirt for the nutrients that are
Speaker 1: inherent there, but not necessarily the ac coming in of
Speaker 1: the car. I mean, I I love the smell of
Speaker 1: air conditioning. I can remember that as a child, like
Speaker 1: loving it, maybe because I liked you know, I like
Speaker 1: the cool and all, and I didn't like being out
Speaker 1: in the sweating heat. But there's something even today, like
Speaker 1: when you when you reached that point we were suddenly
Speaker 1: turning the air conditioning back on, kind of like the
Speaker 1: smell that smells good. I did not even realize that
Speaker 1: air conditioning had a smell. It does it has. It
Speaker 1: has a smell and uh and a quite lovely one
Speaker 1: if you're in if you're in the mood for it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now that makes me wonder, is there a large
Speaker 1: part of the population that likes to smell or conditioning
Speaker 1: and can't detect the smell of it? And I believe
Speaker 1: that I cannot. Well, we talked before. I mean, smell
Speaker 1: is a powerful thing, and we attached memories to smell
Speaker 1: that that we almost really can't completely fathom. We've all
Speaker 1: had that experience where we're walking down the street and
Speaker 1: we smell something and we're like, and it just takes
Speaker 1: us back to like a childhood memory, and then we
Speaker 1: don't even know where the smell came from or even
Speaker 1: necessarily what it was. But the press Dan Pressy and
Speaker 1: a Madeleine's right from the story that he talks about
Speaker 1: his memory and food. Yeah, I was at a friend's
Speaker 1: house and they opened up a new board game and
Speaker 1: I ended up having to like just basically huff the
Speaker 1: board game box for a little bit because the smell
Speaker 1: was taking me back to something that I had some
Speaker 1: positive feelings about with nostalgia for and I think maybe
Speaker 1: it ended up having the same smell as like dungeons
Speaker 1: and dragons manuals from the mid nineties or something. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I think that's what it was. I couldn't
Speaker 1: quite put a pin on it, and it's so, you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably like a weird chemical smell, you know, but
Speaker 1: it pulled something out of me. Crazy game board sniffer. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: this one comes to us from Antonio. Antonio writes, and
Speaker 1: it says, Hi, Robert and Julie, my name is Tony,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to comment on a podcast you
Speaker 1: did a couple of months ago about bad neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: how people generally don't help to start. I live in
Speaker 1: a city of about thirty thousand people, so pretty small
Speaker 1: and not really any bad neighborhoods to speak of. But
Speaker 1: I recently went to Las Vegas, and it was almost
Speaker 1: a sickness to me to give money to every homeless
Speaker 1: person I saw. I believe it is because I live
Speaker 1: in a place where we don't have a homeless population,
Speaker 1: therefore I'm not blind to it. Also, I just watched
Speaker 1: a show on the Science Channel called Alien Encounters, and
Speaker 1: it was mentioned that we just might be developing a
Speaker 1: hive brain mentality with the help of the internet. Um
Speaker 1: in our smartphones, iPods, etcetera, and how that could greatly
Speaker 1: help us against not only an alien invasion, but just
Speaker 1: about any problem human god could face. I'm curious as
Speaker 1: to what you think about the hive brain versus the
Speaker 1: plain old single brain. I love your podcast. I listen
Speaker 1: to it while I work my factory job, and it
Speaker 1: keeps me saying in my brain working, keep it up, Tony.
Speaker 1: So two interesting things. He's he's responding to their one
Speaker 1: talking about you know what happens when we encounter, you know,
Speaker 1: say a homeless individual or somebody in need, and how
Speaker 1: group dynamics affect that. You know, where if if if
Speaker 1: you're seeing other people pass them by, then it kind
Speaker 1: of becomes the norm and you want to and a
Speaker 1: lot of times you feel like you need to keep
Speaker 1: with the norm, or if there's kind of a culture
Speaker 1: of not helping, you know, versus versus other environments where
Speaker 1: you're going to be more in close proximity and they
Speaker 1: seem more human to you strangers in general. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: seen this in countless experiments, whether conducted on the street
Speaker 1: or you know, in an instance where someone is placed
Speaker 1: at a situation where they could give money to another person.
Speaker 1: But if the other person knew they were giving them money,
Speaker 1: then they would give them it. But if they you know,
Speaker 1: like there's all sorts of they are all sorts of
Speaker 1: experiments that involve altruism, and it does seem that whoever
Speaker 1: sort of does the first thing dictates what the protocol
Speaker 1: will be. So if you help that stringer industry, other
Speaker 1: people will follow suit. Yeah, we've talked about this too
Speaker 1: in terms of corporations and industries large you know, any
Speaker 1: kind of large social structure where if you have if
Speaker 1: there's like a caring um culture at the beginning of
Speaker 1: it and the roots of it, then that tends to
Speaker 1: carry on out through the company as it grows. But
Speaker 1: to whatever degree it's not there, then it's not there
Speaker 1: in the larger social organism as well. So anyway, it
Speaker 1: was an interesting email because he really drives home like
Speaker 1: two aspects of the group think and uh and this
Speaker 1: hive mind the idea that it can it can lead
Speaker 1: to some great things, some some bringing together of ideas,
Speaker 1: our potential to better the world and potentially protected against
Speaker 1: an alien invasion, but also in our ability to all
Speaker 1: decide not to do anything for someone that needs help. Well, now, also,
Speaker 1: I think points towards the self organizing nature. And I
Speaker 1: always think about this whenever I get an elevator. Now,
Speaker 1: since we did the podcast on elevators, and you watch
Speaker 1: people come in and see how they organize themselves, and
Speaker 1: over and over again people will self organize into these
Speaker 1: certain configurations. So um for of these invisible forces always
Speaker 1: at play, and we just don't always realize it, all right,
Speaker 1: And here's a one from a listener. Eric Eric writes
Speaker 1: in and says on the subject of laboring, labeling food
Speaker 1: with gross names, like writing cloaca cake on a cake.
Speaker 1: My mother came up with a recipe she calls garbage
Speaker 1: can casserole. She invented it shortly after getting married. She
Speaker 1: had a can of soup, some chicken, and a little
Speaker 1: bit of other food, but not really enough of one
Speaker 1: thing to make a meal for two people. It's basically
Speaker 1: a chicken casserole with cream of chicken and cream of
Speaker 1: mushroom soup right from the can without deluding it so
Speaker 1: it stays thick chow, maine noodles, water, chestnuts, and quote
Speaker 1: unquote other stuff, topped with corn flakes and baked. She says,
Speaker 1: it makes it. It makes you clean out your refrigerator,
Speaker 1: and anything that's not green and fuzzy it goes into
Speaker 1: the dish. It's not quite that easy, but the other
Speaker 1: stuff usually consists of different vegetables like peas, green beans,
Speaker 1: and or a corn i ate. It a lot growing up,
Speaker 1: and despite its name, it's one of my favorites. I
Speaker 1: usually make it for potlock parties and it's almost always
Speaker 1: gone by the end, so long as I don't display
Speaker 1: it with the name garbage can cast role. I've tried
Speaker 1: displaying it with that name in the past as an experiment,
Speaker 1: and if I do, it's almost always untouched, except for
Speaker 1: the helping I took for myself to show it was tried.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Eric has already done this experiment
Speaker 1: that we were talking about to it to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Call it garbage cat roll. Who's gonna eat it? Call it,
Speaker 1: you know, beautiful cast role or just cast role and
Speaker 1: then country cast role. People will go for it. You
Speaker 1: see the same thing with with some fish species, right
Speaker 1: you have fish where it's like if it's called a
Speaker 1: slime head or if it's called a dolphin. Because we
Speaker 1: have the fish that is the dolphin as well as
Speaker 1: the mammalian dolphin. People are going to be hesitant to
Speaker 1: eat it, but you rebrand it as something I forget
Speaker 1: what the slimehead brand it has, but with the dolphin
Speaker 1: became my ma right yeah, yeah, um, it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I still want to do the I think we should.
Speaker 1: I think we should do it. We should film it
Speaker 1: and uh and see see how it pans out here
Speaker 1: in the office. All right, So there you go. Um, robot,
Speaker 1: do you do you feel better about things now? Look good? Good? Yes?
Speaker 1: Well I love you too, all right, and we love you, guys,
Speaker 1: I love you. This is a lot about just sharing
Speaker 1: some of your feedback with everybody else. And we love
Speaker 1: to get this email and it makes us. It remind
Speaker 1: is us of why we love this job so much.
Speaker 1: And it's very nice to thanks guys. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: a feedback is good on this, if you guys like
Speaker 1: this and it wasn't an annoyance, then you know, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll do some more of bonus episodes like this. So hey.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to send us more
Speaker 1: listener mail and reach out to us with your various
Speaker 1: comments and shares and whatnot, you can find us on Facebook.
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