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A Ridiculous History of Brain Science, with Jorge Cham · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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  Speaker 1: the show. Thank you, as always so much Ridiculous Historians
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  Speaker 1: for joining us. Let's hear it for the man the
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  Speaker 1: myth our super producer mister Max Williams Imax. All right, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we're getting some snapping fingers. This is part two of
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  Speaker 1: a continuing exploration. The guy who just said Imax is
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  Speaker 1: mister Noel Brown, none other than.
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  Speaker 2: Oh thanks buddy, You're welcome, Buckeroo.
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  Speaker 1: They called me Ben Bullen in this part of the world,
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  Speaker 1: and Noel, if we could do a previous on Ridiculous History,
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  Speaker 1: the smoke Monster was bullsh wasn't anything, well, it was
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the thing. It was the man in Black, it was
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: you know, that's the show Lost, which dated references.
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  Speaker 2: But that's what we're here for. No, it's true.
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  Speaker 3: We did previously on Ridiculous History talk with the brilliant
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  Speaker 3: and lovely doctor Jorge at Sham, who helped us navigate
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  Speaker 3: the universe a little bit, from the Big Bang to
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  Speaker 3: the singularities to AI and the way that artificial intelligence
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  Speaker 3: may well be close to, if not already at a
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  Speaker 3: place where it resembles the human brain.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, that is true. And Noel, as you know, I'm
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  Speaker 1: really proud of you and Maxim myself for being quite
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  Speaker 1: transparent and forthright with the fact that we are ourselves
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  Speaker 1: not experts.
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  Speaker 2: Folks.
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  Speaker 1: We know everybody enjoyed the first part of our conversations
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  Speaker 1: with doctor or a Champ, and believe it or not,
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  Speaker 1: we were able to get Orgey back for another episode
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  Speaker 1: or Hey, welcome, thank you for joining us.
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  Speaker 4: Hey, super fun to be here. Thanks for having me back.
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  Speaker 3: Of course, of course you're helping us out as well.
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  Speaker 3: We love a good two part, especially one that we
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  Speaker 3: decide on in advance.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, and this will be the Empire Streks back of podcasts.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, that's the film. It's a universe.
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  Speaker 1: We're talking about the history of what we call the
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  Speaker 1: Big Bang in our previous exploration, which led us to,
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  Speaker 1: as you were saying, Noel, an exploration of so called
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  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, the nature of reality, the observable universe. And
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  Speaker 1: we tease just a bit episode two. This is our
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  Speaker 1: exploration of the ridiculous history of a thing that studies
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  Speaker 1: itself the science of the human brain. So real quick
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  Speaker 1: I could if we could open it up this way, Orgey,
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  Speaker 1: just small talk, What is the human brain.
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  Speaker 4: Was this little about sixty eight pound organ that you
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  Speaker 4: have in your head. And it's just another organ in
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  Speaker 4: your head.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 4: It's a lump of fleshy stuff that basically makes who
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  Speaker 4: you are happen, Like your conscious experience, all your memories,
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  Speaker 4: how you feel, that's all happening in that little gelatinous
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  Speaker 4: blob inside your skull.
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  Speaker 3: I've always felt calling the brain an organ was selling
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  Speaker 3: it short just a little bit. When I think of
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  Speaker 3: an organ, I guess I think of just like guts.
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  Speaker 3: You know, it's important. But the brain is a very
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  Speaker 3: peculiar and powerful and incredible organ.
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  Speaker 4: It is it is. People say it's the most complex
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  Speaker 4: organization of matter that we know about in the whole universe.
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  Speaker 2: And it's also the biggest erogenoist zone.
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  Speaker 4: In the human we go. It's the biggest everything zone.
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  Speaker 4: Basically hunger, heye, love, it's all happening in your head.
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  Speaker 1: Now, this is fascinating. I love that phrase because we
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  Speaker 1: also have to acknowledge an inherent dilemma. We're asking a
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  Speaker 1: thing to research and explain itself, to measure itself. Could
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  Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about the philosophical quandaries
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  Speaker 1: involved with that like because ordinarily, you know, if you
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  Speaker 1: asked if you asked a duck its opinion about ducks,
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  Speaker 1: you would get a weird you know, not completely objective.
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  Speaker 4: Right, right, right, and everyone knows are just a bunch
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  Speaker 4: of quacks. Now it's a super interesting philosophical conversation, right,
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  Speaker 4: because right, there's eighty six billion neurons in your head,
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  Speaker 4: and so the idea that eighty six billion neurons could
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  Speaker 4: ever really really understand what's happening in eighty six billion neurons,
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  Speaker 4: even if somebody else's eighty six billionaires, it's sort of impossible, right.
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  Speaker 4: It's sort of like a car understanding a car, or
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  Speaker 4: you know, a switch understanding a switch. So it's probably
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  Speaker 4: not possible for the human brain to really understand everything
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  Speaker 4: that's going on in your brain, like down to the tee.
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  Speaker 4: But you know, we have science, and so we can
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  Speaker 4: make kind of generalizations, we can make certain rules, we
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  Speaker 4: can understand the general structure and organization of the brain,
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  Speaker 4: but like totally understanding the brain and predicting what it's
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  Speaker 4: going to do, it's probably impossible for our brains. But
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  Speaker 4: you can imagine, like maybe aliens who have four hundred
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  Speaker 4: billion neurons, you know them, we might be like, oh,
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  Speaker 4: look at these cats, you know, running around, We can
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  Speaker 4: totally understand what's going on in their heads.
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  Speaker 1: So this leads us to the ridiculous history of neuroscience
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  Speaker 1: or brain science. Could you tell us a little bit
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  Speaker 1: about the first I guess there was a moment in
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  Speaker 1: human civilization, or a series of moments more accurately, wherein
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  Speaker 1: people realized this gelatinous blob in their head was doing something.
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  Speaker 1: We're under the impression that for a lot of human history,
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  Speaker 1: various cultures believed that the soul or the consciousness maybe
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  Speaker 1: resided in other organs, like the heart or the I'll
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  Speaker 1: say it, sorry, substitute teachers, genitalia.
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  Speaker 4: Was there a lot of it? A lot of our
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  Speaker 4: actions do come.
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  Speaker 2: From it's like a second brain.
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  Speaker 1: So what was there any sort of inflection point or
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  Speaker 1: crossroads in history of humans where they started to look
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  Speaker 1: at the brain as a seat of consciousness.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, now, yeah, it's a pretty interesting history because,
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  Speaker 4: as you mentioned, probably for most of human history, we
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  Speaker 4: had no idea what was going on inside of our bodies.
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  Speaker 4: How though our bodies work, much less how our brains
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  Speaker 4: worked or what it did Aristotle back in the ancient
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  Speaker 4: Greek era. Uh, basically agree with what you just said,
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  Speaker 4: which is he thought that everything that makes us who
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  Speaker 4: we are is in our hearts, like in our chest.
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  Speaker 4: And he thought that the brain was really just like
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  Speaker 4: a radiator, like a brain just there to like cool people. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: jes United has all these like lumps and wriggles like
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  Speaker 4: that would make sense, right kind of.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, maybe dissipute the heat like coils like coils in.
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  Speaker 4: Area, Yeah, yeah, like increasing the surface area.
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  Speaker 2: Uh.
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  Speaker 4: And if you think about it, it kind of makes sense, right,
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  Speaker 4: Like if you are designing a human being, Like, why
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  Speaker 4: would you put the most important part on this little
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  Speaker 4: like appendage sitting at the top, you know, exposed to
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  Speaker 4: Yeah it's exposed. Yeah yeah what did you put it?
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  Speaker 4: Like in the chest right protected by ribs and organs
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  Speaker 4: Like that would make a little bit more sense. But no,
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  Speaker 4: it's like it's sticking up in our hands. It's a
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  Speaker 4: little peninsula on the box. Yeah yeah, so easy to
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  Speaker 4: knock or or chop off. So he didn't quite have
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  Speaker 4: it right, But people think that maybe the Egyptians knew
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  Speaker 4: a little bit more about the brain. So there's this
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  Speaker 4: famous papyrus papyrus scroll, yeah, that they found made by
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  Speaker 4: the ancient Egyptians where they kind of like documented medical cases.
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  Speaker 4: It's called the Edwin Smith Papyrus.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, like the thought yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Oh that's another brain game right there. So we know,
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  Speaker 4: like the Addigus catalog all these medical things like oh,
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  Speaker 4: if you break an arm, this is what happens. If
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  Speaker 4: you sever your spinacle, this is what happened. And there's
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  Speaker 4: like an entry number twenty in this squirrel that says,
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  Speaker 4: you know, if you get hit in the head card,
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  Speaker 4: we know that sometimes you can lose the ability to talk.
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  Speaker 4: So like in their heads they're thinking, oh, your brain
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  Speaker 4: is good for things like talking. So that's kind of
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  Speaker 4: like the earliest we think kind of a record of
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  Speaker 4: people humans kind of understanding what the brain is doing.
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  Speaker 2: Oh wow.
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  Speaker 1: And this this also reminds us clearly of a similar
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  Speaker 1: practice indicative of recognizing the importance of the brain as
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  Speaker 1: an organ, which is the practice of trepan nation, right. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: trepanation being.
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  Speaker 2: The demons.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, venting relieving pleasure, yeah, drilling a
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  Speaker 1: physical hole somewhere in the cranium. I think for a
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  Speaker 1: lot of us lay for the primary amazing thing about
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  Speaker 1: the practice of trapanation is that people survived somehow.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah right, Yeah, it's wild. Basically, there's not much activity
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  Speaker 4: going on like understanding the brain up until about the
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  Speaker 4: eighteen hundreds, and that's when people really started to record
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  Speaker 4: things like hey, if you open up your skull and
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  Speaker 4: you dig a hole through here, this can happen. Or
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  Speaker 4: if you open up this part of the brain and
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  Speaker 4: you kind of like mess around with it or apply
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  Speaker 4: electricity like that, your arm will move and so yeah,
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  Speaker 4: so that's one of the things that people did in
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  Speaker 4: the eighteen hundreds, which which opened up your brain and
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  Speaker 4: pok it. And it's sort of dubious to us.
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  Speaker 2: Now that's not to say.
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  Speaker 3: Syram that gave us that information, but which is often
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  Speaker 3: the case with early discovery, it's like, yeah, you know,
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  Speaker 3: you gotta break a few eggs to make a science online.
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  Speaker 4: Be a little bit of a mad scientist. Yeah, but
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  Speaker 4: it taught us a lot, Like it started to kind
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  Speaker 4: of piece everything together. People started to figure out, oh,
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  Speaker 4: like the brain has parts. You know, it's not just
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  Speaker 4: like one giant computer chip. It's got like a little
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  Speaker 4: processor for this over here and a little processor for
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  Speaker 4: that out over there, and so that's kind of how
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  Speaker 4: it started, really kind of ramping up the history of
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  Speaker 4: brain science.
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  Speaker 1: Now we're talking the eighteen hundreds at this point, which
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  Speaker 1: means from what Noel and I understand, this means this happens,
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  Speaker 1: this great scientific inquiry occurs in the same sort of
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  Speaker 1: historical milieu as a lot of quack science. Right, I
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  Speaker 1: guess we should talk about phrenology a little bit.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well it's it's sort of a it's
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  Speaker 4: a bit of a sketchy thing to delineate between quack
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  Speaker 4: science and really thought right, you know what I mean.
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  Speaker 4: Like back then, it's like it's like accusing a cavement
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  Speaker 4: of not being good scientists. You know, they just didn't know,
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  Speaker 4: and so they were just trying all these different theories.
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  Speaker 4: They had all these ideas. They were going on vibes
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  Speaker 4: basically vibes, and yeah, it's a Phrenology was a huge
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  Speaker 4: deal in the eighteen hundreds. People thought that, you know,
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  Speaker 4: there was this idea that the brain is mapped, like
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  Speaker 4: there's areas that do different things. But so people would
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  Speaker 4: just guess, like, oh, the part of the back part of
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  Speaker 4: your rank, that's where that's where your love is located
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  Speaker 4: and the front part is where your egoism is located,
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  Speaker 4: and so they just if you look it up phrenology,
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  Speaker 4: there's all these like maps. I think most people have
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  Speaker 4: probably have probably seen them, just like a human head
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  Speaker 4: with like areas kind of like a like a meat
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  Speaker 4: diagram and a cow for one little.
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  Speaker 2: Regions where the tenderline is exactly.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And that was informed, unfortunately by a lot of confirmation bias,
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  Speaker 1: we could argue from Western Europe at the time, wherein
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  Speaker 1: people would say, oh, we've made this rough Butcher's diagram
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  Speaker 1: or topography of a cranium, and based on this bump,
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  Speaker 1: this guy is going to be good at what's a
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  Speaker 1: silly thing to be good at?
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  Speaker 2: In the unicycle.
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  Speaker 1: This guy's great at unicycles. Yeah, look at the other bump,
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  Speaker 1: you know, right there by the temple. This is our
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  Speaker 1: unicyclist juggler phrenology.
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  Speaker 2: Jorge.
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  Speaker 1: Was it widely accepted in its day.
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  Speaker 4: I think it was, you know, as accepted as like
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  Speaker 4: you know, somebody selling tonics, you know, going from town
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  Speaker 4: to town in the Old West selling tonics to rejuvenate
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  Speaker 4: your vigor or something like that. You know, it's something
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  Speaker 4: that people weren't quite sure it was true or not,
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  Speaker 4: and some people claim that they were starting up it
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  Speaker 4: and you know, people rolled the dice.
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  Speaker 3: Not a far jump from things like the humors, you know,
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  Speaker 3: the idea of leeching and blood letting in order to
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  Speaker 3: balance out these supposed you know, materials within the body.
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  Speaker 3: And then honestly, I'm not trying to poop anybody's beliefs here,
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  Speaker 3: but not too too far off from things like chakras
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  Speaker 3: and meridian lines in some you know, Eastern medicine that
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  Speaker 3: some people think is quackery and some people swear by.
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  Speaker 3: So I mean, it's just interesting the way some of
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  Speaker 3: that stuff is still around and believed in or not
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  Speaker 3: believed in depending.
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  Speaker 4: No, no, that stuff is quackery.
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  Speaker 2: No okay, Oh the.
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  Speaker 1: Professor came out on that one.
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  Speaker 4: No fense to the Crystal fans.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, we just being diplomatic.
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  Speaker 1: We are being diplomatic, and we we share the same pursuits,
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  Speaker 1: which is always going to be hopefully the collective, objective
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  Speaker 1: interrogation of the world around us and within us. One
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  Speaker 1: thing we were talking about a little bit off air.
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  Speaker 1: It pertained to some some just phenomenal and again, as
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  Speaker 1: you said Jorge. Ethically, dubious learnings that came. You mentioned
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  Speaker 1: the earlier realization from humanity that certain parts of the
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  Speaker 1: brain function in certain ways right and excel in certain things.
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  Speaker 1: And at the end of our first conversation we introduced
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  Speaker 1: a patient who for a long time was simply known
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  Speaker 1: as HM, and HM, as we find, is pivotal to neuroscience,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps because of well, gosh, can we tell can we
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  Speaker 1: tell the story? Yes, super fasting story. This was a
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  Speaker 1: little bit later. This was in the nineteen thirties that
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  Speaker 1: this man came about. His name was Henry Malaysan, but
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  Speaker 1: for a long time people didn't know his name because
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  Speaker 1: when you become a medical subject, they kind of make
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  Speaker 1: you anonymous. So for a long time, for many years,
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  Speaker 1: he was just known as patient AHM. And so this
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  Speaker 1: was a guy who had a lot of seizures as
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  Speaker 1: a kid. Some people think it maybe happened after he
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  Speaker 1: had like a bike accident and then he knocked his head.
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  Speaker 1: Some people think he was just kind of he just
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  Speaker 1: had these seizures for no reason. So it's not quite
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  Speaker 1: clear how or why he got these features, but they
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  Speaker 1: were like super intense, like he couldn't really function it
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  Speaker 1: would really kind of make him not able to have
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  Speaker 1: a job or go to school or things like that.
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  Speaker 4: And at the time, as you said, the doctors were like, oh,
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  Speaker 4: I know how to cure it this. I'll just poke
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  Speaker 4: a hole in your head and mess around with it.
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  Speaker 4: And so a common procedure back then was basically a lobotomy,
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  Speaker 4: Like they would just kind of stick this long needle
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  Speaker 4: kind of through your eye socket, did you like move
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  Speaker 4: your eye a little bit out of the way, and
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  Speaker 4: then you stick it in there and then kind of
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  Speaker 4: mess around. And what they did for him specifically was
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  Speaker 4: they destroyed most of his hippocampus, so like deep inside
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  Speaker 4: your brain you have this little these little lumps called
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  Speaker 4: the hippocampus. And you know, his seizures were so severe
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  Speaker 4: that this doctor called Williams Coville thought that he needed
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  Speaker 4: to take out both his hippocampus, and so he did.
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  Speaker 4: And the amazing thing is it sort of worked, like
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  Speaker 4: his seizure stopped. But unfortunately it had a bad side effect,
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  Speaker 4: which is that Henry Molaysan was not able to make
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  Speaker 4: new memories. So like he remembered his whole life, his childhood,
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  Speaker 4: you know, his early adulthood, right up until the day
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  Speaker 4: he had his surgery. But after that he couldn't remember
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  Speaker 4: more than thirty minutes at a time.
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  Speaker 1: He couldn't encode information.
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  Speaker 4: Right, Like if you met him and you said hey,
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  Speaker 4: and he like, he could tell you where he grew up,
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  Speaker 4: who his mother was, and everything, but thirty minutes later
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  Speaker 4: he would totally forget he met you, Or thirty minutes later,
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  Speaker 4: he couldn't tell you how he got to where he was,
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  Speaker 4: what he had for breakfast, you know, any he couldn't
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  Speaker 4: tell you anything beyond thirty minutes ago.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, well, we've all met executive producers and before you see.
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  Speaker 4: A botimized Oh.
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  Speaker 1: So this this is a moment of tremendous significance to
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  Speaker 1: the history of neuroscience when and first off, him's existence
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  Speaker 1: at this point is cursed. You mentioned earlier that this
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  Speaker 1: was this was a primary source for the film Momento.
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  Speaker 2: Is that correct?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, the Christopher Nolan film The When He Got kind
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  Speaker 4: Of I got famous for initially Memento. It was this
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  Speaker 4: guy who basically lived this life, but in our modern
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  Speaker 4: world right now and so he couldn't remember more than
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  Speaker 4: thirty minutes ago, and so and so that movie's kind
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  Speaker 4: of told backwards in time. It's like he's you're sort
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  Speaker 4: of living the movie like he is living in It's like, oh,
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  Speaker 4: I'm here, Why am I here? I don't know why
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  Speaker 4: I'm here? And then you flash back to like thirty
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  Speaker 4: minutes ago to figure out how he got there, and
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  Speaker 4: then you keep flashing back thirty minutes at a time.
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  Speaker 4: That's the movie. And this guy like actually lifted. He
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  Speaker 4: just woke up every day and thirty minutes the world
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  Speaker 4: was brand new to him.
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  Speaker 2: That's a good yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I don't know if that's like terrifying or
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  Speaker 3: kind of awesome, but now I think it's terrifying.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think it would a good way to experience
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  Speaker 2: the world.
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  Speaker 4: Well, it wouldn't make you useful for pretty much anything
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  Speaker 4: except subject There's.
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  Speaker 3: There's something to be said about, like, you know, if
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  Speaker 3: we could just wipe our memories or do a little reset.
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  Speaker 2: But no, I'm sorry not making life.
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  Speaker 3: This is a very very serious condition, but one that
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  Speaker 3: shut up lot of light on some things that didn't
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  Speaker 3: require people to go necessarily digging around in people's brains, right.
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  Speaker 4: Right, right, yeah. In particularly, she had a lot of
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  Speaker 4: light on how memory works in our brain, so, like
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  Speaker 4: before this patient, mostly people thought that memory was something
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: that was spread across your brain, Like people thought your
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: brain was used to giant kind of a computer ship
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: and you had just like you know, you store memories
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: in a little bit here, a little bit there, a
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: little bit everywhere. It's just kind of like evenly spread out.
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: But what was fascinating about patient HM is that he
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: could remember his childhood, his early adulthood. He couldn't make
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: me memories, but you could teach him motor skills like
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: he could. Yeah, Like you could teach him how to
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: play tennis, and the first day he would be terrible
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: at it, but if he kept practicing, he would get
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: better at it, but he wouldn't remember having practice.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: So every time this guy, for example, plays tennis, he's
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: just a little bit better, right, but he doesn't know why.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: He's just really good at it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Like you know, by session thirty, I imagine, right,
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: this is hypothetically because I don't think they really has
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: them to play tennis, But like by session thirty, he'd
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: be like, you know, hitting aces and returning loves and
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: he'd be like, oh my god, I had no idea
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: I could play tennis. That was basically his experience.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: I hope he has a I hope he has a
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: lived perception that he is a virtuoso. You know what
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, because it's always the first thirty minutes that
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: he's played tennis.
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right right, But then in the next session if
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: he doesn't play tennis, he has no idea he's good
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: to play tennis.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Al true periodic victory.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, real conundrum.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: So what did this teach us though about the brain?
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: That there are certain things that could not be recalled,
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: but yet certain things had a bit more of a
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: sense memory perhaps.
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Mainly what it taught people is that there are
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: different kinds of memory. Like I think most people who
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: are listening to about short term memory long term memory.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: So those are two separate things in your brain. But
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: for a long time, we didn't know that, and we
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: didn't know there was such a thing as motor memory.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: Like when you like your signature, you can do you
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: write your signature without thinking about it. It's just in
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: your muscle memory. Or some people can play the piano
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: with is your muscle memory. So that's in a different
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: part of your brain than the long term. The short
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: term even your verbal and language all that is just
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: in separate areas. It's still in areas, but it's a
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: little bit more spread out of the brain. And so
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: that's kind of what it unlocked for scientists is like,
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: oh wait, memory is not just this like one hard drive.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: It's like a whole bunch of little hard drive and
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: a whole bunch of different ways that memories gets stored.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: So that teaches us as well about that reminds us
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of things like what is it called broksophasia or something?
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: So patient HM was capable of retaining and speaking the
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: language she had learned in his childhood. What we're talking about,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: we talk about brocos of phasia is of course the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: breakdown of as you said, Jorge, a different version of
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: the hard drive, right, the one that controls linguistic aptitude.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Did he I don't know the answer. I'm asking honestly,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: did sense memory impact anything?
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Like?
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: Could he the same way he was hypothetically taught to
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: be good at tennis? Could he be taught to and
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: we're breaking tons of ethical experimentation laws on this, but
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: could you possibly teach this patient to be avoidant of
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: or attracted to, say, a certain stimuli like a smell
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: and then wait for that reset in the brain function.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: You know, is this guy? Is it possible to make
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: a world where this guy is waking up experiencing lucidity
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: every thirty minutes and now he just hates the No,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: what's a good smell to hate? Oh, my gosh, the
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: smell of coffee, like coffee, coffee, coffee is a great one.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Is it possible to uh, would it be possible to
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: teach sense memory in an olfactory way or what does
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: that take? Right?
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: I think the idea is that he couldn't make long
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: term memories, so and I'm not sure that like our
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: associations with certain smells, I'm not sure quite sure where
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: that is in the brain. So it might some of
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: it might be in our long term memory, in which
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: case he couldn't. You couldn't train that in him. But
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: some of it might be automatic, in which case you
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: probably could.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: That is fascinating, and it occurs in step with we
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about this with another pivotal moment
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: in neuroscience understanding and and folks, by the way, I
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: feel like we've been very very clear about this. Do
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: not try this at home, no matter how mad you
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: are at your sibling. Do not try this at home.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: There is another case that occurred in the eighteen hundreds,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: so a little bit prior to HM, the infamous Phineas Gauge.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, railroad tie.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: So Finished Gage was a railroad worker. He's just a
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: regular dude in eighteen mid eighteen hundreds up there in Vermont,
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: and you know, by all accounts, he was a nice guy,
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: you know, lived his life, worked hard. One day, he
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: was like installing these long metal rods on a rock
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: to make way for like a railroad. And what they
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: do is they pack some dynamite in there, they stick
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: the rod, and then they light the fuse and then
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: that blows up the rock. What could go wrong? Right,
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: thing exploded on him and this meter long iron rod
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: basically went through his head. So he kind of went
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: in through his left cheek, kind of up and above,
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: kind of behind his eyeballs, through the front part of
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: his brain, and then it came out the top. Gar
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: He did not. He survived, that is the fascinating thing.
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: And so he got better and everyone's like, oh, oh
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: my god, that's amazing. He's a miracle. I guess the
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: brain is not that important. For take away. Yeah, for
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: a long time, he was basically used as an example
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: of like, oh, the brain is like, you know, just
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: one big amorsive most mass, and if you lose a
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: little bit, it's like, you know, you lose a little bit,
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: but whatever, your brain has the risk of itself to
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: like make you who you are. And so he's revived.
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: People thought he was fine, but literally little people sort
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: of realized there was something a little off about him,
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: like he quite wasn't quite himself like he reportedly, he
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: just had like a he kind of basically became an
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: a hole.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I can say that.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a he had a market change in
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: his temperance, right he was he was now seen as yeah,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: like you said, a whole and thank you for keeping
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: it a family show.
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: But he was not a nice guy. Not a nice guy.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Oh by all accounts.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: Before that though, he was a perfectly nice fellow, a
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: hard worker, like you said, and in fun and fine
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: to be around, jovial. And then after this people started
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: noticing that something in his personality had shifted.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: You know, Yeah, his personality had shifted from being like
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: a nice guy to like being very ill tempered, like
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: he just grumpy all the time. But and then beyond
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: his personality, he also kind of had a little bit
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: of ADHD now, like he could he find it hard
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: to focus, He couldn't really concentrate, and so he's just
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: he was just kind of like a frustrated person all
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: the time. And you know, people who knew me were like,
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: this is not the same person. And so only later
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: when the people realize, like, oh, this is perfectly explained
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: because the front part of your brain, that's kind of
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: where your personality is and where your ability to focus is.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: So that was another big part of kind of like
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: mapping the brain and figuring out that there are parts
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: to it that do different things and which parts do
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: different things.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: I gotta say, there's a really great episode of our
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: sister podcast, Stuff You Missed in History Class, all about
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Phineas Gage back in the Archives. I remember back when
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: I produced that show, that was the first time I'd
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: heard of him, and I thought it was super fascinating.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: So do check that one out for a deep dive
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: on this fascinating character.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Also fascinating to borrow that word there. It's also fascinating
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: that his treating physician was a guy named jam Horlow
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and jam Harlow, like many Western physicians of his day,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: held in abiding interest in phrenology. So maybe if you are,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: if you are a boffin or a doctor of the day,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: maybe it's not the fact that this meter long rod
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: went through the front part of this human brain, it's
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: that it altered the shape of the cranium. So now
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: he doesn't have good guy bumps.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: Well, what's interesting is that, you know, this idea sounds crazy, right,
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: like you could judge how a brain works by how
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: well brain is good at something by its shape. But
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: that's actually something they found kind of in the nineties
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: early two thousands, was that they looked at brain scans
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: of taxi drivers in London.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: The knowledge, yeah, the knowledge of this, the way it
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: sort of changed the pathways, right.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So they studied the brains of taxi drivers
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: in life then, and they talk about the knowledge, right, like,
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: you know, if you're brand new at driving a taxi
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: in London, you're clueless. You have no idea where anything
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: is if you've ever been there, there's like alleys everywhere
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: with all these it's impossible to navigate. But once you've
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: done it for a while you know, the whole day
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: of the land, you can take anyone anywhere. They studied
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: the brains of these people, and they found that people
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: who've been doing it for a long time, that part
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: of your brain that stores like locations and spatial memory
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: that's actually bigger, like it grows.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: The mind is shriveled. Y'all. I'm so bad at directions.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: I have no sense of geography.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: It's really bad because yeah, because maybe it was, it's
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: been bad even since before, you know what. It's just
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: funny though, I will say this, I have recently been
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: trying to actively not use maps, and I have found
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: that it improves my sense of direction overall.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: So I think it can be almost relearned or you know, improved. DuPont.
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: My wife just talked to a coworker who said he's
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: taking his son out for walks just to teach him
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: how to go on walks.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's and it's not always inherent, you know, Yeah.
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: Because he's going out to college and you know, kids
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: do they basically maybe don't have that ability to walk around.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I haven't had to uh be lost in the woods,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: right like our four bears. Uh Yeah, It's funny. It's
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: funny you say that because we we've talked in the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: past about these arguments regarding you know, regarding the advent
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: of offloading uh, some sort of process right from the
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: human machine to an external machine. And I love that
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: you're bringing up the knowledge because that was a revolutionary
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: study in neuroscience. It reminds me as well of a
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: study I want to say it was in Why You
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, admittedly small sample size, but
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: they studied people who meditate, Buddhist monks in particular, and
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: they found something similar similar to the similar to how
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: the use of the part of the brain that is
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: occupied with spatial positioning appropreception. You could argue, similar to
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: how their continued practice of knowing where they are and
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: where they're going literally became mind over matter and increased
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the I believe the argument is not just the increase
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: in size, but the increase in density of synaptic connections.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: The study in eight with Buddhist monks found, and I'm
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: going to sound so pops, I hear, and I apologize,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: it found that the part of the brain position toward
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: or associated with things like empathy and compassion was actually
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: denser and larger and exhibited more activity in those Buddhist
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: monks versus a sample size of you know, jerks like.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: Us, non Buddhist monks, not.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Enlightened, not yes, not enlightened, perfect diplomacy. So this brings
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: us to I think I think the general umbrella term
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: for this concept is neuroplasticity. Is that what we're kind
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: of talking about? What is neuroplasticity.
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of this idea that your brain is
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: not static, like at all, Like your brain is constantly
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: kind of rewiring itself, kind of constantly tuning itself. And
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: it's not like you're necessarily growing new neurons, but these
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: neurons are making new connections between themselves. And also kind
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: of more importantly is that these the connections that they have,
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: they're constantly kind of recalibrating themselves. And actually that's kind
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: of what's happening. That's how like ais learn. You know,
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: if you look at these neural net models, basically what
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: they're changing when they're learning stuff is the weighing of
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: the synaptic connections. So like how strong priority wise or
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: yeah kind of priority wise. Yeah, Like each neurons is
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: connected to like let's say a hundred other neurons, and
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: like it's getting all these inputs, so which ones do
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: you ignore? Which ones do you listen to? And so
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: that happens at what are called synapses, which is kind
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: of where like you know, the little branches of two
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: neurons kind of mean.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: And firing, right, firing synapses.
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: Firing, yeah, firing synapses where that gets transmitted from one
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: to the other. So that's that's where that's happening.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And when you look at a brain scan or
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: an MRI, if I'm not mistaken, you can literally see
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: this activity right lighting up in different regions of the brain.
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: Kind of these these are like almost like molecule size.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: They're like super super tiny, so you can't see them
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: like an MRI, but you can see kind of like
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: when you're looking at MRI, what you're looking at is
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: like the oxygen consumption of your neurons. So you can
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: tell like, oh, these neurons are being active because they're God, drinking.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Up a lot makes a lot of sense. So it's
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: an indicator, got it. Yeah, Yeah, that's fascinating.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: So now we have learned that in given that the
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: universe observable according to Big Bang theory is about fourteen
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: billion years old. Humans are real up and coming fad overall.
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: Right, we're the latest it beings. Yeah we are, We
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: sure are, and for long. That's how fads work.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: And and we we also learned in that very brief
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: span of time that we call humanity. Uh, people went
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: from totally thinking the soul was in the most protected
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: part of the body, the torso right to figuring out, oh,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: that fatty thing in your head does something. Right after
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: we figured out just how to stop eating each other's brains. Uh,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: just gonna throw that in there, and and and then
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: from there we see this, this vast series of at
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: times problematic innovations, sometimes based in accident, sometimes based in
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: confirmation bias or as you said, quack science of phrenology
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: or hate. Where does the exploration of consciousness and neuroscience
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: go in the future, By the way, just going to
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: put this out there for posterity. Jorge, Noel Max and
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I are recording this on Monday, June twenty third, twenty
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: twenty five, So no pressure, Orge. Next thousand years, where
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: are we at.
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: No set, assuming we survived the next I don't know months,
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: Oh my god, existence here you know. I think these
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: things are like Pandora's blogs. You know, once you open them,
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: you can't go back, you know. And so I think
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: we're going to be understanding the universe a lot more,
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: We're going to be understanding things at the quantum level
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: a lot more. And who knows what's going to happen
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: with AIS. You know, it's quite I think possible that
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: within I don't know, twenty years, there'll be a conscious
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: AI who is smarter than us.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: I think can That is the term that gets thrown
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: around a lot, is singularity in terms of AI. But
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: then we also in talking about the Big Bang that's
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: referred to as a singularity event, and maybe the terms
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: are sort of used loosely, But can you kind of
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: talk about that term and how it applies to both
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: of those different things. Is it really just kind of
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: like an it moment where a big thing happens.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: So consciousness is one of the most debated things in
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: like neuroscience psychology. Like if you ask any scientist like
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: what is even consciousness? You'll get one hundred different answers.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: Some people think it's like totally kind of biologically based,
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: like it's you know, a dog can have some kind
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: of consciousness and can have a little bit of a consciousness,
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: you know, machine can have a consciousness the material materialist philosophy. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: And some people think there's something kind of special and
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: almost supernatural about it, you know, even scientists sometimes think
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: that when it happens, it's like this kind of indescribable
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: thing that happens.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Promethean lighting in a bottle. Yeah, And this is
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: where we get to the vast precipice, some would say,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: or the vast horizon, depends upon your interpretations of as
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: you said, Nol, singularity or transhumanism and future futurism. Nolan
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and I were talking off air or at length about
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: the concept of AI, artificial intelligence large language models. We
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: touched on it naturally a little bit in part one,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: but perhaps we close out chapter two of our conversation
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: on the history of brain science by exploring the nature
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: of AI just a bit further. Now you have you have,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: through your work explore human human computer interaction in depth,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: right and yeah, and so where do you see the
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: future of human interaction with AI going? You already said,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: you know, there is a horizon where this kind of
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: thing exists. What will that tell us about the human brain? Oh,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: my goodness, small dog. Well, it kind of depends on
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: where you land about how special the human brain is.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: You know, like I personally am an engineer by training,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: and to me, brains are really just like meat machines.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: You know, It's like it's mechanical, there's chemicals, involves some
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: people think like quantum physics and quantum and certainly plays
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: a role in like those little tiny synapsis that we have,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: in which case, you know, there is maybe some magic
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: to how the human rain works.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: I think we're all made of star stuff.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Well, if the Big Bang is true, then technically that
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: that's also true, right.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: Well yeah, we arose from something like that, right, and
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: we had to have.
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, well most of our the atoms and our
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: bodies were made inside of a star. Yeah, because the
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: universe at the beginning was just all hydrogen, and so
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: anything other than hydrogen was basically made by a star
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: and usually starts dying.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: So yeah, this podcast brought to you by hydrogen. So
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: we're saying then that the nature of consciousness is still
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: something that the world's smartest people past, present, and possibly
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: future have debate, have debated, right, the materialist view of
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: this one thing in this one case, these physical processes,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: these mechanics, and these chemical interactions, and then there's the
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: larger question is there something bigger? Right? Is an individual
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: consciousness only a node for a larger system which gets
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: little It's a lot of my old professors hate that idea.
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's this idea like humans are the way that
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: the universe understands itself kind of. Is that what you're
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: talking about a little bit, Yeah.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Because you're talking about we're talking about now what we
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: would call Homo sapiens exceptionalism, right, yeah, right, the idea
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: that although one can observe perhaps emotions in a pet,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: or what seems to be emotions in a pet, even
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: on the strength of various cognitive diagnostics, you could observe
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: maybe the way an octopus dreams, or the the functions
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: of certain higher order mammals.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: To take what we're talking about metacognition here, right, like
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: the fact that humans are uniquely built to think about thinking,
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: to analyze themselves, sometimes into oblivion, which is why maybe
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: sometimes I'm jealous of the guy that can't remember anything
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: for more than thirty minutes, because it can be a
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: awaking nightmare at times what we do to ourselves in
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: terms of like thinking about thinking and all of the possibilities,
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: and it can be really exhausting, right.
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And they're fascinating cases in the history of
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: brain science to the kind of speak to consciousness. So
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: one fascinating case that is pretty recent are conjoined twins.
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: So there's a pair of famous twins called the Hogan twins,
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: and these are two girls who were born conjoined were
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: they basically share a brain, or they share parts of
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: the brain, and specifically they share like this part called
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: the thalamus, which is kind of like a kind of
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: a hub inside of your brain kind of relays information
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: and so it's too definitely to people, like you can
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: talk to one of them, you can talk to the
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: other of them. But they sort of share their consciousness
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: almost in a way like like one of them can
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: sense what when the other person. Sometimes one of them
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: can sort of sense what the other person is thinking,
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: and they can sort of each control different parts of
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: the other person's body kind of like one of them
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: controls the left leg of the other one, the other
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: one controls the right arm of the other one. I
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: forget the exact details, but it's kind of like, like
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: you said, kind of like we sometimes think being conscious
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: the only way to be conscious is to be conscious
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: like humans are right now, But there are other ways
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: that we can be conscious.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, even other non conjoined twin studies yield
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: some pretty interesting results, like in terms of potentially some
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: kind of link, you know, where there's at the very
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: least a what's the word I'm looking for, a kind
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: of intuition, you know, in terms of like that would
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: you know, surpass normal intuition maybe between regular siblings. I've
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: met known in my life multiple sets of identical twins,
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: and there's something to it.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: It's very fascinating.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: I would say that is a different kind of consciousness
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: in some ways where you are. Maybe it's a product
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: of sharing the same space so much and you know,
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: spending so much time around each other. But I have
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: seen something, some things that have a hard time explaining
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: in terms of the way twins can kind of know
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: what each other are thinking and feeling.
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a role for intuition there,
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: and you know, it doesn't have to be physical consciousness,
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: Like you know, I kind of personally think that we
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: all kind of share as a human species some sort
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: of consciousness.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: You know, through the collect it's unconscious, Yeah, like the
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: young and super consciousness, right right, Like that just.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Adds to that. You're right.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry I didn't interrupt, but that's a really good point.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: The Internet is, in and of itself, a super scaled
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: version of that just contributes to what we're talking about.
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it just really all depends on how you define
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: this word consciousness.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Mm.
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: Like if it means, like, you know, being able to
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: write poetry and understand Shakespeare, that's one you might not
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: get very far there. But you know, I've talked to
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: scientists basically, just define it as our sense are as
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: one of our senses that keeps track of our internal state.
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: So like you have a visual sense that tells you, oh,
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: I'm in the room, there's a door over there, that's
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: an apple over there. You have kind of an inner
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: looking sense that just tells you like, oh, I'm feeling
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: this way, I'm thinking about this, I'm having this memory
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: of the apple eight this morning. It's just kind of
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: like something that tells your body, Oh, this is what's
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: going on inside your brain.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: Well, the key word there also is I you know,
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: and this idea of identity and this idea of consciousness
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: revolving around.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: Who we are and when who we are.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: Being ultimately a collection of experience is that are in
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: many ways influenced by the society we live in and
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: you know, and if you want to take it further
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: than them people trying to achieve enlightenment, the idea is
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: sort of disconnect from all of those aspects and like
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: truly experience the spiritual part of what it is to
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: have me have a soul or to like, you know,
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: what it means to be part of the universe, rather
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: than this identity, this construct that we sort of you know,
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: force upon ourselves or is forced upon us oftentimes.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating. Obviously I'm super into this.
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: Well did this gets We just did an episode about
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: this on Signed Stuff, the podcast on and about near
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: death experiences.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, we just.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: Talked to an incredible podcast creator and friend of the show,
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: Dan Bush on stuff that I want you to know
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: about his incredible podcasts Alive Again. That is all about
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: interviews with folks who've experienced your experiences.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I'm going to connect you with those folks. You guys
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: should hang out can you tell us just a bit
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: of a tease as we wrap up what you found
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: in your explorations on ND or near death experiences in
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: science stuff.
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it kind of goes back to this idea
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: of what consciousness is and because you know, a big
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: part of near death experiences is this out of body experience.
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: People feel like they're outside their body, and what we
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: found was that it can it can all be explained
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: by science by how your brain works, and but whether
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: that's actually what's going on, like you know, scientists can't
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: answer that because you know, we can't test someone while
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: they're having it experience. But basically all of these phenomena
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: near thats you know, feeling outside of your body, having
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: weird visions, talking to people who are already dead, there
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: are brain processes that you can say, Okay, I think
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: that's what's going on there, and that we can replicate
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: that in the lab. If I give you, you know,
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: a hallucinogen, well in a control environment, you're also going
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: to have these experiences. If I take i'm achine that
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: disrupts this part of your brain, I can make you
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: feel like you're stepping outside your body.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: Or experiencing divinity like the famous god helmet experiments, and
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: and also very well done doctor cham to note that
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: we cannot ethically pursue some direct experiments that would lead
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: to breakthroughs there because it would require doing kind of
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: evil things to innocent people, even if they signed up.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: You know, we've all seen flatliners. Yeah, classic Julia Roberts movie. Yeah,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, that was joy, that was yeah, young Sutherland,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah. And uh, you know, I've got to
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: be honest. Uh, it's a super up to date pop
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: culture reference, I'm sure, but I remember seeing flatliners and
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: being convinced that this is why people join med school and.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: So they can do the flat so they can do flatliners.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Luckily, Luckily, my uncle, a very nice, very learned man,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: assured a young Ben Bullen that it would still be
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: illegal to quote unquote flat line people to quote unquote
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: see what happens.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Well, And speaking of other cinematic masterpieces, we were talking
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: a little earlier about the idea of Vibes, and I
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: have to take this opportunity to recommend the movie Vibes.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's one of your favorites, Ben. I
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: actually recommended it to a friend the other day.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Seminole Ghostbusters slash Indiana Jones mashup slash Ripoff that everyone
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: should see, starring Jeff Goldbloom and Cindy Love Hare, No
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: True No Vibes. Well, get you to a cinema or hey,
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: hopefully they're doing a revival screening of Vibes somewhere in
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: your neck of the woods.
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: I think I missed that seminal moment in neuroscience.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: It's okay, Yeah, it explains a lot. It's a real breakthrough.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like the Police Academy four of its time.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: It's probably contemporary with Police Academy. It probably is. Actually
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: I've come out the same year with that.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Orgee for spending time with us
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: and making this Orgey and Science Stuff Week. Where can
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: people learn more about your explorations.
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so right now my big project is sign Stuff.
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: It's a new iHeart podcast. You can find it anywhere
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: you get your podcasts. Search for sign Stuff one word
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: and look for the purple icon. That's us. And we
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: asked her awesome questions like do animals understand death? Or
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: do they like to get drunk? Or what's inside of
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: a black hole? Or oh, grow limb Yeah, that's the
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: one that was super fascinating recently. Why can't we regrow limbs?
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: There are animals who, like you, cut up their arm,
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: don't just grow a brand new one. Why can't we
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: do it? And we find out the answer is maybe
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: we can.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: And while you are on the internet, please do check
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: out one of our favorite aspects of Doctor Chimp or Hey.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: In addition to being one of, if not the smartest
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: people on the history of this show, definitely in this episode.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: You are not just a mechanical engineer Stanford graduated. You
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: did not just attend Georgia Tech, one of the most
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: difficult schools of its caliber. You are also the creator
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: of a comic strip called PhD Comics. Could you tell
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: us a little bit about that?
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, PhD Comics. You can find out a PhD Comics
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: dot com. It's a comic strip I started when I
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: was in grad school, and it's all about what it's
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: like to do science, what it's like to be an academic.
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: It's kind of people describe it as the Dilbert of academia.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know this, guys. I'll have to check it
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: out next trip in my life.
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and so I was super lucky to be
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: able to do that for many many years on the internet,
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: huge amount of support for people out there, and then
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: that translated to me doing movies and then a TV show.
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: Recently you can find that one on PPS Kids. It's
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: called Eleanor Wonders Why. And I've also gone in to
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: write and draw a lot of books. So my probably
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: my most famous one I've worked on is called We
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: Have No Idea, which is a guide to everything we
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: don't know about the universe. And now the most popular
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: one is something called Oliver's Great Big Universe, which is
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: for kids. If you have a kid who's really curious
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: and like science but also likes, you know, far jokes
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: and really fun, fun middle school middle grade stories, please
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: check it out.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: A polymath and renaissance man, indeed, doctor Horte Sham, thanks
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: again for joining us on Ridiculous History.
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: For Hoorte Sham week, oh thank you, and well well
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: well bully for us, congratulations and tally ho Wecei Thury, Yes,
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: Noel we once again, my friend, uh.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: We managed to speak with a world class expert uh
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: in science, and I think we post some interesting questions.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: I think so, I think we held our own with
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: doctor cham Jorge to his friends. I'd like to think
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: that we walked away from these recordings as friends. He said,
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: like said, he wanted to come back on again, and
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: that we made him laugh and smile.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: That made us feel really good. That's true.
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: Our neurons were firing, were they which whichever part is associated.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: With learning and with us?
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: And joy?
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: And joy? That's the word we were looking for. Uh
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: we I don't know. No, this guy is so close
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: to getting a cool ridiculous history, street name, a nickname,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: an operator name.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: You know it's doctor horget riverside Champ. Oh, that's true,
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: he made his own.
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: There we go.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: Now we can do better, we'll workshop that one, but
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: for now. Huge days to you, Ben. That was a
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: fun exploration of all things heady and universal.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Huge thanks to you know, huge thanks to our super producer,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: mister Max Frictionless. Williams got a nice haircut there. Also,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: big big thanks to aj Bahama's Jacob's Jonathan Strickland aka
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: the Twister. Okay, yep, big thanks to him.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, of course. Sure, the rude dudes over a
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: ridiculous crime.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: We've got Chris Praciota's and Eve Jeff Coates here and
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: Spirit you know what, I think.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: We'll see you next time, folks.
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: For more podcast from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.