Latest / The You Project / #1851 Temporary Psychopaths - David Gillespie

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#1851 Temporary Psychopaths - David Gillespie · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'll get a team. Welcome to another installing the show.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: It's Jumbo, it's Tiff, It's Galspo, high bloody Glesspo.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: On the same time. Hi mate, Sorry, how about you
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: same time again?
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: Oh I'm good. I'm glad to be doing it at
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: a reasonable time.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's probably a little bit more suitable for you.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: It's not middle of the afternoon. TIF, how are you.
• 0:20
  Speaker 4: I'm fabulous, Thanks for asking.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, we care, David and I care. Ie. No,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of love.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: We were talking before we went live about to how
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: two of us need makeup to look any good and
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: you're not one of them, so that's flattering.
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: It's already wear makeup arts just a little week will
• 0:40
  Speaker 4: be the miscura.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got this very annoying thing going on at
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: the moment, which Gillispo just told me to try some garlic.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: So I have this blocked ear that it just I
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: don't know. It's not water, it's not wax. It's just
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: like every now and then my ear just blocks like
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: this air bubble or something.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: And it's happening right down right now. So if I
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: look down like I'm doing now'll probably take me off
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the mic.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: If you'd just take Mike with you, that'll be fine.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I could just take my mic with me.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Yep, and David, we're talking tonight about paracetamol, which has
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: a particular I don't know what would we call it
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: side effect or panadole as we call it in Australia,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: or panadine or pana max. I think like there's a
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: million names for it, but it's all the same thing, paracetamol,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: and it has an interesting would we call it side effect?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: What would we call it?
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: I mean it's definitely wasn't intended, so I guess the
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: side effect. But you know, there's some really interesting things
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: about this drug that range from that to just some
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: of the things that we think we know about it
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: that probably aren't true too, like the fact that it's
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: a good pain killer. So we're going to dig into
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: that a bit.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: We are a little bit. If you take panadole, do
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: you take any hankillers?
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: I did the other day, but very very rarely.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. I'm not a big fan.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I don't like panadine fort because they make you not
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: poo for about a week. Canadine thoughts no good. If
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: you ever want to clog yourself up forever, Chuck a
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: few of those down your gob take away your headache,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: and I'll take away your pooing power.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: I don't want to do that, because I just bought
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: a squatty potty and that's quite a novelty in this
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: house right there.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: How good are they when you change the old angle
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: of the dangle?
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Then hey, when you suck.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Around with the biomechanics, if you're hipped and your coal
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: and shit, does it make a difference?
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I love it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: I love it.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: Someone use my tool the other day and then later
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: on they go, plastic thing in your toilet.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: That's a squatty potty, bro, That's that's going to revolutionize
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: your life.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: Build them.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: They weren't in doesn't. I have no idea what you're
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: talking about.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: So a squatty potty is a thing that wraps around that.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: We'll get to the topic at hand in a moment.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Fucking hell, we had this big preamble about what we're
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: going to talk about. We're doing none of it. It's
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: like it's almost like a little plastic wrap around footstool
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: for your bog and we sit down and you put
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: your feet on it, and I think there's like one
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: fifty meal which is six inch, two hundred mil which
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: is eight inch, and it elevates your feet so your
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: knees come up, so it's almost like you're squatting. So
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: it only puts your body, your pelvis, your spine, your
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: legs in a position where it's more efficient.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Let's just say that, why why would you want to
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: do that? Because a lot of people get constipated.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Well, then you need to stop eating fiber. We've talked
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: about this before, Craig, stop eating fiber.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: They'll be fine.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Oh dear, I don't know that you and the Australia
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: that you and the AMAC eye on that.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: No, but one of us is right.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Anyway, squatty potty, if you're unless giving up other than
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: giving up fiber, everyone, if you want to try this,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: squatty potty, I've done I think two episodes on twoing
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: over the years, so you can look up those now.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Before we do a deep dive, we've got we're going
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: to talk about paracetamol and one of the interesting effects
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: of it, I guess. But there's also something interesting I'm
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: not going to say too much other than there's some
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: audio that TIFF's going to edit in with the magic
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: of her fingers. I don't know how she's going to
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: do that. Neither is David or David definitely does I don't.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: So let's have a listen to that.
• 4:44
  Speaker 5: So we've all got that bottle in our medicine cabinet, right,
• 4:47
  Speaker 5: you know, the one we reach for without even thinking headache, fever, general,
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: eggs and pans.
• 4:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that little white pill, lasitam minifin, paracetamol tail and
• 4:58
  Speaker 6: all panell Well.
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: So many names, right, same stuff though, just depends on well,
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: I guess where you are in the world. But it's
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: so common, so familiar. But is there more to this
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: simple pain reliever than meets the eye?
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: That's what we're diving into today. And you know, even
• 5:17
  Speaker 6: just that difference in meming acetamnafin here in the US
• 5:20
  Speaker 6: and paracetamol everywhere else, it's kind of fascinating, same chemical,
• 5:24
  Speaker 6: different name. It hints that I don't know a story
• 5:27
  Speaker 6: behind this everyday.
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: Thing, definitely, And we tend to think of it as
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: the safer option, right, I mean compared to asprin or
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: iberprofit like we've been told for years and in always
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: it is. But there's always that if use correctly caveat.
• 5:39
  Speaker 6: Exactly, and I think that's where we should start a
• 5:42
  Speaker 6: seedamnifin might be over the counter and in everyone's home,
• 5:45
  Speaker 6: but it actually has what's called a narrow therapeutic window.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Neuro therapeutic window. Huh im, Sure I've heard that one before.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: All right, there we go. So what was that, David?
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Those two very smooth professional people talking about paracetamol? Who
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: were they and what were we just listening to?
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: They were your replacements. So that's the latest innovation in AI,
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: which is that you can take any document, including this article,
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: which is the one I use to create that, and
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: shove it into an AI. In this case, it's the
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Google Gemini AI, and it will automatically create a podcast
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: type conversation between two people about the contents of the article.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: So the reason I included it when I posted this
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: article is some people just prefer to get their information
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: that way. Some people don't like reading a two and
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: a half thousand word article, and I suspect I may
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: be talking to one of them, and an easier way
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: for them to get that information is just to hear
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: people do what we're doing, which is chat about it
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: and I found it amazing because when you listen to
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: that all the way through, which people can do by
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: just going to the article on my substack and it's
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: there as part of it is when you listen to
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: it all the way through, it doesn't miss anything. It
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: picks up everything that we're about to talk about. It
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: does it in a really engaging way in a conversation
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: between two people. Admittedly annoying American accent to people, but
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: it does a great conversation, does a great job of
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: talking about the article. And it'll be interesting to hear
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: what your listeners think. Do you and I do a
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: better job talking about this article or do they because
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: I actually found it really quite engaging.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Well, if you and I do a better job, then
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Google needs have a good look at themselves, because definitely
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: we are not the high watermark.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: But so are you saying that.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: You just put this written article into a program and
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: with what instruction?
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: So just turn this into a podcast?
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: No, I just asked it to give me an audio
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: summary and that's what it produced.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Wow, that is because when I mean, I didn't know that,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Like you said, I've been busy all done, and you said,
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: have you listened to the audio and I went no,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: and then I just listened to ninety seconds. I went, well,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: this is interesting and they are good. Who are they?
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: And you went essentially, they're robots. So this could be
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: the home straight for the U project.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Let's be honest, Well, the next step might be the end.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: The next step, as I mentioned to you off air,
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: is at the moment you don't get a choice about
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: the voices it uses. They're just that bloken and that
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: woman who are American. But you could easily imagine the
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: next step there is going to be that you could
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: supply a voice, so you could say, speak a certain
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: sentence in and then it could create the same thing
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: but using your voice.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: And then the Tiff and I like, we could plug
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: in our voices and I could sit in the bean
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: bag and watch bloody Netflix while I'm doing a podcast.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: I could send you an article you could feed it
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: in and that'd be done.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if they could incorporate swearing, just to
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: make it, you know, believable.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Sure they could.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so give us the skinny. Hey, I'm
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: let me just tell you. The article is called the
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: empty Pill Paracetamol Surprising side effect.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: And for some of you who are going I think
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I've heard something.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: About this, well done you. We did have a brief
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: chat about it, but I reckon it was probably a
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: good three years ago, and I think we have a
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: very bigger and different audience to them. But for the
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: few of you who have heard some of this before,
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: just call it revision off you go.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: Champion, well and just you know, a check that we
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: still get it right. So I think parasito wal is
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: a really interesting painkiller, mostly because it doesn't really work. It's,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: you know, which is surprising given that you know, twenty
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: five billion pills are downed by Americans every year. You know.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: In Australia, I think it's something like more than sixty
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: percent of us by it at least once a month.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: It's it's one of the world's most heavily consumed medicines
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: and consumed for just about anything pain or fever related.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: Now we're not talking about the anti fever of the
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: anti inflammatory effects of parasitamal today. What we're talking about
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: is the painkilling aspects, and quite a few large recent
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: studies have suggested that it really doesn't do much and
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: it's the kind of thing that can be studied quite
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: well because it's easy to give someone a placebo and
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: give them some paracetamol, and so, unlike many of the
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: things we talk about where you know the thing you're
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: trying to prove might kill someone if you do it,
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: this is easy to study. So and a lot of
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: those studies and then the most recent one is one
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: that came out on back pain just a week or
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: so ago, massive study really well conducted multiple control arms
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: where people are being given placebos and paracetamol, not just
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: that they're testing lots of things for back pain. I mean,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: we could talk about this another day, but what they
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: found in that study is essentially there's not much that
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: works for back pain. And I'm talking about low back pain.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: A lot of people have low back pain. Almost nothing works,
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: including paracetamol. It turns out, so and essentially what a
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: lot of the studies are arriving at with paracetamol is
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: any effect that is perceived to have occurred is usually
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: just a placeivedle effect where the person feels better because
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: they believe they've taken something for it. And that's not
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: to discount that that is a real effect, or as
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: they often say, in the studies that the effect is
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: statistically significant yet clinically minimal, meaning a statistician might find
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: it interesting, but the person suffering the pain probably doesn't.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: There are some kinds of pain where it can be effective,
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: so it's been found to be modestly helpful for some
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: types of headache and also some sorts of physical pain
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: caused by over exercise and things like that. But it's
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: overall not a great pain killer. But it doesn't has
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: a stop just taking it by the truckload, and it's
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: easily the most sold pain killer in the Western world.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: But its history of getting to there is quite interesting too.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: It really only got there from the start of this
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: century onwards because aspirin had a bit of a problem.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: So last century, the big, the big painkiller was aspirin.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: You know, that was what everyone talk that was what
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: everyone trusted. And it was because some concerns were raised
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: about paracetamol being used in children who were suffering from
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: certain viral conditions that they could get a condition called
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: raise ariy es, which is a brain swelling thing, quite
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: dangerous and nasty. And when that started to become clear,
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: a bit of a panic started about using as sorry
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: not paracetamol. Doing aspirin did that, and how a bit
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: of a panic started about using aspirin, and paracetamol jumped.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: The makers of paracenamole jumped on that market opportunity and
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: have really come to own the market since. So you
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: get the picture. Everybody takes it all the time. It's massive,
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: huge market, not particularly effective, but that doesn't seem to
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: bother at anyone. It's what we all take. By the way,
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: people are wondering what they should be taking. Thes NSAIDs
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: are probably a better choice, that's overprofen, but they have
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: their own concerns. You've got to watch out for overdosing there. Overdosing,
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: by the way, is a real problem for paracetamol. It
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: is the primary cause of acute liver failure in both Britain,
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: Australia and the United States every year. So overdosing paracetamol,
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: either intentionally or accidentally, and people might say, what about it?
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Why would anyone be doing it intentionally? Because it's a
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: preferred form of suicide in some places, and so although
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: it's a bit hard to disentangle whether it was intentional
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: or not when people are overdosing, but one hundred. There
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: are one hundred thousand overdoses a year in the United
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: States from paracetamol, and that's because it's got a fairly
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: thin line between effective painkilling capability and just a bit
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: too much, because it and just a bit too much
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: can wreckt the liver, which can result in very dangerous
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: acute overdoses, which can often be lethal. So we've got
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: this thing which is potentially quite dangerous, is taken by billions,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: well certainly hundreds of millions of US, and taken in
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: quantities of billions, and yet it doesn't really isn't all
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: that effective against the things that we think it is.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: But the interesting bit I found was that there were
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: some studies done in the last five or six years
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: that have talked that have looked at does parasnamol have
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: an effect other than on pain, and in fact, does
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: it affect what I would call social pain? So that
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: is whether you feel socially left out of a group,
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: So if there's a group activity going on, and whether
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: you feel social harm from So, say you're in a
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: group with three or four people and everyone else in
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: the group is talking to each other and ignoring you,
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: do you feel upset by that do you feel you know,
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: harm from that, And there's really some quite convincing studies
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: that show yes. And these are placebo controlled studies once again,
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: where they are giving people parasnamol and they're giving others percebo,
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: and they're measuring the degree to which people say they
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: feel disaffected by certain behaviors that they're putting through testing.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: They're finding yes, in fact, they do the people who
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: are taking the paracetamol feel the pain less, They don't.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Care subjects of psychometric testing. That sounds like psychology.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: But I, of course did then go and look at
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: the extended armor of that study that put them in
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: a functional MRI machine. Otherwise otherwise I would have discounted
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: it entirely. But yes, even when they jammed them into
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: an MRI machine and had them play a virtual game
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: that excluded them, they saw the bits of the brain
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: that are associated with social acceptance being affected in the
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: people that were on paracetamol. So what I was doing
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: was turning down their sensitivity to oxytocin induced acceptance. Meaning
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: when people left you out or mean to you, you
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: didn't feel it as much. You didn't care for women.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: It meant they became males in essence, because males are
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: much less sensitive to oxytocin any way, and for males
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: it means they became psychopaths. Well, I may be exaggerating
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: a bit, but it's the same effect, which is that,
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: in essence, you lose empathy. So what it was doing
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: was affecting empathy. And to extend that study, a whole
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: different group of researchers said, does this work the other way?
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: Does it affect positive empathy? So we don't just have
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: negative empathy where we feel others pain or we feel
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: pain because of the way people treat us. We also
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: have positive empathy where something good happens for somebody and
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: we feel good too. Yes, and psychopaths listening won't know
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: what I'm talking about, but take it from me. Normal
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: humans feel that when good things happen to other people,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: they feel good too.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Psychopaths, that's right.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: I just need to you know, it's like having subtitles.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: You need to stand that one in twenty of your
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: listeners are psychopaths and they have no idea what we're
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: talking about. So you got to pull.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Those people right now, going, fuck you, we are not
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: you're a psychopath now the people, the people who were saying,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know what he's talking about.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Ah, the cycles. So anyway, so that experiment once again
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: quality can really high quality study. And they did the
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: same thing, gave some people paracetamoal, gave others pacebo to
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: see what happened, and once again tested it again with
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: functional MRI to make sure that they weren't just imagining
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: this stuff, and same thing was happening, same parts of
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: the brain non activating and coordinating with what people were
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: reporting about what they felt. So they were genuinely not
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: feeling as good about someone. They knew that something good
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: was happening, and they could see that something good was
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: happening for the other person, but they didn't care. So
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: that's interesting. What that tells us is that parasnomol has
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: an effect on the parts of the brain that are
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: involved in empathy, the exact same parts of the brain
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: that do not work in psychopaths. So what we are
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: saying here is that you've got a temporary empathy pill
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: or psychopath pill here is that when you take this
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: stuff that doesn't really work very well, what you're actually
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: doing is dulling down your empathy. You're turning yourself into
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: a psychopath. You become less caring, you call, you are
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: less concerned about the welfare of others for the time
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: that you were on the dose of this pill. The
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: other thing the studies found is that it was only
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: for the duration of the pill. So you know, if
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: it says on the pack this will last four hours,
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: then that's how long it lasts, so that we're back
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: to normal after four hours. But it was only while
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: you were taking it. So don't ask someone for a
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: favor or assistance or to care about you if they've
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: just taken a paracetamol. Is to take away from that,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: because they're temporary psychopaths.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: That's the name of the show.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: What about the converse of that, where we have to
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: go and do something that might be really emotionally confronting
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: and psychologically confronting, something that's very difficult.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: Might be a good idea.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: I take a couple of pan and dole, do that
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: thing that's really emotionally confronting and difficult.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're going to have.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Like that sounds like not the worst strategy, Like I
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: need to go and have these very difficult emotional conversations
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: or deal with this thing that's confronting for me. So
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: I'll just turn myself into a mild psychopath between now
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: and dinner.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, there's no reason why that wouldn't work. That
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: This science is pretty solid. It's it's been well verified.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: The other interesting study that I came is one where
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: they noticed that there's been a definitive lack or decline
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: in empathy in college students in the United States. So
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: there's a study that's done every year where they get
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: the same age of child every year, so a first
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: year college student, and they've been doing it since the
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: nineteen seventies where they just go through every year and
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: they ask the same set of questions about how they
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: feel about other people and other things and all that
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: sort of thing, and they chart that as an empathy score,
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: if you like. And that empathy score has been pretty
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: much the same up until about the early two thousands
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: when it was started dropping like a stone. So empathy
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: is off about forty percent on that study since the
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: start of the century in the same age of college student.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: And the study authors said, we don't know what's causing this.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: This is weird, right, Why have empathy gone out the window?
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: And I don't know coincidence. The takeoff of paracetamol as
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: a mass drug used in the billions in the population
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: happened at about the same time that people throughout the
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: population have lost empathy. Yeah, you know, it's a big look.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: Correlation is not causation, but it's not. I don't think
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: it's a long way to go there. We suddenly are
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: taking this thing in the bindins and it has a demonstrated,
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: proven effect on empathy. It's not a big reach to
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: say it's making the population in general less empathetic. So
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: if you think people are ruder and careless now than
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: in the olden days, maybe it isn't just kids these days.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's just that they're taking a pill that destroys empathy.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: And so you were saying before that typically women are
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: more empathetic than men.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: More sensitive to oxytocin.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, do you think there's a you know, there's a
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: testosterone link to that, Like the more testosterone we have,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: the less empathetic we are.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Or vice versa.
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, so testosterone interferes with the action of oxytocin,
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: So testosterone impairs oxytocin. Now, there's probably pretty good evolutionary
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: reasons for this the reason why women invented men in
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: the first place, you know, I mean, the Bible kind
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: of got it wrong because from a biological perspective, the
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: human race were female, and then they created a subset
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: from an evolutionary perspective which was designed to be dispensable
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: and more rugged and hard wearing, dispensable because it doesn't
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: actually carry the children. So you know, you can have
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: as many males as you like, it doesn't you know,
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: it's irrelevant the important ones, the ones carrying the children.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Do you look at t smiling like aier cap.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: This is a favorite part of any podcast. Ever, Well, no,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: it's by design.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: You make the four wheel drive version, you're going to
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: lose a few, but they're therefore doing the rugged stuff,
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: you know, and it doesn't affect the ability to reproduce
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: because you only really need one that's capable of reproduction
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: and it's all good. So you know, that is the
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: biological history of males, so disappointing as it is. Where
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: the four wheel drive off road version of females that
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: they created to do the stuff that didn't matter if
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: you lost a few. And part of that, yeah, and
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: part of that, which is of course why male injury
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: and death rates are much much higher than female ones
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: because part of testosterone's action is that we have lower
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: impulse control, which means we're more likely to do dangerous
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: things than a female is. And one of the things
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: it interferes with is the reception of oxytocin, which is
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: the communal feeling between humans, which is that we are
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: concerned about what others think and the welfare of others.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: And if you don't, it's also a good idea to
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: turn that down a bit if you're expecting people to
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: go out and risk their lives for you.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, so bloody interesting.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: Kind of went off topic there a bit, but yeah,
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: the history of males for you.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I love it.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: So the article on Substack by David is called the
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: empathy Pill paracetamol paracetamol surprising side effect? Is there any
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Is there a little bow you want to put on
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: that at the end.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: I think it's important to know these things, particularly in
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think this is the second highest drug
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: on the PBS. So the Australians spend vast amounts of
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: money on this drug every year and a lot of
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: us are taking a lot of it and it's important
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: to know. Hey, a side effect of this thing is
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: that you care less about those around you while you're
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: on it.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Oh dear, that's a good thing. I don't take it.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: I already don't care. That's not true, is it, Tiff,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: That's not true. I'm a big softy.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: Just always check if he's taken some parasnamoor before you
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: ask him for a pay, right, Yeah, just just gonna
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: have a chat. But I just want to check have
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: you taken any parasitamile in the last hour or so.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: It's save everybody some time and just don't ask. So mate,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: we appreciate what say. Goodbye fair but as always we
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: appreciate you. Thanks for coming to hang out, you
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Know, pleasure Jack, Thanks buddy, see ya.