April 5, 2012 • 42 mins
The most successful organisms hide in the shadows. The parasite Toxoplasma gondii is just such a puppet master, and its marionettes include rodents, cats and human beings. In this episode, Julie and Robert uncover Toxo's neural-hijacking scheme.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcot the Stuff to Blow
your Mind. Mym is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
The more we discuss the world and the way it
works and the way we perceive it, the more labyrinthine
it confused. Yeah. Yeah, the more layers that you feel away,
(00:26):
the more layers you find underneath. Right, right, you look
back on a time pretty much like the post War
War two era, Like that was the time when it
was all this optimism that we had things more or
less figured out, that we were venturing into this age
where everything's gonna make sense. Diseases, we're going to defeat space,
we're going to travel. Everything was within our grasp. And
then we started learning more and more and things become
(00:47):
just more and more complicated. I mean, that's kind of
a simplification, but but that's kind of the the story
shaped version of it. And yeah, it seemed like science
was emerging to the degree where we could really get
a handle on things. And you know, psychologically we had
Freud and Young and we're really trying to be introspective
and say, ah, yes, this is what drives human beings, right,
(01:10):
and it seems that humans were the lords of the Earth,
that we this was our planet, we had it not,
and we were going to be the poster children of
this planet moving forward. But the topic we're going to
talk about today really sheds a light on just one
of the areas where humans are not the top dogs.
The topic that really illuminates how the organisms that operate
(01:31):
in the shadows, and at a much smaller level, it
may just be the rulers of the planet, right, the
organisms inside of us. And we've actually talked about this before,
whether or not we actually have free will, And we've
talked about this from a psychological perspective like, oh, did
you know that a lot of people who are named
Denise tend to be dentists or Dennists tend to be dentists.
(01:52):
And this was in David Eagleman's book, right recent book Incognito,
that talked about all these sort of subtle machination is
going on that really informed our worldview and the decisions
we make. But we've also talked about little critters and
how how we may actually just be you know, walking
transportation for these guys, so that we we can just
(02:13):
spread critters among the earth. And this has become even
more apparent recently with a recent article that's been in
the news. I believe that the the name of it
is how your cat is Making You Crazy? And this
is by Kathleen Mcaliffe and this was in the March
edition of The Atlantic. Yeah, this of course deals with
(02:35):
good old taxo taxo plasma gandhi taxo plasmosis being the infestation. Okay, well,
and this comes out up every year or two. I
wrote a bunch about it for Animal Planet a couple
of years back. Yeah, you you have actually talked about
this before, but yeah, definitely, there's there's a driving force
now though around the topic, because there are so many
(02:56):
different studies that are beginning to support this idea that
this our side is doing some really crazy Shenanigan stuff
with not just animals but perhaps even humans. Right, there's
a simplistic way to think of parasites, and I think
this is a new way we often think. We we
think in terms of oh, I have a leech on me,
Oh I have a mosquito on me, or a gear
tick or something, and and these are external parasites. But
(03:18):
the model is simple. There's a weakness in my defense
is something is stealing energy from me and then moving on.
It's a blood sucker. Um And that's a that's a
pretty straightforward con. But something like ke Gandhi. Here T
Gandhi is playing the long con and and has and
it's so intricate. I mean, this is like what was
the Kaiser so say movie, Oh the Unsuspected really usual,
(03:42):
you know, it's it's like that level of complex plot
going on where when you begin to see the full
life cycle of this organism and see the full scheme
as much of it as we can understand, you really
odd because it's not just a matter of something, Oh
you've got a little room for me to live inside you.
I'm gonna inside you where it's warm. No, it's it's
it's far more. You're right. If T Gandhi was plain Vegas,
(04:04):
it would be like the ultimate grifter move what we're
about to describe. There would be a parasites. Oh yeah,
well here we go. Okay, So let's talk about T.
Gandhi Texi Plasmosa Gandhi, and let's talk about what it
actually is and why it is so fierce. Yes, so
Toxoplasmosa gandhi is a protozoan parasite and the only known
(04:27):
definitive hosts for T. Gandhi. That's what we're gonna call
it from here on out. Our domestic cats in their relatives,
and that's that's why our feline friends have been in
the news lately too, and a little bit demonized, which
we'll talk about later. The cats. Cats, Yeah, yeah, well
in general they're kind of demon They steal your breath, right,
that's what they say. But old T. Gandhi here makes
(04:48):
the cat, the feline. It's primary host. This is where
it reproduces. This is the the mothership for T. Gandhi,
but it's life cycle takes it to other creek is
as well. So this fantastic journey begins inside spaceship cat
inside the mothership, all right, the new toxoplasma they multiply
(05:09):
in the lining of an infected cats and testing. Right,
so the cat eats something, picks up the parasite, right,
get in the tummy. It reproduces in the cat. It's
the primary host again, So that's what goes on here.
And then the toxoplasma young, which are called ship out
on the feces, okay, um, right, and this is a
common practice among parasites. That's the outgoing highway from most organisms.
(05:34):
And that's so if you need to get out, that's
the way you gotta go. And this is shed for
like one to two weeks or so, you know, in
the feces of the cat. In any creature that encounters
this stowaway laden waist is susceptible to accidental infection. Okay.
So this means you know, everything from touching a litter box,
walking around on barefoot, on infected soil, infected water, infected
(05:56):
garden veggies, where there's poop, there's a way, right. And
so if you think of a bird or a rodent
trapesing across a pile of fresh cat poo, then obviously
that that's a great way for the parasite to hit
a ride now on say a rat, right, because that's
what it needs to do. Ultimately, this parasite needs to
return to a cat, all right, And it really like
(06:19):
that the rat is very important here. This parasite loves
the rat. Yes, so the rat also you know some
some birds things that cats eat. That is it's it's
ticket back aboard a cat. Somewhere. So now it's aboard
the rat, the bird, whatever the intermediate host may be.
And eventually what happens your pet cat corners this intermediate
(06:40):
host um you know, in your cellar, in your backyard,
in the neighbor's yard, wherever it happens to do. It's hunting.
And if you've ever seen your cat with one of
these animals, you know what happens next. It gobbles it down,
or gobbles half of it down, and then leaves the
other half for you to find on your computer day. Yeah. Yeah,
puts its head on a steak. It says, like what
(07:00):
I did. But when the cat eats this intermediate host,
the cycle continues. Now the taxoplasma is in its system anew,
it is returned to a primary host. Yeah, and so
this is the coolest thing about this or frightening or
whatever your perspective is, is that it returns back to
the cat where those ussis transform into taki a z o.
(07:22):
It's after ingestion, and that's where it becomes the adult
version of the parasite. And it's really the only way
that it can fulfill this life cycle again through the
cat right just on its own. I mean, the cycle
is kind of cool, but it's not completely mind blowing
because obviously cats eat mice and birds, so the circle
is pretty simple. It's not completely crazy until you start
(07:46):
getting into the times subtle manipulations that are going on
inside the intermediate hosts. So when the cycle begins a
new it's important though, to stress that more than birds
and and mice are susceptible to this parasite will end
up in humans. Little does the parasite. There's probably a
little chance that once it ends up in a human
that a cat will eat that human. I mean, it
(08:07):
happens sometimes, but for the most part, feral cat hordes
are not overwhelming humans on the train as far as
we know. I don't know this because this could be
a plot by the cats, you know, to infect a
subtle defends out through they are, I guess. But but
for the most part, this is kind of collateral damage.
The parasite needs to return to the cat. It needs
to get in a bird or a rat to do so,
but it'll try pretty much anything. Yeah, So think about
(08:30):
this parasite it's now taken up you know, home, and
say like an animal um and the and the tissues
of an animal usually in the muscle tissues, and these
little cysts are there, So how can it infect a human?
You will you could eat undercooked meat of an animal
that has those those cysts in it. Because I mentioned
the litter box thing is is an obvious but yeah, yeah,
there are more subtle ways to yet yet litter box
(08:51):
even just say stepping on people contaminated soil and then
accionally like swiping your finger on it and then dipping
it in your mouth. Right, so think about that. The
next thing you see children running around barefoot in the
yard actually kind of creepy. Right. Blood transfusion or organ
transplantation and transplants centrally from mother to fetus. Now, I'm
sure that a lot of people have heard about toxoplasmosis
(09:12):
in terms of pregnant women because that really is a
concern in the medical community because if a to be
mother actually were to have toxoplasmosis, she could then transport
that via the placenta to the fetus, and that really
can cause a lot of problems, anything from blindness to
mental disabilities to brain damage. So it's that that's usually
(09:34):
how people know of this. But okay, let's say that
it does occupy the brains of a human who is
not pregnant. And by the way, this is not as
uncommon as you would think. And actually it is just
going to hang out there for the rest of your
life in your body, all right, it's kind of dead
ended in spaceship human, but it's going to stick around
(09:55):
very chance that a cat may eat you one day
exactly that they they finally get the world dominancy that
they are looking for. Yeah, it is buried in your
muscle and nerve tissue. And this is not We're not
talking about like a rare circumstance where oh, they just
happen to have a cat parasite, because you do have
some situations where a parasitic infestation in a human is
kind of a rare occurrence and causes all these problems.
(10:17):
But the U S inert for Disease Control Prevention estimates
that twenty two point five of the United States twelve
and older population currently carries the TOXO parasite and estimates
run is high as nine in some parts of the world.
So between thirty and sixty percent of the global population
is infested. That is an incredible amount of humans infested
(10:41):
with us, right and you know, just for comparisons sake,
let me look at France and that's upward to like
fifty five percent. And again it's a thought because in
France it's much more common to have uncooked meat or
you know, still uncooked the uncooked. But that makes it
sound like they're the frenchmen are running through the fields
like pulling down cows and horses and deer. Yeah, with
(11:05):
with big fancy curly mustaches. But no, I mean, you know,
state tartar are some of the ways that the meat
is prepared wherever there's a tradition of rare to raw
meat consumption. So of stick tatar is big in a
region and domestic cats are around, there's a chance that
that's going to be higher, right, Or if you live
in conditions where you're the soil is contaminated quite a
(11:25):
bit and you don't have say the means to have
access to clean water, of course, and infanstation rates would
be much higher. Um. But okay, so there's all this
data swirling around. Now you know the life cycle of
texoplasmas gandhi, and do you understand that us humans are
far more infected than we probably ever knew, Right, So
(11:46):
what's the big deal. Well, the big deal is that, again,
the cycle itself, the ideal cycle of cat to rat,
the cat is pretty straightforward. But these guys trying to
gain the process because they really once they're in spaceship rat,
they really want to dock with the mothership again. So
they essentially pilot this mothership a little and they don't
(12:06):
completely take the controls. It's not the sort of a
zombie thing, though, You'll definitely see that situation play out
in some parasitic infestations, but in this one, it's more
of a subtle tweaking of the design functions in the rat. Well,
it actually changes the behavior of the rat. And we're
talking about here's the rats fear response specifically to cats. Yeah,
(12:27):
so the rat needs to return to the cats. So
what can I do as a parasite to to set
up this encounter to encourage my rat host to wind
up in the belly of a cat. And indeed, the
easiest thing is too, well, let's make this prey animal
less afraid of its number one predator. Yeah, and actually
let's take up residents and the rats and magdala where
(12:51):
we know that you know, motions like fear are hanging
out and let's do a little neural rewiring. Right, So
this is like oceans eleven um parasites eleven. The they're
sneaking into the into the control mainframe to try and
mess with the security system. Okay, And so if you
think that, we're completely nuts, so we just made all
this up again that the article in the Atlantic is
(13:14):
great in talking about this more specifically. And there are
a ton of studies, one of which was conducted by
Joanne Webster. She's a parasitologist at Imperial College, London, and
she took it an enclosure with rats, and she treated
one corner of each enclosure with the animal's own order
odor excuse me, a second with water, a third with
cat urine, in the last corner with the urine of
(13:36):
a rabbit. Okay, so this is not a creature that
prays on rodents, right. She said, we thought the parasite
might reduce the rats aversion to cat odor. Not only
did do that, but it actually increased their attraction. They
spent more time in the cat treated areas, the cat
urine areas, okay, And naturally they would have gotten one
whiff of that and been out of there, right, so
she and other scientists have repeated this experiment with the
(13:59):
urin of dog and minks, which also prey on rodents,
and the effect was so specific to cat her and
she says that they call it the fatal feline attraction.
In a sense, the parasite makes the rats sexually attracted
to death by cat. Yes, they're creating suicide rats really,
and again this is all pointing back to this disconnection
(14:21):
of fear circuits, and neuroscientists Robert Sapulski and his colleagues
found that T GANDHI disconnects these fear circuits in the brain.
And again that's this isn't somewhat of an explanation for
these rats losing their aversion to cat odor. Okay, now,
if I if I might return to the parasites eleven
analogy here, let's say we want to gain the process
(14:43):
even further. Al Right, Okay, so we've sort of shut
down security. But the rat is and or a bird.
These are creatures that have evolved over millions and millions
of years to effectively evade the predators that want to
eat them. All right, so we tweet things so that
they're attracted to the urine of their predator. But I
wonder if we could do more. What have we made
them clumsy? What if we messed with their motor skills?
(15:05):
Their studies that suggested that this is exactly what happens.
A little parasitic reprogramming of the brain, and they're able
to impair the host motor controls. So the parasite cuts
the host chances of avoiding the cat's jaws and claws
and winding up in the belly, just gains it a
little more. And only that, let's add to the mix
that not only do you lose your fear response and
your motor control slows down, but let's let's say that
(15:28):
when you do get a whiff of that good time
cat you're in, that your dopamine center in your brain
starts to go nuts. It's like you've released something into
the air events to sort of pacify the security patrol
at this hypothetical casino. There you go and you're attracted
to it, and what do you do? You walk right
up to a cat and say, I just I just
(15:49):
had a whiff of your cat. Peek, I like what
you've got going on there? Why don't we hang out?
And then the cat, of course, eats it because because
the cat. In a little bit we'll discuss some possible
sort of side effects for the cat of the taxo
infesting it, but for the most part of the cat
is unaffected. The cat knows what it's doing when it
comes to killing things and then pooping things. So there's
(16:10):
not really any need to tinker with that model because
because if you have a cat, you know that it
eats and poops very well. So we're too about cats,
but they've got those two things down. It's like the
four things they dig, but it's the prey animals, uh,
in the cycle that they tweak. Yeah, that's right. And
so as soon as that rat, who has lost all
sense of fear, presents him or herself to the cat,
(16:30):
then you know, the t gandhi inside are going. You know, Booya,
is exactly what we wanted you to do. But what's
fascinating about that is that that that parasite is in
the rat's brain really tinkering with it so specifically you know,
to cat urine and another animal urine that it's attracted to,
or you know, losing the motor coordination. I mean that
(16:51):
all of that is fascinating to me. Yeah, and it
turns our previous understandings of how the world works on
its head, like the idea that at this small level,
the creatures that we don't even think of as having
intelligence are manipulating the whole show. You know. They're like
they're like tiny gods, right, And now the situation is unfolding,
and there's there's just one researcher, this one scientist who
(17:14):
looks at this. It looks all these different cases of
parasites changing behavior in insects and animals and says, m hm,
you know, but I've been acting kind of strange lately.
I wonder if I could be infested with something that's
changing my behavior. And we're gonna take a quick break,
but when we get back, we're going to talk about
whether or not we are also controlled by unseen forces
(17:38):
aka parasites. We're back, and like we mentioned before that
the parasite he guaranty, wants to get inside a cat again,
and it wants to do that by getting inside a
rat or a bird. That's the cycle cat, the rat,
the cat. But this journey will often lead it into humans,
which generally is a dead end journey. But it is
(18:00):
still going to use all of its skills to try
and get that right and into the belly of a cat.
It's still programmed to change the host and to manipulate
the host towards its ultimate goal again the digestive system
of a feline. So human infestation by T. Gandhi also
appears to result in some mind puppeting. It appears, you know,
(18:22):
the jury is still somewhat out, and there's quite a
kerfuffle about it, but it seems to be some some
pretty serious evidence that there's tinkering going on in the
human mind. In fact, biologist Yaroslav Flagger in the n
as I said before he had begun to suspect that
a parasite was subtly manipulating his personality. For instance, he
(18:42):
would cross the road in the middle of trafficked weapon
without any fear, and in moments of panic he observed
others freaking out while he remained oddly calm. He realized
that he also didn't have much of an investment in
his appearance. He seemed sort of unkempt, introverted, and and uh.
He remembered learning about reckless ants whose nervous systems had
(19:05):
been reprogrammed by flatworms, so he remembered this this instance
in which instead of heading underground, which ants should do
when the temperature drops, these ants would actually scale a
blade of grass and chomp down on the top and
just hang there in the wind until it was gulped
down by a predator. And this was of course the
tapeworm um the tapeworms doing so. He'd heard of a
(19:27):
similar con job in the parasite world, and suddenly he realized,
what if I'm being con What if the parasites are
working through me uh in their their master plan? Yep,
and so on a whim. In at Charles University, where
his colleagues were searching for infected individuals to test out
some new kits to see how fancy they were, they
found that Flagger tested positive for the parasite. So his
(19:51):
hunch was right. What that led to is this guy
like doggedly trying to understand this parasite and how it
behaves in humans, and a bunch of other people of
late have you know, jumped on the ship to try
to figure out what's going on as well. So he
was a man with no fear, he was, Yeah, he
was a man with no fear. And so again, and
you know looking at rats, and he he looked at
(20:12):
rats too, and was looking at the same thing. This,
this disconnecting of the fear center and wondering if his
own crazy behavior and walking out in the middle of
traffic was related. And he found in one of his
studies that this had a direct correlation to people in
traffic accidents. Yes, according to a two thousand and nine
(20:32):
study from Charles University in Prague, toxoplasmosis infection could make
one two point five times more likely to wind up
in an automobile accident, specifically if you happen to have
Reese's negative blood, which means you're missing a protein on
the surface of your blood cells. And this comes around
to the tinkering we were talking about earlier, that motor
skills have been adjusted, the fear of death has been adjusted,
(20:56):
and combine those two out on the road and you
can make I feel like you can make a definite
case that you're more susceptible to an automobile wreck. Yeah,
that's right. And the two Turkish studies have replicated his studies. Again,
these are people who have been involved in traffic accidents
and the accident victims blood was taken and again, it
(21:18):
was found two and a half times more likely to
be in traffic accident if you are infested with this parasite. Yeah,
amazingly enough, the prog studies suggests that between four hundred
thousand and a million of the world's annual road deaths
might be due to toxoplasma. Okay, so that's where, of course,
where people start to put up the red flag and said, Okay,
don't worry, you can still drive a car. Let's try
(21:39):
to get more data on this and truly understand whether
or not it's a cat to that degree correlation, right, right.
Then Flagger also sorted to say, well, you know, I
wonder if humans, like rats also have a delay in
response time, and he studied that. He found in one
of his studies that there was a slight delay in
(22:00):
response time for a group infected with two gandhi in
comparison to their study counterparts. Both groups were asked to
press a button when they saw a white square appear
against a dark background. So yeah, the actually delay time
is pretty subtle, but is very distinct that there was
a delay in people with T gandhi. Fliger also noted
(22:21):
that T gandhi men and women developed subtle personality changes.
The men were more prone to be introverted, suspicious, and
rule break, rule breakers as well as sort of unkempt,
while women were more outgoing, trusting, rule abiding, and paid
much more attention to their appearance. And he determined this
by first giving them personality tests. Then he began to
(22:42):
test the emerging data that came out of those personality tests. So,
for instance, um he would test trust levels by saying, hey, here,
drink this unidentified liquid, and again, the Ti Gandhi men
were more likely to be very suspicious of this, where
the whereas the Ti Gan women were like, hey, okay, sure,
I'll have a sip of it. He also gauged the
(23:04):
amount of time subjects spent with friends and how subjects
valued their appearance. Another potential byproduct of infestation by T
Gandhi is depression. There's some research into this from the
Stanley Research Medical Institute of Maryland, and they found that
people infected with toxoplasma are at greater risk of developing depression.
There was even one case, and this was a study
(23:25):
published in BMC Psychiatry that studied a depressed thirty two
year old male who only responded to added pressence after
being treated for toxoplasmosis. It's one of these cases where
we're not sure this is actually part of the grand
design of the parasite, because they've also there's some studies
that they think that there might be some mild depression
in cats when they have an acute infestation of T
(23:47):
gandhi in their systems. But it's another reason to be
I guess a little well. In the article also points
out the behavioral differences among genders, and they wonder like,
why could that be so very different? And one of
the because it seems to make women more fun, right,
I mean more spend more yeah, uh, and having a
(24:09):
good time. They're they're more promiscuous living up, whereas the
men become sullen, shut in men with bad attitudes and
worse hygiene. Yeah, pretty much just sort of like a
little bit retreating to their caves, I guess you could say.
But yeah, I mean that the idea is that the
T GANDHI relating to depression does increase anxiety in people,
(24:34):
and that these are just sort of the coping mechanisms
that come up when you're experiencing anxiety. I don't know
that I've ever been really anxious and decided that I
would just drop five bucks and then go out and
be super social. But I don't know, I mean, you know,
this is again this is a bit of the mystery
behind T. Gandhi and how it's working in humans. And
one of the things that was brought up in this
article that's that's also pretty intriguing m is schizophrenia and
(25:00):
hat fancying and how they all relate to T. Gandhi
referencing the stereotype of the old cat lady, the crazy
old cat lady, right, well, well lots of cats and
is a little adult. It has been pointed out that
schizophrenia didn't really come onto the scene until the eighteenth century,
about the same time that people began keeping cats as pets,
(25:21):
and this became like a something that just spread throughout
the world, became like really cool to keep cut to
domesticated in that way, and your keep it with you
in your house where you have obviously much more interaction
with it. A ka feces on your hands sort of,
I mean not directly all the time, but there are
more opportunities for infection. Right. So, there's a psychiatrist by
(25:43):
the name of E. Fuller Tori and he, along with
Robert Yulkin, a neuro virologist at Johns Hopkins University, surveyed
a subset of seventy epidemiology studies from the nineteen fifties.
And these weren't just random papers. The study these they
were pretty rigorous in terms of their scientific standards. And
(26:03):
they found that schizophrenic patients with taxo are missing gray
matter in their brains. Okay, and that sounds like what, um,
you know, It's just it's a little bit more complicated
than that, and subtle Torre and Yo can found that
the mental illness is two to three times as common
in people who have the parasite as in controls from
the same region. Okay, so this is giving us some
(26:24):
interesting evidence that t GANDHI could perhaps affect your brain
and the reasons for depression or schizophrenia or anxiety. The
thing is is that a lot of schizophrenia patients show
shrinkage in parts of their cerebral cortex. Twelve of forty
four schizophrenia patients who underwent m r I scans the
team found had reduced gray matter in their brain. Okay,
(26:46):
and the decrease occurred almost exclusively in those who tested
positive for T gandhi. So what Flagler and a lot
of people are starting to interpret those results as is
that the parasite may trigger schizophrenia and genetically so uptible people.
So the genetic part comes into play because what they
think is that that this connection with schizophrenia running and
(27:09):
people's families is connected to genes that may have been
passed down with a deficient immune response to invaders like
T gandhi. So it's not a situation where cats are
just pooping out schizophrenia. Jesy, right, right, right, then this
is a subtle distinction. I'm glad you brought that up.
It's not just like, hey, humans infected. Now I'm going
(27:29):
to have a kid, and I'm going to have a
kid with T gandhi and schizophrenia. Now, it's more like,
to use the parasites of leven analogy, the burglars are
crawling through the duck work into the main frame. They're
tweaking the security on the host, and then oh, you
happen to have a switch over here for schizophrenia, and
they hit it with their elbow. Yes, Because they know
that genes that are most commonly associated with schizophrenia relate
(27:51):
to the immune system. Okay, So all it means is
that you could have had these genes passed down, which
would give you a weekend immune respon to the parasite
if you happen to be infected with it, which may
relate to triggering schizophrenia. This is one of those things
like you could not make this up if you tried, right,
So this is what is rattling a lot of people's
(28:12):
cages because we don't really quite have a complete understanding
of how this works. Yeah, that we're beginning to understand
the scheme that is playing out at the parasitic levels,
and it can be intimidating and a little scary. Like
when I first researched the topic a couple of years back,
it kind of messed with my relationship with my cat
for for like a couple of weeks, because I'm like,
I'm suddenly looking at the cat like you. I thought
(28:35):
you were my friend. I thought we were cool, but
you may have a parasite that might be changing me
into a frumpy, grumpy shut in. Uh, you know, destroying
my relationship with my spouse, trying to get me in
a car wreck, and ultimately in a cat's belly while
while making my already suspect motor skills even sloppier. I
(28:58):
felt kind of weird about it, and I was kind
of I don't really know if I want you sleeping
on the bed sleeping on the bed. But but we
repaired things after that, and right there still needs to
be a lot of research on these different aspects of
t GANDHI and how it works in humans right to
to nobody needs to really go off the deepend and
get tested right now and be afraid of their cats,
(29:21):
because it's easy to to self diagnose with any anything really,
because it's something like this. You think, well, I don't know,
I haven't gone out and been social lately. Maybe I
have a parasite. I'm not that good of a driver,
maybe I have a parasite. It's right, it's easy to
self diagnosed like that. But what I ended up telling
myself I ended up looking at that figure, like, you know,
(29:41):
thirty and six, between thirty and six in the global population.
I started looking at the amount of time I had
already lived around my cat or other cats, and and
I ultimately had to decide, well, yeah, if I got it,
I got it. If I don't. I don't. It's well,
and I don't know if this is going to be comforting.
But this sort of infestation and behavioral changes, uh, it's
(30:03):
not really that uncommon. It's not just this parasite, right,
It's not a case where oh, I am completely in
charge of my own destiny and then it moves the
parasite and changes things around. I think we've we've done
enough podcasts on similar topics that I think long time
listeners already have a good idea that there are a
lot of There are a lot of burglars in the
(30:24):
ductwork already, right right, there are other microscopic puppeteers, I
guess you could say, because nothing of the own complexity
of our own cognitive process, and how free will and
subsurface cognition are already altering, well not altering, but dictating
the way we perceive the world and perceive ourselves. Right,
we already know that, you know, our bacterial cells out
(30:45):
number are our cells, you know, tend to one. So
we really are just the hosts hanging our own To
that point too, let's look at the flu. Right, there
are studies that say that perhaps the flu changes our behavior.
There's one study at Colorado State University that showed that
when subjects were given a flu vaccination, essentially stoking the
subject's immune response, they doubled the amount of people they
(31:09):
came into contact with during the time that they were
maximally contagious. So these were introverted people in the first place,
who you know. They started to keep tabs on um
the behavior of these people who have been infected. I'm
doing some air quotes uninfected um and and they did
find that they were seeking out more and more people
(31:32):
to commune with, which sort of leads us down this
path of is the flu encouraging us to be more
social so that it can spread itself. Yeah. And then
there is a woman named Janice Moore who is one
of the Flu studies researchers, and she also looked at
(31:52):
other human pathogens like AIDS, syphilis, and her peace. Uh.
And the reason she did that is because at the
end of stages of AIDS and the outbreak stages of
syphilis and herpes, people report in intense craving for sex. Again,
the idea is that the pathogen is rewiring the host
to spread itself. It's not enough that the the life
cycle is in place, but let's tweak the host organism
(32:15):
in a manner to optimize it's spread to other host organisms. Again,
I find a little bit of comfort and and just
knowing that it's not just T. Gandhi that is, because
that was a very comforting statement you made that all right, Well, no, no,
I mean that's that's all. That's a bit depressing. But
what I guess my point is is in your point
to is that there are a lot of other burglars
bungling the duct work, as you say, and in their
(32:38):
already yes, exactly. Yeah. And here's another thing too again,
don't look at your cats suspiciously quite yet, um, Indoor
cats pose no threat because they don't carry the parasite.
They're not outside being infected by the parasite. In theory, yes,
in theory. I've also seen some studies that are really
making the case. Though. You would have to have had
this cat in an impregnable fortress its entire life for
(33:01):
it not to have the potential to be exposed. Okay, okay,
so don't so don't suddenly free all my goodness, if
my cat darts out the door, he's you know, he
or she's going to be in toxo. No, no, no. Yeah.
You know, as for outdoor cats, they shew the parasite
just for a couple of weeks of their life, typically
when they're young and they've just begun hunting, okay, and
so that's just a pretty brief period. And so one
(33:25):
of the things you could do is just make sure
that you keep everything super clean during that time period
if you do have a new cat, a new kitten
that is out and about hunting around, and of course,
you know, washing her hands, you know, handling catlet or
all of that stuff is just common sense. Don't let
them on the dinner table, scrub your vegetables, eat cooked meat,
pretty well cooked. You know. I think it's the cat bowl.
(33:49):
Don't have a picnic in the sandbox that all the
neighborhood cats poo in, that kind of thing. Yeah, I
mean common sense stuff. Yeah, don't make cat pooh popsicles, um,
all kinds of stuff like that. But here's the thing
I think it's kind of interesting is that Martina Nava Latova,
oh tennis player, famous tennis player. She's playing against Pam
(34:10):
s Driver in the U S Open. She loses miserably
and she turns around and says, you know what, this
is the reason why I lost taxoplasmosis because she had it.
She says that she ate cocktail nuts that were contaminated
by a cat. Don't ask me how why that happened.
I remember reading that too. I'm like, how did by
(34:31):
a cat? Did you see the cat like peeing in
the nuts? And then you like absent mindedly ate something
like all crap, Maybe these are like coffee beans like
and goats, the same sort of idea that you could
get these super gore may nuts that they passed through cats, right,
num first, I mean it sounds like a situation where
I mean, if I screwed up or did something that
I didn't think was in keeping with my normal behavior
(34:54):
or performance, I could probably make a case. Oh I
bet I have talks so and just based on the
numbers we looking at early, there's what you know, thirty
to six percent chance I'm right, and then I'll play
and then I can have the medical reports say here,
there you go, Taxa. That's the reason I was dogging
it last week. I wonder if Martina Navratlova looks at
this and says, yeah, I've been saying this for years
(35:15):
now changed my behavior. I feel vindicated. It wasn't just
that I had sour grapes from losing. There's a real
problem here. And I totally remember that time period because
I spent like ten thousand dollars going out all the time,
trusting everybody whooping it up. Yeah, well, she just needs
to be careful about about mixed nuts, is all, don't
we all? All right, Well, let's let's call the robe
(35:36):
it over here and collect a little listener mill. Here's
one I received from Heidi. Heidi writes and it says,
hello there. I love the podcast. It is one of
my absolute favorites. I had to share a few incidents
I've experienced that are related to your recent podcast on art.
I am a classical musician, and I have had many
opportunities to be overwhelmed by music, art, poetry, etcetera. When
(35:58):
I was about twenty two, I visited the Buffalo Museum
of Art and went to see the Picassos on exhibit.
To my surprise, when I viewed the Cubist pieces, I
was almost ill. I had such a visceral reaction to
the work that I couldn't explain, and I still vividly
remember it. Over twenty years later, I thought there was
something wrong with me, or that I was just lacking culture.
The second incident occurred when I visited the Sistine Chapel
(36:21):
in Rome about ten years later. We decided to take
the Long Museum tour. Big mistake. The artwork is mixed
together and cramped in in there like a Victorian living room.
By the time we hit the Raphaels near the end
of the tour, I had my hands cupped on the
side of my face to block out everything but the
path ahead of me. I ran out of out of
(36:42):
there because I couldn't stand another minute. Again, I thought
I was insane. I'm so fascinated by this topic and
it actually makes me feel better knowing that other people
experienced similar strong reactions to art work. Anyway, I thought
i'd share. You and Julie are great height think so, yeah,
that's that's Stenhill syndrome is people feeling over welmed by
the artwork in front of them. And I couldn't help
(37:03):
but think about that secret room, the purported the secret Room,
and the Sustaine Chapel with all of the naughty artwork.
I don't think it's culture. I'm not up on this
Oh yeah, yeah, so it's supposedly that's all like the
nefarious stuff. And you know, during the years, I think
they've rotated things in and out depending on what the
idea was of that particular sculpture, whether it was pagan
or whether or not it just had naughty parts and
(37:24):
lots of them. Um. But can you imagine if all
that stuff was was rolled out, yeah, just and crammed
next to each other on the wall. Yeah. I mean,
I'd like to think that the priest go in therey
once while and just get a little Stenthall syndrome just
looking at all of that amazing nefarious artworks. Here's another
one that we received on the topic of Stindall syndrome.
This one's from Kyle. Kyle writes in I wanted to
(37:47):
write in about your Stendall Syndrome podcast. I can't say
that I had an instance of losing it or going
weak in the knees while looking at a piece of art,
but I remember the first time I had that kind
of experience. It was my first time in Europe. I
was doing a study abroad program in Italy. Within a
day of our arrival, we went to the Vatican and
I saw La Patita de Michelangelo. Gotta do it right?
(38:10):
So does that Italian? Enough? If if I tried to
do the Italian, it would just sound Australian. Uh, and
then it would it might lapse into a bad Russian accent.
I remember vividly that I was just so taken with
the piece when I saw it. I couldn't believe how
realistic it was. Your podcast made me think about this moment.
Because I had only been in Europe for less than
(38:30):
twenty four hours and they had been walking through the Vatican.
I'm sure that I was already under the influence of
culture shock and overwhelmed by the size and grandeur of St.
Peter's Basilica. I didn't have any real formal knowledge of
the piece, and I do come from the Christian upbringing,
and like everyone else on the planet, I had heard
about the talent of Michelangelo for years as being a
(38:50):
great artist, even if some of that knowledge was gained
by a spark of interest drawing from the teenage mutant
Ninja Turtles. Anyway, I immediately bought the postcard of the
statue at the gift shop, and I continue to have
great appreciation for this and all of Michaelangela's work. Thanks
for the great podcast. He's truly one of my favorites. Cool. Thanks, Kyle.
Having been to Rome a couple of times, I do
(39:11):
have to say like I am completely overwhelmed by that
city from Georgia. Yes, no, rom Italy and uh. I
often wonder like if you are a Roman born and
bred there, would you completely freak out if you went
to America and if you went to Rome, Georgia, Georgia.
But on the flip side of the coin, like if
(39:32):
you saw the void or if you saw like the
amount of strip malls or something. I mean, these things
just obviously don't exist to to a Roman, right, like
a strip mall? What is that? Um? I mean because
you know that I've got bits of crazy like eight
hundred BC architecture in my backyard. Do they have something
they're called like strip mall Syndrome? Uh? You know, I
wonder if they do. I remember when I was first
(39:54):
driving down to Atlanta on a SIMI regular basis, and
I was driving from rural Middletonnessee. Yeah, yeah, rural middle
Middletonnessee and uh and and I've been to some major
cities a lot, but that then you know, it's necessarily
looking out the window and really taking it in. But
I remember just really looking at the sprawl, and I
still get this, Like, I'll look at the sprawl around
(40:16):
Atlanta and I'll think, who are all these people? Yeah?
Are they? And what do they do? And how Even
if I'm downtown and the Midtown, I A, I'm looking
at these buildings and I'm like, who lives here? Who
are these people? And I get a sense of that
everywhere I go. It's just kind of overwhelming at times
to just just sort of stand back and try and
understand these places that are folding out all around you. Yeah,
(40:38):
and and you know, Atlanta has a really a very
particular character too. It's a very wealthy city. So sometimes
I don't know if you are struck with this all.
Sometimes we like, who are all these captains of the
industry and where are they getting all their money? What
is daily life like for these people. Here's another bit
of listener mail, this one calling back to our episode
on spontaneous human combustion. This is from a listener by
(40:58):
the name of Duty. Judy says, love the show. You
make l a traffic enjoyable. Uh, that's that's the statement,
that's the statement I had an experience with spontaneous combustion.
We had painted the kitchen and awoke the next morning
to find the floor and counters covered in a fine soit.
A pack of matches had ignited and burned the counter
as well. My father, an electrical engineer, fiorized that the
(41:21):
paint fumes in the still room were ignited from a
small spark generated by the refrigerator cycling on. Interestingly, the
fire alarm had not been activated either. All right, So
there you have it. If you would like to share
something with us, you can find us on Facebook, and
you can find us on Twitter. Facebook. We're stuff to
Blow your Mind. On Twitter, our handle is blow the Mind.
(41:43):
Do let us know what you think about toxic plus moses,
about your cap, about the parasitic infestations that maybe puppeteering
our brain even as we speak. We'd love to hear
from you. Yeah, and if you want to know the
name of that article again, it is how Your Cat
Is Making You Crazy by Kathleen mcculiffe. And that's the
march to a twelve edition at the Atlantic. You can
also go onto the CDC's website and check out more
(42:04):
information about toxoplasmosa, and you can always send us your
thoughts via email at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stup Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcot the Stuff to Blow
your Mind. Mym is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
The more we discuss the world and the way it
works and the way we perceive it, the more labyrinthine
it confused. Yeah. Yeah, the more layers that you feel away,
(00:26):
the more layers you find underneath. Right, right, you look
back on a time pretty much like the post War
War two era, Like that was the time when it
was all this optimism that we had things more or
less figured out, that we were venturing into this age
where everything's gonna make sense. Diseases, we're going to defeat space,
we're going to travel. Everything was within our grasp. And
then we started learning more and more and things become
(00:47):
just more and more complicated. I mean, that's kind of
a simplification, but but that's kind of the the story
shaped version of it. And yeah, it seemed like science
was emerging to the degree where we could really get
a handle on things. And you know, psychologically we had
Freud and Young and we're really trying to be introspective
and say, ah, yes, this is what drives human beings, right,
(01:10):
and it seems that humans were the lords of the Earth,
that we this was our planet, we had it not,
and we were going to be the poster children of
this planet moving forward. But the topic we're going to
talk about today really sheds a light on just one
of the areas where humans are not the top dogs.
The topic that really illuminates how the organisms that operate
(01:31):
in the shadows, and at a much smaller level, it
may just be the rulers of the planet, right, the
organisms inside of us. And we've actually talked about this before,
whether or not we actually have free will, And we've
talked about this from a psychological perspective like, oh, did
you know that a lot of people who are named
Denise tend to be dentists or Dennists tend to be dentists.
(01:52):
And this was in David Eagleman's book, right recent book Incognito,
that talked about all these sort of subtle machination is
going on that really informed our worldview and the decisions
we make. But we've also talked about little critters and
how how we may actually just be you know, walking
transportation for these guys, so that we we can just
(02:13):
spread critters among the earth. And this has become even
more apparent recently with a recent article that's been in
the news. I believe that the the name of it
is how your cat is Making You Crazy? And this
is by Kathleen Mcaliffe and this was in the March
edition of The Atlantic. Yeah, this of course deals with
(02:35):
good old taxo taxo plasma gandhi taxo plasmosis being the infestation. Okay, well,
and this comes out up every year or two. I
wrote a bunch about it for Animal Planet a couple
of years back. Yeah, you you have actually talked about
this before, but yeah, definitely, there's there's a driving force
now though around the topic, because there are so many
(02:56):
different studies that are beginning to support this idea that
this our side is doing some really crazy Shenanigan stuff
with not just animals but perhaps even humans. Right, there's
a simplistic way to think of parasites, and I think
this is a new way we often think. We we
think in terms of oh, I have a leech on me,
Oh I have a mosquito on me, or a gear
tick or something, and and these are external parasites. But
(03:18):
the model is simple. There's a weakness in my defense
is something is stealing energy from me and then moving on.
It's a blood sucker. Um And that's a that's a
pretty straightforward con. But something like ke Gandhi. Here T
Gandhi is playing the long con and and has and
it's so intricate. I mean, this is like what was
the Kaiser so say movie, Oh the Unsuspected really usual,
(03:42):
you know, it's it's like that level of complex plot
going on where when you begin to see the full
life cycle of this organism and see the full scheme
as much of it as we can understand, you really
odd because it's not just a matter of something, Oh
you've got a little room for me to live inside you.
I'm gonna inside you where it's warm. No, it's it's
it's far more. You're right. If T Gandhi was plain Vegas,
(04:04):
it would be like the ultimate grifter move what we're
about to describe. There would be a parasites. Oh yeah,
well here we go. Okay, So let's talk about T.
Gandhi Texi Plasmosa Gandhi, and let's talk about what it
actually is and why it is so fierce. Yes, so
Toxoplasmosa gandhi is a protozoan parasite and the only known
(04:27):
definitive hosts for T. Gandhi. That's what we're gonna call
it from here on out. Our domestic cats in their relatives,
and that's that's why our feline friends have been in
the news lately too, and a little bit demonized, which
we'll talk about later. The cats. Cats, Yeah, yeah, well
in general they're kind of demon They steal your breath, right,
that's what they say. But old T. Gandhi here makes
(04:48):
the cat, the feline. It's primary host. This is where
it reproduces. This is the the mothership for T. Gandhi,
but it's life cycle takes it to other creek is
as well. So this fantastic journey begins inside spaceship cat
inside the mothership, all right, the new toxoplasma they multiply
(05:09):
in the lining of an infected cats and testing. Right,
so the cat eats something, picks up the parasite, right,
get in the tummy. It reproduces in the cat. It's
the primary host again, So that's what goes on here.
And then the toxoplasma young, which are called ship out
on the feces, okay, um, right, and this is a
common practice among parasites. That's the outgoing highway from most organisms.
(05:34):
And that's so if you need to get out, that's
the way you gotta go. And this is shed for
like one to two weeks or so, you know, in
the feces of the cat. In any creature that encounters
this stowaway laden waist is susceptible to accidental infection. Okay.
So this means you know, everything from touching a litter box,
walking around on barefoot, on infected soil, infected water, infected
(05:56):
garden veggies, where there's poop, there's a way, right. And
so if you think of a bird or a rodent
trapesing across a pile of fresh cat poo, then obviously
that that's a great way for the parasite to hit
a ride now on say a rat, right, because that's
what it needs to do. Ultimately, this parasite needs to
return to a cat, all right, And it really like
(06:19):
that the rat is very important here. This parasite loves
the rat. Yes, so the rat also you know some
some birds things that cats eat. That is it's it's
ticket back aboard a cat. Somewhere. So now it's aboard
the rat, the bird, whatever the intermediate host may be.
And eventually what happens your pet cat corners this intermediate
(06:40):
host um you know, in your cellar, in your backyard,
in the neighbor's yard, wherever it happens to do. It's hunting.
And if you've ever seen your cat with one of
these animals, you know what happens next. It gobbles it down,
or gobbles half of it down, and then leaves the
other half for you to find on your computer day. Yeah. Yeah,
puts its head on a steak. It says, like what
(07:00):
I did. But when the cat eats this intermediate host,
the cycle continues. Now the taxoplasma is in its system anew,
it is returned to a primary host. Yeah, and so
this is the coolest thing about this or frightening or
whatever your perspective is, is that it returns back to
the cat where those ussis transform into taki a z o.
(07:22):
It's after ingestion, and that's where it becomes the adult
version of the parasite. And it's really the only way
that it can fulfill this life cycle again through the
cat right just on its own. I mean, the cycle
is kind of cool, but it's not completely mind blowing
because obviously cats eat mice and birds, so the circle
is pretty simple. It's not completely crazy until you start
(07:46):
getting into the times subtle manipulations that are going on
inside the intermediate hosts. So when the cycle begins a
new it's important though, to stress that more than birds
and and mice are susceptible to this parasite will end
up in humans. Little does the parasite. There's probably a
little chance that once it ends up in a human
that a cat will eat that human. I mean, it
(08:07):
happens sometimes, but for the most part, feral cat hordes
are not overwhelming humans on the train as far as
we know. I don't know this because this could be
a plot by the cats, you know, to infect a
subtle defends out through they are, I guess. But but
for the most part, this is kind of collateral damage.
The parasite needs to return to the cat. It needs
to get in a bird or a rat to do so,
but it'll try pretty much anything. Yeah, So think about
(08:30):
this parasite it's now taken up you know, home, and
say like an animal um and the and the tissues
of an animal usually in the muscle tissues, and these
little cysts are there, So how can it infect a human?
You will you could eat undercooked meat of an animal
that has those those cysts in it. Because I mentioned
the litter box thing is is an obvious but yeah, yeah,
there are more subtle ways to yet yet litter box
(08:51):
even just say stepping on people contaminated soil and then
accionally like swiping your finger on it and then dipping
it in your mouth. Right, so think about that. The
next thing you see children running around barefoot in the
yard actually kind of creepy. Right. Blood transfusion or organ
transplantation and transplants centrally from mother to fetus. Now, I'm
sure that a lot of people have heard about toxoplasmosis
(09:12):
in terms of pregnant women because that really is a
concern in the medical community because if a to be
mother actually were to have toxoplasmosis, she could then transport
that via the placenta to the fetus, and that really
can cause a lot of problems, anything from blindness to
mental disabilities to brain damage. So it's that that's usually
(09:34):
how people know of this. But okay, let's say that
it does occupy the brains of a human who is
not pregnant. And by the way, this is not as
uncommon as you would think. And actually it is just
going to hang out there for the rest of your
life in your body, all right, it's kind of dead
ended in spaceship human, but it's going to stick around
(09:55):
very chance that a cat may eat you one day
exactly that they they finally get the world dominancy that
they are looking for. Yeah, it is buried in your
muscle and nerve tissue. And this is not We're not
talking about like a rare circumstance where oh, they just
happen to have a cat parasite, because you do have
some situations where a parasitic infestation in a human is
kind of a rare occurrence and causes all these problems.
(10:17):
But the U S inert for Disease Control Prevention estimates
that twenty two point five of the United States twelve
and older population currently carries the TOXO parasite and estimates
run is high as nine in some parts of the world.
So between thirty and sixty percent of the global population
is infested. That is an incredible amount of humans infested
(10:41):
with us, right and you know, just for comparisons sake,
let me look at France and that's upward to like
fifty five percent. And again it's a thought because in
France it's much more common to have uncooked meat or
you know, still uncooked the uncooked. But that makes it
sound like they're the frenchmen are running through the fields
like pulling down cows and horses and deer. Yeah, with
(11:05):
with big fancy curly mustaches. But no, I mean, you know,
state tartar are some of the ways that the meat
is prepared wherever there's a tradition of rare to raw
meat consumption. So of stick tatar is big in a
region and domestic cats are around, there's a chance that
that's going to be higher, right, Or if you live
in conditions where you're the soil is contaminated quite a
(11:25):
bit and you don't have say the means to have
access to clean water, of course, and infanstation rates would
be much higher. Um. But okay, so there's all this
data swirling around. Now you know the life cycle of
texoplasmas gandhi, and do you understand that us humans are
far more infected than we probably ever knew, Right, So
(11:46):
what's the big deal. Well, the big deal is that, again,
the cycle itself, the ideal cycle of cat to rat,
the cat is pretty straightforward. But these guys trying to
gain the process because they really once they're in spaceship rat,
they really want to dock with the mothership again. So
they essentially pilot this mothership a little and they don't
(12:06):
completely take the controls. It's not the sort of a
zombie thing, though, You'll definitely see that situation play out
in some parasitic infestations, but in this one, it's more
of a subtle tweaking of the design functions in the rat. Well,
it actually changes the behavior of the rat. And we're
talking about here's the rats fear response specifically to cats. Yeah,
(12:27):
so the rat needs to return to the cats. So
what can I do as a parasite to to set
up this encounter to encourage my rat host to wind
up in the belly of a cat. And indeed, the
easiest thing is too, well, let's make this prey animal
less afraid of its number one predator. Yeah, and actually
let's take up residents and the rats and magdala where
(12:51):
we know that you know, motions like fear are hanging
out and let's do a little neural rewiring. Right, So
this is like oceans eleven um parasites eleven. The they're
sneaking into the into the control mainframe to try and
mess with the security system. Okay, And so if you
think that, we're completely nuts, so we just made all
this up again that the article in the Atlantic is
(13:14):
great in talking about this more specifically. And there are
a ton of studies, one of which was conducted by
Joanne Webster. She's a parasitologist at Imperial College, London, and
she took it an enclosure with rats, and she treated
one corner of each enclosure with the animal's own order
odor excuse me, a second with water, a third with
cat urine, in the last corner with the urine of
(13:36):
a rabbit. Okay, so this is not a creature that
prays on rodents, right. She said, we thought the parasite
might reduce the rats aversion to cat odor. Not only
did do that, but it actually increased their attraction. They
spent more time in the cat treated areas, the cat
urine areas, okay, And naturally they would have gotten one
whiff of that and been out of there, right, so
she and other scientists have repeated this experiment with the
(13:59):
urin of dog and minks, which also prey on rodents,
and the effect was so specific to cat her and
she says that they call it the fatal feline attraction.
In a sense, the parasite makes the rats sexually attracted
to death by cat. Yes, they're creating suicide rats really,
and again this is all pointing back to this disconnection
(14:21):
of fear circuits, and neuroscientists Robert Sapulski and his colleagues
found that T GANDHI disconnects these fear circuits in the brain.
And again that's this isn't somewhat of an explanation for
these rats losing their aversion to cat odor. Okay, now,
if I if I might return to the parasites eleven
analogy here, let's say we want to gain the process
(14:43):
even further. Al Right, Okay, so we've sort of shut
down security. But the rat is and or a bird.
These are creatures that have evolved over millions and millions
of years to effectively evade the predators that want to
eat them. All right, so we tweet things so that
they're attracted to the urine of their predator. But I
wonder if we could do more. What have we made
them clumsy? What if we messed with their motor skills?
(15:05):
Their studies that suggested that this is exactly what happens.
A little parasitic reprogramming of the brain, and they're able
to impair the host motor controls. So the parasite cuts
the host chances of avoiding the cat's jaws and claws
and winding up in the belly, just gains it a
little more. And only that, let's add to the mix
that not only do you lose your fear response and
your motor control slows down, but let's let's say that
(15:28):
when you do get a whiff of that good time
cat you're in, that your dopamine center in your brain
starts to go nuts. It's like you've released something into
the air events to sort of pacify the security patrol
at this hypothetical casino. There you go and you're attracted
to it, and what do you do? You walk right
up to a cat and say, I just I just
(15:49):
had a whiff of your cat. Peek, I like what
you've got going on there? Why don't we hang out?
And then the cat, of course, eats it because because
the cat. In a little bit we'll discuss some possible
sort of side effects for the cat of the taxo
infesting it, but for the most part of the cat
is unaffected. The cat knows what it's doing when it
comes to killing things and then pooping things. So there's
(16:10):
not really any need to tinker with that model because
because if you have a cat, you know that it
eats and poops very well. So we're too about cats,
but they've got those two things down. It's like the
four things they dig, but it's the prey animals, uh,
in the cycle that they tweak. Yeah, that's right. And
so as soon as that rat, who has lost all
sense of fear, presents him or herself to the cat,
(16:30):
then you know, the t gandhi inside are going. You know, Booya,
is exactly what we wanted you to do. But what's
fascinating about that is that that that parasite is in
the rat's brain really tinkering with it so specifically you know,
to cat urine and another animal urine that it's attracted to,
or you know, losing the motor coordination. I mean that
(16:51):
all of that is fascinating to me. Yeah, and it
turns our previous understandings of how the world works on
its head, like the idea that at this small level,
the creatures that we don't even think of as having
intelligence are manipulating the whole show. You know. They're like
they're like tiny gods, right, And now the situation is unfolding,
and there's there's just one researcher, this one scientist who
(17:14):
looks at this. It looks all these different cases of
parasites changing behavior in insects and animals and says, m hm,
you know, but I've been acting kind of strange lately.
I wonder if I could be infested with something that's
changing my behavior. And we're gonna take a quick break,
but when we get back, we're going to talk about
whether or not we are also controlled by unseen forces
(17:38):
aka parasites. We're back, and like we mentioned before that
the parasite he guaranty, wants to get inside a cat again,
and it wants to do that by getting inside a
rat or a bird. That's the cycle cat, the rat,
the cat. But this journey will often lead it into humans,
which generally is a dead end journey. But it is
(18:00):
still going to use all of its skills to try
and get that right and into the belly of a cat.
It's still programmed to change the host and to manipulate
the host towards its ultimate goal again the digestive system
of a feline. So human infestation by T. Gandhi also
appears to result in some mind puppeting. It appears, you know,
(18:22):
the jury is still somewhat out, and there's quite a
kerfuffle about it, but it seems to be some some
pretty serious evidence that there's tinkering going on in the
human mind. In fact, biologist Yaroslav Flagger in the n
as I said before he had begun to suspect that
a parasite was subtly manipulating his personality. For instance, he
(18:42):
would cross the road in the middle of trafficked weapon
without any fear, and in moments of panic he observed
others freaking out while he remained oddly calm. He realized
that he also didn't have much of an investment in
his appearance. He seemed sort of unkempt, introverted, and and uh.
He remembered learning about reckless ants whose nervous systems had
(19:05):
been reprogrammed by flatworms, so he remembered this this instance
in which instead of heading underground, which ants should do
when the temperature drops, these ants would actually scale a
blade of grass and chomp down on the top and
just hang there in the wind until it was gulped
down by a predator. And this was of course the
tapeworm um the tapeworms doing so. He'd heard of a
(19:27):
similar con job in the parasite world, and suddenly he realized,
what if I'm being con What if the parasites are
working through me uh in their their master plan? Yep,
and so on a whim. In at Charles University, where
his colleagues were searching for infected individuals to test out
some new kits to see how fancy they were, they
found that Flagger tested positive for the parasite. So his
(19:51):
hunch was right. What that led to is this guy
like doggedly trying to understand this parasite and how it
behaves in humans, and a bunch of other people of
late have you know, jumped on the ship to try
to figure out what's going on as well. So he
was a man with no fear, he was, Yeah, he
was a man with no fear. And so again, and
you know looking at rats, and he he looked at
(20:12):
rats too, and was looking at the same thing. This,
this disconnecting of the fear center and wondering if his
own crazy behavior and walking out in the middle of
traffic was related. And he found in one of his
studies that this had a direct correlation to people in
traffic accidents. Yes, according to a two thousand and nine
(20:32):
study from Charles University in Prague, toxoplasmosis infection could make
one two point five times more likely to wind up
in an automobile accident, specifically if you happen to have
Reese's negative blood, which means you're missing a protein on
the surface of your blood cells. And this comes around
to the tinkering we were talking about earlier, that motor
skills have been adjusted, the fear of death has been adjusted,
(20:56):
and combine those two out on the road and you
can make I feel like you can make a definite
case that you're more susceptible to an automobile wreck. Yeah,
that's right. And the two Turkish studies have replicated his studies. Again,
these are people who have been involved in traffic accidents
and the accident victims blood was taken and again, it
(21:18):
was found two and a half times more likely to
be in traffic accident if you are infested with this parasite. Yeah,
amazingly enough, the prog studies suggests that between four hundred
thousand and a million of the world's annual road deaths
might be due to toxoplasma. Okay, so that's where, of course,
where people start to put up the red flag and said, Okay,
don't worry, you can still drive a car. Let's try
(21:39):
to get more data on this and truly understand whether
or not it's a cat to that degree correlation, right, right.
Then Flagger also sorted to say, well, you know, I
wonder if humans, like rats also have a delay in
response time, and he studied that. He found in one
of his studies that there was a slight delay in
(22:00):
response time for a group infected with two gandhi in
comparison to their study counterparts. Both groups were asked to
press a button when they saw a white square appear
against a dark background. So yeah, the actually delay time
is pretty subtle, but is very distinct that there was
a delay in people with T gandhi. Fliger also noted
(22:21):
that T gandhi men and women developed subtle personality changes.
The men were more prone to be introverted, suspicious, and
rule break, rule breakers as well as sort of unkempt,
while women were more outgoing, trusting, rule abiding, and paid
much more attention to their appearance. And he determined this
by first giving them personality tests. Then he began to
(22:42):
test the emerging data that came out of those personality tests. So,
for instance, um he would test trust levels by saying, hey, here,
drink this unidentified liquid, and again, the Ti Gandhi men
were more likely to be very suspicious of this, where
the whereas the Ti Gan women were like, hey, okay, sure,
I'll have a sip of it. He also gauged the
(23:04):
amount of time subjects spent with friends and how subjects
valued their appearance. Another potential byproduct of infestation by T
Gandhi is depression. There's some research into this from the
Stanley Research Medical Institute of Maryland, and they found that
people infected with toxoplasma are at greater risk of developing depression.
There was even one case, and this was a study
(23:25):
published in BMC Psychiatry that studied a depressed thirty two
year old male who only responded to added pressence after
being treated for toxoplasmosis. It's one of these cases where
we're not sure this is actually part of the grand
design of the parasite, because they've also there's some studies
that they think that there might be some mild depression
in cats when they have an acute infestation of T
(23:47):
gandhi in their systems. But it's another reason to be
I guess a little well. In the article also points
out the behavioral differences among genders, and they wonder like,
why could that be so very different? And one of
the because it seems to make women more fun, right,
I mean more spend more yeah, uh, and having a
(24:09):
good time. They're they're more promiscuous living up, whereas the
men become sullen, shut in men with bad attitudes and
worse hygiene. Yeah, pretty much just sort of like a
little bit retreating to their caves, I guess you could say.
But yeah, I mean that the idea is that the
T GANDHI relating to depression does increase anxiety in people,
(24:34):
and that these are just sort of the coping mechanisms
that come up when you're experiencing anxiety. I don't know
that I've ever been really anxious and decided that I
would just drop five bucks and then go out and
be super social. But I don't know, I mean, you know,
this is again this is a bit of the mystery
behind T. Gandhi and how it's working in humans. And
one of the things that was brought up in this
article that's that's also pretty intriguing m is schizophrenia and
(25:00):
hat fancying and how they all relate to T. Gandhi
referencing the stereotype of the old cat lady, the crazy
old cat lady, right, well, well lots of cats and
is a little adult. It has been pointed out that
schizophrenia didn't really come onto the scene until the eighteenth century,
about the same time that people began keeping cats as pets,
(25:21):
and this became like a something that just spread throughout
the world, became like really cool to keep cut to
domesticated in that way, and your keep it with you
in your house where you have obviously much more interaction
with it. A ka feces on your hands sort of,
I mean not directly all the time, but there are
more opportunities for infection. Right. So, there's a psychiatrist by
(25:43):
the name of E. Fuller Tori and he, along with
Robert Yulkin, a neuro virologist at Johns Hopkins University, surveyed
a subset of seventy epidemiology studies from the nineteen fifties.
And these weren't just random papers. The study these they
were pretty rigorous in terms of their scientific standards. And
(26:03):
they found that schizophrenic patients with taxo are missing gray
matter in their brains. Okay, and that sounds like what, um,
you know, It's just it's a little bit more complicated
than that, and subtle Torre and Yo can found that
the mental illness is two to three times as common
in people who have the parasite as in controls from
the same region. Okay, so this is giving us some
(26:24):
interesting evidence that t GANDHI could perhaps affect your brain
and the reasons for depression or schizophrenia or anxiety. The
thing is is that a lot of schizophrenia patients show
shrinkage in parts of their cerebral cortex. Twelve of forty
four schizophrenia patients who underwent m r I scans the
team found had reduced gray matter in their brain. Okay,
(26:46):
and the decrease occurred almost exclusively in those who tested
positive for T gandhi. So what Flagler and a lot
of people are starting to interpret those results as is
that the parasite may trigger schizophrenia and genetically so uptible people.
So the genetic part comes into play because what they
think is that that this connection with schizophrenia running and
(27:09):
people's families is connected to genes that may have been
passed down with a deficient immune response to invaders like
T gandhi. So it's not a situation where cats are
just pooping out schizophrenia. Jesy, right, right, right, then this
is a subtle distinction. I'm glad you brought that up.
It's not just like, hey, humans infected. Now I'm going
(27:29):
to have a kid, and I'm going to have a
kid with T gandhi and schizophrenia. Now, it's more like,
to use the parasites of leven analogy, the burglars are
crawling through the duck work into the main frame. They're
tweaking the security on the host, and then oh, you
happen to have a switch over here for schizophrenia, and
they hit it with their elbow. Yes, Because they know
that genes that are most commonly associated with schizophrenia relate
(27:51):
to the immune system. Okay, So all it means is
that you could have had these genes passed down, which
would give you a weekend immune respon to the parasite
if you happen to be infected with it, which may
relate to triggering schizophrenia. This is one of those things
like you could not make this up if you tried, right,
So this is what is rattling a lot of people's
(28:12):
cages because we don't really quite have a complete understanding
of how this works. Yeah, that we're beginning to understand
the scheme that is playing out at the parasitic levels,
and it can be intimidating and a little scary. Like
when I first researched the topic a couple of years back,
it kind of messed with my relationship with my cat
for for like a couple of weeks, because I'm like,
I'm suddenly looking at the cat like you. I thought
(28:35):
you were my friend. I thought we were cool, but
you may have a parasite that might be changing me
into a frumpy, grumpy shut in. Uh, you know, destroying
my relationship with my spouse, trying to get me in
a car wreck, and ultimately in a cat's belly while
while making my already suspect motor skills even sloppier. I
(28:58):
felt kind of weird about it, and I was kind
of I don't really know if I want you sleeping
on the bed sleeping on the bed. But but we
repaired things after that, and right there still needs to
be a lot of research on these different aspects of
t GANDHI and how it works in humans right to
to nobody needs to really go off the deepend and
get tested right now and be afraid of their cats,
(29:21):
because it's easy to to self diagnose with any anything really,
because it's something like this. You think, well, I don't know,
I haven't gone out and been social lately. Maybe I
have a parasite. I'm not that good of a driver,
maybe I have a parasite. It's right, it's easy to
self diagnosed like that. But what I ended up telling
myself I ended up looking at that figure, like, you know,
(29:41):
thirty and six, between thirty and six in the global population.
I started looking at the amount of time I had
already lived around my cat or other cats, and and
I ultimately had to decide, well, yeah, if I got it,
I got it. If I don't. I don't. It's well,
and I don't know if this is going to be comforting.
But this sort of infestation and behavioral changes, uh, it's
(30:03):
not really that uncommon. It's not just this parasite, right,
It's not a case where oh, I am completely in
charge of my own destiny and then it moves the
parasite and changes things around. I think we've we've done
enough podcasts on similar topics that I think long time
listeners already have a good idea that there are a
lot of There are a lot of burglars in the
(30:24):
ductwork already, right right, there are other microscopic puppeteers, I
guess you could say, because nothing of the own complexity
of our own cognitive process, and how free will and
subsurface cognition are already altering, well not altering, but dictating
the way we perceive the world and perceive ourselves. Right,
we already know that, you know, our bacterial cells out
(30:45):
number are our cells, you know, tend to one. So
we really are just the hosts hanging our own To
that point too, let's look at the flu. Right, there
are studies that say that perhaps the flu changes our behavior.
There's one study at Colorado State University that showed that
when subjects were given a flu vaccination, essentially stoking the
subject's immune response, they doubled the amount of people they
(31:09):
came into contact with during the time that they were
maximally contagious. So these were introverted people in the first place,
who you know. They started to keep tabs on um
the behavior of these people who have been infected. I'm
doing some air quotes uninfected um and and they did
find that they were seeking out more and more people
(31:32):
to commune with, which sort of leads us down this
path of is the flu encouraging us to be more
social so that it can spread itself. Yeah. And then
there is a woman named Janice Moore who is one
of the Flu studies researchers, and she also looked at
(31:52):
other human pathogens like AIDS, syphilis, and her peace. Uh.
And the reason she did that is because at the
end of stages of AIDS and the outbreak stages of
syphilis and herpes, people report in intense craving for sex. Again,
the idea is that the pathogen is rewiring the host
to spread itself. It's not enough that the the life
cycle is in place, but let's tweak the host organism
(32:15):
in a manner to optimize it's spread to other host organisms. Again,
I find a little bit of comfort and and just
knowing that it's not just T. Gandhi that is, because
that was a very comforting statement you made that all right, Well, no, no,
I mean that's that's all. That's a bit depressing. But
what I guess my point is is in your point
to is that there are a lot of other burglars
bungling the duct work, as you say, and in their
(32:38):
already yes, exactly. Yeah. And here's another thing too again,
don't look at your cats suspiciously quite yet, um, Indoor
cats pose no threat because they don't carry the parasite.
They're not outside being infected by the parasite. In theory, yes,
in theory. I've also seen some studies that are really
making the case. Though. You would have to have had
this cat in an impregnable fortress its entire life for
(33:01):
it not to have the potential to be exposed. Okay, okay,
so don't so don't suddenly free all my goodness, if
my cat darts out the door, he's you know, he
or she's going to be in toxo. No, no, no. Yeah.
You know, as for outdoor cats, they shew the parasite
just for a couple of weeks of their life, typically
when they're young and they've just begun hunting, okay, and
so that's just a pretty brief period. And so one
(33:25):
of the things you could do is just make sure
that you keep everything super clean during that time period
if you do have a new cat, a new kitten
that is out and about hunting around, and of course,
you know, washing her hands, you know, handling catlet or
all of that stuff is just common sense. Don't let
them on the dinner table, scrub your vegetables, eat cooked meat,
pretty well cooked. You know. I think it's the cat bowl.
(33:49):
Don't have a picnic in the sandbox that all the
neighborhood cats poo in, that kind of thing. Yeah, I
mean common sense stuff. Yeah, don't make cat pooh popsicles, um,
all kinds of stuff like that. But here's the thing
I think it's kind of interesting is that Martina Nava Latova,
oh tennis player, famous tennis player. She's playing against Pam
(34:10):
s Driver in the U S Open. She loses miserably
and she turns around and says, you know what, this
is the reason why I lost taxoplasmosis because she had it.
She says that she ate cocktail nuts that were contaminated
by a cat. Don't ask me how why that happened.
I remember reading that too. I'm like, how did by
(34:31):
a cat? Did you see the cat like peeing in
the nuts? And then you like absent mindedly ate something
like all crap, Maybe these are like coffee beans like
and goats, the same sort of idea that you could
get these super gore may nuts that they passed through cats, right,
num first, I mean it sounds like a situation where
I mean, if I screwed up or did something that
I didn't think was in keeping with my normal behavior
(34:54):
or performance, I could probably make a case. Oh I
bet I have talks so and just based on the
numbers we looking at early, there's what you know, thirty
to six percent chance I'm right, and then I'll play
and then I can have the medical reports say here,
there you go, Taxa. That's the reason I was dogging
it last week. I wonder if Martina Navratlova looks at
this and says, yeah, I've been saying this for years
(35:15):
now changed my behavior. I feel vindicated. It wasn't just
that I had sour grapes from losing. There's a real
problem here. And I totally remember that time period because
I spent like ten thousand dollars going out all the time,
trusting everybody whooping it up. Yeah, well, she just needs
to be careful about about mixed nuts, is all, don't
we all? All right, Well, let's let's call the robe
(35:36):
it over here and collect a little listener mill. Here's
one I received from Heidi. Heidi writes and it says,
hello there. I love the podcast. It is one of
my absolute favorites. I had to share a few incidents
I've experienced that are related to your recent podcast on art.
I am a classical musician, and I have had many
opportunities to be overwhelmed by music, art, poetry, etcetera. When
(35:58):
I was about twenty two, I visited the Buffalo Museum
of Art and went to see the Picassos on exhibit.
To my surprise, when I viewed the Cubist pieces, I
was almost ill. I had such a visceral reaction to
the work that I couldn't explain, and I still vividly
remember it. Over twenty years later, I thought there was
something wrong with me, or that I was just lacking culture.
The second incident occurred when I visited the Sistine Chapel
(36:21):
in Rome about ten years later. We decided to take
the Long Museum tour. Big mistake. The artwork is mixed
together and cramped in in there like a Victorian living room.
By the time we hit the Raphaels near the end
of the tour, I had my hands cupped on the
side of my face to block out everything but the
path ahead of me. I ran out of out of
(36:42):
there because I couldn't stand another minute. Again, I thought
I was insane. I'm so fascinated by this topic and
it actually makes me feel better knowing that other people
experienced similar strong reactions to art work. Anyway, I thought
i'd share. You and Julie are great height think so, yeah,
that's that's Stenhill syndrome is people feeling over welmed by
the artwork in front of them. And I couldn't help
(37:03):
but think about that secret room, the purported the secret Room,
and the Sustaine Chapel with all of the naughty artwork.
I don't think it's culture. I'm not up on this
Oh yeah, yeah, so it's supposedly that's all like the
nefarious stuff. And you know, during the years, I think
they've rotated things in and out depending on what the
idea was of that particular sculpture, whether it was pagan
or whether or not it just had naughty parts and
(37:24):
lots of them. Um. But can you imagine if all
that stuff was was rolled out, yeah, just and crammed
next to each other on the wall. Yeah. I mean,
I'd like to think that the priest go in therey
once while and just get a little Stenthall syndrome just
looking at all of that amazing nefarious artworks. Here's another
one that we received on the topic of Stindall syndrome.
This one's from Kyle. Kyle writes in I wanted to
(37:47):
write in about your Stendall Syndrome podcast. I can't say
that I had an instance of losing it or going
weak in the knees while looking at a piece of art,
but I remember the first time I had that kind
of experience. It was my first time in Europe. I
was doing a study abroad program in Italy. Within a
day of our arrival, we went to the Vatican and
I saw La Patita de Michelangelo. Gotta do it right?
(38:10):
So does that Italian? Enough? If if I tried to
do the Italian, it would just sound Australian. Uh, and
then it would it might lapse into a bad Russian accent.
I remember vividly that I was just so taken with
the piece when I saw it. I couldn't believe how
realistic it was. Your podcast made me think about this moment.
Because I had only been in Europe for less than
(38:30):
twenty four hours and they had been walking through the Vatican.
I'm sure that I was already under the influence of
culture shock and overwhelmed by the size and grandeur of St.
Peter's Basilica. I didn't have any real formal knowledge of
the piece, and I do come from the Christian upbringing,
and like everyone else on the planet, I had heard
about the talent of Michelangelo for years as being a
(38:50):
great artist, even if some of that knowledge was gained
by a spark of interest drawing from the teenage mutant
Ninja Turtles. Anyway, I immediately bought the postcard of the
statue at the gift shop, and I continue to have
great appreciation for this and all of Michaelangela's work. Thanks
for the great podcast. He's truly one of my favorites. Cool. Thanks, Kyle.
Having been to Rome a couple of times, I do
(39:11):
have to say like I am completely overwhelmed by that
city from Georgia. Yes, no, rom Italy and uh. I
often wonder like if you are a Roman born and
bred there, would you completely freak out if you went
to America and if you went to Rome, Georgia, Georgia.
But on the flip side of the coin, like if
(39:32):
you saw the void or if you saw like the
amount of strip malls or something. I mean, these things
just obviously don't exist to to a Roman, right, like
a strip mall? What is that? Um? I mean because
you know that I've got bits of crazy like eight
hundred BC architecture in my backyard. Do they have something
they're called like strip mall Syndrome? Uh? You know, I
wonder if they do. I remember when I was first
(39:54):
driving down to Atlanta on a SIMI regular basis, and
I was driving from rural Middletonnessee. Yeah, yeah, rural middle
Middletonnessee and uh and and I've been to some major
cities a lot, but that then you know, it's necessarily
looking out the window and really taking it in. But
I remember just really looking at the sprawl, and I
still get this, Like, I'll look at the sprawl around
(40:16):
Atlanta and I'll think, who are all these people? Yeah?
Are they? And what do they do? And how Even
if I'm downtown and the Midtown, I A, I'm looking
at these buildings and I'm like, who lives here? Who
are these people? And I get a sense of that
everywhere I go. It's just kind of overwhelming at times
to just just sort of stand back and try and
understand these places that are folding out all around you. Yeah,
(40:38):
and and you know, Atlanta has a really a very
particular character too. It's a very wealthy city. So sometimes
I don't know if you are struck with this all.
Sometimes we like, who are all these captains of the
industry and where are they getting all their money? What
is daily life like for these people. Here's another bit
of listener mail, this one calling back to our episode
on spontaneous human combustion. This is from a listener by
(40:58):
the name of Duty. Judy says, love the show. You
make l a traffic enjoyable. Uh, that's that's the statement,
that's the statement I had an experience with spontaneous combustion.
We had painted the kitchen and awoke the next morning
to find the floor and counters covered in a fine soit.
A pack of matches had ignited and burned the counter
as well. My father, an electrical engineer, fiorized that the
(41:21):
paint fumes in the still room were ignited from a
small spark generated by the refrigerator cycling on. Interestingly, the
fire alarm had not been activated either. All right, So
there you have it. If you would like to share
something with us, you can find us on Facebook, and
you can find us on Twitter. Facebook. We're stuff to
Blow your Mind. On Twitter, our handle is blow the Mind.
(41:43):
Do let us know what you think about toxic plus moses,
about your cap, about the parasitic infestations that maybe puppeteering
our brain even as we speak. We'd love to hear
from you. Yeah, and if you want to know the
name of that article again, it is how Your Cat
Is Making You Crazy by Kathleen mcculiffe. And that's the
march to a twelve edition at the Atlantic. You can
also go onto the CDC's website and check out more
(42:04):
information about toxoplasmosa, and you can always send us your
thoughts via email at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com.
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