Listener Mail VII: Fill Your Ears

It's listener mail time again! Join Robert, Joe and Christian for listener feedback on combat drugs, only child syndrome, technology without fire, ghost marriage, forensics and more. Plus Karnie the Mailbot scans itself for viruses and reboots for action.

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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, I'm Christian Sea,
and I'm Joe McCormick. In today, we're coming at you
with some listener mail. That's right, Carney, our mail bot

(00:23):
is currently go undergoing routine self virus scanning, so he's
kind of in a dormant state, but he's still able
to print out listener mails, your listener mails first to
sort through and read. So he's just continuing to to
sport out this massive pile of a dot Matrix printer.
And guys, I know this is an inconvenience, but it

(00:44):
really does make sense because when Carney gets infected with malware,
it is a bad scene. Yeah. I actually heard that
somebody hacked into Carney through the Internet of Things in
order to commit a di DOS attack. Really yeah, against
what against what I believe is the targets Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah, they turned our own
listener mail robot against us. That's vile. Yeah, it's just

(01:07):
real despicable guys, these hackers, and not quite as well
as the people who sees the baby monitors but it's close,
all right. Well, well, without further ado, let's see what
we've got here. We haven't done one of these in
a few months, and we've received a lot of listener mail,
a ton, yeah, of some wonderful stuff, and sadly, you know,
we're not gonna be able to get to all of
it here, and we're not able to directly respond to

(01:29):
a lot of it. But we do appreciate all the
wonderful takes, all the wonderful tidbits, all the wonderful bits
of feedback that you send in on each and every week. Okay,
And first off, our listener, Kelly writes to us on
Facebook in response to our episode about being eaten by
a giant spider, And just a note on that episode,
We did have to publish that one twice because first

(01:51):
time it came out maybe that was during our di
Dos attack. I don't know, Uh, something happened with the publishing.
And so if you saw that episode show up twice, uh,
or if you had a problem with it the first time,
you might want to check that that second version of
it anyway, right, Uh, So, Kelly writes, Hi, guys, I
just listened to your giant spider episode. I was never

(02:11):
skittish with spiders. My friend even had the sweetest tarantula
that like to cuddle more than a puppy. Somehow I
doubt that, but okay, I was always the designated quote
spider remover of our family because I thought we had
a great symbiotic relationship. And Kelly, you are exactly right.
Humans and spiders peas in a pod. The we're friends.

(02:33):
They're not our enemies. But Kelly, Kelly does have a
little case of friendly fire to mention to us. Here,
Kelly writes about a decade ago, I woke up with
the left side of my face so swollen. Just by
looking out the corner of my eye, I could see
my cheek. I sleep stumbled into the bathroom to find
huge bloody sores from my forehead down to my nose.

(02:56):
I got an appointment of my doctors that day. He
informed me that I'd been attacked by a brown recluse
in my sleep, and also let me know that if
I hadn't come in so quickly, the venom would have
likely eaten through my skin and muscle and started to
ulcerate my skull. Wow, that sounds horrible. Months of medication later,
plus a few glycolic face peels to soften the scarring

(03:17):
from ulceration. I'm almost normal. I do refer to myself
as Scarface to give myself more street cred. By the way,
and we get some pictures, you can still see my
spider scars on my forehead and nose, although they're blessedly
just a fraction of the original sizes. Well, I hope
you out there listening will not take this as justification

(03:38):
for global spider panic. We still stand firmly against spider panic.
But if you can avoid being bitten on the face
by a brown recluse, that is something to to do.
I grew up in New England and that the brown
recluse was like always the um the scariest thing that
you could run into up there. Like we don't have
scorpions or you know, poisonous snakes or anything like that,

(03:59):
but about like a New Hampshire county with a shotgun.
Well those, yeah, I mean I guess technically, yeah, I
was always on the lookout with more than two legs?
Is the scar Yeah, is a brand reclusive problem down
here in the sound? Yeah, yeah, you could brown problem
if they do exist down here. Well, one, it only
takes one to be a problem, right, It really gets

(04:21):
in that whole scenario, like to to what extent is
it an actual problem, just to the perceived threat of
the brown. Yeah. For example, I I follow on Twitter
a spider researcher who named Catherine who I believe she
works out of Canada. But she does a whole thing
on Twitter that I've seen never do before, which is
just like hashtag not a brown recluse, which is going

(04:41):
through people's pictures that they put on Twitter and say, look,
I found a brown recluse in my house. And she's like,
that's a wolf spider. So you know, it's easy to
to get too worked up about a spider that's basically brown. Yeah.
I thought you were going to say, I follow spider
on Twitter. That would be great. I would love to
see a spider's Twitter account. It's just like it's all

(05:02):
fake news exactly. Okay, what else has Carney got for us? Well,
we received an awful lot of email related to our
Only Child Syndrome podcast episode. Yeah, we got there was
a lot of mails, So thank you all for sending that.
A lot of people telling us their experiences being an

(05:24):
only child, or being a parent of an only child.
There were so many that we couldn't possibly read them all,
but we did pull one or two for today's episode. Yeah,
and this one that I'm about to read actually comes
from someone who has some experience with the one child
policy in China. Okay, so this bit of listener mail
here is from Betty. Betty rights in and says, Hi, guys,
just listen to the Only Child Syndrome podcast, which was great,

(05:46):
and I thought i'd share some experiences from growing up
in China as an only child in the nineties. Growing up,
we all knew the one child policy was out of
the norm from a global and historical standpoint, but since
almost every kid we ever met was an only child,
not having siblings just felt like the norm and very
few people found it weird. And of course, my friends
and acquaintances from school ranged in personalities just like everyone

(06:09):
else in the world. I can't speak for other only children,
but I was raised in a way that would have
been pretty difficult to result in spoiled bratness. I had
to do many household chores every day from age six
to moving out of college. I was a default laborer
for all home reno and home improvement projects. Renovation not
not going to reno. Uh. If I wanted to buy

(06:31):
anything like toys or games, it was limited to my
Chinese New Year money, which was like ten to twenty
bucks a year, or I had to do extra chores
to earn it. When I turned six, team my parents
also told me to get a job. In addition, it
was mandatory to do well in school. Of course, at
the time, I did not appreciate doing all those things,
but in retrospect it kind of worked out. By the
time I moved out for college, I knew how to cook, clean, dow, laundry,

(06:54):
and all kinds of other household tests. I knew how
to get a job, got a job, and already had
money saved up from it. And I was the go
to handy person my dorm because I was one of
the only few, one of the few people who knew
how to use power tools and fixed broken equipment. I
live in Canada now, but whenever anyone discovers that I
am an only child, their first reaction is, oh, I
would have never guessed. But from what I can tell,

(07:16):
it's nearly impossible to guess if a person as an
only child anyway, since who they are largely depends on
how they were raised and what kind of environment they
grew up in with things have been different if I
had siblings, It's possible, but my parents wanted to raise
me as a capable, hard working, independent person, and there's
no reason they wouldn't have wanted the same for all
their children if they had had the opportunity to do more.

(07:38):
Thanks again for the great podcast, Betty. Yeah, that definitely
thank you, first of all, Betty for sharing the experience
with us. But that seems to line up with what
we uh, the conclusions we came to in that episode,
which is it seems like only child syndrome is not
a psychological issue. Uh, it's more of like a sociological
factors how you were raised, what type of home you're

(07:58):
raised in, what tree you were raised in, what the
norms were there. You know, everybody I know who fits
the stereotype of the only child is actually an oldest child. Yeah.
I don't think I mentioned that on that episode, but yeah,
I have the same experience. Yeah, yeah, the the episode.
In the episode, we explore the idea that only children

(08:22):
are spoiled or they're lonely. I mean all the various ideas,
they just won't go away culturally despite all of the
evidence to the contrary for like over a hundred years now,
because of just that one guys bad methodology and a
psychological report. Yeah, but this is a great bit of
listener feedback though, because it it highlighted both the just

(08:44):
just the the only child aspect as well as the
one child's policy a bit. I think it's always interesting
to get a different perspective on that. Yeah. So this
next letter comes from someone who wants to talk to
us about an episode from I think it's over a
year go, but this is a really interesting message, so
I wanted to address it now. It's from the episode

(09:05):
that Robert and I did on the Unlanguaged Mine and
Feral Children. Uh, and if you haven't heard that, please
go back and listen to it. We had I wouldn't
say fun with that episode, but it was very educational
for us learning about this sort of history behind that,
and we got a lot of good feedback about Yeah. Yeah, so, uh,
she says, Hello, Robert and Christian. My name is Candice.

(09:26):
I just recently discovered your podcast and have been going
through the archives. I stumbled upon and listened to the
two episodes titled The un Language Mind. I found the
information you presented and your perspectives fascinating. Those two episodes
resonated with me because I am a teacher of the
deaf and heart of hearing and have come into contact
with Unfortunately, multiple students born into hearing homes without access

(09:48):
to American Sign language. Several of these students resulted in developmental, social, behavioral,
and academic delays because of the lack of language. One
student in particular, who I have been working with for
the past three years, is the closest I have come
to a feral child. He was not locked away in
a room, but he did miss the critical periods for

(10:08):
learning language. When he entered the school system in kindergarten,
it was clear that he had no language, no respect
for social norms or rules, or any desire to communicate
with other humans in a truly meaningful way. To communicate
his needs, he resorted to pointing, mimicking, gesturing, and violence.
Multiple other team members and myself have been punched, kicked,

(10:30):
cut bitten, scratched, and had our hair pulled by this student.
He has thrown feces at our staff and urinated on
classroom floors intentionally. However, with intense language, academic, and social intervention,
the student has improved and matured by leaps and bounds.
He is now functioning in a classroom with typically hearing
peers while using an a s L interpreter. He is

(10:51):
still learning to express himself in a s L and
is using two to four word phrases. He now values
relationships with adults and peers and under dance how to
nurture and keep those relationships, and is currently eight years old.
Thank you for shedding light on this difficult subject and
informing the public of a humans dire need for language.
So that's really interesting to me because I know it's

(11:13):
been a while since we did those episodes, but I
don't remember coming across specific examples of children, uh, in
present day scenarios where they were they unless they were
like totally neglected, but in this situation because they're deaf,
it makes it even more difficult. Yeah, it's been a
long time since we we looked at the research to

(11:34):
data there, but yeah, I don't remember a specific case
like that. Yeah, but this was really fascinating. Thank you
for sharing it with this Candice and I'm really glad
to hear that this this kid is is getting so
it sounds like world class treatment and help so that
he can adapt better with his peers. It is amazing.
You know. One thing I actually recently was thinking about

(11:56):
your episode on The Unlanguaged Mind because of a movie
I just saw. They came out. Did y'all see Arrival yet? Yes?
In Arrival they we're not talking about the one with
was it with the Sheen in it? Right? Not? Martin.
Charlie Sheen was in a movie called The Arrival. I
know you're talking about heron silver in it that I've seen.

(12:17):
There's actually two of those. Those are about the aliens
with the backward legs. This is just Arrival without of
the in front of right, the one with Amy Adams Whittaker. Yeah,
it's about It's a movie about language in a lot
of ways. And they discussed the sapire warf hypothesis, which
actually plays into the plot. I don't want to give
anything away, but they talked about the sapiar warf hypothesis
and I was like, oh, yes, the un language Mind.

(12:39):
Arrival is a movie that I feel like is made
for us and for listeners who like stuff to blow
your mind. Like it's like such a great sci fi
movie that really latches onto real world concepts and we're
dealing with ideas, Yeah, and works them really well into
the story. I really enjoyed it was. Yeah, I was
so impressed. The one based on the novel by Ted Sang. Yeah,

(13:00):
it's a short story, I think, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
you'd love it. You gotta check it out. Cool, Yeah,
it's on our on our list, So I will, I will.
I definitely look forward to seeing that one because I
actually I am just finishing reading finally The Three Body Problem,
which which deals with some similar themes, you know, communication
with an alien uh species and what the what what

(13:24):
the what the the the ramifications of that communication might be.
In the meantime, we should all go back and watch
those Charlie Sheen movies. I didn't realize there's more than one.
Should we watched The Wraith? Did that have Charlie Sheen
in it? I don't know, but that is but The Arrival, Wow,
that movie had an effect on me. Yes, The Wraith,

(13:45):
it does have Charlie Sheen and I just looked it up. Okay,
he plays like a guy. I think he gets killed
in a drag racing accident or something, and he comes
back for it. Is it Soultaker? Essentially? It sounds very
soul Taker. Soul Taker might be a remake of the
Wraith sense like, we need to do some coverage on
both of these. This this reminds me, Actually, it's a
good opportunity to point out casually that we've been doing

(14:08):
some Facebook Live experiments where we've been showing movie trailers
of movies related to the episodes that we're doing that week.
So if you're on Facebook and you have time to
watch Facebook Live, you can hear us talk. You guys
did one about spiders, right, Giant spider movies. That was
the the second one. And we're a bit disrupted by
various holiday occurrence is right now, but we'll hopefully get

(14:29):
right back into the back of the regular routain with that. Yeah, Okay,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we will hear from our listener Jen. With the holidays
almost here, you don't have time to go to the
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stamps dot com inter stuff and start mailing things. So

(15:39):
our listener Jin got in touch with us over Facebook,
and she's responding to our episode. The episode Robert and
I did a while back about Undead Jenes, so brief
refresher from that episode. Some researchers made public a paper
on a pre publication server claiming to show that some
certain genes in the bodies of dead animals were still

(15:59):
transcribe being RNA after the organisms died, meaning that you'd
have whole body death right organismal death. The organism is dead,
but on the molecular level, some life, or some version
of life is still going on. The genes are still
encoding for for RNA. And so Jen gets in touch
with us about this. She says, hey, guys, I love

(16:21):
your podcast and finally had time to listen to last
week's Undead Jeans episode. As a molecular biologist, I was
really excited for an episode right in my wheelhouse. There
were a couple of things that stuck out to me
while listening that made me go hunt down the paper.
I assume you left out some detail to keep things
more accessible to amateur nerds versus those of us who
do things for a living. But I noticed in the

(16:41):
paper that they have left some glaring holes. I'd even
venture to guess that these holes could be the reason
while we're reading the article from a depository depository and
not a high impact journal. But I digress. The main
point I wanted to make, while acknowledging that you, as
the host, may already be aware, is that RNA is
a extremely sensitive to degradation. The notion that you can

(17:03):
plunge a fish into an icy death pool and then
just PLoP it back into some normal seventy ish degree
fahrenheit tank and then come back days later and get
good quality RNA is literally unbelievable to me. Have you
ever had a fish go belly up and not noticed
right away? I don't know if I remember fish going
belly up? Do you guys keep fish tanks right now?

(17:25):
But luckily, so far, so good, nothing's died. So I
had that experience as a kid. Yeah, Jen says, it
gets stink stinky fast. Do you agree? Yeah, my dad
collected like exotic fish in a tank. Yeah, she's right,
all right. So she says, of course, the authors did
not give any data about the RNA integrity, and she
says a standard thing would be a one to tend

(17:46):
scoring system. So she says, my guess is that what
they are seeing as an upregulation, and that was their
term of, you know, RNA transcription appearing to take place.
So my guess is what they're seeing is as an
upregulation of new genes. May actually be transcripts that are
for some reason fairly stable but in low abundance, so
they're missed in freshly dead samples but seem to appear

(18:10):
in longer dead samples only because more abundant transcripts have
fallen away due to degradation. So does that make sense
what she's saying, Like, there's all this RNA there, some
are not very common but fairly stable. When you test
the organism right after death, you don't see a bunch
of these. But then when all the other RNA decays
and these fairly stable RNA molecules are left, that's what

(18:34):
you have left. And it makes it look like more
of this is being created after death. So it sounds
like more research is required. Yes, uh, And she says
it could be that or some other factors she hasn't considered,
but anyway, she says, I know that their claim is
that these are truly new RNA molecules, so degradation is
not a factor. But that is a huge leap for
which they do not provide support. I just wanted to

(18:56):
add a large dose of skepticism on top of the
healthy bit we should always have. This concept is still fascinating,
but the study is too flawed to add to the
conversation in a meaningful way. Anyway, Love what you guys
are doing, and always look forward to what you have
in store next. Have a great day, Jen, Thank you
so much. Jen. This is the kind of email I
love to get because it's from an actual expert who

(19:16):
has some some direct knowledge of the kinds of research
that we covered in the episode. So uh, those of
you out there who heard that episode, please take Jen's
considerations into into consideration. I wasn't when when thinking about
this research. I wasn't on that episode, but I I
love UH messages like this because I think it's so

(19:39):
important for us to critically evaluate the um the sources
that we're bringing into the episodes that we do and
and some people have asked us this before, and it's
worth reminding we are not experts in these fields that
we talk about, right. We we do the research, we
immerse ourselves in it, and we try to bring it
to you the listener in the best most accessible way possible.

(20:01):
But we're not always able to, for instance, like a
judge whether or not the r N a methodology of
this study. Right, we don't have the knowledge of a
working microbiology exactly. Yeah, and so I really like to
hear that kind of feedback. All right. We have another
bit of listener mail here. This one comes to us
from Kristen and she is responding to our episode on

(20:22):
a Chinese practice of ghost marriages though the right of
minghome that we discussed. Yeah, yeah, that was an interesting episode. Uh,
Chinese and also sometimes Japanese practice. We we got a
lot of email about it. Uh. One in particular that
I remember that's not on here was from a man
in Taiwan letting us know that the red envelope practice

(20:44):
that we mentioned, he was totally unaware of it, yet
his wife, who was also Taiwanese, was aware of it. Yeah.
We also heard from a few different people who are
in the Church of Latter day Saints because we discussed
the celestial marriage practice a little bit and its comparisons
to this, uh, this Chinese practice of ghost marriages. And
that's where this particular listener comes in. She writes it

(21:06):
and says, I really love the recent episode about the
Chinese practice of ghost marriages. The entire time, I listener
was absolutely fascinated. When I got to the end of
the podcast and you mentioned, uh, the Church of Latter
Day Say It's my eyes almost rolled out of my head.
I'm a recent transplant to Salt Lake City from Washington,
d C. I'm Jewish, and it has been incredibly difficult
to adjust a living in the city that is the

(21:28):
seat of the letter the Church of Latter Day Saints.
So the uh the writer here Christian. She goes on
to talk about how essentially by thinking about this uh,
this Chinese model and then the and the some of
the ideas wrapped up in UH in the in the
right of man hun, it forced her to reconsider these

(21:49):
practices that were much more immediate and some of the
belief systems who were much more immediate um in utah uh.
She she summarized and says, when I got to the
part of the podcast discuss saying uh the LDS, I
initially rolled my eyes and scoffed. I began to write
it off as quote, just some other weird things that
Mormons do unquote and as the podcast ended, well it

(22:10):
struck me. I sat there an hour, fascinated, open minded,
and ultimately understood the purpose of ghost marriages and had
a respect for the practice. But as soon as the
word Mormon was mentioned, I became dismissive and closed minded,
ready to let my own bias get in the way
of furthering my understanding. And I really analyzed, analyzed why
that was an inappropriate reaction to have. How could I

(22:32):
sit there and listen to the entire show with an
open mind but justify being so dismissive at the end.
I appreciate that you do a podcast that is all
about information, and you do a great job of pushing
your audience to open their minds and hearts to other
cultures and beliefs. I believe you guys initiated and epiphany
in me I really needed to have and ultimately will

(22:53):
help help me as I continue to learn about the
ld S faith and enjoy living in this beautiful melting
pot of a city. That again, for the great show
and for leading by example on being open minded. High
fives Kristen. I really appreciate that. Um I especially I
guess like something that's worth highlighting for the listeners is like,
sometimes we approach these episodes and maybe have our own

(23:15):
either misconceptions about cultures or we're just totally unfamiliar with
them because their lifestyles outside of our territory. I guess
it's the best way to put it. And for this
episode in particular, I was really fortunate in that I
have a friend who is who is Mormon, who's a
member of the Church of Latter day Saints. He really
role modeled for me that there were a lot of

(23:37):
misconceptions about that faith, and so when we approached this episode,
I just thought of him in the back of my
head the whole time, and and and how he would
approach talking to me about it, and that was very
helpful to me. So it's always it's always nice to
have people in your life like that. But then again,
when we approach episodes like this another one we're gonna
talk about later, we Robert and I did the episode
on combat stems in the military. I don't have of

(24:00):
any experience in the military, and it's it's completely outside
of my uh lifestyle experience, but it was really nice
to hear that people who were in the military and
did have experiences using these drugs in the field. Uh,
seemed to resonate with what we what we talked about
in that episode. Yes, so much of what we cover here,

(24:21):
especially when it is a psychological or cultural in nature.
You know, it's it's about it's about putting trying to
put ourselves in another person's worldview and another person since
experience and uh, and that can that can be challenging
at times. But I also think that's that's one of
the core mission statements of the show, right, But it's
about finding ways to open ourselves up to alternate modes

(24:46):
of of sense experience and of end of reality perception. Um.
You know, we're a science podcast, but uh, but but
I feel like that's a core aspect. Ever, Like, if
you know, we're called stuff to Blow the Mind, Blow
your Mind, I feel like if I could change the title,
it would probably be more like stuff to expand your
mind or a slow motion explosion of the mind, rather

(25:09):
than just sort of the the pop that the name implies.
I definitely agree. Um, And to that point. Actually, we
received another email that's related to that episode about ghost marriages,
and this time it was from somebody who belongs to
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His
name is Michael, and he says, hey, guys, I just
finished listening to the episode on ghost marriages, and I

(25:29):
found it fascinating. I've never heard of this practice before
your episode. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints, and I want to applaud your
accurate description of celestial marriages. An interesting point about ceilings
is that they are only performed in elds temples like
the one near you. He means, us in Sandy Springs, Georgia.
So for those of you who aren't from the Atlanta era,

(25:50):
Sandy Springs is a suburb that's what north of the
city by about thirty minutes, he says. A temple is
a building that is not open for worship on Sunday.
It is only open during specific hours of the week.
And we believe that ordinances may be performed for those
who have died as well as the living. We believe
that those who have died then have the opportunity to

(26:10):
accept the ordinance performed on their behalf by those who
are alive. That is a reason that our church is
big on doing family history and provide services such as
He lists a website here called family search dot org
in order to learn about our ancestors and perform ordinances
for all who did not have an opportunity to perform
them in this life. It's an amazing topic. I would
be happy to answer any questions that you have about

(26:31):
this practice. I enjoy the show. Thank you for the
information that you are able to beam to my mind
as I commute to and from work. If only we
could literally use beams, well, we might get there soon.
I don't know. It's some new Uh. Can we use
em drives? Now that that's been announced, can we start
beaming information to people's brains with them drives? Speaking of
being critical of research, that's the thing that I ever

(26:54):
end up talking about that. I'll be very curious to
say what skeptical scientists say in response. So, now that
the md I have paper has been published, Yeah, well,
I just wanted to thank Michael um I think for
both Robert and I going into that. I mean, we
researched that practice, but certainly we had not experienced it before,
so we were doing our best to try to represent it.
And it's encouraging to hear that we we didn't offend anybody. Yeah, alright,

(27:18):
we're gonna take a second break, and when we come back,
we're going to dive into more listener mail riches. Brought
to us, of course by Carney. Hi. I'm Lauren Vogelbauma,
host of the new House to works Now podcast. Every week,
I'll be bringing you three stories from our team about
the weird and wondrous developments we've seen in science, technology,

(27:39):
and culture. Fresh episodes will be out every Monday on iTunes, Spotify,
Google Play Music, and everywhere else that fine podcasts are found. Carney,
what have you got for us next? Oh? Well, it
looks like we are getting some of the massive mail

(28:01):
bag that we got in response to the episode Robert
and I did on Fire. Oh yes, yes, World before Fire.
So Robert and I did a couple of episodes on
Fire about how sort of the conditions on Earth, the
geological conditions and atmospheric conditions that make Earth the fire
planet and as far as we know, uniquely the fire planet.
When you guys were researching, did you only listen to

(28:22):
Ngay Momstein's Fire and Ice. I don't know what you're
talking about, but just a continuous loop of of what
Metallica's fight fire with nice? Nice? Okay, that's better. Oh man,
I remember that one. You know, my favorite Metallica song
back in the day was four Horsemen. Yeah we're really
and yeah I love Master Ofpuppets. I don't know where

(28:44):
we're going with this, but okay, okay, uh yeah. So anyway,
we we heard from several people, and I'm gonna try
to get a few messages about this couple of episodes
because we got a ton. But we heard from Julian
one who said, hey, there, Robert and Joe might ears
just had the awesome pleasure of being completely enveloped and
soothed by your latest episode. That's embarrassing but also doing

(29:07):
some um some SMR. I hope not. But okay, So
Julian says the episode was a world without fire. Uh
please excuse my strange intro. Somewhere in this episode you
mentioned that wildfires can occur outside of hot, dry climates
like the jungle. I figured i'd write in and fill
you in on a recent fire we had here. I

(29:28):
live in Belize in Central America, and last year we
had a hurricane passed just south of us. The jungles
here are too lush in the atmosphere too humid to
have a wildfire from an unchecked camp fire or spark. However,
when this hurricane passed over, it did some damage to
the vast jungles. Although never strong enough to completely knock
down everything, hurricanes do damage to the canopy, breaking off

(29:52):
the tops of trees and high branches and leaving a
blanket of dead foliage on the canopy. And this is
what happened last year. After several weeks, the dead foliage dried,
and it is believed that a lightning strike ignited this,
causing a forest fire on top of the jungle. A
strange and scary event, indeed, but it does happen, and

(30:13):
this sort of connects to I definitely didn't see it
in the jungles, but we talked about the ideas of
crown fires, right, the fires that become very hot and
spread from the tops of trees. Picking up with Julian's email,
another thought that came to my mind during this episode
came after you guys mentioned how a civilization or life
form would ever be able to advance without fire for cooking, smelting,

(30:34):
metal works, etcetera. I immediately thought to myself, we have
fire to thank for our advancement as a species. But
is there an element? Is there a substance or a
certain reaction like fire that another species on another planet
has used and thanked for its advancements that we have
yet to discover or may never discover at all due
to differing planetary and atmospheric conditions. Uh. This is sort

(30:58):
of one of the questions we talked out, and so
Julian says, really wish I could have gotten this to
you in time for your second episode on the topic.
Thanks for the great podcast you guys do. I know
you must hear this plenty, but I have to mention
it as well. You guys do amazing work. It's always
a joy listening to you. And also, Julian ads that
we must pass on the praise to Christian. Oh that's

(31:19):
thank you, Julian. I hope that my voice also soothes Julian,
you are you are incredibly soothing. I try. I was
just going to mention in relation to this, uh, this
letter that we here in Georgia have been what is
the terminology that they're using, like red alert or we've
had smoke conditions. So just last week we were in Atlanta,

(31:42):
the city was enveloped in smoke. Yeah, you couldn't even
really walk outside. It was like a beautiful day, dude.
That was the thing. I was gonna work on my
front porch. But you go outside and it's just breathing
in this yeah awful fume. Yeah yeah. And uh and
this apparently came from fires up in northern Georgia. There
were forest fires because it's been so dry, so very

(32:03):
very much related to what he was talking about in Belize.
It sounds like, uh, well different there because it's not
naturally dry there, but that the dead foliage can become
dry if it gets all ripped off of the trees
due to a hurricane. So quick personal aside on this.
Uh So, they've been telling us here in Georgia that
we should be, you know, concerned about the possibility of

(32:24):
fires just starting in like your yard or something like that.
It's not the weekend to have a bonfire. I have. Um,
there's a house that's empty behind me. You guys know this.
I think I've told you, and there's been some people
squatting in it. Just the other night they started a
bonfire in the backyard of this house. And I was
really worried, like I don't want to rat out on

(32:45):
these folks, you know, like they it's cold out, they
need a place to stay. But at the same time,
I also don't want them to start a fire that
burns the neighborhood down. I mean, put that it, put
it in a barrel. That's why we have barrels, right,
steel drum. Yeah, yeah, but this is like a like
concern for a lot of people in the area right now. Yeah, Okay,
Like I said, we've got a bunch of email about

(33:05):
the fire episodes because we asked. We asked the listeners, like,
could you think of another chemical reaction alternative to fire
that could take place on one of these worlds where
fire is not permitted? That pops into my mind is plasma?
Did you guys talk about that at all? Well? Plasmas?
What do you mean? I mean, like, plasma is a
phase of matter. But how would you create um? Couldn't

(33:27):
you use plasma for some of the same things that
you use fire for? How would you create it? That's
the problem. Yeah, But I guess you'd have to imagine
an alien civilization where they have access to it, And
that's the that's the one of the problems is that
increasingly you have to employ a rather robust imagination factor
to fill in the gaps, uh, to make up for
the lack of fire. But anyway, we postulated that the idea.

(33:49):
We don't know that it's true, but we said, you know,
it could be that you can't have advanced civilization in
this universe without a planet that allows for fire. And
we talked about one paper where a guy makes this case. Um,
and so one listener got in touch with us. Our
listener named Tapan got in touch with us to say
that essentially this idea that you might need fire as

(34:13):
a necessary pre requisite to advance technology. And the main
idea we had there is that you can't create metal
tools without fire as far as we know. Uh. Tapan says,
we essentially should be more open minded. So I so
I sent to Pan a list of modern technologies and
was like, okay, well, I want to see your imagination.
How could you come up with these things without fire

(34:34):
or metal tools? And to Pan's responses were interesting to me.
So for instant long distance communication, the suggestion was sound
travels through all solids, not just metal. So I'm trying
to imagine like wooden or stone telephone wires. I don't know,
but maybe okay. But then I said, what about rapid

(34:54):
land transportation? Japan says, wouldn't spring catapults with landing pair
shoots like woven out of natural materials? Okay? I was like, okay,
what about video recording and playback? That's got you gotta
have metal tools for that, right Uh? And to Pan
suggests a record movement using a fast solidifying semi solid Oh. Okay,

(35:17):
so like gel type materials. Maybe maybe so the the
if you're recording, say a roadrunner running across the street,
you would have to have it run through the gel
and then you would have like this gel material I
don't know what we're using, vast would only playback if
you were within proximity of the gel. Okay. So uh.

(35:40):
For aviation, the suggestion was, of course a hang glider,
but of course a hang glider doesn't gain altitude on
its own. Um. For optics and astronomy, to Pan suggested,
I thought this was smart water lenses. That's actually I
could see that being a possibility. Um maybe maybe who knows.
For radio depends suggest loudspeakers, I don't know about that one. Uh.

(36:04):
For computers, we get the suggestion of a difference engine
built with wood, which you could build. I guess the
question there would just be size, Like you could build
a giant wooden structure that works to essentially be a
binary difference engine computer. I think to do that, you know,

(36:24):
to make even a simple computer, you might need a
structure the size of a state or something. I mean,
it would be gigantic. In the three body problem, it's
it's brought up at one point that you could you
could have a computer where it's basically individuals setting around
waving flags. Yeah, I mean, any any anything you can
use in nature to create a consequential series of on

(36:47):
off switches could be turned into a computer. Giant Turing machine. Yeah,
it's just gonna be so big. You know the thing
about semiconductors, as you can pack them into this tiny space. Uh.
And then of course with district needed power grids, I
was like, how would you get that? Well, Japan reminds
me any container with electrolyte will transmit electrons, So maybe
you could have like a salt water pipe based power

(37:11):
grid or something like Well, this came up in our
Frankenstein episode to talking about voltaic batteries. Yeah, um huh, yeah,
that's interesting. Uh So anyway, I I'm not buying it yet.
I'm not I'm not convinced that you can get to
advance technologies without fire and metal tools. But but I
really really admire the imagination in these responses. I think

(37:31):
they're very smart, even if maybe implausible. Well, this is
how we get cool movies like Arrival, right, is like
these thought experiments. All right, So this next one comes
to us from Chris, who works at the JPL for NASA,
and this is related to our episode about the Osiris
REX mission that recently launched. Chris says, Hi, gentlemen, while

(37:54):
listening to your recent episode on the Ossiris REX mission,
I was thrilled to hear you mentioned the three sites
gold Stone, Canberra, and Madrid. I know I'm pronouncing Canberra
around because we got got emails about that. In the
fire episode, I mentioned Canbra. Is that Yeah, it's Canbra,
Canbra all right, sorry, but I pronounced it Canberra Okay.

(38:16):
That will be receiving signals and data. These three sites
make up the Deep Space Network d s N, which
is a system of thirteen antenna's managed by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. The cool thing about the DSN is that
every spacecraft American or otherwise otherwise further away than the
Moon talks to the Earth through these antennas. Voyager phones home,

(38:39):
it's calling the d s N. Juno sends a picture
through the d s N. The d s N is
one of NASA's oldest continuous programs, but it doesn't get
a lot of love because it's like the cup holder
in your car. You're so used to it being there,
you don't really notice it unless it stops working. But
really it's fascinating and exciting, both for its storied history

(39:01):
they supported the Apollo program and it's importance to modern
day space exploration. I do have one correction to make.
You said that the antenna can talk to spacecraft up
to the size of a pizza box box. That fact,
TOID is actually as small as a pizza box, and
it's meant to illustrate how powerful and precisest equipment is.

(39:22):
Imagine aiming at something that small just one mile away,
let alone a billion. Our DSN operators do that twenty
four hours a day, three d and sixty five days
a year. Anyways, thanks for the fantastic podcast for making
me a little smarter every day and for mentioning one
of my favorite NASA projects. I would love to hear

(39:42):
a future podcast on the DSN itself, because I think
there's lots of good material there, or even the history
of the Jet Propulsion Lab, which is, in my humble opinion,
the coolest NASA center. Keep up the great work. Is
there really a coolest NASA center? So all cool? In
my heart? They do yeah, and and we at how

(40:03):
stuff works. Just have a general fondness I think for
NASA and and love doing stories related to it. I
will say Robert and I are looking into doing an
episode related to the history of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
because we're talking about doing an episode on Jack Parsons,
who was instrumental in starting the JPL and coincidentally thought

(40:24):
himself to be a magician occultist. Have you not heard
of Jack Parsons? No, I don't know anything about this. Yeah,
this is awesome, a lot of fun uh in there,
we're we're talking about to put it together, right. So
he was interested in getting in touch with the outer
horrors through space exploration. So I don't know if he
and he had a really interesting history parallel to l

(40:45):
Ron Hubbard. Yeah, I guess the question we're sort of
asking is, at this point, do we want to do
an episode just on Jack Parsons, his science and his
uh extra scientific beliefs, or is it something in which
he is a part if we're like looking at more
of connections between modern scientific investigations and sort of new

(41:08):
age ideas. So we're still figuring that one out if
you're interested in the meantime. Once upon a time, when
I first started at How Stuff Works, I think my
first video I ever did here for our Stuff of
Genius channel was all about Jack Parsons. So I did
a little four minute Jack Parsons video. I'm sure if
you google Stuff of Genius Jack Parsons that should come up, alright. So,

(41:31):
in discussing our episode on combat Stems combat steems better
Warriors through Chemistry, we discussed how you know, so often
in our video games there's all this horrific violence, military
combat going on, and to them, for the most part,
you don't have to deal with the psychological effects. Uh.
You know, sometimes, like in a game like x COM,

(41:51):
you can have characters that end up panicking and they
run off or they there's a friendly fire incidents something
like that, but for the most part it's easily dealt with.
So we reached out to all of our gamer listeners
and said, hey, do you have any examples of games
that actually take PTSD into account in any way, shape
or form, and we heard back from some people. So
this one came to us from Matt listener. Matt writes

(42:13):
and it says, Hi, Robert and Christian love the podcast.
It keeps me company and informed on the way to
work on your combat STEMS episode. You wondered if there
are video games, specifically shooters to deal with PTSD. I'm
not sure about shooters, but there is an excellent game
called Darkest Dungeon where the toll the that the horrors
of adventuring take on your mind is just as dangerous
as the monsters. Based on discussions on past episodes, I

(42:35):
feel this game is right up your alley. Picture a
side scrolling dungeon crawl said in a love crafty in
Hamlet and drawn in the style of the hell Boy comics.
Stress comes into play during each mission and between missions,
your characters developed quirks, agrophobia, I fear of the dark,
fear of blood, holy ravings that need to be addressed.
You keep a stable of about fifteen adventures on hand,

(42:58):
but if you run out of gold for treatments, sometimes
you find you've got to send in a group of paranoid,
abusive drunks, send them into a dungeon and hope for
the best. Enjoy and keep up the awesome work. Matt
in Toronto And uh, yeah this. I have not played this,
but I had to look it up after receive the email,
and it came out from It was published by Red

(43:20):
Hook Studios and it looks like it's available for Windows, H, Linux, UM,
PlayStation four and PlayStation Vita. If anyone out there has
those systems I do not. Yeah. And also in relation
to that, we received I would say a good dozen
emails of people recommending a game to us called spec

(43:41):
Ops the line, which apparently also incorporates in some way
or another dealing with PTSD in battle. But almost all
of our listeners who recommended this to us said that
it's like a it's a really important twist as part
of the games story, so they didn't want to reveal
to us how it played into it. They all recommended

(44:02):
the game entirely they said. They said that it was
really great, So, yeah, that maybe something that I'll looked
to play down the lip. Yeah, I looked this one up.
It came out, and it sounds like it was probably
maybe a little ahead of its time, or you know,
maybe it's it's it's trying to make So what is
it a shooter? It is. It is a shooter. It's
a third person shooter and it was developed by Yeager

(44:23):
Development for two K games. Uh to Interact make a
Battle Born and u uh Borderlands. Yeah, so it it
sounds to me from materials I was looking at about
it and I have not played it that yeah, that
it was just maybe a little to advance for what
people really want to I guess people wanted the escapist

(44:45):
call of duty and shoot everything without consequences kind of
game point play, and this was developing something a little
more deeper and maybe maybe a little less fun in
the process. Well that was what we were asking for.
I don't know about the less fun part, but what
I was saying in the episode was I would think
it would be a more immersive storyline and so and
it it definitely sounds like from everybody who's played this

(45:06):
that they think so, so it sounds like it's worth
checking out. Yeah, you guys might have mentioned this in
the episode, but it does certainly make me think that
exactly that concept runs counter to what I think a
lot of people are trying to get out of a
video game experience. I mean, I think a lot of
people are like they want a rush without actually having
to experience any lasting trauma or anything. It's kind of

(45:29):
the same way as like a horror movie or a
roller coaster or something like that, something to to, you know,
give you adrenaline, focus and get the get the high,
get the experience, get the relaxation benefits you get out
of that, but without actually having to do anything dangerous
or scary. It's funny that you mentioned this because I
was thinking about the episode that you guys did on Tetris. Yeah,

(45:51):
that came up. Yeah, And and uh, I've been uh
lately playing a lot of the shooter game Destiny. I
don't know if you guys have played this before. Uh no, No,
it's like an mm O slash first person shooter. This
is the one whatever. It has like weird faceless film
its yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, uh and I have found

(46:13):
that even though I'm kind of bored with the game
itself in the storyline, that I'm just repetitively playing it,
almost like I would play like a puzzle game like
Tetris solely just to kind of calm down. Like I'll
play it for like thirty or forty minutes. It's totally mindless.
I don't really get anything, Like, I don't even get
like any adrenaline high out of it. It's just kind

(46:35):
of like put the bullets in the heads, it's flow. Yeah,
that's the whole thing with with Tetris. I mean, suppose
we talked about this in our episode. Is creating a
state of a task that's um that's just challenging enough
to keep you engaged, but also easy enough that it
never becomes frustratingly simplified reality too one with definite definite goals,

(46:58):
definite limits, clear clear goals, clear achievable goals that you
can just essentially a set of parameters where you can
just continually achieve success over and over without it becoming
too easy to be boring. Yeah, and certainly, as we
discussed in those episodes, Tetris is a game that never
becomes too easy and inevitably becomes too hard. I think

(47:21):
that that's probably what I think. Bungee are the developers
of this game, and that's kind of how they've figured
out to keep you addicted to it, you know what
I mean. It's like there's always some like next stage
to get to with it, and there's not too much
thinking involved. The thing that's weird to me is like
it you know, we talked about this in the Combat
Stems episode that like you and I, mainly if we're

(47:41):
playing shooters, we don't we like them to be fantastic
or sci fi, and this is like very sci fi
aliens people don't really die that can reincarnate as like
digital forms of their bodies. But like there's something inherently
weird about like calming down while just like blowing away
like fifty year sixty aliens. You know, I don't know
about you, guys. I I fail to see the appeal

(48:03):
of these military shooter again. I know they're very popular,
but I cannot see what's all that fun. A lot
of people love them. My brother really likes playing them,
but like we said in the episode, for for me
personally has to be some kind of uh fantastic element
involved in it for me to not feel like I'm
just replicating like horrific real world violence. Yeah, I do

(48:26):
have to say that I haven't played one in a while,
but I used used to really enjoy playing World War
two aviation simulators with my dad. Uh And but I
wonder if that has more to do with your love
of planes. I think so, Well, the thing is too
they're the planes, and then there's that distance from the
human reality because it's ultimately it was ultimately like these

(48:47):
breathtaking digital models of planes interacting with each other. And yes,
it's representing encounters that would end we end in human
deaths and casualties and sometimes bombing incidents. But but still
there was a there was a it was a little
more removed. Um that being said, I know we have
some listeners out there who play an early end of

(49:08):
these military stimulation games, So I would I would love
to hear you guys. I don't want to, you know,
just completely judge you guys, and you're the games you're into.
I'd love to hear your feedback on it and how
you think about it. There's got to be something to
it that that I feel like I'm missing because they're
so incredibly popular. But also related to that episode, we
got a letter from Joseph and he has personal experience

(49:29):
in the military and wanted to weigh in on what
we talked about with combat stimulants and other drugs in
the military. He says, I'm writing in response to your
questions posed at the end of Combat Stems is a
four year veteran of the Marine Corps. I found it
extremely interesting. First off, I'd like to say that I
loved your fallout references and that you approached the subject

(49:50):
of PTSD, killing, etcetera very well and I think everyone
will be happy with it. My experience with drugs in
the military, specifically the Marine Corps, is one of deep
involvement in at every marine I ever knew was part
of it. Drugs are in the culture. We promote heavy
drinking and even heavier use of stimulants. One drug you
didn't cover was nicotine, which I think has an impact

(50:11):
second only to caffeine. That's a really good point. I
didn't even think about that during the episode. Possibly a
third of all Marines I ever met smoked or dipped,
and during deployments or training operations that grew to easily
half and not without good reason. Deployments and training operations
are exhausting. Hell, even normal days in state side are exhausting.

(50:32):
An average day would begin at oh five hundred, waking
up than exercising with the platoon at oh six hundred.
After that we would work until often as late as
seventeen thirty, but it could go longer. That's roughly a
twelve hour day, and doing that five days a week
is exhausting to cope with. Even that, Caffeine is impossible
to avoid, and nicotine is hard to say no to. Hell,
I dare to say I owe my life to Copenhagen

(50:54):
twenty four hours, no sleep, driving thirty five miles per
hour on a desert road, with more than a little
more than candlelight, no exaggeration to see the vehicle in
front of me. It's impossible without nicotine and caffeine. A
common breakfast among the Marines was something called an m
R E, a cigarette and a can of Monster. Of course,
if you could get it, which I could, Adderall was

(51:16):
a godsend. We did talk about Adderall in that episode.
I don't know if it's clear from the message, but
does that mean does that mean sanctioned by the military
authorities or illicit use of adderall. So we talked about
this in the episode. It depends. I think for pilots
it may be sanctioned, but adderall for marines I don't
think would be right. It's I think what you're encountering

(51:39):
here is is likely similar to what you're encountering in
so many lines of work that are not even military based.
Is that you have you know, individuals within these uh
these lines of work that have access to it, and
then that access is shared, and ultimately you're talking about
a brain boosting power up that that improves focus, that
improves energy. Uh yeah, it's gonna get used. Uh yeah.

(52:03):
And so maybe like a culture of permission, even if
it's not explicitly on the situation. Yeah. Um. And going
back to what he says, he says with that with adderall,
one could easily work eighteen hours days, pass out and
keep going. Personally, I could keep this up for a
week before I began to feel tired. Now I was
no pilot, he says, just a dumb guy. You don't

(52:25):
sound like a dumb guy from this message, man, But
uppers are the savior of the modern military. Painkillers are
also very commonplace. There's a running joke that the longer
you're in the more pain killers you take in the morning.
Concerning steroids, I know a few guys who were on them,
but it wasn't to make them better killers. They just
like to look big. Did it help in fights, absolutely,

(52:45):
but it wasn't the purpose because they were illegal under
the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I didn't partake, but
if I could have legally, I definitely would have, because
not being extremely strong is not something your buddies take well. Okay,
so Joe a stuff. Actually there's a lot more to
his letter here, but I don't think we have time
for it in this episode to read the whole thing.

(53:05):
Suffice to say, he provides us a look at a
day in the life of a marine. He also talks
about PTSD and and uh. He liked our reference to
minimaxing again video game terminology in terms of being in service.
I also want to throw in here that we received
some feedback from few listeners who pointed out some World

(53:26):
War Two era uses of meth amphetamine. In particular, I
think Panza's chocolade came up, as well as a stucco tabletin,
and those were on the German side of Yeah, and there,
but there are some other examples from World War Two
as well, So that's something we might come back and
look at in more detail at some point. Uh really
look at sort of the the the World War chemical

(53:49):
rise of methamphetamines. It might also be interesting to look
at drugs at the top of the Nazi chain. I
know there's a lot of interesting stuff now about about
like Hitler and top Nazi commander is in their and
their drug use habits. Yeah, yeah, Herman Goring pills and uh,
I seem to recall talk of intravenous methem fetamine used

(54:10):
by Adolf Hitler. Is that right? I I can't vow
for the better remember seeing some speculation on that at
least worth revisiting in the future. Okay, we got one
more for you, and it is one coming in from
our listener Stephanie, in response to the episode we did
way back, Christian and I did a two parter about
the failings of forensic science. Yeah, a lot of people

(54:31):
wrote into us and actually asked for more, So maybe
that's something will revisit in the future. But if you
recall that was a while ago. The basic idea was
that um that there is a lot of research now
indicating that some of the major uses of forensic science
in the justice system in the United States have been

(54:53):
not so great that sometimes in valid methodologies. Yeah, like
some methods used to produce evidence that supposedly scientifically solid
evidence to defend people or convict people is actually just
based on you know, mythology of the culture of the
fire investigator or something like that. So there's a bunch
of stuff like that, and that's what we talked about

(55:14):
in the episode. There's a bunch more we could have
talked about, but anyway, here's where Stephanie comes in. She says, Hi, Fellas,
I'm catching up on your recent podcasts, and the ones
regarding forensic failings caught my attention. I'm an experimental psychologist
and I graduated from the University of Wyoming with an
emphasis in psychology and law. Needless to say, it is
a fascinating and fruitful area of research, some of which

(55:36):
focused specifically on the failures of eye witness memory. And
we did mention that in the episode. How bad eye
witness memory is, She says, since you mentioned the Innocence
Project and that's a uh an advocacy group that we
mentioned in the episode. She says, since you mentioned the
Innocence Project, I'm sure you already know that over seventy
of their exonorees were originally incriminated using eyewitness test money.

(56:00):
If you haven't already, I recommend reading quote Picking Cotton
by Jennifer Thompson, a rape victim who misidentified her attacker
and Ronald Cotton, the man she misidentified and who spent
roughly eleven years in prison while innocent. To be fair,
there are some procedures that may assist in lowering systemic
causes of misidentification. Some of these, and again the Innocence Project,

(56:23):
has a website containing great information, include the following lineups.
Selecting fillers for lineups that actually match the description of
the eye witness. There are cases where people of different
races were used as fillers, which only serve to highlight
the suspect. Also, having the lineup administered by someone who
do who does not know who the suspect is as

(56:45):
having verbal and nonverbal clues, may lead the eyewitness to
an individual. The instructions given during a lineup are also
crucial and eye witness her victim, as in the case
of Jennifer Thompson, is under a great deal of pressure
to identify the attacker. Saying something as simple as the
perpetrator may not be in the lineup can help relieve
that pressure and give the eye witness permission to not

(57:07):
select someone. The Innocence Project also suggests getting confident statements
from the eye witnesses having him her rate his or
her level of confidence in the selection of the individual
from the lineup. However, research indicates that the confidence one
feels does not always positively correlate with accuracy. This holds
up from a lot of stuff I've read where people

(57:29):
will sometimes misidentify someone in eye witness testimony and say, yep,
that was him, I know it. And also we've done
brain stuff episodes on how confident people think they are
about things, and they often report themselves as feeling very
confident in things when they have the least amount of
expertise or actual confidence participating those I forget. There's a

(57:53):
terminology for are you talking about the dunning Kruger Effe's
dunning cruer. Yeah, that has to do with like, the
lower your level of skill in a particular task is
the higher you rate your skill I could see your
relation here. Possibly you don't know how little you know
about how to do it, but anyway, uh So, continuing
with Stephanie's email, she also mentions photographs. Photographic lineups, she

(58:16):
says should also follow the same suggested procedure as in
person lineups. Additionally, however, the pictures should be shown consecutively
rather than concurrently as we often see on TV. This
reduces the chance that the eyewitness will make a relative judgment,
meaning one individual looks the most like the perpetrator, so
that must be the guy. As an aside, my dissertation,

(58:39):
which I hope to publish soon, was on the accuracy
or inaccuracy as I found, of memory in the elderly.
It was formatted after Steve Chechi's famous mouse trap study
in response to the daycare scandals of the nineteen eighties,
in which he asked children simple questions, some of which
were implausible. Over the course of many weeks, he found

(58:59):
that children would start to form memories of the events
specified in the questions. Similarly, I found that after only
a few weeks of asking those over the age of
sixty five similar questions, I had them telling me their
memories of events that did not actually happen to them,
e g. They were struck by lightning while riding a
bike in a rainstorm. So this ties into the Satanic

(59:22):
Panic episodes that we did well back. But both that
and our episodes where we've been recently talking about how
memories are formed and how we're every time we're recalling
a memory, we're rewriting that memory. I also have read
separately about totally different research along these lines, where the
experiments where if you can just get people to say

(59:42):
they did something, over time, they will start to remember
having actually done it. So you get some students to say, like,
just read these prepared statements, you know, I have fallen
in love with a dictionary. Um, And then later you
ask them like do you remember falling in love with
the dictionary? And they'll be like, yeah, yeah, that I

(01:00:02):
guess that did happen. It's heartbreaking. Did you guys watch
Making a Murderer? Yes? No I didn't. I don't want
to say anything, but it's related to that. Well. Yeah,
so anyway that the whole thing is Yet again, this
comes up over and over on the show. Our memories
are just not as good as we think they are.
We're really really prone to to false memory implantation and recall. Um.

(01:00:24):
But anyway, so Stephanie continues evidence that protocols must be
put in place to prevent, to the best of our abilities,
faulty eyewitness identification. I could go on. There are many suggestions,
including areas such as interviews and even protecting eye witnesses
from the suspecting court. I'd be happy to assist should
you want to do an episode on eyewitness memory. Keep

(01:00:45):
up the good work. So thank you, Stephanie. UH and
that is that was an awesome message. Yeah, this is
certainly a topic that we're interested in, and I think
that there's going to be more and more research coming
out in contemporary academic glitter nature. That's finding newer and
better ways to do forensic science, but also that's evaluating

(01:01:06):
the methodologies that are currently in place. Sure, hopefully we'll
return to it in the future. All right, Well, you know,
I don't want to cause any alarm here, but Carney
appears to have finished his self virus scan. He appears
to have rebooted and may have rebooted in uh in
combat mode, So we might need to clear out of here.
What are these pop ups saying we have to import

(01:01:27):
a credit card number before we can properly load the
operating system. Who. I wouldn't argue with him right now though,
better better pull out to either of you have some
jet that I can take. Um, I think Carney has
some jet, but I don't know if you want him
to administer it. I don't know, Psycho Jetta. All right, Hey,

(01:01:47):
if you want to check out the episodes that we
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(01:02:08):
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(01:02:30):
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(01:03:04):
prop