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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, I've got a new fun physics book out now.

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Speaker 1: It's called Do Aliens Speak Physics? And I think it's

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Speaker 1: a lot of fun. But don't take my word for it.

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Speaker 1: Here's what Lake Crouch, famous author and smart guy, said.

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Speaker 1: Do Aliens Speak Physics is a charming, thoughtful meditation on

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Speaker 1: the common language of the universe, a book which asks

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Speaker 1: important questions about the fundamental nature not just of our existence,

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Speaker 1: but of reality itself. So go out and pick up

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Speaker 1: a copy of Do Aliens Speak Physics? I think you'll

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Speaker 1: enjoy it.

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Speaker 2: This pregnancy thing is just the pits? Is there anything

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Speaker 2: we can do to speed it up a bit?

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Speaker 1: When we're undergrade stress? Can we really lift a car?

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Speaker 1: Or is that an urban legend that's gone a bit

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Speaker 1: too far.

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Speaker 2: Bacteria can be beneficial, as I've come to understand, But

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Speaker 2: what about viruses?

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Speaker 3: Do they ever lend a helping hands?

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Speaker 1: Whatever questions keep you up at night are.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes beyond the intellectual grasp of Daniel and Kelly. So

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Speaker 2: on today's show, Doctor Capo Hannon joins us to answer

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Speaker 2: questions that stumped well Kelly in particular.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe plus friends.

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Speaker 2: Plus friends, and note this friend studies reproduction and sex,

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Speaker 2: and so you should decide ahead of time if that's

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Speaker 2: appropriate for young children.

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Speaker 4: Bigs.

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I don't

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Speaker 1: know the answer to every single physics question you might imagine.

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Speaker 3: Hello. I'm Kelly Windersmith.

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Speaker 2: I study parasites and space, and wow, y'all ask me

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Speaker 2: a lot of biology questions that I do not know

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Speaker 2: the answer to. And I was on a road trip

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Speaker 2: with my friend cap Ohannon. We were driving through Wales.

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Speaker 2: We did the show together called Moms on Mars, where

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Speaker 2: we talk about how difficult reproduction on Earth is and

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Speaker 2: how it would be even more complicated on Mars. And

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Speaker 2: it's not a great idea to rush into that. And

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Speaker 2: I mentioned that I have this new podcast and I

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Speaker 2: have these amazing listeners who send me a bunch of

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Speaker 2: questions that I don't know the answer to, even though

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Speaker 2: they're about biology. And Kat was like, dude, I'll come

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Speaker 2: on an answer. I was like, sweet, So we decided

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Speaker 2: to do that.

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Speaker 1: Well, it's incredible to me how broad biology is as

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Speaker 1: a field. I mean even physics. Like in my department,

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Speaker 1: we have people who do particle physics and condensed matter

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Speaker 1: physics and plasma physics, and the fields feel totally different.

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Speaker 1: But like we have sixteen different biology departments here on campus.

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Speaker 1: You know, like the breadth of stuff from like ecology

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Speaker 1: to microbiology to medical stuff is just really astounding. I

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Speaker 1: don't know why y'all even call each other biologists.

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Speaker 3: No, it's super different.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I was at a university that had, you know, immunology, ecollege, nematology, botany,

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Speaker 2: and it's they are all very different. And I'm very

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Speaker 2: flattered that the listeners think that I can handle any

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Speaker 2: biology question. But I do every once in a while,

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Speaker 2: and buy every once in a while, I mean quite

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Speaker 2: often need to lean on a friend who's an expert

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Speaker 2: mm hmm.

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Speaker 1: And I've thoroughly enjoyed hearing about all these biology questions.

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Speaker 1: I'm so glad folks out there are curious not just

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Speaker 1: about the physical universe and cosmology and particles, but how

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Speaker 1: all this gunky stuff inside of us works. We can

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Speaker 1: go on doing its meat machine for so many years.

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Speaker 1: It's amazing to me as well. And of course I'm

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Speaker 1: interested in biology. I hear about it at home, but

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Speaker 1: it's wonderful to also get to dig into it on

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Speaker 1: the podcast. So send us your questions about physics, about biology,

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Speaker 1: about all the gunky stuff inside of you. Write to

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Speaker 1: us too, questions at Danielankelly dot org. We will answer

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Speaker 1: your questions or do a little bit of research or

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Speaker 1: put it here on the podcast to.

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Speaker 3: Joke about, to joke about, and try to answer.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, and also answer yes.

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Speaker 2: We try to get answers one way or another to

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Speaker 2: nearly every question, although there are a couple that are

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Speaker 2: just way too far out of our wheelhouses and we

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Speaker 2: have to throw up our hands and say I'm so sorry.

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Speaker 1: But I think that gives us credibility because you know,

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Speaker 1: sometimes you don't know the answer, and you should say

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Speaker 1: you don't know when you don't know. That's one of

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Speaker 1: the joys of working at the forefront of knowledge is

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Speaker 1: you just get to throw up your hands sometimes and

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Speaker 1: say nobody knows, we don't know. It's one of the mysteries.

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Speaker 2: That's right, or it depends is my favorite, or we

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Speaker 2: have no idea, that's right.

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Speaker 1: There you go.

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Speaker 2: But Kat has an idea, and so Kat will be

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Speaker 2: answering the questions today. So let's go ahead and bring

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Speaker 2: Kat on the show. On today's show, we have my

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Speaker 2: good friend Kat Bohannon, who completed her PhD in twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty two at Columbia University, where she studied the evolution

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Speaker 2: of Narrative and Cognition. Eve How the Female Body Drove

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Speaker 2: two hundred million years of Human Evolution is her first book.

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Speaker 2: It's a New York Times bestseller and was listed for

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Speaker 2: the Royal Society Prize, the Orwell Prize, and the Women's

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Speaker 2: Prize in twenty twenty three. She lives in the US

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Speaker 2: with her partner and her two semi fairwah children. And

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Speaker 2: those are her words, not mine. I'm sure they're lovely.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to the show, Kat, Hey.

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Speaker 1: Folks, thanks for being here for helping us answer these

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Speaker 1: amazing questions.

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Speaker 4: I'll do it, I can. Questions are great.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, So we've been getting a lot of questions

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Speaker 2: about the human body, and the first person I think

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Speaker 2: of when I think how does some part of my

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Speaker 2: body work?

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Speaker 3: Is I should ask Kat?

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Speaker 2: And so we're passing these questions to you. Okay, So

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Speaker 2: let's go ahead and listen to our first question.

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Speaker 5: Hello, Extraordinaries. I'm Andrea from Italy, a big fan of

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Speaker 5: the podcast. In your Books, youre with me? Is my

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Speaker 5: wife with some questions for you? Probably Maureen Kelly's ballpark.

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Speaker 6: Hello there, Alessandra here. My question for you is what

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Speaker 6: determines the length of pregnancies in humans and other species?

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Speaker 6: Is it correct to assume it's a function of the

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Speaker 6: needed number of cells? That said, have there been studies

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Speaker 6: on how to shorten gestation? If so, how would that

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Speaker 6: be technologically achieved? And lastly, what's social implications with a

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Speaker 6: rise as a consequence of shortened gestation in humans? Do

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Speaker 6: you think you can affect the current birth rate or

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Speaker 6: other aspects of our social structure?

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Speaker 4: Ooh, so that is a meaty question, full of many

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Speaker 4: questions inside that little package of question.

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Speaker 1: But do you think this is somebody who just went

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Speaker 1: through pregnancy and wished it was shorter? She was like,

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Speaker 1: oh my gosh, how can I end this sooner?

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Speaker 4: I mean, that's one of those things anyob I will

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Speaker 4: tell you that by the time you get to your

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Speaker 4: third trimester stating people are ready, They're like, you know what,

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Speaker 4: I'm freaking good, Yeah, let's let's do this thing. In fact,

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Speaker 4: the only thing that could probably push any reasonable person

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Speaker 4: over that totally reasonable fear of the process of giving

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Speaker 4: birth is the idea of continuing to be pregnant as

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Speaker 4: an alter you know what I mean.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So you don't think anybody was like, hmm,

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Speaker 1: this has been cozy. I could use another forty weeks

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Speaker 1: of this.

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Speaker 4: Oh well, beings are a little kray. So I'm never

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Speaker 4: gonna say no one, you know what I mean. There

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Speaker 4: are some people, some unicorns who like the knocked up

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Speaker 4: state and are like, I want more of this, I

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Speaker 4: want more of this. I think most of us it's

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Speaker 4: a mixed bag. There are bits we like, bits we

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Speaker 4: don't like. It's very complicated, but most of us, by

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Speaker 4: that third trimester, if we make it there are like, yeah,

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Speaker 4: get this thing out of me. Now, this is a

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Speaker 4: Ridley Scott scenario. Get this thing.

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Speaker 3: Out yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

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Speaker 4: So the short answer to have there been studies to

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Speaker 4: shortened gestation is yeah, and we're already doing it, but

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Speaker 4: not on the development side. On the like, can we

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Speaker 4: do it outside the body side?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 4: And that's a slightly easier thing to rig right. So

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Speaker 4: for example, literally all IVF as we currently do, it

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Speaker 4: shortens the process by which you know, a thing that

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Speaker 4: becomes a human later is in the body at the

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Speaker 4: front end, because we are fertilizing that egg outside of

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Speaker 4: that pelvis. We are doing it in a different way.

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Speaker 4: We are doing it. Sometimes it's a tube I think

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Speaker 4: nowadays it's a pea tradition. Then too, it's complicated, depends

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Speaker 4: on the lab there's a history of it. There's a

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Speaker 4: lot I don't know, but yeah, basically, so like a

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Speaker 4: blasticist of five or six stay blasticist, which is kind

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Speaker 4: of a basketball of cells. So at that stage of development,

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Speaker 4: which isn't yet gestation. Gestation technically is when it starts

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Speaker 4: burrowing into your body, into your uterus, right, that's your

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Speaker 4: start of pregnancy. So this is just cells doing crazy stuff,

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Speaker 4: making a hollow basketball. That thing is not in your

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Speaker 4: pelvis until it gets transferred in, right, So that's already

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Speaker 4: shortening what's going on your body, and the other end

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Speaker 4: gets more complicated. Very late stage pre meis basically now

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Speaker 4: there's a lot of development around improving a nickqu by

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Speaker 4: creating a more womblike environment. Right, So you can think

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Speaker 4: of the whole NIKEU as shortening just station even though

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Speaker 4: the gest state in person probably didn't want to thank you.

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Speaker 4: Those are premies right, But now we're trying to improve

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Speaker 4: it because like the way we do it now is

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Speaker 4: damaging to the lungs. Those lungs are you know, often

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Speaker 4: not quite ready to breathe air, they're still developing. So

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Speaker 4: we're working on having that be a more fluid environment.

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Speaker 4: There's a thing called a bio bag that can mimic

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Speaker 4: more of that liquid environment. It's not out there, you're

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Speaker 4: not going to find it in the hospital, but those

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Speaker 4: are labs developing that stuff. But that whole middle bit,

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Speaker 4: which is basically when that placenta attaches on up until

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Speaker 4: very late stage pregnancy, we don't have that yet. We

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Speaker 4: don't have a way to have a mammalian pregnancy like

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Speaker 4: happen without a uterus and without a body that's hosting

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Speaker 4: that uterus. Right, So that's like the counterintuitive way of thinking,

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Speaker 4: how can we shorten gestation The way they're really hoping,

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Speaker 4: which is speed up, is a lot crazier and actually

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Speaker 4: unpacks whole bag of worms that we don't know in biology,

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Speaker 4: which is really interesting, like why the hell do fetal

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Speaker 4: cells multiply so rapidly? And then for some reason, once

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Speaker 4: you achieve a certain kind of body organization, certain body plan,

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Speaker 4: some of those tissues start slowing down their replication cycle,

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Speaker 4: and some of them stay fast, you know, like when

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Speaker 4: you're building a body, which again is actually not just

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Speaker 4: making cells but also having them migrate right to different

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Speaker 4: areas in that developing embryonic body. You know, there's just

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Speaker 4: a whole city infrastructure going on in there, right, and

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Speaker 4: it's going really fast. It's going really really fast, and

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Speaker 4: then some parts of it slow down.

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Speaker 1: Like I couldn't build a baby faster than that, for sure,

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Speaker 1: it would take me a lot longer. So this is

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Speaker 1: pretty impressively quick, right.

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Speaker 4: I mean, technically we could attach a placenta to like

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Speaker 4: your abdominal wall, but you probably don't.

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Speaker 3: Want to do that.

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Speaker 4: You probably that's not like on your Bingo card for

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Speaker 4: twenty twenty. I mean, I know there's been a lot

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Speaker 4: that's been surprising this year, you know, like the but

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Speaker 4: not not like knocking you are now no no, no,

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Speaker 4: no no.

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Speaker 1: Well put this in context for us, like our humans do,

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Speaker 1: they have a longer gestation period than other great apes.

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Speaker 1: For example, they are human babies more developed or less

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Speaker 1: developed than like chimpanzee babies when they're born.

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Speaker 3: See.

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Speaker 4: I think that's also a really good way of framing it,

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Speaker 4: because like when you get born as a mammal is

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Speaker 4: not like this set thing, like you are so ready

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Speaker 4: for the world or so unready for the world. Like

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Speaker 4: when mice are born, they're pretty fetal. You know, we

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Speaker 4: call them pinkies. You know, they have no hair yet,

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Speaker 4: their eyes aren't open, their ears aren't unruled. Like even

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Speaker 4: to poop, the mother mouse needs to lick along the

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Speaker 4: abdomen to like stimulate you know, them to pee, and

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Speaker 4: they will actually die of not defecating and peeing if

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Speaker 4: they don't get that stimulation in those early wow phases

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Speaker 4: of being So is that really developed? Is that really

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Speaker 4: being born?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 4: And that's that interesting thing, Like all mammalian species have

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Speaker 4: a different level of development or readiness, you know, for

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Speaker 4: existence outside that body, which is really interesting. And so

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Speaker 4: human bodies when we're born, a lot of people make

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Speaker 4: a lot of hay out of the fact that we're

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Speaker 4: pretty freaking useless. We can't hold up our heads, like

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Speaker 4: we are just barely able to exist compared to say

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Speaker 4: a chimpanzee or a gorilla or many other primates.

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Speaker 2: Right, But I didn't have to lick Ada's belly so

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Speaker 2: she could poop. So that's pretty that's pretty great. I'm

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Speaker 2: calling that a win.

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Speaker 4: Sorry, go ahead, No, no, that is really great. But

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Speaker 4: you trying to make sure she didn't snap her stupid

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Speaker 4: neck was definitely like a thing that other monkey moms

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Speaker 4: don't have to do. Right, So we are a needy

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Speaker 4: baby species. We are like, gotta do more to keep

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Speaker 4: this thing alive species for sure. And Holly Dunsworth did

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Speaker 4: the most famous research on this. So for a long

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Speaker 4: time we thought human babies were born because our heads

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Speaker 4: are stupidly large, and our vadge is really not that large.

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Speaker 4: It's actually not the vadge that can stretch or tear.

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Speaker 4: Don't think about that too hard. But like the actual

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Speaker 4: pelvic inlet, the bone opening, you know where the babies

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Speaker 4: come out at the bottom, is small compared to how

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Speaker 4: big a thing we got to push out. So we

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Speaker 4: thought that was the obstetric dilemma. We thought that was

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Speaker 4: why we were born when we were born. But Holly

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Speaker 4: Dunsworth did some really great research saying, actually, this is

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Speaker 4: a metabolic threshold. Actually it's more like how much longer

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Speaker 4: can you gestate this super greedy, metabolically costly fetus before

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Speaker 4: your local resources are not sufficient. In other words, it's

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Speaker 4: actually an ecological concept. Right when are mammals born, It's like,

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Speaker 4: how much longer in our case can this body continue

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Speaker 4: to literally bear the load of this resource hall right

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Speaker 4: before it's like, oh no, we got to switch to lactation.

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Speaker 4: You need to get the hell out of here. This

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Speaker 4: is not this is not cool.

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Speaker 2: Is it calories or is it space? Like are they

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Speaker 2: pressing on your lungs in your heart or is it both?

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Speaker 4: I did not enjoy how difficult it was to breathe

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Speaker 4: in late term pregnant. Same you know, I wasn't cool

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Speaker 4: with like how literally my diaphragm was compressed out for

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Speaker 4: by this new mask growing not nah nah no, no, no, no,

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Speaker 4: not fun. But so yeah, that's not great. But no,

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Speaker 4: it's actually it's calories and general just load. Now, metabolic

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Speaker 4: load is going to be a cost that isn't simply

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Speaker 4: how many calories transferred, but also what are the resources

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Speaker 4: you need to continue to exist jes dating while bearing

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Speaker 4: this thing that also requires resources, So that's not simply

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Speaker 4: you transferring resources. It's also how much does it cost

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Speaker 4: for you to carry this thing around? How much does

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Speaker 4: it cost for you to care to have a heart

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Speaker 4: that's still working pumping this much blood. So that's like

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Speaker 4: a whole it's a complicated, sweet oft stuff, but that's

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Speaker 4: the general idea. We give birth when basically it's too

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Speaker 4: costly to continue doing this thing, you know, and that

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Speaker 4: was done so great insight that it's not about the

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Speaker 4: head size, although head size also sucks.

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Speaker 7: Well.

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Speaker 1: I remember when my kids were born, feeling like, Wow,

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Speaker 1: this baby was better suited inside the womb because you know,

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Speaker 1: you didn't have to worry about it crying. It was

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Speaker 1: fed automatically, you know, the whole diaper thing, Like, it

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Speaker 1: just felt like it was so much easier. Also, of

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Speaker 1: course it wasn't inside me. There's that.

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Speaker 3: It's an important insight.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, really significant. Bell just went off there. Yeah, thank

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Speaker 4: you for acknowledging that. Uh huh, hello, I heard that. No,

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Speaker 4: for sure, I mean technically that mother was having to

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Speaker 4: like eat and drink and go to the bathroom a lot,

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Speaker 4: so I wouldn't say it was automatic. It's just that

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Speaker 4: you didn't have to think about feeding it, and you

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Speaker 4: didn't have to think about dealing with its cell waste,

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Speaker 4: like how often and where is it peeing?

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Speaker 6: You?

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Speaker 4: Know, my first child had a penis. My son definitely

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Speaker 4: peed not just on me, but greatly upward.

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Speaker 3: I definitely.

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Speaker 4: My face was peed on taking care of that thing.

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Speaker 4: Oh yeah, my daughter did not have that. It was fascinating.

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Speaker 4: I was like, oh, it could be like this. This

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Speaker 4: is better.

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Speaker 2: So the listener wanted to know if the length of

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Speaker 2: pregnancy is a function of the number of cells. But

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Speaker 2: it feels like what we've said is maybe number of

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Speaker 2: cells matters, but it's also how developed the baby needs

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Speaker 2: to be before it's ready to enter the world, which

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Speaker 2: depends on like the evolutionary history of the animal.

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Speaker 3: Does that sound fair?

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Speaker 4: I think that sounds fair. I mean elephant chestation takes

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Speaker 4: a long time to build a big freaking body like that.

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Speaker 3: That is true, and it's.

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Speaker 4: Very rare for elephant twins almost never. Oh interesting, both

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Speaker 4: the metabolic load of that thing and also it's an elephant. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: and it's in you. So even if you're an elephant,

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Speaker 4: you're growing an elephant. Oh god, you know, so that's

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Speaker 4: that's the thing. So yeah, so that newborn size, just

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Speaker 4: sheer size is definitely definitely a factor. But you know,

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Speaker 4: even as adults, our cells are replicating at very different

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Speaker 4: rates what their cell cycle, like, how long do you

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Speaker 4: go through that early cell phase into when does it

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Speaker 4: finish out? The lining of your intestines can finish a

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Speaker 4: cycle in like I think ten hours or something like that,

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Speaker 4: you know, whereas your liver can take like a year.

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Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure it's the hpatasite. It can take like

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Speaker 4: a long time. And then of course the most famous

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Speaker 4: case of the longest cells to complete their cycle is

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Speaker 4: our freaking eggs. Right, So, like Kelly, when you were

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Speaker 4: inside your mom, well the tissue and the feetus, then

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Speaker 4: that became you and you were developing those nascent follicles

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Speaker 4: in your little bit ovaries, right, those things reach a

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Speaker 4: certain stage and then just stop, just hang out, just pause,

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Speaker 4: some of them for as many as forty years or more, right,

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Speaker 4: whereas the rest of your cells are definitely not doing that.

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Speaker 4: So actually, one of the big mysteries in biology is

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Speaker 4: what is regulating all of that? How does that work,

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Speaker 4: What are the switches, what are the inhibitions genetically and

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Speaker 4: otherwise that and what changes that later on? Because actually

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Speaker 4: that's one of those things in cancer, you get a

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Speaker 4: lot of cells that then, say a liver tumor that

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Speaker 4: originates in the liver. Right, how do you take a

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Speaker 4: cell that has a really long turn over time and

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Speaker 4: have it start multiplying rapidly? Right? What's controlling that? If

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Speaker 4: we can actually figure that out, oh we can keep

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Speaker 4: a lot more people healthy.

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Speaker 1: Well, say more about that, because say we understood what

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Speaker 1: is regulating this isn't that downstream of something else which

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Speaker 1: is regulating it. It's in the whole thing, some complex

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Speaker 1: Rube Goldberg machine. It's not like if we understood, oh

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Speaker 1: it's this level of hormone, you could just like give

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Speaker 1: somebody more and it would happen faster, or take it

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Speaker 1: away to make things slower. Isn't it an enormously complex

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Speaker 1: device that we have almost no hope of being able

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Speaker 1: to like manipulate to our ends.

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Speaker 3: Daniel finds biology frustrating.

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Speaker 1: Yes, it's not just a particle.

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Speaker 4: I was just about to say, you seem to just

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Speaker 4: be describing biologies. These are complex systems interacting complexly. That's

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Speaker 4: what what where is? Okay? Yeah, it's nice. It's nice

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Speaker 4: in physics that you can just like get your foil

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Speaker 4: from Costco and build your experiment. But we have to

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Speaker 4: have things make babies.

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Speaker 1: Okay, you just described all the physics. That's amazing. Wowols

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Speaker 1: from costco that's my entire budget.

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Speaker 4: Yes, that sounds nice. Well, unless you're actually trying to

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Speaker 4: build certain you know there are there are there are

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Speaker 4: different levels of cost and experiments. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Man,

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Speaker 4: So I think I I completely agree with you that

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Speaker 4: there isn't going to be one smoking gun for what

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Speaker 4: regulates all this stuff. And like in oncology, there's definitely

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Speaker 4: a case that some cancers are what you're describing with

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Speaker 4: the hormones is environmentally triggered cellular pattern changes, right, where

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Speaker 4: like if you get your more estrogen and you have

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Speaker 4: a kind of breast cancer that is especially responsive to estrogen,

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Speaker 4: then you want to downregulate that to keep the cancer

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Speaker 4: at bay if you're a survivor. Right. There are many

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Speaker 4: kinds like that. That's also true of you know, prostate

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Speaker 4: and testicular cancer that you want to downregulate certain androgens

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Speaker 4: so that you don't end up with more of that

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Speaker 4: cancer profile. Right. So that's manipulating the environment of those cells.

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Speaker 4: And there's a lot of stuff that changes your replication

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Speaker 4: rate that doesn't have to do with that. But you know,

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Speaker 4: like One of the things that we're starting to think

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Speaker 4: about in aging science is, Okay, what does resource availability

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Speaker 4: do to sell replication? We know, for example, in diabetic

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Speaker 4: patients that they have a higher risk profile for a

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Speaker 4: number of different kinds of cancers, and the thought is

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Speaker 4: that many cell types are responding to that higher level

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Speaker 4: of local sugar. Basically, you know that that is changing

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Speaker 4: what the cells are doing, almost as if, like in

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Speaker 4: an ecological problem, there's more resources, so we can make

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Speaker 4: more babies, you know, we can replicate those cells faster. Right, So,

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Speaker 4: really thinking about the body as a bunch of different

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Speaker 4: local environments is surprisingly useful. But again, is that thing

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Speaker 4: where like, can we speed up gestation? Well, the first

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Speaker 4: thing you think of is like, so are we just

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Speaker 4: going to turn all fetuses into cancer? Just a whole

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Speaker 4: lot of cancer, because that's probably what you're proposing to

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Speaker 4: try to speed up a basic body plan without knowing what.

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Speaker 8: All you're doing.

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Speaker 2: I'm guessing that's not what she had in mind. But

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Speaker 2: it's a good way of highlighting.

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Speaker 4: No, she wasn't thinking a lot of cancer. She was

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Speaker 4: just like making me less pregnant for less time.

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Speaker 3: That's right. It's a good way of highlighting the complexity

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Speaker 3: I think.

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Speaker 1: But let's say that somehow you could, right, somehow you

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Speaker 1: figured this out, and you could have a baby in

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Speaker 1: six weeks instead of you know, forty weeks. Okay, what

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Speaker 1: do you think that would do to the social structure

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Speaker 1: and you know, the decisions people are making about having babies.

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Speaker 1: We've heard on the podcast recently about how, you know,

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Speaker 1: birth rates are dropping worldwide.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, birth rates are dropping around mostly wealthier, mostly white women.

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Speaker 4: But we could get into that debate another time. Actually,

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Speaker 4: our global population continues to grow, and it's fine, Okay,

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Speaker 4: So now that I've done that PSA, I'll just quickly

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Speaker 4: say that, like, we're definitely thinking about a matrix scenario.

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Speaker 4: Now we're talking about external wombs. A human body would

436
00:22:37,040 --> 00:22:42,719
Speaker 4: not be able to supply, you know, the resources necessary

437
00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:46,880
Speaker 4: without dying to create a whole human body in six

438
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:50,760
Speaker 4: weeks in a uterus. Besides just having that uterus grow

439
00:22:50,800 --> 00:22:53,480
Speaker 4: to sufficient size, remember that normally it's the size of

440
00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:56,400
Speaker 4: a freaking adult fist, and we're now making it a basketball.

441
00:22:56,440 --> 00:22:59,560
Speaker 4: So that's a thing that takes time, right, It's also

442
00:22:59,600 --> 00:23:03,680
Speaker 4: simply again that metabolic load. How do you transfer sufficient

443
00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:09,480
Speaker 4: resources and stay alive. That's the mammalian conundrump. Right. Yeah,

444
00:23:09,760 --> 00:23:12,760
Speaker 4: So so okay, so external wound would be a major thing.

445
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:14,719
Speaker 4: And as soon as you have that, then the social

446
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:20,439
Speaker 4: implications are absolutely massive. Right that, now there is no

447
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:25,040
Speaker 4: individual body that needs to bear you know, the burdens

448
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 4: and the blessings, but mostly burdens of making bodies inside

449
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 4: of it. Right, That actually changes a lot about what

450
00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 4: it is to be a person with the uters. That

451
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 4: changes a lot about things that we assume are simply

452
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:40,320
Speaker 4: part and parcel of being female, which could be both

453
00:23:40,359 --> 00:23:41,800
Speaker 4: really cool and really weird.

454
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:44,720
Speaker 2: All right, so let's go ahead and we're going to

455
00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:47,600
Speaker 2: share this answer with the listener and see what she

456
00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:48,240
Speaker 2: had to say.

457
00:23:48,640 --> 00:23:50,200
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for your answers.

458
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:50,600
Speaker 4: Kat.

459
00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:54,159
Speaker 6: Let me clarify that I'm not currently pregnant or have

460
00:23:54,280 --> 00:23:57,560
Speaker 6: been pregnant. The reason for my question was rather my

461
00:23:57,640 --> 00:24:01,440
Speaker 6: interest for social policies and how science can shape them.

462
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:04,520
Speaker 6: As a matter of fact, I found especially interesting your

463
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:08,280
Speaker 6: insight on how an external leaders would disrupt our traditional

464
00:24:08,359 --> 00:24:12,800
Speaker 6: understanding of gender roles. That is definitely something to think about. I.

465
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:15,720
Speaker 5: On the other hand, found very interesting the idea of

466
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:19,600
Speaker 5: birth as a metabolic necessity that explains how some newborn

467
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:24,160
Speaker 5: animals can instantly run while others can't even stand. Thank

468
00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:44,760
Speaker 5: you all and keep up the good work. Bye bye.

469
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:48,200
Speaker 2: All right, and we're back and we are on to

470
00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:51,520
Speaker 2: our second question with Campo Hannon, and so let's go

471
00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:53,159
Speaker 2: ahead and hear the listener question.

472
00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:56,520
Speaker 8: Hi, Daniel and Kelly. I was recently with a group

473
00:24:56,560 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 8: of friends playing a superhero RPG and a question was

474
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 8: posed that I'm hoping you can help us out with.

475
00:25:01,240 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 8: Can humans really lift a great deal of weight in

476
00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 8: times of great stress? I've heard that humans have restrictors

477
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:09,360
Speaker 8: on their muscles, otherwise they'd hurt themselves with how much

478
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:11,800
Speaker 8: they can really do. I've also heard the story of

479
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:14,040
Speaker 8: a mother lifting a car off of her trapped children.

480
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 8: Are either of these things really true? Would an ordinary

481
00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:19,440
Speaker 8: non body built human be able to lift a car

482
00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:21,040
Speaker 8: a foot or so off the ground if they really

483
00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:24,000
Speaker 8: needed to? If so, what happens in our bodies to

484
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 8: make such a thing possible? If not, where do you

485
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 8: think stories like restrictors and super strength moms come from?

486
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 8: Thanks in Evans.

487
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 2: Can we start with just what happens when you have

488
00:25:32,600 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 2: an acute stress experience? So, like something stresses you out.

489
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:38,439
Speaker 2: Let's say, not stresses you out enough that you need

490
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 2: to try and lift up a car? What does our

491
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:42,199
Speaker 2: body do there? And then maybe we can move to

492
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 2: can you lift up a car if you're stressed enough?

493
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:46,639
Speaker 4: Well, first, I think one of the things that's really

494
00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:50,160
Speaker 4: great about these accounts, which have to do with like

495
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 4: removing normal limitations on muscular use and things like that,

496
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:59,679
Speaker 4: you know, during periods of intense adrenaline, intense stress, what

497
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 4: it's often called in the literature. I looked this up

498
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:09,360
Speaker 4: is hysterical strength, which is.

499
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 3: Which is amazing.

500
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 4: That's amazing to me, knowing anything about the history of

501
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:15,439
Speaker 4: feminism and the term historic, that's amazing to me. Just

502
00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:19,560
Speaker 4: picturing these people just losing their minds. I love all

503
00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:22,040
Speaker 4: of that, you know. And there are these accounts of

504
00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:26,920
Speaker 4: people like lifting cars off of trapped you know, teenagers

505
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:31,159
Speaker 4: and toddlers and things like that. And again the listener

506
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 4: was right to say, we're talking like one wheel. You know,

507
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:36,240
Speaker 4: if you think in basic physics, those other wheels are

508
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 4: still on the ground. You are a temporary jack on

509
00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 4: one corner there, So you're not lifting the whole car,

510
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 4: you're lifting a certain amount. What you're really doing is

511
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:47,359
Speaker 4: a dead lift, and so you, as an untrained person,

512
00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 4: are not doing a dead lift that somehow is better

513
00:26:50,359 --> 00:26:53,880
Speaker 4: than like the world record keeper of deadlifters. Right, that's

514
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 4: not doesn't matter how much adrenaline you got, babe, that's

515
00:26:56,560 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 4: not a thing. What's interesting about it to me is like, Okay, yeah,

516
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 4: like Kelly says, something happens in your body. You get

517
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:06,720
Speaker 4: that adrenaline going, and two things are happening. One, a

518
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:10,440
Speaker 4: lot more blood is rushing to your muscles, all of

519
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:13,119
Speaker 4: your muscles really, but especially the ones you're trying to activate.

520
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 4: Your heart rates accelerating and what have you. That's a

521
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:19,879
Speaker 4: thing that's happening. And a lot of you know, in

522
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:21,639
Speaker 4: that blood, you're getting a lot of sugar transfer, a

523
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 4: lot of energy transfer, not so not just local but

524
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 4: also body wide. Energy is going to the thing you're

525
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:29,680
Speaker 4: trying to do. But what's really interesting about this moment

526
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:33,640
Speaker 4: is that you're actually affecting your brain that much more

527
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:36,199
Speaker 4: than the local muscles. We used to think that the

528
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 4: brain was kind of not really involved in these caps

529
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 4: on your strength because remember when you're when you're using

530
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:45,200
Speaker 4: a muscle, you don't want to use all your strength

531
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:47,840
Speaker 4: to lift your coffee cup. It may feel like that

532
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:51,440
Speaker 4: at six am, but it's not that at all. Right,

533
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:54,399
Speaker 4: you don't want to blow out your back for reasons

534
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 4: by ridiculously lifting your coffee cup. You're you're just going

535
00:27:57,280 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 4: to use what you need, right. But if you're trying

536
00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:01,440
Speaker 4: to lift a car to save a life or save

537
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:05,479
Speaker 4: your own life. This thing that happens with people who

538
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 4: are trying to escape war areas, and you hear stories

539
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 4: of soldiers or even mothers with children walking for days

540
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:15,200
Speaker 4: with no food or water, going up into the hills,

541
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:19,359
Speaker 4: surviving extreme temperatures. You know that normally we wouldn't really

542
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:22,600
Speaker 4: be able to do. And what's happening there is that

543
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 4: your body is willing to damage itself to save its life,

544
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 4: or willing to damage itself to save another's life. That's

545
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 4: what's really up. And that's actually a brain thing. That's

546
00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 4: a brain thing more than your heart rate thing. And

547
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 4: so what your brain is doing it is it is

548
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:42,400
Speaker 4: ignoring more of those pain signals. And that's the thing.

549
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:46,680
Speaker 4: So you literally experience less pain during this period of crisis, right,

550
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 4: because if you're not noticing the pain, that literally means

551
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,200
Speaker 4: you're experiencing less pain. What is pain, it's a thing

552
00:28:52,320 --> 00:28:53,320
Speaker 4: happening in your brain.

553
00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:53,960
Speaker 3: Right.

554
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 4: So, actually a lot of studies have been done that really,

555
00:28:57,240 --> 00:29:01,160
Speaker 4: during these moments of intense fight or flight, tense stress,

556
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:07,560
Speaker 4: your brain is down regulating its response to normal pain response.

557
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:09,960
Speaker 4: And there is an account of a dude who lifted

558
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 4: a corner of a car off an adolescent who later

559
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 4: found out that his teeth really hurt because while gripping

560
00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 4: his you know, clenching his jaw, he managed to crack

561
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 4: eight of his teeth. Wow, while he was lifting. Right,

562
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 4: So that talk about a no pain response, talk about

563
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 4: like I am using the limits of my body to

564
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 4: save this person's life. But what I think is really

565
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 4: smart about what you said there, Dan is is it's

566
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 4: not just you know, this account of what's the heart doing.

567
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 4: It's not just what the brain is doing. It's also

568
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 4: how we understand these experiences after the fact, whether we

569
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 4: go through them or someone else does, because these are

570
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 4: the stories we tell. These are the incredible, weird stories

571
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 4: that don't line up with our normal experiences of our

572
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:58,440
Speaker 4: bodies or other people's bodies, or human capability, you know

573
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:01,560
Speaker 4: what I mean, which is situated in our lives, which

574
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 4: is culturally situated, you know what I mean. Like, for example,

575
00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:09,239
Speaker 4: Dan and Kelly's Incredible Universe exists in a culture of

576
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 4: doubt where a lot of times, you know, it isn't

577
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 4: that the spirit world is literally imbuing you with extra strength,

578
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 4: and that's why, right, you know. And there are cultures

579
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:24,560
Speaker 4: now and cultures in the past that do have that model,

580
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 4: that don't find these moments so as extraordinary maybe as

581
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:31,720
Speaker 4: we do, because we don't have as much of an

582
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:36,480
Speaker 4: explanatory frame for something that feels hard to understand, understandably

583
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:40,160
Speaker 4: hard because it's rare, right, And some cultures do have

584
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:45,600
Speaker 4: that explanatory frame and then don't find such moments as novel.

585
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, I never thought of it that way.

586
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:49,800
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, So there's one culture for example, I'm not

587
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 4: remembering the name because I am not an anthropologist, but

588
00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 4: there is one culture that tends to give birth alone.

589
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 4: This is hunter gatherer community, very rare in the human species.

590
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:01,400
Speaker 4: We do not normally birth alone. But this they like

591
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 4: go out in the grass, they go out in the fields,

592
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 4: and they do that. Now, it's not that they're not prepared.

593
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 4: Let's make it clear. Their whole childhood has stories of

594
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 4: how to do it, and so they have their own

595
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:14,479
Speaker 4: knowledge and there are people who help in certain cases,

596
00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 4: you know what I mean anyway, but they have a

597
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 4: frame where to get through the pain of it. They

598
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 4: are calling down strength from the universe effectively, So their

599
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 4: experience of contractions is this deeply different thing where they

600
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:33,440
Speaker 4: are experiencing the pain as a calling down of strength,

601
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 4: which is good for them. No, I did not have that.

602
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 4: I just had your basic fear of death.

603
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:43,680
Speaker 2: I'd rather have the epidural really, but I had that too.

604
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:46,880
Speaker 4: I had that too, but it actually didn't work as well.

605
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:49,160
Speaker 4: But I still am grateful for the portion they did work.

606
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: So the way to think about this is that your

607
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: body has certain capabilities and certain limits which are just

608
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:57,440
Speaker 1: physical like there's no way I'm lifting a boulder, yep.

609
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: But there's also warning signs your body say to you

610
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: when you're starting to damage yourself, and those typically limit

611
00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 1: what you're actually going to do. But in moments of

612
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: great stress, essentially it ignores those and you're willing to

613
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 1: do stuff that damages yourself or cracks your teeth, depletes

614
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: crucial resources to survive the moment. But that's a subconscious thing, right,

615
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: It's not like that's right I'm saying, Daniel, I'm going

616
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 1: to turn off these pain regulators because I think it's

617
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 1: a good idea. It makes it sound like there's some

618
00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 1: sort of strategizing or some thought process there, But if

619
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:29,400
Speaker 1: it's subconscious, there must be some mechanism there. Do we

620
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: understand how that works at all?

621
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 4: Do we understand how pain works in the brain?

622
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 2: Oh?

623
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 4: Kind of.

624
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:37,600
Speaker 3: Kind?

625
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:42,360
Speaker 4: We've made great strides. I will say that it's you know,

626
00:32:42,400 --> 00:32:45,240
Speaker 4: it's been studied that there are a number of pro

627
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 4: athletes of various types who are known to have effectively

628
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 4: higher pain tolerances than the average population. So the most

629
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 4: famous pain tolerance thing is shoving your hand and a

630
00:32:56,760 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 4: thing of ice water, because we all, you can't think

631
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:02,840
Speaker 4: you're way out of it. It's your hand lowering temperature,

632
00:33:03,560 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 4: and it's one of the best ways to gauge what

633
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 4: is your basic pain tolerance?

634
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:07,240
Speaker 1: Here?

635
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:09,400
Speaker 4: What's your nose sceptor? They like, what do you do?

636
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 4: And many of these athletes do, indeed, have start to

637
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 4: feel a lot of pain later and respond to it

638
00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 4: and feel that urge to take it out later. So

639
00:33:20,680 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 4: part of what may enable some of those extreme athletic

640
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:28,960
Speaker 4: things isn't simply training, but also kind of being wired differently.

641
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 2: So how do you differentiate between I put my hand

642
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 2: in and for some person it starts to hurt immediately,

643
00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 2: and for some people it takes five minutes to hurt,

644
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:39,920
Speaker 2: and it hurts both of us at the same time.

645
00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 2: But I am just better at handling pain for longer. Like,

646
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:45,480
Speaker 2: are those two different things?

647
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 4: I think that that's a thing that we all want

648
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 4: to do with the idea of pain. We want it

649
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 4: to be about the virtue of endurance, you know. We

650
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 4: want it to be about like, you're more bad ass

651
00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:01,200
Speaker 4: because you just deal with it, right, But that actually

652
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:04,440
Speaker 4: doesn't allow for bodily difference. Actually, there are a lot

653
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 4: of bodies that are just sending a more muted or

654
00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 4: blunted or delayed pain signal, and that's not because they're badass.

655
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:14,239
Speaker 4: It's just that it's a different body. But then there

656
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:16,680
Speaker 4: is a kind of mindfulness training. There is a thing

657
00:34:16,760 --> 00:34:18,880
Speaker 4: that a lot of people with chronic pain have to do,

658
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 4: which is training your brain to ignore certain pain signals

659
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:26,839
Speaker 4: more so that your life becomes more tolerable, which can

660
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:29,960
Speaker 4: in fact make things slightly less painful. It doesn't truly

661
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 4: remove certain kinds of pain, but it can make it

662
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:37,080
Speaker 4: more bearable. Right, So there are different tiers of awareness

663
00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:40,160
Speaker 4: of pain. As far as the ice water though, I mean,

664
00:34:40,239 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 4: there is a moment that everyone, except for those rare

665
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:45,399
Speaker 4: people who have that genetic condition where they don't feel pain,

666
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:48,360
Speaker 4: need to take their damn hand out. They just can't.

667
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 4: They can't bear it anymore. It's very very rare to

668
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 4: be able to bear it through. This is not a

669
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 4: like badassery thing. It's one of those basic tests of pain.

670
00:34:57,719 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 1: Well, my son is an athlete, and I've learned just

671
00:35:00,160 --> 00:35:04,319
Speaker 1: watching him train and push how much of racing he's

672
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,279
Speaker 1: a runner, is mental? Yeah, do I think I can

673
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: go faster? And also how long am I willing to

674
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: sustain this feeling of pain? And one of the best

675
00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:15,800
Speaker 1: examples is he was telling me that after the first

676
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 1: person ran a four minute mile, then like a bunch

677
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: of other people did it, and it was just sort

678
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:22,880
Speaker 1: of this mental barrier. People thought, well, that's just impossible,

679
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: there's no way I could accomplish it. But then after

680
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 1: somebody do, they're like, oh, it turns out he can

681
00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:28,759
Speaker 1: do it. I can probably do it too. I'm just

682
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 1: going to go do it. Sure, It's incredible. How much

683
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: of athletic performance is just believing you can do it.

684
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 3: Did any of them get hurt after that?

685
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were all in pain, but there's no

686
00:35:38,640 --> 00:35:40,320
Speaker 1: amount of believing I can do it that's going to

687
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: make me run a four minute mile.

688
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:43,560
Speaker 3: Same.

689
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 4: No, that's right, and that's because while we're all sliding

690
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 4: towards death, we're not young anymore. There's just that true

691
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:55,640
Speaker 4: thing about aging. But also maybe you're slightly less susceptible

692
00:35:55,680 --> 00:36:01,080
Speaker 4: to peer pressure, which hopefully is also an ad Yeah.

693
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:04,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well, let's go ahead and see if

694
00:36:04,120 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 2: our listener has any follow up questions.

695
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:09,360
Speaker 8: Hi, Daniel and Kelly and Kat, thank you all for

696
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:12,960
Speaker 8: answering my question about humans gaining momentary superpowers or not.

697
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:15,839
Speaker 8: It makes way more sense that our brains just tune

698
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 8: out the pain, rather than us turning into a one

699
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:20,720
Speaker 8: percent version of a very angry green Marvel Comics man.

700
00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:23,520
Speaker 8: I did sort of have a tangential question sparked by

701
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:25,719
Speaker 8: what was said. I've heard that people that can give

702
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 8: birth have something that allows them or enables them, to

703
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 8: forget the pain of childbirth. I know conceptually that there

704
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:34,920
Speaker 8: is a lot of pain involved, because I will never

705
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:37,279
Speaker 8: give birth. Is it kind of similar to the man

706
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:40,280
Speaker 8: that cracked out of his teeth. Are both brains tuning

707
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:43,040
Speaker 8: out the pain or is there a different mechanism at

708
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:45,760
Speaker 8: play for people that can give birth versus people that can't.

709
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:46,760
Speaker 3: Ps.

710
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:49,719
Speaker 8: I've listened to the audiobook for Eve and absolutely loved it,

711
00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:51,239
Speaker 8: So thank you Kat for writing that.

712
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 5: Cheers.

713
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:54,439
Speaker 4: Hey, thanks for the follow up question, and so glad

714
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:58,840
Speaker 4: you like to Eve. Okay, so your question has two parts. First,

715
00:36:58,920 --> 00:37:01,320
Speaker 4: do people who give birth really forget the pain of

716
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:05,320
Speaker 4: childbirth and not just like on Instagram or completely lying

717
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 4: about it? And two, if they do, is the mechanism

718
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:11,360
Speaker 4: similar to that guy who didn't notice he was cracking

719
00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:14,239
Speaker 4: his teeth when he was lifting the corner of a

720
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 4: car or something because of adrenaline. Okay, so first, it's

721
00:37:18,719 --> 00:37:21,759
Speaker 4: totally not true that we all forget the pain of

722
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,920
Speaker 4: giving birth, though thankfully we do forget the pain of

723
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 4: being born, which doesn't actually sound very fun at all,

724
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 4: So I'm down with that. In fact, we forget much

725
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 4: of the first five years of our lives. It's called

726
00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 4: childhood amnesia. We basically all get it. It seems to

727
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 4: have to do a childhood brain development, and that's totally

728
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 4: why you should stop feeling guilty about that time you

729
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 4: yelled at your toddlers in public, because they're not going

730
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 4: to remember any of this. Most studies show that as

731
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 4: long as you're not actually abusing them, a lot of

732
00:37:49,239 --> 00:37:52,799
Speaker 4: that parenting crap comes out in the wash. Okay, so

733
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 4: forgetting pain. Pain is actually one of those things that

734
00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:59,880
Speaker 4: doesn't get perfectly encoded in memory. We remember the men

735
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:03,600
Speaker 4: side effects of pain, like starting to sweat, like having

736
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 4: a hard time moving or breathing fast or whatever, and

737
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 4: we can kind of describe pain, like when your doctor

738
00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:14,320
Speaker 4: says was it a stabby pain or a grinding, dull pain?

739
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 4: But your brain doesn't seem to usually encode totally specific

740
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 4: impressions of the pain itself in long term memory. It's

741
00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 4: like we save the gist of pain. It's not like

742
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 4: remembering the face of a loved one. That's a long

743
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 4: way of saying we forget a lot of pain all

744
00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:35,560
Speaker 4: the time. Do mothers forget the pain of trying to

745
00:38:35,560 --> 00:38:39,520
Speaker 4: squeeze a bony watermelon out of her vatch? She might

746
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:42,800
Speaker 4: say she does. She might have been experiencing such total

747
00:38:43,120 --> 00:38:45,920
Speaker 4: pain delirium, which is a thing kind of like the

748
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:49,120
Speaker 4: guy who cracked his teeth. She's trying to achieve a goal,

749
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:52,600
Speaker 4: and her focus on that goal overrides her focus on

750
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 4: the pain her body is experiencing to achieve that goal.

751
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 4: And attention is a big memory driver, right, So if

752
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 4: you're literally not paying attention to the pain in the moment,

753
00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:08,399
Speaker 4: you're less likely to remember it happening later. But women

754
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 4: who experience birth trauma, which is a shocking number of people,

755
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 4: are more likely to go on and develop secondary tokophobia,

756
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:19,960
Speaker 4: that's fear of giving birth for I don't know the

757
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:23,480
Speaker 4: obvious reasons. You tear yourself open to get another body

758
00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:25,799
Speaker 4: out of your body, and it's a little traumatic, more

759
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:29,399
Speaker 4: so for some people than others. So like they're remembering

760
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 4: those painful, terrifying features of that experience really really well too,

761
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:39,680
Speaker 4: well well enough that therapy becomes useful or even necessary

762
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:42,919
Speaker 4: to go on having a fulfilling life, much less try

763
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 4: to do such a thing again. Right. So I suspect

764
00:39:46,120 --> 00:39:49,720
Speaker 4: it's a mixed bag of Some people who usefully glide

765
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,839
Speaker 4: over the pain of that moment, usually impart because they

766
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 4: value the outcome. Hey look I made a baby, and

767
00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:58,960
Speaker 4: luckily they have brains that are able to basically downplay

768
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:02,280
Speaker 4: the sense memory of what it took to make said baby,

769
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:05,759
Speaker 4: which not all people have, and the ability to do

770
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 4: that is by no means a measure of how much

771
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 4: they value the resulting baby. It's just that brains are organs,

772
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 4: and just like everybody's heart is a bit different, ask

773
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:20,400
Speaker 4: any cardiologist, everybody's brain is also a little bit different.

774
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 2: All right, we are back with our third question. Let's

775
00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:44,720
Speaker 2: go ahead and listen.

776
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 7: If I understand it correctly, there is a hypothesis that

777
00:40:48,680 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 7: the mitochondria in our cells came from one cell enveloping another,

778
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:56,840
Speaker 7: which formed a symbiosis that was mutually beneficial to both.

779
00:40:57,360 --> 00:41:00,400
Speaker 7: This is mind blowing in and of itself. Or I

780
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:03,799
Speaker 7: believe that I have heard something similar about viruses. So

781
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:07,879
Speaker 7: my question is this, have there been any positive or

782
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:11,759
Speaker 7: symbiotic benefits resulting from viral infections?

783
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:16,320
Speaker 4: Uh? Depends how you feel about mammalian pregnancy.

784
00:41:16,239 --> 00:41:18,680
Speaker 3: Actually on a thing for this show, that's.

785
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 4: Right, because it does seem that so it's a really

786
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 4: weird thing that you can have an embryo implant in

787
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 4: your uterine wall. Actually we take that for granted, but

788
00:41:27,640 --> 00:41:32,840
Speaker 4: actually that's very similar to how cancer metastasies attaches to

789
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:37,399
Speaker 4: different tissue. Normally, local tissue strongly rejects and calls in

790
00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 4: the immune system when a cell that shouldn't be there

791
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:42,560
Speaker 4: is there a cell that it shouldn't be there might

792
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:45,600
Speaker 4: be doesn't contain all your genetic material, like an embryo,

793
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:48,600
Speaker 4: or it might be like what is this liver cell

794
00:41:48,719 --> 00:41:51,160
Speaker 4: doing in this intestine or vice versa. Right, you know,

795
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:54,080
Speaker 4: there's a local community kind of thing that says you

796
00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 4: belong here you don't. So actually, really weird that we're

797
00:41:57,160 --> 00:41:59,480
Speaker 4: even capable of it, And it does seem that it

798
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 4: may be because we got a cold, like ancient little

799
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:07,560
Speaker 4: rat like things got a cold and started attaching interiorly,

800
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,280
Speaker 4: And that's part of how that seems to work, where

801
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:14,239
Speaker 4: some genes are effectively switched off that permit implantation that

802
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,239
Speaker 4: seems to be strongly tied to what we think was

803
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 4: a viral infection. So cool cheers that we did that.

804
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:24,560
Speaker 4: I'd still prefer to lay eggs, but there you.

805
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 3: Go, there you go.

806
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:29,319
Speaker 1: So I think you're suggesting that viruses can infect you

807
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 1: and transfer their DNA yes into ourselves, and we essentially

808
00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 1: adopt that, and that's part of being human. That a

809
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:37,760
Speaker 1: significant fraction of our DNA actually is viral.

810
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:40,320
Speaker 4: I don't know what would count as a significant fraction,

811
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:42,560
Speaker 4: And I don't know that we really know how much

812
00:42:43,160 --> 00:42:47,840
Speaker 4: of our DNA was or wasn't sourced from a virus,

813
00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:50,440
Speaker 4: because we're talking really ancient time, which we're looking at

814
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:54,440
Speaker 4: basic cell mechanics, like be kind of hard to say

815
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:57,040
Speaker 4: what was or wasn't originally, you know what I mean,

816
00:42:57,400 --> 00:43:00,480
Speaker 4: especially since the listener was thinking about that really ancient

817
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 4: case of mitochondria getting in there. So I don't know

818
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:08,080
Speaker 4: that we know. I will say though, that certainly our

819
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 4: cells are being infected by viruses all the time. Whether

820
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:12,719
Speaker 4: or not they make it into that germline, whether they

821
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:16,080
Speaker 4: become a basic part of our body plan, you know,

822
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 4: in our eggs or in our sperm, is a bigger threshold. Usually,

823
00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:24,560
Speaker 4: like a huge number of your cells, dear listener, are

824
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:28,400
Speaker 4: presently infected with viruses, some of which may well be

825
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:30,879
Speaker 4: passed on in that local tissue, some of which will

826
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:34,719
Speaker 4: be totally annihilated by the immune system, right, Like, that's

827
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:37,600
Speaker 4: just a constant state of being. You're so infected all

828
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:41,840
Speaker 4: the time with bacteria and viruses and many other things,

829
00:43:42,040 --> 00:43:44,720
Speaker 4: depending where you live in the world, right, But whether

830
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:47,239
Speaker 4: or not your kids then are going to change some

831
00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:50,800
Speaker 4: feature of their body plan because of that, legacy is

832
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 4: a higher bar. Now there is interesting stuff because there's

833
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:57,400
Speaker 4: another thing, so that's like an inherited thing. So that

834
00:43:57,480 --> 00:43:59,920
Speaker 4: pregnancy thing is an inherited maybe we'll call it ben

835
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:04,480
Speaker 4: official legacy in mammals. Right, But there is an across

836
00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 4: the lifetime thing that happens when you're infected with viruses

837
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 4: that sometimes is beneficial. So this is a really interesting case.

838
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 4: So first of all, you are definitely infected with a

839
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 4: number of different herpes viruses, that's just for sure, for sure. True,

840
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:22,040
Speaker 4: there are so many of them, and you are definitely

841
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:25,439
Speaker 4: carrying So we all got the herp enjoy that, that's right, Yeah,

842
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:26,440
Speaker 4: we do.

843
00:44:27,440 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 1: It makes us feel closer to you.

844
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:32,640
Speaker 4: You know, we're so bonded. It depends where you got it.

845
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:35,960
Speaker 4: Certainly the one that causes cold soares like over ninety

846
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:38,120
Speaker 4: percent of the human population has it at this point,

847
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 4: so cheers. Yeah, And herpes viruses are tricky because a

848
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:44,000
Speaker 4: lot of I think all of them, but at least

849
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 4: a lot of them if I'm remembering it right. Again,

850
00:44:46,239 --> 00:44:49,279
Speaker 4: not virologists, but what I know. They infect your your

851
00:44:49,320 --> 00:44:53,160
Speaker 4: nerve tissue, and your immune system tries not to attack

852
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:56,240
Speaker 4: your nerve tissue for all the reasons. Your nerve cells

853
00:44:56,239 --> 00:44:58,080
Speaker 4: are a thing that your immune system is like, should

854
00:44:58,080 --> 00:45:01,280
Speaker 4: I attack this like your brain and or your spine

855
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:03,800
Speaker 4: and or you know, probably not unless you have a

856
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 4: big auto imune thing. So it's a good place for

857
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:07,600
Speaker 4: a virus to hang out and go dormant, which is

858
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:13,240
Speaker 4: what herpes viruses generally do. So there's this one CMV cytomegalovirus.

859
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 4: A lot of people, majority of the population have it, okay,

860
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:20,319
Speaker 4: and when you're old it seems to be associated with

861
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 4: a number of not great things, like people who are

862
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:25,480
Speaker 4: you know, serah positive, Like you can test for it

863
00:45:25,480 --> 00:45:27,799
Speaker 4: in the blood, you have antibodies to it, you know

864
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:29,560
Speaker 4: you're gonna have you're more likely to have certain kind

865
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:32,920
Speaker 4: of heart problems and other things. But interestingly, when you

866
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:36,279
Speaker 4: are young and healthy, like in your late teens and

867
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:40,719
Speaker 4: in your twenties, it improves your response to influenza.

868
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:41,920
Speaker 3: Huh.

869
00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:45,000
Speaker 4: So, if you're infected with CMV, this is a really

870
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:48,799
Speaker 4: amazing paper, you are gonna have a better response to

871
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 4: your flu vaccine. You're gonna have a better response to

872
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:56,280
Speaker 4: getting infected with the flu. More broadly, weirdly, CMV seems

873
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:58,760
Speaker 4: to do it, and it's not like all herpes viruses

874
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 4: do it, like the stein Bar virus. That's another virus

875
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 4: and it doesn't have that effect. So it really seems

876
00:46:05,040 --> 00:46:10,440
Speaker 4: to be and we have no idea why, specifically immunomodulating

877
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:15,719
Speaker 4: that body while you're young and healthy and interestingly, to

878
00:46:15,760 --> 00:46:18,799
Speaker 4: a lot of biologists, when you're probably making babies, because

879
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 4: when you're old, you're kind of probably done with the

880
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 4: baby making thing. And so if it sucks for you

881
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 4: in old age, well, oh well, you know, like evolutionarily speaking, right,

882
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 4: but it's boosting you. It's boosting you. It's making you

883
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 4: survive things like flu better when you're young and healthy.

884
00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:38,759
Speaker 4: Cidomegalovirus also sucks when you're a baby, Like it can

885
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:41,400
Speaker 4: make you really sick if you're a very young infant.

886
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:45,399
Speaker 4: So new infections at that age actually do very bad things.

887
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:48,200
Speaker 4: It can cause meningitis and blah blah blah. Basically, it's

888
00:46:48,239 --> 00:46:51,719
Speaker 4: just the sweet spot, Like specifically, it's it's okay to

889
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 4: have it when you're already mostly adult and or young adult,

890
00:46:56,560 --> 00:47:00,160
Speaker 4: Like right right there, sweet spot, but not so much before,

891
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:01,359
Speaker 4: not so much later.

892
00:47:01,640 --> 00:47:04,400
Speaker 3: Too bad, you can't just get rid of it. Yeah.

893
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we actually get a lot of questions from

894
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:09,360
Speaker 2: the listeners. I think we've had three or four different

895
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:12,279
Speaker 2: times where we've had this question, like why does our

896
00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:15,439
Speaker 2: immune system get worse when we get older? Like why

897
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:18,879
Speaker 2: is a virus that was maybe good initially bad later on?

898
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 2: Like we've seen so many new things as we get old,

899
00:47:22,120 --> 00:47:23,640
Speaker 2: Like we've seen a bunch of viruses, a bunch of

900
00:47:23,680 --> 00:47:27,280
Speaker 2: bacteria infections. Why doesn't that make our immune system stronger

901
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:27,920
Speaker 2: as we get.

902
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:30,919
Speaker 1: Older, wiser? Yeah, with a deeper library.

903
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,439
Speaker 4: So many things, so many different metaphors we could layer

904
00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:36,640
Speaker 4: on this thing. I think probably the short answer is

905
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 4: it's just harder to do everything as a body as

906
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 4: entropy kicks in, whether that's your immune system or other things. Right, So,

907
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 4: like we shouldn't give a special category to the immune

908
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:49,040
Speaker 4: system just because, right? What do I mean by that?

909
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:49,279
Speaker 1: Though?

910
00:47:49,600 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 7: So?

911
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:54,479
Speaker 4: Like we know, for example, that when you're younger, you're

912
00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:59,720
Speaker 4: better at suppressing a latent herpes infection from having an outbreak,

913
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:02,200
Speaker 4: you know, and when you get older you get less

914
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:05,000
Speaker 4: good at that. Shingles is a really good example of this,

915
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:08,080
Speaker 4: you are far more likely to develop shingles, which is

916
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:12,160
Speaker 4: again a latent infection that then runs rampant when you're

917
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 4: older than when you're younger. So that's that immune system

918
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 4: failing to tamp down on that virally infected cell going

919
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:24,880
Speaker 4: nuts and spreading that around, right, And I think I

920
00:48:24,960 --> 00:48:27,719
Speaker 4: think some of it is just cells get worse at

921
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 4: replicating them cells, you know, as they go further along

922
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:34,920
Speaker 4: in their many replicated lifespan. You know, when you look

923
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 4: in a mirror at one of those fun houses and

924
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 4: like there's a bunch of mirrors and it makes that

925
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 4: infinity mirror effect, so you have an infinite number of views.

926
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:44,799
Speaker 4: But like you start looking not great if you really

927
00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 4: look back at the like far distant, you know, like

928
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:52,600
Speaker 4: there's image loss of you, Like there's info loss, is

929
00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:55,160
Speaker 4: what it really is. And cells have info loss over

930
00:48:55,200 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 4: time too. Basically, they get less good at correcting for

931
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:02,560
Speaker 4: errors the more they've been replicating over a body's lifespan.

932
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:05,160
Speaker 4: And as far as we know, the immune system does

933
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:08,120
Speaker 4: that too. But to speak to Dan's instinct here, as

934
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:11,800
Speaker 4: he already mentioned, it's probably pretty complex. That's actually a

935
00:49:11,840 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 4: pretty simplistic explanation for why aging sucks for all cells

936
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:18,640
Speaker 4: throughout the body. And actually it's probably a lot of

937
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:19,280
Speaker 4: different things.

938
00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: That's super fascinating. I've always been curious about this story

939
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,839
Speaker 1: of mitochondria coming from the outside and then getting sort

940
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:27,640
Speaker 1: of incorporated. You're telling me that's a real story.

941
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 4: Well, it's as real as science is able to make

942
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:33,399
Speaker 4: it real without a time machine. But yeah, like, there

943
00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:36,840
Speaker 4: is this idea that once upon a time there were cells. Like,

944
00:49:36,840 --> 00:49:39,200
Speaker 4: the cells have a lot of different organelles in them.

945
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:43,239
Speaker 4: Cells are full of stuff. You've probably seen a diagram, right, yeah, okay, Well,

946
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:48,319
Speaker 4: mitochondria are the energy powerhouses of your cell basically, and

947
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:51,399
Speaker 4: they're their own little independent organelle. Interestingly, they have their

948
00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:55,480
Speaker 4: own DNA m DNA, your mitochondrial DNA, which is separate

949
00:49:55,520 --> 00:49:58,640
Speaker 4: from the DNA in the nucleus. So that's your first

950
00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:01,239
Speaker 4: clue that something's up. Not all the organelles in your

951
00:50:01,280 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 4: cell have their own DNA, you know, it'suff like, hmm,

952
00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:06,759
Speaker 4: what's up there? Why do you got your own?

953
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:07,719
Speaker 3: Right?

954
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:11,160
Speaker 4: So that's part of it. But also it seems generally

955
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:14,520
Speaker 4: that once upon a time, either a cell tried to

956
00:50:14,600 --> 00:50:19,320
Speaker 4: eat another, you know, being in the soup of ancient

957
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:24,839
Speaker 4: world and or actually the mitochondria tried to infect you know,

958
00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:28,680
Speaker 4: protobacteria like we're not really sure a cell and then

959
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:32,000
Speaker 4: failed to die and or eat the cell it was

960
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:33,600
Speaker 4: trying to eat. We don't know which direction. We don't

961
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:36,600
Speaker 4: know who was eating who. Here as the point, but somehow,

962
00:50:37,040 --> 00:50:40,840
Speaker 4: one one dude, one cellular dude ended up inside of

963
00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:44,120
Speaker 4: the envelope, the cellular envelope the membrane of another one,

964
00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:49,279
Speaker 4: and somehow didn't die and zombie like. That became a

965
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 4: mutual relationship, right, and over time it became a basic

966
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:59,240
Speaker 4: part of how basically all cells go about their cellular lives.

967
00:50:59,760 --> 00:50:59,840
Speaker 6: Right.

968
00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:05,120
Speaker 4: That so effectively your mitochondria and your cells are replicating

969
00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:09,680
Speaker 4: in an interesting way when each cell goes through the

970
00:51:09,719 --> 00:51:15,160
Speaker 4: process of replicating itself, right, hence the separate lineages of DNA.

971
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 7: Wow.

972
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,920
Speaker 4: Now, one of the really cool things about this is

973
00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:22,439
Speaker 4: that also means that this is yet another reason why

974
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:28,279
Speaker 4: sperm don't do a lot so well sorry, sorry, uh.

975
00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:32,000
Speaker 4: You know that nearly all of your mitochondrial DNA is

976
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:34,480
Speaker 4: coming from your mom. That's coming from the egg, right,

977
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:37,399
Speaker 4: And that's why eggs are so huge and sperms are

978
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 4: like a tiny little like you know, Twitter feed, a

979
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:44,759
Speaker 4: tiny little note of information with a tail. You know

980
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 4: that just somehow has to get there. Because when a

981
00:51:47,680 --> 00:51:51,880
Speaker 4: sperm you know, decapitates itself, basically drops off its tail

982
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:55,240
Speaker 4: and goes inside the egg, you know, it is then eaten.

983
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:59,120
Speaker 4: It's eaten by the egg basically and then you know,

984
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 4: hence baby, the miracle of life. But usually the egg

985
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:07,359
Speaker 4: just completely destroys all the mitochondria from that sperm. It's

986
00:52:07,400 --> 00:52:10,879
Speaker 4: like nope, nope, nope, no nom nom you out right.

987
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:16,640
Speaker 4: But we now know because unfortunately, some people have issues

988
00:52:16,680 --> 00:52:19,759
Speaker 4: with their mitochondria that gives them certain kinds of infertility

989
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:24,120
Speaker 4: or developmental problems. There are disorders that can come with mitochondria.

990
00:52:24,160 --> 00:52:29,720
Speaker 4: Basically that every now and again, sperm mitochondrial information actually

991
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:33,760
Speaker 4: do manage to escape the death spree that is going

992
00:52:33,800 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 4: inside of an egg. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Because this is

993
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 4: an IVF thing, right, The idea is like, well, can

994
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:44,000
Speaker 4: you simply get rid of the mitochondria from the sperm

995
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:45,560
Speaker 4: or what have you, or from the egg and then

996
00:52:45,640 --> 00:52:48,480
Speaker 4: just replace it and we solve all of our mitochondrial

997
00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:53,160
Speaker 4: disorders thereby. Wouldn't that be awesome? It would be if

998
00:52:53,160 --> 00:52:55,719
Speaker 4: only it were a perfect system that it's never the

999
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:58,640
Speaker 4: case that the sperm mitochondria actually make their way in.

1000
00:52:58,920 --> 00:53:01,000
Speaker 4: So again, biology.

1001
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:01,960
Speaker 3: Sloppy, super sloppy.

1002
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 1: It's a delicious mess.

1003
00:53:03,320 --> 00:53:04,480
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's delicious.

1004
00:53:04,520 --> 00:53:11,480
Speaker 4: What I always find kind of chalky. Hmm, go ahead.

1005
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:15,040
Speaker 2: So when when the sperm mitochondria stick around, what is

1006
00:53:15,080 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 2: the problem. Is it just that they're interfering with each

1007
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:20,560
Speaker 2: other or the sperm mitochondria is like deficient in some way,

1008
00:53:20,640 --> 00:53:22,640
Speaker 2: like would do we know what causes the problem there?

1009
00:53:22,800 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 4: I don't think it's the case that sperm mitochondria are

1010
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:29,320
Speaker 4: just so janky that let's just not although I'm amused

1011
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:33,719
Speaker 4: by that idea that somehow they're just like the worst option. No,

1012
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:36,480
Speaker 4: I think I think it's actually that they've set up

1013
00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:39,360
Speaker 4: their mitochondrial system in that egg. The they that is

1014
00:53:39,400 --> 00:53:41,760
Speaker 4: the collective which is an egg, and it's many organelles,

1015
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:44,040
Speaker 4: you know, and they just don't want to like throw

1016
00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:46,319
Speaker 4: some new shit in the mix, as it were. So

1017
00:53:46,360 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 4: that's the general theory that basically it's controlling for error

1018
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 4: to not have that be And this is part of

1019
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:56,759
Speaker 4: how you you trace the so called mitochondrial eve. You're

1020
00:53:56,760 --> 00:54:02,919
Speaker 4: actually tracing the mitochondrial inheritance over many generations to say

1021
00:54:02,960 --> 00:54:05,960
Speaker 4: who is the last being from? Whence most of our

1022
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:07,040
Speaker 4: mitochondria come from?

1023
00:54:07,080 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 1: Incredible?

1024
00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:10,160
Speaker 3: All right, well let's see if we answered Petre's question.

1025
00:54:10,520 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 7: Thank you Kelly and Daniel for choosing to answer my

1026
00:54:13,080 --> 00:54:15,400
Speaker 7: question on the show, and thank you especially to doctor

1027
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 7: bo Henson for your wonderful answer. I realized that this

1028
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 7: is an incredibly difficult question that goes way back into

1029
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:27,200
Speaker 7: deep time, and ideas of what is beneficial versus not

1030
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:30,920
Speaker 7: beneficial certainly get muddled quite quickly. But your answer was

1031
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:34,400
Speaker 7: fascinating and enlightening. I also appreciate that you took the

1032
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:39,840
Speaker 7: time to address the other question of mitochondria DNA. That

1033
00:54:39,960 --> 00:54:44,000
Speaker 7: is something that's intriguing for me and I'm sure for

1034
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:46,880
Speaker 7: many of the other listeners. So once again, that's a

1035
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:48,239
Speaker 7: great answer. Thank you so much.

1036
00:54:55,239 --> 00:54:58,800
Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio.

1037
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:00,440
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1038
00:55:00,640 --> 00:55:03,560
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1039
00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:06,400
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1040
00:55:06,520 --> 00:55:09,480
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1041
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:10,440
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1042
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1043
00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:16,719
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1044
00:55:16,760 --> 00:55:19,880
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1045
00:55:19,040 --> 00:55:21,120
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1046
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1047
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1048
00:55:26,040 --> 00:55:29,000
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1049
00:55:29,200 --> 00:55:30,759
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