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Myths About the Brain · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
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Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works dot com. Hey,
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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
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Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and this is stuff you should know the podcast.
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Speaker 1: Greetings pricklings. Hello, everyone, brains, brains, brains. That's right, that's
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Speaker 1: my intro. Uh that you didn't do it ten times though?
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Speaker 1: About no one wants to hear that. And we're not
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Speaker 1: going to even talk about ten brain myths we even
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Speaker 1: though the this episode is called ten Myths about the Brain. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: if you're new to the show and you've never heard
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Speaker 1: us do one of our famous top tens, then you
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Speaker 1: probably don't know. We rarely cover all ten. We will
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Speaker 1: tease you a bit with six to eight and then
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Speaker 1: say go read the article if you want the other one.
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Speaker 1: And in this case, we've actually covered a couple of
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Speaker 1: the things before, so there's no point in rehashing exactly
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Speaker 1: so that. I guess I just probably need to explain
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Speaker 1: that you laid the ground rules pretty well man to
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Speaker 1: a top ten that is really not tin um. So
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Speaker 1: we we have brains in our heads. Uh, And I
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Speaker 1: think most people walk around feeling like they have some
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Speaker 1: ideas about the brain, some understanding, um, but it turns
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Speaker 1: out that some of them are wrong. There's myths out
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Speaker 1: there and so have kind of interesting weird origins too. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I thought this is pretty cool article because we've covered
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Speaker 1: the brain a lot and it's one of our favorite,
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Speaker 1: favorite favorite subjects. So it's kind of cool to root
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Speaker 1: out some of these things that a couple of these
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Speaker 1: I thought were true. Well. Well, for example, like, um,
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Speaker 1: your brain is gray, I thought that to be true. Well,
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Speaker 1: and it's understandable why too, because people call the brain
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Speaker 1: gray matter. Um apparently Hercule Paul row I just said
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Speaker 1: that like a dog that was That was right, h
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Speaker 1: That's an odd name to have to say though. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Hercules plaically especially from my tongue marble mouth. He used
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Speaker 1: to call his brains his gray cells. Oh yeah. Um,
2:07
Speaker 1: so yeah, everybody thinks the brain is great and it
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Speaker 1: is gray. There are very much, um lots of gray
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Speaker 1: areas called gray matter, but there's other colors to the
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Speaker 1: brain too. Yeah. This kind of knocked me out because
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Speaker 1: I had no idea that the brain was also white, black,
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Speaker 1: and red like our Georgia bulldogs in Atlanta, falcon starts
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Speaker 1: lapping in there, everybody's brains walking around the bulldog fan So,
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Speaker 1: like you said, there is a lot of gray matter,
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Speaker 1: uh cells, neurons connecting to each other. There's also white matter.
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Speaker 1: Well that's the stuff that connects them. Well, the white
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Speaker 1: matter is is the nerve fibers right right, So it
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Speaker 1: connects like your gray matter regions to one another. So
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Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, but what about the substantia nigra
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Speaker 1: Latin for black substance that is part of your brain
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Speaker 1: is black? I would think that would be scary. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: he was dead, dude, think so. But the that that
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Speaker 1: region of the brain um, it has to do with
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Speaker 1: motor control, like fine control, and that's that They think
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Speaker 1: that possibly that's where Parkinson's damage comes from, or Parkinson's
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Speaker 1: disease is located there. And the reason it's black is
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Speaker 1: because of neuromelanin, which is a pigment. And I was
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Speaker 1: very curious why your brain would eat any kind of pigment? Whatsoever?
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Speaker 1: Did you get to that? Yeah, it turns out they
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Speaker 1: don't know, but they think that it basically takes um
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Speaker 1: it removes heavy metals from your bloodstream. From that area
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Speaker 1: and that they they also think that it has to
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Speaker 1: do with there's a adrene of chrome, do you remember that?
3:38
Speaker 1: From Fear and low thing in Las Vegas. So that
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Speaker 1: stuff is real, and your brain produces as a byproduct
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Speaker 1: of some of his normal processes, and we would all
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Speaker 1: be totally psychotic apparently from the stuff if it wasn't
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Speaker 1: for neuromelanin. They think basically getting rid of it. So
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Speaker 1: we depend on that color. Yeah, that pigment, at least
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Speaker 1: not for coloring in this case, but some other stuff. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I couldn't. The reason we think gray besides people calling
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Speaker 1: it gray matters because usually when we see a brain
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Speaker 1: it's floating in a jar, then it has been turned
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Speaker 1: gray from the formaldehyde and stuff. But I couldn't find
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Speaker 1: any kind of picture of like an active brain with
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Speaker 1: all these colors. I guess it's impossible unless they just,
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Speaker 1: you know, peel your skull off and take a picture
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Speaker 1: real quick. Yeah, I'm sure that was exist. What couldn't
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Speaker 1: I find a picture? I don't know. I mean, yeah,
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Speaker 1: they do brain surgery, you know, with the healthy living brain.
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Speaker 1: Didn't work super hard though, that's the secret. So there
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Speaker 1: there you go. Red black, white and gray your brain,
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Speaker 1: all right. Number two, listening to Mozart makes you smarter. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: this one I thought was did too, because Baby Einstein
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Speaker 1: if you've never heard of that, that is, parents are
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Speaker 1: living this stuff, big, big, multimillion dollar industry of packaging
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Speaker 1: classical music and poetry and stuff like that to a
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Speaker 1: not just to your baby and toddler and growing child,
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Speaker 1: but for your fetus as well. Even. Yeah, the Mozart
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Speaker 1: effect is what it's called, UM, and it's gonna be smarter.
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Speaker 1: Apparently the Mozart effect is trademarked by a guy named
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Speaker 1: Dan Campbell. Basically, UM puts together Mozart and CDs and
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Speaker 1: books and stuff like that. Um. The thing is is
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Speaker 1: this Mozart effect was It was first noted in the fifties,
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Speaker 1: I think by an ear nose and throat doctor named
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Speaker 1: Albert Tomattus, and he said that he made it. He
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Speaker 1: said that UM, the his patients who were struggling with
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Speaker 1: speech and audit auditory disorders UM showed improvement when they
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Speaker 1: listened to Mozart specifically. And then in the nineties somebody
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Speaker 1: else apparently conducted a test at the University of California,
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Speaker 1: Irvine that showed that people's IQ scores improved after listening
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Speaker 1: to Mozart, and then the Mozart effects was born. Well,
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Speaker 1: so based on these studies, I would think that it
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Speaker 1: does make you smarter. So is that true? Apparently not
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Speaker 1: necessarily no, because these are all myths. Yeah, that that
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Speaker 1: that you see Irvine study in particular was kind of
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Speaker 1: taken out of context. I get the impression, and um,
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Speaker 1: they were saying, well, we never said it makes you smarter.
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Speaker 1: We just said that it improved people's ability on the
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Speaker 1: specific temporal spatial test. Yeah, this one specific thing. We
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Speaker 1: didn't say it makes you smarter. That's the popular media
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Speaker 1: that did that. So things got a little twisted around
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Speaker 1: over time, and since then they have not been able
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Speaker 1: to duplicate these results from that original test. So it
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Speaker 1: turns out it probably won't hurt you any right, but
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Speaker 1: listening to classical music is not going to actually make
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Speaker 1: you smarter. But they have found that, um, learning to
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Speaker 1: play music, you can do a lot of stuff. Um,
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Speaker 1: it improves concentration, self constant competence, coordination. Really yeah uh
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Speaker 1: and you mentioned people playing Mozart to get the Mozart
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Speaker 1: effect for their fetuses. Yeah, Um, have you ever heard
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Speaker 1: the one that you get a new wrinkle in your
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Speaker 1: brain every time you learn something. I knew that wasn't true.
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Speaker 1: It sounds a little bit like an angel gets his
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Speaker 1: wings every time. All totally, Uh, that is not true.
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Speaker 1: But there are some cool little factoids in here. Uh,
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Speaker 1: one of which is that by the time you reach
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Speaker 1: forty weeks old, you have the same brain. It will
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Speaker 1: get larger, of course, but you have all the same
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Speaker 1: little folds and crevices called jerry and sulci um, all
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Speaker 1: folded up together. And the reason it's folded up together
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Speaker 1: is because our brain is large and the skull isn't,
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Speaker 1: so it needed to scrunch itself in there as we evolved.
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Speaker 1: And I think if you unfolded all that, the brain
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Speaker 1: would be the size of a tennis court. No, no,
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Speaker 1: that's the intestines a pillowcase. Okay, that's still pretty Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's huge. Um, and that's why we're so smart. Um,
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Speaker 1: which kind of leads us to another. Um. Another myth
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Speaker 1: all right, that humans have the biggest brain, which is
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Speaker 1: not the case, which makes sense to me. I thought
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Speaker 1: this one was pretty cool. Actually, Um, A lot of
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Speaker 1: people walking around I think that because we're so smart,
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Speaker 1: we must have the biggest brain. But if you if
8:24
Speaker 1: you think about it, no, a whale is going to
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Speaker 1: have a bigger brain than a human brain. That's true
8:28
Speaker 1: because whales are enormous. Our brains about three pounds a whale.
8:33
Speaker 1: Sperm whales about what's seventeen pounds, Yeah, which is a
8:36
Speaker 1: huge brain. So why aren't sperm whales running the planet?
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Speaker 1: The reason why, It doesn't really matter the size of
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Speaker 1: the brain. It's the size of the brain to the
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Speaker 1: rest of the body. That ratio is what matters. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I thought that was super interesting. They used dolphins as
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Speaker 1: an example because the dolphin's brain is about the same
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Speaker 1: size of a humans brain. Dolphins are super smart, But
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Speaker 1: an average dolphin weighs about three fifty pounds. Uh, I
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Speaker 1: don't know. Does it say how much the average adultways,
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Speaker 1: it's not three. I would say, depending on whether it's
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Speaker 1: male or female, anywhere between a hundred to two hundred pounds,
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Speaker 1: whether or not average somewhere in there. Sorry. Uh. And
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Speaker 1: then they also go on to name some other animals,
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Speaker 1: which was just sort of cute to think about. A
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Speaker 1: beagle's brain is two point five ounces. Cute, little beagle
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Speaker 1: and a sparrow has a brain that weighs less than
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Speaker 1: half an ounce. That's adorable. So again though it's the
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Speaker 1: it's the brain size to body size ratio, and humans
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Speaker 1: it's one to fifty UM. Most other mammals it's one
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Speaker 1: to one eight UM, and then in birds it's one
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Speaker 1: to two twenty typically. Yeah, but we do have humans
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Speaker 1: compared to mammals, we have the largest cerebral cortex, which
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Speaker 1: is really where like that's the money section. It's also
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Speaker 1: the newest part of our brain. It's on the outermost surface, um,
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Speaker 1: and that's where all the higher functions are carried out.
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Speaker 1: And that's what really separates us. That's why we run
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Speaker 1: the planet. Otherwise just be orangutans. Um. What about subliminal
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Speaker 1: messages and we learn from those? Uh, that is a falsehood, sir.
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Speaker 1: I guess that's the spoiler. All these are false but
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Speaker 1: their myths. Yeah, they're myths. Um. But back in the
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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, there was a marketing executive, a researcher named
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Speaker 1: James Vickery who, uh did you know everyone always heard
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Speaker 1: you know, you go to the movies and they splash
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Speaker 1: up Coca cola and popcorn. I thought that was a myth.
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Speaker 1: I did too, but that was true. They did that
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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty seven. Yeah, there's a there's a still
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Speaker 1: in this article from the movie and over Kim's face
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Speaker 1: it says hungry eat popcorns and it's from a frame
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Speaker 1: of the movie. So that's one three thousandth of a second.
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Speaker 1: And um, Vickery said, you know what, Uh, sales increased
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Speaker 1: in the theater by eighteen percent for popcorn I'm sorry
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Speaker 1: for drinks, and by fifty seven percent for popcorn thanks
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Speaker 1: to these messages. Yeah, and everybody said, okay, well, we're
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Speaker 1: very interested in basically psychologically manipulating everybody into buying our products.
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Speaker 1: So they started putting that stuff in jingles and in
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Speaker 1: UM movies and television, and UM, they found pretty quickly
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Speaker 1: that it actually doesn't have an effect yet. Well, they
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Speaker 1: banned it first of all, the FEC band in nine,
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Speaker 1: because they did think it worked at the time. UM.
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Speaker 1: But then later on it turns out that James Vickery
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Speaker 1: just lied about the results, not true at all. He's like, hey,
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Speaker 1: I was a sales guy, not a scientist, but you
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Speaker 1: expect uh so yeah, like you said, the FEC band
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Speaker 1: subliminal advertising in general, which was a good move because
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Speaker 1: if it did work, that's not okay. No, but a
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Speaker 1: lot of people still think that it's still around and
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Speaker 1: then it actually does work, Yes, but it is not true.
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Speaker 1: And they even tested this in Canada evidently on TV.
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Speaker 1: They flashed the message call now during a broadcast, and
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Speaker 1: I guess nobody called. Maybe they didn't give a number.
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Speaker 1: There's this right, I feel like I need to call somebody,
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Speaker 1: but I don't get it. I wondered though, like if
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Speaker 1: if they were studying the wrong thing, like call now
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Speaker 1: makes sense, but what if it has to be much
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Speaker 1: more explicit, like hungry eat popcorn? You can't eat popcorn?
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Speaker 1: Like maybe that would make you grab a bite of
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Speaker 1: popcorn fit we're in your lap. Maybe it has to
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Speaker 1: be more direct, like hungry, go buy popcorn at the
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Speaker 1: front concession stand now, you know, because then your brain
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Speaker 1: would obey that command rather than a roundabout command that's
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Speaker 1: the result of something you have to do, telling you
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Speaker 1: to go do that thing. Maybe that would work. So
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Speaker 1: you're leaving the door open for this for further testing.
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Speaker 1: I could see it subliminal below the lineman or lemon,
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Speaker 1: which is the threshold of our conscious awareness. Yeah, it
12:54
Speaker 1: looks like Lineman when by itself, that's what's in sprit.
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Speaker 1: But if he said subliminal, then somebody would just on
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Speaker 1: two upside the head, you know. Yeah, where are we now?
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Speaker 1: We are on the idea that brain damage is always permanent.
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Speaker 1: I didn't know that this was a thing. I didn't
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Speaker 1: know that people said that. Sure, I never heard that. Well,
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Speaker 1: I think the point of it is is you know
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Speaker 1: that the brain can't repair itself once it's damaged, And
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Speaker 1: that's absolutely not true. It's not true. The brain is
13:23
Speaker 1: extremely resilient. It's it's so much so that there's this
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Speaker 1: thing called plasticity, um, which is it kind of ties
13:31
Speaker 1: into that idea that you get a new wrinkle when
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Speaker 1: you learn something that's not true. But your brain can
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Speaker 1: rewire itself. That's how you learn and unlearned behaviors through
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Speaker 1: brain plasticity. Yes, so I guess there are some truth
13:44
Speaker 1: in that. Neurons, once they are damaged, they cannot grow back, right,
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Speaker 1: but thanks to plasticity, that will make new neural connections
13:52
Speaker 1: in sometimes surprising ways, which is why if you've had
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Speaker 1: a stroke and damage part of your brain, you can
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Speaker 1: relearn to speak alps if you've lost that ability by
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Speaker 1: forging these new connections. There's a girl out there, um
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Speaker 1: who has only one hemisphere of her brain. That's it
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Speaker 1: that way. I don't remember she was born that way
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Speaker 1: or if it was the result of surgery or damage
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Speaker 1: or something, but she's got half of a brain. Her
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Speaker 1: brain has just one hemisphere, and she has binocular vision.
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Speaker 1: She can see out of both eyes, which they had
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Speaker 1: no idea how that was going on. And they finally
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Speaker 1: went in and looked, I guess using an m R
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Speaker 1: I and they found that her optic nerve that should
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Speaker 1: be connected to the missing hemisphere had basically grown, had
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Speaker 1: grown to go patch in another part of her brain
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Speaker 1: on the other side, and it basically hijacked this other
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Speaker 1: part of her brain and was using it for sight.
14:43
Speaker 1: That is unbelievable. That's the brain. I wonder what you
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Speaker 1: lose though, I wonder if it forges a connection and
14:49
Speaker 1: at the expense of another, you know what I'm saying, Yeah, like,
14:53
Speaker 1: could she be like, man, I can see through both eyes,
14:55
Speaker 1: but I can't tie my shoot any longer. Yeah, maybe, yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's possible, But I mean the brain would would say, well,
15:01
Speaker 1: it's better you can see somebody else can tie your shoes.
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Speaker 1: Well that makes me wonder, though, I wonder if there
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Speaker 1: is an order to it all, like if the brain
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Speaker 1: knows what's more important. Yes, there is. As a matter
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Speaker 1: of fact, this ties into that idea that you only
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Speaker 1: use ten percent of your brain. Wow, all right, let's
15:18
Speaker 1: hear it. Well that's not true, by the way, right,
15:21
Speaker 1: And actually that one has a pretty interesting origin, doesn't it. Yeah,
15:25
Speaker 1: they're not quite sure where it came from. Um, it
15:28
Speaker 1: seems like it's always been around though, the notion that
15:31
Speaker 1: you only use ten percent of your brain. But um,
15:33
Speaker 1: they think it may have come from American psychologist William
15:37
Speaker 1: James in the early nineteen hundreds when he said the
15:40
Speaker 1: average person rarely achieves but a small portion of his
15:43
Speaker 1: or her potential. And that was just sort of twisted
15:46
Speaker 1: into ten percent of your brain is used. And people,
15:49
Speaker 1: you know, you see people taking advantage of this notion
15:52
Speaker 1: all the time with self help books like Tap into
15:54
Speaker 1: the Other and it's just bunk, right, And this is
15:57
Speaker 1: where it ties in. It is in that all regions,
16:03
Speaker 1: all physical regions of your brain are being used. But
16:07
Speaker 1: there's a theory that's around for savantism. Explain savantism, which
16:11
Speaker 1: I want to do someday, we need to write the
16:13
Speaker 1: article on it. But so fascinating. There's a theory right
16:19
Speaker 1: now that savanta is um is from the result of
16:22
Speaker 1: like brain damage. What what savantism is the result of
16:26
Speaker 1: the brain's tyranny of the frontal lobe is what it's called.
16:31
Speaker 1: And basically the idea is that your frontal lobe decides
16:36
Speaker 1: what's important, and it bosses around all the other regions
16:39
Speaker 1: of your brain to carry out this very smooth, efficient
16:43
Speaker 1: streamline process that basically it decides is the most important,
16:48
Speaker 1: and in doing so, it cast to the side a
16:51
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff, like the ability to make great art,
16:54
Speaker 1: or the ability to count a bunch of matches that
16:56
Speaker 1: just fell on the floor, whatever, And that savantasm is
16:59
Speaker 1: the result of this executive function, this tyranny of the
17:01
Speaker 1: frontal cortex being disrupted, so that maybe you aren't just
17:06
Speaker 1: the most efficient shark in the tank any longer, and
17:10
Speaker 1: you're not out there and like going, going, going, and
17:12
Speaker 1: like trying to compete and beat everybody else. But there's
17:16
Speaker 1: all these other things that are now free to just
17:18
Speaker 1: kind of blossom, like artistic deep, amazing, artistic, interesting abilities. Yeah,
17:24
Speaker 1: that's that's this theory point and we're just now learning
17:27
Speaker 1: this stuff. But it suggests that maybe we do only
17:31
Speaker 1: use a portion of our abilities, not physical, like we're
17:35
Speaker 1: using a dred percent of the physical parts of our brain,
17:38
Speaker 1: but what we're using it for is that issue. Yeah,
17:40
Speaker 1: you see what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, so there's definitely
17:42
Speaker 1: something to that. Yeah. I trip out on the brain
17:46
Speaker 1: a lot, Like when I'm studying it for the podcast,
17:49
Speaker 1: I'll get sidetracked. Like this morning, I was reading this
17:52
Speaker 1: article and I just had one of those little flights
17:54
Speaker 1: of fancy where it amazed me that I was looking
17:57
Speaker 1: at these printed shapes on a pay paper that formed
18:01
Speaker 1: words into sentences that I understood and had meaning. And
18:05
Speaker 1: I just was amazed by the brain. Just laying in
18:08
Speaker 1: bed this morning, I was like, oh my god, Like
18:10
Speaker 1: I'm reading these words that makes sense, and I'm speaking
18:12
Speaker 1: words that have a symbol form on a paper, And
18:16
Speaker 1: I promise you I wasn't on LSD this morning, but
18:20
Speaker 1: I just had one of those moments where it just
18:21
Speaker 1: like totally amazed me that I was even able to read.
18:24
Speaker 1: So the brain basically made you impressed with itself. Yes
18:28
Speaker 1: it did. And while you mentioned ls do we I
18:31
Speaker 1: guess we can say in passing apparently drugs do not
18:36
Speaker 1: create holes in your brain. That is not true, um.
18:39
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of uh back and forth over
18:42
Speaker 1: how much damage drugs due to your brain at all,
18:46
Speaker 1: how reparable that damage is. And there are studies going
18:50
Speaker 1: on on all all the all the time about long
18:52
Speaker 1: term drug use and the results. One of them, interestingly
18:57
Speaker 1: found that they think that some long term use of
19:01
Speaker 1: some drugs can cause structures in the brain to grow,
19:05
Speaker 1: and that is why addicts may have a hard time
19:07
Speaker 1: kicking the habit, because they've grown a certain part of
19:10
Speaker 1: their brain. I guess to Yeah, your limbic system is
19:13
Speaker 1: strengthened through that. Very interesting and alcohol um does not
19:19
Speaker 1: kill brain cells. It damages the dentrides that we've talked about,
19:23
Speaker 1: and those are the ends of the neurons where the
19:25
Speaker 1: connections are taking place. I guess right. So it makes
19:29
Speaker 1: your neurons talk sideways to one another like the brain
19:32
Speaker 1: cells are still there, but they just can't talk about yeah,
19:35
Speaker 1: pretty much. And there's something a neurological disorder called Wernikey
19:41
Speaker 1: Corsicov syndrome, and that is uh can result in a
19:45
Speaker 1: loss of neurons in the brain. But that's basically what
19:48
Speaker 1: I think of when I think someone has like pickled
19:50
Speaker 1: themselves with alcohol. But that's kind of what's going on.
19:53
Speaker 1: It's actually not the alcohol that's killing brain cells. It's
19:57
Speaker 1: from it's from a uh A deficiency and thymine. That amazing. Yeah,
20:03
Speaker 1: So if if you have a thymine deficiency, you can
20:05
Speaker 1: get this war Nikki Corsicov syndrome and um, that's a
20:09
Speaker 1: B vitamin. And if you are an alcoholic, you typically
20:13
Speaker 1: aren't absorbing your your thymin like you would if you
20:16
Speaker 1: weren't an alcoholic, which is why it's associated with alcoholism.
20:18
Speaker 1: But it's not alcohol killing brain cells, right, And it's
20:21
Speaker 1: much easier for me just to say they've pickled themselves,
20:25
Speaker 1: which is really sad. We're laughing, but it is. It
20:28
Speaker 1: is super sad. Yes, it is. If you've ever met
20:31
Speaker 1: anyone that was pickled, well, yeah, and here's a alcohol
20:33
Speaker 1: Any addicts suffering as a result of their addiction is
20:36
Speaker 1: extremely sad, it is. So that's all I got. How
20:40
Speaker 1: many was that? Seven? Is eight or six and a
20:43
Speaker 1: half something like that. Um, if you want to learn
20:46
Speaker 1: the fate of the other remaining brain myths from this
20:50
Speaker 1: top ten list. Type in brain myths in the search
20:54
Speaker 1: bart how stuff works dot com and it will bring
20:56
Speaker 1: this article up. And actually we sort of have issue
20:59
Speaker 1: with one of them we left off was the decapitation.
21:03
Speaker 1: They said it was a myth. I guess I didn't
21:05
Speaker 1: even read it, kind of but didn't we say it was?
21:08
Speaker 1: They say, and they're like, yeah, it's gonna last for
21:11
Speaker 1: a couple of seconds or whatever, like, which is what
21:14
Speaker 1: we said in the podcast. But for some reason they
21:17
Speaker 1: made that seem like, but that's nothing right. But then
21:20
Speaker 1: they said that it's an extremely painful way to die
21:23
Speaker 1: because you are conscious. Afterwards, it was it was kind
21:26
Speaker 1: of a cluster mixed messages. Yeah, all right, uh so
21:29
Speaker 1: I said, such partians this time for a listener. Now, yes,
21:34
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this poop poopy time. We did our
21:39
Speaker 1: our podcast on fecal transplants, and we've had all manner
21:43
Speaker 1: of poopy emails coming in and I'm gonna share one
21:46
Speaker 1: from Jacob Carnes, U, Hi, Josh, Chuck and Jerry and
21:50
Speaker 1: he spelled Jerry right. I just finished the Fecal Transplant
21:53
Speaker 1: podcast and felt compelled to write in after you mentioned
21:55
Speaker 1: the Nora virus, which I was afflicted with about two
21:58
Speaker 1: weeks ago. Didn't last long, just about twenty four hours,
22:00
Speaker 1: but it hit instantly, like someone flipped the switch. I
22:04
Speaker 1: will spare you the details, but it was nearly the
22:06
Speaker 1: worst I've ever felt. The day after was nearly the
22:09
Speaker 1: best I've ever felt, due to the euphoria of still
22:12
Speaker 1: being alive. But for the following week, my gut felt
22:15
Speaker 1: like it just wasn't right. My hunch is that it
22:17
Speaker 1: was really messed with the internal flora. He needs some
22:20
Speaker 1: Kombucha's that. Oh it's this um. It's just like fermented
22:25
Speaker 1: basically like probiotic drink. Um. I guess it's Eastern. It's
22:31
Speaker 1: really delicious. There's some very delicious kombucca drinks out there,
22:35
Speaker 1: and it's supposedly promotes um colonization in your gut. You're
22:39
Speaker 1: drinking this stuff. I love it. Yeah, where you get it?
22:42
Speaker 1: Whole Foods has his kind. It's called GTS and they
22:46
Speaker 1: have a specific flavor called ginger a. That's just it's
22:50
Speaker 1: so good. You have to check that out. Yeah all right. Uh.
22:53
Speaker 1: He follows up to say, this is my favorite part.
22:55
Speaker 1: Like I said, I felt compelled to write after you
22:57
Speaker 1: mentioned the Nora virus, but I felt obligated after you've
23:00
Speaker 1: brought up the terror of your young selves experience when
23:04
Speaker 1: you had the misfortune of using the bathroom after your
23:06
Speaker 1: father's remember that old man poop. When I was a child,
23:10
Speaker 1: my father liked to enjoy a cigarette while doing his
23:13
Speaker 1: business is very seventies, So when I heard the call
23:18
Speaker 1: uh shortly after him, I was subjected to the putrid
23:21
Speaker 1: number two smell mixed with the stale cigarette smoke, and
23:25
Speaker 1: to this day I have trouble separating the ladder from
23:27
Speaker 1: the former. As I grew up, the need to look
23:30
Speaker 1: cool convinced me to try and take up the habit
23:32
Speaker 1: of smoking to look cool on the toilet numerous times. Uh.
23:36
Speaker 1: But my childhood association has at least helped me come
23:39
Speaker 1: to my senses. So you never learned to smoke because
23:43
Speaker 1: he associated with his dad's poop. That's good. Whatever works.
23:47
Speaker 1: Thanks for another great podcast, guys, Jacob Carnes. Yeah, I
23:51
Speaker 1: guess for all of you smoking out there, like take
23:53
Speaker 1: it to the toilet. See what happens. I take a
23:55
Speaker 1: big whiff of poop. Well, while you're smoking a cigarette
23:59
Speaker 1: and they'll probably bring Q of your habit mixing, disgusted
24:02
Speaker 1: with anything. Well, we'll break you have habits right, Um,
24:07
Speaker 1: if you have a habit breaking tip, bad habit breaking tip,
24:12
Speaker 1: we want to hear it because that's the demonstration of
24:14
Speaker 1: brain plats. The city is you know Uh. You can
24:17
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s y SK podcast. You can
24:20
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24:22
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Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, and you can join us at our
24:27
Speaker 1: home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com
24:36
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