Microplastics might be getting overcounted because of lab gloves, some birds masturbate and a trillion dollars is the kind of number that turns your brain into soup… oh, and there’s a mushroom story that sounds like a joke until you remember Alzheimer’s exists.
This week, we bounce between contaminated science tools, horny wildlife, billionaire maths and a single case study that has researchers quietly paying attention.
The Gloves That Cried Microplastics
We start with microplastics, because nothing says “modern life” like finding plastic in places it has no business being. Researchers at the University of Michigan measured microplastics in outdoor air and got results so high they looked fake. Like, a thousand times higher than earlier studies.
But instead of declaring the apocalypse, they did the more annoying thing. They assumed their methods were wrong and went hunting for the problem. And the problem was the most boring object in the room.
The gloves.
To identify microplastics they used vibrational spectroscopy, which reads the “signature” of tiny particles. The catch is that polyethylene, the most common plastic you are trying to detect, can look a lot like stearate salts under that method. And stearate salts are used in manufacturing gloves. They can shed onto samples and get misread as plastic.
So no, it is not a “microplastics are fake” story. It is a “your tools can lie to you” story. Which is worse, because it means you have to keep checking everything forever.
Lovebirds Gone Wild
Next up, birds. Specifically, birds masturbating, which is both real and somehow still treated like a scandal.
A lot of the time, bird self pleasure has been written off as a captivity stress thing. Something bored or broken animals do when humans have messed up their environment. But the research suggests it is widespread across species, happens in both sexes, and is actually more common in the wild than in captivity.
So if your parrot is doing a loud little performance on a branch, it might not be traumatised. It might just be a bird doing what birds have been doing for a very long time.
Trillionaire Maths and Brain Melt
Then we hit the trillionaire story, because nothing makes you feel poor like learning your brain cannot even picture the number properly.
A trillion is one of those figures that sounds like it should be understandable, but once numbers get that big, we stop visualising and start doing vibes based maths. So here is the easiest way to feel the scale.
If one dollar equals one second, a million dollars is about eleven and a half days. A billion dollars is about thirty one and a half years. A trillion dollars is about thirty one thousand years.
That is not “a bit more”. That is a different universe.
Even if you spent one million dollars every day, it would still take you about 2,700 years to spend a trillion. So when someone’s “rounding error” is tens of billions, we are no longer talking about money like normal humans talk about money. We are talking about a number that breaks your sense of reality.
Mushrooms, Memory and a Single Weird Case
Finally, we land on the heaviest topic, but with a strange little spark in it. Alzheimer’s is brutal. It strips people back piece by piece, and families have to watch it happen in slow motion.
A case study on a Japanese American woman with severe Alzheimer’s reported an unexpected improvement in cognition after taking a large dose of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms.
To be clear, this is not a home remedy. It is one case, it is risky, and it is not a “everyone go dose Grandma” situation. But it is the kind of result that makes researchers sit up, because it hints there may be pathways we have not properly explored yet.
So that is the week. Microplastics that might be glove dust, birds doing bird things, trillionaire maths that makes your eyes glaze over and mushrooms that might one day change how we think about memory loss.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:45 Microplastics Shock Study
01:57 Lab Protocols And Jerkins
03:46 Glove Contamination Twist
05:40 How Bad Is Shedding
07:11 Science Skepticism Lesson
07:54 Onanism Bible Origin
10:41 Animals Doing It Too
13:38 Bird Masturbation Explained
17:19 New Research And Takeaways
20:18 Trillionaire Brain Melt
21:38 Why Big Numbers Fool Us
23:40 Time Scale Money Trick
24:33 What Buys A Trillion
27:07 Inequality Airplane Metaphor
29:07 Mushrooms And Alzheimer Case
32:44 Science Skepticism And Ethics
38:06 Signoff And Ratings
SOURCES:
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-found-a-big-problem-with-how-we-measure-microplastics
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2026/ay/d5ay01801c
https://theconversation.com/birds-masturbate-and-thats-perfectly-normal-284232
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2022.2044446
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-brains-underestimate-elon-musks-wealth/
https://futurism.com/health-medicine/elderly-woman-high-dose-psychedelic-mushrooms
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[00:00:00]
[00:00:45] Rod: So March 2026, couple of chemists at the University of Michigan published a bit of a study. It was inspired to begin with. They wanted to understand how many microplastics Michiganders-
[00:00:54] Will: Uh, uh ...
[00:00:55] Rod: were inhaling when they were outside, and whether that depended on where they lived. So they went and checked, and they found plastic counts in the air that were significantly higher than they would've expected from previous work, and I'm talking orders of magnitude higher.
[00:01:07] So a lot. Ob- obviously this means the world is screwed and we're all gonna die.
[00:01:10] Will: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:10] Rod: But then they went, "Look, there's nothing obvious in the Michigan environment that would lead to this. There's, there's a problem." So they were good skeptical scientists, so they said, "All right, let's, um, let's have a look at our own experimental protocol."
[00:01:19] So they looked what they'd done. They'd followed all the standard protocols when conducting the research.
[00:01:24] Will: Yeah.
[00:01:24] Rod: They avoided using plastics in the lab.
[00:01:26] Will: Sure. Don't know how you do that.
[00:01:28] Rod: Without... Or they didn't use plastic.
[00:01:30] Will: Sure.
[00:01:31] Rod: Your glass retorts and your lead Bunsen burners. Good safe lead.
[00:01:35] Will: I don't know if Bunsen burners are often made of plastic, but any- anyway, yeah, I-
[00:01:39] Rod: Fuck, I love a Bunsen burner.
[00:01:40] When I was a, a, a student in the, uh, in the high schools and we had Bunsen burners, it was always exciting when we got to light those. And then one day a student went, "What happens if we just light the tap-
[00:01:48] Will: Yeah,
[00:01:48] Rod: sure ... from which the gas comes out?" Turns out when you do that, that's quite a flame.
[00:01:52] Will: Yeah. No,
[00:01:52] Rod: I- It, it went across half the classroom.
[00:01:54] Will: Every high school ever.
[00:01:55] Rod: Very exciting. Very exciting. So yeah, they avoid using plastics. They wore [00:02:00] non-plastic clothing, which puts me... I'm thinking they were wearing woolen pants, chain mail shirts, and leather jerkins.
[00:02:05] Will: Cotton is also. Cotton is a very common non-plastic.
[00:02:07] Rod: That's not fun. I just love the word jerkin too.
[00:02:10] Jerkin's fabulous. My parents, especially my mother, never heard of the word vest, so everything was a jerkin.
[00:02:15] Will: No, the only people that wear jerkins are carnies. Like everyone else, it's a vest or a, or a-
[00:02:20] Rod: And my dear departed mother. We had jerkins.
[00:02:24] Will: Had jerkins.
[00:02:24] Rod: Or wore a lot of jerkins. So many jerkins.
[00:02:27] Will: Were you a, were you a jerkin-wearing boy?
[00:02:29] Rod: Yeah, the '70s were a strange time- ... in primary school So they were wearing non-plastic clothes. They avoided plastic in the lab. They followed all the pr- appropriate protocols. They even used a special chamber to reduce potential contamination from lab air. So they're reviewing their protocols.
[00:02:46] Will: So this is a, a full-on, like, biosecurity protocol three-level thing.
[00:02:49] Like-
[00:02:50] Rod: Level 17-
[00:02:51] Will: Yeah, yeah, yeah ... top si- We're buried under the, you know.
[00:02:54] Rod: Yeah, exactly. Like, they... All good. So then they're thinking, "Why the fuck were our results literally 1,000 times higher levels of microplastics?" Mm. 1,000 times higher. When they looked at reviews of heaps of previous studies, yep, 1,000 times higher.
[00:03:06] So these researchers, the, the technique they use is called vibrational spectroscopy. Oh. This is how they identify microplastics. All that means is that, bottom line is they look at how particles that they're examining interact with light, and they all interact with light in a specific way. So you get, like, a, a particular signature for each thing.
[00:03:22] Will: Okay.
[00:03:23] Rod: So this is how they-
[00:03:24] Will: So, so we can see multiple things in, in-
[00:03:26] Rod: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, this one we know resonates, like, reflects light that way, so it must be-
[00:03:31] Will: Mm ...
[00:03:32] Rod: hamburger meat. This is, however-
[00:03:34] Will: In the air.
[00:03:35] Rod: Exactly, in the air. Very small particles. And so what they really were trying to look for was polyethylene, which is the most common plastic found out in the environment.
[00:03:41] Will: I knew that.
[00:03:42] Rod: I know you did, but other people didn't. I didn't mean to offend you, though. Yeah. I apologize for that. So that's cool. The problem is, though, polyethylene particles are structurally a lot like another thing called stearate salts. What that means is when you do the, the, what is it called?
[00:03:54] Vibrational spectroscopy, the light that's spat back looks very much the same between these two things.
[00:03:59] Will: Okay. Where do the [00:04:00] stearate salt, salts come from?
[00:04:01] Rod: So turns out when you make laboratory gloves
[00:04:06] Will: Laboratory gloves
[00:04:06] Rod: Stearate salts are used to help the gloves peel away properly from the molds that make them.
[00:04:11] Will: Oh, okay.
[00:04:12] Rod: You probably see where this is
[00:04:13] Will: going. Yeah. Okay.
[00:04:15] Rod: These gloves are... It's not like these people are idiots. They're 100% endorsed by scientific community, the best practice gloves-
[00:04:21] Will: Uh-huh ...
[00:04:21] Rod: in your laboratories.
[00:04:22] Will: Just to pause for a sec.
[00:04:23] Rod: Yeah.
[00:04:24] Will: I love putting on lab gloves.
[00:04:26] Rod: Of course you do.
[00:04:26] Will: I, I would wear them a lot more if people didn't say that's weird.
[00:04:30] Rod: That makes you a freaking pervert.
[00:04:32] Will: It really-
[00:04:32] Rod: Of colossal proportions. I- In ways we can't even imagine ...
[00:04:35] Will: so good. I feel like, ah.
[00:04:38] Rod: How do you feel about latex?
[00:04:39] Will: I don't mind latex.
[00:04:40] Rod: Don't mind?
[00:04:40] Will: Uh, you know.
[00:04:41] Rod: Bit of a fan? Are you wearing some right now?
[00:04:44] Will: Indeed.
[00:04:44] Rod: In- invisible?
[00:04:45] Will: I have four pairs all around me.
[00:04:47] Rod: Latex, uh, girdle?
[00:04:49] Will: My... I got an inside jerkin. Yes, you do. Latex jerkin.
[00:04:52] Rod: So these are best practice gloves, but of course they can shed onto samples. So the... what they were using to do their, um, microplastic studies were these small metal sheets.
[00:05:01] Will: That's so weird. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:03] Rod: Yep, yep, yep. So also these salts apparently, just as an aside, they're not particularly good for you if you ingested a shitload of them, and they liken them to soap molecules.
[00:05:10] Will: I should stop eating the gloves.
[00:05:11] Rod: You should stop eating the glove. But they're not super harmful in the environment the way mi- microplastics appear to be.
[00:05:16] Will: So I can eat some of the gloves.
[00:05:17] Rod: Some of the glove, but not all of the glove. You can lick the gloves, but don't lick every glove. Just lick one or two gloves. Yours or someone else's, that's up to you.
[00:05:25] Will: While they're wearing them or
[00:05:26] Rod: not. Pleased to meet you.
[00:05:29] You taste like a stearate salt. Maybe it's pronounced stea- steatite. I don't know. So contamination was discovered, but what about the other gloves? You know, the ones that kind of the whole thing that needs to be done with. So they, they basically went, "We need to look further." So they investigated the extent of the contamination.
[00:05:44] How far could it go? They mimicked the touch between seven types of gloves that would be used in a lab.
[00:05:49] Will: Yep.
[00:05:49] Rod: Seven types. They counted the number of microplastics that would, uh, incorrectly be attributed to the environment If we follow the most common approaches, they say Yeah,
[00:05:57] Will: yeah, yeah
[00:05:58] Rod: They found gloves can shed [00:06:00] 7,000 plus particles per square millimeter that could be misidentified as microplastics
[00:06:05] Will: Are, are we gonna say here there's no microplastics in the world, it's all in the gloves?
[00:06:09] Rod: There are literally no micropla- no, not necessarily, but, mm. Worse, the most common particles are less than five, uh, micrometers in size, yeah, UM. And those microplastics are... They're the ones that have very large impacts on humans and the ecosystem because they can most easily enter cells. So the false readings are very much like the real readings that they want
[00:06:27] Will: Oh
[00:06:28] Rod: So basically, this means these gloves could be inflating all kinds of microplastics readings
[00:06:34] Will: That's fascinating
[00:06:36] Rod: Yes.
[00:06:36] Will: It's like, wow I mean, the fact that we have been finding them everywhere-
[00:06:38] Rod: Everywhere, in everything,
[00:06:40] Will: a lot ... it do- it does suggest perhaps... But let's check the lab. Like let's check the lab. And I don't doubt that microplastics are everywhere, but maybe, maybe they're- Maybe
[00:06:48] Rod: not as everywhere. Do you know the, um, the ultimate solution for them?
[00:06:52] Will: Metal gloves Don't
[00:06:53] Rod: wear gloves Don't wear gloves I love... I'd be like, "What if we take them off?"
[00:06:58] Will: Do you know, you know? Wow
[00:07:00] Rod: Which of course in some cases you probably should. So there are other kinds of gloves you can use that don't shed these things. But also it doesn't matter so much. When you're looking for your pathogens and stuff, you're not gonna confuse them with your stearate salts
[00:07:11] Will: So y- your point of this is not, don't worry about microplastics, but, uh-
[00:07:16] Rod: Ask more questions Don't, don't worry Just ask more questions.
[00:07:18] I mean, yeah, I'm not... The, the problem is of course those who are your anti-sciences and stuff and don't believe in environmental being bad and stuff could very easily leap upon this and go, "Well, see, it's all bullshit." That's not the point. The point is, 'cause it's good science, check Look,
[00:07:33] Will: yeah
[00:07:33] Rod: Check. And if you're wrong, admit it and find out what it really looks like, or at least get a better measure of what the microplastics
[00:07:42] Will: look like And then say thank you science for- Thank you science
[00:07:42] Rod: continue checking I hope they're right because that means there are less microplastics out there. I hope this is really widespread, Bob. I don't know yet. I really hope it's widespread in the labs
[00:07:50]
[00:07:51] Rod: Well, this is, um, it's an interesting warmup you've given me to this story. Onanism
[00:07:56] Will: Oh.
[00:07:56] Rod: So that's a fancy way- It's a
[00:07:57] Will: biblical practice.
[00:07:58] Rod: It is, and it's, it's a fancy [00:08:00] way for the, you know, the one person out there who doesn't realize. It's a fancy way to talk about interfering with oneself for the purposes usually of pleasure.
[00:08:06] Will: Sexual pleasure.
[00:08:07] Rod: Sexual pleasure. You can interfere
[00:08:08] Will: for other-
[00:08:09] Rod: That's true. And you mentioned the Bible, and I, I didn't realize this. I'd, I'd used the word before 'cause I felt terribly clever, but I never really looked up why it's called that.
[00:08:15] Will: Old Mr. Onan.
[00:08:17] Rod: Yeah, it was. So Book of Genesis 28:9. Yeah. Obviously you knew that.
[00:08:20] Onan, the son of Judah.
[00:08:22] Will: Ah, indeed.
[00:08:23] Rod: He, um, was obliged by levirate, levirate, levirate law.
[00:08:28] Will: Yeah, that's... Come, come to-
[00:08:29] Rod: Levirate marriage law ...
[00:08:30] Will: come to a little bit of science for your Bible
[00:08:32] Rod: studies. For your ancient Jewish laws. So he was obliged, 'cause his brother died, he was obliged to impregnate his brother's widow and then raise those babies in his brother's name, apparently.
[00:08:41] Yeah. It's like, "Oh, shit, my brother died. I'm gonna have to have intercourse- No ... and, uh, raise the
[00:08:44] Will: babies." I, I, in the old school, I can understand that- Sure ... uh, I don't know if it has to be the babies, but might be there a duty of care to your wife-in-law, in-law.
[00:08:52] Rod: Yeah, but including you gotta knock her up and look after the kids- Just in, just in
[00:08:55] but call them your brother's kids.
[00:08:57] Will: Oh, you call them that?
[00:08:58] Rod: Not your kids.
[00:08:59] Will: Oh.
[00:08:59] Rod: You raise them in the brother's name.
[00:09:00] Will: Oh, do you?
[00:09:01] Rod: Apparently.
[00:09:01] Will: Does the brother, like, have more cash or something lying around?
[00:09:03] Rod: Probably. It's the Bible. There's something nefarious going on. There's always something nefarious. I
[00:09:07] Will: don't feel like raising them in their name.
[00:09:08] I think that's weird.
[00:09:09] Rod: But the reason he has to.
[00:09:10] Will: Yeah, okay. But apparently he didn't-
[00:09:11] Rod: And so what does he do to solve the problem? He didn't want to. He didn't want to, so to avoid it, the quote is, "He spilled his semen on the ground when he went to his brother's wife so that he would not give offspring to his brother."
[00:09:19] So
[00:09:19] Will: that doesn't necessarily mean masturbation. That just means he's doing the business.
[00:09:23] Rod: He spilled it somehow. And- I think it was the pull-out method.
[00:09:25] Will: It's the pull-out method.
[00:09:26] Rod: He- Yeah, the, the implication is it wasn't.
[00:09:28] Will: And also he's leaning over the bed as well, I feel
[00:09:31] Rod: like. Of course he is. He was feeling faint.
[00:09:31] Like, he's
[00:09:32] Will: like... I feel like he could spill it on the bed, but he's like, "No, I'm gonna get it on the ground."
[00:09:37] Rod: No, it's going... All the dirt falls, you just sweep it away. Wait for it to harden and, I don't know.
[00:09:42] Will: Pry it off.
[00:09:43] Rod: But, um, it can be re- used to refer to female pleasure, self-pleasure as well, though it's more often, shockingly and not surprisingly, considered more negative when it's related to a lady because we're shits, basically.
[00:09:54] Anyway, you're more likely to call it masturbation, wanking, manual pleasure, yanking, whatever it is, and it's probably one of the most, two [00:10:00] most common ways humans have sex, so to speak. Yeah. That and the other one I think might be cloacal diving.
[00:10:05] Will: I think so.
[00:10:05] Rod: But I'm not sure.
[00:10:09] Will: You have said before, if there is a term for it or an interest for it, there is p*rn. Someone's
[00:10:14] Rod: into it.
[00:10:14] Will: I don't know if there is cloacal diving.
[00:10:16] Rod: I bet... I've told you, and I'll tell you again. If you can imagine it, someone's into it.
[00:10:19] Will: Not many humans have a cloaca.
[00:10:21] Rod: That's my T-shirt: "If you can imagine it, someone's into it."
[00:10:23] Will: Yeah, someone might be, but not many people have a cloaca.
[00:10:26] Rod: Like- Well, you need one. We did cover a story where-
[00:10:28] Will: Yeah ...
[00:10:28] Rod: there was uniting internally of certain- Yeah.
[00:10:30] Will: Well, it was someone who got pregnant through anal sex as well.
[00:10:33] Rod: Yeah, and there was a, a rip within the body. So you could kind of call that a, I don't know, artificial cloaca.
[00:10:39] Probably shouldn't.
[00:10:40] Will: Not called diving.
[00:10:41] Rod: No. So anyway, it's, um, definitely not limited to humans, though. Like masturbation is quite common in animals. And from this seminal work, you're welcome, 2022, Masturbation in the Animal Kingdom.
[00:10:51] Will: Ah.
[00:10:52] Rod: It's a... I, I'm sure you've read it. It's a wonder So they offer several hypotheses to explain the function of masturbation in other species.
[00:10:58] Will: Yes.
[00:10:58] Rod: I'm like, "Okay, let's talk about its function." So some of the observations include things like people suggesting masturbation improves ejaculate quality. I don't know, you keep it pumping, make it fresher. Decreases the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections. I assume that's also because you flush it out.
[00:11:14] A
[00:11:14] Will: cleaning function.
[00:11:15] Rod: Like I said, a cleaning function. Um, it may merely be a byproduct of sexual arousal and thus an alternate outlet to copulation.
[00:11:22] Will: Yeah, but I don't, I don't know why animals want an alternate outlet. Like, I don't think evolution says, "Let's have an alternate." I can understand those other things- Yeah
[00:11:28] evolution providing a reason for. Um-
[00:11:31] Rod: But if, if there's not a sufficiently a- arousing animal around you or willing, but you're feeling like a little bit of good stuff, then you do it yourself.
[00:11:38] Will: Yeah.
[00:11:39] Rod: Animals get
[00:11:39] Will: that. Yeah, I, I, you know, I'm just, I'm just trying to understand this evolutionary speaking that, um- Yeah, it
[00:11:43] Rod: gets
[00:11:44] Will: me
[00:11:44] I can understand if it helps keep you clean or it helps- Yeah ... you improve the sperm quality, absolutely that would leave to, lead to a fitter animal. But, uh-
[00:11:51] Rod: Well, maybe they just, they want, we want to breed animals getting less bored.
[00:11:54] Will: Oh, okay.
[00:11:55] Rod: Animals sitting there going, "Oh, nothing else to do," whack off.
[00:11:57] Will: And that's the thing- Now I'm interested
[00:11:58] that's the thing we're evolving [00:12:00] for.
[00:12:00] Rod: Yeah. Well, not us. The a- obviously we're, we're better than that because we are, you know, devout. And they say, "We propose that the widespread prevalence of masturbation in the animal kingdom may be better explained by viewing masturbation as primarily self-reinforcing behavior that promotes pleasure both in humans and non-human species."
[00:12:16] Sure. But unshockingly, the other thing I think is interesting they mention is the research on which all these theories are based is scarce, and it's heavily focused on male masturbation. Oh. Not female. What a
[00:12:25] Will: surprise.
[00:12:26] Rod: Imagine that, right? What a
[00:12:27] Will: surprise. What
[00:12:27] Rod: a surprise. Oh, ladies doing, huh. So there are heaps of animals that do it.
[00:12:30] Various primates are classic for it. Yep. There are others. And speaking of videos, you recommended a video a moment ago. There's one here, um, a tortoise doing the business to itself.
[00:12:40] Will: A tortoise? How quickly?
[00:12:41] Rod: Oh, it's... This video will fucking break your heart . It's, it's in the show notes. It's a YouTube video.
[00:12:47] It's called "Speedy's Big O... Turtlegasm." And the camera angles are close and clear
[00:12:54] Will: I don't need to see this
[00:12:55] Rod: It's phenomenal. Like, I really, I expected something quite simple
[00:12:58] Will: I, I am very much imagining a cartoon tortoise at this point Nope And I'm just try- and, and of course, I, this is an actual, I'm, I'm just trying to imagine It is
[00:13:04] those little hoofs trying to do a thing
[00:13:07] Rod: It defies description. I mean, the, the appendage itself is wildly multifaceted and full of things Oh, yeah And it sounds like a, like a mother and a daughter or something filming it, and they're just delighted
[00:13:17] Will: Wow.
[00:13:17] Rod: Sure And then Speedy goes kabooch, and it's prolific.
[00:13:20] It's remarkable. So anyway, tortoises. Apparently, camels rub their penises in the sand, but what else are they gonna do? They're in the desert. What else are they gonna rub them into? Their hoofs. Hooves? Dogs we know like to hump a leg, a pillow or whatever. Um, apparently also African ground squirrels are into it, you know?
[00:13:35] Yeah I, I knew you were gonna bring that up. List goes on and on and on. But today I wanna talk about birds
[00:13:39] Will: Sure '
[00:13:40] Rod: Cause obviously, apparently it's really common among birds
[00:13:44] Will: Really?
[00:13:44] Rod: Yeah. I, I'd had no idea. So according to bird masturbation experts Proud, proud parents out there going
[00:13:51] Will: There's a lot of science out there.
[00:13:52] There's a lot of science
[00:13:53] Rod: There, there is. I mean, there's stuff like this, I'm thinking, "Wow, you specialized."
[00:13:57] Will: Well, someone's gotta do it
[00:13:59] Rod: No, they don't, but they [00:14:00] can do it. That's what's important
[00:14:01] Will: Yeah, okay, that's true
[00:14:02] Rod: So they say, look, avian self-pleasure is usually a rather inelegant affair
[00:14:06] Will: An inelegant affair
[00:14:07] Rod: Yeah, inelegant
[00:14:08] Will: They aren't dainty when they're doing it
[00:14:10] Rod: Well, they say in which-
[00:14:11] Will: Can I just check?
[00:14:11] I mean, well, you're gonna talk me through the method here?
[00:14:13] Rod: Of course. Of course.
[00:14:14] Will: Beak or wings or talons?
[00:14:16] Rod: Well, here we go. Apparently, the bird rubs their cloaca against an object like a branch, a twig, or a toy, 'cause sometimes they find a toy or in captivity. Yeah. And it's, uh, quote, "Often accompanied by a lot of flapping and self-satisfied vocalizations."
[00:14:31] Will: A lot of flapping.
[00:14:33] Rod: Flucka, flucka, flucka, flucka. Yeah, yeah, yeah! This twig is perfect for my genital stimulation.
[00:14:40] Will: That's great.
[00:14:42] Rod: So this might explain why it's often been treated as abnormal behavior when captive birds do it, because apparently it looks quite inelegant and noisy and- Sure, sure ... annoying. And they say particularly parrots.
[00:14:52] Apparently parrots really stand out. Yeah,
[00:14:53] Will: but parrots are the kind of thing that w- they-- Parrots, I hate to say, like, just by their behavior, they're a master- masturbatory species. Fuck yeah, they are. Like, like they're in the category in advance, you'd go, yeah, they, they're into that. Of course. They're
[00:15:04] Rod: shit stirrers.
[00:15:04] They'll drop stuff on you. Yeah. They'll mess with you. They'll eat shit you don't want to eat. Yeah, yeah. And they will beat off whenever they want to.
[00:15:09] Will: Indeed.
[00:15:10] Rod: Preferably if you're watching.
[00:15:11] Will: Like they're the primates of the bird kingdom.
[00:15:13] Rod: And, and you know they're making eye contact the whole time. They're just like, "No, if you're gonna look at me, you're gonna look at me."
[00:15:17] Will: Well, they can look both sides of their heads, so. Like they can do eye contact with a lot of the world.
[00:15:22] Rod: Haven't you had that exper-- No, we're not gonna get into that. They claim, at least in captivity, it had been assumed that the, the masturbation was due to, like, high stress, bad health or terrible environments.
[00:15:30] Yeah,
[00:15:30] Will: yeah. Sure, sure. This is just hippy scientists- This is bizarre behavior ... blaming captivity when it's just that the birds like doing it.
[00:15:36] Rod: Well, I know. But so they say that at least so far, bird keepers would regularly discourage masturbation in their captives via punishment, veterinary interventions such as- Yeah, yeah
[00:15:46] diet or care changes, and sometimes even drugs and surgery. You've been beating off, you're a bad bird or you're a broken bird. We will correct you.
[00:15:52] Will: I, I
[00:15:53] Rod: It's great, huh?
[00:15:54] Will: Look, I, I appreciate, you know, they got the, the queen coming over to visit their bird sanctuary, and all [00:16:00] the birds are whacking off.
[00:16:01] Rod: Please don't, don't masturbate in front of
[00:16:02] Will: His Majesty.
[00:16:02] Not now, please. Not now.
[00:16:04] Rod: One is not amused.
[00:16:06] Will: Like there might be a time and a place for these things, and birds, birds are not a time and a place sort of creature.
[00:16:10] Rod: Well, they are. This is the time, and this is the place. I'm here, and ooh, look at the time. But so apparently the question is, is it true that captive birds beating off are demonstrating abnormal behavior?
[00:16:22] Mm-hmm. And therefore, should you curtail it? This is the question that was- Well- ... being asked.
[00:16:26] Will: No, because it's-- Well, this is me. Should you curtail it? Like this sounds a little bit biblical. Does it? If I don't curtail it, God will punish someone here, and I-- it sounds ... What are you doing?
[00:16:35] Rod: The bird got-- Well, it's-- Would you have a quiet chat?
[00:16:37] Talk me through it. Why are you doing that?
[00:16:39] Will: Why? Why?
[00:16:39] Rod: What's up, champ? You appear to be rubbing against that toy too often.
[00:16:42] Will: No, it was more the talking a bird out of having a wank. It, it feels like this is futile. Like I- There's, there's many things on which you can spend your time.
[00:16:50] Rod: Talk a bird out of anything.
[00:16:51] Go
[00:16:51] Will: on. Well, indeed. Indeed.
[00:16:54] Rod: Although, no, I've had magpies that we've made friends with walk into my kitchen, and I have to say, "Out you pop," and I talk to them like I talk to my dogs, and they kind of go, "Yeah, fair call."
[00:17:01] Will: No, but that's a magpie. That's a smart bird. But
[00:17:02] Rod: I can talk to them. I
[00:17:03] Will: talk them out of it.
[00:17:04] All right. Can you-- Next time you talk them out of masturbation.
[00:17:05] Rod: I will.
[00:17:06] Will: You just-
[00:17:06] Rod: Not in the house ...
[00:17:07] Will: give it a
[00:17:07] Rod: go. Not on my watch. Not under my roof.
[00:17:09] Will: Not in the house, sweetie.
[00:17:10] Rod: Not
[00:17:10] Will: under
[00:17:11] Rod: my roof.
[00:17:11] Will: Out you go. Out you go. And they warble back at you with that beautiful song.
[00:17:14] Rod: They do. They've walked into my house and looked at me going, "Where's the food?"
[00:17:16] And then gone, "Back up, back up, back up" And I'm like, "What are you bitching at me for? You're inside." "Off." So anyway, um, turns out masturbation in birds has been largely unexplored by the scientific community. Mm-hmm. It's not a common topic until recently. And one reason was apparently cloacas were assumed to have shitloads less nerve clusters than like human bits, so-
[00:17:37] Will: Well, no one's mapped the cloacal
[00:17:39] Rod: nerve endings yet.
[00:17:39] No, we've only just done the clitoris, so why would we rush to the cloaca? But they reckon that maybe they're not that sensitive to it, so if they're masturbating, there's something else going on because they, they can't be that into it.
[00:17:48] Will: Maybe.
[00:17:49] Rod: Yeah, well, this is, this is speculation. So a new bit of research.
[00:17:52] They've fixed this. They've sorted it. They investigate the distribution and evolutionary history of masturbation in birds for the first time. [00:18:00] Um, again, though, saying your parents, "What are you doing at uni?" "Bird wanking."
[00:18:05] Will: But the evolutionary history of it.
[00:18:06] Rod: Yep
[00:18:08] Will: Through time.
[00:18:08] Rod: Yep.
[00:18:09] Will: Old birds.
[00:18:10] Rod: Don't tell your grandfather.
[00:18:11] He's not into it.
[00:18:12] Will: I'm looking for fossils of, of birds that wanked.
[00:18:15] Rod: Yeah, whatever. It's not copro, it's coprolite or-
[00:18:17] Will: Oh, no, just saying, you know, if they di- died in the act
[00:18:20] Rod: or something like that. Spermulite? Died in the act. Well- So they found, they found masturbation is widespread across birds, and there's a strong evolutionary history to this.
[00:18:27] I won't go into details, long and boring. There are more records of masturbation in male birds, but it does happen in both of every age. It's more common in species that have multiple partners than ones that kind of monogamize. Oh,
[00:18:40] Will: okay.
[00:18:40] Rod: Yeah. And they reckon there might be evolutionary and procreational benefits- Yeah, yeah, yeah
[00:18:43] cleaning, et cetera, like I mentioned earlier. But the big thing is, it's less common in captivity than in the wild.
[00:18:48] Will: Really?
[00:18:49] Rod: Less common in
[00:18:50] Will: captivity. There you
[00:18:50] Rod: go. Yeah. So screw you, you bird prudes. They're doing it in captivity. If they're doing it eight times a day in captivity, the same bird out in the wild-
[00:19:00] Will: Nine
[00:19:01] Rod: or-- Nine. Exactly. One and a, nine and a half. Just not the fruition. So it's neither unnatural and it is not a consequence of captivity.
[00:19:10] Will: That's great.
[00:19:11] Rod: Yeah. So bird keepers, stop stopping them. Stop it. Um, unless they're really going extreme, they're chronically masturbating, they're causing, you know, they have or they're getting health problems, psychological issues, et cetera, obviously.
[00:19:21] Will: Breaking your house or something.
[00:19:23] Rod: Breaking your house, yeah. So the scientists reckon, they've kind of come up to the, the conclusion, birds clearly get some pleasure from doing it. It might be important for breeding programs and avian well-being to leave them the hell alone. And they conclude, "While sexual pleasure may not be exactly the same experience as for mammals, it is wildly premature to dismiss the idea that birds also feel pleasure."
[00:19:46] And I'm not gonna lie, I never thought about it. I figured you seen animals beating off, I'm like, "Of course they like it." You know, it never made me think, "Oh, there must be other reasons." I'm like- I would- ... "They must just like it." I
[00:19:55] Will: would imagine, I, I would imagine that, uh, what's, what's the old thing? You know, [00:20:00] avoiding, avoiding pain and heading towards pleasure-
[00:20:03] Rod: Yeah
[00:20:03] Will: is a pretty old evolutionary instinct. Yeah. Fucking worms
[00:20:06] Rod: do it.
[00:20:07] Will: Indeed. Worms masturbate?
[00:20:09] Rod: Yep.
[00:20:09] Will: Oh, great.
[00:20:10] Rod: But I don't know if it's pleasure or pain, though.
[00:20:12] Will: Oh. '
[00:20:13] Rod: Cause worms feel a lot of shame. Avoiding pain. Avoiding pain. Worms feel a lot of shame. I'll cover that next episode
[00:20:18] Big numbers hurt our brains. Maybe they don't hurt yours. Maybe you have a special-- I know you have a special brain. Oh. But in this sense, Elon Musk, as we all know now, if you're, if you're listening to this in the vague present, he just became the first US dollar trillionaire in history.
[00:20:30] Will: Ah, that's true, US dollar tri- 'cause there's been plenty of trillionaires.
[00:20:33] Rod: Yeah.
[00:20:34] Will: Like you go to Zimbabwe, and it's, ain't hard.
[00:20:36] Rod: German mark straight after World War II- Yeah ... or just before.
[00:20:39] Will: Yeah.
[00:20:39] Rod: You're like, "What do you need?" "Oh, I need a wheelbarrow of million-dollar bills to buy a loaf of bread." And you're like, "Eh, we've run out of bread."
[00:20:44] Will: Yeah. Okay. US do- U- US
[00:20:45] Rod: dollar. US dollar trillionaire in two thousand twenty-six, and we know this 'cause his, the share offering for SpaceX went ballistic, which is hilarious.
[00:20:52] That's what he does. He offers shares in stuff that may or may not work, and then boom. But
[00:20:55] Will: look-
[00:20:55] Rod: Anyway, I don't even know how to think about the number one trillion. Like, I mean, I know it's big, and I kinda go goggle bergo blugen.
[00:21:01] Will: I, I-- and if you were to swim in it, like if the Scrooge McDuck scenario where you're swimming in a-
[00:21:06] Rod: In coins
[00:21:06] Will: in coins-
[00:21:07] Rod: Which
[00:21:07] Will: is- Like how big is your swimming pool?
[00:21:09] Rod: Large. Going back to astronomical units. Yeah. It's just what's, uh... You've seen the realest version of diving into the pool of coins.
[00:21:17] Will: Oh, no, it would hurt.
[00:21:18] Rod: Oh, no, you smash yourself to bits. But so it's a one with 12 zeros. Like that kinda helps. So I can look at it, and I write it out.
[00:21:25] I kinda go, "Okay, one zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, et cetera." Yeah, yeah, okay. But I was re- I was relieved to find out when I think about a trillion, I think about infinity, I'm like, look, I understand the idea of it, but I don't know how to get my head around it. Okay. I just don't. I just don't. And I was relieved to find out that it's not just me who has problems with this.
[00:21:38] So there was a study in two thousand and eight. It starts like this. It says, "Look, if we were asked to map out the numbers one to ten on a line, we'd probably leave the same gap between one and two, two and three, three and four, et cetera." Yeah. Like a ruler. That's what we'd probably do. I would.
[00:21:50] Will: Yes.
[00:21:50] Rod: I reckon you would, too.
[00:21:51] Will: Yes. Okay. Thanks, science. Is this it?
[00:21:54] Rod: But-
[00:21:55] Will: Oh, okay. Okay ...
[00:21:56] Rod: there's more. Indigenous Amazonian [00:22:00] folks who had not been Western educated, and they tested on, you know, your untouched native types- Yeah ... which is, you know, a classic trope. They were given numbers to place on a line in various forms, as they put it, sets of dots, spoken words, tone sequences.
[00:22:12] I don't know how you do that, but- Yeah ... different ways to represent the numbers, and they said, "Place them along this line." And they tended to place larger numbers closer together at one end and smaller numbers further apart at the other.
[00:22:21] Will: Oh,
[00:22:22] Rod: okay. So one and two further apart, nine and 10 closer together.
[00:22:25] Will: Well, I'm with them. Like the gap- Of course you are ... the gap between nine and 10 is, uh, actually smaller than the gap between one and two.
[00:22:30] Rod: It's not.
[00:22:31] Will: In percentage-wise, it is.
[00:22:32] Rod: Yeah, but it's not.
[00:22:33] Will: No. Absolutely it's not. So you go from one to two, you're doubling. Yeah. And to nine to 10- And
[00:22:36] Rod: that is
[00:22:36] Will: the logic
[00:22:36] you're, you're adding a, adding a small
[00:22:37] Rod: fraction. Yeah, and that is the logic that kind of messes with the system because that's what happens. As you get bigger and bigger, people kind of look at absolute versus relative-
[00:22:45] Will: Yeah,
[00:22:45] Rod: yeah ... relationships. Exactly what you said. But it seems also then when you get to the point of estimating the leap from a million to a billion and a billion to a trillion, it really messes with people's brains.
[00:22:56] Will: People are like, "Uh, not much different."
[00:22:57] Rod: Yeah, they go from a million to a billion, you add three zeros, that's cool. A billion to a trillion, you add three more, so it seems like the same kind of leap.
[00:23:03] Will: Okay, yeah.
[00:23:04] Rod: Three zeros, three zeros, same thing. But it absolutely isn't because obviously counting zeros won't help you.
[00:23:09] If you're a millionaire, you have to earn another 999 million to become a billionaire.
[00:23:13] Will: Mm-hmm. If
[00:23:14] Rod: you're a billionaire, you need to get another 999,999 million-
[00:23:19] Will: Yes ...
[00:23:19] Rod: to become a trillionaire. That's, um- Not the same
[00:23:22] Will: Yeah, okay
[00:23:23] Rod: They're different. They're different. So they put this in the study. As soon as we confronted, we're confronted with values we can no longer visualize, we fall back on this intuitive pattern recognition, the kind of thing, exactly what you kind of described.
[00:23:34] Apparently, this leads us to underestimate the true magnitude of the wealth of the super-rich. Yeah, okay. We just kind of don't really get our heads around it. So there's a suggestion. I'll give you two suggestions. I'll give you their suggestion, and then the one I found, which I like more.
[00:23:45] Will: Mm.
[00:23:45] Rod: How do you visualize it?
[00:23:46] One is you convert numbers into, or the dollars, whatever it is, to the unit of time. So you say, okay, one dollar equals one second.
[00:23:53] Will: Oh, okay. Yeah, okay. Yep.
[00:23:55] Rod: So that means one hour, thirty-six hundred bucks.
[00:23:58] Will: Yep. Okay.
[00:23:58] Rod: Okay, cool. You [00:24:00] go, like, a million dollars, eleven and a half days.
[00:24:02] Will: All right. Okay. Mm-hmm.
[00:24:04] Rod: One billion dollars.
[00:24:05] Will: Mm.
[00:24:05] Rod: Wanna guess?
[00:24:06] Will: I'm, I'm guessing it, it, I... It's gonna be a lot of your life, isn't it?
[00:24:10] Rod: Not my case. It's about a quarter of my life.
[00:24:12] Will: A quarter of your life,
[00:24:13] Rod: okay. So thirty-one and a half years. Yeah,
[00:24:14] Will: yeah.
[00:24:15] Rod: A trillion dollars.
[00:24:16] Will: Well, we're talking a thousand times that. Yeah, yeah. So thirty-six thousand years. Yeah,
[00:24:20] Rod: yeah.
[00:24:20] Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two thousand years.
[00:24:23] Will: Yeah.
[00:24:23] Rod: And so they think, they say, "Oh, that might help." And actually, the moment I read it, I kinda went, "Okay, that helps me somehow qualitatively make more sense of that number." Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then I thought, there's gotta be other ways. So I went to, you know, Al Jazeera.
[00:24:34] We all know this site. Al Jazeera's handy what-can-you-buy-for-a-trillion-US-dollars website. They've got a little calculator there. It's great.
[00:24:40] Will: Is it, like, Sydney?
[00:24:41] Rod: Oh, it's be- it's better. It's better. And they've got this big, "This is estimates. These are all estimates." Well-of course it is Yeah ... point in time, blah, blah, blah.
[00:24:49] Will: Oh, and, and once you start throwing your trillion dollars around, people raise the price. Like It's true. Like- How
[00:24:53] Rod: mu- how much do you have to spend? I don't wanna tell
[00:24:55] Will: you ... if you come and say, "I wanna buy Sydney," and, like, yesterday, they would've sold for a trillion, but now they're like- Ooh ... "Well, we're on
[00:25:00] Rod: the market."
[00:25:00] Gonna be five trillion. A trillion, they wanted it? So here, here are some of the examples. How many basically American McDonald's burgers?
[00:25:07] Will: Well, a trillion.
[00:25:08] Rod: 200 billion.
[00:25:09] Will: Okay, great. Sure.
[00:25:12] Rod: Okay, how about iPhone 17 Pro Maxes?
[00:25:15] Will: Well, yeah, do the conversion.
[00:25:16] Rod: 834 billion.
[00:25:17] Will: Yeah. Okay.
[00:25:19] Rod: Or million, sorry, million.
[00:25:20] Will: Okay.
[00:25:20] Rod: Barrels of crude oil.
[00:25:22] Will: Yeah.
[00:25:22] Rod: So Elon could buy 12 and a half billion barrels of crude oil. Like, what? Are there that many? Yeah. You could fund global humanitarian aid for 22 years, all aid- All
[00:25:35] Will: of it, yeah ...
[00:25:36] Rod: and have 32 billion left over.
[00:25:37] Will: That's a lot of money left over. Yeah, it's like- Why'd they leave that amount left over?
[00:25:40] Rod: Oh, no, it's just 'cause they did the calculation. It's
[00:25:42] Will: a rounding error. Yeah, like- When $32 billion is your rounding error,
[00:25:45] Rod: see that's the- Yeah, that's what, that's what's left over. I think they valued each year at about 44 billion. Yeah, okay, yeah. So it's like, "Oh, you got 32 billion left." It's like, "Cheers, I'll, I don't know.
[00:25:52] I'll, I'll go buy pie or something." "Get comfy." Global famine relief, not humanitarian aid, global famine relief, [00:26:00] 166 years-
[00:26:01] Will: Yeah ...
[00:26:02] Rod: at the current rates. Or more familiar to us, and you'd know this too, how many James Webb telescopes do you think that is?
[00:26:07] Will: Ooh. It's gotta be 100.
[00:26:08] Rod: It is 100. 100 James Webb telescopes for a trillion dollars.
[00:26:12] Yeah, how
[00:26:12] Will: many, how many... What are they called? The curved space telescope. Curved space telescope. Is that's the-
[00:26:17] Rod: I don't know ...
[00:26:17] Will: that's the one out, out, out in
[00:26:19] Rod: the- You didn't give us a price, did you?
[00:26:20] Will: No, I didn't.
[00:26:21] Rod: Six-
[00:26:21] Will: I don't think they've worked out a price yet ...
[00:26:22] Rod: six cost units. M- the one I like best probably is they say, "If you burn through $1 million every day", a million a day.
[00:26:30] Will: That is, that's hard to spend.
[00:26:31] Rod: That's- That's what I was thinking, like, "How the fuck do I spend a million a
[00:26:33] Will: day?" Certainly, and, and you would go, "Okay, I could buy a house every day," but that gets tedious. Like, that's, there's-
[00:26:38] Rod: Imagine every morning you wake and go, "I'm gonna buy another house, and it's gotta be a million bucks.
[00:26:41] Fucking I don't care." If you spent a million a day, we're ignoring the fact that if it's sitting in a bank, it's earning z- a bajillion in interest. Yeah, yeah. 2,700 years to spend a trillion dollars- ... at a million dollars a day.
[00:26:51] Will: So you could literally live the fastest life you could possibly imagine.
[00:26:55] Rod: Beyond sanity.
[00:26:56] Will: Yeah.
[00:26:57] Rod: Like, beyond imagination- Yeah ... so much amount of money. Of course, it's all ephemeral and, you know- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... the stock market's rising and falling, but, like It's kinda fun to think about- Mm ... but not in a... It, it's not money anymore. I,
[00:27:07] Will: I... There, there was one metaphor that I heard once that I thought was a, a really nice one for...
[00:27:11] And it didn't do Elon Musk, and I don't have the exact numbers in here.
[00:27:14] Rod: Yeah.
[00:27:14] Will: But it's like, if you say, say to people, "Oh, what do you think is the world income distribution?" They give, they give a certain sort of picture. Like
[00:27:22] Rod: who gets what
[00:27:23] Will: and what- Yeah, how much, how much is owned by the, the top 1%, or the top- Oh, yeah, yeah
[00:27:26] 5%. Yeah. Um, what should the world's income distribution be? And they, they, they do a different version. But ba- basically to do this, then they look at distribution on a plane. 'Cause in a, in a- Like an airplane? An airplane. A big international airplane. You've got, you've got four different classes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:27:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've got the economy seats. Yeah. You've got the premium economy. You've got the business and the first class.
[00:27:44] Rod: Yeah.
[00:27:44] Will: And so you- Is
[00:27:45] Rod: this first class the one with the shower, or...?
[00:27:47] Will: Uh, I, I don't know.
[00:27:49] Rod: Just wanna be clear.
[00:27:50] Will: But what they, what they say is, so people look at, say, a big international plane, and they say, "Okay, that's fair."
[00:27:56] You know, sort of first class people have maybe three or four [00:28:00] times the amount of room as- Yeah ... as an economy seat.
[00:28:01] Rod: Yeah.
[00:28:02] Will: Um- Yeah, no. And -
[00:28:04] Rod: No ...
[00:28:04] Will: and it, it's, it's shockingly not like
[00:28:06] Rod: that. No, first, first class people in this equation have 9,000 planes.
[00:28:10] Will: Well, well, that's the Elon version. Yeah. But in, in, in reality, like, it's like if you had a, a first class which is, like, the 1%- Mm
[00:28:16] they have half the plane.
[00:28:17] Rod: Yeah.
[00:28:18] Will: And they're, they're, they're literally walking around in so much room, and- Yeah ... and everyone else is squeezed in the back. Yeah,
[00:28:23] Rod: they're looking for shit to put in the plane.
[00:28:24] Will: Yeah.
[00:28:24] Rod: They've
[00:28:24] Will: got so much space. So, so I thought that plane metaphor gave a sort of really visual representation.
[00:28:28] Mm. Mm. 'Cause people understand and, and recognize, okay, if we have different sorts of wealth in society- Yeah ... it's not the worst that some pe- there are, like, the first class, and they have four times the amount. Yeah. But it's nothing like that. It's nothing-
[00:28:40] Rod: You got 20 times the seat- 20 ... than
[00:28:42] Will: what I have? Um, yeah.
[00:28:44] Rod: That doesn't seem nice. But then you go, "Well, they can afford it." You go, "Mm, it's..."
[00:28:48] Will: Mm. Yeah, well, maybe, maybe, maybe we can do something about that.
[00:28:50] Rod: We can?
[00:28:51] Will: Yeah.
[00:28:52] Rod: Well, if you donate, hit donate. We'll put up a Donate button, and if you give us $1 trillion, we'll donate, what? 82% of it.
[00:28:58] Will: Sure, yeah.
[00:28:59] Rod: Fuck it, 84. I'm feeling generous.
[00:29:00] Will: I'll donate 99%.
[00:29:02] Rod: Look at you.
[00:29:02] Will: Look at me.
[00:29:03] Rod: Giving away my money.
[00:29:05]
[00:29:07] Rod: Alzheimer's sucks, right?
[00:29:08] Will: Ugh.
[00:29:08] Rod: It's poop. But here's a good news story, kinda. So there's a, there was a story very recently about a 83-year-old woman, apparently Japanese-American, as you know the Americans are fond of co-labeling. So for the last five years, horribly afflicted by Alzheimer's, like 24/7 care, communicated in single syllables.
[00:29:25] Will: Yeah.
[00:29:25] Rod: Struggled to walk, urinary incontinence at-
[00:29:28] Will: Yeah ...
[00:29:28] Rod: great levels, you know, all the terrible things. Then recently, with the consent of her son, she was given an amount of the Enigma strain of the highly potent magic mushroom species.
[00:29:36] Will: The Enigma strain?
[00:29:37] Rod: The Enigma strain.
[00:29:38] Will: That's the one Churchill had.
[00:29:39] Rod: That's all he ever had. With his breakfast champagne.
[00:29:42] Will: It's an enigma wrapped in a rizzle, riddle wrapped in a-
[00:29:44] Rod: Wrapped in a rizzle-dizzle? The species is Psilocybe cubensis, for those of you playing at home. So-
[00:29:51] Will: The cubist one?
[00:29:52] Rod: Yeah, yeah. It's the Picasso version of the- Yeah.
[00:29:54] Will: You only have Picasso versions
[00:29:55] Rod: yeah. Suddenly everyone's eyes are on the same side of their head and stuff like
[00:29:58] Will: that. Or do you get the little picassos?
[00:29:59] Rod: That's the [00:30:00] mushrooms. Different mushrooms.
[00:30:01] Will: Oh, different mushrooms.
[00:30:02] Rod: Different mushrooms. Standard dosages of this. So microdose, .1 to .2 grams. Common is, is mu- if you're being recreational, one to two and a half grams.
[00:30:10] Will: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:11] Rod: So they gave her five.
[00:30:12] Will: Why did they start there?
[00:30:13] Rod: I don't know. It's a, a bunch of these-
[00:30:16] Will: Was it, was it a little bit of what's the worst that can happen? Well- Were these medical professionals doing this?
[00:30:20] Rod: Well, again, y- yeah, ish. Oh, okay. It's, it's a little bit ambiguous. It's a little bit ambiguous. Okay.
[00:30:25] It was written up, this study or this case report was written up in a journal. Yeah, look, it's not clear to me why, A, they gave it to her at all, and B, that amount. It's not clear to me. She initially began sweating profusely and entered a prolonged deep sleep-like state. I'm not shocked But then they say about 19 hours later, her facial expressions became much more animated.
[00:30:44] Will: Mm.
[00:30:45] Rod: She made prolonged eye contact, smiled responsibly, and moved with greater agility.
[00:30:49] Will: Oh.
[00:30:49] Rod: She started speaking in complete sentences.
[00:30:51] Will: Uh, right.
[00:30:52] Rod: Initiated a conversation that included memories and reflections of the past, and that lasted around four hours. Over the next few days, her family or caregivers at least said she started recognising family members, walked more independently, could dress herself, smiled and made eye contact, spontaneously entered conversations, and regained bladder control.
[00:31:11] Will: Wow. Like, that's quite a lot of difference.
[00:31:13] Rod: Oh, just a tad.
[00:31:14] Will: Like, that's-
[00:31:15] Rod: Yeah, huge ...
[00:31:16] Will: and just, you know, the normal understanding of the trajectory of Alzheimer's, dementia, those kinds of things. It's not, it's not- It's not. There, there is a, a one-way trajectory here.
[00:31:23] Rod: Yeah.
[00:31:24] Will: Like-
[00:31:24] Rod: And like many, uh, many of us-
[00:31:26] Will: Yeah
[00:31:26] Rod: I've, I've seen it firsthand, and it's, um-
[00:31:28] Will: And mostly what people- It's what happens ... are talking about is slowing the slide or delaying the slide, but- Yeah ... not getting-
[00:31:34] Rod: There ain't no reverse talk going on- No ... as a rule. So it seemed like a month later she was still showing she had improved function, but it might've been dropping a bit.
[00:31:41] So they said, "Give her three more grams."
[00:31:42] Will: Sure.
[00:31:43] Rod: After this, she selected and put on coordinated clothing independently.
[00:31:47] Will: Oh, coordinated clothing.
[00:31:48] Rod: Yeah. So it wasn't just like a, a shoe on her ear and one glove or something. She
[00:31:52] Will: would actually- Oh, no. It's, it's a matching twin set. Like-
[00:31:53] Rod: Yeah, yeah. She's wearing a...
[00:31:54] She would never wear a Gucci with a Versace- No, gee ... because she's not an animal.
[00:31:57] Will: No.
[00:31:58] Rod: She'd go to the television room [00:32:00] waiting for her breakfast. She'd recognize contextual details, they say, such as a rented car.
[00:32:04] Will: That car's rented.
[00:32:05] Rod: Yeah. And I- ... I, I'm like, "Wait!" It's a
[00:32:10] Will: rental. It's a...
[00:32:10] Rod: Exactly. It's a...
[00:32:11] Will: Don't be showing off in a rental.
[00:32:13] Rod: Exactly. Get away.
[00:32:14] Will: I know you can just get it in the shop.
[00:32:16] Rod: Buy one, you jerk. I, yeah, I don't, um, I don't understand that detail. But anyway, she also would notice when someone was unexpectedly absent from her environment. Repeatedly remained continent for a long time when her incontinence had normally been quite routine.
[00:32:29] Yeah.
[00:32:30] Will: Consistent.
[00:32:30] Rod: Yep. And apparently she also described surfing with her son on a peaceful island. I'm not quite sure how that fits in.
[00:32:35] Will: I, I feel she described it. She said, "We did a thing at a time in the past." Let's assume that.
[00:32:39] Rod: Or let's not forget, she's on mushrooms.
[00:32:41] Will: Yeah. We're surfing.
[00:32:42] Rod: It's the most she was doing right now.
[00:32:44] It's not clear. So what the fuck's going on is obviously a big question. So one guy, David Nutt, he's at Imperial College London, he said-
[00:32:50] Will: Oh ...
[00:32:51] Rod: he's heard of similar reports of psychedelic. He didn't do this work. He didn't do this thing.
[00:32:54] Will: No, but we've talked to David Nutt years ago.
[00:32:55] Rod: I was thinking that name is familiar.
[00:32:57] Will: Yeah.
[00:32:57] Rod: We did talk to him.
[00:32:58] Will: Many years ago.
[00:32:58] Rod: So anyway, he, he'd heard of similar reports of psychedelics improving brain functions in people with neurodegenerative decline. Mm. But he says the accounts don't prove psychedelics promote longevity, maintain good brain function, et cetera, but they are consistent with their apparently known anti-inflammatory actions.
[00:33:14] Will: Okay.
[00:33:15] Rod: So it's kind of like could be, couldn't be, could be a bit, but yes.
[00:33:17] Will: Sure. I just want to pause for a second. Longevity is not necessarily the goal here.
[00:33:21] Rod: No.
[00:33:21] Will: Like-
[00:33:22] Rod: No ...
[00:33:22] Will: 10 years of no real function versus three years of you get- The function ... back. I can imagine people making that trade-off.
[00:33:29] Rod: Yeah.
[00:33:30] Will: Longevity is not necessarily the goal.
[00:33:31] Rod: It's not. So there's theories that say, look, uh, psilocybin alters communication between brain networks. loosens activity patterns, which allows surviving neural circuits to reconnect. So that's cool. In animal studies, it says it might promote neuroplasticity and reduce inflammation. Wow. So it's, um, so it's not wildly out of the realm of possibility.
[00:33:49] So we've got another guy, Albert Garcia-Romeu. He's at John Hopkins, and he doesn't study... Sorry, he does study psilocybin stuff on depression, people with mild cognitive impairment and early [00:34:00] Alzheimer's. And he says, "Look, it's unclear what psilocybin effects it could have in the long term." It's like, okay. He says, "I have a litany of concerns about the validity of the report and the ethics of this overall."
[00:34:08] I'm like-
[00:34:09] Will: Mm-hmm ...
[00:34:10] Rod: sure. "The paper only described the month after the session, does not specify any longer term follow-up or how long or whether improvements persisted." Okay. And a big part of this skepticism beyond it being just on one person, the case report lists the author's affiliation as, uh, the medical department of the Asocio Cruz de Anc- Uh, in São Paulo, which is, um, appears to be religious and philosophically oriented organization.
[00:34:33] Apparently, this is a, a need for criticism, and conservative scientists basically worried they're a bunch of hippies 'cause their Instagram apparently had been gushing about this-
[00:34:40] Will: Okay ...
[00:34:41] Rod: case report, and also they've got posts on things like, "Plato's Cave is a metaphor for awakening human consciousness amid the illusions of everyday life."
[00:34:49] Will: Oh, okay.
[00:34:49] Rod: And also how they p- reported how people in the group meeting had introspective experiences with psilocybin use from ancestral visions to overcoming barriers of ego. Now, to me, that's a statement of fact. I don't know if that's necessarily a legitimate critique of what they're doing.
[00:35:02] Will: Yeah.
[00:35:03] Rod: But for your more conservative science types, you can see them going, "
[00:35:06] Will: Well,
[00:35:06] Rod: really, hippies."
[00:35:06] Will: I, I think- "Hippies" ... they, they could well be hippies, but I think, like in the realm of the case report, if you've done some, uh, experimental science, and it suggests something that you could inquire more-
[00:35:17] Rod: Yeah ...
[00:35:18] Will: then that's worth inquiring more.
[00:35:19] Rod: Uh, look, I agree. I-
[00:35:20] Will: I, I don't think this is the cure necessarily, but jeez,
[00:35:24] Rod: like- This smells to me a bit, it's still that kind of, but it's mushrooms.
[00:35:26] That's just the impression I get. 'Cause you've got then legitimate and august folks saying f- they found things like new connections can form, and networks can change in response to the- Yeah ... administration of the drug. It can temporarily reshuffle how networks communicate. It also has been found to help nerve cell growth, and we s- mentioned inflammation and brain network activity.
[00:35:44] But whether this occurs in people with Alzheimer's is unclear. It's like, well, so we're finding out.
[00:35:48] Will: Yeah.
[00:35:49] Rod: And the Garcia-Ramos, who I mentioned a moment ago- Mm ... he goes on and says... Look, this is the one I find the most dumb, honestly. I, I could be wrong, but to me I'm like, "Come on." He says, "Her diagnosis was based on symptom assessment, not more [00:36:00] reliable methods such as biomarker testing or neuroimaging."
[00:36:03] Will: Okay.
[00:36:04] Rod: Who fucking cares?
[00:36:05] Will: Yeah, no, no. And remembering the point of any cure or any treatment is to reduce symptoms.
[00:36:09] Rod: Yeah.
[00:36:10] Will: Like, if you still have a condition, but you have it now managed in a way through some sort of treatment- Yeah ... that means it doesn't affect your life-
[00:36:17] Rod: Yeah. Oh, no, we need a bra- ... doing great
[00:36:18] we need a brain scan to prove what, that it did- Ah,
[00:36:21] Will: yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:36:21] Rod: Like, just calm down, science guy. Calm down- Yeah ... or medical science guy.
[00:36:24] Will: Look, and this is, you know, it's like AIDS, the HIV AIDS that, uh, we have moved to a place where people now manage it and have fulfilling long lives-
[00:36:32] Rod: Yes ...
[00:36:33] Will: in a way that 30 years ago, people were like, "No way.
[00:36:35] That, it's, you know-" You're fucked, yeah ... "death sentence, and that's it."
[00:36:37] Rod: Yeah.
[00:36:37] Will: And yes, they still mostly, I think there are, there are occasionally people that the virus is dropping below detectable levels.
[00:36:43] Rod: Hmm.
[00:36:43] Will: But mostly people still have it, and it's like, so we redefine what the problem is. Like, the problem is- Yes
[00:36:49] that they couldn't live long lives, and they couldn't have relationships and things like that. So- Yeah,
[00:36:52] Rod: yeah ...
[00:36:52] Will: ah, calm down.
[00:36:53] Rod: And, and look, I'll go on record. I'll go on record here and say- Ooh ... if I'm in that place-
[00:36:58] Will: Oh, here we go ...
[00:36:58] Rod: where I'm Alzheimer and messed up-
[00:37:00] Will: You wanna take the mushrooms ...
[00:37:01] Rod: you have it here on record, I'm saying to you right now, pump me full of this shit, and let's see what happens.
[00:37:05] Will: I don't think that's on an ethics application, pump me, pump him full of this shit.
[00:37:08] Rod: Don't do it as science.
[00:37:09] Will: Don't do it as science.
[00:37:10] Rod: Just come over and go Dude, I... Well, fuck, I won't know what you're doing. And then you give it to me, I'll go like, "Well, you remembered. It's been 400 years. You finally got me loaded."
[00:37:19] Will: Oh, there you go. Pump him full of the shit.
[00:37:20] Rod: But why wouldn't you though? I mean, seriously. Like, that's my other question, and I
[00:37:23] Will: know this gets- No, but, but actually, and here is the pause, that the conservatives are somewhat right here.
[00:37:28] Rod: Of course.
[00:37:29] Will: And you've gotta be careful of the podcasters going, "Oh, here we've got a cure to Alzheimer's."
[00:37:33] We don't know. No. We don't know. It's one story. And-
[00:37:34] Rod: It's one story ...
[00:37:35] Will: and you could imagine, you could imagine idiots reading this and going, "Cool, granny up in, upstairs has got the bad Alzheimer's, so let's just get some shrooms and keep trying it until-"
[00:37:44] Rod: And, and five grams is good, so we go the 12.
[00:37:46] Will: Yeah, exactly.
[00:37:47] So, you know, it is worth being careful here.
[00:37:50] Rod: We need to think about it, I agree. And yes, you're right. Your idiot podcaster's making proclamations. I'm just saying do it to me.
[00:37:55] Will: Okay.
[00:37:56] Rod: Not to you. And also, nowhere are we suggesting that taking a bunch of [00:38:00] mushrooms preemptively averts Alzheimer's and other things.
[00:38:03] No one's saying that.
[00:38:04] Will: Oh.
[00:38:04] Rod: Yet
