Ig Nobel Prizes 2018: Part 2

Each year, the Ig Nobel prizes honor the weirdest and wackiest contributions to humanity’s scientific understanding of the natural world. In this pair of Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast episodes, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick unpack each of this year’s winners.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and we're back with part two of our ig Nobel
Prize Recipients episode. I was gonna say, if you haven't

(00:25):
heard part one, you need to go back and listen
to that first, but you don't really. I mean, you
should go back and listen to it, but you can
understand this episode without hearing that one. That's right. We're
just covering all the winners across two episodes. Ultimately, it
doesn't matter which order you take them in. Uh. Though,
the top of the first episode has just a brief
section where we talk about what the ig Nobel Prizes are,
So if you're if you're not sure on that, I

(00:47):
would recommend checking that little bit out. But have you've
been listening to the show for years, you know that
we continually do this. We do this pretty much every November,
sometimes in October, but generally it's a November situation where
we catch back up see uh what the previous months
or technically September's UH honorees were for the ignoble prizes,
and we just talk about them a little bit. Sometime

(01:08):
the past, we've done, uh, you know, two hosts talking
about it. We've done three hosts talking about it. We've
tried to cover them all on a single episode. We've
covered them across three episodes. This week it's just Joe
and I and we are doing it in two episodes.
So some of these descriptions are shorter than others. That
kind of depends on what kind of meat is on
the bone. Speaking of if you haven't listened to our

(01:29):
last episode, it had some good stuff about cannibalism, so
I didn't check that out all right, well, speaking speaking
of meat, though, let's go ahead and jump into biology. Okay,
the biology prize. I gotta start with a question, Robert.
You know some people are these what would you call it,
the unbothered eaters, the the cool hand lukes of eating stuff.

(01:50):
If you're everything bagel falls on the floor, you just
pick it up and eat it. It's just a little
more of everything, right, Robert? Are you like that? Or
are you somebody who can't can't talk all erate getting
a few hairs off the floor on your food? Who?
Uh if I am not going to pick a hair
off of it. But if I dropped something and it's
just there for a second and the floor looks relatively clean,

(02:11):
especially if it's in my own house, then yes, I'll
probably eat it. I do have limits, though, I mean,
there have been times, especially when I've been places with
my son, who, especially when he was a little younger,
there was a higher probability that what he was trying
to eat might fall onto the ground. I like, I
particularly remember eating these delicious fish sandwiches in Barbados to

(02:33):
this place called Kuzzes cutters cutter being the uh the
boji and I believe slang for a sandwich. But it
was just like a delicious fish and cheese sandwich with
some boji and hot sauce, absolutely delightful, and we were
just eating it over just this uh like it was
just you know, like gravel and some bottle caps, and
it was just on the brink of falling apart in

(02:55):
my son's hands, and I just I just saw it
in my mind, like that fish is going to the ground.
The fish Patty's gonna jump out of the sandwich and
there's gonna just gonna be no reclaiming it. Luckily, it
didn't happen, Well, thank the gods for that. That's a
that's a deliverance. But if I were in my own
house and that were to happen, I would say, no,
we're not throwing that fish patty out. We're gonna pick

(03:16):
that up. We're gonna brush it off, and you can
finish it. Okay, Parts two and three coming. Part two.
You're at a restaurant. You find a hair in your soup.
Do you just pick it out and keep eating the
soup or do you eat the hair or do you
abandon the bowl completely? I think I have. I have
a pretty good ability to quickly remove a hair and
and almost kind of delete the memory of it occurring

(03:37):
and keep going, especially as long as it's you know,
relatively good. If if the food was already offending me,
I don't know, it might be different. Yeah, you like
men in black pin yourself. It's just like it's wiped clean.
Didn't not seeing it? Now, didn't see it. You're just
gonna keep moving. Okay, here's the last one. What if
there's a fly in your glass of wine or your
cocktail or whatever, do you still drink it? Or is

(03:59):
the ruined? Has the has the fly simply landed on
the glass, or is it floating dead in my drink.
That's a good question. It's let's just say it's in
it's in the liquid. It's in there. Well, once it's
in the liquid, that is kind of gross. I mean,
you can't help, especially if you're drinking something outside. You
can't help, but have fly or even like a yellow

(04:20):
jacket or something sometimes land on your drink and there's
nothing to be done. If a fly is just floating
in there, I might have to send it back. Sometimes
those flies can be disease vectors. Yeah, you don't know
what they were landing on before this. They might have
been on sewage. I mean, I think that's that's a
bridge too far from me. Even though it's gross enough
if one lands on something you're eating or drinking, but

(04:41):
there's something about the fleeting contact. As gross as it is.
I can again, I can use the I can delete
the memory and keep moving. But if I have to
fish the body out of my drink, I don't know. Well,
here's another thing. Have you ever noticed if a fly
landed in your drink if you could smell it. No,
I've never noticed that. Well, maybe this is something to

(05:02):
check out next time, because that's what this year's Biology
Prize concerns. So the the paper in question here is
called The Scent of the Fly by Paul Betcher, Sebastian
le Breton, Erica Wallen, Eric Headenstrom, Philippe Berrero, Echo, Verry,
Marie Bankson, Vulcar Jorger, Peter witzkall, oh, that's the whole list. Sorry, congrats.

(05:28):
I would have just at all the crap out of
that one. Oh man, I probably should have. But yeah, okay,
so I've got a new word for you, Robert simio chemicals.
Heard that one, simio chemicals. Okay, it just means chemicals
used for communication, like semiotics, signs study of science sending communications.
So the authors of this study point out that all

(05:50):
living things communicate by way of chemicals, quote, unlike sounds
or sites, simio chemicals interconnect species across kingdoms and enable
information exchange between animals, plants, and microorganisms. And I think
there's some indication that's true, like that they're chemical signals
that allow your body to communicate with your microbiome. Yeah,

(06:11):
all right, or maybe I'm going on on on in here,
but I mean it seems like Some obvious ones would
be the smell of rotting flesh or rotting organic material, right,
kind of sends a signal across a species. Yes, you're
communicating in a way with the bacteria that are consuming
that flesh. And also i'd imagine that the smell of
something especially sweet, the smell of nectar, etcetera. Right, you

(06:35):
might be communicating with a plant. Yeah, exactly. So a
fascinating takeaway from this knowledge is that the same one
biocompound maybe bioactive for different species in different ways. In
other words, one semiochemical communicates something to both you and
some other animals, say your dog or an insect, but

(06:57):
what it communicates is radically different. And anybody who has
a dog, in fact, probably is familiar with this because
something that smells repulsive to you smells delicious to your dog.
Uh So, one example is don't you just love the clean,
fresh scent of citrus? You know, it's like it's a
very calming smell that makes you feel like everything is

(07:19):
spick and span. Yes, unless it's actual spick and span.
You know, I don't know actual spickin span. Spickin span
is a cleaning product, right, which is yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's right, but it does this touches on one of
the key differences for me. If it's legitimate citrus, yes,
it's beautiful. I love the smell. But if it's something
that it is, like a fake lemon smell, then there's

(07:42):
something unnatural about that. Well, did you know I actually
came across the paper while I was reading about this
that found that, like the title of it was something like,
lemon fresh scent causes flies to lay eggs. It's a
lemon fresh scent. It's a chemical cue that says to you, ah,
this place is clean and delightful, unless maybe it's the

(08:04):
synthetic smelling kind that you don't like. But so this
one might be why the fly would be seeking out,
say my tiki drink. Yeah, it's got a lemon fresh scent.
It says to the flies, lay your eggs here, this
is a great place. And this is probably because the
vinegar fly Drosophila melana gaster prefers to deposit its eggs

(08:24):
in the peel of citrus fruit as long as yeast
is present there. And so this particular study, the the
Ignoble winning study, focuses on a compound called Z four
undescinal or Z four eleven a L undicinel or dc
aldehyde is an organic compound that can be found in
citrus oils. So Z four eleven a L you can

(08:46):
associate it with with a kind of citrus peel, clear,
oily liquid kind of thing, And it is one of
these volatile compounds that plays a role in the life
of multiple organisms. In vinegar flies, Z four or eleven
a L is produced by females and it seems to
play a role in the attraction of male mates. But

(09:07):
Z four eleven a L is also bioactive in other organisms.
For example, Z four eleven a L is produced in
the anal glands of male rabbits such as the European
wild rabbit. And it's got a mini splendored scientific name
or ricto legas coniculus. Yeah, that's like it. That should
be a bond villain name. And so experts believe this

(09:29):
volatile compound might play some role in territorial marking uh.
And one reason for thinking that is that, like studies
have found that when you have other male rabbits smell
this compound, their heart rates shoot up, maybe like oh,
there's another dude around here. Not having a um. A
related similar scent has also been found to emanate from

(09:49):
the colonies of a c bird called the crested auklet,
which is Ethia Christa tella. And this scent has been
tracked to two associated alde hydes. It's not exactly the same,
it's not Z four eleven a L, but it's the
chain shortened analog Z four decinal as Z four ten
a L and Z two decinal and researchers think that

(10:12):
these smells function as a parasite repellent and an advertisement
of mate quality. Another another interesting link, like we've talked
about before, between mating advertisements and the avoidance of parasites. Right,
sometimes when you're showing off how good of a mate
you are, what you want to show is I got
no parasites on me. Look and see. Oh and I
also just included an image of what crested auklets look

(10:33):
like because they look really funny. Oh yeah, they're they're beautiful.
They're are some beautiful birds. And if you want to
check out a picture of them again, that the spelling
on that auklet is a u k l et. Yeah,
they've got um so they've got crests like sort of
mohawks going out of I don't know what you'd call
that part of the face, the bridge of the nose

(10:54):
over the beak, uh that like shoot out forward and
then they've got really funny google there are like googly
eyes those eyes. But anyway, but so back to the compound.
We're talking about Z four eleven a L. But the
funny thing this study found is that apparently humans are
also highly sensitive to the smell of this particular compound.

(11:15):
So it comes out of rabbit anal glands, it comes
out of auklets, but humans also find significant the smell
of Z four eleven a L, even in tiny quantities.
And thus humans are highly sensitive to the smell of
the female fruit flies or not fruit flies. Actually they're
often called fruit flies, but technically they are vinegar flies

(11:35):
vinegar flies that produce it. And there was an experiment
that proved this. It was a wine tasting. So you've
got eight members in the study. That was two women
and six men who were trained wine assessors, wine experts.
You know that those people the smela types who I
think they worked in the wine industry assessing wines in Germany,

(11:56):
and each sample the aroma of multiple randomized glasses across
a few tests. So across the different tests, these glasses
contained either nothing in the control condition, or the scent
of a female fly, which produces the compound, the scent
of a male fly, which does not produce the compound.
Various amounts of synthesized like lab made Z four eleven

(12:17):
a l uh tested against a background content of nothing,
water or white wine. I believe it was a dry
Pinot blanc from and the results were that tasters could
strongly detect the smell of a single female fly or
the presence of isolated Z four eleven a l in
the glass. It was even perceptible at one nanogram that's

(12:39):
one billionth of a gram per glass. So even at
the smallest concentrations, the compound was described as unpleasant and
as an off flavor. At higher concentrations it was perceived
as a loud off flavor. And so the author's right quote.
This supports the observation that one fly spoils a glass
of wine after falling into it. I did. It is

(13:00):
of the female sex, so it wouldn't just be the
conceptual gross out of having a fly fall in your wine.
You wouldn't have to think through, Oh this could be
a disease vector, or oh it's grossing me out for
this reason or another. Just if it's a female fly,
just the smell of it could be repellent enough that
you would detect it and you would find the glass

(13:20):
revolting afterwards. Interesting. So that's the funny part of the study. Obviously,
you've got wine wine tasters like sniffing glasses with flies
in them, right, and everybody loves up. I mean, anytime
there's a scientific article about wine or wine tasting, uh,
people tend to read it, even if it's relatively unamusing.

(13:41):
But I actually would love to do another episode in
the future just on wine and wine tasting, and not
only the like the biological aspects, but of course the
psychological aspects. We have an older episode of stuff to
blow your mind that went into it a little bit,
but I feel like didn't really give the the the
importance of of of priming and the psychological weight of

(14:04):
of wine tasting. You know, your expectations, the story that's
told about it, etcetera. I would be more than happy
to come back to that. Uh. So that's the funny part.
The funny part is them sniffing flies. The interesting question, though,
is why why are humans so sensitive to Z four
eleven A l It's this compound that's very relevant to
the lives of these vinegar flies. Right, So, if you're

(14:27):
a drosophila, this this compound is super important to your
mating process. But why do humans find it repellent in
food consumption contexts? The answer to this question is not
currently known. It's not clear that this compound is of
any biological significance to humans. So the author's hypothesized, well,
let's see what could be the reasons. Maybe it's reminiscent

(14:50):
they say, of quote other food alde hides, so like
our sensitivity to it could be part of a general
food hunting olfactory package. But then again, why would it
repel us in the context of wine? And we know
that sometimes some food smells can be attractive in one
context and repellent in another, like certain smells associated with cheese. Right, Yeah,

(15:12):
there have been some wonderful studies that have shown that
if you smell the same thing, if you're told that
it's a shoe, you'll be grossed out. If you're told
that it's it's a cheese, then you'll run grab some crackers. Delicious, Yeah,
And I suspect that same smell which would seem to
be delicious on a cheese, if you smelled it on, like,
I don't know, a bunch of strawberries or something, you
would probably think something was wrong with them. You'd be

(15:34):
grossed out. But I don't know that that's just my
I'm supposing. But then again, they also hypothesize. The authors
do that the human sensitivity could exist in order to
quote avert ingestion of fruit that is infested with vinegar flies, which,
as we were talking about earlier, can of course be
covered in microbes and can easily be a disease vector.

(15:55):
But at this time we just don't know the answer.
We don't know why this smell is so salient to humans.
You would think there need to be a reason for that,
but we don't know what it is. Also, the authors
note that Z four eleven a L is of course
found in citrus essential oils. For example, it's part of
the smell of clementines, and the authors point out that
it could play a double role in signaling, not just

(16:17):
as a sign of food, but as a sign of
of social significance. For example, mate location or territory marking
in not just flies, but other animals as well, coming
back to this theme that the same compound that's uh,
that's very significant to one animal could be significant but
have a totally different meaning to a different animal. And
ultimately the authors proposed at the end that they just

(16:38):
want more research to provide a deeper understanding sort of
of the the ecology of smells, the way volatile compounds
connect different organisms to one another, and they write quote
a future challenges to extend functional behavioral, ecological, and phylogenetic
studies to include vertebrates toward an understanding of the chemical
vocabulary that interconnects us with other living things. This is

(17:01):
a great um uh prize winner for the Igno Bells.
I think because it touches on tours for for starters,
it has that obvious, funny mental image of someone smelling
the wine and saying, there's a fly in this. But
then it does get into this, like the deeper roll
of these chemical signals and and the mystery of exactly

(17:25):
why they're setting us off like this. Uh, there there's
a mystery to it. Yeah. I liked this one a lot. Alright,
on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and
when we come back we will look at another two
thousand eighteen Ignoble Prize winner. Than alright, we're back, al right,
So I'm I want to talk about the Reproductive Medicine Prize. Okay,

(17:45):
So this I like how they have a special category
for reproductive medicine because stuff in there. Yeah, yeah, because there,
it's gonna be a lot of essentially a lot of
penis jokes, I think are the typical winners. I'm gonna
have to look back at some past winner is to
to make sure that's the case, but it's certainly the
case with with this particular winner. The title of the

(18:08):
study that is honored is Nocturnal penile uh to me
essence monitoring with stamps stamps like postage stamps, Yes, with
postage stamps kind you get in the post office exactly.
And this is was published in Neurology back in nineteen
eighty by authors that Barry blank In Boulou. So for
this one, we're gonna have to talk a little bit

(18:29):
about nocturnal penile too me essence or mpt is. It's
also known exactly what is this this is? Of course
morning would is that's kind of the colloquial term, right. Uh,
this is the common sling for it. This is often
this is experienced by males, a waking and perhaps unexplained erection. Now,

(18:51):
the interesting thing, of course, is that the stiffening of
the member in question is not the work of devilish
succubi or experimenting aliens. I'm sure have been blamed over
the years. So yeah, I think that obviously we just
think of it. You have say, particularly if you have
a pious individual, someone who is due to their particular
religious thinking, you know, ab whore the temptations of the

(19:13):
flesh and um, you know, are staving off their their
primal hunger. What what does it mean when they're waking
up in the night or in the morning with a
full erection like fully physic physiologically aroused. Uh, and had
to be a demon. It must be a demon. And
then of course in some cases there has been nocturnal emission,

(19:34):
there has been discharge, so it seems like some sort
of act has taken place, perhaps two. This is coupled
with dreams, so we have all sorts of of human
complexities that are layered on top of that that can
lead to some confusion. But but of course it's it's
none of these things. It's not the work of the devil, etcetera.
In fact, you know, a healthy male experiences up to

(19:54):
five I've seen as high as like, I've seen three
to six also as a figure, but to say five
or six of these a night as part of his
regular R E. M. Sleep. In fact, m pt s
are so normal that doctors test for them when diagnosing
erectile dysfunction because you know, think of it. If these
directions occur on their own during the night, then the

(20:17):
patient's waking problem is likely a psychological rather than physiological. Yeah,
that makes sense. Yeah, Now you might be wondering the
why do they why do they happen at all? Good question. Yeah, Well,
since they occur during the rim cycle, there's always the
potential for sexually charged dream tie in, but it's not necessary.

(20:38):
The main IMPT theories actually have nothing to do with
dreams at all. Rather that the body maybe oxygenating the
penile tissue as a sort and of a sort of
maintenance procedure, and the stimulant for this is thought to
be the release of nitric oxide by nerve fibers in
the penis. Oh, and then there's also the full bladder
bladder ankle as well. The two often occur together and

(20:59):
scientists have have taken note of this as well. So,
for instance, a mail will wake up in the morning
uh there is an erection and at the same time
they perhaps illogically it seems, need to urinate pretty badly
as well. So some theories view uh impt or morning
wood is the body's anti bed wedding is the one
of the body's anti bed wedding measures and perhaps a

(21:21):
wake up call to the sleeper himself. So this particular
study study with the stamps, it has to do with
mpt s role in figuring out what's going on with
erectile dysfunction, not with where the mail is, right, yeah, no, no,
the postage is not intended for mailing purposes because but
again think about it, aside from self reporting, how do

(21:41):
you figure out if a patient's if a patient has
experienced and erection during the night, Because so, I mean,
I guess you could like have them come into a
clinic overnight, right, right, Yeah, you could do some sort
of observation, but you know, there are a couple of
problems with that as costly you're having you're asking them
to sleep somewhere else, or you're I guess you could
say you're think about putting somebody in their room to

(22:01):
watch them sleep. These are just not good solutions, and
you're also disrupting their life. You're sort of disrupting the
like then their natural sleep cycles potentially by doing this.
So there have been a few different methods to figure
out what's going on with the penis steering sleep. One
MATHOD method that has been employed is ridges scan. So

(22:23):
this is a battery powered instrument that places one loop
around the base of the penis and the other at
the tip, and these loops tighten every fifteen, two or
thirty seconds. And the recording unit itself that is attached
to these two loops that straps to the wast to
the thigh, so it regularly tests to see how engorged
and rigid the member is throughout the night. Sounds cumbersome.

(22:48):
I don't want to, you know, cast maybe that's a
very useful device. Yeah, I looked at a picture of it.
I mean, it doesn't look that bad. It doesn't if
it sounds torturous, it does not look torturous. The other
method is this popular as the penal plethysmic graph. This
is a pulse volume recorder wired to a penile cuff
that measures blood flow. I know I've heard about things

(23:10):
like this being used in studies that are trying to
detect physiological signs of sexual arousal right, I believe this
is This one, for instance, comes up in silence of
the lambs. I believe it's like something that they would
put on someone and show them films of horrible things
and see if they're sexually aroused by them. Yeah. So
these methods, these two methods we discussed are are pretty accurate,
uh and and are generally considered more accurate I understand

(23:33):
than the stamps method. But back in the researchers in
question uh presented the Stamp method uh quote. A Stamp
technique was developed to detect complete nocturnal erections for the
evaluation of impotence. The test correctly detected complete nocturnal erections
in twenty two potent men and absence of complete nocturnal

(23:55):
erections in eleven impotent men. This is a simple, useful
screening test for organic impotence. So the idea here is
fairly simple. You take a ring of postage stamps, so
they haven't been separated, and you know they have the
perforated edges, you know, so they pop apart easily. So
you take this this ring of stamps and you fix
them around the penis uh in its non erect uh

(24:18):
nin gorged state, and then the individual goes to sleep.
The subject goes to sleep. In the next morning, they
check for breakage if the stamps, If that ring of
stamps has broken, and again it should ideally break easily
because of the perforations uh, this will be a sign
that an erection has occurred. And this has some key advantages. Right,
it's a low cost. Just the cost of postage. Basically,

(24:39):
the cost of postage goes way up. Right, it's gonna
there's gonna be a regional determined and determined they're also
you know, don't don't buy rare stamps just by the
forever stamps. I guess somebody doing it with like the
thousands of dollars of stamp collector stamps. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
don't use this, but yeah, it's low cost. You can
and also can be self administered with ease. You don't

(25:00):
even you don't even necessarily have to have a doctor
involved there, right, so that's part of the appeal. Doesn't
sound too dangerous, No, yeah, it's going to break apart
the stamps is so you don't have to worry about
like constriction so much. The only real risk, of course,
is accidentally mailing the penis. But that's a joke. Now.
Some studies have backed up the effectiveness of this particular method.

(25:23):
Paper titled Nocturnal penal too essence Monitoring with stamps in
Impotent Diabetics found that quote, the diagnostic value of this
method is nearly the same as that of MPT recording
with a strain gauge, and that's from diabetics research and
clinical practice. However, the problem with the stamp method is
that there's always the chance that shifting around in one

(25:46):
sleep will simply tear the perforated edges. There's a strip
of tear the stamps without an erection taking place at all,
and that would give you a false positive, a type
one error, right, and then it's yeah, But then the
problem there is is if you're trying to treat some
sort of uh um, you know, impotent scenario, then you
start treating as if it's psychological when it's really a

(26:07):
physiological ailment, So that's the risk. So why is this important, Well,
because erectile dysfunction is legitimate medical concern, and it's funny
because it involves a penis in mourning wood, and these
are inherently funny tens and stamps like stamps and penis. Uh,
it's really I mean, in retrospect, it's kind of surprising
it took the ignal Bells this long to honor these researchers. Well, Robert,

(26:31):
that one made me laugh and even sort of a
little bit made me think. It's good to think about.
You know, what are the what are the maybe not
as perfectly effective, but cost effective, safe things people can
do to substitute for expensive medical tests. Obviously, sometimes you're
going to value accuracy over you know, cost effectiveness and

(26:53):
stuff like that. But with with some of these things,
you know, it seems like it's worth doing a cheap
test before you spring for the expensive test. Yeah, it
makes sense to me. I should add that I also
saw a criticism of the stamp test, being that we're
entering an age where there people have decreased access to
traditional stamps, and so that could be a potential problem.
The doctor says you need to get some stamps for

(27:15):
your penis. And then your response is what are stamps?
Couldn't the urologist to just have medical stamps? Like they
could have stamps that you value at all? Or I
guess it probably probably be over the counter. Would they
need to keep that behind the counter yet? But then
what about the embarrassment when you accidentally try and mail
um something? You start mailing your Christmas cards and the

(27:38):
medical stamps my medical penis stamps? Do they say penis
stamps on them? Like? That's totally warning? Medical penis stamp,
no postage value? Oh, I think we need to go
to another one. Okay, let's move on. Okay, I want
to do one that we can look at pretty quick.
Uh quick question, Robert, do you read the user manual
when you buy a thing and it comes with a manual?

(28:00):
I guess it depends on the thing. It also depends
on how excited about the thing I am, versus like
how much just pure drudgery is the thing? Does being
excited to make you more or less likely to read
the manual? If I'm more excited, then I'll probably be
more likely to read than the manual because I want
to know how it works. It's like, it's the thing's
functionality is uh, you know, I want to be it

(28:21):
to be a part of me. Where if it's something
like a refrigerator, like I know how refrigerator works, and
I really I don't want any more details. They just
wanted to work, that's all I ask. Do you read
the owner's manual when you get a new car, like
Arnold Schwartzeningger and Twins. Did he do that? Yeah, he's like, Uh.
There's a scene where they're riding around in a car
and Arnold Schwarzenegger is reading through some book and he's

(28:42):
and Danny de Vito asked him what he's doing, and
he's like, I'm learning to drive. Um, it's been a
long time since I've seen that. I might not be
remembering correctly, but I think that's pretty dead on. Uh No,
A lot of times I don't read the manual either.
I especially love it when there are manuals for things
like the refrigerator that you just don't need a manual for.
It's like, if you don't automatically know how to use

(29:05):
this thing, you're in trouble, right, And I'm not authorized
to fix most things, and and it is. If it
is something I can fix, then yes, maybe I'll pop
up in the manual if I know where the manual is.
User manuals are sometimes worth looking at just to see
if there's any hilarious bad writing or bad translation. Yeah,
that can be fun, you know. Actually, I will take

(29:26):
one thing back. One item that I did read the
entire user manual for was the insta. Oh I've got
one of those. That's great free plug. They did not
pay us for this. Yeah, I love it. It helps me.
It's as you mostly use it as like a rice
and bean cooker, but it was one of these devices.
When I got it, I was like, all right, I

(29:46):
have no idea how this works. I need to know
how this works. I guess I'm gonna read the user
manual and uh, and then I was good to go.
I know you all don't often meet at home, but
if you're ever making like a like a you know,
tough pork or beef dish or something like that is
just fantastic heart, human heart that you need to tenderize.
Real good. It's it's great for that. It's really good

(30:07):
for lentil dishes. It's the lentils, real nice and like
they keep their their texture and and shape, but they
get tender. It's great. Yeah, yeah, we've definitely used it
on some lentils. Okay, okay, but we're getting distracted. Just
gushion about our pots. The Literature Prize of the lfls
IS was given to THEA. Blackler, Raphael Gomez, Vestna Popovic,

(30:31):
and m Helen Thompson quote for documenting that most people
who use complicated products do not read the instruction manual.
And this was a paper called Life's Too Short to
r t f M. I think that's read the field manual,
that not another F modifier. How users relate to documentation
and excess features in consumer products. So this study investigated

(30:53):
people's relationship with two aspects of consumer products, number of
features in an interface and product documentation the manual. So
the authors did two sets of studies to look at
the manuals and the excess features in common household products
and they're right quote. The quantitative set was a series
of questionnaires administered to a hundred and seventy people over

(31:14):
seven years. The qualitative set consisted of two six month
longitudinal studies based on diaries and interviews, with a total
of fifteen participants, and here's what they found. First of all,
most people don't read the manual, and most people do
not use all the features on the products they have.
Quote people claim to read the manual and use all
of the features of many common domestic and personal products

(31:35):
only twenty percent of the time. I have to add
that clearly. One of the reasons that this study was
was honored is that it it does something that the
ignoble prizes frequently like it it it points out something
that is blatantly obvious and backs it up with scientific rigor.
You know, I actually like studies like that. People react
on social media when there's like a study that shows

(31:59):
to wrecked evidence of something that should seem obvious, and
then people respond like, oh, why do you have to
do a study on that that's obvious? No, it's I
mean all the time we have beliefs about things that
seem obvious, but they're in fact not true. Tons of
things that you think are obvious are false. And when
a study shows you that something you think is obvious

(32:21):
is actually backed up by evidence, that's valuable information. So anyway,
rant end on that. But so, but this this one
might be less less life and death than some of
these things that people think are obvious. But I do
think it's kind of interesting about a relationship with our products. Okay,
so here's another question. Most people don't read the manual
and don't use all of the features on complicated products.

(32:44):
But who actually does read the manual? Who's more and
less likely in terms of like the demographics. Turns out
women are less likely than men to read the manual
and use all the features. Uh. Young people are less
likely than middle aged and older people to read the
manual and use all the features, and more educated people
are less likely to read the manual. Ok So, I

(33:07):
don't know if these If these groups actually compound on
top of each other, I'm not sure whether that's the case,
but if they do, you would say, statistically, the person
most likely to read the manual is like a lower education,
older male, and statistically the person least likely to read
the manual is a higher education, younger woman. Also, people

(33:29):
do not like excess features on a product interface. Uh So,
excess features, they say, quote, are associated with negative affect,
whereas core features are associated with positive affect. Again, this
might be kind of obvious, but people don't really like
all the bells and whistles. They like a product to
be good at the main thing it's supposed to do.

(33:49):
So I wonder how most people feel about those food
specific buttons on microwaves. Like those things well whatever the
other The popcorn is the only one I've ever attempted
to use, and I usually and I have only used
it like once, and I burned popcorn. Yeah, so I
just I just do my own thing. I could not
tell you what the those buttons on my microwave say,

(34:10):
Like there could be one that says human flesh, and
there could be another one that says, like, I don't know,
a bucket full of lollipops, and I wouldn't know. I
didn't looked at them. I didn't figure out how the
power percentage on my microwave worked until like the last
year or two. Yeah, but then I started noticing, oh wait,
this actually, this particular microwave dish requires that I use power.

(34:33):
How do I do that? And then I have to
figure it out. But I never looked at the manual.
I stuck to my guns on that one. So you
actually follow instructions on microwavable meals. You don't just press
six six six like a lot of people do. I
didn't know if people did that, and some sometimes people
do that. I mean, that's as solid, solid choice, good number,
steady tradition in my family. Um No, I think it

(34:55):
usually comes out better if you follow the instructions. That's
kind of like reading the manual. Also, people hate having
to consult the manual to figure out how to use something.
Quote reading of manuals appears to cause annoyance and negative
emotional experiences unquote. On average, people just want their products
to be self explanatory. They do not want to have

(35:15):
to read all that stuff and deal with a bunch
of extra features and settings. They want stuff to be
easy and intuitive, and they don't want to read manuals.
So I wonder what companies should learn from this, Like
is there something Is there a lesson here for the
creation of manuals or the or the creation of of
alternative materials regarding the use of their products. That's a

(35:36):
good question. Um. I mean, generally, I think it should
be the case that if it's possible for you to
make an interface a product interface self evident, like it
should just be obvious how the product works and how
you're supposed to use it. You should do that. Now,
obviously you can't always do that. They're gonna be lots
of kinds of features of products that are more complicated.

(35:58):
They can't just be totally obvious on the interface. Uh So,
in that case, I don't know what you're supposed to do.
Maybe you're just going to have people being frustrated. Maybe
the idea is that all products should contain sort of
to whatever extint possible kind of walk through features, right
like they don't. You don't have to go look at
the manual. It just asks you what you want to

(36:20):
do and helps you do it. I walk through, but
who wants to do that? No, that's like, that's really
annoying to I don't want to do like a robotic
walk through with my new microwave. I just want to
use it when I have to write, Yeah, I don't
know what to do. But do you want to burn popcorn?
We're doing it either way exactly. All right, Well, on
that note, let's move on to our next award winning study.

(36:42):
Let's let's talk peace. Okay. This is theeen Ignoble Peace
Prize was awarded to Francisco Alonso, Christina Esteban, Andrea Serge
Maria Luisa Balistar, him Ace San Martin, Constanza Cataloud, Beatriz
Alama are Oh and Beatriz Lamar for measuring the frequency, motivation,

(37:03):
and effects of shouting and cursing while driving an automot
UH and there are a couple of references here, one
of the Journal of Sociology and Anthropology from UH. Francisco
Alonso attended the ceremony, but the author's right that quote.
Evidence has shown that drivers who usually express aggressive behaviors
more frequently tend at the same time to have higher
rates of road crashes or traffic incidents. And so the

(37:26):
situations in which aggressive behaviors arise tend to be very common,
meaning that driver aggression is potentially a major traffic safety issue.
And the authors administered a number of survey questions to
Spanish drivers over the age of fourteen to figure out
their perceptions and attitudes about aggressive driving behaviors like shouting
and insulting behind the wheel. And so I found a

(37:49):
long form version of this. That I don't know is
that it seems like the long form version I found
is not the study itself, but is a summary that
was published after the prize was awarded. Because it's got
some really funny uh statements in the conclusions, such as,
let us also remember that people who use cars to
make love as well, which is clearly better than eventually

(38:11):
using them to get get us killed. Uh. And also,
as it happens with these prizes, we need to support
laughters because they are not compatible with certain negative emotional states,
and for sure they will lead us to peace. Well,
that's a nice sentiment. Just to look at the data
real quickly that they come up with. They say that
about twenty six point four percent of people of drivers

(38:32):
admit that they sometimes insult other drivers or shout while
driving forty one point six percent, So they never do it.
I don't know. I almost never do it, but sometimes
they really get to you. It's a real struggle for me,
especially when I'm in the car driving the boy around.
And uh, I'm really good at watching my language the

(38:54):
rest of the time, I think, but when him in
the car, it's a little harder. Luckily he mishears me.
Oh yeah, um, for a while he was convinced. Hopefully
he's still convinced that I sometimes refer to other drivers
as funky's uh, and I should really try to do
that instead of what I am saying that that's a
good one. Funkies, you know it's just funky driving. Yeah.

(39:15):
Uh quick. Look also at the data about a reasons
people self reported to initiate some shouting or insulting other drivers.
Top one with twenty two point five percent was reaction
to breaking a rule, So when somebody else breaks a road,
that's when you will shake my finger at them. Yes.
Also next at twenty one four percent, reaction to dangerous maneuvers,

(39:39):
so when other people behave recklessly. Uh. Then below that
at thirteen point six percent, the other driver puts me
in danger. Also at thirteen point six percent, just stress,
you know, stress. But that's that's people being self conscious
right there, they're admitting, yes, stress probably just makes me
do it. Other reasons are below that. Uh. And then

(40:00):
finally one point three percent of people say they do
it because quote everybody does it. Now something that's not
reflecting this study. I just want to throw in. I
recently watched The ice Cream Manes horror film starring Clint Howard,
and Clint Howard apparently drove around yelling in his car
in order to get his voice nice and raspy for

(40:22):
the role so it's possible that that person you think
is driving angry, it's just Clint Howard preparing for a
leading role method acting. Yeah, all right, we need to
take a quick break, but we will be right back
with more ignobles. Thank alright, we're back. Well, Robert, is
it time for the Economics Prize? It is, which you know,
the Economics Prize. It might not sound exciting, but this

(40:43):
is a pretty good one. It's often one of the
funniest ones. Yeah, because I think it's because it plays
well with humor. Because you think Economics Prize, you think, uh,
something dry and stuffy and uh And in most cases
they'll find something that has an instant does that as
in this case, the pozzas comes in the form of
voodoo dolls. Nice. Uh so the uh, the the particular

(41:06):
paper here this honored is titled writing a wrong Retaliation
on a Voodoo Doll symbolizing an abusive supervisor Restores Justice
And this was by Laying at All published in the
Leadership Quarterly February. Do you think this study was funded
by big voodoo? No, and I'll get to that in
a minute. Really, really that there's virtually no voodoo in

(41:27):
any of this, there's a sort of a metaphorical voodoo doll.
Yeah yeah, there. There's no Afro American religion or folklore
in this particular study at all, but it does a
center around a reality that a lot of us have
been forced to face over the years, unfortunately, and that
is abusive supervisor figures. Terrible bosses, mean bosses, They exist,

(41:52):
they do. I've been I've been lucky. I haven't had
an abusive boss at least in a long time, but
I I did have one briefly at one point. I
remember it being pretty horrible to work under them. What
what is counting as an abusive supervisor here? Is this
like like really egregious abuses or just like being a jerk? Well,

(42:12):
it can cover a wide variety of things. Uh. It
could be punching holes in walls. It could be Um,
it could be just yelling at at subordinates that sort
of thing. Their whole host of behaviors that fall under
this umbrella. Uh. And whether you're dealing with big, big
ones or supposedly little ones, I mean, it all can
add up. It can all make make ones a work

(42:35):
life rather dismal. And then what are you gonna do? Right?
Hopefully you're gonna there's gonna be a system in place
like via HR to report such individuals. But as the
authors of this twenty team paper point out, there may
be attempt at temptation for reprisal in other words, to
get revenge in some sense at the boss or superior

(42:59):
that is, uh, that is being horrible, but sort of
by the dynamics of the workplace, you can't really do that, right,
at least not in any kind of legitimate way, right,
I mean, And that's something that they point out time
and time again, like they're they're not saying that reprisals
are good. Reprisals are bad. Reprisals only just add more
chaos to the workplace environment and cost the company money, etcetera.

(43:24):
But here's one of the things they had to say
in the study quote, when a subordinate receives abusive treatment
from a supervisor, a natural response is to retaliate against
the supervisor. Although retaliation is dysfunctional and should be discouraged,
we examine the potential functional role retaliation plays in terms
of alleviating the negative consequences of abusive supervision or subordinate

(43:47):
justice perceptions. So, yeah, basically, the idea is, if you're
pushed down by a terrible boss, there is going to
be this natural incline, a shin to push back in
some way. Right, So is there some way you can
do that without making things worse for yourself and others? Right? Yeah?
Because I think a lot of times it is about that,

(44:09):
Like what would feel good right now? Like nothing would
feel better than to destroy the boss's bobble head? You know.
But as fun as it might look on the the
office or some other television show or film, uh, it's
it's not really necessarily a good move in the long run. Still,
aggression against such supervisors is common as high as seventy

(44:29):
six according to a sited study in this paper, and
this is seemingly on par with aggressions towards co workers
as well, if not more prevalent. The authors point out
that the prevalence of retaliation suggests that retaliation may play
functional role in dealing with abuse, and there are various
theories as to why an adaptive response a way of

(44:51):
rebalancing the relationship, etcetera. So it could be I mean,
not to put thoughts in everyone's head, I guess on
this matter, but it could be as simple as okay
an otherwise okay, boss like raises their voice at you.
You feel a little hurt. Their bubble head takes a
little dive off the side of their table. You can
universe is restored, you know, because you're like, all right,

(45:11):
you yelled at me and I didn't really like that.
But the bubble head is dead now and you could
see that. It's like, okay, things are equal. How are
they really equal? Well, that depends on all the other
aspects of the the the office dynamics. So the authors
here they lay out a functional theory of retaliation, whereby
engaging in retaliation reaffirms one sense of justice and supervisor

(45:34):
abuse is the external stressor that violates one's expectations of
fair treatment. So to test this out, they made use
of an online voodoo doll representing an abuse of supervisor
and specifically in the wording of the paper. Uh, they
use what they would call a voodoo doll task or
vd T paradigm to manipulate retaliation. Get love that sterile terminology. Yeah, So,

(46:00):
so again, there's nothing actually related to any kind of folklore,
I or religious practice here, So it's not really a ritual.
It's more just like the concept of enacting violence on
some kind of effigy, right, yeah, such as you know
very much the bubblehead in question. So the paper argues
that retaliation might be an important way in which we

(46:21):
deal with supervisor aggression, even though it should be discouraged
and only creates more problems. Quote. In particular, we have
proposed and found that subordinate retaliation can directly influence subordinate
justice perceptions. These findings suggest that retaliation not only benefits
individual victims, but may also benefit the organization as a whole,
given that justice perception is important for employee performance and

(46:45):
well being. So this is kind of like having the
giving employees the illusion of some kind of retaliation, like
that they haven't actually done anything to the boss, but
if they just pretend they're retaliating, that that makes the
company a little more lubricated of things. Okay, they're not saying, hey,
you need to have a dunking booth every year, and

(47:05):
that's the only way you're gonna restore balance of your company.
They say they take home is that is not that
companies should encourage retaliation, but they should include instead foster
quote subordinate justice perception. And one example of this is
having a zero tolerance policy against various abusive behaviors. They
also wonder if companies should rethink what is referred to

(47:25):
as deviant subordinate behavior. This would be like breaking the
bubble head because the individuals here, the the the subordinates
that are acting out. They might be attempting to resolve
perceived injustices, and perhaps they really should be disciplined for
what they're doing, but perhaps it also points to other
issues in the workplace that have yet to be resolved.

(47:46):
So it's like you fire the guy for breaking the bubblehead,
or you make the guy who broke the bubblehead, you know,
take a some sort of anger management towards toys class. Uh,
but then you still have whatever the existing caustic dynamic
happened to be between the boss and the employees. What

(48:07):
do you do about that? Like that it remains unchecked.
So they're saying this, this kind of behavior could just
be a you know, a canary in the coal mine,
I guess. So, then, was the use of the the
abuse of the effigy task was so? Was that actually
just to reveal some underlying attitudes or they actually suggesting
something like that is useful? I think they just used

(48:30):
it to reveal in this case, they're not saying, like,
do a voodoo doll task. You know that the voodoo
doll task is merely a part of the experiment and
part of any kind of solution that they are presenting.
So yeah, again, putting voodoo in the title of the paper,
it's it's maybe selling the voodoo elements a little too strong. Well, yeah,

(48:52):
And I think often to refer to like any process
by which like the mechanics of which are unclear. I
mean I think about like the phrase like voodoo economics
and stuff like that. I mean, it would be funny
to sub in any other name of any other religion.
They're like calling it Christian economics or uh or Hindu
economics or something. It wouldn't make much sense. I don't know.

(49:14):
I think maybe maybe people should try to retire those
uses of the word voodoo. It's a system of beliefs. Yeah,
you know that this would be a great excuse to
come back at some point in the future and do
a show on voodoo because we could discuss what voodoo is,
slash was, how it has been represented in our culture,
and how uh the terminology has been utilizable in this

(49:36):
case in scientific studies, but elsewhere as well. Okay, time
to turn to the Anthropology Prize, very different kind of subject.
This is going to deal with the concepts of learning
and imitation and uh and social mimicry. So you've heard
the expression obviously, monkey see monkey do uh. The funny

(49:56):
thing is that this is almost always applied to human
children rather monkeys. You know, people never say that about
a monkey. They say that about a four year old,
and as such, it tends to highlight the very strong
imitative tendencies of human children. You ever notice how like
a child will seem to spontaneously, almost unconsciously, mimic actions

(50:18):
that they see, Like they watch something on TV or
an adult doing something, and you'll see the child doing
the same thing with their hands that the adult is doing,
or the person on TV is doing, or something without
even seeming to realize it. Oh yeah, Like I need
the countless examples from my home child's life. But I

(50:38):
specifically remember like watching him dance while watching Frozen when
he was like super little, Like he doesn't even remember this,
but during the dance scenes he would move a little
bit while watching That's funny, I mean I actually have
very strong specific memories about this from when I was
a little kid, like of suddenly becoming embarrassed because I

(51:01):
realized I was spontaneously unconsciously imitating an action I had
just seen an adult do. For example, I remember being
very young and I was like watching a dude in
my neighborhood using a jackhammer to tear up a concrete
porch on the side of a house. And I realized
I was like spontaneously pretending to use a jackhammer and
making sounds with my mouth. And I was suddenly realized this,

(51:24):
and I was like super embarrassed. But we do this
for some reason. Obviously why One obvious answer is that
imitation is an instinct related to what the clear thing
learning right? Right, You see something, you sort of do
it yourself. You you imitate, and through imitation you learned right.
And so the idea here is that it's adaptive to

(51:45):
have an imitation instinct because through this you can have
transgenerational transfer of of ideas and behaviors. For example, you
watch the skilled adult do something throw a rock or
make a hand axe, and you imitate their movements as
a way of learning how to do the thing yourself.
But there appears to be another biological function of imitation,

(52:08):
which is that it plays a social communicative role. It
prolongs pro social interactions and generally promotes positive social relationships.
And this latter role has been investigated in humans, but
it's sort of under explored or sometimes even thought to
be absent in non human primates like chimpanzees. Uh, there's
clear evidence of other other primates like chimpanzees, say, imitating

(52:31):
behaviors of each other and of humans, especially in order
to clearly learn how to do something. But what would
be the evidence that there's this social communicative role in
humans that's not necessarily there in chimpanzees. Well, one is
this interesting fact that human children, but not apes, tend
to what's called over imitate. So here here's an example

(52:53):
I want to give you. If an adult is demonstrating
the physical actions required to accomplish a goal, human chill
aldren will usually copy directly all of the adults actions,
even if they're clearly irrelevant to achieve the goal. And meanwhile,
chimpanzees will tend to ignore the irrelevant actions and figure
out what's the important part to get the desired goal.

(53:16):
So an example would be an adult picks up a
colored block and then uses it to flip a switch
on a box, and then the box opens to reveal
a toy. Human children, especially starting around two years old,
will copy this exactly. They'll pick up the colored block
and use it to flip the switch to get the toy,
whereas the apes will just skip the block and they'll
just flip the switch with their hands and get the toy.

(53:38):
Another version I've heard is like, um, you have a
food item or a toy or something inside a box,
and you have an adult go through these elaborate rituals
with their hands before they open the doors of the
box and get the thing out. Apparently, apes and human
children will tend to copy all of the actions if

(53:58):
the boxes ache, but if the box is clear and
you can see the item inside, the human children will
still copy all of the actions, but the apes will
just reach in and get it. So the tay with
the real Tay come here would seem to be do
not bring a chimpanzee to communion, right, because that's not
going to follow any of the more ritual aspects of
the thing. It's just gonna go for the juice and bread. Well,

(54:21):
this is clear because this shows that even the presence
of rituals seems to show that there's some role of
imitation in human culture that goes beyond just like learning
useful skills that achieve goals. There's some type of imitation
that happens between humans that seems to be purely social,
and it's hypothesized by some that humans are actually better

(54:43):
learners than apes in part because of this slavish copying
of apparently pointless actions. You can imagine how this might
help in like learning to perform actions that don't immediately
result in a goal or reward. Right, Mimicking behaviors with
no obvious benefit also helps you learn more complex multi

(55:03):
step skills. That's true. Plus I also can't help but
think of steps in performing tasks where the the importance
of some of those steps might be lost on on
a novice exactly, but later I realize, oh, that's really
essential if I should wear a radiation suit well while
messing around with these these rods. Yes, So the question

(55:26):
is why do human children copy more perfectly and more pointlessly,
where whereas apes don't to the same extent, And one
potential answer is that the human copying appears to be
for more than just learning how to achieve goals. It's
also playing this social communicative role where the imitation itself
is useful not just for achieving mechanical goals, but for

(55:48):
things like improving relationships between people. And this could be
seen somewhat parallel to Robert something I know you've read
about before, the unconscious process of mirroring in human psychology
and behavior. If you if you've never observed this, just
do a quick experiment. Watch two co workers separately, and
then watch them once they begin a conversation with each other.

(56:11):
There's a very good chance that when they start talking
to each other, you might be able to notice them
beginning to show similar posture and nonverbal behaviors like gesturing,
without them seeming to notice that they're doing it. And
this is an unconscious form of imitation known as mirroring.
It appears to be a pro social adaptation that builds

(56:31):
feelings of closeness and rapport between people, and research shows
that when other people mirror your actions, you have increased
positive feelings. You trust them more, you feel closer to them,
You're more likely to believe they share your attitudes and
stuff like that. But we like to. We like to
mirror each other's behaviors because we like to be mirrored.
It makes us feel good. Yeah, this is always something

(56:53):
very interesting to observe when we we actually stop to
observe it, because there's like it's happening at a linguistic level.
It's happening in the way we speak with our hands,
and now the under person may speak with their hands
as well. Um, And of course we're not running through
all of this before we have a conversation. We're not saying, hey, uh,
if do you wanna how much do you want to

(57:13):
use your hands during this conversation. I'm thinking about keeping
it like nd body level, but I could go wider. No,
I mean, it's generally entirely unconscious. And the funny thing is,
I mean we like it when it's unconscious. But like
if you pointed it out and people were doing it consciously,
it would seems psychopathic, right, You would think like, oh
my god, I'm being manipulated. I hate this if you

(57:34):
thought the person was consciously doing it. But nevertheless, we
do have all of this clearly conscious imitation going on
with with human children and with nonhuman primates, with the
distinctions we've talked about before, but this study that won
the Ignoble this year, the Ignoble Anthropology Price focused on
testing for evidence of social communicative imitation in non human

(57:55):
primates in chimpanzees. So it's taking issue with that previous
consensus that they're is no social communicative imitation and non
human primates. That for the non human primates, it's just basic,
you know, mechanical learning imitation. And so the prize was
given to Thomas Person, Gabrielle, Elina South south Quick, Elaine Madison,

(58:16):
Oh sorry, and Elaine Madison for quote collecting evidence in
a zoo that chimpanzees imitate humans about as often and
about as well as humans imitate chimpanzees. This was published
in the journal Primates in the year so earlier this year,
and so basically what happened is you had these researchers
from Lunda University in Sweden and they studied spontaneous interactions

(58:38):
between chimpanzees and human visitors at the Furivic Zoo in Sweden,
and what they found was interesting. They found that humans
in chimpanzees spontaneously imitated each other at roughly the same
rate going both ways, about ten percent of actions that
each species performed were spontaneously imitated by the other, though

(58:59):
human is overall showed what they quote called a higher
imitative precision. So like the humans, imitations of the apes
were more finely tuned, you might say, a little bit
more accurate. But the apes imitated the humans at the
same rate that the humans imitated the apes. Uh. There
was also some congruity in the kinds of actions imitated

(59:19):
by both humans and chimpanzees, who tended especially to copy
things like clapping the hands, pressing lips against the window,
like kissing the glass, knocking on the glass with the hand,
and knocking on the head with the hand. I like
that one. But one thing you might notice about these
imitated actions is that they're common, which means they're familiar,

(59:41):
which means they're not new to the animal, and they're
not in service of any goal. They're not getting anything. Thus,
the authors think that this is evidence of social communicative imitation,
what's done for the purpose of bonding, building rapport, communicating intentions,
and so forth, rather than for learning how to do
new tas asks or accomplished goals. Another piece of evidence

(01:00:03):
that the chimpanzees showed social communicative imitation is that interactions
between humans and chimpanzees lasted longer on average when there
was imitation than when there was none. So the authors
conclude that there's more evidence than previously thought that apes
also evolved imitation instincts for social and communication reasons, not
just for learning. So maybe we could bring them to communion.

(01:00:26):
Maybe that's a good Yeah, So I wonder, I mean,
this obviously is intension with some previous findings, so you
gotta wonder, like what what's causing the distinction there. Maybe
chimpanzees are just more goal oriented. They know what they
want and they tend to get it. I wonder how
this play is into any of the Planet of the

(01:00:47):
Apes movies, if this could be used to understand any
character motivations there, well, like if Charlton Heston had only
mirrored doctors as more, um, they might have gotten a
long better all right, So there you have it. Ignoble Prizes.
We've rolled through all the winners for this year in

(01:01:08):
these two episodes, and again some of them we gave
more attention than others, and pretty much any of them
touch on a topic that we either have discussed in
the pastor could easily discuss again in the future. So
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