STBYM: Three Years of Word Salad

STBYM: Three Years of Word Salad: Robert and Julie celebrate 3 years of cranium-popping episodes and discuss how Stuff to Blow Your Mind has changed their lives.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
But you know these things because if you've been listening
to our podcast for the last three years, then this
is the way we always start our episode. Sometimes you

(00:25):
throw in a curious nickname or two for yourself, but
otherwise the info is pretty much always the same, straight
for it. But today it's a little bit different. You
guys can't see here in the studio, but it is
just brimming with balloons that have fallen down from the ceiling.
And do you know why, I hope that you noted
the day? No, what is the day? It's our anniversary. Yeah,

(00:48):
it's been three years since we started this, this little
cabusive podcast. Yeah, and at the time we didn't know
how it would go, but it seems to have gone,
you know, pretty well well. And I don't know if
let's there's know this, but um, we did not pick
the name for this podcast. It was it was given
to us. So when we first started it kind of

(01:09):
felt huge and looming, but ultimately we thought that we
could grow into it. Since we're both curious types and uh,
we are very interested in science. Yeah, of course the
original podcast was Stuff in the Science Lab and that
evolved into this podcast. And and at the time, our
our boss Connell said, uh, such about your mind. That's
that's gonna be the title, and uh and and we're like,

(01:31):
all right, we'll run with it. We trust you. You
you come up with some great ideas. So let's we'll
see if we can make this work. Because on one hand,
we weren't sure. Is it kind of cheesy sounding maybe?
And then also is that a lot to deliver on?
Like we can actually blow my And it's kind of
silly that we were even thinking about it at the time.
I was like, dude, what if it's not a what
do we do an episode and it doesn't blow people's minds?

(01:52):
What if it's not really like crazy awesome in your face,
like stoner science that we're throwing at at at you,
like what happened? When it's just kind of that that's
kind of neat. But I mean, in some episodes are
more mind blowing than others. There are some episodes we've
done that I feel, even researching them kind of shake
me to my core and make me just reevaluate either

(02:14):
myself or the universe though the world I live in,
the culture that I'm a part of, and in there
are other episodes where they are just a little bit like, oh,
that's kind of neat. I never thought about that, But
I feel like that's just all building up on the
narrative that we have when we discuss certain themes. Um. So, yeah,
obviously that's what we're going to talk about a bit today,
is you know, in our research force to flill your mind?

(02:36):
How has this influence for our lives because obviously this
is a very intimate part of our lives, even if
this is for work. And um, I wanted just to
quickly say that we want to thank everyone who has
stuck with us from the beginning and those of you
who have just stumbled upon the podcast. Um, it's largely
the conversation that we have with you guys that's helped

(02:56):
the direction of the podcast and oftentimes really added new
layers to it. So and we've really been fortunate with
our listeners because there are a number of podcasts here
in in the How Stuff Works suite of podcasts. I mean,
you got uh stuff, you should know stuff they don't
want you to know stuff Mom never told you, stuff

(03:16):
you missed in history class. All all these different brands,
and we hear about other people's listeners, and there are
great listeners, great fans for all of the podcasts. Though
I feel like we have less in the way of
like evil listeners or band listeners or or negative listeners.
You know. We we get we occasionally catch some flak

(03:37):
for this, that or the other, but but I feel like, uh,
we've got a really good crew. We do. We we
often get if we get criticism, is it's thoughtful and
it's couched in a way that's helpful. UM. But we
also most of the time get feedback that were really
actually blows my mind, that makes sort of takes the
conversation that we're having together and takes it to another

(03:57):
level because you guys have gone away with with some
of the thoughts of your own on these topics and
really spun them. So it's been a very nice experience.
And so we just wanted to talk a bit today
about the different ways that we've digested this stuff. And
by the way, we would love to hear from you
guys to um, you know, if if there are certain

(04:19):
things from the podcast that have affected your lives, A
certain bits of information that have made you sort of
rethink what's going on in your world. Yeah, indeed, I
should also want we have heard from We're always hearing
from listeners who play us in the background during their
artistic creation. So they're they're painting or they're they're building

(04:40):
something and uh. And that's always just really great to
hear that we, in some way, and even in just
some small way, maybe contribute to their creative process, be
it art or science. Indeed, all right, you want to
take the first way in which this podcast has changed life? Well, influenced? Yeah,

(05:04):
influence because change tends to you know, it makes you
think like you gave up all your your belongings, you know,
became Buddha or something. No, no, no, so one thing.
I would think. It's it's not so much that change
something about me, but I feel like it often strengthens
qualities that are already there because for instance, um, when
it comes to feminism, uh and uh and the subject

(05:27):
of the ladies and and you know who women are,
why that what their role is in the species? Um,
I feel like I I have always been sympathetic to
feminist issues. But in the in the course of the
podcast we've discussed for this Ladies not Implanet Earth was
an early episode where we talked about such issues as

(05:48):
you know, the the idea that that females are the
species and that males are merely a mutation necessary for
sexual reproduction. We looked at examples, especially the insect world,
where males have been face doubt. We've looked at some
of the theories regarding the destructive aspects of the patriarchy
versus matriarchy and culture and uh. We've also discussed witchcraft,

(06:11):
witchcraft persecution, the ways in which male dominated culture have
persecuted women. So it really forced me when I when
I encounter stereotypes, when when I encounter other attitudes regarding
regarding sex and gender. Um, I have all of this
science that I bring to my evaluation of it, and
I'll think, well, okay, well that person is viewing the

(06:32):
world in this way, and here's why, and uh, and
and here is maybe what it's more like from a
from from an organism level. That's interesting that you say that,
because um, all of the episodes that you mentioned were
of interest to me in the ways that we paint gender.
But I think that for me, the bulk of it

(06:52):
um in terms of gender has been our research into
the subconscious and symbols and how we create world of
symbols that we moved through and um So my suspicion
has always been that to a large degree we perform
our gender. Um. I know there, I say a large
degree of leaving some room there, But for the most part,

(07:13):
I feel like men and women are just equally capable
of moments of atrocities and moments of grace, you know,
both physically and mentally. So I think back to Elizabeth Spelki,
who is the cognitive psychologist who responded to Lawrence Sumner's
that then Harvard president, who said that there was a

(07:34):
shortage of women in science or the physical science is
because perhaps they did not have the sort of um rigor,
the sort of intellectual rigor that allowed them to do well.
And she actually looked at decades of her research into
infants and children, and she took that data and she

(07:56):
found that there was nothing, There was no evidence of
differences between girls and boys on basic number skills, a
bunch of different things that she was looking at, and
so she said her position is that the null hypothesis
is correct, there's no cognitive difference and nothing to say
about it. And she actually debated uh, Dr Stephen Pinker

(08:17):
in a fascinating bit their friends, and so they both
differed on this, this topic of gender differences in the
physical sciences. And if anybody has, like I don't know,
two hours to kill anyone. You want to look at
a transcript of this. It's online, but it's it lays
out very interesting arguments on this. And I think that
that Dr Spucky does a great job of attacking this

(08:40):
in the way of saying, let's not overlay gender stereotypes
and have them stand in for real data. And now
what about you? What's what's a way in which working
on this podcast has influence store changed your life? Ah,
this consciousness stuff, that's really uh, it's kind of like
the tail wagging the dog problem of death in the

(09:01):
afterlife for me, and I did not think that that
was something that would happen, that that that this um
preoccupation with consciousness would bring up these questions not so
much actually, you know, about what happens after we die,
because for me that's fairly simple and straightforward. The lights
kind of go off in the brain and that's it
for me. It brought it more um in terms of

(09:25):
what happened before. So this question of consciousness, I feel
like it is very much related to the beginnings of
the universe. So how do I don't know how to
explain this um. It's troubling to me because that, to me,
that's the great void of knowledge. So if we know
that we're inherently tied to the universe through chemicals, the

(09:48):
chemical imprint, so like hydrogen, helium, and carbon and oxygen,
those are the most common elements in the universe, and
we know that hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen are the top
three ingredients for life on Earth. And then we look
at our bodies, ourselves, and we know that hydrogen, carbon,
and oxygen account of the atoms and the human body,

(10:09):
and you know, it begins to make this case of well,
of course, you know this is this is something that's
tied into something that we can't understand at this point.
And we can't also understand consciousness. We can't point to
the area in our brain that says this is me,
this is what makes me me and makes me understand

(10:30):
my place in the world, just like we can't point
to the beginnings of life in the universe and say
that's where it began. And see what you're underlying here
is something that's always been part of our our mission statement,
you know, to to take listeners and ourselves to that
aha point, to the edge of human understanding. And when
you reach that point and then you're just staring off

(10:52):
into the void, you're staring staring down into where knowledge
drops off into the abyss. And that's that means an
amazing and at times fright main place to be. It is,
and I'm actually pretty astounded that as humans that we
have come this far to understand our our chemical fingerprints
in our bodies and in the universe and tied them
all together. But that still leaves this gaping whole and

(11:15):
logic and uh and understanding as well. So again it's
not for me necessarily a really just toned um conversation
with myself about what it all means. It just is
this question of consciousness that has wrung out some of
these more troublesome aspects of how it all began. So

(11:36):
do you feel like you have more existential dread now
than before? Yes? Yes, and no, yes and no. And
I actually wrote down this this little bit from theoretical
physicist Lawrence Kraus and his Cosmic Connections lecture, because it's
always given me a measure of comfort. And he said,
and every breath you take their an average of at

(11:58):
least ten oxygen ms from the dying breath of Caesar
when he said aboute every time you breathe, you're breathing
in atoms of everyone who has ever lived. So when
the universe feels immense and like there's no beginning and
no end, I think about that quote and I think
about how we just essentially in the day, I have
this sort of snow globe existence that we just kind

(12:20):
of shake up around while the little elements uh on
the earth that are that are surrounding us. I think,
for my own part with the existential dread, I feel
like maybe I might have the same level of existential dread,
but I understand it a little more and then, and
maybe in the same way that you know when you're
practicing meditation and mindfulness, it's about it's realizing when you're

(12:42):
angry or when you're letting your when you're sad, realizing
what your emotional state is and that being conscious of
it is the first step in managing it. So maybe
maybe I am maybe I have a little less existential
dread in in the fact that I am more conscious
of how it's working line feeling that way. Well, it's
when you bring that up, because I had also thought

(13:03):
that one of the byproducts of working on this podcast
is that there's a meta awareness of my thoughts because
we talk about this all the time that you know
that if you can identify your thoughts and identify what
is motivating them, then you can oftentimes really get to
the root of a problem, or you can you can
correct your responses. So we've even talked about if you're angry,

(13:26):
you know, count to five, because it takes a little
bit for your prefrontal cortex to get in line with
your magdala to make sure that you don't do some
sort of crazy thing or say something crazy. So there's this,
there's a sort of wisdom to being able to slow
down your thought process and um and figure out what's
going on now you said crazy. Uh. That is another

(13:49):
thing that has has really hit me over the course
of these three years is enforcing a pronounced appreciation with
the thin line between sanity and insanity, way normal and
paranormal in the human experience. And when we've looked at
that in terms of the human brain, all the different
elements that make consciousness what it is, that make memory

(14:10):
what it is, and how fallible all of that is,
How how fallible memory is, How the slightest changes in
the in the brains of structure or chemistry alter the
way that we perceive the world, how we interact with it.
How so many of the things that we see as
paranormal experiences be at an alien abduction and encounter with
elves in the woods, uh, and angelic visitation, the voice

(14:33):
of God, in anything from from the from the grand
list of of of the strange and and the powerful
and the holy, they can they can almost universally, all
be explained by looking at the way our mind works,
that the way our our perception and interaction with the
real world works. And uh and and and it's not
something that I feel diminishes the magic of reality at all,

(14:56):
you know. It's not something like, oh, there aren't really angels,
isn't that doesn't that suck? No? No, it's more that
it's it's more exhilarating to think that that our existence,
in our in our experience of the world is such
a behind line. It's such a narrow thing, and you know,
it's like a tight rope walk. I was thinking about
this last night. I thought I was drifting off to
sleep because I was seeing images, and I thought, really,

(15:19):
this is my brain hallucinating because it doesn't have any
stimuli right now. You know, it's it's dead quiet, and
it's dark, and it has nothing to chew on. So
it's going to start the dream cycle and start hallucinating
for me. Uh, you know, to recreate maybe the events
of my day or just to float off into different
areas of exploration. So it really is fascinating. You're right

(15:41):
there that line between what is mental order and mental disorder. Yeah,
I mean, because it at the end of the day,
you're you're encountering the the idea that the brain is
the most complex structure that we know of. It's this
intense creation machine, creating, spending off ideas, uh, spenning off

(16:03):
the whole imagined worlds and uh and we we are
yet and we are at the center of it all right.
So comfort So you fall on the line of comforting
or discomforting, I would say, I would say comforting, Yeah,
at least for me, because I'm still able to enjoy
all those other things too. You know, I still can
really get into the idea of, you know, of Dante's Inferno,
or you know, or some horror movie with demons in

(16:24):
it or something, because it doesn't it doesn't disappoint me
to to know that those are creations of the mind,
and it just shows out baculous the mind is, and
it just comes back out in on itself like that. Cool.
All right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
we get back, we are going to discuss the deep
dirt secrets of our lives. All right, we're back. So,

(16:52):
so what else in three years of stuff about your mind?
What else has this changed about you? How has how
has Obviously the Julie Douglas that exists now is different
from the Julie Dougles that existed then. Core elements still there,
You're right. I've got some new cells, new cells, and
in a different brain structure. Actually, I do have a

(17:14):
very I think I have a very different brain structure.
And I say this because, um, we have mentioned before
I quit drinking alcohol. Um, I don't know a year
and change your sixteen months ago or something. And the
reason is because I began to have foreign of an

(17:34):
awareness of addictive behavior. And so if you have an
addiction or a dependency on something like I do with alcohol,
it's really hard to sit back and do research on
how the brain responds to substances when they're pushed up
against the anxieties of life and then not see the

(17:54):
patterns of your own behavior in this light. And you know,
I think the thing that was most striking to me
is that when we were doing research on you know,
whether it was alcohol or drugs, or just talking about
the reward system and dopamine for instance, UM, I began
to see that these habits that we create for ourselves

(18:18):
are really just sort of well trod circuitry in our brain,
this thing that we keep doing over and over again.
And for a long time I have wanted to stop
drinking and and I didn't really I wasn't able to
understand it in a way that I could. But when
I got frustrated enough that I had created essentially a
chemical feedback loop, UM, I began to understand that this

(18:41):
was something that I might be able to reverse. And
this was another chilling thing to me, is that learning
how memory was affected by alcohol, because if you talk
about the hippocampus, which is involved in memory making, and
you look at self that are bay and alcohol, what
you will see is that they lose the ability to

(19:04):
connect and communicate with other brain cells and they either
aren't going to make any connection and you're not going
to have that memory, or your brain actually has to
create a sort of plan B for memory. And so
what I thought to myself is, not only have I
got these chemical feedback loops I don't want um and

(19:25):
I've sort of fallen victim to that, but I have,
you know, I have memory stores that maybe are working
or not working in the way that they should be.
And that really was something that was troubling to me.
So I will say that through the research and just
the constant sort of flow of information about how the
brain works, I was able to address that. Okay, So

(19:49):
in a sense, did did the research provide you sort
of the scientific backup to force the change? Is that
what you're saying, Yeah, I mean the awareness when you
think about how bit that you have you don't normally
research or habit to the degree that you are understanding
the inner mechanisms of how that habit is playing itself
out because in a way, sometimes our habits have they

(20:12):
almost have a mind of their own, They almost have
a defense mechanism in place to protect themselves from you. Well,
that's a story that we tell whenever we're engaging in
the habit. So I'm not gonna go I don't want
to go into you know, addiction too much. But you know,
I will say that this is a truthful account of
of having worked on the podcast over the last three

(20:33):
years and doing research on the brain and on memory
and on um, you know, various substances, and then coming
to the conclusion that you know, there's there was something
you know, awry in my own personal space that I
needed to address. Cool you what's your deep dark serian? Well, um, yeah,

(20:55):
I don't know if I have anything is as powerful
as that. Now, I will say that, Um, I'm pretty
Are you sure that working on stuff to bow your
mind your mind did force me to give up eating cephalopods, which, grant,
I mean, I'm not putting that out there like I've
what I've done is super noble because I'm still probably
a huge hypocrite because even though I do not actively
seek out pork, I still I don't think I've yet

(21:18):
to oppose it on moral grounds to say I'm not
gonna eat that, because pigs are smart and wonderful and
I respect them as intelligent beings, whereas with cephalopods of
kind of chosen my battle there and said, you know,
in the past, I've really enjoyed eating pretty much any cephalopod,
especially the squid and also the octopi. But now that

(21:40):
I know more about their brains, you know about how
fabulous they are as organisms in general, but also how
how intelligent and octopus can be, and how arguably it's
it's conscious, how arguably it's it's in the same neural
zone is my cat. And I don't want to eat
my cat. I can't bring myself to eat the octopus either. Yeah,

(22:02):
And a lot of this came up when we were
talking about the book Um, some we eat, some we
love and saying we kill, and is that right? Some
eat love and kill? I think so. The follow up
to Eat Praying, Love and and it was talking about
our weird relationship with animals and the way that we
regard them, and that really was, you know, I think
something that brought up this sort of idea of personhood.

(22:24):
And then we did the of course, the episode on personhood,
and we talked about these higher cognitive functions and some animals,
you know, could they were they conscious? Did they have
uh complex social relationships? Yes? And yes, and so it
sort of makes that area even a little bit murkier
in terms of well is this a food source it's

(22:46):
And like I say, I realized I'm a hypocrite by saying,
you know, no notice cephalopods, But I'm still okay with
with you know, poor could be forced on me and
you know, chicken and whatnot. I we don't eat a
lot of meat in our household. We tend to lie
on the on the vegetables, but we will will still
have you know, a little chicken or or fish here
and there as as need be. So I don't know,

(23:09):
I mean, I can. I sometimes I think though that
I'll maybe reach the point where I'll say no to
all the meats and hopefully find a goat that I
can have a consensual arrangement with where the goat will
will give me it's it's milk, and maybe the goat
will make the milk into cheese for me, because I
feel like that's the big hurdle to me is that
it is the cheese factor. I don't know how I

(23:32):
could give up the cheese meat. I feel like it
can ultimately take a leave in the long run. But
have you heard about this product called beyond Meat? No,
but it sounds scary, So what is it? It is?
It's a one of the you know, samelackrums of meat
products that have come out recently that apparently like gotten
the sponginess of meat, so the texture and the flavor

(23:55):
and the color right and and people are going nuts
over this stuff. So anyway, my point is is that
this may not even be a concern in fifty years
when you have these um you have these stand ins. Yeah,
and then of course then all the itemals that have
gone extinct anyway, so well, and there's that. Yeah, most
of the things in the sushi bar are no longer

(24:16):
with us. So send in the fake meat beyond meat
in your grocery store somewhere. Is it really? Yeah? Actually
it is. I'm not well whole foods Okay, So if
you want to go into a grocery store with really
nice lighting, I think you will find it there right now.
But I think the idea is to stock it in
every single grocery store eventually. Yeah. Well, I say put

(24:38):
it in fast food, you know. I mean we're already
using things that are not really meat, but they come
from meat, So why not just go ahead and go
the extra mile. I mean, it's all deep fried anyway,
cost my friend cost. Yeah, but we'll get to that
eventually too. Um. One other thing that I was thinking
about is the fact that we and we talked about

(24:59):
the all the time, that we tend to create this
blueprint in our mind and we rely on that instead
of actually seeing things for what they are. And we
have to do that because every time we enter a room,
we can't take the mental energy to completely recreate it
from the ground up. We have a memory of this room,
a blueprint of this room, a map, and so in

(25:21):
a way, we limit ourselves with the very tools that
allow us to move through the world in an efficient way.
And so I thought, that's something that's really come um
to my attention. And and again it comes back to
this awareness you were talking about earlier, awareness of thoughts
and trying to slow down and really see things as

(25:43):
they are. And then I thought, this is completely underscored
my appreciation for and all of people working in various
fields of science who are in the labor or in
the field and going through mountains of data and trying
to find those those those bits of amazing things in

(26:05):
the road every day and having those breakthroughs in our understanding,
that sort of recast how we see the world. Yeah,
because we kind of get to come in at the
end of the process and how awesome it is. But
we weren't there in the kitchen to see and be
part of all the hours that went into preparing the
dish or you know, Marie Cree, like going through the
pitch and finding the radium. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I

(26:27):
mean the sacrifice, the real sacrifice of science. Yeah. So
that that definitely has been something that is uh, the
forefront of my mind, and as well as all the
great science writers who have been able to talk about
this in very meaningful ways, you know, bringing up actual
scientific sacrifice. It also makes everything I've said even more

(26:48):
hollow when I say, oh, well, in the course of
this podcast, I gave up eating some squid and uh,
and you know, as maybe a little more in touch
with how the world works. And meanwhile, while you know
someone else is like, well, I have cancer now because
of radiation, because of my research, well I know, and
that's when I started to think about that, like what
what are the sacrifices of going through? Of course, now

(27:09):
we know much more about the elements and so presumably
conditions are much safer. But you know, there is there's
a sort of um trade off with obsession that people
sometimes in those fields find themselves. Will you swallow a
shrew to see what right are you dedicated? So there

(27:31):
you have it. There's just a little inside into what
the podcast has meant to us and uh and how
it has changed us and how it I mean really
it comes down to it. We put down two episodes
a week pretty much every week. The show pretty much
permeates every aspect of my life. Um, you know, if
i'm you know, no matter what I'm doing, there's a
good chance that I might realize, hey, maybe this would

(27:54):
make a good podcast. I wonder if there's something what's
the science of this that's going on? You know, be
it you know, spending time with my my son or
you know, traveling somewhere or eating something weird, or suddenly
realizing that I have no idea how a gadget in
my house actually works, I might think, huh, I wonder
if if that's something we can or should cover for

(28:14):
the podcast. It's true, and I think that both of
us feel like we wish we had more many more
hours to actually um put into this. But already, you know,
we are pretty dedicated to trying to bring to you guys,
um the information that we think is really cool and important,
and as you say, um, you know, thinking about it
at all hours. In fact, both of us tend to

(28:35):
send emails at odd hours like hey, I was just
looking at this and this seems really cool. So um
so yeah, and that's a source of joy for me.
So um, this has been great to work on this podcast,
and uh look forward to even more very cool stuff.
And again this is definitely a conversation. Um. You know,
the micro crimera episode that we covered was actually suggested

(28:57):
by listener SHAWNA, which I did not mentioned at the
top of that episode, and I completely should have shame
on me. But this is a great example of someone
who's like, hey, you've got to cover this. This is
an incredible territory. So thanks to you guys for for
keeping us uh apprized of all. Yeah, you continue to
help us populate a great list of topics to come

(29:18):
and topics that we've covered before and we'll cover again.
That's a great thing about science. It's ah, we're never
going to run out of topics, never, never, never, just
try it, alright. So hey, in the meantime, you want
to get in touch with us, you wanna talk with
us about any of this, or maybe you just want
to complain, but you can find us online. Stuff to
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