Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today I wanted to start off with a short
Speaker 1: reading of a few lines from the Odyssey that will
Speaker 1: introduce the subject we're getting into for the next few episodes.
Speaker 1: So this is from the Odyssey book eleven. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be reading from the Emily Wilson translation, But this is
Speaker 1: a section of the story where Odysseus is describing the
Speaker 1: horrors that he witnessed in Hades, and there are different
Speaker 1: kinds of horrors, Like some of the horror of Hades
Speaker 1: is just a kind of profound, depressing disappointment with when
Speaker 1: he's confronted with the reality of how crappy it is
Speaker 1: to be dead, you know that, Like he he tries
Speaker 1: to talk to a Jax, and Ajax can't even really
Speaker 1: say anything. But then there's this other section where he
Speaker 1: starts seeing more Dante in Inferno, kind of horrors of
Speaker 1: actual tortures, and so he sees King Minos, he sees
Speaker 1: a Ryan, he sees Sisyphus famously, you know, in the
Speaker 1: futile labor of pushing the boulder up a hill long
Speaker 1: you see it rolled down again. But eventually he comes
Speaker 1: to a figure called Tantalus. And then here's what Odysseus
Speaker 1: says about Tantalus. I saw the pain of Tantalus in
Speaker 1: water to his chin so parched, no way to drink.
Speaker 1: When that old man bent down towards the water, it
Speaker 1: was gone. Some god had dried it up. And at
Speaker 1: his feet dark earth appeared. Tall leafy trees hung fruit
Speaker 1: above his head, sweet figs and pomegranates and brightly shining
Speaker 1: apples and ripe olives. But when he grasped them with
Speaker 1: his hands, the wind hurled them away towards the shadowy clouds. Now.
Speaker 1: When I look at the contraposition of the two tortures
Speaker 1: of Tantalus, you got the And you know he always
Speaker 1: wants to reach up to get the delicious fruit from
Speaker 1: the tree, but the wind kicks up, it pulls it
Speaker 1: out from his hands, and he can't ever get the food.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a a torture in Tartarus by starvation,
Speaker 1: which is not good. Obviously, starvation is very bad, and
Speaker 1: it's probably more expressively phrase the second half of this, uh,
Speaker 1: the situation, But it's actually the first half that fills
Speaker 1: me with more horror when it talks about how he's
Speaker 1: he's standing in water, so it's like, you know, he
Speaker 1: feels it lapping around on his skin, but every time
Speaker 1: he tries to kneel down to put his face to
Speaker 1: it to get a drink, the water just is pulled away,
Speaker 1: as if by a tide. The gods dry it up
Speaker 1: away from his mouth, and he can't ever have a drink.
Speaker 1: To me, that's the more terrifying half of this situation. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the image of Tantalus. Is this um this
Speaker 1: being that is uh, It's he's like he's suspended between
Speaker 1: his desires, between his needs needs or desires, depending on
Speaker 1: how you want to frame it here. Right, Well, I
Speaker 1: guess this raises questions about the the biology of your
Speaker 1: shade in Hades or Tartarus, Like does it actually need
Speaker 1: to eat and drink and he can't get it or
Speaker 1: is this just some kind of I don't know, psychological
Speaker 1: need his soul has. It's not really biological. I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: given what we we we believe about the underworld via
Speaker 1: other myth cycles, I guess it's the idea that he
Speaker 1: doesn't actually need the fruit or the water to live.
Speaker 1: If you call this living, he's forever suspended in the
Speaker 1: state of of on death and on life. Um, but
Speaker 1: but wants to have the water, wants to have the fruit.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's the kind of question you're not actually supposed
Speaker 1: to bother thinking about this, like the annoying pedantic question
Speaker 1: that Plato would bring up. Yeah, I mean well, speaking
Speaker 1: of of philosophy, there is the concept of Burden's ass
Speaker 1: named for fourteenth century French philosopher gen Burden. This one.
Speaker 1: This is a basic idea that also pops up in
Speaker 1: the works of Aristotle and al Gazali various other writers.
Speaker 1: The more common thirst related version is if you have
Speaker 1: a donkey that is both hungry and thirsty, and placed
Speaker 1: the equal distance from both food and water, it will
Speaker 1: remain immobile and die. Now, this may be apart from
Speaker 1: the lesson that the the thought experiment is trying to produce,
Speaker 1: But I think that's not necessarily true. I think there
Speaker 1: might very well be biological priorities that would place access
Speaker 1: to water above access to food. Yeah, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of these paradoxes that maybe doesn't. You can't exactly recreate
Speaker 1: it in reality and expect it to be quite as
Speaker 1: a captivating but uh, abstractly it's it's kind of fascinating.
Speaker 1: So as Aristotle put it, quote, a man being just
Speaker 1: as hungry as thirsty, and placed in between food and
Speaker 1: drink must necessarily remain where he is and starve to death.
Speaker 1: So obviously that's not going to be the case. If
Speaker 1: you're hungry and thirsty and the waiter brings you your
Speaker 1: sandwich and your your cola at the same time, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna die. You don't have to give the waiter
Speaker 1: special instructions. You will. You work in restaurant industry, Joe.
Speaker 1: This is not like they don't tell you this, right.
Speaker 1: They don't say, look, don't put the drink in the
Speaker 1: food in front of the customer at the same time,
Speaker 1: or they will. They will just remain immobile and die.
Speaker 1: It is actually broadly considered very important in restaurants to
Speaker 1: get people their drinks before you get them their food.
Speaker 1: If you bring them food before they get their drinks,
Speaker 1: people will get very confused and upset. Well, and uh,
Speaker 1: I know, I often hear you know when you're a
Speaker 1: lot of times when you're hungry, you're actually thirsty, and therefore,
Speaker 1: to avoid and prevent overeating, you want to make sure
Speaker 1: you have plenty of liquids as well. So yeah, like,
Speaker 1: if I'm going into a restaurant situation, I definitely want
Speaker 1: my water first because I feel like I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have a more balanced experience eating lunch or dinner there,
Speaker 1: you'll certainly have a more pleasant experience. Though actually sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm just introducing exceptions to every single thing we say
Speaker 1: so far, but does come up in a paper that
Speaker 1: I want to look at later. There is a concept
Speaker 1: that's been documented widely in animal biology known as dehydration
Speaker 1: and do standardrexia, which is essentially the idea that many
Speaker 1: animals species, certainly humans and rodents, will naturally restrict their
Speaker 1: own food intake in response to dehydration. Again, there are
Speaker 1: some exceptions some animals like get their water entirely from
Speaker 1: food and so forth. But but but typically, like if
Speaker 1: you get rodents and and they're thirsty, they will eat
Speaker 1: less at each meal you give them, not saying that's
Speaker 1: a way to live your life, though, I mean better
Speaker 1: to be hydrated. Well, you know, coming back to mythology
Speaker 1: a bit. I thought we might mention just a few
Speaker 1: other you know, bits of myth and folklore and legend
Speaker 1: and so forth concerning thirst uh, because I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, we we have the sort of mythological echoes
Speaker 1: of the basic biological reality, and maybe these can help
Speaker 1: and inform and shape our conversation as we move forward. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there's one, uh particular story I was taken with
Speaker 1: from from from ancient China. It's an ancient story dating
Speaker 1: back at least as far as the shan Haijing. This
Speaker 1: is the the Fabulous Book of Monsters that we we
Speaker 1: did an episode, did a couple of episodes on I
Speaker 1: think last year, and have recently or will be rerunning
Speaker 1: those episodes very soon. The title is sometimes translated as
Speaker 1: the Classic of the Mountains and Seas. Yeah. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of mythological beings and places
Speaker 1: mentioned in the book. Um and Uh, and there's there
Speaker 1: is this account of Kuafu. It's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a story that continues to be told today in modern China,
Speaker 1: and there have been many versions of it um. According
Speaker 1: to U Yang and and Turner in Chinese mythology, basically
Speaker 1: what you have in Kuafu is this primordial giant with
Speaker 1: two yellow snakes circling his ears and two more yellow
Speaker 1: snakes in his hands ends and he's powerful, very powerful, certainly,
Speaker 1: but he overestimates his own power, and depending on the
Speaker 1: story and the exact telling, he either challenges the Sun
Speaker 1: to a race, or he just wants to chase the
Speaker 1: Sun's shadow and catch the Sun. I've also read a
Speaker 1: version where he wants to prolong the day by catching
Speaker 1: the sun, Like if I can just get my hands
Speaker 1: on the Sun and then it can't move away, it
Speaker 1: can't set, the day will never end. Oh that's a
Speaker 1: good plan. Yeah, well, either way it works out. This
Speaker 1: giant runs after the Sun, intending to catch it um,
Speaker 1: but the Sun stays just ever out of his grasp.
Speaker 1: And what happens, well, he grows ever thirstier, So eventually
Speaker 1: he just has to stop for a second and he
Speaker 1: drinks the yellow river Um. Then he stops and he
Speaker 1: drinks drinks another river. But he's still so thirsty that
Speaker 1: he heads for the Great Marsh to the north, but
Speaker 1: on the way there he collapses. He dies of thirst.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those stories that is often
Speaker 1: used to explain geography, so they are different. All these
Speaker 1: details about what happens to his body once he falls,
Speaker 1: what happens to his walking stick or his club once
Speaker 1: it falls, what happens to the dirt from his sandals,
Speaker 1: you know, they become foothills, that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: it's also a tale about just overreaching. And so the
Speaker 1: idea of of this giant chasing the sun is the
Speaker 1: idea that yeah, he's powerful, but he thinks he's more
Speaker 1: powerful than he is, and it's going to get him
Speaker 1: into trouble. Oh that's interesting because to bring it back
Speaker 1: to Tantalus, I mean, it's somewhat different, but both stories
Speaker 1: have the problem with the character is that they're in
Speaker 1: some way brazen or overaudacious in their challenging of celestial
Speaker 1: figures or gods. Because the While there are multiple stories
Speaker 1: of what Tantalus did in order to deserve this punishment
Speaker 1: in tartarus Um, but one of the most commonly received
Speaker 1: stories is that Tantalus well, so it's often said that Tantalus,
Speaker 1: like uh, shared a table with the god, so he
Speaker 1: was a king, but he'd be invited up to Olympus
Speaker 1: to to dine with Zeus and Apparently at some point
Speaker 1: Tantalus was serving a banquet to the gods, and as
Speaker 1: the main course, for some reason, he decided to kill
Speaker 1: and serve his own son. So he liked, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's a bad choice. So he yeah, he boils
Speaker 1: his own son, serves his meat to the gods. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's like this horrible samelier competition, like can you tell
Speaker 1: this is my son you're eating? And the gods can
Speaker 1: tell they are good semeliers, so they figure it out
Speaker 1: and uh. And apparently cannibalism and the killing of ken
Speaker 1: were considered among the worst taboos in ancient Greece. So
Speaker 1: it's like a story of the guy doing like the worst,
Speaker 1: most awful thing you can imagine in order to embarrass
Speaker 1: or humiliate the gods, and the gods catch him doing it,
Speaker 1: so they send him to this horrible punishment in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: And so I do think it's kind of telling that
Speaker 1: this is a guy who does like the worst thing
Speaker 1: you could possibly imagine doing in in ancient Greek ideas,
Speaker 1: like that he commits the worst violence taboos, killing his
Speaker 1: own son and trying to get the gods to commit
Speaker 1: cannibalism and what what is the punishment for that. It's
Speaker 1: eternal unsatiable hunger and thirst. Yeah, yeah, there's this there's
Speaker 1: something about thirst, especially that it's just so it's so
Speaker 1: primal and it's uh and it's this thing that can
Speaker 1: just crescendo towards madness and of course death. Um so
Speaker 1: we we we find numerous accounts where the gods become
Speaker 1: involved with human thirst. Um. There's an interesting story in
Speaker 1: Hindu traditions. This one appears in the Mahaparata. It's about
Speaker 1: a desert dwelling sage by the name of Utanka Uh.
Speaker 1: And Utanka uh is uh. There are various accounts of
Speaker 1: you know, of what he got up to, but uh,
Speaker 1: there's basically one of the key ideas here is that
Speaker 1: he was witnessed to Krishna's universal form. So this is
Speaker 1: the same universal form that shown to Argina during the
Speaker 1: famous uh you know, now I am behme death encounter.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay. But with Utanka, he's given a special
Speaker 1: divine boone. Uh. So he's told whenever he feels thirst,
Speaker 1: his thirst will be quenched. Um. So. You also there's
Speaker 1: this idea that he's followed by by rain clouds even
Speaker 1: in the desert, and so sometimes uh, you'll see these
Speaker 1: clouds in real life referred to as Utanka's clouds. Um,
Speaker 1: so the clouds sent by the gods to follow him around.
Speaker 1: And there's another story too that involves him him thirsting
Speaker 1: and the thirst being quenched uh and but water being
Speaker 1: sent to him via a member of a lesser cast,
Speaker 1: a lower cast, and uh, and then he refuses. As
Speaker 1: it turns out the water in question was going to
Speaker 1: be uh, the potion of immortality, but he was not
Speaker 1: ready to receive it spiritually because he was not willing
Speaker 1: to accept it from this individual. Mm hmm. Coming back
Speaker 1: to the earlier detail in this where Utanka has given
Speaker 1: the boone that whenever he is thirsty, his thirst will
Speaker 1: be quenched. I wonder what is the what is the
Speaker 1: more specific imagination of that scenario, like that that water
Speaker 1: will appear somehow for him to drink, or that there's
Speaker 1: a kind of quinching without water, in which case it
Speaker 1: kind of makes you think what is quinching because that
Speaker 1: when I think of the feeling of quenching thirst, it
Speaker 1: is specifically the feeling of like water filling your mouth
Speaker 1: and going down your throat. Yeah, yeah, them, It's not
Speaker 1: just the idea that we're going to suddenly feel magically.
Speaker 1: I'll give across how would that happen? Right? You can't
Speaker 1: just turn it off with a switch. Our our one
Speaker 1: our primary means of alleviating thirst is to drink water.
Speaker 1: And therefore, you know, it's hard to disconnect the too well. Actually,
Speaker 1: one of the some of the studies I want to
Speaker 1: talk about as we go on in the series have
Speaker 1: to do with the what is the relationship between the
Speaker 1: feeling of thirst quenching and the hydration of the body.
Speaker 1: Not as direct as you might think. Now, another example
Speaker 1: of supernatural thirst, and in this case also hunger. Um.
Speaker 1: Of course, you have in various Eastern traditions you have
Speaker 1: hungry ghosts, and the the ghaki are a type of
Speaker 1: hungry ghost in the tradition of Japan, also described as
Speaker 1: as always hungry and always thirsty, just monsters of torments.
Speaker 1: So they have huge bellies, be steel heads, talons and
Speaker 1: so forth, and their home is the barren wasteland realm
Speaker 1: of Gakito, and they sometimes drag the dyeing to hell,
Speaker 1: but they can be driven out through ceremonies. I think
Speaker 1: that they also are often illustrated as having very narrow necks.
Speaker 1: So it's like their hunger there is great, their belly
Speaker 1: is great, their neck is narrow, like their their throat
Speaker 1: is narrow. Their ability to quench uh, their their bodily
Speaker 1: hunger and thirst is entirely insufficient. Of course, hungry ghosts
Speaker 1: are are you know, widespread again in Eastern traditions. But
Speaker 1: but I ran across an interesting tradition from pre Islamic
Speaker 1: Arab culture that I had never heard of before that
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting, and it concerns owls. I
Speaker 1: was reading Echoes of a Thirsty Owl by T. M. L.
Speaker 1: Hammer and published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Speaker 1: from so the author here writes that there was an idea,
Speaker 1: you know again in the pre Islamic Arab cultures, that
Speaker 1: the soul of a bird was quote unquote spread out
Speaker 1: through the body of a human being, and when the
Speaker 1: human died, um the resulting bird circled the body and
Speaker 1: cried out over the grave of the deceased. So the
Speaker 1: and then in time this bird grows and it becomes
Speaker 1: a savage and shrieking owl, and the owl, of course
Speaker 1: haunts the places of death. Well, that almost makes me wonder.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think about the spooky movie trope of
Speaker 1: having an owl hooting in the darkness in the graveyard.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. The more I think about that,
Speaker 1: that's probably a coincidence. Well, I mean, owls are are
Speaker 1: are are associated with with death and the supernatural throughout
Speaker 1: various cultures. You know, because they're they're creatures of the night.
Speaker 1: They fly so silently that it's almost like they're not
Speaker 1: even there. Um, you know, they have those large eyes,
Speaker 1: their their their head appears to have various kind of
Speaker 1: humanoid qualities. Uh So, you know, I think there is
Speaker 1: some connection there, maybe not not a direct connection, but
Speaker 1: a connection via the the the widespread associations and various
Speaker 1: cultures between the owl and the and the dead. Okay,
Speaker 1: and also the various omens. You know, sometimes in different
Speaker 1: cultures the owl is a is a dire omen to behold. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess this would depend on the owl species. But
Speaker 1: also their vocalizations have to play a role in in
Speaker 1: spooky associations. Yeah, yeah, and I think and and also
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes owls don't make a sound at all. Again,
Speaker 1: either they're flying silently or they're just sitting there silently
Speaker 1: just kind of watching and so uh maybe connected to
Speaker 1: that that that that it's also said that these owls
Speaker 1: may also just sort of check in on sons and
Speaker 1: grandsons to see what happens after they have died. Other
Speaker 1: traditions say that the owl will return to the grave
Speaker 1: once every century. And then there's this idea that in
Speaker 1: the event that the deceased might seek vengeance for something
Speaker 1: or another, the grave of the dead should be watered
Speaker 1: to quote slake the thirst of the dead. Oh wow, yeah, now,
Speaker 1: of course, and this we're probably getting into that. Uh
Speaker 1: you know something we we hinted out already, the idea
Speaker 1: that that thirst takes on so many different forms, and
Speaker 1: the water that quenches the thirst, or the liquid the
Speaker 1: quenches that thirst takes on so many different forms in
Speaker 1: our traditions, like his thirst. Uh, thirst is of course
Speaker 1: something we all feel. It's a you know, we all
Speaker 1: need water. But depending on how it's written up, you
Speaker 1: could you can describe thirst as a as a as
Speaker 1: a need, or as a desire, as something that your
Speaker 1: will has the ability to overcome or not overcome. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, thirst can be uh portrayed as something positive,
Speaker 1: like the third, for knowledge, the thirst for for for
Speaker 1: for God. But also thirst can be seen as like
Speaker 1: the thirst for for wine, or for blood, or for vengeance. Well, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I was also thinking about the abstract metaphors of
Speaker 1: thirst that we use um and what it means to
Speaker 1: to choose that word in particular, to to say that
Speaker 1: you want something by saying that you thirst for it. So,
Speaker 1: in the example of someone who has a thirst for vengeance,
Speaker 1: how is that different from just wanting vengeance? To me?
Speaker 1: At least in that case, thirst as a metaphor, as
Speaker 1: a metaphor for want, implies a kind of irrational desperation
Speaker 1: in the in the acquisition behavior is something that will
Speaker 1: be sought without hindrance and without reason. Now, obviously that
Speaker 1: wouldn't exactly apply to other metaphorical uses of thirst, like
Speaker 1: you said, the thirst for knowledge. But again that that
Speaker 1: word choice seems to me to imply something different than
Speaker 1: somebody just saying somebody likes knowledge or seeks knowledge. It
Speaker 1: suggests a kind of primal need. I guess, yeah, And
Speaker 1: I guess you also have to factor in that, you know,
Speaker 1: for a lot of us we live in in very
Speaker 1: water rich environments, and water rich cultures and uh socioeconomic places.
Speaker 1: So you know, we we we don't feel true thirst
Speaker 1: for the most part, you know, we don't we don't
Speaker 1: feel the thirst that is approaching madness and death, um
Speaker 1: and the and and then again it comes down to,
Speaker 1: like what is the person thirsting for? If you're talking
Speaker 1: about somebody feeling a mighty thirst, but you're alluding to
Speaker 1: their desire to have an alcoholic beverage, like that's that's
Speaker 1: a slightly different thing that just talking about Oh well,
Speaker 1: this is this is thirsty work that they're doing, and
Speaker 1: you know, implying that they're just they're just building up
Speaker 1: a natural uh need for a big draft of water
Speaker 1: to satisfy their thirst. It seems when people use thirst
Speaker 1: to talk about alcohol, I always detect an air of
Speaker 1: of irony and that, yeah, just like it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be a little bit funny that you're using it that way, right,
Speaker 1: because if you're truly thirsty, alcohol is not what you
Speaker 1: should right now. Just to come back to the the
Speaker 1: idea of these owls briefly, Apparently, some writings say that
Speaker 1: the blood and the brain in the in the deceased
Speaker 1: fused together after death to form the owl. Others would
Speaker 1: say that it was born of one's bones and that
Speaker 1: the owl would then erupt from the head, which I
Speaker 1: think is a wonderful and horrifying supernatural uh picture. But
Speaker 1: it was a reference in a number of different poems
Speaker 1: um by a lot of pre Islamic Arab poets. The
Speaker 1: Arabic poet Alan Bari wrote quote, and it is said
Speaker 1: that man, when he has killed and his revenge is
Speaker 1: not taken, an owl comes out of his grave and
Speaker 1: then continues screeching, quench me, quench me, continuing so until
Speaker 1: his killer is killed. Whoa anyway that that article is
Speaker 1: titled Echoes of a Thirsty Owl UM. If anyone's interested,
Speaker 1: I recommend reading that. He also compared, you know, compares
Speaker 1: it to various other traditions concerning the owl as some
Speaker 1: sort of a supernatural being. He talks a little bit
Speaker 1: about about the role of the owl and Greek mythology
Speaker 1: and so forth. Than now, we we can't very well
Speaker 1: cover a complete cultural history of human thirst here, but
Speaker 1: it is worth driving him. The thirst is an important
Speaker 1: aspect of history and civilization, UM, in in obvious ways
Speaker 1: and maybe sometimes in less obvious ways. I was reading
Speaker 1: a article in the Journal of European Archaeology by uh
Speaker 1: Slavamil Venhical titled the Archaeology of Thirst, and in it
Speaker 1: the author points out that naturally, the human satisfaction of
Speaker 1: thirst is an essential part of the human experience, and
Speaker 1: it's a but it's of course of great interest in archaeology.
Speaker 1: But a number of obstacles have to be overcome. So
Speaker 1: first of all, you just have the volatile nature of liquids.
Speaker 1: You also have the scant chemical signatures to be found
Speaker 1: inside ancient drinking vessels um, also scarce paleo botanical analysis
Speaker 1: of those residues. UM. They also mentioned quote the functionally
Speaker 1: unspecific nature of most vessels, which I thought was interesting,
Speaker 1: reminding me of our our holiday discussion of leg shaped vessels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a hard A lot of times people are like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what people would put in this leg. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like we can assume they would put oil in it,
Speaker 1: you know, but it depending on what the vessel is
Speaker 1: and what the culture is, and how much additional information
Speaker 1: we have. We might just have to guess and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it seems like you might drink out of this, or
Speaker 1: you might just or maybe this is just restoring some
Speaker 1: sort of oil. On top of that, we often have
Speaker 1: scant iconographical information. Also, this is a big one, and
Speaker 1: this is this apply too far more than just drinking vessels.
Speaker 1: But if the vessel is organic in nature, we may
Speaker 1: not have any uh surviving examples of what it was.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, by and large we tend
Speaker 1: to focus on exceptional examples of drinking and storage vessels,
Speaker 1: which of course limits study to a very slim part
Speaker 1: of a given culture. You know, so it's like a
Speaker 1: highly ornate decorative peace that you know, maybe is of
Speaker 1: the same shape and basic function is what people would
Speaker 1: have in general been using to drink water or store water, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But maybe not like maybe it is us. It's more
Speaker 1: about looking interesting as opposed to anything else. But the
Speaker 1: archaeology of thirst ends up encompassing some very ancient examples um,
Speaker 1: including things like neolithic wells. Um Water is the most
Speaker 1: basic means of meeting human thirst, and it's taken on
Speaker 1: mundane and fantastic connotations at times. But on top of this,
Speaker 1: of course humans have come to drink SAPs, but ud
Speaker 1: of course various concoctions such as meat and wine and
Speaker 1: beer and more. But but I guess water, You know,
Speaker 1: water remains the big one obviously. And another idea worth
Speaker 1: mentioning in all of this that I was reading about,
Speaker 1: um is the idea that, okay, so human thirst is
Speaker 1: of course ubiquitous. Everybody is going to thirst. Everyone needs water. Um.
Speaker 1: And so if you look back um to to Jewish
Speaker 1: and Islamic traditions, you you find in both legal traditions
Speaker 1: this idea of the right of thirst um. The the
Speaker 1: idea being that like every every every human government by
Speaker 1: this law, has this right of thirst uh, to this
Speaker 1: right to water via their own thirst. And in Islamic law,
Speaker 1: apparently this extended to animals as well. Animals had the
Speaker 1: right of thirst, which gave them meant that they had
Speaker 1: a right to access water based on their thirst. But
Speaker 1: but it's also it's interesting how you know this sort
Speaker 1: of this this foreshadows a lot of our modern relationship
Speaker 1: with water. The idea that that the right to water
Speaker 1: is classified as a basic human right by the United Nations. UM.
Speaker 1: But of course, at the same time, uh, not everyone
Speaker 1: has equal access to to water and uh. And this
Speaker 1: is going to continue to be a problem moving forward,
Speaker 1: and of course you can't help, but then take all
Speaker 1: of that and relate it back to our metaphorical treatment
Speaker 1: of thirst. You know, how does the how does that change?
Speaker 1: You know, if you're if you're if you're talking about
Speaker 1: thirst in reference to you know, spiritual needs and um
Speaker 1: and you know thirst for knowledge, Like, how is that
Speaker 1: different if you're if you're expressing that, uh within a
Speaker 1: you know, in a place where there where water is plentiful,
Speaker 1: where a drinking water is plentiful, or a place where
Speaker 1: access is more limited. But I guess before we can
Speaker 1: answer any of these questions, we need to back up
Speaker 1: quite a bit and just talk about thirst as a
Speaker 1: biological reality. What is it and how does it work? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And so this was actually rather interesting to me because
Speaker 1: it turns out I I knew less about thirst than
Speaker 1: I realized. And uh and what we do know about
Speaker 1: thurst and what we don't know about thirst are both
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Uh. So I was reading an article called
Speaker 1: just called Thirst that was published in Current Biology in
Speaker 1: sen by David E. Leeb, Christopher A. Zimmerman, and Zachary A. Night.
Speaker 1: And this article is essentially a summary of all the
Speaker 1: existing research on thirst. It was, as of the year sixteen,
Speaker 1: a sort of perfect primmer catching everybody up on what
Speaker 1: do we know about Thurst and what do we not know? Now,
Speaker 1: before we get into the meat of that discussion, I guess,
Speaker 1: uh to to just cover the very basics, uh, the
Speaker 1: first fact before we get into anything else. You are
Speaker 1: a water bag. That that is what we are. That
Speaker 1: is what all of us are. We we are not
Speaker 1: just simple water bags, but our bodies are essentially water
Speaker 1: bags over any other material description. All the animal life
Speaker 1: that currently lives on land evolved from creatures that used
Speaker 1: to live in the ocean, where you're surrounded by water
Speaker 1: all the time. And when we evolved to live on land,
Speaker 1: we had to create essentially bags that would contain water
Speaker 1: to take with us because all of the of the
Speaker 1: biological chemistry, the biochemistry of life takes place in water,
Speaker 1: in solutions of water, and so as water bags. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we we are complex autonomous water bags. But
Speaker 1: most of those complex autonomous activities actually require that there
Speaker 1: be a fairly precise amount of water in the bag
Speaker 1: and a fairly precise concentration of various substances things like sodium,
Speaker 1: for instance, that pretty precise amounts be dissolved in the
Speaker 1: water in the bag, and so various processes of life
Speaker 1: are constantly leading to water coming in and out of
Speaker 1: the bag. Uh. So there there are several common routes
Speaker 1: of water to be added to the bag. Were familiar
Speaker 1: with the most common of those, which is drinking fluid,
Speaker 1: drinking water or or fluids that are mainly water, or
Speaker 1: eating food with water content. And that the second one
Speaker 1: they're eating food with water content is less prominent for
Speaker 1: humans because you know, we typically drink a glass of
Speaker 1: water with food or between meals or whatever. But there
Speaker 1: are some animals that basically get almost all of their
Speaker 1: water from their food. Yeah. This includes certain desert species
Speaker 1: such as the kangaroo rat and the kangaroo mouse, which,
Speaker 1: of course, on the planet Iracus becomes the the the
Speaker 1: the mouse. Deep. Um, we also have things like the
Speaker 1: sand cat, the sand gazelle. Um, and uh, I know,
Speaker 1: just in my household, it also seems to include my cat,
Speaker 1: who does not seem to drink water at all anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: We we have to lean heavily on moist foods to
Speaker 1: get to get her her liquids, So feeding her wet food,
Speaker 1: adding a little bit of water like sneaking it into
Speaker 1: the wet food, and yet if we make the wet
Speaker 1: food too wet, she will say, no, it's too much
Speaker 1: like water, I will not have it, And then we
Speaker 1: put out water for We've tried the fountains, we've tried everything.
Speaker 1: The only thing she ever actually drank out of was
Speaker 1: a fish tank when we had a fish tank, and
Speaker 1: then she would not stop drinking out of the fish tank.
Speaker 1: But any other thing we've tried, she hasn't gone for.
Speaker 1: And so when she's had some issues before, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, she's clearly dehydrated. In the past, we even
Speaker 1: had to had to use an i V to give
Speaker 1: her the water. So we we still have a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of bags of fluid around in case she has
Speaker 1: any any flare ups of her issues. But in terms
Speaker 1: of just like drinking straight water, she's not interested at all. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: simultaneously that is kind of fascinating, but also I feel
Speaker 1: for her and I feel for you guys that that's
Speaker 1: very frustrating. Now we're weird. I mean, everybody seems to
Speaker 1: be at a comfortable level right now. She's she seems
Speaker 1: to be getting all the liquid she needs through her
Speaker 1: her meat paste. But but it's it's weird with cats,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I think some people have this experience with
Speaker 1: with cats where they really have to be tricked into
Speaker 1: drinking water, but others will just drink it on the
Speaker 1: fly out of toilets or dripping faucets and so forth. Right,
Speaker 1: So all of that is direct water acquisitions. Of course,
Speaker 1: you get water from drinking water. You get some smaller
Speaker 1: amount of water from eating food that contains water. But
Speaker 1: then apparently there's there's a secondary route for water acquisition
Speaker 1: by eating food through what's known as metabolic water, which
Speaker 1: is when your metabolism oxidizes various energy containing substances that
Speaker 1: you eat and produces water in the process. So some
Speaker 1: water is created at the molecular level by your metabolism,
Speaker 1: and there are some organisms that get a large amount
Speaker 1: of their their water content from metabolic water. Humans only
Speaker 1: get a very small amount from it. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think like some desert dwelling organisms and some birds
Speaker 1: and stuff it get all or almost all of their
Speaker 1: water by by chemical reactions that happen inside their body
Speaker 1: after they eat food and turn parts of that food
Speaker 1: into water molecules. Now, one of the interesting things I
Speaker 1: was reading about some of these desert species um and
Speaker 1: at least with some of them. You know, if they're
Speaker 1: in a captivity and they are offered water, well, then
Speaker 1: when they they their thirst builds up, they will drink
Speaker 1: the water. So it's not it's not like everything. I
Speaker 1: don't want to imply that anything out there that gets
Speaker 1: most of its water through its meat is going to
Speaker 1: be like my cat and just refused to drink water.
Speaker 1: You know, she has her own issues going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that varies by organism. Okay, but those are
Speaker 1: the routes in you've got directly through drinking and eating
Speaker 1: and then secondarily through metabolism. But then you've got a
Speaker 1: number of routes for water to be to be eliminated.
Speaker 1: So you've got urination of course, and then you've got
Speaker 1: lost through defecation. You've got evaporation through the lungs of people.
Speaker 1: Sometimes don't think about this, but you lose water when
Speaker 1: you exhale water. Vapor comes out of your mouth or
Speaker 1: out of your nose, and then there is also evaporative
Speaker 1: loss of water through the skins just through sweating, so uh,
Speaker 1: and then other other more minor things. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: some extremely tiny amount of water evaporates off of the
Speaker 1: liquid on the surface of your eyes and so forth.
Speaker 1: But but those are the big ones. The defication is
Speaker 1: worth mentioning, probably stressing again because I think most people
Speaker 1: are probably familiar with this. But obviously, if one is
Speaker 1: in a UH, is suffering from a condition that the
Speaker 1: results in you know, um um diarrhea or um, you knows,
Speaker 1: some sort of dysenterious situation, you end up losing more
Speaker 1: and more water through defecation, and therefore you have to
Speaker 1: make sure you're drinking more and more water to make
Speaker 1: up for that water loss. Also, just a reminder out
Speaker 1: anyone out there, a well fitted and well manufactured still
Speaker 1: suit will collect all of this as it leaves your body. UH.
Speaker 1: All the routes out will be covered, and you'll lose
Speaker 1: no more than a thimble's worth of water per day.
Speaker 1: We gotta stress well fitted though. You get the wrong
Speaker 1: still suit on there, you're gonna have all kinds of
Speaker 1: gaps and things not working right. That's right. You don't
Speaker 1: know how to work the straps, and you're not you
Speaker 1: don't have that forehead piece on correctly. It's just not
Speaker 1: gonna work um at at an optimal level than all right. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: I want to come back to some of the findings
Speaker 1: that are summarized in that current biology paper by leave
Speaker 1: at all that I mentioned earlier. And again this is
Speaker 1: from so there will be more research that we get
Speaker 1: into from after that adds to some of these findings.
Speaker 1: But this is where we were when this when this
Speaker 1: good summary came out. So in the human body, the
Speaker 1: brain monitors the body's water content, and when certain thresholds
Speaker 1: are reached in the that information monitoring system, it motivates
Speaker 1: the body to drink fluids. Of course, it's not only
Speaker 1: the decrease of fluid volume in the body that makes
Speaker 1: us thirsty. One of the most important things to understand
Speaker 1: in the maintenance of the body's water content is the
Speaker 1: importance of something known as osmal reality. That's O s
Speaker 1: M O L A l I T Y. This is
Speaker 1: the concentration of various particles such as electrolytes like sodium,
Speaker 1: that are dissolved in the body's water content. And you'll
Speaker 1: you'll see this often described as blood osmo reality. It's
Speaker 1: basically functionally the same thing. The liquid part of our
Speaker 1: blood plasma is roughly water. So when people talk about
Speaker 1: blood osmo reality. They're talking about OSM reality of the
Speaker 1: body's water content. The brain is actually incredibly sensitive to
Speaker 1: changes in blood OSM reality. An increase in just one
Speaker 1: percent of of the blood OSM reality can cause an
Speaker 1: animal to feel thirst and the author's right quote. This sensation,
Speaker 1: in turn, is sufficient to orient and energize all of
Speaker 1: an animal's actions towards goal of finding and consuming water. Thus,
Speaker 1: the study of thirst is the study of how the
Speaker 1: brain performs this remarkable transformation, such that small changes in
Speaker 1: the composition of the blood become a potent and specific
Speaker 1: motivational drive. Uh And and the more I thought about that,
Speaker 1: the more interesting it became that essentially, just sort of
Speaker 1: eating a small amount of salt, for example, is enough
Speaker 1: to to motivate my brain to change all of my behavior.
Speaker 1: Because my osmolality goes up, the salt dissolved in my
Speaker 1: body's water content increases in order to balance that out,
Speaker 1: my body wants me to go get some more water
Speaker 1: to drink, and that I will interrupt whatever I'm doing
Speaker 1: to go do it. And we and we dind not
Speaker 1: even really think about this. We don't think, Oh, now
Speaker 1: my body has need of water, I must go get it.
Speaker 1: It's just like, it's just what you do. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: I mean right here, as we're recording, and I have
Speaker 1: a big thermis of water and I just end up
Speaker 1: casually sipping on it the whole time. Yeah. Same here.
Speaker 1: I always get a nice big glass of water before
Speaker 1: we start recording. But but the question would be, why
Speaker 1: are our bodies so sensitive to these tiny changes in
Speaker 1: osmo reality in the amount of of osmolites dissolved in
Speaker 1: the blood. Why would like a one percent increase in
Speaker 1: salt concentration really caused that much of a problem. Well,
Speaker 1: the authors offer some explanations. They say, first of all,
Speaker 1: you've got this thing in your body known as the
Speaker 1: electrochemical gradient. The cells in our bodies are selectively permeable
Speaker 1: to specific ions quote, resulting in an electrochemical gradient across
Speaker 1: the plasma membrane that is exploited for numerous cellular functions.
Speaker 1: So this means that there's a difference in the electrical
Speaker 1: charge and the concentration of various chemicals on opposite sides
Speaker 1: of the membrane that surrounds each of our cells. And
Speaker 1: the difference or the gradient here, the fact that it's
Speaker 1: different on each side of the membrane is what permits
Speaker 1: the transportation of ions across the membrane so that cells
Speaker 1: can do things, so that they can send and receive things.
Speaker 1: So if you change your blood osmolality, you say, increase
Speaker 1: the concentration of salt in the body's water content. You
Speaker 1: change this gradient, and you change the water contents inside cells,
Speaker 1: and you quote degrade normal cellular function. Now, I was
Speaker 1: trying to think of a rough analogy, and here's what
Speaker 1: I came up with. This may be very rough, but
Speaker 1: it's my best attempt. So when you change your blood
Speaker 1: osmolality away from its ideal, I would say your body
Speaker 1: sort of becomes like a city that starts having system
Speaker 1: wide problems opening and closing doors. Now, is the problems
Speaker 1: opening and closing doors of all kinds throughout a city
Speaker 1: get worse? Eventually this would just cause myriad diverse problems
Speaker 1: throughout the city, much like it would in your body. Well,
Speaker 1: that that just sounds like chaos. That just sounds like
Speaker 1: like all order is falling out out the window, right,
Speaker 1: And you can actually see that the visual representation of
Speaker 1: that chaos in a chart that the authors include in
Speaker 1: their paper, where it shows what the typical symptoms are
Speaker 1: as the blood osmolality goes too far above or below
Speaker 1: what it's supposed to be uh and uh. Basically on
Speaker 1: both sides, it's sort of a mirror image with a
Speaker 1: few differences. So you've got the normal range, but then
Speaker 1: you start getting away from it, you get things like irritability, lethargy, nausea,
Speaker 1: a taxia, trembling, hypothermia, and then in both cases you
Speaker 1: end up in the seizures and death territory. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so basically, you know, we have this this thin little
Speaker 1: realm of stability, and to either extreme it's just madness
Speaker 1: and death. Right, So the body has to very carefully
Speaker 1: keep that concentration of osmo lites in the right range,
Speaker 1: and if it gets off there there are it will
Speaker 1: take drastic measures to get it right again. But then
Speaker 1: the authors identify another major reason that the body has
Speaker 1: to keep fluid volume and osmalality at the right levels,
Speaker 1: which is blood pressure. You know, they say, your body
Speaker 1: uses blood to transport oxygen and other essential nutrients to
Speaker 1: all of its tissues. Everything of the body. It needs
Speaker 1: to get oxygen uh that you know, from the lungs
Speaker 1: in the heart, and the blood has to get there
Speaker 1: to do its work. If the volume of water in
Speaker 1: the body drops below ideal levels, blood volume actually decreases.
Speaker 1: There's not enough blood, which means the circulatory system has
Speaker 1: to work harder and harder to keep blood pressure up
Speaker 1: where it needs to be to get to all the
Speaker 1: parts of the body and deliver those nutrients. So, in
Speaker 1: addition to maintaining the right concentration of those dissolved things
Speaker 1: like sodium, you also just need to have enough water
Speaker 1: in your body to keep your blood pressure up to
Speaker 1: allow your heart to keep getting blood to all the
Speaker 1: parts of the body. It just it kind of comes
Speaker 1: back to what you said earlier about it. You know
Speaker 1: that we're there's water bags. We are creatures made out
Speaker 1: of water, and if we don't have enough water, we
Speaker 1: don't have enough of us. Right, Yeah, nothing nothing works
Speaker 1: without it anyway. The authors say that the bodies of
Speaker 1: animals have evolved to carefully preserve blood volume and blood
Speaker 1: OSM reality, and then they describe some of the main
Speaker 1: components of this system that we know about. So, first
Speaker 1: of all, there are neurons that monitor blood OSM reality
Speaker 1: and volume. You've got specially dedicated cells in the central
Speaker 1: nervous system, that pay attention to this stuff, and when
Speaker 1: they detect a problem, they quote trigger a coordinated set
Speaker 1: of autonomic, neuroendocrine, and behavioral responses that defend these parameters
Speaker 1: against change. So one of the main measures the body
Speaker 1: can take to defend against changes in OSM reality is
Speaker 1: modulating kidney function. So as osmolality increases, you get a
Speaker 1: surge of anti diuretic hormone, which makes the kidneys change
Speaker 1: tack to keep more water inside the body and make
Speaker 1: the urine more highly concentrated, make it less deluded with water.
Speaker 1: Of course, the kidneys can't do their job alone because
Speaker 1: they also have to do other things. In addition to that,
Speaker 1: they have to help purge the body of toxic substances
Speaker 1: and other kinds of waste, and of course some some
Speaker 1: water volume will necessarily be lost in that process. Also,
Speaker 1: the body loses water through these other means we mentioned
Speaker 1: a minute ago, sweating, breathing, and so forth, So eventually
Speaker 1: the body will be forced to consume new water to
Speaker 1: restore the balance and the volume of the blood plasma.
Speaker 1: So so that's the chemistry and the physiology, but eventually
Speaker 1: you have to get to behavior. At some point, the
Speaker 1: brain has to trigger behaviors to get new water. In
Speaker 1: so an animal thinks I need to drink water. Of course,
Speaker 1: this behavior can be costly there, you know, there are
Speaker 1: factors working against an animal's motivation to do it because
Speaker 1: it might involve spending energy finding and traveling to a
Speaker 1: water source. It might involve taking big risks. I mean,
Speaker 1: think of all the nature documentaries you've seen when predation
Speaker 1: happens at the water's edge, whether it's a crocodile jumping
Speaker 1: out of the water or a predator sneaking up while
Speaker 1: an animal is distracted by lapping up water. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and some of those predators have been traditionally been human beings,
Speaker 1: oh totally. And of course drinking water just involves temporarily
Speaker 1: de prioritizing other important things, like you know, in the
Speaker 1: natural context, maybe forging for food or pursuing reproduction. But
Speaker 1: even think you know, it might force you to get
Speaker 1: up from gaming or whatever. Well, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: one of those areas again where like with humans, so
Speaker 1: many of us are are are fortunate that we never
Speaker 1: have to hunt for water. You know, the drinking water
Speaker 1: is readily available to us. We have all that we need.
Speaker 1: And likewise, through humanum civilization, we we tend to have
Speaker 1: the food situation knocked as well. Again, and and ideal circumstances,
Speaker 1: you're not going to have to spend um most to
Speaker 1: your day foraging for food, which is going to be
Speaker 1: the case with many different species of animals, you know,
Speaker 1: where most of the day is about just finding the food,
Speaker 1: eating the food, and of course there's no there's no
Speaker 1: room for anything else. And if you're having to hunt
Speaker 1: for extra water along the way, then you're that's getting
Speaker 1: in the way potentially of this this vital food hunt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just as an aside, easy access to clean, drinkable running
Speaker 1: water is like might go to example of what's good
Speaker 1: about modern civilization. You know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who kind of demonize modern civilization, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things about it not to like. But
Speaker 1: but easy access to clean water is like, that is
Speaker 1: the most unambiguous good thing I can think of, right,
Speaker 1: I mean to the to the to the extent that
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous in some in many cases you know where
Speaker 1: someone might ask, what what is this, what is this
Speaker 1: water in your toilet? Well, this is drinking water, the
Speaker 1: drinking water that comes into the house. He goes into
Speaker 1: the toilet, we just make sure that the water in
Speaker 1: there it's perfectly fresh and drinkable. Um, which I guess
Speaker 1: is good for the dogs and the cats. But um,
Speaker 1: you know certainly that I think you see these various
Speaker 1: you know, gray water models that certainly make a lot
Speaker 1: more sense, like why should the drinking water be the
Speaker 1: water in the toilet. Can't the water from the washing
Speaker 1: of my hands be the water in the toilet? Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that make more sense? Of course it requires more work, right,
Speaker 1: But to come back to the the the wild context,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there are all these things that would
Speaker 1: be factors pushing against your your acquisition of water when
Speaker 1: your body needs it. So of course what an animal
Speaker 1: needs is intrinsic motivation. Actually, they're demotivating factors that are
Speaker 1: just natural parts of the environment. So acquiring water needs
Speaker 1: its own intrinsic motivation, hence the motivating desire of thirst.
Speaker 1: It is a moment to moment drive to acquire water
Speaker 1: that's calibrated by the constantly updated feedback on blood volume
Speaker 1: and osmality, though there may also be some other interesting
Speaker 1: and more prizing inputs on it that will get to
Speaker 1: in a bit Now, the authors point out that thirst
Speaker 1: appears to have both positive and negative motivating mechanisms, and
Speaker 1: I think you can think about food, food and hunger
Speaker 1: as an analogy here, because there's something sort of along
Speaker 1: the same line. So you've got positive reinforcement of fluid
Speaker 1: drinking behavior by just making drinking water when you're thirsty
Speaker 1: feel really good. You know, when you're very thirsty, that
Speaker 1: glass of water, it's it's delicious, it's wonderful, it feels great.
Speaker 1: And then you've got the negative reinforcement side, which is
Speaker 1: that thirst is inherently unpleasant. It is experienced as a
Speaker 1: type of discomfort or pain that has to be alleviated
Speaker 1: by drinking fluid. So we all know from experience that
Speaker 1: these things are true, that you have this positive and
Speaker 1: negative reinforcement mechanism within the brain for thirst and the
Speaker 1: drinking of water. But what's very interesting is that, at
Speaker 1: least at the time of this paper, in how these
Speaker 1: two mechanisms of thirst are instantiated in the brain is
Speaker 1: still not fully understood. There are some major question marks remaining,
Speaker 1: and I think there are at least a few other
Speaker 1: studies that we can refer to in subsequent parts of
Speaker 1: the series about that where where some ideas have developed
Speaker 1: since then, but there's still a lot of questions out there,
Speaker 1: and this is This is one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: I thought it would be so interesting to pursue Thirst
Speaker 1: as a series on the show, because it's surprising that
Speaker 1: there are things we still don't know about it. It
Speaker 1: seems like one of those things that would be absolutely
Speaker 1: totally understood at this point. But but there's some great
Speaker 1: outlining questions about thirst and and uh, how we experience thirst,
Speaker 1: what are the neural pathways there, how is thirst sated?
Speaker 1: And so forth? So maybe we'll have to call it
Speaker 1: for this first part here. I know I'm only halfway
Speaker 1: through discussing this uh from repaper, but if we go
Speaker 1: on through the end of this one, this first episode
Speaker 1: is gonna be two hours long or something, So so
Speaker 1: maybe we should call it. What do you think, Rob?
Speaker 1: I think so, Yeah, I'm actually almost out of water
Speaker 1: here and I'm going to have to reef ill. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to keep going with this. There are a
Speaker 1: number of little areas I'm hoping we'll get into the
Speaker 1: manipulation of thirst by other organisms the end and life
Speaker 1: forms the I want to get back to the taste
Speaker 1: of water. Uh, this is something that's always fascinated me.
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, water, the taste of of of water
Speaker 1: will change depending on where you're getting the water. But
Speaker 1: you'll sometimes hear people say, well, I don't like the
Speaker 1: taste of water, or we'll think of water as having
Speaker 1: no taste at all. Um. I actually found some some
Speaker 1: some some papers dealing with this topic a little bit,
Speaker 1: so I think they could be fun to discuss people
Speaker 1: who don't like the taste of water that is a
Speaker 1: telltale sign of vampireism. Just add some red food coloring
Speaker 1: to it. Then then you're you're like, oh, this is great,
Speaker 1: this is wonderful. Okay, well, all veins to drink from
Speaker 1: when we return, all right. Uh. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, you'll find them in the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever you get your podcast
Speaker 1: Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday is artifact episodes on Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: listener mail on Mondays, and on Fridays would do weird
Speaker 1: how cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious
Speaker 1: matters and just discuss a weird film Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows.