How Morphic Fields Work?

Biologist and science historian Rupert Sheldrake is known as a heretic of science, mostly for his deeply strange ideas about what connects all living things. But his pokes at science help keep the field from growing dogmatic and for that we salute him.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you've ever been at home and wondered, Josh and Chuck,
is it really worth going to see them perform live?
The answer is a resounding yes yes. And if you
live in Vancouver, b C or anywhere near there, come
on out to the Chance Center on Sunday, March twenty
nine to see us and find out for yourself. And
then the next night, if you live around Portland, Oregon,

(00:20):
you can go to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and
we'll be there ready to go on Monday, March That's right.
You can get all ticket information at s y s
K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

(00:41):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's guest producer Dylan
sitting in this fine Wednesday morning of weirdness. Everything's out
of whack and strange. I know, right, Hopefully our voices
sound normal, Chuck. I was worried about that so out,
not that anyone cares, but our regular Tuesday sesh got

(01:06):
pushed because our computer took a dump technical difficulties, and
then we said, hey, let's just do it tomorrow morning.
I had a few more technical difficulties, but here we
are going strong. Buddy, I'm tired, are you No? I'm okay.
I've had enough coffee that I'm not tired. It's weird
for us to record in the morning and just everything's
out of whack. I would call it eerie, I think,

(01:28):
because you know, I do the movie Crush Mini Crushes
on Wednesday mornings usually, So usually I'm just making dumb
jokes and cussing a lot with nol. Right now, right,
I gotta switch my brain back into g rated mode.
Yep to talk about Rupert Childrake. That's what we're doing.

(01:48):
And you can curse if you want. We'll beep it
out Childrake, depending on Yeah. I think that's how the
scientific community refers to That's just one of those names.
It seems like it should be yelled at like that.
And I like to call him Rupert after Michael Caine
in Um Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Remember he called Steve Martin's

(02:11):
name at one point was Rupert. There's a Cork on
the Fork. Yeah, man, that was a good movie. It
was so um we're talking about a different Ruprit or
rupert Rupert Shel Drake, who is widely considered in the
scientific community um, a heretic, fraud hoaxter, a pseudo scientist,

(02:32):
all sorts of things. And normally we don't entertain um
that kind of stuff, or specifically people who are considered
as such, because we tend to be like, yeah, pseudo
science is not so great. But there's something about Rupert
shell Drake is that maybe a little bit something like that.
But he he is different in some ways. He kind

(02:55):
of stands alone. He's got staying power, to say the least.
He was first branded as sign antific heretic in and
he's still around doing his thing, ticking off the scientific establishment. Um.
But see, he's also in certain circles labeled as an
open minded scientist and someone not afraid to kind of

(03:17):
question the unquestionable, and someone who flies in the face
of what some people call the scientific orthodoxy or dogma
where everything is so rigid that there is no room
for new ideas. Right that that basically the scientific orthodoxy

(03:39):
that you refer to. It kind of says we are
on basically the right track. We generally have the parameters
kind of figured out. We know the math we need
to be using. We know the places we need to
be looking. We have generally and everything from physics to
biology and understanding of the general structure. Now it's just

(04:00):
a matter of filling in the details. We looked under
the hood, uh huh, and we know what's going on generally.
We know that it's a combustion engine and not an
electric car. That the universe is that kind of thing
electric car, right, So when somebody comes along and says, no, no,
that's not even a car that you're looking at, that's
a boat. Um. The scientific establishment or really any establishment,

(04:25):
really tends to get shook by that kind of stuff.
They don't like that. And one of the reasons I
was trying to figure out why people get so invested
in this. I think there's a lot of people who
come and say, I am a person of science, I
believe in this, I subscribe to it, and they end
up going so far as to pin their identity to it.
And this happens with just about any any structure. And

(04:45):
when you pin your identity to something, when that when
that's something that structure is attacked, you take it as
a personal attack. And I think that that's one of
the reasons why a lot of people are so rapidly
against Rupert Sheldrake. So should we talk about this guy.
I think we should. I think Chuck, we should explain.
One of the reasons why he has such staying power

(05:06):
and what makes them different is that he is about
as trained as scientist as a scientist can be. Yeah,
And you know, as we move through this, you'll see
that what makes him stand out from kind of other
uh kus is that he's very very intelligent guy. He's
he's not a kook. No, So that's why it's kind
of like, that's why certain people listen to him. One

(05:27):
of the other things I really want to point out
at the start of this, and this is what really
differentiates him from a lot of people on the fringes today,
is he's not in a hole. He's very polite, he's
very calm, he's very measured. He doesn't engage in ad
hominum attacks against his critics. He engages with his critics.
He is he's actually a very congenial person. Yeah, he's

(05:49):
just on a different side of the coin from the
scientific establishment and almost every respect. Yeah. And when I've
read articles and interviews with other people from the established
mit that have hung out with him and done experiments.
They're all like, he's a really affable kind of fun guy,
even though when you look at him and when you
hear Rupert Sheldrake doesn't scream fun and affable. No, but

(06:12):
he is. Yeah, he's got a lampshade on his head
nine tenths at the time. Man, can you imagine the
party the lab parties beer boney. Alright. So he started
out his career um kind of right down the middle
of science science wise. Went to Cambridge as an undergrad.
He won a Botany prize. Uh there, the University Botany Prize.

(06:36):
He then went to Harvard study philosophy, he studied the
history of science, went back to Cambridge. Yeah, apparently he's
just like a savant when it comes to science history.
Went back to Cambridge, got his PhD in biochemistry, and
then a post stock with the Royal Society, uh in
plant development in the aging of cells. So I think

(06:57):
that's unassailable, unimpeached bowl. It really isn't. Had he just
kind of continued along this is largely in the seventies.
Had he just kind of continued along this path um,
he probably would have been a really widely respected although
pretty obscure plant scientist or biologist of some sort. But

(07:18):
one of the things that happened to him was he
went to India and studied and lived at an ash
room for about a year and a half and apparently
smoked a lot of hashish while he was there. The
hashish part, Oh, I'm just goofing, but but surely he did.

(07:38):
But the thing is is, around this time, UM he
elaborated on an idea that he'd had that he learned about,
probably in his history of science. UM the classes that
science can't explain how you can take some cells that
start out as like a seed or something like that,

(07:59):
and that little seed grows into an oak tree, and
that that oak tree looks startlingly similar to other oak
trees that you know, you can dig up from a
thousand years ago, or imagine that they'll basically look like
a thousand years from now, or that are spread out
on different continents. They can't science can't explain how um

(08:21):
morphology works. That that how something becomes the thing that
it is, and that that resembles something else. And you say, well,
it's genetics, like that's kind of the common thing. But
here we get to that point where science is like,
we're we've got the broad strokes, we just don't understand
the details. And and genetics can possibly be the thing
that explains this later on, but we really have no

(08:43):
idea how this stuff works because it's really really intricate
how something like that happens. Yeah, it's almost like shell
Drake was like, uh, Tom Hanks and Big in the
in the boardroom when they're talking about the toys, and
he's just like, I don't get it. Yeah, like because
they'll say, oh, well it's d n A and he's like, yeah,

(09:06):
but I don't get it. Like how does a toolip
become the tulip? Well it's d n A, yeah, but
that really doesn't explain at all. Well it's d n A.
We understand d NA. He's like, yeah, I don't get it. Yeah.
And to him specifically, DNA is a chemical that that
um dictates how other chemicals are produced. Right, he thinks
it's very overrated. He does um, which that in and

(09:28):
of itself is heretical. But it's pretty funny too. But
it is. But with with this, with morphology, with the
how something takes the shape that it has eventually in
it's a mature state. There's a lot going on there.
There's like little cells that have to set up and
arrange in a certain pattern that later on down the road,
after all these processes play out, will form another pattern.

(09:50):
So there's basically planning. There's um timing like all those
that process has to happen at just the right steps
and just the right stages for that end result to
be it's supposed to be. There's differentiation of cells where
one cell can produce a new cell and the new
cell has totally different genes turned offer on that will
allow it to specialize. And these are the things we

(10:11):
don't understand what's guiding it. And so Rupert Sheldrake kind
of tapped into a thought that started, I think back
in the nineteen twenties among biologists that there must be
some unseen guide or force that is that basically says
I've got this, I know what the end result is.

(10:32):
I can take the starting bit and guide it into
this end result, and we don't understand what that is. Yeah,
there were a couple of scientists in the twenties and
thirties studying what they called uh morpha genetic fields, which
is sort of like the idea that there's this invisible
mold that we don't fully understand that gives the shape

(10:55):
to these things. Uh. Guy named C. H. Waddington in
nineteen thirty six had a paper called morphogenesis and the
field concept, and then a Russian biologist named Alexander gurvitz
Um kind of had the same thoughts. But you know,
I think he came independently to these thoughts, yeah, which was, Hey,

(11:15):
there's something else going on here. We're calling it morpha
genetic fields. Uh. And this is this, like I said,
this idea that there these invisible molds that we don't
fully get that gives things their eventual shape and that's
why they all look alike. Right. So so on the
astroom in the late seventies early eighties, Childrake was kind

(11:35):
of vibeing on this idea of there must be some
some some field, these morphic fields or whatever that guide
the development of something living into its mature form because
we just don't understand it. So hey, maybe that's just
as good an explanation as our current understanding, which is
really nonexistent. So um. He took it further though, and

(12:01):
he wrote a book and he took it further, he
wrote a book called A New Science of Life. It
was his first book, um, as far as I know,
at the very least, it was his first book that
really kind of made a splash. And in it, um
he he kind of said, these these morpha genetic fields,
we're gonna call him morphic fields now. And not only
do they they guide the morpha genesis of a living thing,

(12:23):
they guide its behavior from from that moment on, from
the moment of conception onto I guess it's death. And
then when that thing dies, the life that it's led
will contribute to this morphic resonance that carries on to
the next generation and the generation beyond that. And so
you eventually have this long line of tulips that know

(12:46):
not only how to grow into the right shape, but
how to behave and do all the things that tulips
do because of all of the living tulips that came
before it through this process of morphic residence. Yeah, and
not just like, uh, that tulip growing nearby at the
same time, but he said, what if it just was

(13:08):
across all of space and time, and the tulip in
Africa in the nineteenth century is has informed the tulip
in Florida in the year how to grow right, and
everyone went oh good hashish over there in India in
the nineteen seventies, right, Sheldrake, Right, So um, yeah, Well

(13:31):
we'll get to how it was received in a minute,
but let's you want to take a break and then
come back and kind of explain how how how he
says it works a little more. Yeah, but I also
think I totally spoiled how it was received. But that's okay,
that's all right, man, all right, okay. So we're at

(14:08):
the point where um Rupert Sheldrake has published his book
A New Science of Life, and in it he's talking
about this morphic residence that basically says, um, anything that
self organizes, from a molecule to a giraffe, UM knows
how to take the shape or is guided by a

(14:28):
process that shapes it called morphic fields. But even more
than that, its behavior, it's future behavior is shaped by
these same morphic fields. All of the all of the
things that the giraffes that came before it learned and
new and saw and eight and figured out becomes this
kind of body of consciousness that's passed along to every

(14:50):
new giraffe that's born. Yeah, I think we should read
this quote. Okay, there's a great interview in Scientific American. Uh,
who was it? Was it? Who was it interviewing him? Like,
can't remember now? Was it Rose? Now? I'm not sure
it was. It was a contemporary who was more you know,
traditional mainstream science. But he again was like the Celdric guy,

(15:12):
he's got something, He's got equality alright. So here's how
Sheldrake himself answers the question of morphic residence. Morphic residence
is the influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent
similar structures of activity. Organized by morphic fields. It enables
memories to pass across both the space and time from
the past. The greater the similarity, the greater the influence

(15:35):
of morphic resonance. What this means is that all self
organizing systems like molecules, crystal cells, plants, animals, and animal
societies have a collective memory on which each individual draws
into which it contributes. And here's the key here, I
think he says, in its most general sense, this hypothesis
implies that the so called laws of nature are more

(15:55):
like habits. Yet scientific establishment really particularly doesn't like that
last bit right there. Yeah, shel Drake just uh called
out the laws so called laws of nature. Right, So
there's something in there that kind of stuck out to
me that I was curious about. I couldn't find an
answer to. Is that, Um, he says, the greater the similarity,

(16:15):
the greater the influence of morphic residents. But what is
the similarity, say, in like a giraffe embryo, that allows
the morphic residents of all the giraffes that came before
to be like this, this is the thing we need
to exert our influence on. Like what similarity attracts that
morphic residence. I took that to mean maybe not in
the case of giraffes, but in the case of like

(16:36):
different varieties of an orchid, like the more similar you know,
because that's why they are all different ones. Yeah, But
what is the initial similarity that that morphic field recognizes
in that specific kind of orchid that says, Oh, I'm
going to influence you. Or is it just we should
call him it just naturally happens. I don't know, But

(16:57):
these are the questions that you start to wonder about
out when you read sheldrake stuff. Which is I think
the reason why I like him. UM like he it
just makes you think you just start to think differently
than than just like it's it's d n A, Yeah,
where are you with this guy? Overall, I am sympathetic
to him because I admire that he has a tremendous

(17:22):
amount of courage uh and willingness to take tons of
flak and I'm sure in this day and age, lots
of hate and threats. Um. I think that I am
critical of the fact that he stopped publishing pure of
view papers all the way back in the mid eighties.
That makes him currently less of a scientist and more

(17:44):
science communicator. But he's also kind of making up his
own science too, so I don't know if he qualifies
a science communicator, but I generally like him, and I
appreciate the role that he um he plays in this
this uh with science. What about you? I'm kind of
with you there. I admire his his chutzpah um because

(18:07):
I don't think that he is as charlatan out just
to make money selling books like some people think. I
don't either. I think he's a really smart guy who
gave has given his whole life to deep, deep thought
and research on this stuff, and I read some of
it and I think he may be onto something. I
read other stuff, and I think that sounds like magic,
right right. Uh. And we are men of science, you know,

(18:29):
we're we are podcasters, but we have always you know,
roundly sided with the scientific method as sort of the baseline.
And if you can't you can't satisfy the scientific method,
then uh, we typically kind of pooh pooh it. But
there's something again about the way he's gone about it
that just doesn't seem like he's just some whacko out

(18:51):
there making stuff up. Yeah, And I think he also
kind of tunes into something that I dislike, which is,
you know, he's really critical and really challenges, you know,
hardened dogma of a lot of the scientific community where
it's like, this is just how it is. Well why,
I don't know, but I was taught that, but that's
just how it is, and stop questioning it. And I'm

(19:11):
really dislike that, and I like him that he challenges
that as well. Yeah, there's a rigidity in science that
turns us both off. I think, um so turned off
right now. I was gonna make a joke, but I'm
not going there. Because I'm in the mini crush mode.
So right on, right on, keep it, keep it, keep

(19:32):
it in all right. So let's let's look at a
few examples of claims that he makes about uh things
that he thinks morphi residents might explain in nature UM,
specifically with animal behaviors. He says things like fish schooling UM, butterflies,
monarchs flying thousands of miles to to uh the same place,

(19:56):
homing pigeons, um, termites in Africa that are blind, that build,
you know, a tin foot tall nest with ventilation structures.
He said, all this stuff or more importantly, and we'll
look at this a little closer in a minute. A
dog and their owner, and a dog anticipating their owner's return,
even though it might vary on what time that happens.

(20:18):
Like the sense that the dog knows and is waiting
by the door. He thinks that's all explained by morphic resonance. Yeah,
and I mean like it, it's curious in that, you know,
how does a how does a bee know after it
makes that wax ring in a honeycomb? How does it
no to to melt it into um a polygon shape

(20:39):
rather than just a circle, or like those termites, Like
why does a termite nest look almost identical to other
termite nests? You know, yeah, exactly, Like there's there's a
lot of behaviors that we can't quite explain that if
you do kind of buy into this morphic grows in
this idea, you could say, well, that's actually really really
interesting now. And this is a real good criticism of

(21:01):
morphic residents is you could also just as equally say
magic or god or whatever. There's not that no one's
proven that morphic resonance exists. This is just shel Drake saying,
here's a good examples of what I'm talking about, this
morphic resonance stuff. Yeah, and this is kind of important too.
He talks about the fact that humans are not as

(21:24):
sensitive to this because and this is where he kind
of got me a little bit thinking. He says, we're
so distracted by technology and we don't need collective memory
of past humans to survive anymore. So that's why we're
not that's why we can't really sense these fields. And
I kind of disagree with that in some ways, Like
I think, if if it does exist, it's still is

(21:46):
it still survives in humans and things like think about
how how um easily the average human can pick a
snake out of the grass with with peripheral vision. Right,
I wasn't raised around snakes. My parents didn't drummed in
my into my head to be really wary of all snakes.
And yet I'm a pro at picking a snake out

(22:06):
in the grass with my peripheral Sure, And it's been
shown that that people can like pick a gun out
as quickly as they can't pick out snakes and spiders.
And we're really good at picking out snakes and spiders
in our environment. Um and uh that this would be
a pretty good example of that, if you ask me.
That is the most common descriptor I think when people
say what's Josh like, I'm was like, he drinks a

(22:29):
lot of beverages, coffee, water, you know, energy drinks. He Uh,
he's a hard worker. And man, you should see that
guy pick a snake out of his peripheral vision. It's uncanny.
It makes a gunshot ricochet sound like. I don't go
for a walk in the woods without him anymore. Sometimes
you're nice and carry me on your back when I
get tired. So, um, here's a couple of things with

(22:54):
human morphic residents. That this is where it gets a
little wacky to me. Um, he says. He claims that
a crossword puzzle is easier to complete later in the
day because of all the other people that had solved
it earlier in the day, and they are broadcasting this
morphick resonance out into the universe. I guess just their

(23:17):
general awareness of the answers. That gets a little wacky
to me. Yeah, a little. The other one is not
as wacky. Um. Is that feeling eyes in the back
of your head like you're being stared at? That's a thing? Uh,
he says, that's morphick fields. Yeah, that your morphic field
extends beyond your head and that it's sensitive and is

(23:39):
the first thing contacted by that person stare and it
lets you know basically that you're being stared at. Yeah,
this is very just he's going in the right direction.
Then I hear that, and I'm think, oh boy, that
is sounds a little wacky. I wrote another really good
explanation for that. Um that it's a self fulfilling thing
where you, um say, you're in the library to what

(24:00):
over and you get the sense that you're being stared
at by somebody at a table behind you, and when
you start to turn around, the movement of your head
look at a person's attention. Interesting And when you look,
when you finally complete that turn, that person is looking
at you. That makes sense, especially if you're like, oh,
for God's sake, can you turn around right? Yeah, then

(24:20):
they're definitely going to look the next time you turn
to because they're keeping an eye on you, that's right,
or they're just looking for snakes. So, Charles, Um, as
you kind of said earlier, this has not all been
very well received by the scientific community. They tend to
think of it as hocum um. The fact that he
doesn't publish peer of view papers anymore, and and said

(24:43):
writes books directly to the to the public um. The
fact that, uh, they claim that his stuff isn't false viable,
but if you read his explanations and descriptions, he's like, no, actually,
this all is false viable, And I try to run
experiments all the time. Sometimes it comes back with positive results. Um.
But they generally don't like the stuff that he's saying.

(25:03):
And in particular, there was one guy who, looking back,
made Rupert Sheldrake's career, and his name was Sir John
Maddox and at the time that um, uh what it
was that the Science the New Science of Life. When
that book came out, Uh, Sir John Maddox happened to

(25:25):
be the editor of the journal Nature. Nature and Science
are the two most prestigious scientific, peer reviewed publications in
the entire world. And this guy, right was the editor
of that and he got his hands on the Science
of a New Science of Life and wrote not just
a book review, an editorial about this book from the

(25:49):
editors of Nature, claiming that it was an infuriating tract
and that it was the best candidate for burning there
has been for many years. Yeah. Also this in an interview,
he said, Chouldrake is putting forward magic instead of science
and that can be condemned. And exactly the language that

(26:10):
the Pope used to condemned Galileo for the same reason.
It is heresy. Right, So if you were curious about
how Sir John Maddox felt about the dogma of science,
the fact that he used the word heresy kind of
says it all right. And this is thirteen years after
that first and he poked the Pope. Yeah, he was
doubling down on this, and he didn't mention that it

(26:30):
turned out Galileo was right, even though he positioned himself
and science in the pope position in this one. The
fact is he used the word burning. He he and
his defenders later on we'll say like, no, he if
you read the whole thing at the end, he says, no,
we shouldn't be burning books. But he does say that
there's hadn't been a better candidate for but if we

(26:52):
were to be the first one on the pile, right,
and so that you know, from that point on, Rupert
Sheldrake's publishers are like, we'll be using that on the
dust jacket of every addation of this from now on.
And it made his career. He went from somebody who
might have never been anybody to the premier heretic of

(27:13):
science thanks to that dusty old crotch. Sir John Maddox, Yeah,
here's dusty old crotch. Yeah. I'm not a big fan
of him, man, or anybody who's suggests we should burn books.
So here's another quote from another professor of biology at
University College London, Lewis Walpert more Fick. Residents is rubbish.

(27:33):
It is unmitigated junk and a great insult to the
people who do real work in the field. Yeah. And
I'm sure we could spend the next twenty minutes finding
quotes like that, um about that book. Yeah, and and
shel Drake's response has always been, um, I mean he'll
go back at people, for sure, but not in a

(27:53):
sort of a poopy pants way. Uh. He's basically is
like and and you know, in any idea that doesn't
conform to this religion of science is denounced. And he said,
it's close minded. It's a close minded system. It goes
against the nature of what science is, which should be
discovery and investigating hypotheses. Uh. And the fact that they're

(28:15):
valid until they're proven or disproven by experimenting. Uh So
get off my back with your dusty crotch. And in fact, um,
some some scientists in the field, are in a number
of fields, have kind of come to shell Drake's defense,
not so much that they've criticized John Maddox. I get

(28:37):
the impression that you don't you don't criticize sir John
unless the editor of Josh Clark. Right. Yeah, Well, I'm
not a scientist. I've got no skin in this game.
But um, they came to shel Drake's defense and that, Um,
they said, Okay, if you're saying these are falsifiable, let's
let's do some experimentation. Let's take let's take this to
the to the point you're you're putting in at and

(28:59):
let's let's apply the scientific method to this. Yeah, here,
smoke this hash right. No, Sheldrick said that to them, like, okay,
for the for the data to make sense, you got
to smoke this first, that's right, And they went, oh, okay, right, yeah,
I got it. But that's why everybody likes to hang
out with him, Um, because he's got the good stuff, right,

(29:19):
all right, So should we talk about, um a little
bit about what he claims and what he's tried to prove. Yeah,
because so again like he's he's run these experiments. But
there have been I just want to say, there have
been a few people who have come up and been like,
you know, that was bs what sir John said. We
shouldn't be burning books. I'm going to extend an olive
branch on behalf of the scientific community, and and we're

(29:42):
going to test some of these experiments. Yeah. So he
drilled down on a few in a few different areas Um,
that we're going to talk about. One is the one
I talked about about humans being stared at. The other
is the dogs anticipating their owners in return, right, basically
human dog eelepathy right Uh. And then yeah, boy, as

(30:03):
soon as that work telepathy is thrown out there, that's
a science killer. Yeah. And that's a I mean, that's
a big easy criticism of Sheldrig's ideas is that they
they include telepathy. That the idea that we're tuned into
this general body of conscious knowledge, that that was accumulated
by all the living things that came before us, and

(30:23):
that this exists outside of our minds and we can
connect to it with our minds. That's telepathy. And yeah,
there's no way to put it otherwise. Well in PSI
in general, which we should probably do a podcast on
at some point. Sure, I mean we've been chipping away
at a little by little bit. Uh. And then the
third one that that he kind of drilled down on
was the idea that different that successive generations of lab

(30:47):
rats can solve their little puzzles and problems faster and
easier than generations before that is because of morphic residence. Yeah,
and there's been data he's either carried out experiments himself
where he's he's you know, pointed out to publish data
before that has shown that. I think back in the thirties,
there was a a I guess a biologist or a

(31:08):
psychologist who was training matt or rats how to um
run a maze. And he found, to his amazement that
rats of successive generations over like thirty six generations did
better initially on these mazes than their predecessors, which would
suggest well a lot of things, but apparently controlled for

(31:28):
genetics and environment, and said, it's possible that this is
this is somehow being passed down from one generation to
the next outside of jeans. So let's talk about the
dog thing, because we have dogs, and we love to
think that our dogs are little people, and that they
sit by the door waiting on us and look out
the window and are just sad until we get home. Uh.

(31:52):
And so he did this experiment, and then later on
did some more experiments with a partner um which will
talk about here in a second. But he found a lady,
a British woman who her name was Pam, and she
had a dog named j t j y t E.
And she said, hey, use me because I got this

(32:13):
dog who waits by the window, uh, before I come home,
no matter when I come home, So it doesn't matter
if you come home with five or ten o'clock at
night or three in the afternoon. This dog is by
the window. So I think there's some telepathy going on.
And Sheldrake said, well, step right up and let's see

(32:33):
what's going on here. Yeah, And it wasn't just that
her dog sits by the window the whole time she's gone.
It's that people had noticed that would suddenly sit up,
go to the window, and then within a few ten
minutes or something like that, Pam would come home right
and started singing True Colors by Cindy Lauper right, and
she would come home at different times of the day
like this is a pretty It was a remarkable thing.

(32:55):
So um, apparently, over a hundred different tests, Sheldre found
that eight four out of a hundred times this dog
accurately predicted when Pam was coming home. And shel Drake's
whole hypoth in eleven seconds. We well, people should understand
not that this dog, here's the car pull in within

(33:16):
eleven seconds of her leaving to go home, right, leaving
her office I think miles away. And again this is
at different times of day. Um. They apparently experimented so
that she would come home in different kinds of cars,
including taxis, so that the dog couldn't somehow like hear
this this particular come of the of Pam's motor or

(33:36):
something like that. Um. But he controlled for a lot
of stuff. And this is something you got to understand
about Rupert Sheldrake. He carries out scientific experiments, like under
the scientific method. What people disagree with his interpretation of
the data typically, but he controlled for all this different
stuff and he found the eighty four times out of
a hundred, UM j t accurately predicted roughly when UM

(34:00):
Pam was going to come home by getting up and
going to the window to wait for her. Right. Yeah,
I think that first one, though, was not quite so scientific.
Wasn't that the deal? This is why they redid it. No, No,
they didn't redo it because it wasn't scientific. They redid
it because one of his greatest critics, Richard Wiseman, who
was a UM uh I think it's psychologist but also
like a professional skeptic, UM said this is b s.

(34:25):
But let's let's let me carry out let me replicate
your experiment and see if I get the same results. Okay,
because the he had an Austrian documentary crew and they
said that the test wasn't scientific. Oh I'm sorry, right,
they like they're they're filming. What they did was not scientific.
But he had already previously carried out in private that. Yeah.

(34:47):
But I mean, you know, the scientists do that all
the time. I don't think that he's I don't think
he has been accused of fudging his methodology. I think
he's just roundly accused of cherry cherry picking data, or
misinterpreting the data, or interpreting the data to suit as needs,

(35:07):
that kind of stuff. But I don't get the impression
that a lot of people are like this data on
its at its cores hocum. All right, Well, Wiseman, like
you said, noted skeptic, professional poopo or of things, experimental psychologist.
He comes in and says, all right, let's do this together.
He said, all right, this dog did not uh. In

(35:28):
four different occasions or four different experiments, this dog failed,
right uh. And this dog is going to the window
a lot. He's a window hanger outer yeah, this dog
loves that window. And so they said, all right, let's
rule out some of these false positives and let's say,
let's let's define what the real signal would be. That's

(35:50):
if this dog stays at the window for two minutes,
not just pops up to see if it's raining or
to sing a stands of true colors, but really sits
there for two minutes um, and then let's see what happens.
They did that, and Wiseman said, uh, all right, and
we all got to also say it's got to be
within ten minutes of her leaving for from home, not

(36:13):
eleven minutes, right, shaved off one minute. And in all
four of these experiments, this dog gives a signal before
that ten minute period, before she even started for home.
So Wiseman said failed. So if you read shell Drake's
rebuttal to Wiseman's findings, and Wiseman ran around not just
saying failed, he like gave I think four different talks

(36:35):
about this experiment, how like it was it didn't amount
to anything um And so shell Drake responded to it
and he was like, well, this two minute duration was
an arbitrary signal that you came up with that wasn't
part of my original methodology. And then also and I
think all four of those experiments, right, maybe all four. Um,

(36:57):
So the dog went to the window or lee and um.
And then afterward if he went to the window again,
which apparently he did to wait for Pam, that was
thrown out because he'd already gone to the window before.
He's like, well, I never said the dog only went
to the window when Pam was coming home. I just
said he would go to the window to wait for Pam. Um,

(37:18):
you know, within some certain time frame of her leaving.
And apparently the dog continued to do this, but it
wasn't included in these tests because he had already gone
to the window. So it's really detailed and you can
read it yourself if you want to. But um, he
has a good explanation for why Wiseman's interpretation of the
data was you know, or his methodology was flawed. But

(37:40):
it's all very civil like you were saying before. He's
not like Wiseman's a moron who couldn't do science if
it's sat on him and and caused him to stop
respirating or anything like that. Yeah, And I think it's uh,
the other thing, he because you know, the thing that
Wiseman poop pood was the fact that the dog started
this behavior before she started from home. And Sheldrike was like, hey,

(38:02):
I think that further proves it, actually, because I think
that Pam is sending signals before she starts for home
that she didn't even realize, Like maybe she she gets
her coat and goes to the restroom for a few
minutes or something. Even well she was with the beginning
of the going home process, yeah, or she was with
Wiseman's assistant, and Wiseman's assistant was the one who knew

(38:23):
what time they were going home, so she he said,
maybe Pam was picking up on the guy looking at
his watch or something like that and knew when she
was going to go home. Anyway, Um, there's a lot
of he has a lot of explanations for It's very
interesting to kind of read the back and forth. But
um so that so, but Wiseman won that one because
everyone wanted Wiseman to win that one, and and I
think that's kind of par for the course. For Sheldrake,

(38:45):
He's like, well, no, here's all these other explanations for
this interpretation, and people just kind of ignored unless you
want to believe what Sheldrake has to say. Um, if
you don't want to believe what Sheldrick has to say,
people like Wiseman and other skeptics provide, you know, well
here we carried at this experiment and now this is disproven. Right.
Another guy who did that is a really um big

(39:08):
critic of shell Drake. His name is Steven Rose. I
think he's a no, I'm sorry, he's yeah. He's a
biologist and a neuroscientist, Steven Rose, And um, he carried
out another experiment about how chicks might be able to
learn kind of like that lab rate experiment, how they
successive generations learned, um, how to do amaze. Well, they
did this with chicks, and they did this experiment together,

(39:30):
and they had different interpretations of the data and it
went back and forth and in different journals or whatever.
But the fact is there are scientists out there, skeptics
who are critics of shell Drake and his ideas and methods.
But um still scientists that are willing to engage his ideas.
And I think that that's healthy, even if they are
coming at it from you know, the standpoint like this

(39:50):
is bunk this is howcome they're still willing to go
through with these experiments. And I respect that you want
to take another break. Yes, all right, Chuck, We're going
to take another break everybody, in case you didn't hear,

(40:27):
all right. So Rose, uh, Stephen Rose. And this, this
quote kind of really puts the nail on the head
of the critics of shell Drake. Uh. And this actually
is one that spoke to me because it's not it's
not an attack on on shel Drake. It's more of
a sympathetic view, which is this shell Drake is so

(40:49):
committed to his hypotheses that it is very hard to
envisage the circumstances in which he would accept its disconfirmation.
So it's a very sweet way of saying, like, this
guy really really believes this stuff so much that like,
I don't think he is able to look at the

(41:10):
data in a in a sort of level headed, unbiased way. Right. So,
and that says at all. I mean, that's tough to
to It's a very cutting criticism because how do you
how do you show that's not true other than to
say these are wrong. You know, you have to admit

(41:32):
that your hypothesis is wrong. Um, to to get away,
to get around that, and then once you've done that,
you've just lost anyway. So it's a it's a tough,
very it's a very shrewd criticism. Yeah. So Sheil Drake
over the years has um, he's written a lot of books.
He has been accused of. Um, he's been accused by

(41:55):
some of like, hey, this guy is just out there
writing books to make money, uh, and has sort of
made himself the superstar of the altar side of science.
That seems to be the biggest explanation for what he's
why he's doing what he's doing that he found it easier,
an easier and quicker path to fame and recognition and
probably money writing these books about his own made up

(42:18):
ideas rather than writing you know, academic papers like everybody else. Right,
And on Sheldrake's side, he's like, listen this uh what
he calls the default worldview of science and these dogmas. Um,
he said they should be sort of pushback against. And um,
what about questioned, Yeah, questioned, what about the Big Bang?

(42:39):
He's like, everyone you know thinks they have it all
figured out and all laws in the universal constant, well
except for the Big Bang and then you know, we
can't fully explain that and that There's another great quote
from a philosopher named Terence McKenna is, give us one
free miracle and we'll explain the rest, and you know

(42:59):
when it comes, and things like the Big Bang. That
kind of holds true. Yes, specifically with the Big Bang,
I think is what he's talking about. That if you
can just allow for their nothing, nothing that came before,
and all of a sudden, all the matter and energy
in the universe, um, suddenly existed, then we can pretty
much explain all other physics from that point on, or

(43:21):
we can use that and um. And that's the big question,
is what happened right before the Big Bang? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But we also have other questions about the universe, like
is it inflating, you know, is there gonna be a
big bang? Or is there going to be a big
crunch or um. We have a lot of questions and
a lot of misunderstanding about it too. But we physics

(43:41):
needs the Big Bang to have happened the way that
we think it might have happened. But even still, the
way we think it might have happened doesn't follow the
physical laws as we understand them, and so shell Drake
and others point to that one and they're like, come on, guys,
like this is just one of several examples of science
just saying this is the way it is, even though

(44:04):
we don't fully understand it or the data we're getting
suggests otherwise. And oh man, how can I say this
in a way that's not like controversial? There isn't one.
It's not the same as when let's say a a
creationist saying, well, you can't really explain the Big Bang, so, um,

(44:27):
it's all magic, and that's okay, right right, you know
it's not It's not along those same lines. There's something
different about what Sheldrake is saying. I think what he's
saying is, yeah, in some cases he's like, we don't
understand this. So here's my interpretation. I think. In his
more recent UM book, The Science Delusion, which came out
in two thousand twelve in the US is called Science

(44:48):
Set Free. Um, he's saying, here are some some essential
dogmatic beliefs of science that are worth challenging, and that
if we don't chan challenge them, we we might end
up going down this wrong path of scientific inquiry. UM.
And we need to be a little more free to
differing ideas because we don't understand these things like everybody

(45:12):
generally believes we do. Yeah, I think he kind of
in the book title itself, he said in America's Science
Set Free, that kind of encapsulates. I think he sees
himself as as some kind of emancipator of science rather
than um a kuk who believes in telepathy, right, even

(45:32):
though he kind of I mean that stuff. And Dave
Russ helped us with this, uh, with this research. Yeah,
I did a great job he did. And you know,
he points out, and he's right, morphic resonance sounds very
strange and weird, you know, and it also sounds like
something that would sell a book, right right. But to
throw him in there, I think it's a Rose said

(45:55):
he's basically no, no better than someone who endorses crop
circles and create ationism and pseudoscience. Yeah, And I don't
think that's necessarily fair. No, And even so, if you
take away things like morphic resonance and things like um,
uh well morphic residence basically, um, if you if you

(46:15):
take that stuff away and just look at him as like, uh,
a challenger to scientific Dogma. You can appreciate him on
the on that level as well, like he he you
can peel back different layers of this guy and appreciate
different parts and also disagree with different parts. But so
in his most recent when the Science Solution, he basically says,

(46:36):
here are some things that science believes that we shouldn't
necessarily believe, like that matters unconscious. And there are people
out there, including physicists, who are like, you know, if
consciousness were just a a property of all matter, and
that the more matter you put together, the more sophisticated
consciousness you got, that would explain a lot of stuff,

(46:57):
including human consciousness. That's just an emergent property of all
these particles that came together to form human beings. Um.
But currently scientific establishment says no matters unconscious. That's just
our understanding of it. That's the way it is, although
that is being challenged by more people into super Sheldrake.

(47:18):
And then there was another one. He gave it ted Talk,
a Ted x white Chapel Talk was later banned, right,
but they took it from their YouTube channel and then
inserted it into a blog post. You can still see it,
but they put it in a blog post because their
science advisors have been like, uh, this is pretty heretical,
and I don't think you should just be presenting it

(47:38):
like it's just you need to couch it in some language.
So they did and they put in a blog post,
but you can still see it. It's not like they
just took it down altogether. But um, it's a really
interesting talk. It's only like twenty minutes long, but in
it he makes a really good case about how the
laws of nature, like the gravitational constant or the speed
of light aren't actually constant, and physics needs those things

(48:02):
to be constant for it to do its inquiries, for
it to do its formula and equations, for the current
theories to work. And he's saying, no, there's been periods
in history where we've measured these things and gotten different,
different measurements, and that during that same period, all these
different um scientists around the world, we're getting roughly the
same different measurements from what we thought it was before.

(48:25):
How do you explain that? And I think that point
is really important because if something like the speed of
light does change, and understanding that it does and how
it does could give us an even greater understanding of physics.
And that right there, I think is the greatest role
that Rupert Sheldrake plays is to say, no, stop looking
at it through this lens. This lens is possibly incorrect

(48:48):
at the very least, don't burn all your old stuff,
don't throw it away, but just step to the side
and approach it from a different way, just to see
if that's the truth, and if it is the truth,
and will have a great or understanding of how things
actually work. Yeah, because the unexplainable are only unexplainable until
they can be explained, You're right, you know, and various

(49:09):
points throughout history there there were a lot of claims
that things were unexplainable until they figured it out. And
again we're not touting pseudoscience here because we have a
pretty good track record of uh roundly sighting on the
side of science. Yes, but and expertise to like, we
both have a tremendous amount of respect for expertise. And

(49:31):
you know, people who go study things for years and
years and years and apply themselves to that understanding that
one thing, that's an expert and they should generally be
listened to. That's right, And shel Drake has proven himself
out enough to be listened to. I think he's not. Uh,
aliens Man, whoever that guy was? So yeah, I mean,
make up your own mind. Go read about him, Go

(49:53):
read both sides about him if you if you're interested
in this, don't just listen to us like he's definitely
one of those people. You should make your own mind up.
And if you disagree, great, If you agree, fantastic. We're
just kinda we just kind of admire thinkers like that.
That's right. Are you got anything else? I got nothing else,
Rupert Sheldrake. That was it. If you want to know

(50:14):
more about him, go read I go, go read his books.
Go do what you want. Um. And in the meantime,
since I say go do what you want, it's time
for listener mail. Yeah. This one is a little long,
but this was a firsthand account from the Iowa Caucus,
so I thought it bared reading. Uh. This is from Lauren,
a student at the University of Iowa, participated in her

(50:36):
first Iowa Caucus. She said I went last Well, she
did say that I went because it's such a big
deal here and since I'm graduating, I thought it might
be my only chance. However, this week's events. It's looking
like it maybe the last time anyone is going to participate.
There were several logistical issues in my opinion, that led
to issues where I was participating. My caucus location was

(50:58):
downtown Iowa City at the Ingle Alert Englert Theater. My
roommate and I arrived about forty five minutes before to
make sure we could be in the door before seven,
since we had been told if you weren't in the door,
then t s for you. Two lines for the caucus
wrapped around the block, one for people who registered in
the correct precinct and one for people who needed to

(51:19):
change their registration to the correct precinct. There were over
seven people in our caucus location alone, far more than
a the Democratic Party of Iowa had expected. Since my
caucus location was at theater, was almost impossible to distinguish
where different candidates were in the room. The Bernie and
Warren groups were so large they had locations on the
floor and had to have satellite spots in the balcony

(51:42):
when it came time to do the head count. The
overcrowded space led to issues tallying people. All of the
campaign volunteers had reported numbers caucus delegate informed us that
the total number of people under each candidate was about
fifty under the amount of total people checked in, so
they assumed that fifty all had chosen to leave before
the votes were all tallied, but the campaign volunteers demanded

(52:04):
a recount. All in all, it took about two and
a half hours to get through the first round of
caucusing to find out which candidates would be bible. My
prediction is that because Islands are so passionate about their
caucus system, they'll probably happen again next election cycle, but
since their faux importance is brought to public consciousness this year,
they'll eventually die away to a primary system soon. That

(52:26):
is from Lauren Cheshire. Lauren, that was a great account.
You're basically like the Hunter Thompson correspondent of stuff you
should know, and we appreciate that big time. That's right
the Iowa after that, and the name of the subject
line of the email was the Iowa caucus is depraved
and decadent. Very nice. Um, So if you want to

(52:50):
get in touch with us to let us know something
that's going on in your neck of the woods while
we want to hear about it, you can go on
to stuff you Should Know dot com. I don't know
why you would want to these days. Instead to send
us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
and send it off to stuff podcast at i heeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production

(53:11):
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