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Nostalgia: Mithridatism · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to Why.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: We do what we do. I am your lightly poisoned host, Abraham,
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: and I'm flying solo. Unfortunately, we have had some emergencies
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  Speaker 2: to get these episodes out. So for now, we are
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: going to release another nostalgia episode. We did one last week,
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: we'll do one again this week. Hopefully we'll be back
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  Speaker 2: to do another one, but we're hoping we'll get caught
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  Speaker 2: up by next week. But this episode is a re
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: release of an episode we released in November of twenty
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: twenty one. It was episode two thirty four, and it
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: is coming out as a nostalgia episode as episode four
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: sixty three, so it's very close to being exactly double
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: the number. But we are going to play this episode
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: in its entirety and then I'll come back, and because
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: I'm alone, I'm just going to give a very brief
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: update on things to know about this episode, and then
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: we'll close it out and let you go about your day,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: and it'll be a shorter one this week, but as
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I said, hopefully we will be back to the regular
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• 1:39
  Speaker 2: hanging through this with us just for fun. Because we're here,
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  Speaker 2: I hope that you enjoy what you hear in this discussion.
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  Speaker 2: As I said, this is a little bit of a
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• 2:25
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  Speaker 2: to release a bunch of nostalgias in a row. And
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  Speaker 2: things happen, you know, and we're making do with what
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: we have. So I hope you enjoy this. And it's
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: a rerelease, so you kind of get to dive into
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: the history. And if you're a returning person, then welcome back.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: I hope that you continue to enjoy what you are
• 2:43
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  Speaker 2: these at the end of this discussion today. So we
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: are going to play this pisode for you now and
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: I will revisit at the end and do a very
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: brief little update. All right, welcome to Why We Do
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: what We do. I am going to be your somewhat
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: sickly host.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Abraham, and I'm going to be your based on the topic,
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: maybe your blue skinned host Shane Nice.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: All right, welcome to our podcast. We are psychology podcast
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: most days, and we are we like to talk about
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: all kinds of things psychology related, particularly with a hard
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: edge science sort of view. Sometimes that means that we
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: just sort of ramble about stuff and sometimes we tell stories.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Anyway, today we're going to talk about a phenomenon of
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: self poisoning. Ah now, yes, important note not suicide, right,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: This is not at all about self poisoning, specifically with
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: the intention of that resulting in a fatal dose of poisoning,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: but self poisoning with the intention of surviving the poison.
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  Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: And this is not self poisoning by putting on a
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: poison record and listening to Brett Michael's vocals over and
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: over and over again. That's not the type of self
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: poisoning we're talking about either.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Indeed, although I suppose that my fall to the category
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: of what we're talking about, depending on how you think
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: about eighties.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: Metal, I feel like if I were to show this
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: to my dad, he would be like, He's like, yeah, no,
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: I self poison throughout the entire seventies and eighties.
• 4:32
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  Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah, we've actually even read reviews on this podcast
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: sometimes occasionally, not super frequently, but you know, it happens
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: here and there. Yeah enough, Yeah, flatterus enough. He'll probably
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: make it. Of course it's something really clever or funny,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: you know that sort of that. But maybe you don't
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  Speaker 2: want your comments read either way, It's fine.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Help us out, that is what we're saying.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Help us out, that's what we're asking. Yeah, all right,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: So this is going to be a short one, mostly
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: because we're sort of telling a short story and then
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: understanding the context of this and how this applies to
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: things that we do currently in life. Yeah, and so
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: let's dive in, as they say, Yeah, I think that's
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: the word in the legend of Mithridates or I've also
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: found that it was pronounced Mithridates, depending on who you're
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: talking to. And this is a person who lived roughly
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty or one hundred and twenty to
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: sixty three BCE. And for those of you who are
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: familiar with Roman history, Rome was notorious for citizens poisoning
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: one another, poison mushrooms, other similar concoctions. There was this
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: powder that they used that was arsenic triglyceride or something
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: like that is an arsenic thing. Yeah, that was called
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: the Successor powder because it was so effective at poisoning
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: people and was I guess described as being used to
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: topple many rulers and that sort of thing.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: I also liked the idea that it was like a
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: big business, like thinking about like big box poison companies
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: and stuff at the time, and like like different poison
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: stores like and then there's like conspiracy theorists that are like, yeah,
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: of course people are dying, it's big poison.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. It was. You could you could
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: go pick up your sort of low grade right off
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: the shelf Walmart poison or they had their their tradeois.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. Yeah. You either had your artisanal poisons or
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: your just your dollar store poisons.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: Your organic poisons, and during certain times a year you'd
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: also have pumpkin spice poison.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: So right specifically, so not unlike today.
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  Speaker 3: Not unlike today, Yes, absolutely so. People would poison their
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: political rivals, family members who they didn't like people that
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: thought they were swindlers. There were all kinds of reasons.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: It was pretty much justified at any point in time,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: if I wanted to poison somebody, I could poison somebody,
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: and I'm gonna do it.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: That's right now we're still talking about Mithrid Deatees or Mithridates,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: but right now we're setting the context for the world
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: in which he lived and talking about Rome here in
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: the prevalence of poison. There were some considerations to keep
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: in mind about these rumors, of these thoughts that Rome
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: was this place of just everybody's killing everybody with poison. First,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: despite what is historically believed to be a widespread phenomenon,
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: the fact or the idea that there's a lot of
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: poisoning occurred, it was really attributed to women and slaves. Okay,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: these are the people who were not respected and didn't
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: have any rights already, and they were the ones being
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: accused of being the poisoners.
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  Speaker 3: Right, And this was fear mongering in service of classism, racism,
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: and sexism. Basically, it was often believed that women were
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: unscrupulous adulterers and so they were poisoning their husbands so
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: that they could be with their new lovers. And so
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: one source argued that in ancient Rome calling someone an
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: adulteress essentially meant calling a person a poisoner. So they
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: were kind of one and the same. And if you
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: think about it, it makes sense, right, like these are
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: these are folks that are marginalized people that are technically
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: oppressed in some in some fashion, right, so they're trying
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: to get out from under their oppressors. So poisoning is
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: an effective way to get out of.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: It in a society that effectively and not to like
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: misrepresent history or even really the Romans, but where you
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: definitely had some clear examples of misogyny and a lot
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: of generally to be expected in fidelity among men, infidelity
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: among women was like so much worse that if they
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: were they that they were the ones believed to just
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: be doing it constantly, poisoning everyone in their wake. Right,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: And so that was sort of how that was described,
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: which of horses, just a bunch of sexism, right, and
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: not not even ending there. There's more to understand about
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: this poisoning thing. It is possible that a significant proportion
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: of outbreaks of death that were attributed to poison so
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: people saying there is this huge rash of people dying,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: the adulteresses and slaves are added again, poisoning everyone around them.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: It was actually misunderstood epidemics of disease, and that that
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: was actually ultimately the reason that there was all these
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: deaths happening. But like so many things, when there is
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of people dying, there is a scientific reasonable
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: explanation like disease, and then there is a sexist, classist,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: racist explanation like there all these minority, marginalized groups are
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: causing it because they're bad.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: If you hadn't picked this up from our history, we
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: have a long tradition as a species of blaming certain
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: groups specifically for diseases. Right, we blame immigrants like not we,
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: I should say, but like Americans will blame immigrants for
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: bringing in diseases or even like drug epidemics and stuff
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: like that, when ultimately all the meth is made in
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: Alabama and we.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Know that that's right, and so yeah, yeah, we love
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: to pick a group of people and blame them for
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: something that's happening. Particularly, I've found that the group that's
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: actually committing the problem, they're the ones usually pointing the
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: fingers yep, absolutely, yeah, I just sort of picking a target.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: So all right. So we were talking about Mithridates, and
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: the legend that we opened up with in this dialogue
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: was about a boy who was destined to be the
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: king of Pontus, which is in Asia for those of
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: you are not familiar with your ancient historical geography. And
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: he grew up in a household in which his mother
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: was believed to have or at least suspected of poisoning
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: his father, who was the king of Pontus, as would
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: be the case now, as Mithridates was too young, I'm
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: just gonna stick with me third eighties for the rest
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: of this. If everyone that feels good, that's okay, cool
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: to me, awesome, all right. So, as he was too
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: young to take the throne when his father passed, his
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: mother was the acting ruler. She was pretty cool with
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: this because she's like, think of the power, you might call.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: So she was the assistant to the regional monarch, you
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: might say, for us office fan service there. But as
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: as Mithridates grew older, he was becoming eligible to take
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: over these ruling duties, and he started becoming afraid of
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: being poisoned by his mother. Or his brother, who he
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: believed wanted to prevent him from ascending to power so
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: that they could keep it for themselves, And so in
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: fear of that happening, he ran away from home.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so on his drifting travels, he was paranoid about
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: poisoning and experimented with strategies to make himself immune to poison.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Some involved drinking the blood of animals he had poisoned
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: and that subsequently died from the So just kind of
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: like almost like microdosing a little bit this particular poison
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: that he himself had enacted. And you know the thing is,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: is this idea, this being afraid of being poisoned, is
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: a legit thing that you'll see across like any sort
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: of like monarchy, or you'll see this kind of always
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: go on. That's why kings would have tasters, right, who
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: would taste food before food would arrive or like when
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: it would arrive, to make sure that the food had
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: itself had not been poisoned. Because people were always fighting
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: for the throne and it happened within families. So it
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: makes sense that he had this Like this wasn't like
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: an irrational fear.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: This is a pretty legitimate fear for somebody in his position,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: and so they tried to do some things like drink blood.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Interesting note about the tasters that I've always wondered about
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: and I didn't look into in researching this topic, but
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: it's a really good point that you raise is most
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: poisons don't act fast enough for you for that to
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: make any amount of sense, right, Like they would have
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: to eat in the food like the day before to
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: be able to actually demonstrate that it was safety. Like.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: There are very few poisons that are that, and I
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: think if you were trying to poison them on ARC,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: you would know that and specifically choose one that wasn't
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: fast acting so that it wouldn't be caught by their tasters, right,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: assuming they had any. And so anyway, that is just
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: the thing I thought that was sort of like it
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: seems like a totally pointless practice. I think what ultimately
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: happened is that there was someone who got like a
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: ton of like super fresh, really good free food and
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: they're like, this is the job that I want and
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: the job that I'm going to strive to have, and
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: good on them, yeah, or they were forced into it,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: or they were forced into it, Yeah, it's like, if.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: You don't be my taster, I will take all of
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: your land and make sure your family does not your
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: genetic line does not continue.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the taster got really fat. All right, Just
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: be clear when you said he sort of poisoned the
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: animals and then drank their blood. Mithrd Eate's was not
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: the one that died. It was animals that died, because yes,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: he poisoned him, and it was delight diluting it by
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: by putting in their blood and doing vampire things. But yeah,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: essentially with his experimenting with this, he kind of became
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: like a scientist of poisons and death definitely became a
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: super expert in poisons. He study the effects of poisons,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: He carefully measured his doses, he took copious notes on
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: the results and his dosing and that sort of thing,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: and he learned to administer poisons, at least to himself,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: in sort of the service of understanding poisons and dosing.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So, although it's highly unlikely that he himself invented
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: the practice itself, he also started microdosing poison cocktails, So
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: that is, he took a bunch of poisons, but at
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: such low doses that they weren't actually harming him, not
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: in any significant way. And then he gradually increased the
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: dosage over time. And you'll see people do this, like
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: you'll hear people talking about microdosing acid now and stuff
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: like that, or mushrooms. You know, people will do that
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: for like experimenting with drugs, but people will do this
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: for this type of this thing here where he's he's
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: kind of trying to slowly build a tolerance to poison.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: So as his body habituated to the poisons, he would
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: again increase the dose so he was no longer feeling sick.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: He could take the poison, wouldn't feel ill, And then
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: what would then just make sure that he took a
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: little bit more next time, and with enough exposure, his
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: body would tolerate levels of poisoning that would be easily
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: fatal to a sort of non enlightened individual.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: So real quick, Abraham, what what does habituated mean? And
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: I'm going to say that in the four ky Toy story,
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: four tone, what is habituated time?
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: A great vocabulary. Yeah, habituated is you know, used in context.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: I think I tried so it sort of spells out here,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: but it really just means a decreasing response to the
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: same presentation of some kind of stimulus or event or substance,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: like let's say, for example, a particular noise in your environment.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: If you habituate to it, it means your reaction to
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: it and your noticing of it decreases over time as
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: you sort of tune it out, baited out, if you will. Yeah,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: And that's that's also the case here is just sort
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: of his reaction to the poison tight traded downward over time,
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: And so that's that's what habituated means.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: It's a good word. I always use the example of
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: like I grew up in a house where a train
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: would go by the back of my house mm hm,
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: and every time it would come through, it go bah
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: bah really loud. And when we first moved in, it
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: was very it was horrifying, yeah, because the whole house
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: would shake too. And then the longer I lived there,
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: I don't even notice it. I'm thirty five now and
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: when I go to my parents' house, like, I don't
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: even notice that it's going by.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Super. That's a super good example and one of
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: the more common ones. I think often sided as people
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: who live in sort of noisy areas and they just
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: get used to it, and that getting used to it
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: is a habituation piece. Yeah, cool, very good.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: I don't ever want to be in a position where
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: I have to get used to poison, though.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Well maybe maybe if life circumstances lead you there, you
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: would want to be in that position.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it's fair. I gets It's all context, right,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: It all depends.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Are you planning to be the king of Pontus anytime soon?
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, I have talked about getting knighted. There is
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: a process for Americans to get knighted, so it's it's
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: you know, it's on the way, all right, maybe, I think,
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: sir doctor Professor Spiker, sounds good, that's right.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe maybe you're on this path.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Probably not, Yeah, maybe I don't, I mean hopefully not.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: So.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: Apparently he became a rather skilled wartime technician as well,
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: so of course, as an expert on poison, he also
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: likely uses knowledge to secretly attack his enemies, which is
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: like total espionized type of things. Sure, and there's a
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: story that may he may have been the first leader
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: to use chemical warfare by poisoning and invading Roman army.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: So this guy he's got a body count.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he was really concerned about Rome sort of
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: coming over and taking over Pontus as one of the
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: last holdouts I guess against Roman rule. Anyway, So there's
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: the story again, maybe true, maybe legend, who knows, there
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: is something very real in the story. So, first of all,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: there are these Caucasian bees who collect pollen from rhododendron flowers.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: But the pollen that's collected from rhododendron flowers creates a
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: toxic honey. This honey is called deli ball in modern
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Turkish or translates to mad honey. If you take this
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: in relatively small doses, it'll cause diarrhea, vomiting, hallucinations, disorientation,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: and then in some cases it can be fatal. And
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: so there's the story of this of mithradates essentially leaving
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: out these just sort of casually planting these jars of
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: honey deli ball or the matt honey along the path
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: of the marching Roman army. They happen across these jars
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: of honey and they eat it and become violently ill.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: And this sounds so much like like a Tom and
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Jerry cartoon, or like itchy and scratchy cartoon. You know.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: It's yeah, it's so dumb, like an you think about it,
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: like it's like I found a jar honey. I go ooh,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: jar honey, I'm gonna eat this, like wild jar of
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: honey exactly.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were just just happened along these jars, and
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: they're like someone left all this honey. Here, score, guys,
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: let's have lunch.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: I also, I also really liked the idea of Caucasian
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: bees because all I think of them is going to
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: art markets during the during the winter and like being
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: really stoked about pumpkin space.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: That's that's probably why they're called Caucasian bees.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: It's like, oh, I really, did you see my new dream? Nice?
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: I like it?
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: Oh man. So the legend goes on to speculate that
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: as the Romans geared up to conquer Pontus, Mithridates began
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: to fear that there was no possible victory or viable
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: chance for escape. So Mithridates decided death was better than capture,
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: and as an expert on poison and not a particularly
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: creative person, he decided to poison himself and his daughters
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: by taking massive quantities of poison. So he is on
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: his way out. That's what he's trying to do.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and his daughters died instantly because they took massive
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: quantities of poison. However, he had built up his tolerance
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: so high that he not only didn't die, he instead
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: ended up only feeling a little weak and out of sorts.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: And so, because he felt like there was no way
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: to die from poisoning, he did get a little creatives,
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: you know, when forced to do so, when one will
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: do so, he asked someone to kill him in the
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: more traditional way, which is a sword to the face.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean that's just it's usually like, that's what
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: I would ask for, that's in my will.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, I was ready to die and this
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: just isn't happening. So grab that sword over there, please, Yeah.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Now this is entirely apocryphal. Don't know how much
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: of this is actually true, but that's sort of how
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: the legend goes and where we get to our understanding
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: of this this thing from mithridates.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's from this practice of ingesting small, relatively
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: harmless quantities of poison that we get the eponymous mythra datism.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: And you'll see there's a lot of examples of this,
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: we'll talk more about that later that you'll see kind
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: of in pop culture and you've probably already seen this
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: happen in one of your favorite movies.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: But that's right, this is where it comes from. Yeah,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: exactly right. So the whole thing that we're talking about
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: really today mostly was the legend, but the whole point
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: was in service of this concept of mithridatism, which is
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: over time, taking gradually increasing doses of several types of poison,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: therefore resulting in the body having an increased capacity to
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: tolerates level of that poison that would kill someone who
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: did not have such a tolerance. And that's that's the
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: whole thing. And there's actually an analogous way that we
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: kind of do this with a lot of things in
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: our life.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that would be like self immunization. So there
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: are a couple of important notes here on terminology as
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: we kind of get into this, though this isn't really
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: building an immunity. So like what we're doing here is
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: we're building a tolerance more than anything. When we build
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: an immunity to a disease, that disease cannot kill us
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: even with high exposure. Right, So with poisons a substantial
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: enough dose is still effective to kill someone. So a
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: more precise term to describe this here is as resistance
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: or tolerance. Right, so we have a higher tolerance to
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: these types of poisons that would normally kill mortal men
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: that are.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Not me indeed or me in case this isn't clear
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: from anything we're saying, the practice of methrodatism is real
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: and it does actually work, Like this is something that
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: people can use effectively. However, extremely strong PSA. This is
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: extremely dangerous and not something you should try at home
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: or do just because you're like, oh, yeah, I would
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: like to be imune to poison. Sure, you really need
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: to be like, if you're gonna pursue this, like, find
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: a professional, use assistance with you, like, work with your
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: healthcare providers. Whatnot. Do not try and just, you know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: randomly inject poisons to make yourself immune. That is a horrible,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: terrible idea, and I'm telling you not to do it,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: just to be clear.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: I second that please do not go poison yourself. I
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: can't imagine you're gonna go to your your primary care
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: physician and be like, hey, I got a real arsenic
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: fear right now, I'm gonna need that. I'm gonna go
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: ahead and need to microdose this, and they're gonna be like,
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: what are you talking about. You need to go talk
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: to a therapist, like you don't, don't go do this.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: But there are also a lot of examples that we
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: do this in other areas that you might not realize
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: that people already actively do this. So it's one of
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: those things where you know, on like when you talk
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: about the more extreme, which is like I don't want
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: to be poisoned by my enemies, so I'm gonna go
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: and engage in this. That's one thing, but there are
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: common everyday things that we do that are a form
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: of mithridadism.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The important thing on this really too is the
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: dosing is so critical because you need to know understand
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: what amount of a dose is going to be definitely
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: fatal because like arsenic, for example, it takes next to nothing,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: like two little globules of our snack. The size of
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: a couple of grains of sand is enough to kill
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: a full grown adult. Yeah, And so like you don't
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: want to get you need like homeopathic levels of that
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: stuff to start building a tolerance. If you're going to
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: do it. So you might be like, oh, I'll just
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: take this little tiny vial there. I'm like, no, that
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: would kill fifty people, like, don't take that.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a playground in our city that they found
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: arsenic in the dirt. They had to like redo the
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: entire playground, but they basically said it wasn't enough to
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: kill anybody. It was like there were traces of it.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: In order to die from it, you'd have to eat
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: a whale barrel full of dirt. So I know there
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: was at least one kid that did do that. Oh good,
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: I mean maybe I would assume that there's a kid
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: to data will barrel full of dirt. We all knew
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: kids at eight dirt.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure, that makes sense. All right. Anyway,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: So we were talking about the practice of methridaitism in
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: real life and some examples of that. One that you
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: might not think about initially is alcohol. Alcohol is just poison,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: albeit a poison that has a very specific effect on
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: our brains. So when people drink a lot of alcohol,
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: they actually, as many people know, will build up quite
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: a tolerance to the amount of alcohol they consume. That
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's not still poisoning them. It is, but
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: the effect that it has on their overall reaction to
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: it diminishes with repeated exposure, And so you build up
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: a sort of threshold of tolerance to a certain amount
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: of toxic dosage such that there is still a like
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: you'll never get to the point where no amount of
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: alcohol will kill you, but you will get to a
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: point where enough that would kill someone who does not
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: have that level of tolerance will only make you very drunk.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean if I drink a bit the whiskey,
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: I would get.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Sick, yeah, and I would die.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And there you go like it. But like for
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: other people, that's like, that's a that's a breakfast.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: And also too, it's important to note that like stuff
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: like that, Like different poisons have different interactions in your
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: body with different food. It's like, so there's all these
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: other things. That's not just about dosage. There are other
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: factors that might contribute to the potency of whatever poison
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: you're putting in your body.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, very good point.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: So another one too, allergies, Right, So folks who have
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: allergies might do like some very small exposures to things
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: that make them sick or trigger allergic reactions you'll see
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: this time, like you'll hear like kind of the remedies too.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: And I don't know how much weight this holds, but
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: I've heard this where if you eat honey that's made
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: with pollen, like local pollen, honey that's like produced within
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: fifty miles of where you live, and it's got those
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: same kinds of pollens that that do trigger those reactions,
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: Like if you eat that, that tends to help with
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: your allergies long term.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: I've heard that as well, and you know, sort of
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: the joke being it's it's like match dot com you
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: get a local honey.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: I've never heard that that's good.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know how clear this sciences on all of that,
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: but it does make some amount of intuitive sense at least,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: and at least it's probably not terribly harmful. And I
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: actually have known some people who were deathly allergic to
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: certain things, and their doctor, whoever, whatever an allergist person is,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: essentially put them through a regiment of systematic desensitization to
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: the thing at which they're allergic, and over time they
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: went from being like they would go into anaphylactic shock
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: if they walked into a state that contained that thing
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: that they're allergic to a United States state. But then
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: they got to the point where they could actually consume
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: it in small amounts and they wouldn't even have a
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: reaction just through that continuing represencing of that and to
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: them it wasn't it's not technically actually talk like, it's
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: not an actual toxin, right, but their bodies reacted to
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: it as if it were. But it's a very similar
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: process of building a tolerance to that substance.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Another one, and very similar to this, is how people
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: are often treated for anxieties and phobias, which is that
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: whatever the triggering situation is, they are placed in a
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: sort of safe version of it, sometimes as simple as
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: just talking about it. So you might have someone who's
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: horribly afraid of heights, and I say, let's talk about
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: like the top of a building, and if you can
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: talk about like if they're if if they're at that level,
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: you know, if you can talk about okay, you can
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: imagine that you're looking down over the building and you
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: can see all the way down and the and the
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: person is like, Okay, I feel like I'm at like
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: a four out of ten on anxiety or a nine
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: out of ten. Yeah, whatever, it is just what that
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: repeated practice, eventually the reaction gets lower and lower, and
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: then you can do like, let's do a virtual reality simulation.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Let's like go in a place where I'm gonna put you.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna put you on a ladder that's a foot
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: off the ground, and I'm gonna put you on a
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: harness that's attached to a steel ibeam so that even
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: if you were to fall, you would fall less than
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: a half of an inch and you'd be fine. And
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: there there's just represencing. And that's how a lot of
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: treatment for many phobias and anxiety disorders go is just
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: this systematic continuing represencing, very similar to this idea of mythridatism.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: You're microdosing fear, which would be a really cool album
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: name that rules.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: So I love see you know. You know what we
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: need to do. This is gonna be a quick sidebar.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: You and I need to start a fiver where all
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: we do is we just charge people for coming up
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: with really awesome names for things like, Oh you need
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: a metal album name, I've got one for you. Oh
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: you need a name for a food truck, good, I've
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: got Optimist Prime rib where there we go, We're gonna
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: we're golden.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: That sounds like fun.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it would be fun. We could charge like five
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: bucks a name. It's great.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Nice, that's a new Patreon to you, Patre that's great.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: So another one another thing that people do is they
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: do this with exercise, right, Like nobody is born running
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: a marathon, Like you have to gradually shape that up, right,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: Like you have to like really work that up, because
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: the first person that ran a marathon died. That's the story, right,
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: So what you do is you gradually shape up that behavior.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: Like that's where people like slowly start lifting larger weights,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: heavier weights. They engage with activity longer periods of time,
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: They can plank longer, they could do more pull ups.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: But it starts with small incremental steps towards that larger
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: terminal goal.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: And furthermore, with that one too is the amount of
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: soreness that you feel, Like something like if I were
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: to attempt even like a third of an exercise that
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: someone who goes to the gym on a daily basis,
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to move for like four days. Yeah,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: that would be so sore. So you recover more quickly
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: with repeated practice of those things. Another one that's very
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: relevant to me is spicy food. A lot of cultures,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: spicy food is just built into the normal diet, and
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: so they tolerate really high levels of spice because that's
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: how they flavor things. And someone who comes from maybe
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know, a Western US diet for example, might
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: try it and then their mouth is on fire because
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: they can't handle it. And I got really into the
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: idea of being able to tolerate spicy foods when I
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: was very young, and so I ate a lot of
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: spicy food and have continued to do so. And I
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: love spicy food, and I know that's that's there's a
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: lot of people for whom that's true, right, They specifically
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: wanted to build a tolerance to it. I will taste
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: something that has spice in it and I'll say, this
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: isn't spicy, and someone else that eat it and they'll go,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: oh God, give me, give me water, give me milk.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: I'm also, I'm not like extreme. I'm not you know,
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: I'm not sucking on Carolina reapers just for the you know,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: the thrill of it. It's just I think my spice
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: level is slightly higher than average relative to some people,
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: and there are many people who are way above where
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: I'm at. But I really enjoy spicy food.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: I have a supervisor who's like their favorite food to
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: make is this stew from Nigeria that like that they
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: used to make when they were kids. And they were like,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: we have to special order Scotch bonnet peppers. I was
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: like and she, and she's like, that's that's like my
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: favorite food. I'm like, if I eat a Scotch bottet pepper,
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: I would literally die, Like I would literally I could
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: not handle that. But I but I get it, like
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: where it's like I like spicy food too, so you
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: kind of like build that up.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's the Simpsons episode where they were trying to
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: have like the spiciest.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: Chili for oh yeah, the insanity peppers.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he touches one and like goes into this like
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: hallucinating alternate reality.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he goes on his vision quest.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was very funny.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: It's so good. So people do this with other foods too, right, Like,
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: as somebody who does not like diet soda, I would
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: have to learn how to do this. I mean I
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: can't stand the taste of asprotat.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Swirling it around like a cupful of water, or just
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: like a little shot of it.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like just the Yeah, it's just I got
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: a microdose diet coke to get used to it. Like
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: we we were just kind of using examples of gefilter fish,
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: which is like or like stinky cheeses, like foods that
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: are like have very potent smells or very strong tastes. Yeah,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: it may be difficult to consume that the first time
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: that you try it, but over time, the smaller dose
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: is and smaller kind of chunks that you take, the
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: better the easier it's going to be for you to
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: to eat it exactly.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: And this all of this actually is very important in
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: understanding why medical dosing is so critically important. When people
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: take antibiotics just a sort of a background thing, like
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: I have just pop an antibiotic, what then ends up
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: happening is that you builds resistant, like bacteria start becoming
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: resistant to this drug. That's happening in low enough forms
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: that what doesn't kill them. So what you're essentially doing
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: is practicing mithridatism with your bacteria that's trying to kill you.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: That's the whole idea of these like super bugs that
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: people have talked about, it's it's because of dosing or
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: if you do the whole spaced out vaccine regimen. So
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: the spacing of vaccines is determined through a scientific process
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: of looking at under what conditions do we see the
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: most effective result from vaccines, and science does not back
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: up spacing out vaccines beyond the prescribed schedule, and so
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: people will be like, well, I'm not anti vas I
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: just want to have them spaced out, which is like
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: I want to reduce my immunization from like ninety percent
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: to like forty percent or less. And so that's it's
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: also a dangerous place to have because what you're doing
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: is you're not necessarily doing, like we're saying, your body
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: to build up the kind of antibodies and immunization that
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: it needs to be to successfully compete with a virus. Instead,
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: you're doing like, here's a small amount of immunization, and
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: now here's another small amount, way too late in the future,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: and so your body is like, oh, I kind of
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: think I'm vaguely remember that, and then it doesn't do
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: a very good job when it actually encounters the disease
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: and so again, this is why dosing is so critically
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: important in medicine.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and this is this is like nice
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: and simple stuff, right, I mean, like when you when
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: it makes sense when you think about it. It's like
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: like whenever you study any sort of medicine at all,
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: there's these terms. You'll hear lethal dose and you'll hear
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: the therapeutic dose. So therapeutic doses are usually what they
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: aim for when you're taking psychiatric meds. You can overdose
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: on all of those psychiatric meds, but there's a therapeutic
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: dose or therapeutic level that they try to reach. And
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: so this is a lot of what we're talking about.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: Maybe some things like some of this is going a
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: little bit beyond that therapeutic level that is kind of
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: towing the line towards a lethal dose, but it's not
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: quite a lethal dose yet. That's and that's really what
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: we're doing here. Sure, so snake handlers also do this,
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: and this doesn't mean that every single snake handler does this.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: I imagine the people that like breed ball pythons do
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: not try to dose venom, but rulers that like actually
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: handle snakes that do have high potency venom. What they
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: will do is they will microdose this a little bit.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: They'll they'll gradually expose themselves to these poisons where and
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: you'll see people get bit by king cobras and be
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: more resistant to it. Again, they're not likely to survive,
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: but what might happen is they have a longer period
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: of time for that venom to do the damage it
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: would need to do to take that person out.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: The snake handlers are maybe the closest example to what
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: we're specifically talking about with methrodatism, which is like what
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: they will do is specifically inject venom into their veins
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: in small doses to build up a resistance and tolerance
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: to that venom. And that's like a legitimate practice like that.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: As you said, not all of them, but some people,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: particularly those who handle a lot of high venom snakes,
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: will do this, and that can at least help prevent
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: super fatal bites. Now, there is also I've heard several
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: things about this. I didn't check into them necessarily, but
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: I've heard that First of all, poison is extremely metabolically
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: expensive for snakes, so they're not actually going to using
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: their venoms, So they're not actually going to use their
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: venom unless they're like actively trying to kill you, which
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: when it's defense is not always the case. A lot
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: of times they're just trying to get you away from them,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: So they might use a small amount enough to make
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: you sick or none at all, just to hurt you
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: with their teeth, because it does not feel good to
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: have two or four gigantic, super thick needles going into
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: your flesh.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: Nope, no, especially like suddenly you're not prepared for it.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And and they aim for sensitive spots
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: like your neck and your face and things of that nature.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: So so there's that. The other one I've heard is
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: that young snakes aren't super good at like regulating this,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: and so they're more likely to use higher doses of venom. Again,
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: I didn't look into whether or not that's true, but
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: it does make a certain amount of sense that, you know,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: sort of like how kids just run around all the
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: time burning energy like crazy, that these young snakes are
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: just sort of like all of the venom and.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: You get the full dose.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: That's right, Anyway, some interesting stuff there, Interestingly, So this
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: methrodaetism has also been used for helping to develop anti venom,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: specifically with people who who practice methrodatism. I found a
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: source of there's one guy in particular who like has
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: spent like thirty years building up tolerance to this, that
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: they I start using his blood to develop anti venoms
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: rather than the venom itself, because his blood has the
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: antibodies already in it, and so they can more or
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: less imitate those and replicate those antibodies specifically, rather than
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: trying to sort of make up something that counteracts the
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: effects of a venom, which is which is kind of cool,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: and so that's that's the way it's been used. Now.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: As a side note, there was a source that I
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: found that indicated that you can drink snake venom because
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: it's it's not a poison, it's a venom, and that
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: the enzymes in your stomach will actually break down the
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: harmful medicines. But I mean, if you had like an
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: open wound in your mouth or your throat or your stomach,
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: then the poison will get into your bloodstream and then
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: kill you. I'm not recommending that anybody drink snake venom ever,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: you don't do it, but if for some reason that
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: was something you had to do, I'm given this source
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: at least claimed that it would not be harmful to
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: you unless it got into your bloodstream somehow.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, again, I back up that don't please don't drink
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: Please do not drink venom. I mean not just snake venom,
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: any venom.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Don't drink any venom. That's right, Yeah, that's all. Yeah,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: don't even drink the symbiote venom. It's just just bad news.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: So it's all bad news, and not just even for
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: the reason of like the fact that like it could
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: be extremely dangerous and not probably a good idea and
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: it probably has no nutritional benefits really, but also from
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: the fact that like they have to get that that
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: by specifically like squeezing the glands of snakes to get
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: out of them. So it's just like it's mean to
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: snakes and it's totally unnecessary and it has no benefits
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: and it's just dumb. So just don't.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're we're outspoken anti whacking day people here at
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: the Why we do what we do. If you've ever
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: seen that episode of Simpsons where they have whacking Day
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: where they just go hit the snakes.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that weird a Huzzle song about that Yeah.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're anti whacking day, so be nice to the snakes.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: We need them.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Anti like explicit harm all the time in general.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: So there are some pop culture examples of this, and
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: me say pop culture, but there's also kind of like
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: a historical precedent for some of this too, And the
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: first one we want to talk about is Resputant. So
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: if you're not familiar with the Resputant, he was kind
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: of a The best way I can describe is he
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: was kind of a sketchy dude. He did some stuff
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: that was not so great, but there is the kind
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: of the legend that he was unkillable, and so there's
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: the story where he gathered with some people that tried
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: to poison them. They put arsenic in like literally everything
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: that he was eating and drinking that night, and all
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: it did was make him kind of drunk. So they
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: had to stab him and shoot him and drop him
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: into a frozen river.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: To kill him.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: So it was one of those things where you know,
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: he had kind of had this like mysticism about him
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: that he was like, you know, had deals with the
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: devil and he was immortal. But the failed poisoning it
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: suggested that he knew that he was always in danger,
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: so he kind of microdosed a little bit so that
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: he could, in the event of poisoning, not run into
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: an issue. So that's kind of that's one of the stories.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: He was like, the artistic didn't kill him, it just
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: made him drunk, right.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: There's also the popular example in Princess Bride where Wesley,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: the hero of the story, is meeting with Zinni Vizzini,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: I think is how it's pronounced with who's Wallace Sean
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: And it's a great in exchange, right, So, like you've
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: got Fezick, who is Andre the giant, and he's like
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: the big muscle and money. But then you've got Vizzini,
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: who is like the one that's like the intellectual, and
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: they're playing word games and they keep switching the drinks
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: back and forth, and then what ends up happening is
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: they both take the drink and Vizzini dies because he's poisoned.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: Because Wesley had already microdosed and had been had developed
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: a tolerance to the poison that was in the drinks,
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: so he had actually poisoned both drinks and was able
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: to tolerate the drink.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole thing was, yeah, like which you know,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: choose which cup one of them has poison and then
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: so the guy, the guy dies and he said they
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: were both poisoned. Yeah, really fun movie. Yeah. So those are, yeah,
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: two good examples. Now the resputing. One is disputed. It's
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: you know, another apocryphal story, who knows if it's true, Uh,
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: the Count of Monte Cristo. There was a whole thing
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: in that story where the Count takes like this poisoned
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: cream at breakfast or something so that he he also
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: is microdosing this poison so that he does not suffer
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: the effects of it. So that was a point in there.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Agatha Christie novel If you're in like old mysteries, there
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: was the book called The Mysterious Affair also had a
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: plot line using mithridatism with someone who's self poisoned. So
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: it's you know, it's it's a not uncommon plot device
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: to use, particularly in things like mysteries and adventures and
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: you've got heroes and high risk stakes sort of things. Yeah,
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: it'd be like in The Deer Hunter if if Robert
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: de Niro's character had somehow made themselves immune to bullets
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: and so it didn't matter if he played the Russian
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: roulette game. You know.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: Also, I don't think humans can make themselves immune to.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Bullet No, no, no, that you don't try that. Yeah,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I definitely don't try that. Yeah, I'm just being silly.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: That's that's a nonsense example. So as far as talking
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: about the why, the actual why of this, we've already mentioned, like,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: there are some practical reasons, but I think, speaking loosely,
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: this is there's the fear of death and the potential
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: for protection from harm. Like that's sort of the why,
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: in a sort of loose speaking way of describing it.
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And non language using animals are very unlikely to
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: do something like this, especially systematically. They're not going to
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: be planning and kind of doing all that. But because
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: we have language, we can talk about things that have
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: not yet happened, and so we can actually plan ahead
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: and we can reason and prepare for things that non
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: language using animals might not be able to do.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And this ability to behave with respects to hypothetical
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: circumstances that may or may not occur, it provides flexibility
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: in our in our actions to do things like make
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: plans and anticipate outcomes for better or for worse.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: So if we value living and have some kind of
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: description available to us about the relative possibility of a
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: fatal outcome from something such as a poison, then we
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: might choose to inject and consume toxic agents to prevent
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: this hypothetical fate. Again, don't do it unless you think
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: you're gonna be in a situation where you're going to
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: be poisoned. Then go ahead and consult with the appropriate
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: people to make sure that it's done well and it's
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: not done fatally. But we just strongly recommend not doing
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: this in general so that you don't die.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: I really wonder if, like us, presidents actually do practice mithridaetism.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: I wonder like the steady Paris and that's what it is.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: They always look like one hundred years older when they
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: come out of that job, except Joe Biden, who will
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: look exactly the same, probably more hair, and it's maybe
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: because of methridatism. So there's a really fun video I'm
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: linking to in the show notes of this by on
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: a channel on YouTube called minute Earth, and they sort
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: of talk about how the difference between something that is
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: just you know, neutral, is something that is and something
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: that is poison really is the dose, and they use
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: a metaphor of like a bathtub, Like our body has
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: a bathtub, and if that bathtub overflows, then we die
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: from the level of toxicity. So like for for example,
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: water can become toxic if you drink it in enough volume.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: But our bathtub, the size of the bathtub we have
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: in our bodies for water is so large that we're
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: more likely to just pee it out before we reach
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: that level. Not that it can't happen you, one hundred
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: percent can and people have died. Actually more people have
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: died from overhydration than dehydration in the last year, so
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: it's it's definitely possible. Another one's like coffee, Like if
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: you drink an espresso, if you just do that, like
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: eighty six more times, they'll reach toxic levels of caffeine
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: in your body because our bathtub for espresso is much smaller. Yeah.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: I also learned that the water that, like your urine,
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: doesn't come from drinking water. It comes from your blood.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: So everything that you're peeing out has been built from
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: your blood.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Fun blood water. That's why you don't drink urine. Yeah,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: by the reasons, So yeah, that's the idea, and it's
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: really fun video they talk about they give examples of
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: like you know, our bathtub, for our is extremely small,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: like it takes almost nothing to overflow that bathtub. So anyway,
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: it's just a fun video on that. But yeah, so
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: that's that's sort of what we got on the why
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: and understanding those things. Anything else on that.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: No, I don't. I mean, I think, I think at
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: the end of the day, this is just like one
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: of those fun things. It's like, you see, you've heard
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: people talk about it at some point in time, and
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: it's an interesting phenomenon and it's interesting to know that
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: there is a way to do it, but that it's
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: dangerous and you shouldn't.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: Most of our listeners will have heard of the idea
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: of something like this, and now you know it's called
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: mythra datism and why it's called methrodatism.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: Uh huh. Yeah, MirOS, he was just a little bit
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: weak and then well in the poison didn't work, so
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: he took a sword to the face.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. So yeah, the mythra datism, the
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: whole thing is just as might take on point, I
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: guess have you leaved here? With nothing else is taking
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: small amounts of poison to to create a tolerance or
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: more or less forcing your body to habituate to something
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: that would otherwise be harmful.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: Yep, absolutely okay, but I mean.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: It's mostly designed specifically with the respect to poison. That
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: was the where the term comes from. Absolutely all right,
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: show me one is recommendations, let's do it.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Recommendations.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: I am thrilled to recommend this movie that came out
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: recently called shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: This is the new Marvel property man. This movie was
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: so well done. This rocketed to the top of my
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: list for Marvel movies. And here's the thing about this too.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: For many people, I think entering into the Marvel cinematic
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: universe can feel a little daunting because there's like twenty
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: three or twenty four movies now, and you might look
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: at that and be like, I don't know that I
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: want to take on that big of a storyline. Shang
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Chi has almost no reference to the other movies. They're
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: like Easter eggs and stuff that's in there that like
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: you would get a reference that was sort of a
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: thing that happened in the background or in this one
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: scene that doesn't actually affect the movie that are necessary,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: But for the most part, you could watch this movie
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: having never seen another Marvel movie and totally be able
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: to follow the story. And it is just so extremely
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: well done. I loved it tremendously. I strongly recommend it.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: Awesome movie. Shang Shi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: I one hundred percent back this recommendation because it is
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: so good. It is really so good, Like it's like
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: it's done so well what they do with the rings,
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: like the rings like they feel impactful, they feel like
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: they hit hard, like it's really really cool. I am
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: like all for it.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's rad, all right.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: My recommendation is week is a book it's called Hey Ho,
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: Let's Go The Story of the Ramones, which is like
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: a really fun like like dig into this band. What's
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: very fascinating about this band, if you've ever listened to
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: the Ramones, is that they really only put out like
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: three really great records, maybe four if you want to
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: out Road to Ruin, which is like the one with
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: let I want to be sedated on it. But they
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: were a band for twenty two years and for most
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: of the time Johnny and Joey didn't talk. They weren't
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: even friends. So there's this really interesting dynamic in the
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: band where they treated it like a business and they
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: ran it like a business and they were highly successful
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: for it. Interesting facts from this book. They were bigger
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: than the Rolling Stones in Brazil, Like they are a
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: more famous band than the Rolling Stones in Brazil. Wow,
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: and a few things like that. It's a really fascinating
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: story and it's got some cool interviews and it just
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: talks about where they came from and if there's actually
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: seven Romones not four, so people thought they were only four.
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: There's also CJ, Elvis and Marky who was like one
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: of the new ones, but like the four originals are
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: no longer with us. But it's a really interesting read
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: into this band, which is like you wouldn't think that
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: they were as that there was as much depth this
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: band as you as you might realize. And everybody loves Joey,
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: so rest in peace, Joe Man.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: You have like an encyclopedic knowledge of band biography books.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's weird. I'm just fascinating with bands. Ian that's
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: really interesting.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: That's great and I love it. Yeah, it's good stuff,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: all right. If you practice mythrid autism, If you would
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: like to tell us about a recent Marvel movie that
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed, or a book about punk bands that you like,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: or even any bands that you want to talk about,
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: or you want to remind us of a story that
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: we missed in mythrid atism in pop culture, or correct
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: us on something that we said, please reach out to us.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: You can contact us on social media and on all
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: the other platforms. You can email directly at info at
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: WWDWWD podcast dot com. I know that you can also
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: go to that website to find out more about this
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: another episode that we've recorded. Quick side note, actually one
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: of our patreons reached out and informed us of a
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: zombie property we totally missed, or vampire property we totally missed.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: When we were talking about vampires in this this year's
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: Halloween episodes, which was the Underworld movies.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: Oh how do we miss those?
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking. I was like, Oh, man,
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: that was so silly, so.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Much leather, much Lincoln Park. And I really like the
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: I I really do like the idea that like there's
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: vampires fighting were wolves. Like that's that feels good.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Right exactly? Yeah, those are fun movies, so if we
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: miss something about about vampires or were wolves or mythradatism,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: you should definitely reach out to us. Okay, So that
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: was our episode on mithridatism, which, as you just heard,
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: is the idea of ingesting small amounts of poison to
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: essentially build up a tolerance to doing this. And just
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: as a quick overview of some of the things, not
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: a huge amount seems to have happened in the world
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: of mythradatism or in the science of this, although there
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: have been a few updates. So one of the things
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: we need to stress very heavily is that this only
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: kind of works sometimes for some poisons. Importantly, things like
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: heavy metals, those actually those don't leave your body very quickly.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: They actually just accumulate. So even if you try to
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: take them in small doses, over time, that small dose
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: eventually becomes a large dose because the doses that are
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: in there don't leave, They just build on each other,
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: eventually becoming increasingly toxic. And there are other types of
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: poisons that would do similar things where it's like you
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: would have to have a very long period of time
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: between them, and just because you take them doesn't mean
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: your body will change anything about the enzymes that it
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: produces or anything else that it might handle with those
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: chemicals that would actually result in building a tolerance. Instead,
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: you just be doing slow amounts of damage, probably to
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: your vital organs over time. So that's one thing to know.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: The other is that there are a few things to
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: which this will probably work. Actually, people who consume a
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: lot of alcohol do kind of a form of this.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: Alcohol is basically just poison, and people drink it in
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: small enough quantities that they can tolerate more and more
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: over time. But even that will eventually kill you because
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: it can destroy your liver and do other things to eat,
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: damages your brain, all kinds of things. So enough of that.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: While you may have a tolerance to it in terms
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: of its effects on you, you are just poisoning your body
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: over and over again. So again you're not actually building
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: a tolerance to its deadly effect necessarily. I mean, maybe
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: to a little bit of an extent, but mostly you're
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: just damaging your body very slowly or very quickly, I guess,
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: depending on how much you're drinking. But the one place
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: where this does seem to be the most relevant is
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: with snakes. I think we mentioned last time, there was
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: a person who has been experimental or not experimentally but
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: intentionally injecting himself with venom and his blood. They were
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: able to extract venom that was or the antibodies to
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: a venom that was so powerful that when they injected
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: it mice, it was actually able to completely prevent the
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: effects of pure venom from Cobra's king combras and even
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: black mambas. And that the antibodies in his blood would
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: it be relevant to the venom of about sixty percent
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: of venomous snakes, which is really impressive. So anyway that
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: covers some of it. Because it's a biologic, because it
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: is something that we can build enzymes against, it could
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: potentially work. Why would you want to do this for
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: most people? I guess it is for prevention, Like it
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: is an attempt to avoid if you were to come
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: into contact with some lethal dose. I think if you
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: worked around snakes, which I believe we mentioned the last time,
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: then that might be a reasonable situation. Maybe some people
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: just want it as like a party trick. They're like, hey, look,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: I can inject this what would normally be a deadly
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: amount of venom. As a podcast, we recommend against doing
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: this unless you really need to for some reason. But anyway,
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: those are some of the things that have happened. The
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: idea that you can just give yourself a bunch of
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: poison and prevent yourself from being poisoned is questionable at best,
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: and I think it's definitely too dangerous to try and
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: actually do something like that unless you have a lot
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: of experts and doctors and people on your side and
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: like anti venoms and whatnot for people who can help
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: in the instance that you were to try, or you
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: were to cross into a point where your body is
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: no longer able to fight the poison and some damage
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: can't be undone, So be careful, I guess is what
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: I'm saying there, But okay, I think that is what
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say about Mithrodatism. Keeping it short and
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: sweet here, I would like to say if you enjoyed
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: what you heard in this discussion, you'd like to support us.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: As I mentioned, you could join us on Patreon. If
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: you go over there, you will get add free episodes,
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: early episodes, bonus content, all kinds of goodies, and you
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: can join our list of very cool people that we
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: appreciate so much. So giant. Thank you to those over
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: on Patreon who have been behind us and helping us
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: do our thing. Thank you to Mike m Megan, Mike T, Justin,
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian Ashley and Kiara. Thank you so
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: much to my team of people writing in fact checking
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: from Shane and myself. Shane couldn't be here today. Our
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our extraordinary. Our
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: producer Extraordinary, who is also extraordinary and an empire maybe
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know, is Justin, who is very awesome at
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: his job. He actually helped record our mini this week.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: When you want to hear his voice, you can catch
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: it there. He's got a lovely voice as well. So
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: those are the things. Thank you so much for listening.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: Other ways that you can support us include leaving us
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: a rating and a review. It helps to get the
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: algorithm out there. You can tell a friend, make sure
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: you like and subscribe so you get all updated episodes
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: and whatnot. And if you'd like to tell us your
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: thoughts on myth or datism or anything else they'll be
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: covered in this episode. You can read us directly at
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com and I we do look
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: forward to hearing from you. There, I guess I'll give
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: a quick recommendation. Why not.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Recommendations.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: I'm recommending a movie. This is a very popular movie
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: that has a very popular sequel, and it is many
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: people who listen to this may have seen it already,
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: but I'm recommending Avatar Way of Water. I just saw
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: it for the first time, so I'm like way behind,
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: so sorry for being really late. But anyway, it was
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: pretty good. I think there are a lot of criticisms
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: people have about those movies. It's you know, Feren Goalie,
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: It's whatever. But I enjoyed it. I thought it was
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: well done. The CGI was very impressive, and it's very long.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: It's like three hours, so it took me a very
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: long time to get through the whole thing. But I
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: enjoyed it. So if you're interested in the Avatar movies,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: if you haven't seen the second one but you have
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: seen the first one, I thought it was really good
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: and I do recommend it. So I think that's what
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: I have to say about that, and I think that
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: that is everything. So thank you for listening, Thank you
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: for being here. Is kind of a weird one to do,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: appreciate it, but hopefully we'll see you next week with
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: some new stuff. This is Abraham and we are out.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: we hope you have an awesome day