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What Is The Stoned Ape Theory? · Gil I Am

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the gill i Am Podcast, where we
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  Speaker 1: explore history, mysteries, faith, science, and the biggest questions humanity
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  Speaker 1: has ever asked. Today, we're diving into this explainer on
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  Speaker 1: one of the most controversial theories ever proposed about human evolution.
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  Speaker 1: What if our ancestors didn't become intelligent simply because they
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  Speaker 1: learned to hunt better. What if the leap from primitive
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  Speaker 1: ape to modern human was sparked by something growing right
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  Speaker 1: on the ground in the African savanna. What if psychedelic
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  Speaker 1: mushrooms helped create civilization itself. Let's jump right in and
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  Speaker 1: look at the stoned ape theory. Now, before we get
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  Speaker 1: too far, let's be absolutely clear right out of the gate,
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  Speaker 1: there is no direct scientific proof that this theory is true.
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  Speaker 1: The vast majority of mainstream scientists flat out reject it.
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  Speaker 1: But today we're going to step into the realm of possibility.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to impartially explore this wildly fascinating concept originally
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  Speaker 1: proposed by the ethnobotanist Terence McKenna in his nineteen ninety
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  Speaker 1: two book Food of the Gods. We're going to look
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  Speaker 1: at the sources and ask one simple question, what if
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  Speaker 1: the stone ape theory is actually true. So here is
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  Speaker 1: the core mystery that McKenna was trying to solve, the
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  Speaker 1: explosive growth of the human brain. If you look back
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  Speaker 1: around three million years ago, early hominids like Homo habilists
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  Speaker 1: had a brain weighing roughly seven hundred and seventy grams,
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  Speaker 1: But then, in what is basically a blink of an
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  Speaker 1: eye in evolutionary time, that brain rapidly expanded. By the
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  Speaker 1: time Homo sapiens showed up about one hundred thousand years ago,
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  Speaker 1: our brains had nearly doubled to around thirteen hundred fifty grams.
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  Speaker 1: Evolutionary biologists still scratch their heads at such a massive
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  Speaker 1: rapid leap. So what was the catalyst To really picture this,
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  Speaker 1: I want you to imagine Africa nearly two million years ago.
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  Speaker 1: The world is completely wild. Our early ancestors are just
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  Speaker 1: struggling to survive. They've got very simple tools, limited communication,
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  Speaker 1: small social groups. Then a massive climate shift hits. It
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  Speaker 1: pushes the tropical forests back and creates these vast, sweeping
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  Speaker 1: open grasslands. This forest are early ancestors out of the
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  Speaker 1: safety of the trees and right out onto the planes
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  Speaker 1: to survive. They had to adapt, mostly by following massive
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  Speaker 1: migrating herds of wild cattle across this newly open terrain.
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  Speaker 1: And this right here created a really fascinating ecological chain reaction.
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  Speaker 1: You see, where large herds of cattle travel well, massive
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  Speaker 1: amounts of dung follow and growing abundantly right out of
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  Speaker 1: that cattle dung in these tropical regions was a very
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  Speaker 1: specific mushroom silicybe cubinsus a psychedelic mushroom. Now, remember food
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  Speaker 1: is scarce out there. Curiosity literally equals survival. McKenna theorized
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  Speaker 1: that hungry foraging hominids looking for new food sources would
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  Speaker 1: have inevitably encountered and eaten these mushrooms. Our relationship with
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  Speaker 1: these fungi goes back a long way, but McKenna argued,
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  Speaker 1: it goes all the way back to our very origins.
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  Speaker 1: McKenna mapped out this really interesting evolutionary progression based on
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  Speaker 1: dosage at low doses, say just accidentally eat more foraging.
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  Speaker 1: He suggested psilocybin acted like chemical binoculars, its slightly improved
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  Speaker 1: visual acuity and edge detection. Think about it, The hunter
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  Speaker 1: spots prey faster, the hunt succeeds, the tribe eats and
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  Speaker 1: better hunters eat more, survive longer, and feed their offspring. Then,
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  Speaker 1: at slightly higher doses, the mushrooms start acting as a
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  Speaker 1: central nervous system stimulant. This leads to increased sexual arousal,
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  Speaker 1: which obviously means higher birth rates and greater social bonding,
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  Speaker 1: creating much tighter, more cooperative communities. But what happens at
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  Speaker 1: high doses, Well, this is where language enters the chat.
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  Speaker 1: How did simple primate grunts turn into poetry and complex conversation.
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  Speaker 1: McKenna speculated that high doses of psilocybin actually hyper stimulated
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  Speaker 1: the language forming regions of the brain. He believed the
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  Speaker 1: mushrooms triggered something called glossalalinga. It's the spontaneous vocalization, almost
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  Speaker 1: like speaking in tongues or raw poetry that isn't consciously
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  Speaker 1: directed by your ego. Suddenly, early humans are having these
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  Speaker 1: intense shared visions. The overwhelming urge to articulate these wild
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  Speaker 1: internal experiences might have been the exact spark that forced
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  Speaker 1: early humans to invent complex language, and the theory goes
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  Speaker 1: that language wasn't the only byproduct here. Modern research actually
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  Speaker 1: shows us that the mystical experience of self. Transcendence enables
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  Speaker 1: us to grasp entirely new concepts. So picture early humans
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  Speaker 1: sitting around a campfire together going through a shared psychedelic trip.
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  Speaker 1: They're feeling this profound connection to nature, the total dissolution
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  Speaker 1: of their sense of self, and encountering what felt like
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  Speaker 1: spirits or the divine. McKenna argued this was the literal
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  Speaker 1: birth of religion and abstract moral realism. In this view,
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  Speaker 1: the gods weren't just invented out of thin air. They
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  Speaker 1: were experienced directly through the mushroom. Now, for decades, this
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  Speaker 1: whole theory was written off as just some nineteen sixties
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  Speaker 1: hippie fantasy. But recently modern neuroscience has actually started uncovering
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  Speaker 1: data that makes McKenna's wild idea look well a bit
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  Speaker 1: more plausible. Enter a new class of compounds called psychoplastogens.
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  Speaker 1: These are substances that don't just temporarily alter your mood.
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  Speaker 1: They actually trigger rapid physical changes in the brain's neuroplasticity
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  Speaker 1: after just a single dose. And you guessed it, Psilocybin,
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  Speaker 1: the active compound in those savanna mushrooms, is a very
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  Speaker 1: powerful psychoplastogen. When we look at modern science we observe
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  Speaker 1: some incredible things happening in the brain. Under the influence
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  Speaker 1: of psilocybin. It activates the five HT two A serotonin receptors,
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  Speaker 1: which are heavily concentrated in our advanced prefrontal cortex. This
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  Speaker 1: activation literally promotes neurogenesis, which is the growth of brand
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  Speaker 1: new neurons. It stimulates synaptogenesis, creating new connections between existing
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  Speaker 1: brain cells, and even triggers remyelination to insulate those neural pathways. So,
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  Speaker 1: if our ancestors were eating these mushrooms generation after generation,
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  Speaker 1: it actually provides a highly plausible biological mechanism for how
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  Speaker 1: the brain could physically expand and rewire itself so incredibly fast.
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  Speaker 1: Section the skeptics lens what the scientists say. So while
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  Speaker 1: the neur roscience sounds super exciting, the stoned ape hypothesis
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  Speaker 1: has a pretty glaring issue. There is absolutely zero direct fossil, genetic,
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  Speaker 1: or archaeological evidence to back it up. Because of that,
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  Speaker 1: the vast majority of evolutionary biologists and anthropologists completely reject
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  Speaker 1: mechanis theory. They argue it relies way more on massive
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  Speaker 1: leaps of logic than on hard data. Let's take McKenna's
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  Speaker 1: core biological claim the chemical binoculars. Critics point out that
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  Speaker 1: he fundamentally misrepresented the early scientific research. Sure, psilocybin alters
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  Speaker 1: your visual perception, but there's no real evidence it improves
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  Speaker 1: actual visual acuity for hunting. In fact, think about it,
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  Speaker 1: If you're stoned on mushrooms out on a dangerous predator
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  Speaker 1: filled savannah, your vision and practical hunting skills are almost
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  Speaker 1: certainly going to be hindered, not helped. You're honestly way
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  Speaker 1: more likely to forget your spear than accurately track of
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  Speaker 1: fast moving gaze out. And that brings us to a
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  Speaker 1: really fascinating anthropological critique about ego dissolution. A lot of
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  Speaker 1: people today use psychedelics to quiet their stressed out, highly
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  Speaker 1: critical inner monologue, but anthropologists point out a huge flaw here.
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  Speaker 1: Early apes likely didn't even possess that kind of language
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  Speaker 1: based inner monologue. Apes aren't sitting around feeling embarrassed or
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  Speaker 1: agonizing over what the other apes think of their reputation.
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  Speaker 1: So the whole idea that they needed a psychedelic to
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  Speaker 1: suppress an overactive ego to unlock social bonding, it's basically
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  Speaker 1: projecting modern human psychology backward onto early hominids. So if
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  Speaker 1: magic mushrooms didn't cause our brains to double in size,
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  Speaker 1: what actually did well The brain is a massive energy hg.
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  Speaker 1: To grow it, our ancestors needed calories, like massive amounts
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  Speaker 1: of them. Mainstream science says the true catalyst wasn't fungi,
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  Speaker 1: it was fire and tools. The consensus is that inventing
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  Speaker 1: tools allows us to crack open animal bones for high
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  Speaker 1: calorie marrow, and mastering fire allowed us to cook our meat.
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  Speaker 1: Cooking essentially predigests food, which unlocks huge amounts of energy
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  Speaker 1: and dopamine. That energy rewarded complex social behaviors and provided
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  Speaker 1: the direct biological fuel needed to dramatically expand the brain. Furthermore,
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  Speaker 1: scientists argue that humanity absolutely did invent a powerful mind
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  Speaker 1: altering technology, but it wasn't a fungus. It was language itself.
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  Speaker 1: Once language emerged, which was likely driven by the need
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  Speaker 1: to coordinate complex social hunting and tool making, it completely
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  Speaker 1: rewired our consciousness. Couple that with some totally unique human
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  Speaker 1: adaptations like women living for decades past their reproductive years
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  Speaker 1: to serve as grandmothers, and you get intergenerational storytelling. This
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  Speaker 1: allowed us to pass down vital life saving knowledge, which
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  Speaker 1: effectively meant our culture started driving our evolution just as
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  Speaker 1: much as our biology did. So what does this all mean?
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  Speaker 1: Where does that leave us? While the Stone day theory
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  Speaker 1: obviously lacks the hard physical evidence to be accepted by
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  Speaker 1: mainstream science, but you know, as our modern understanding of
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  Speaker 1: psychedelics and brain plasticity continues to grow, it remains an
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  Speaker 1: incredibly compelling thought experiment. Was the leap to human consciousness
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  Speaker 1: just a slow build driven by cooked meat and tool use,
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  Speaker 1: or did a chance encounter with a mind altering mushroom
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  Speaker 1: accelerate that spark of imagination, language, and the divine? Maybe
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  Speaker 1: it tells us a little less about exactly where we
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  Speaker 1: came from and a lot more about the untapped neuroplasticity
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  Speaker 1: of where the human mind can still go. I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to leave you to think about that one. Thanks for
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  Speaker 1: joining me on this explainer