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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, I'm Christian Sager, and I'm

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Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And we're back again with the ig Nobel Awards.

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Speaker 1: We covered him last year and we're we're back with more. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's always always a fun chance to roll through some unique,

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Speaker 1: at times humorous, at times more important than you might

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Speaker 1: think scientific studies. From me, they seem to die pretty

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Speaker 1: much at any point during the last several decades. They

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Speaker 1: really do. Yeah. So if you haven't listened to our

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Speaker 1: previous episode, we'll just give you a brief update on

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Speaker 1: what the ig Nobels are. They happened last week on

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Speaker 1: September two. Uh. They take place at Harvard's Uh this

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Speaker 1: is Harvard University Sanders Theater, which is the largest theater

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Speaker 1: on their can this I don't know why that was

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Speaker 1: added to the press release. Uh. And they pack it

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Speaker 1: to the brim with scientists and students and science aficionados

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Speaker 1: and basically they go to research that it just that

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Speaker 1: is described as quote improbable research. Uh. They are awarded

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Speaker 1: by a magazine called the Annals of Improbable Research, which

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Speaker 1: is great. They have a wonderful web presence. Yeah, really

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Speaker 1: cool magazine if you enjoy humorous takes, but but respectful

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Speaker 1: text on science. And that's really one of the key

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Speaker 1: things to remind everyone about the Ignoble Prizes. It's not

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Speaker 1: about belittling science. It's I mean, it's conducted in large

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Speaker 1: part by scientists. So um, yeah, there's a there's an

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Speaker 1: appreciation for the work that's going on. But it's kind

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Speaker 1: of the realization that science as it is expands, is

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Speaker 1: this slime mold of science expands through the maze of

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Speaker 1: of of acquirable knowledge. It's going to acquire some unique

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Speaker 1: bits that might make you google a little bit. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And of course their motto is it's about science that

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Speaker 1: makes you laugh and then makes you think. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: the Improbable Research Group, as Robert just mentioned, they've got

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Speaker 1: a magazine, they've got a website, they put out books,

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Speaker 1: they have lots of videos. You can watch the whole

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Speaker 1: proceedings on YouTube on their channel, which I did this

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Speaker 1: morning and you loved every second of it. We will

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Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit later. Uh. And they

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Speaker 1: even have a podcast now which I was unaware of. Um,

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Speaker 1: the theme of this year's contest was time, and I

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Speaker 1: will make I will make that theme obvious. Unfortunately, as

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Speaker 1: I describe what I saw, Is there anything else you

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Speaker 1: guys want to add before I tell you what I

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Speaker 1: watched on the proceedings? No, go ahead and complain. So

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Speaker 1: those of you who heard last year's episode, No, what'sn't

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Speaker 1: a huge fan of the the ig Nobels sense of humor.

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Speaker 1: I like the ig Nobels on paper, like when we're

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Speaker 1: going through and we're looking at the recipients. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: do have so much the ceremony. It's the ceremony itself

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Speaker 1: drives me nuts. Yeah, it's just it's a it's it's

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Speaker 1: not my cup of tea. They tend to go for

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Speaker 1: really silly, silly humor. Yeah, it's it's very, in my opinion, unfunny. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of puns. It's very uh what I

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Speaker 1: would call NPR humor. Like it's kind of wait, wait,

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Speaker 1: don't tell me. Yeah, it reminded me of wait, wait,

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Speaker 1: don't tell me the whole time. It's Uh. At one point,

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Speaker 1: they do three three separate joke operas about clocks, time

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Speaker 1: and time ticking and and tick talking of clocks. Uh,

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Speaker 1: They also played because time clocks ticking, they played tic

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Speaker 1: tac toe between a brain surgeon and a NASA scientist. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so it's a draw. I don't you know. I was

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Speaker 1: watching it honestly on double speed. I didn't catch who

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Speaker 1: want um and uh the But the the interesting part

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Speaker 1: was they brought the Boston Roller to be team out

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Speaker 1: and they skated onto stage and they finished the tic

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Speaker 1: tac toe game, which was kind of cool. They also

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Speaker 1: have this ritual which they did last year too, where

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Speaker 1: they all through everybody in the audience throws paper airplanes

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Speaker 1: at one guy on the stage, Like he just wears

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Speaker 1: like a big bulls eye and goggles and everybody just

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Speaker 1: hurls paper airplanes at him. So that's the kind of

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Speaker 1: thing the proceedings are. It's kind of like a scientific

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Speaker 1: academic release valve. Yeah. Yeah, it really does seem like that. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's not my cup of tea. Look, there

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Speaker 1: were hundreds of people in the audience. They were loving

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Speaker 1: every minute of it, So I I may be the

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Speaker 1: odd man out here. If you're interested yourself, obviously go

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Speaker 1: watch it. Um. But I will say the papers that

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about today that won these awards pretty fascinating.

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Speaker 1: There's some good stuff. I mean, they have their ritual.

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Speaker 1: Our ritual is to the three of us to come

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Speaker 1: together and divvy up the prize winning papers and each

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Speaker 1: of us, you know, roll it out and we'll discuss

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Speaker 1: them a little bit. So it's gonna be a two

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Speaker 1: part of this week, that last day year, uh, where

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Speaker 1: we're gonna cover all the award winners. So speaking of

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Speaker 1: why don't we get into the first one, which good

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Speaker 1: old Robert Lamb is going to cover or something about

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Speaker 1: rats wearing pants. Oh yes, and and beyond. So this

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Speaker 1: one's rat pants beyond this the reproduction process, the reproduction

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Speaker 1: prize categories. Yeah, and it covers it was also kind

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Speaker 1: of like it was a way to honor a a

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Speaker 1: now deceased researcher, Cairo University professor Dr Ahmed A. Shafik.

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Speaker 1: He was a noted Egyptian sexologist and researcher. And this

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Speaker 1: is one you know a number Like I said that

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Speaker 1: they dive back into the into the history books a

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Speaker 1: little bit on some of these studies. So it's not

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Speaker 1: all gonna be like fresh and new. It's gonna be

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Speaker 1: sometimes stuff that has been covered to varying degrees. UM

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Speaker 1: shoppicks work in particular was I was familiar with it

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Speaker 1: from Mary Roach's book Bonk covered sex research and uh,

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Speaker 1: former guest of the show she's been on a few times. Um.

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Speaker 1: This particular study was from ninety three and it had

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Speaker 1: to do with polyester pants wearing rodents. Well, man, you

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Speaker 1: know you're gonna make rats wear pants, you make them

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Speaker 1: wear polyester pants. Well, that's you're gonna see. That's keyta

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Speaker 1: to everything in shopickstarch. Have you guys ever worn poly

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Speaker 1: just pure polyester pants before. I don't think it's extremely

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Speaker 1: I gotta be honest, I don't know what my clothes

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Speaker 1: are made of. It could be it could be like

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Speaker 1: endangered kangaroo forever. I have no idea. Your wife wouldn't

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Speaker 1: let you buy endangered kangaroo shirts. I mean, if I

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Speaker 1: knew that's what it was, I wouldn't buy it. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's possible. It's possible that the reason you're not wearing

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Speaker 1: polyester and most of us not wearing polyester, is that

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Speaker 1: there's nature has selected for non polyester wearing individuals. Um.

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Speaker 1: I think that tongue in cheek, but but this was

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Speaker 1: actually the serious matter of Shopkicks research. He looked into

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Speaker 1: the possible effects of polyester on sexual activity, particularly as

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Speaker 1: it relates to to the male genitalia of rats and

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Speaker 1: human The most probably most known for the rats specific experiments,

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Speaker 1: because any experiment that that had clothes animals, and there

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Speaker 1: have been several that have done this, um, you know,

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Speaker 1: are instantly going to catch our attention. So this is

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Speaker 1: what he did. He dressed seventy five test rats in

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Speaker 1: pants which they wore for an entire year. One group

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Speaker 1: for wait wait, wait wait, did they wear them for

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Speaker 1: an entire year? Did they take them off to go

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Speaker 1: to the bathroom or at night when they slept like uncertain,

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Speaker 1: but but they wore them. One group wore on polyester pants,

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Speaker 1: another fifty fifty blend, and another on cotton, and another

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Speaker 1: on wool. And there was a fifth control group that

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Speaker 1: went to Commando. I guess you'd say. So. The result

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Speaker 1: is thus, uh Shopping discovered that rats dressed in polyester

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Speaker 1: engaged in sex significantly less often than the rats and

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Speaker 1: cotton or wool. His theory was that polyester generated electro

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Speaker 1: static potentials that induced electrostatic fields in the inner workings

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Speaker 1: of the rat penis, resulting in diminished sexual activity. So

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Speaker 1: his theory was that polyester containing pants just generated this,

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Speaker 1: you know, kind of created this force field against sexuality, right,

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Speaker 1: while other texts, text of tiles did not. And these potentials,

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Speaker 1: he argued, better than a chastity belt. Well that's that's

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Speaker 1: where he goes with the Next time, he said, all right,

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Speaker 1: if this is going on with rats, I mean, the

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Speaker 1: main concern here are the primary wears of polyester pants,

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Speaker 1: which would be humans. So he went on to conduct

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Speaker 1: similar tests with human males. Uh. And the specific language

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Speaker 1: of the study, uh is wonderful. Contrast the contraceptive effect

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Speaker 1: of a polyester sling applied to the scrotum, which was

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Speaker 1: worn for twelve months, was also worn worn for a

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Speaker 1: year by by humans. How did he recruit for this? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I was gonna say, can you imagine being the poor

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Speaker 1: volunteer for this and you've got to wear polyester? What's

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Speaker 1: the compensations like? Well, uh, I'm not sure exactly how

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Speaker 1: they were compensated other than just you know, the zeal

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Speaker 1: of getting to contribute to science, the prestige. But but

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Speaker 1: clearly this is going somewhere. Did so did these They

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Speaker 1: were all male volunteers, I'm assuming, and did they want

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Speaker 1: to have sex? Well? I assume, well did they? And

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Speaker 1: they engaged in sex? And see the idea here is that, uh,

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Speaker 1: this was not so much as looking at how you

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Speaker 1: could keep males from male humans from having sex, but

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Speaker 1: rather what this could be a potential contraceptive. So in

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Speaker 1: in twenty in two thousand five he published Effect of

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Speaker 1: electromagnetic field exposure on spermato genesis and sexual activity. So

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Speaker 1: this was this was something of his his his life's work,

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Speaker 1: I guess you could say, and uh, and and any

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Speaker 1: attempted he attempted to spin his findings off out into

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Speaker 1: new methods of contraception, such as testicular suspension. So this

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Speaker 1: is the whole polyester sling experiment with the with the

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Speaker 1: humans lead also playing on his work with the rats,

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Speaker 1: and in the findings he presented, he showed that there

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Speaker 1: was a decreased decreased sperm count, there was degeneration in

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Speaker 1: the semi infarious tubules, and even hormone levels decreased in

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Speaker 1: in individuals who wore the sling. Did they say if

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Speaker 1: they were boxer like underwear between the sling or was

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Speaker 1: the sling the sling as polyester and then they're wearing

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Speaker 1: that under polyester pants as well. This is just the sling,

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Speaker 1: so you can wear whatever pants you top of. It

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Speaker 1: is the concept here. But but here's the thing. Everything

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Speaker 1: returned to normal six months later for the test subjects.

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Speaker 1: So he presented this as a a safe, reversible, acceptable method.

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Speaker 1: So instead of, you know, instead of engaging in other

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Speaker 1: contraceptive methods, you could just have the mail in the

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Speaker 1: scenario slings polyester sling you don't want them to, but

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Speaker 1: just just sexually is of adults. Yeah, it's it's amusing. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So on one level, why is this funny? Because obviously

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Speaker 1: mice wearing pants are funny, but your pants eating funnier? Yeah? Um?

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Speaker 1: And then uh but but then when you start looking

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Speaker 1: at it has worked with with human males, Um, you

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Speaker 1: don't see much. There's not nothing really in the way

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Speaker 1: of follow up that I could find. So I don't

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Speaker 1: think anyone else's has really taken the torch and run with.

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Speaker 1: Further research is required, but but it presents this this

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Speaker 1: tantalizing possibility because why not, like why like, look at

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Speaker 1: all the contraceptive pressure that's put on females in society. Yeah, sure,

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Speaker 1: Is it that much to ask that a male swing

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Speaker 1: has scrowed him in a polyester sack a little bit? Yeah? Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, but I guess my experiences with polyester pants,

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Speaker 1: it's uncomfortable. I mean, I which I imagine un be

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Speaker 1: a little uncomfortable. Well, that's what I mean, is that

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Speaker 1: that it contributes to this result that we're examining here. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: not that. I don't think I've ever worn polyester pants

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Speaker 1: without underwear. I don't remember it, but I've definitely worn

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Speaker 1: polyester pants and shirts before. They're Yeah, they're itchy, uncomfortable,

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Speaker 1: they get really hot really quickly. I don't think they

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Speaker 1: allow a lot of air flow. Yeah, it's but it's

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Speaker 1: one of these areas where you have a scientist who

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Speaker 1: is he's falling. He's falling, he's pulling on his thread

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Speaker 1: following the research, and it's taking him to a possibility

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Speaker 1: that that seems, based on his findings, it seems, you know,

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Speaker 1: ripe for use in human society. But at the same time,

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Speaker 1: like human society clearly is not ready for this scrotal

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Speaker 1: polyester sling. Yeah. I can't imagine like a planned parenthood

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Speaker 1: campaign about polyester slings. Well, I would think a big

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Speaker 1: aspect of it would be how effective is it? Exactly

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Speaker 1: at what rate does this prevent pregnancy compared to other

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Speaker 1: birth control methods. Well, his his findings presented a rather

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Speaker 1: a they're encouraging picture of of scrotal sling based contraception.

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Speaker 1: Like he had you know, sexually active individuals who while

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Speaker 1: they were wearing the sling and for months on the

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Speaker 1: end it was you know, resulting in no pregnancies, and

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Speaker 1: then afterwards, especially after that six month readjustment period, then

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Speaker 1: they're then they're they're they're they're actually getting pregnant with

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Speaker 1: their you know, their respective spouses. So, like I say,

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Speaker 1: it's just it's just his research that we seem to

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Speaker 1: have to go on this. Nobody else's has picked it up,

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Speaker 1: but we don't have things to compare it to. But

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's very interesting. Well, I say, sexologists

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Speaker 1: out there get to work trying to replicate this right now. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because I want to know a few things here. I

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Speaker 1: want to know if different materials have different results, uh,

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Speaker 1: like wolf slings or like a silk sling, Like would

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Speaker 1: some particular textiles be would they increase the likelihood of pregnancy.

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Speaker 1: What about it? What about a chain mail sling? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that would be rough, I mean potential, that's key to it.

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Speaker 1: So there you go chain mail, although wool would also

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Speaker 1: probably generate a lot of static electricity. Well, hey, everybody

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Speaker 1: out there, let us know, get in on it. Um,

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Speaker 1: maybe you can conduct your own experiments at home and

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Speaker 1: let us know a year from now. Yeah, a number

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Speaker 1: of his papers are readily available online. And like I said,

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Speaker 1: he's been covered in the past by Mary Roach and others.

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Speaker 1: So I would love to hear from anyone who for

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Speaker 1: whom this is uh, you know, their area of research. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: definitely with that, why don't we take a quick break

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Speaker 1: and when we get back, Joe is going to tell

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Speaker 1: us all about Rocks. Okay, so we're back, Joe. What's

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Speaker 1: your ignoble prize to talk about right now? Well, so,

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Speaker 1: the Economics Prize for this year went to Mark Avis,

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Speaker 1: Sarah Forbes, and shell Out Ferguson for us sessing the

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Speaker 1: perceived personalities of Rocks from a sales and marketing perspective,

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Speaker 1: and the study that they referred to the that they

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Speaker 1: won for was called the Brand Personality of Rocks, a

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Speaker 1: critical evaluation of a brand personality scale. So this kind

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Speaker 1: of applies to our line of work. Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: this one is actually more interesting than it that it

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Speaker 1: might seem at first. But a lot of our older

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Speaker 1: listeners are going to think of pet rocks that no,

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Speaker 1: it does not concerned pet rocks at all, though pet

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Speaker 1: Rocks will come in kind of so uh So in marketing,

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Speaker 1: we gotta back up. There's this concept in marketing known

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Speaker 1: as brand personality, and it's defined in the academic literature

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Speaker 1: as quote, the set of human characteristics associated with a brand.

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Speaker 1: So what it means is you've got a brand like

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Speaker 1: holiday In or Jack Daniels or yeah sure, a O

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Speaker 1: L butterball turkey. All of these can be perceived as

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Speaker 1: having unique human character traits that would normally apply to

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Speaker 1: a human being. So you might think of a brand

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Speaker 1: and say that brand is outdoorsy or sincere, or trendy

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Speaker 1: or hard working, down to earth, family oriented, masculine, feminine

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Speaker 1: upper class. You know, this is these weird things bringing

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Speaker 1: like back so many like bad flashbacks of meetings about

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Speaker 1: brand construction over the last couple of years that I've

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Speaker 1: had not here, but just various various workplaces yeah, but

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Speaker 1: but this is basically all the stuff that anyone putting

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Speaker 1: together a logo, ad campaign or just a brand identity

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Speaker 1: you wanna personify a company. Yeah, exactly. It's assumed that

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Speaker 1: this actually matters in marketing because people in the field

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Speaker 1: believe that consumers make choices based on their feelings about

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Speaker 1: a brand personality. A lot of times you're gonna buy

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Speaker 1: a brand of vodka or something, and you know you've

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Speaker 1: got Absolute or you've got Stolely, and maybe you you

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Speaker 1: can't even tell the difference in how they taste, but

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Speaker 1: you know that one of them seems like a fun, young,

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Speaker 1: hip person and the other and seems like an older, intellectual,

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Speaker 1: conservative person, and that might actually be the thing that

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Speaker 1: makes the difference in your purchase decision, not being a drinker.

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Speaker 1: I don't really know. I just assume I guess from

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Speaker 1: the ads I've seen that Absolute is the one that's

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Speaker 1: the hip one, and Slowly is like an older Russian lady. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is an older Russian lady, I guess. So this

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Speaker 1: is actually an example from one of the papers I'm

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Speaker 1: going to refer to. So this new research, the paper

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Speaker 1: that actually won the Ignoble this year, is mainly formulated

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Speaker 1: to analyze and critique another very influential paper in the field.

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Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, I need to do a little background

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Speaker 1: and unpacking in order for this to make sense, but

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Speaker 1: I think it'll be worth it. Okay, let's do it.

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Speaker 1: So marketing experts have been talking about this idea of

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Speaker 1: brand personality for at least sixty years or so, goes

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Speaker 1: back to nineteen fifties. But the academic measurement of brand

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Speaker 1: personality really changed in nineteen nine seven with a now

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Speaker 1: highly cited, highly influential paper published in the Journal of

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Speaker 1: Marketing Research called Dimensions of Brand Personality. And this paper

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Speaker 1: was authored by a business professor named Dr Jennifer Aker

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Speaker 1: who's now at Stanford Business and the point of Dr

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Speaker 1: Aker's paper was to quote establish a theoretical framework of

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Speaker 1: brand personality dimensions and a reliable, valid and generalizable scale

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Speaker 1: that measures these dimensions. So essentially, she's trying to create

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Speaker 1: a standard measure instead of just randomly coming up with

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Speaker 1: a bunch of descriptive dimensions of personality on an ad

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Speaker 1: hoc basis, marketing researchers could measure the personalities of brands

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Speaker 1: against each other using consistent categories of description. So let

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Speaker 1: me see if I've got this like it sounds like

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Speaker 1: they were trying to move from a quantum uh sorry,

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Speaker 1: qualifiable model to something that could be quantifiable that they

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Speaker 1: could actually analyze and look at for success. Well, it

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Speaker 1: would it would be quantifiable, and I guess it would

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Speaker 1: be qualitative to because it would involve qualitative judgments. But

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Speaker 1: what Acre did is she took a series of consumer

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Speaker 1: questionnaires and these categorization techniques to come up with standard

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Speaker 1: dimensions of brand personality. And you have this questionnaire language

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Speaker 1: that says, we would like you to think of each

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Speaker 1: brand as if it were a person. This may sound unusual,

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Speaker 1: but think of the set of human characteristics associated with

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Speaker 1: each brand. We're interested in finding out personality traits or

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Speaker 1: human characteristics that come to mind when you think of

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Speaker 1: a particular brand. So from this process she does a

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Speaker 1: lot of research and Acre comes up with five big

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Speaker 1: dimensions of brand personality that are sort of congress to

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Speaker 1: know to what's known as the Big five human traits

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Speaker 1: in psychology. You guys have heard of these before. You know,

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Speaker 1: you can think of a human as having various scores

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Speaker 1: on the categories of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

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Speaker 1: So the big five brand traits that she comes up

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Speaker 1: with our sincerity, which the typified example here is Hallmark cards, excitement,

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Speaker 1: the example given is MTV. You can already tell this

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Speaker 1: was a nine competence. The example they give is the

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Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal sophistication, which they give guest genes yes

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Speaker 1: and a different time, and ruggedness, where they give the

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Speaker 1: example of Nike tennis shoes. And then she concludes pretty

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Speaker 1: much all the major elements of personality that people are

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Speaker 1: going to apply to brands can be grouped under these

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Speaker 1: headings and then measured with standardized scores. And then thus

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Speaker 1: we get this big model that's used in marketing research,

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Speaker 1: the brand Personality five factor model or the bpf FM.

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Speaker 1: So okay, fast forward back to the present, and this

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Speaker 1: is where our studying question comes in. Acre's Brand Personality

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Speaker 1: scale is widely used in marketing and consumer behavior research.

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Speaker 1: It's all over the place, people use it all the time,

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Speaker 1: but it has met a lot of critiques, and this

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Speaker 1: year Ignoble winning paper provides one of those critiques. So

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Speaker 1: what it is is that the authors are asking what

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Speaker 1: I think is a smart methodological question. So you give

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Speaker 1: somebody a survey and you say, think of a butterball

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Speaker 1: turkey as if it were a person, how would you

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Speaker 1: describe that person? People are going to be able to

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Speaker 1: come up with some descriptions, But how do you know

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Speaker 1: those descriptions that they have come up with are really

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Speaker 1: feelings that they already had about the butterball turkey brand.

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Speaker 1: What if the fact that you're putting people in a

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Speaker 1: scenario where they have to describe the personality of butter

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Speaker 1: ball creates this perception of personality. Yeah, you're essentially generating

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Speaker 1: this perception through the experiment itself, rather than testing how

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Speaker 1: people already feels. Going to scare your results? Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: this this depends on some some factors that they point

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Speaker 1: out in their papers, such as acquiescence bias, the tendency

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Speaker 1: of test subjects to sort of just go along with

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Speaker 1: whatever is being suggested by the experiment er, and then

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Speaker 1: also the problem of forced choice. So you've got these

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Speaker 1: liquor scales that people use in studies all the time.

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Speaker 1: Rate on a scale of one to five. Uh, how

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Speaker 1: descriptive this word is of butterball turkey? So or let's

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Speaker 1: campbell soup? Is Campbell soup confident on a scale of

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Speaker 1: one to five. There's no option to say this question

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Speaker 1: is meaningless to me. The question and answer structure forces

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Speaker 1: you to rate how confident or not you think Campbell

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Speaker 1: soup is, and if you don't have an opinion, you

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Speaker 1: might default to one, but then that reads as it's

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Speaker 1: not confident, or you might say, well, go to the

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Speaker 1: middle of the scale. I guess I give to three.

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Speaker 1: But that just makes it look like you think it's

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Speaker 1: moderately confident. Um, And there's just not an option to

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Speaker 1: say it does not make sense to me to characterize

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Speaker 1: chicken noodle soup is confident or not confident. I feel

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Speaker 1: like we encountered this a lot with like online and yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: like that. We talked about this in the last episode

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Speaker 1: of the What Game of Thrones character? Are you that

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Speaker 1: kind of stuff? Yeah? Yeah, And so the structure of

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Speaker 1: the experiment itself sort of is driving us towards generating

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Speaker 1: data that might not be reflective of anything people are

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Speaker 1: really feeling in reality. But anyway, so to quote from

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Speaker 1: the abstract of the study, they say, this article considers

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Speaker 1: the possibility that acres scale methodology creates the brand personality

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Speaker 1: or BP that it measures, and then using pictures of

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Speaker 1: rocks as stimuli. This article applies the principles of ACRES

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Speaker 1: methodology to examine the brand personality of rocks. What kind

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Speaker 1: of rocks are we talking about? Three pictures of rocks

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Speaker 1: that they didn't get to handle? The rocks, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think you're selling them short. I just call them rocks.

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Speaker 1: These are these are some mineral specimen. Yeah, like you know,

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Speaker 1: they're solid rocks, sports or something like that that you're

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Speaker 1: gonna find. I can show you here. So there's like

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Speaker 1: one kind of spongy looking rock, and then there's this

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Speaker 1: one smooth, dark, obsidian type rock, and then there's this

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Speaker 1: quartzea kind of rock. Would you say that's about right? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So they all have very different personalities. I would say

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Speaker 1: exactly right. But as they say, rocks are chosen as

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Speaker 1: stimuli as they do not have any obvious commonalities with

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Speaker 1: brands or antecedents of VP formation. So Christian, you might

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Speaker 1: be able to look at these rocks and say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that rock that has some personality, But you did not

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Speaker 1: previously have opinions about the personalities of rocks. Yeah, probably not. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean I guess So before you even showed me

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Speaker 1: the picture, I said quarts because I was like thinking

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Speaker 1: of I used to have like a quartz uh, like

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Speaker 1: I don't know, mantal piece on my desk when I

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Speaker 1: was a little kid, And you thought it was really confident. No,

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Speaker 1: but like I just associated it as being like kind

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Speaker 1: of cool and wonder wondrous, you know. I mean, we

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Speaker 1: we can't help as humans, but to personify you and

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Speaker 1: everything I'm gonna applies subjectiveness. And if you've ever been

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Speaker 1: to a mineral museum, oh, I mean, it's loaded with

426
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 1: specimens with a lot of personality to them. I mean,

427
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: and in the act of contemplation you sit there and

428
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: you imbue these characteristics on them. But before you're they're

429
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:13,159
Speaker 1: contemplating them, you don't have these feelings about rocks in

430
00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: the abstract. So what what did they find? Well, so

431
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:18,879
Speaker 1: I first got to point out this was maybe my

432
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:22,440
Speaker 1: favorite aspect. This was not the first study to apply

433
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:26,199
Speaker 1: the five factor model to rocks. A previous study in

434
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 1: two thousand five applied the model to rocks, but in

435
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,400
Speaker 1: that older study, the scientists first dressed the rocks up

436
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:37,400
Speaker 1: with anthropomorphic decoration. See I thought, you're wait, you are

437
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: saying they put pants on it. They made them pet rocks.

438
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:43,600
Speaker 1: Basic uh, and this this could be seen as skewing

439
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 1: the results towards personification. So this new study is the

440
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:50,000
Speaker 1: first study to apply the model to naked rocks with

441
00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:55,440
Speaker 1: no faces or anthropomorphic traits of any kind. So their method,

442
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: they got two test subjects in New Zealand. They gave

443
00:25:58,359 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 1: him a vp f FM st i'le liquor scale, same

444
00:26:01,880 --> 00:26:05,159
Speaker 1: thing where they just they just did the five factor model,

445
00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:08,800
Speaker 1: but instead of saying coke, PEPSI or dr pepper, they

446
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 1: gave them three pictures of rocks. That's exactly what they did.

447
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 1: Four test subjects withdrew because they were having a hard

448
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:18,920
Speaker 1: time personifying the rocks, but the rest did fine, and

449
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:21,679
Speaker 1: when given a version of the bpf FM, the rocks

450
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:25,600
Speaker 1: got some distinct scores emerging. For example, rock H scored

451
00:26:25,680 --> 00:26:30,160
Speaker 1: really good on ruggedness, which which one is that one Robert.

452
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:33,120
Speaker 1: It looks kind of it has like a very sandstone

453
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 1: spongy look to it, so it looks abrasive. Yeah, so

454
00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 1: H scored really good on ruggedness, but scored low on sophistication.

455
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 1: They did not think it was sophisticated. Rock G was

456
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:47,679
Speaker 1: rated the least sincere. Which one is rock G. Robert, Oh,

457
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: it is black and he's gleaning. It's that obsidian looking piece. Uh,

458
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:54,440
Speaker 1: that doesn't I get. I guess I never thought about

459
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:59,640
Speaker 1: it sincerity though. Yeah, well apparently you could if prodded

460
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:02,879
Speaker 1: to do. Because the second study they did two experiments.

461
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 1: The second one they did the same thing again, but

462
00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:08,720
Speaker 1: they introduced a subjective element, or I guess, a descriptive element.

463
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,479
Speaker 1: They just asked the participants to, in their own words,

464
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 1: explain their thought process when writing the personalities of Rocks.

465
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: I want to give some quotes Rock G. Again, that's

466
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 1: the obsidian looking one. Uh. Some quote from one of

467
00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:26,120
Speaker 1: the participants is some young businessman slick and smart but devious,

468
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: probably would backstab you if he could make his way

469
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:32,680
Speaker 1: up the corporate ladder. Faster carries a black briefcase, slick hair,

470
00:27:32,880 --> 00:27:36,680
Speaker 1: quick thinker, and quicker talker. Not a good dude. Though. Wow,

471
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:40,320
Speaker 1: that's a great imagination. Though seriously, I mean, like, I

472
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 1: could try to personify it, but I would have just

473
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:44,640
Speaker 1: come up with, like, I don't know, a couple of adjectives.

474
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,560
Speaker 1: That was a whole backstory. It's a great deal of

475
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:51,360
Speaker 1: color theory and yeah, yeah, another one rock I which

476
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: one is I Uh? It is a gleam. It's like

477
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: a mineral crystally composite that I'm I'm looking at black

478
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 1: and white, but I am assuming it's like purple or something. Yeah,

479
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 1: it's quartzy uh and the one of the test subjects

480
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: described this rock as liberal, attractive, and female. A young

481
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:11,320
Speaker 1: person maybe mid thirties, who was very attractive when she

482
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 1: was younger, possibly a model, has her own way of

483
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: thinking with a somewhat grounded confidence, enjoy's organic food. Oh

484
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 1: hell low quartz, but there were also Another interesting thing

485
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 1: was that the Rocks had some consistent themes emerging. People

486
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: didn't just make up random whatever. Rock G was pretty

487
00:28:31,040 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 1: consistently described as a businessman, while another rock, Yeah Rock H,

488
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 1: was often described as a farmer or rural worker. This

489
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: weird because when I look at Rock G, I think

490
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: of the Cobba stone, so I think of religious and

491
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:47,680
Speaker 1: spiritual overtones and supposed to business. I looked at it

492
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 1: and I immediately thought of the occult, that it was

493
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:51,440
Speaker 1: like the kind of thing that you would have in

494
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 1: like a witch's circle, or see it and think dragon glass.

495
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:58,880
Speaker 1: Right there you go, it's also subjective. It's just it's

496
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:02,040
Speaker 1: depending on on whatever where you're backloaded with. Yeah. But

497
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,960
Speaker 1: so anyway, and they're concluding discussion, they say quote. However, viewed,

498
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: the findings highlight that the BPFFM methodology is at least

499
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 1: able to create personality in stimuli, would share no obvious

500
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: antecedents to the formation of brand personality. Uh. This is

501
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 1: evident in the significant differences between the rocks at the trade,

502
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: facet and factor level. The bp f FM was described

503
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:29,160
Speaker 1: as a valid and generalizable measure of VP, and this

504
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:33,959
Speaker 1: study saw it generalized two pictures of rocks. Uh. Like

505
00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 1: this study. Yeah, I think this is really good and

506
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 1: I have some things I want to say about it.

507
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 1: First of all, I do want to say it's not

508
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:43,560
Speaker 1: to prove that consumers don't actually personify brands. It's just

509
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 1: a critique of this method of testing for it, because

510
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,520
Speaker 1: it's showing that the dominant existing method and marking research

511
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 1: would have a hard time telling the difference between a

512
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 1: consumer who naturally tends to personify a brand, say in

513
00:29:57,120 --> 00:29:59,960
Speaker 1: the store or in their regular life, and a consumer

514
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 1: who's forced to unnaturally come up with a personification of

515
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:06,960
Speaker 1: a brand by the conditions of an experiment the ladder,

516
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: which could be inferred to have very little relevance to

517
00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:12,680
Speaker 1: consumer behavior, right because when I pick out a brand

518
00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 1: of p I'm not just off the spur of my

519
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 1: head writing like a one word, two hundred word statement

520
00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:23,040
Speaker 1: on how it feels slick back hair, black briefcase. Not

521
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:26,040
Speaker 1: a good dude. Though. Now I'm starting to think that

522
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 1: maybe I should start thinking about the things I buy

523
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 1: more often and write a little like backstory for for

524
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: each of them, so that because maybe I'm hanging out

525
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:40,560
Speaker 1: with some uncouth items. Okay, so last two points one

526
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 1: we got hit. Why it's amusing? I think the main

527
00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 1: the best way to sum this up is it's amusing

528
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:48,920
Speaker 1: because this is verbatim what the researchers told the participants quote.

529
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: We would like you to think of each rock as

530
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 1: if it were a person. This may sound unusual, but

531
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 1: think of the set of human characteristics associated with each rock.

532
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 1: If you see a descriptor and you of no sense

533
00:31:00,680 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 1: of how it applies to the rock, look at the

534
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 1: rock picture again and think of it as if it

535
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:09,200
Speaker 1: were a person. See so now that I hear that, Now,

536
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 1: like the long descriptions of these rocks make a little

537
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:15,680
Speaker 1: bit more sense. It's like they're in their own way.

538
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 1: They were primed as well by the study. This is

539
00:31:19,080 --> 00:31:21,800
Speaker 1: exactly a mirror ring of the language you'd give people

540
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 1: in in personifying brand. Yeah. But then there's the question

541
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:28,240
Speaker 1: of why it's important. And I actually do think that

542
00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: I'm not usually very interested in marketing research, but I

543
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: found this study very interesting, especially because because it was

544
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: a critique of methodology that I thought was very smart,

545
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 1: and because it's an interesting and uncommon type of study,

546
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:45,719
Speaker 1: which is it's a reductio ad absurd um study. So

547
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:48,720
Speaker 1: the reductio ad absurd um. You know this from rhetoric

548
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 1: Christian right, It's a rhetorical tactic of showing that your

549
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:55,520
Speaker 1: opponents premises or methods are flawed by demonstrating that they

550
00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:59,160
Speaker 1: can be used to prove conclusions that are obviously false. Yeah,

551
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: it's like a you break apart the logic of their argument. Yeah,

552
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: you show that, and also to continue to follow your

553
00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:08,600
Speaker 1: logic it would lead to absurd conclusion. Yeah, and it

554
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 1: does damage to the quality of the character of whoever

555
00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:16,120
Speaker 1: you're arguing. Again, but in this case, the reductive goes

556
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 1: this way. If your brand marketing methodology yields the conclusion

557
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 1: that people think of a previously unknown collection of rocks

558
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: as each having distinct personalities. There's something wrong with your

559
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:33,640
Speaker 1: test method. Uh. And I just wanted to compare this

560
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: actually to another previous ignoble winner from from years back

561
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: that I thought was another good example of the reductio

562
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:43,720
Speaker 1: ad Absurdam study. It was a critique of certain types

563
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:48,400
Speaker 1: of fm R I scanning that critiqued this by scanning

564
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:51,720
Speaker 1: the brain activity of a dead salmon. I think I

565
00:32:51,760 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 1: remember this one. Yeah, yeah, this was great. It was

566
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 1: another reductio. It was like, okay, well, look at what's

567
00:32:56,840 --> 00:32:59,720
Speaker 1: going on in the brain of a dead fish when

568
00:32:59,760 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 1: sir and things are done to it. Obviously there's no

569
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:05,600
Speaker 1: thinking going on in the brain of a dead fish.

570
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:08,120
Speaker 1: What they were trying to show was that fm R I,

571
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 1: when not used very carefully, can generate false positives. And

572
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:14,960
Speaker 1: so you've got to control your data very very rigorously

573
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 1: unless there's a ghost of a dead fish being scanned,

574
00:33:17,560 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 1: I guess, and your results are in big trouble. Man.

575
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:24,960
Speaker 1: You get into some serious questions consciousness of the dead. Snap. Yeah,

576
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 1: ghost fish are constantly messing with science. I gotta give

577
00:33:27,520 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: him credit. I found this way more interesting than I

578
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 1: was expecting to find. A marketing research Yeah, I I

579
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 1: I often love the marketing ones. If if marketing research

580
00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: is really well done, I think ultimately like it reveals

581
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 1: something about the human condition, right, And in this one,

582
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:44,640
Speaker 1: like as we were just talking about the sort of

583
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 1: subjective nature of how we personify everything around us, or

584
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: at least that we can. Yeah, but Christian, I know

585
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 1: you've got the next one. Why why don't you tell

586
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:58,320
Speaker 1: us about the view from between the legs? Okay? So

587
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 1: this one, this is a good one actually in terms

588
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 1: of like the science of it. But it's a little gimmicky,

589
00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 1: which is probably why it won an Ignoble award. Paper

590
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:11,440
Speaker 1: is called Perceived Size and Perceived Distance of Targets Viewed

591
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:18,040
Speaker 1: from between the Legs colon Evidence for pro pri Eceptive Theory. Okay,

592
00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: now what are we talking about with you between the legs? Okay?

593
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 1: So I I needed to actually like really dive in

594
00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 1: here to understand what they meant from a view between

595
00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 1: the legs. So they are talking specifically about when you,

596
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 1: as an individual bend over and look between your own

597
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:40,279
Speaker 1: legs with your head upside down. But within and I'll

598
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 1: get to this, but within their research they had controls obviously,

599
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:47,040
Speaker 1: so they also had people lying flat and looking between

600
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: somebody else's legs or tilting their heads in certain ways.

601
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:54,360
Speaker 1: And this, this will this is actually kind of important.

602
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:57,720
Speaker 1: It'll become important when I reveal that is one looking

603
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:01,280
Speaker 1: at oneself or you simply looking past your legs and

604
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: in like an upside down world, you're looking past your legs.

605
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 1: So the things that are most important here is they

606
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:12,799
Speaker 1: want to they're investigating perceived size and perceived distance when

607
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:18,920
Speaker 1: you're looking between your own legs. Um. They used three comparisons,

608
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:22,439
Speaker 1: and there were five targets that were presented to these

609
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 1: subjects from between two point five and forty five meters away.

610
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 1: They tested ninety observers to judge how they perceived size

611
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,799
Speaker 1: and distance from between their legs. All right, so these

612
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:36,719
Speaker 1: are the three comparisons. And the first one they have

613
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:41,480
Speaker 1: fifteen observers upside down looking between their own legs. Another

614
00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:47,720
Speaker 1: fifteen viewed the objects while uh, this is a study

615
00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:51,000
Speaker 1: while erect, so while they're standing up straight, um, not

616
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:55,720
Speaker 1: looking between their legs. Results showed that inverting the head

617
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:59,919
Speaker 1: lowered the size and scale for distance. So so when

618
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 1: you look between your legs, they they saw that you

619
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:06,760
Speaker 1: had less of an ability to judge how big something

620
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:09,479
Speaker 1: was and how far away it was, and you thought

621
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:12,720
Speaker 1: of it as being closer and smaller. So I imagine

622
00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:15,440
Speaker 1: this racist questions about why that is, Like is it

623
00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:19,280
Speaker 1: because the head's upside down or the framing of the legs.

624
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:21,759
Speaker 1: Like my instant thought is that like the plane that

625
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 1: is normally the ground becomes the plane of the sky,

626
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:27,680
Speaker 1: sort of a natural That's a good theory. I don't

627
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:29,680
Speaker 1: think they addressed that, but I will get into what

628
00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 1: their hypotheses are. Um. One of the things that they

629
00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:36,359
Speaker 1: were asking themselves though, were they were these results due

630
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 1: to the inversion of the retinal image or body orientation.

631
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:45,120
Speaker 1: So they did some other studies comparison to They took

632
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:48,399
Speaker 1: fifteen observers who were upright, and they gave them these

633
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 1: goggles that had prisms in them, and it made it

634
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:54,840
Speaker 1: so that their visual field flipped a hundred and eighty degrees.

635
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:59,320
Speaker 1: And then they took fifteen people standing up right wearing

636
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:02,239
Speaker 1: goggles that were hollow, that had no prisms, and they

637
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:07,240
Speaker 1: compared those results. In both they were able to judge

638
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:12,160
Speaker 1: size consistently. Distance they found to be quote a linear

639
00:37:12,239 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 1: function of physical distance. Not quite sure what that means,

640
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: but I think it was basically around the same comparison,

641
00:37:20,239 --> 00:37:23,920
Speaker 1: three fifteen people wore the prism goggles again, but this

642
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:28,320
Speaker 1: time they bent their heads forward, while fifteen other people

643
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 1: wore hollow goggles but laid on their bellies. This showed

644
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:37,759
Speaker 1: a low degree of size constancy and a compression of

645
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:41,319
Speaker 1: the scale for distance. So again, uh, things that were

646
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 1: further away seemed to be nearer. Okay. So they ran

647
00:37:45,200 --> 00:37:49,879
Speaker 1: all the distances and subjects through this analytic program called AMOS.

648
00:37:50,239 --> 00:37:53,800
Speaker 1: And there there was some serious math involved in this paper.

649
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 1: Like as I was reading through it, I was there

650
00:37:56,080 --> 00:37:57,440
Speaker 1: was a lot of it that went over my head.

651
00:37:57,480 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 1: There was a lot of mouths. So these, I mean,

652
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: this wasn't just some willy nilly research. They really have

653
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:04,959
Speaker 1: their methodology nailed down. All of this helped them hone

654
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 1: in on what variables may have been affecting the perception

655
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 1: of the observers. So their conclusion was this, the perceived

656
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 1: size and perceived distance are affected by an inversion of

657
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 1: body orientation, but not by retinal image orientation. And they

658
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:25,040
Speaker 1: got there because of the whole goggles thing. They also

659
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 1: said that perceived size and perceived distance are independent of

660
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 1: one another, so those two things aren't necessarily connected. So this,

661
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:36,400
Speaker 1: I imagine would Earlier you mentioned that this was in

662
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: some way connected to appropriate receptive theory, right, like the

663
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:42,160
Speaker 1: the idea about the since we have of where our

664
00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:46,720
Speaker 1: body parts are in relationship to one another. Uh so,

665
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:50,839
Speaker 1: so they're sort of saying that we make visual judgments

666
00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 1: with more than just our eyes, like that the feeling

667
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:57,719
Speaker 1: of the body is involved in making decisions about what

668
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 1: we're viewing with our vision exactly. They said that this

669
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:04,400
Speaker 1: is an example of what's called a propri receptive information

670
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: in which we take in our sensory data. But our

671
00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:10,280
Speaker 1: body could be bending, or our neck could be tilting,

672
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 1: or we could be raising or lowering our eyes in

673
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:16,360
Speaker 1: different ways, and all of these things influence our spatial perception.

674
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:21,480
Speaker 1: It's possibly also connected to our tactile senses interacting with

675
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:24,560
Speaker 1: our visual ones. So in a certain qualified sense, you

676
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: sort of see you with your butt. Yeah. Although I

677
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:31,520
Speaker 1: here's the thing that I got from this. The actual

678
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:34,600
Speaker 1: like bending over and putting your head between your legs,

679
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:37,680
Speaker 1: I think was less important than the idea of being

680
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:42,359
Speaker 1: upside down. Um so, but yeah, I mean where your

681
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,960
Speaker 1: butt is in space while you're looking at something. I

682
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 1: guess I can influence your your body's perception. Yeah, I

683
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:52,560
Speaker 1: guess I was just being cheeky about the butt. Cheek

684
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 1: you see what your body you do? Yeah. So at

685
00:39:57,440 --> 00:40:00,960
Speaker 1: the ignobiles, the professor, one the main professors on this

686
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:04,960
Speaker 1: his name was at Suki Higashia Yama. I believe he

687
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:09,120
Speaker 1: accepted the award. He then bent over and demonstrated the

688
00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:12,879
Speaker 1: effect I watched this on the thing he received. These

689
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:14,799
Speaker 1: were the awards they won, by the way, this year

690
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 1: a sixty one second clock hilarious uh an award paper

691
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 1: and they received a ten trillion Zimbabwean bill, which apparently

692
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 1: isn't a real thing, so it's worth worth nothing. Uh.

693
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:33,279
Speaker 1: This guy was then joined by other Nobel winners, who,

694
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:36,280
Speaker 1: all on stage and in front of their scientific peers,

695
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:39,399
Speaker 1: stuck their head between their legs to perform their own

696
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:43,280
Speaker 1: empirical study. Then he was escorted off stage by human

697
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:46,880
Speaker 1: alarm clocks because he exceeded his allotted one minute time.

698
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:49,879
Speaker 1: You know, I can't help but wonder if if one

699
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:55,480
Speaker 1: engaged in this body position either constantly or on a

700
00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:59,239
Speaker 1: consistent basis, if one would have a better like a

701
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:02,440
Speaker 1: like a more one to one comparison. Um, you know,

702
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 1: their their appropreceptive experience. Yeah, I think you're right, actually,

703
00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:08,839
Speaker 1: and there's some evidence in the paper that that could

704
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 1: be the case. Um, like maybe yoga, because that's because

705
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:15,359
Speaker 1: that's a common pose when you're going through like if

706
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:19,280
Speaker 1: you're in handstand all the time or something. Yeah. Um, well, okay,

707
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:23,800
Speaker 1: why is this amusing? How because to conduct this study,

708
00:41:23,960 --> 00:41:27,879
Speaker 1: you're essentially mooning whoever the subject is right as well,

709
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: I mean, assuming you have your pants on. I don't

710
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: know about the rats that were involved, if they had

711
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: rats involved in this study. Uh, they did get a

712
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 1: bunch of people to do it on stage, like I said,

713
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 1: and then they also asked everybody in the audience to

714
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: do it at the Ignoble Prize uh ceremony. On a

715
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: number of people went out into the audience into the

716
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:49,880
Speaker 1: aisles and bent over and looked between their legs. So

717
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:55,720
Speaker 1: that's an example of ignoble humor at play. But here's

718
00:41:55,880 --> 00:42:00,800
Speaker 1: why it's important. Okay, So this research, which was influenced

719
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 1: by the work of a guy named Herman von Helmholtz,

720
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:07,560
Speaker 1: and he conducted similar perception studies over a hundred years ago.

721
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 1: Now the other thing too that I want to mention

722
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:13,360
Speaker 1: that these were Japanese scientists who won this. This is

723
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: the tenth year in a row that Japanese scientists have

724
00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:19,959
Speaker 1: won a prize at the IGNO Bells. So um, there's

725
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: something about the research that's being conducted in Japan that's

726
00:42:23,120 --> 00:42:26,879
Speaker 1: just inherently interesting to these IGNO Belt committee. I'm not

727
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 1: quite sure why. We now know that while inverted, we

728
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:35,760
Speaker 1: perceive things as smaller and the distance to them appears

729
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 1: to be smaller. Right. But the weird side result of

730
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:41,200
Speaker 1: all of this is that when observers bent their head

731
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:45,319
Speaker 1: between their legs and then bent their heads forward while

732
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 1: they had their heads between their legs, the perceived size

733
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 1: actually decreased while the viewing distance increased. So it actually

734
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:57,160
Speaker 1: distorts our visual sense even more than we think it does.

735
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:01,080
Speaker 1: We'll see this is very important actually for yoga classes,

736
00:43:01,160 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 1: because you're getting into this pose yah, and you're essentially

737
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:07,359
Speaker 1: everyone's staring at everyone's but yep. And this this has

738
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:10,920
Speaker 1: real world consequences for but perception exactly how big it is,

739
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 1: how far away it is, all these things the way

740
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 1: that I was applying it. I didn't quite go to

741
00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:18,960
Speaker 1: the yoga butt thing, Robert, but I thought that it

742
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 1: was probably important to zero gravity studies and then maybe athletics.

743
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:26,560
Speaker 1: And this was the thing that immediately popped in my mind.

744
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:31,440
Speaker 1: What if you're like Hawkeye or Green Arrow or Catness Everdeen.

745
00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:34,240
Speaker 1: You're like one of these characters who's a really good archer,

746
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 1: and you are trying to shoot a target accurately while

747
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:42,040
Speaker 1: you're flipping in mid air upside down. So this is

748
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:44,719
Speaker 1: going to affect how far away you think something isn't

749
00:43:44,760 --> 00:43:46,760
Speaker 1: and how big you think it is. Right, I seem

750
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:51,359
Speaker 1: to recall Green Arrow shooting. Uh wait, was it Green Arrow?

751
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 1: I don't know, one of those guys with the bow

752
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 1: one who's in uh the dark Knight returns when he

753
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 1: shoots a kryptonite thing Superman that's like upside down in me.

754
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:03,799
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, yeah hang, and he also only has

755
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:07,600
Speaker 1: one arm I think in that case too. Yeah yeah.

756
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:09,799
Speaker 1: But so you would assume that if you are one

757
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:12,320
Speaker 1: of these expert archers who is really good at shooting

758
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 1: even when you're upside down, that you would be aware

759
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 1: of this theory so that you can always hit your mark. Uh.

760
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:24,360
Speaker 1: There are also two causes that they speculate on, and

761
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:26,400
Speaker 1: this gets back to what Robert was just talking about.

762
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 1: The first is autolithic stimulation in the inner ears could

763
00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: be getting disturbed in our head when we're flipped upside

764
00:44:33,080 --> 00:44:36,520
Speaker 1: down gets congested with blood. Also, as I mentioned earlier,

765
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 1: our retinal images reversed from left to right and inverted

766
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,600
Speaker 1: up to down right. It's also thought that for consistency,

767
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:47,640
Speaker 1: we learn all of these visual skills upright from birth.

768
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 1: So yeah, Robert's right, maybe we can be conditioned to

769
00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:55,359
Speaker 1: be more sensitive in an upside down position rather than

770
00:44:55,360 --> 00:44:58,160
Speaker 1: in an upright position. So if you were upside down

771
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 1: all the time, you just eventually get used to it

772
00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:05,240
Speaker 1: and your your perception would become more accurate. Yeah, yeah, exactly,

773
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: Like maybe if you walked around in handstand all the

774
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 1: time or something like that. I mean, I've been to

775
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: yoga classes where I've seen people who are like so

776
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 1: proficient at handstand that they can pretty much just like

777
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 1: you know, exist in it at all times. I wonder

778
00:45:19,200 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 1: how long though it takes your mind body relation, I

779
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 1: guess is the word for this kinesics um that, like,

780
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:29,279
Speaker 1: how long it takes for those two aligned together so

781
00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 1: that your sense of perception is what it would be

782
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:35,919
Speaker 1: if you were upright. Yeah, I mean, I guess you

783
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 1: if you could get used to seeing the inverted world,

784
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:41,319
Speaker 1: it's when you're you're you're fooled into seeing it the

785
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 1: wrong way, but it really throws us off. There's a

786
00:45:44,080 --> 00:45:47,759
Speaker 1: there's a video piece that that I saw at actually

787
00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 1: at the mat when we were up there for the

788
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 1: Star trek Uh mission New York. And the video was

789
00:45:54,080 --> 00:45:58,200
Speaker 1: of a suspension railway in Germany. And but they had

790
00:45:58,239 --> 00:46:01,880
Speaker 1: inverted the footage. So when you're looking at it, especially

791
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:05,000
Speaker 1: if you're just kind of casually seeing it, it has

792
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:09,319
Speaker 1: the appearance of a train, like a normal, typical train

793
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:13,879
Speaker 1: running through an upside down world. Uh. Sorry, Robert, after

794
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 1: your earlier discussion about rats with pants, I can't hear

795
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:21,360
Speaker 1: the words suspension anymore without thinking of testicular suspension. What

796
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:23,799
Speaker 1: does that look like upside down? Oh? I don't know.

797
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:25,920
Speaker 1: You when you start piling these studies on top of

798
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:28,239
Speaker 1: each other, you really it really raises some question. Let's

799
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:30,520
Speaker 1: conduct some experiments. We'll take some pictures and we'll put

800
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 1: them on our Instagram page. The last thing I do

801
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:35,239
Speaker 1: want to say about this study. Is it. One of

802
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 1: the other reasons why this is important is it gives

803
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 1: us a greater understanding of our perception in our normal,

804
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:43,120
Speaker 1: upright state, right and the way they described as they

805
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 1: said in their terms, the judged distance is proportional to

806
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 1: the objective distance under a natural environment. So it gives

807
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 1: us a little bit better of an understanding of how

808
00:46:54,160 --> 00:46:58,560
Speaker 1: we understand size and distance just in our everyday lives too.

809
00:46:58,760 --> 00:47:02,240
Speaker 1: I wonder if this has ramifications for any like virtual

810
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: worlds as well. Oh yeah, I bet it would write

811
00:47:05,160 --> 00:47:06,719
Speaker 1: like you would take this and apply it to the

812
00:47:06,760 --> 00:47:10,960
Speaker 1: programming when you're programming like a game or an environment

813
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:14,799
Speaker 1: for those goggles. Yeah, certainly. All right. So let's let's

814
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:21,400
Speaker 1: move along from the inverted world to another strange perceptive scenario,

815
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 1: and that is, of course, the world of mirrors, um

816
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 1: which I think I was I was talking to with

817
00:47:29,080 --> 00:47:31,400
Speaker 1: you and a friend in New York about this, about

818
00:47:31,719 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: about mirrors in our life and about how there we

819
00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:39,080
Speaker 1: take them for granted, studies have shown that most people

820
00:47:39,160 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: don't really know how a mirror works, and we just

821
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:44,520
Speaker 1: kind of we we just grow to accept the weirdness.

822
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:47,000
Speaker 1: We kind of push the strangeness of this mirror person

823
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 1: out of our head. We accept that our our hair

824
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:51,759
Speaker 1: actually parts on that side of our body when it

825
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 1: actually does not. And then we have the occasional haunted

826
00:47:56,600 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 1: mirror movies such as Oculus or that fat with Stephen

827
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:04,520
Speaker 1: King's story, Um the Reaper's Image that one. Yeah, we

828
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:06,440
Speaker 1: have these tours stories that kind of serve as a

829
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:10,280
Speaker 1: like a cultural release valve for all of this buried

830
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:14,759
Speaker 1: anxiety about how creepy it is that we mirrors all

831
00:48:14,760 --> 00:48:17,040
Speaker 1: over our world. That's my take on it. Anyway. Yeah, No,

832
00:48:17,120 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think there's something inherently bother

833
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:25,360
Speaker 1: some about mirrors. It's almost like a doppelganger that's a

834
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 1: reverse version of you, you know what. They also do

835
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:30,600
Speaker 1: this in uh was it Poltergeist three when they're in

836
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:34,239
Speaker 1: the skyscraper and the mirror versions of themselves like come

837
00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 1: out from from the Oh. That's one with Tom Skarrett.

838
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:44,000
Speaker 1: It's good, Well not really, it's not good, but it's

839
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:47,080
Speaker 1: worth watching. Another weird thing is have you ever tried

840
00:48:47,120 --> 00:48:50,400
Speaker 1: to explain or put into words why it is that

841
00:48:50,560 --> 00:48:53,480
Speaker 1: words read backward in a mirror, like even if you

842
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: can picture it and understand correctly. Why this is the case,

843
00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 1: it's hard to explain. What about bloody may Yeah, bloody mirrors.

844
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:03,919
Speaker 1: And another one there is we actually have an older

845
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:07,319
Speaker 1: episode from back when Julie's co host talking about some

846
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 1: of the mirror weirdness, and and that's that's one of them.

847
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:11,280
Speaker 1: Because part of it is you stare into the mirror

848
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:13,520
Speaker 1: long enough, in your mind begins to see new details,

849
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:16,480
Speaker 1: especially with the bloody merry thing you spin around to,

850
00:49:16,760 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 1: which related to the last study, is probably filling your

851
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:22,320
Speaker 1: head with blood in a different way, so your perception

852
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:25,120
Speaker 1: is different as well. Well. Like I said, we we

853
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:27,439
Speaker 1: begin to realize how weird mirrors are if we stare

854
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 1: at them long enough, if we watch haunted television shows

855
00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: about them. But also when we we we clinically study

856
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:41,000
Speaker 1: the results of perception through mirrors. I imagine, I imagine

857
00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 1: a number of our listeners and you guys as well,

858
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: have have heard of the use of mirrors to treat

859
00:49:46,680 --> 00:49:52,040
Speaker 1: phantom limb syndrome. I have not. That's interesting, alright, So

860
00:49:52,120 --> 00:49:54,920
Speaker 1: this was this was This is not the the ignoble

861
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:59,319
Speaker 1: prize winnings. This is the one that precedes it, all right,

862
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:03,399
Speaker 1: And this was this is the work of vs. Ramachandren

863
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:06,359
Speaker 1: Uh and he helped he would figure out They say, hey,

864
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:08,399
Speaker 1: if you can, you can use a box with two

865
00:50:08,440 --> 00:50:11,520
Speaker 1: mirrors in the center, one facing each way, and you

866
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 1: can use this to help alleviate phantom limb pain and

867
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:17,600
Speaker 1: when and this is when pain patients who have suffered

868
00:50:17,600 --> 00:50:22,399
Speaker 1: at an amputation an injury, they still feel of sensations

869
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: and pain of that missing limb um. This is what vs.

870
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 1: Ramachandre had to had to say about it. Quote. Many

871
00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:33,319
Speaker 1: phantom arms are paralyzed in a painful position. If a

872
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:38,480
Speaker 1: mirror is propped vertically in the sagital plane and the

873
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:41,480
Speaker 1: patient looks at the reflection of his or her normal hand,

874
00:50:41,800 --> 00:50:47,359
Speaker 1: this reflection appears superimposed on the felt position of the phantom. Remarkably,

875
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 1: if the real arm is moved, the phantom is felt

876
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:55,040
Speaker 1: to move as well, and this sometimes relieves the painful

877
00:50:55,080 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 1: cramps in the phantom. Brains are weird, so you have

878
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:04,759
Speaker 1: no arm to move, but you feel you must move it.

879
00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:08,000
Speaker 1: You can't move it because you don't have it. But

880
00:51:08,080 --> 00:51:10,399
Speaker 1: if you look at your reflection in such a way

881
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:13,800
Speaker 1: that suggests, because of the reversed image, that you're moving it,

882
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:17,279
Speaker 1: then it'll feel like it's moving. Now. I do want

883
00:51:17,280 --> 00:51:21,480
Speaker 1: to add that not everyone is sold on this this

884
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:24,200
Speaker 1: treatment method, but it but it does seem to have

885
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 1: a definite effect on some individuals. So where where the

886
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:32,920
Speaker 1: ignaled bells come into play? Here is a paper that

887
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:37,759
Speaker 1: came out in UH and this one is titled It's

888
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:42,920
Speaker 1: Relief by Mirror Scratching a psycho physical Study. UH. And

889
00:51:43,000 --> 00:51:45,799
Speaker 1: so this one said basically takes the whole mirror box

890
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: treatment for phantom women, says, hey, what about itches? Um,

891
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:54,279
Speaker 1: They sought to extend these original findings to the perception

892
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:58,280
Speaker 1: of itch. Could you, in fact use the perverse magic

893
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 1: of a mirror to sc ratch and itch on the

894
00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:03,040
Speaker 1: opposite side of your body? So if you have a

895
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:05,799
Speaker 1: left side of your face itch, could you scratch your

896
00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:08,880
Speaker 1: right side and then in the mirror it's inverted and

897
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 1: you could effectively could you possibly scratch that itch? You're

898
00:52:12,200 --> 00:52:16,320
Speaker 1: blowing my mind? And they they demonstrated this on stage

899
00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:20,319
Speaker 1: at the agnog They did because that's the thing they

900
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:23,719
Speaker 1: found that you could indeed do this thanks to the

901
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 1: quote transient illusory, intersensory perceptual congruency of visual, tactile and

902
00:52:32,239 --> 00:52:36,400
Speaker 1: per receptive signals. So they used healthy participants and they

903
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:40,840
Speaker 1: injected like a histamine um concoction under the skin of

904
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:44,280
Speaker 1: one forearm. And the first experiment utilized an actual mirror.

905
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:46,680
Speaker 1: The second they used a video so that they could

906
00:52:46,719 --> 00:52:48,960
Speaker 1: use a control group and just you know, decide how

907
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 1: they wanted to present the the image, either as a

908
00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:54,319
Speaker 1: you know, an inverted reflection or just the straight up

909
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:57,360
Speaker 1: visual of what's occurring. And yes, they found that you

910
00:52:57,400 --> 00:53:00,520
Speaker 1: could scratch a left side itch by scratch the right

911
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:05,200
Speaker 1: if you perceived it reversed in the mirror. That is,

912
00:53:05,400 --> 00:53:09,759
Speaker 1: that's pretty phenomenal and again yet another example of how

913
00:53:09,760 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: the ignobles are not just funny, like there's there's some

914
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:16,799
Speaker 1: real weird but interesting work going on here. Yeah. I

915
00:53:16,800 --> 00:53:19,960
Speaker 1: mean it's amusing because the nitch right as opposed to

916
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:22,719
Speaker 1: my missing limb, and it's not dealing with the very

917
00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:25,920
Speaker 1: seri health matters that this dismemberment. Yeah, I can't imagine

918
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:29,160
Speaker 1: that the ignobles with like bring a bunch of amputees

919
00:53:29,239 --> 00:53:31,960
Speaker 1: up on stage and perform this. Yeah. So so on

920
00:53:31,960 --> 00:53:35,000
Speaker 1: one hand, it seems like a like a fun, safe

921
00:53:35,040 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 1: way to enjoy the absurdity of our whole relationship with mirrors.

922
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: But the the the cool thing is that there are

923
00:53:41,680 --> 00:53:45,680
Speaker 1: potential applications here because sometimes and it should not be

924
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:49,640
Speaker 1: scratched at if if there are any other parents out

925
00:53:49,640 --> 00:53:51,920
Speaker 1: there listening to me, you probably have had this conversation

926
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:54,040
Speaker 1: with a child where you say, don't scratch that itch.

927
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:56,399
Speaker 1: Don't scratch that it's gonna get it's gonna get raw,

928
00:53:56,520 --> 00:53:58,359
Speaker 1: it might even get bloody, and then it's gonna hurt

929
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:00,759
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be complaining about it even or don't

930
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:04,239
Speaker 1: scratch that itch. But even more so, you have you

931
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:08,480
Speaker 1: have individuals who suffer from focal skin diseases, and they

932
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 1: have an added incentive because they're they're often just dealing

933
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:15,680
Speaker 1: with severe itching that are that's a part of their condition,

934
00:54:16,080 --> 00:54:19,120
Speaker 1: and if they scratch the itch, they're gonna further damage

935
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:23,080
Speaker 1: they already afflicted tissue. So you could potentially use this

936
00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:27,520
Speaker 1: as a treatment method allowing them to physically scratch uh

937
00:54:28,160 --> 00:54:33,520
Speaker 1: n damaged tissue and in doing so, like psycho physically

938
00:54:33,719 --> 00:54:36,839
Speaker 1: scratch the itch that should not be damaged further. I'm

939
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 1: thinking of like when you get like chicken pox and

940
00:54:41,560 --> 00:54:44,399
Speaker 1: is right and seems like it would be a great yeah,

941
00:54:44,520 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 1: like because doesn't at least, this is how I remember

942
00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:47,799
Speaker 1: it from when I was a kid. It sort of

943
00:54:47,840 --> 00:54:50,200
Speaker 1: travels across your body right like, it's not like it.

944
00:54:50,480 --> 00:54:52,160
Speaker 1: I don't know. In some cases maybe it does, but

945
00:54:52,200 --> 00:54:54,520
Speaker 1: I'm on me. It went from like, let's say, like

946
00:54:54,560 --> 00:54:56,279
Speaker 1: the left side of my body to the right side

947
00:54:56,320 --> 00:54:58,359
Speaker 1: of my body. So put me in front of a

948
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:01,440
Speaker 1: mirror and I itch on the right side. That way,

949
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:04,239
Speaker 1: I'm not irritating the already irritated skin on the left side.

950
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:07,640
Speaker 1: Poison ivy comes to mind too, something that I think

951
00:55:07,640 --> 00:55:09,680
Speaker 1: they touched on in the article, but having had some

952
00:55:09,760 --> 00:55:12,960
Speaker 1: severe ivy outbreaks before, like if you scratch it, it

953
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:15,560
Speaker 1: just gets gross and disgusting even more so and starts

954
00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:18,960
Speaker 1: oozing everywhere. But if I could potentially scratch the gross

955
00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:24,839
Speaker 1: tissue by actually scratching unaffected tissue, that seems like that's

956
00:55:24,840 --> 00:55:26,960
Speaker 1: something I would go for. I wonder how that figures

957
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:29,120
Speaker 1: into the people who think that you can spread poison

958
00:55:29,160 --> 00:55:31,960
Speaker 1: ivy by scratching. I think I'm to understand that the

959
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:35,160
Speaker 1: medical science community does not agree that is true. That

960
00:55:35,280 --> 00:55:38,359
Speaker 1: is my understanding as well. They're like, pretty much the

961
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 1: the condition has spread that it's it depends on the

962
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:46,759
Speaker 1: thickness of skin, and and and what has been touched. Yeah,

963
00:55:47,040 --> 00:55:48,439
Speaker 1: I mean really we could. We could do a whole

964
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 1: episode on poison ivy when I guess when it gets

965
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:54,239
Speaker 1: summer again. But what if when you're looking into a

966
00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:58,960
Speaker 1: mirror and you're scratching one side, you're actually you're actually

967
00:55:59,080 --> 00:56:03,759
Speaker 1: scratching the wound on somebody in an alternate universe, and

968
00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 1: you're making their wound worse while just only scratching your

969
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:10,840
Speaker 1: normal art. That gets into us a lot of ethics

970
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:13,560
Speaker 1: involved in multiverse theory here. Yeah, well that gets into

971
00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:17,360
Speaker 1: two Borges is a story about the rainbow fish that

972
00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:21,239
Speaker 1: had where the mirror world is an actual world, but

973
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:23,359
Speaker 1: we like defeated them in a battle a long time ago,

974
00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:29,040
Speaker 1: and so now they're forced to just mimic everything we do. Yeah,

975
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:34,520
Speaker 1: mirrors are crazy. Yeah, even crazier. However, is our next

976
00:56:35,200 --> 00:56:37,160
Speaker 1: our next entry, which we're gonna take a little break

977
00:56:37,200 --> 00:56:45,320
Speaker 1: first and then come back with all right, we're back.

978
00:56:45,960 --> 00:56:51,600
Speaker 1: So we've talked about perception, reproduction, marketing, and economics, itching

979
00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:55,120
Speaker 1: I think now it's time to talk about biology. And

980
00:56:55,160 --> 00:56:57,080
Speaker 1: this is one that all three of us did a

981
00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:00,520
Speaker 1: little bit of reading about the Biology Prize this year

982
00:57:01,200 --> 00:57:06,160
Speaker 1: at the Ignobles was presented to not a particular study

983
00:57:06,520 --> 00:57:10,120
Speaker 1: or a bit of research, but a couple of books

984
00:57:10,120 --> 00:57:14,359
Speaker 1: were that were essentially about becoming beasts, and one of

985
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 1: the two sort of took the limelight. I think because

986
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:20,680
Speaker 1: he's been in the news a lot lately. He's referred

987
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:22,680
Speaker 1: to as the goatman by a lot of people. But

988
00:57:22,720 --> 00:57:25,480
Speaker 1: it turned I almost missed it. Um. There was a

989
00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:28,920
Speaker 1: guy named Charles Foster who was also awarded for writing

990
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:33,360
Speaker 1: a book called Being a Beast. Uh And during the

991
00:57:33,400 --> 00:57:36,520
Speaker 1: award he accepted it while the goat guy just stood

992
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:38,360
Speaker 1: next to him and his goat costumes. We should say,

993
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:41,320
Speaker 1: the goat guy's name Tomas. How do you pronounce that?

994
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:43,760
Speaker 1: Is it thwaits? I think it's the way it's Thomas

995
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:47,880
Speaker 1: w A I t e s Thomas the way it's in. Yeah.

996
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:50,560
Speaker 1: So they each wrote books, which one. Let's talk about

997
00:57:50,560 --> 00:57:53,760
Speaker 1: Foster first. Yeah, let's touch on Foster first. So Foster

998
00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:58,000
Speaker 1: is an English writer who lived underground with badgers, swam

999
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:01,760
Speaker 1: with otters, and followed foxes on the alleyways of East London.

1000
00:58:01,840 --> 00:58:05,480
Speaker 1: He also tried to paraglide with Swift's I thought this

1001
00:58:05,520 --> 00:58:08,400
Speaker 1: was interesting because I looked him up, and previously Foster

1002
00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:13,600
Speaker 1: has written a lot of like medical ethics and healthcare

1003
00:58:13,680 --> 00:58:18,640
Speaker 1: law books, also on theology, so that this was a

1004
00:58:18,680 --> 00:58:20,640
Speaker 1: kind of interesting place to see him go. But he

1005
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:23,280
Speaker 1: claims to practice, at least in one interview I saw,

1006
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:27,080
Speaker 1: he claims to practice quote literary shamanism. Well, you could

1007
00:58:27,080 --> 00:58:30,920
Speaker 1: say he's definitely getting in touch with the natural world here. Uh.

1008
00:58:31,200 --> 00:58:35,240
Speaker 1: During his six weeks with badgers, he lived underground in

1009
00:58:35,360 --> 00:58:39,520
Speaker 1: eight earthworms while he was down there. Other examples from

1010
00:58:39,560 --> 00:58:42,080
Speaker 1: his book, as cataloged in the New York Times book Review.

1011
00:58:42,800 --> 00:58:46,240
Speaker 1: To understand the lives of urban foxes living in London,

1012
00:58:46,520 --> 00:58:49,080
Speaker 1: he decided to head out onto the London streets and

1013
00:58:49,160 --> 00:58:54,000
Speaker 1: to quote Wallow incontinently in his own mess and to

1014
00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 1: eat scraps of food that he finds discarded in the trash,

1015
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:02,000
Speaker 1: such as pizza, fried rice, and chips. And during his

1016
00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:07,120
Speaker 1: Otter episode, Foster and his six children decided to defecate

1017
00:59:07,160 --> 00:59:10,600
Speaker 1: outdoors and then examine each other's species to try to

1018
00:59:10,680 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 1: distinguish each family member's leavings by the smell. All right,

1019
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:17,400
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. That seems like it's borderline. Child

1020
00:59:17,400 --> 00:59:20,480
Speaker 1: abused to me well, at least these are older children.

1021
00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 1: I think, okay, um, what kids love pop you know,

1022
00:59:27,240 --> 00:59:29,840
Speaker 1: but I would say it certainly sounds to like it

1023
00:59:29,920 --> 00:59:32,360
Speaker 1: borders on madness. I mean, like biblical accounts, was it

1024
00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 1: in Nebucha Nezzar who went mad and pretended and thought

1025
00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:37,800
Speaker 1: he was a bull? Or maybe oh I don't remember

1026
00:59:37,960 --> 00:59:40,640
Speaker 1: one of these. I'm sure our listeners will correct me. Well,

1027
00:59:40,640 --> 00:59:44,400
Speaker 1: one of our biblical kings in the Old Testament days

1028
00:59:44,440 --> 00:59:47,360
Speaker 1: would would think himself a bull, that's go running around

1029
00:59:47,520 --> 00:59:49,800
Speaker 1: and uh, and it was. It was madness. But here

1030
00:59:49,840 --> 00:59:52,520
Speaker 1: it's science. Yeah, well this is something there, Maybe is

1031
00:59:52,600 --> 00:59:56,720
Speaker 1: something interesting to learn from trying to take on the

1032
00:59:57,240 --> 00:59:59,480
Speaker 1: lifestyle of an animal. Now you can't fully do it

1033
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:03,160
Speaker 1: because you can't be the animal. But is is there

1034
01:00:03,160 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 1: maybe something to learn from living in a badger burrow

1035
01:00:06,400 --> 01:00:09,080
Speaker 1: underground and eating earthworms, or running around the streets and

1036
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:12,560
Speaker 1: eating garbage or smelling pieces to try to get social cues.

1037
01:00:12,760 --> 01:00:16,000
Speaker 1: Foster argues in this book that his goal was to

1038
01:00:16,120 --> 01:00:19,160
Speaker 1: make people reflect on their own viewpoint of the world,

1039
01:00:19,160 --> 01:00:20,640
Speaker 1: so he thinks of all of this as being a

1040
01:00:20,680 --> 01:00:24,960
Speaker 1: travel book, like giving them different perspectives on life. He

1041
01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:28,440
Speaker 1: described the otters that he lived with as quote, relentless

1042
01:00:28,600 --> 01:00:31,959
Speaker 1: killing machines who eat the equivalent of eighty eight Big

1043
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:34,960
Speaker 1: Max a day, and he said being an otter is

1044
01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:38,360
Speaker 1: like being on speed because they have a requirement to

1045
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:41,400
Speaker 1: constantly keep their calorie and take up, so all they

1046
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:46,360
Speaker 1: do is crave. And then ultimately he sees human beings

1047
01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:49,920
Speaker 1: as acting toward the natural world with a lack of empathy.

1048
01:00:50,040 --> 01:00:52,840
Speaker 1: I can't disagree with him there. He says, if we

1049
01:00:52,960 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 1: acted that way toward each other, we would be considered psychopaths.

1050
01:00:57,760 --> 01:00:59,880
Speaker 1: I think I think this is interesting because I sort

1051
01:00:59,920 --> 01:01:02,640
Speaker 1: of respect the project of trying to understand what it's

1052
01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:04,520
Speaker 1: like to be an animal, but at the same time,

1053
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:07,280
Speaker 1: maybe we just can't understand what it's like to be

1054
01:01:07,320 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 1: an animal. That that is uh. I think that's a

1055
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 1: very pervasive argument, one made most famously by American philosopher

1056
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:18,400
Speaker 1: Thomas Nagel, who asked the question, what is it like

1057
01:01:18,480 --> 01:01:22,600
Speaker 1: to be a bat? This was the article, and he

1058
01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:26,200
Speaker 1: ultimately argued that it is impossible for any animal to

1059
01:01:26,280 --> 01:01:30,760
Speaker 1: comprehend another animal's mind state, specifically impossible for humans to

1060
01:01:30,880 --> 01:01:35,480
Speaker 1: really comprehend the mind state of any other entity. Uh.

1061
01:01:35,520 --> 01:01:37,680
Speaker 1: And he uses that as an example because it of

1062
01:01:37,720 --> 01:01:41,400
Speaker 1: course it perceives the world through echolocation, which even if

1063
01:01:41,400 --> 01:01:44,720
Speaker 1: you study like echolocation and you look at the graphs

1064
01:01:44,800 --> 01:01:49,080
Speaker 1: and I was actually just reading um a Little Animal

1065
01:01:49,080 --> 01:01:52,360
Speaker 1: book to my son, where it doesn't use the term echolocation,

1066
01:01:52,400 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 1: but it talks about bats, uh, you know, in more

1067
01:01:54,920 --> 01:01:58,520
Speaker 1: simpler terms like seeing the world by hearing these sounds,

1068
01:01:59,120 --> 01:02:01,160
Speaker 1: you know, really trying to ta get down. But even

1069
01:02:01,200 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 1: like really breaking it down into a very digestible nuggets,

1070
01:02:04,160 --> 01:02:08,200
Speaker 1: it's such an alien concept and so so Nagle's point is, yeah,

1071
01:02:08,240 --> 01:02:11,080
Speaker 1: there's good luck, but you can't do it. I mean

1072
01:02:11,600 --> 01:02:14,520
Speaker 1: you you can't really put yourself in that mindset. You

1073
01:02:14,680 --> 01:02:16,960
Speaker 1: What you can do is what we always do, right,

1074
01:02:17,040 --> 01:02:20,280
Speaker 1: the kind of Peter Rabbit scenario where we just imagine

1075
01:02:20,360 --> 01:02:24,000
Speaker 1: animals as being little people back to personifying be it

1076
01:02:24,080 --> 01:02:28,120
Speaker 1: our pets or wild animals with with you know, increasingly

1077
01:02:28,320 --> 01:02:32,320
Speaker 1: disastrous or tragic consequences. But of course that's not going

1078
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:34,720
Speaker 1: to stop us from trying, right No, And I guess

1079
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:38,880
Speaker 1: maybe that's where these these studies are wealth, these books,

1080
01:02:38,920 --> 01:02:42,480
Speaker 1: these experiences, these experiments are handy in it, and that

1081
01:02:42,640 --> 01:02:44,720
Speaker 1: it's kind of uh, it's it's like, let me try

1082
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:48,240
Speaker 1: and put myself in the mindset, in the in the

1083
01:02:48,320 --> 01:02:52,400
Speaker 1: mind state of an animal, but in a more thoughtful way,

1084
01:02:52,480 --> 01:02:57,280
Speaker 1: like actually, actually, you know, try thinking about like their

1085
01:02:57,360 --> 01:03:00,320
Speaker 1: energy level, their their food, and what values they have

1086
01:03:00,840 --> 01:03:04,040
Speaker 1: on the world they perceive and and in both cases,

1087
01:03:04,640 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 1: well we should get to the other guy, Thomas Thwaite's

1088
01:03:06,760 --> 01:03:08,760
Speaker 1: what what he did. But in both cases, what I

1089
01:03:08,760 --> 01:03:11,440
Speaker 1: think is interesting is they went to physical lengths to

1090
01:03:11,560 --> 01:03:14,080
Speaker 1: understand the experience. Like they were like, you can't just

1091
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:18,480
Speaker 1: imagine being a fox or imagine being a goat. You

1092
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:21,760
Speaker 1: actually have to change the way your body interacts with

1093
01:03:21,840 --> 01:03:23,920
Speaker 1: the world and the way you get your food and

1094
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:26,920
Speaker 1: stuff like that to understand better what it's like to

1095
01:03:26,960 --> 01:03:33,480
Speaker 1: be these animals. Yeah, so goat guy Thomas Thwaite. You've

1096
01:03:33,520 --> 01:03:35,840
Speaker 1: probably seen him in the news lately. If you haven't,

1097
01:03:36,040 --> 01:03:39,760
Speaker 1: he's been covered everywhere. In fact, just yesterday, as I

1098
01:03:39,800 --> 01:03:43,040
Speaker 1: was doing research for this, a story popped up that

1099
01:03:43,400 --> 01:03:46,480
Speaker 1: a local news network somewhere here in the States was

1100
01:03:46,520 --> 01:03:50,320
Speaker 1: covering the Ignobels and they're trying the broadcaster was trying

1101
01:03:50,320 --> 01:03:55,880
Speaker 1: to talk about goat man, and uh, she just absolutely

1102
01:03:55,920 --> 01:03:58,680
Speaker 1: lost it on air. Like they were showing the footage

1103
01:03:58,680 --> 01:04:02,760
Speaker 1: of him walking around in the Swiss Alps with other goats,

1104
01:04:03,160 --> 01:04:06,640
Speaker 1: and she just lost it on here. She could barely Well,

1105
01:04:06,880 --> 01:04:08,920
Speaker 1: have you seen the photoge, So what's funny about a

1106
01:04:08,960 --> 01:04:11,480
Speaker 1: man being a goat? Yeah? Well, I mean I guess

1107
01:04:11,480 --> 01:04:13,960
Speaker 1: that's why it's amazing. Okay, So here's where my bias

1108
01:04:14,000 --> 01:04:15,400
Speaker 1: is gonna come out. I'm just gonna say this and

1109
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:17,800
Speaker 1: then let's go through it. I'm not particularly fond of

1110
01:04:17,840 --> 01:04:21,760
Speaker 1: goat man. He's just he's been everywhere lately. I'm kind

1111
01:04:21,760 --> 01:04:25,480
Speaker 1: of bored with him. And then also, uh, in relation

1112
01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:29,600
Speaker 1: to all these other ignoble prizes, even a foster, I

1113
01:04:29,640 --> 01:04:33,840
Speaker 1: feel like he's just like kind of performing this thing

1114
01:04:33,920 --> 01:04:36,920
Speaker 1: to get attention, and these people are actually like trying

1115
01:04:36,920 --> 01:04:39,120
Speaker 1: to understand the world in a different way. Well, I

1116
01:04:39,160 --> 01:04:41,040
Speaker 1: had to give him some credit, at least for one

1117
01:04:41,040 --> 01:04:44,800
Speaker 1: of his previous projects, the toaster project, which which some

1118
01:04:44,920 --> 01:04:47,480
Speaker 1: listeners may be familiar with. This is where he attempted

1119
01:04:47,520 --> 01:04:51,240
Speaker 1: to make a toaster from scratch as an exercise. And

1120
01:04:51,480 --> 01:04:53,200
Speaker 1: you know, I guess I'm packing just how removed we

1121
01:04:53,240 --> 01:04:56,840
Speaker 1: are from the primary skills involved and in creating the

1122
01:04:56,880 --> 01:04:59,680
Speaker 1: objects we depend on, how dependent we are on manufacturing,

1123
01:05:00,040 --> 01:05:02,680
Speaker 1: and he published a book about this and on the

1124
01:05:02,720 --> 01:05:07,560
Speaker 1: cover there's a photograph of this just ungodly blasphemous creation

1125
01:05:08,240 --> 01:05:10,160
Speaker 1: of a toaster because you know, he since he had

1126
01:05:10,160 --> 01:05:12,840
Speaker 1: to learn to you know, to smelt the metal, mind

1127
01:05:12,880 --> 01:05:15,440
Speaker 1: the or you know all, they just build it utterly

1128
01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:19,600
Speaker 1: from scratch. It looks just absurd and kind of horrible,

1129
01:05:19,600 --> 01:05:22,800
Speaker 1: but it supposedly functioned at least for a few seconds.

1130
01:05:22,800 --> 01:05:26,760
Speaker 1: And we should say he himself is already a conceptual designer.

1131
01:05:26,840 --> 01:05:29,120
Speaker 1: He's based out of England, but that's his day job.

1132
01:05:30,720 --> 01:05:32,840
Speaker 1: But yeah, so he wrote a book as well. Of course,

1133
01:05:33,000 --> 01:05:35,560
Speaker 1: it is called Goat Man, How I Took a Holiday

1134
01:05:35,560 --> 01:05:39,000
Speaker 1: from being Human from the If this is correct according

1135
01:05:39,040 --> 01:05:44,440
Speaker 1: to Amazon, the publisher is the Princeton Architectural Press. So, yeah,

1136
01:05:44,560 --> 01:05:46,600
Speaker 1: you and I were talking about this earlier. I'm I'm

1137
01:05:46,600 --> 01:05:49,120
Speaker 1: thinking that that's partially because of his background as a

1138
01:05:49,160 --> 01:05:53,280
Speaker 1: conceptual designer, but then also the prosthetics that were constructed

1139
01:05:53,360 --> 01:05:56,160
Speaker 1: for him. He didn't make them himself, but he commissioned

1140
01:05:56,760 --> 01:06:00,320
Speaker 1: somebody to build prosthetics for him so that he could

1141
01:06:00,400 --> 01:06:03,040
Speaker 1: live like a goat. So if you've seen you have

1142
01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:06,040
Speaker 1: to google this to see it. But he wears this

1143
01:06:06,600 --> 01:06:10,920
Speaker 1: costume basically that like gives him goat legs, and he

1144
01:06:11,000 --> 01:06:15,520
Speaker 1: has like on all four yeah, I got with these stilts,

1145
01:06:15,920 --> 01:06:18,040
Speaker 1: and he has like the tilted head of a goat.

1146
01:06:18,080 --> 01:06:20,120
Speaker 1: He wears like a helmet kind of thing. He got

1147
01:06:20,120 --> 01:06:22,960
Speaker 1: a special goat gut that would help him digest grass.

1148
01:06:23,080 --> 01:06:25,840
Speaker 1: So what I what I read was he wanted that,

1149
01:06:25,920 --> 01:06:29,400
Speaker 1: but he wanted the goat gut, but it didn't actually yeah, yeah,

1150
01:06:29,440 --> 01:06:33,240
Speaker 1: he didn't actually achieve that was he constantly pooping like

1151
01:06:33,280 --> 01:06:35,720
Speaker 1: all goats I've ever been around, you know what I have.

1152
01:06:36,080 --> 01:06:38,800
Speaker 1: Maybe you have to buy the book. But I didn't

1153
01:06:38,800 --> 01:06:42,520
Speaker 1: read anything about his fecal practice because that would be

1154
01:06:42,560 --> 01:06:44,120
Speaker 1: my first thing. Is like, to be a goat, you

1155
01:06:44,160 --> 01:06:47,200
Speaker 1: gotta preep to do a lot of pooping. Well, he's

1156
01:06:47,240 --> 01:06:50,120
Speaker 1: wearing He's wearing clothes throughout all this. It's not like

1157
01:06:50,120 --> 01:06:53,000
Speaker 1: he's naked in the prosthetics. Like he's wearing pants and

1158
01:06:53,080 --> 01:06:55,520
Speaker 1: a shirt and stuff. When you see him marching around,

1159
01:06:56,280 --> 01:06:59,240
Speaker 1: uh and at the Igno bells, he wore the goat

1160
01:06:59,320 --> 01:07:02,600
Speaker 1: costume and pray surround on stage in it. All right,

1161
01:07:03,080 --> 01:07:04,920
Speaker 1: I would hope that next time he would be an

1162
01:07:04,960 --> 01:07:08,760
Speaker 1: ant heater but that would be more of an exercise

1163
01:07:08,800 --> 01:07:12,480
Speaker 1: in doppling. Doppling. Yes, we should do a whole episode

1164
01:07:12,480 --> 01:07:15,000
Speaker 1: on doppling. So yeah, I think I think there's a

1165
01:07:15,080 --> 01:07:17,480
Speaker 1: there's a big future in doppling. For anyone who's not familiar,

1166
01:07:17,520 --> 01:07:19,720
Speaker 1: this is we're of course alluding to Overdrawn at the

1167
01:07:19,760 --> 01:07:23,720
Speaker 1: Memory Bank, a fine film, fine film. Yeah, there's a

1168
01:07:24,240 --> 01:07:26,160
Speaker 1: you're probably familiar with it from in the Mystery Sense

1169
01:07:26,160 --> 01:07:29,320
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand. But it's based on a short story

1170
01:07:29,360 --> 01:07:33,080
Speaker 1: by John Varley. I believe. No, it's a novel, I believe. Yeah,

1171
01:07:33,520 --> 01:07:37,440
Speaker 1: a full blown novel, wonderful sci fi concept. We'll have

1172
01:07:37,480 --> 01:07:40,880
Speaker 1: to come back to it later, So I would be

1173
01:07:41,280 --> 01:07:43,880
Speaker 1: I would. I would just have to kick myself if

1174
01:07:43,880 --> 01:07:47,520
Speaker 1: I didn't mention that this Thomas Waite's book, The Goatman.

1175
01:07:47,640 --> 01:07:50,880
Speaker 1: Book has some pretty good Amazon reviews. Yeah, the Amazon

1176
01:07:50,960 --> 01:07:53,560
Speaker 1: reviews may in fact be better than the book itself.

1177
01:07:53,600 --> 01:07:57,600
Speaker 1: Well you ever read the book, Christian. I'm just I'm

1178
01:07:57,640 --> 01:07:59,600
Speaker 1: just gratchy about this guy. Look. I love the people

1179
01:07:59,600 --> 01:08:02,240
Speaker 1: who stick their heads between their legs and the other

1180
01:08:02,240 --> 01:08:04,320
Speaker 1: ones we're going to talk about. I love the rocks,

1181
01:08:04,400 --> 01:08:08,840
Speaker 1: but this guy, what's your attitude towards goats alone. I

1182
01:08:08,960 --> 01:08:11,680
Speaker 1: like goats, So it's not the animal. No, it's not

1183
01:08:11,720 --> 01:08:13,800
Speaker 1: the goats. That's this guy. Like it's just that, like

1184
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:16,439
Speaker 1: all these other people seem to me to be doing

1185
01:08:16,439 --> 01:08:20,960
Speaker 1: either research or trying to like inherently understand the world

1186
01:08:20,960 --> 01:08:22,720
Speaker 1: in a different way. And this feels like he was

1187
01:08:22,760 --> 01:08:25,320
Speaker 1: just preparing to sell a book and like he did

1188
01:08:25,320 --> 01:08:27,240
Speaker 1: a photo exhibit in low Maybe this is more of

1189
01:08:27,280 --> 01:08:30,679
Speaker 1: an artistic exercise as opposed to uh, you know, because

1190
01:08:30,920 --> 01:08:33,120
Speaker 1: if it was artistic, I guess I would support it

1191
01:08:33,160 --> 01:08:35,360
Speaker 1: more to it just seems like a sort of like

1192
01:08:35,479 --> 01:08:39,719
Speaker 1: look at me like moment. And maybe I'm just biased because,

1193
01:08:39,760 --> 01:08:43,680
Speaker 1: like you guys know, like we look at feeds a

1194
01:08:43,720 --> 01:08:47,600
Speaker 1: lot of what's going on in science and news, and

1195
01:08:47,600 --> 01:08:50,200
Speaker 1: this guy showed up in my feed constantly for the

1196
01:08:50,320 --> 01:08:55,400
Speaker 1: last two months and even before you yeah, well that's it.

1197
01:08:55,520 --> 01:08:59,280
Speaker 1: It's goatman fatigue. I'm just I'm burnt out on goat man. Well, anyway,

1198
01:08:59,320 --> 01:09:02,760
Speaker 1: the Amazon reviewers did not necessarily share your fatigue. One

1199
01:09:02,920 --> 01:09:04,960
Speaker 1: review I want to read. This book made me change

1200
01:09:05,000 --> 01:09:07,800
Speaker 1: my outlook on life and how I examined my day

1201
01:09:07,880 --> 01:09:10,559
Speaker 1: every morning. I am a goat. We are all goats

1202
01:09:10,680 --> 01:09:14,559
Speaker 1: by his book Be a Goat. Another two star review

1203
01:09:14,640 --> 01:09:19,000
Speaker 1: reads all over case no punctuation, What the hell? Uh?

1204
01:09:19,479 --> 01:09:23,240
Speaker 1: Several one one review says, having lived the last seven

1205
01:09:23,360 --> 01:09:26,320
Speaker 1: years as a goat, I can vouch for the author's expertise.

1206
01:09:27,000 --> 01:09:29,400
Speaker 1: He does a great job of capturing what it means

1207
01:09:29,439 --> 01:09:32,479
Speaker 1: to go full goat. Uh. And isn't there like they

1208
01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:36,280
Speaker 1: complain about how he was this. This reviewer and at

1209
01:09:36,360 --> 01:09:38,519
Speaker 1: least one other I saw, complained that he did not

1210
01:09:38,680 --> 01:09:42,280
Speaker 1: talk enough about his sex life as a goat. Well,

1211
01:09:42,320 --> 01:09:46,080
Speaker 1: he actually so to clarify it. Uh. First of all,

1212
01:09:46,120 --> 01:09:48,320
Speaker 1: he said the prosthetics that he was wearing were very

1213
01:09:48,479 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 1: painful when he was going downhill. Uh. And I want

1214
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:54,759
Speaker 1: to clarify too. He did not sleep with the goats

1215
01:09:55,280 --> 01:09:58,479
Speaker 1: outside because he said it was too cold and rainy,

1216
01:09:58,560 --> 01:10:00,439
Speaker 1: so he would get out of his goat austume and

1217
01:10:00,479 --> 01:10:04,360
Speaker 1: go sleep in a tent with his crew. He traveled

1218
01:10:04,360 --> 01:10:06,960
Speaker 1: with a herd of goats through the Swiss Swiss Alps

1219
01:10:07,000 --> 01:10:09,519
Speaker 1: for three days, and then he spent another three days

1220
01:10:09,680 --> 01:10:14,280
Speaker 1: by himself as a goat. So six days total, but

1221
01:10:14,400 --> 01:10:18,559
Speaker 1: not at night. H. I don't know. Can you get

1222
01:10:18,560 --> 01:10:20,599
Speaker 1: the full goat experience. If you don't get rained one

1223
01:10:20,640 --> 01:10:22,160
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, well, I mean to

1224
01:10:22,240 --> 01:10:25,040
Speaker 1: come back to nag, you cannot get the full goat

1225
01:10:25,080 --> 01:10:28,320
Speaker 1: experience period. I guess it comes down to to what

1226
01:10:28,479 --> 01:10:33,599
Speaker 1: extent did he get a significant goats of the goat

1227
01:10:33,640 --> 01:10:37,600
Speaker 1: experience as it is accessible to human beings. Yeah, we

1228
01:10:37,640 --> 01:10:40,840
Speaker 1: should clarify too that like, unless you've seen the video,

1229
01:10:40,960 --> 01:10:42,720
Speaker 1: like you may not like have a full understanding of

1230
01:10:42,760 --> 01:10:44,599
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. But this guy like literally

1231
01:10:44,640 --> 01:10:48,080
Speaker 1: like eight grass, Like he would bend over and like

1232
01:10:48,520 --> 01:10:50,600
Speaker 1: eat grass right off the ground and stuff in his

1233
01:10:50,680 --> 01:10:54,400
Speaker 1: goat performance. And I think, like I remember reading something

1234
01:10:54,439 --> 01:10:56,280
Speaker 1: along the lines of like he was a little concerned

1235
01:10:56,280 --> 01:10:58,320
Speaker 1: at first that the goat herd wasn't going to accept

1236
01:10:58,400 --> 01:11:00,320
Speaker 1: him and they might attack him with their whole warns.

1237
01:11:00,400 --> 01:11:02,880
Speaker 1: But then like he need friends with one goat and

1238
01:11:02,920 --> 01:11:05,439
Speaker 1: a he says, they accepted him in the end, in

1239
01:11:05,439 --> 01:11:07,760
Speaker 1: the end, they did. Yeah, that would be my fear

1240
01:11:07,840 --> 01:11:10,719
Speaker 1: that I would be accepted in the end by bye goats.

1241
01:11:10,960 --> 01:11:15,840
Speaker 1: That's fear. That's how it would end. Yes, Okay, I've

1242
01:11:15,840 --> 01:11:19,880
Speaker 1: got to ask the question why is this amusing? Well, Well,

1243
01:11:19,960 --> 01:11:23,080
Speaker 1: I feel like we've answered that question because it's sniffing

1244
01:11:23,080 --> 01:11:27,320
Speaker 1: poop and goat goatman and and eating earthworms in a

1245
01:11:27,320 --> 01:11:30,759
Speaker 1: badger hole, animals being people and people being animals, both

1246
01:11:31,080 --> 01:11:34,040
Speaker 1: instantly amusing. It's like, it's always funny when you put

1247
01:11:34,040 --> 01:11:37,240
Speaker 1: an animal in human clothes. It's always funny when you

1248
01:11:37,280 --> 01:11:39,280
Speaker 1: put a man in a badger hole and have a

1249
01:11:39,360 --> 01:11:42,040
Speaker 1: meat earth once. We've got both of those in the ignobles.

1250
01:11:42,120 --> 01:11:45,120
Speaker 1: We've got rats and pants and men dressing up like

1251
01:11:45,200 --> 01:11:48,559
Speaker 1: goats or living with badgers. It's all through the looking glass,

1252
01:11:48,600 --> 01:11:50,360
Speaker 1: and we have a looking glass. You know what I

1253
01:11:50,400 --> 01:11:52,680
Speaker 1: first thought of when I was when I read about this,

1254
01:11:52,760 --> 01:11:56,519
Speaker 1: I thought of Bella Lego sees Atomic Superman monologue from

1255
01:11:56,600 --> 01:12:00,360
Speaker 1: Bride of the Monster, remember that when he's it's in

1256
01:12:00,400 --> 01:12:04,600
Speaker 1: the middle of it. You know, I have no home, hunted, despised,

1257
01:12:05,000 --> 01:12:09,080
Speaker 1: living like an animal. The jungle is my home. It's great.

1258
01:12:09,320 --> 01:12:14,200
Speaker 1: Maybe those guys said that to themselves every night. Maybe. Alright,

1259
01:12:14,200 --> 01:12:18,360
Speaker 1: So there you have it, our first dose of ignoble

1260
01:12:20,080 --> 01:12:22,720
Speaker 1: for your listening pleasure. So to hear about the other ones,

1261
01:12:22,760 --> 01:12:25,880
Speaker 1: you need to join us again. Next time. Yeah, next

1262
01:12:25,880 --> 01:12:29,439
Speaker 1: time we will be covering even more ignobles will be

1263
01:12:29,479 --> 01:12:34,480
Speaker 1: talking about everything from b s, two lying white horses,

1264
01:12:34,600 --> 01:12:40,240
Speaker 1: volkswagens and dead flies. All right, and in the meantime, Hey,

1265
01:12:40,280 --> 01:12:43,800
Speaker 1: you want to check out the old Ignoble episodes, then

1266
01:12:43,840 --> 01:12:45,519
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1267
01:12:45,560 --> 01:12:47,920
Speaker 1: That's where we find all the podcast episodes. You'll find

1268
01:12:47,920 --> 01:12:50,519
Speaker 1: some videos, you find blog posts, you'll find links out

1269
01:12:50,520 --> 01:12:55,320
Speaker 1: to our very social media accounts. Yeah, we're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram. As I mentioned before. Uh and also, by

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Speaker 1: the way, you might have seen this on social media,

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Speaker 1: but if you haven't, I have another podcast outside of

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Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. I do a show called super Context.

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Speaker 1: It's myself and my partner Charlie Bennett. We work together

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Speaker 1: on it and it is a show that is an

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Speaker 1: autopsy of media, how we consume it and how it

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Speaker 1: informs everyday culture. It's a little different from the science

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01:13:17,479 --> 01:13:20,720
Speaker 1: e Stuff to Blow your Mind angle. We have episodes

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01:13:20,800 --> 01:13:24,840
Speaker 1: on everything from Lady Dynamite at Flannery O'Connor, nick Cave,

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Speaker 1: the Hatefully, and we even did a primer on the

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Speaker 1: medium of podcasting and how it currently works. So you

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Speaker 1: can check that show out also on Twitter and Tumbler

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01:13:34,920 --> 01:13:37,680
Speaker 1: or just download it wherever you get podcasts. Uh, and

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Speaker 1: I draw an exclusive cartoon for every episode. If you

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Speaker 1: want to see that, you can see them on on

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Speaker 1: on the Super Contact social media channels. But Joe, stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind wise, where do people write us

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Speaker 1: directly if they want to tell us how they feel

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Speaker 1: about goat Man? Or you know what? I would really

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Speaker 1: like to know this time around? What five traits they

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Speaker 1: think Stuff to Blow your Mind has as a brand? Oh?

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Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Oh no, uh, yeah, well

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Speaker 1: it didn't leave me much to say. I guess it

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Speaker 1: was stuff to blow your mind. Wait, that's not it

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01:14:13,600 --> 01:14:25,960
Speaker 1: blow the mind at How stuff work? Stock coom for

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that

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Speaker 1: how stuff work? Stop com