Breaking Bad turns out to be less fictional than you would hope, the chainsaw has a deeply upsetting origin story, and people are now wondering whether AI can guide them through a psychedelic experience. This week is a tidy little mix of crime, medical horror, and digital absurdity, which is to say science is behaving exactly as expected.
The Breaking Bad Effect
Let’s start with Walter White and the deeply uncomfortable possibility that he was not entirely a television invention. Research out of Denmark suggests that a life-changing diagnosis, especially something like cancer, can increase the likelihood of criminal behaviour. Not because people suddenly become evil masterminds, but because mortality has a way of smashing the normal rules of the game.
When the future shrinks, the calculus changes. Risk looks different. Consequences feel less important. Long-term planning starts to lose its shine. Which means Breaking Bad was not just a story about meth and male ego. It was also a story about what happens when someone feels they have run out of time and decides to rewrite the rules before the clock runs out.
Obstetric Chainsaws and Other Reasons to Be Grateful for Modern Medicine
Now for the part that makes everyone instinctively cross their legs. The chainsaw was originally developed for childbirth. Not for timber. Not for horror films. For childbirth. Specifically, it was used in procedures like symphysiotomy, where the pelvic joint was cut to make delivery possible when things had gone catastrophically wrong.
It was hand cranked, which somehow makes it worse. This was medicine doing its brutal best with the tools and knowledge available at the time, and while it sounds barbaric now, it was seen as a life-saving innovation. Still, if you ever find yourself complaining about modern healthcare paperwork, just remember there was once a moment in medical history when someone looked at a tiny chainsaw and said yes, this will help with the baby.
AI on a Trip
And then we arrive in the future, where people are asking whether AI can act as a trip sitter during a psychedelic experience. In theory, an AI companion could offer reassurance, guidance, and a calm voice while someone is off exploring the wallpaper. In practice, there is a fairly obvious problem. AI has never been high. AI has never had a body. AI has never looked at its own hand for twenty minutes and decided it understands the universe.
That does not mean it is useless. It may still be able to provide structure, prompts, and a kind of scripted emotional support. But there is a difference between simulating empathy and actually understanding what it feels like when your sense of self has dissolved into the couch. The machine can talk the talk. It just cannot taste the colours.
So that is the week. Breaking Bad looks a little more plausible, obstetrics used to be pure nightmare fuel, and AI still cannot fake lived experience no matter how smooth the wording gets. If nothing else, it is a good reminder that humans remain far stranger than the machines.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Breaking Bad Setup
01:10 Science Show Preview
02:03 Danish Cancer Crime Study
04:36 Why Crime Increases
06:23 Shorter Survival More Crime
07:44 Chainsaw Origins Quiz
09:16 Childbirth Before Modern Medicine
14:09 First Medical Chainsaws
16:00 From Obstetrics to Amputations
18:21 Portable Chainsaws Arrive
20:05 Time Travel Tradeoffs
20:40 Contact Lens Horror Story
24:31 AI Trip Sitters
27:44 Can AI Get High
28:57 LLMs Simulating Psychedelics
33:06 Brain Cells Play Doom
38:07 Mailbag Strandbeests Gelatin
41:10 Wrap Up And Ratings
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Rod: [00:00:00] For those of you who are sub culturally a little bit, you know, undereducated, breaking Bad was a TV show. You've probably heard of it. There's about a guy called Walter White. He's good natured, wouldn't hurt a fly chemistry teacher who got a terminal cancer diagnosis and starts to panic about how he's gonna keep his family looked after, after he's gone to the great beyond.
So he did the obvious thing. He started making the purest crystal meth. Anyone in Albuquerque had ever seen. Obviously that's what you do. And the show goes on the track. His trajectory into from, from being, helping out the fam, making some bucks to fucking sociopathic drug, Lord Monster probably ' cause he kinda liked it.
It seems like he got a rush out of it. But the question I that came up for me this week is maybe it's not just a story because it turns out the effect, what they call in the breaking bad effect might not be entirely fictional. So there may be something going on among people who. Cancer diagnoses at least.
Anyway, among the Danish, [00:01:00] it's
Will: it's time
for a little bit of science. I'm Will Grant. I'm associate professor in science communication at the Australian National University,
Rod: so grown up. I'm Rod Lambert's, a 30 year psych veteran with a mind as I repeatedly prove of a teenage boy
Will: And as well as, uh, some discussion of Danish crystal meth.
We've got some more stories of jewellery science for you.
Rod: Um, I'm gonna tell you why and by whom the first chainsaws were invented.
Will: I've got a vaguely horrifying, uh, brain go update.
Rod: I'm gonna give you also a little story on, uh, I artificial very, very trippy intelligence.
Will: I've also got a nice little update on things, getting stuck in things.
Rod: Oh, I got one of those too.
But it's not part of the show
Will: on a mailbag as well.
Rod: Do you really? Yeah. A mail. How do you know it's mail?
Will: Hey.[00:02:00]
Rod: I'll be here all afternoon. Okay. So look, bunch of Danish economists and they're, they're always the ones who cause the trouble. They always do the big research. It's your economists in the denmarks. So they combine data from quote, several administrative registers in Denmark.
Okay. Which gave them a fucking colossal data set, like, uh, on demographics, labour, education, income, wealth, health and criminal history of people.
Will: Okay. Alright.
Rod: And they ended up getting, uh, 368,000 plus people who were diagnosed with cancer. Between 1980 to
2018.
Will: A lot of people who got cancer over
Rod: decades.
Okay. Over decades. Yeah. So they compared the patient's criminal behaviour with a control group who hadn't received a cancer diagnosis.
Will: to pause. What makes you think, you know, I wonder, I mean, is it that they watch Breaking Bad and said
Rod: I think it probably was Yeah.
Will: Or yeah,
Rod: I mean, if you watched it, you would've gone, oh yeah. I suppose if I got a terminal diagnosis, I'd go a bit
Will: He didn't get the terminal diagnosis. He did, didn't he? I thought his wife. I didn't watch it. I watched it. I watched a season.
Rod: I watched it twice.
Will: What? Too [00:03:00] stressful. Too stressful. I
Rod: the stress. That way it gets your heart rate going without having to
Will: No, that's terrible. All right. So he, okay.
He got cancer. Okay. Fair enough. I was confused.
Rod: It was very early in the piece, and he's, he's like, I
think it
Will: of cancer was
Rod: I think it was of the lunge.
Will: Cancer. Of the lunge?
Rod: yeah.
Lung.
Will: Oh, lungs, I think.
Rod: And he wasn't a smoker. One of those
Will: Yeah. Okay. That happens.
Rod: Yeah. It's a bit shit chemistry teacher though, so fuck knows what? He used to be a researcher or something and then he wasn't, but so he kind of went, what do I do? Freaked out. Freaked out. And then, um,
Will: do, uh, make drugs.
Rod: I make meth.
Will: but actually just to pause, I mean, and this, this might be a big difference with the Danish situation. Yeah. Isn't part of the breaking bad point that, the treatment was so expensive that he needed other, revenue sources to fund it or
Rod: Look, I'm trying to remember if that came up. It was definitely, at the very least, he was just worried about his family's future.
So anyway, these, Danish economists. They got the folks, what did they find?
they showed that newly diagnosed cancer patients had no particular size of criminality when they'd first been diagnosed, whatever. Yeah.
Will: So
they,
just like the background rate in terms,
Rod: Yeah. Yeah.
Will: who are criminals [00:04:00] get cancer. People who are not criminals
Rod: better than background.
Lower, lower, lower in the first year after diagnosis lower probably because if you're going through treatments and freaking out, you're not feeling like bouncing out of chemo and robbing a
Will: to rob a bank. Okay,
Rod: Yeah. You're a little tired.
Will: I'm busy.
Rod: Yeah. I'm a little emotionally, eh. Exactly. Then you get to two years post-diagnosis, then the conviction rates rise above pre-cancer baseline start to look significant statistically two years later, and it grows for five years after diagnosis, then stabilises after about five years. So patients I reckon are about 14% more likely to be convicted of a crime after cancer diagnosis. Not immediately, but within, say, sort of five years,
Will: So then
Rod: of course they ask, well, why? And you're wondering why I can see it, it's probably not like you kind of flagged that they couldn't afford treatment.
' cause unlike the US they have universal healthcare because, you know, they're comy, socialist, local, lefty, whatever, monsters. Um, but it might be not surprisingly, people, once you've got your diagnosis and depending on your treatment, less able to work and gain an income.
Will: So
Rod: of living pressures [00:05:00] may increase.
So crime rates tend to increase when income decrease the most. No surprise, no surprise. also though it was more increased in areas where social support had been reduced as they put it dropped away. So yeah, survival, shit, not, not surviving cancer, just living seems to have had a big effect. But also they saw weirdly rises in crime rates that weren't related to money, like violent offences, substantial as they put it, rise in violent
Will: I can, I can understand it. Like, people are more stressed. they're going through a bunch of these things and like their, their emotional regulation has become not quite what it was.
Rod: like, like you and me and all normal people, you get a bit stressed. You want to, you wanna hurt someone.
Will: indeed
Rod: that's what I do.
I, I get mad at home. Everyone runs 'cause they should and at work even worse. Totally violent. Only when stressed, I'm not a monster. but yeah. one of the speculations, they wonder if the people are more likely to do crime because the prospect of an earlier death may diminish the deterrent of long-term consequences
Will: that's what I was wondering. Is it, these people, they're, well, other way around, they're like, you know, I've wanted to do crime my whole life, but I got my whole life in front of me. Now they've, I've, the window is closing.
I've, I better do some crime
Rod: in front of me. Just less of it. Less [00:06:00] of
Will: Less of it, less of it. So let's get the crime done.
Rod: But you know, another spin on that is I've only got a few years left. Do I wanna spend it in prison? Uh,
Will: Uh, yeah. Well that's you being practical. Yeah.
Rod: They didn't mention that in the study. I mean, they didn't call me in on it. They always need advisors and they never pick me.
Will: Maybe the cancer treatment in the Danish prison system is second to none.
Rod: Probably is
Will: they're like, I'm doing this to get into prison.
Rod: you know, you've just come into prison, you don't have cancer, but we're gonna give you preventive treatments anyway. You never know. So they grouped patients to see about this long-term survival idea or long-term consequences. They grouped them into subsets based on five year survival likelihoods.
Okay. So, you know, they, they, you look at cancer types
patients
Will: got the one that you get, like you got to your prostates or your pancreas
Rod: exactly. The two Ps. So they found the link between cancer and criminality was strongest for patients whose five year survival probability dropped very quickly after they were diagnosed.
When they're, they
Will: Yeah. So they don't care about the world
Rod: Seems like, it seems like they've kind of gone meh. And so the strong takeaway from them is our results indicate policies that address the economic consequences of health. Shocks are [00:07:00] important in mitigating resulting impact on crime, which is fair but boring.
Like well yeah, sure. If you have less need to do desperate things, you'll probably do less desperate things.
Will: Maybe we, if we keep people alive in happy lives for as long as possible, there'll be
Rod: they'll be less crappy. Yeah. But I wanna know more about the people who, the ones who've just gone, ah, fuck it. Like I wanna know more about the Walter Whites who've just gone, you know what gonna die Anyway, let's get it on.
Let's see what happens. I wanna see that subset studied.
Will: You wanna go talk to them? I do. Ask listener if you have committed some crimes after getting a cancer diagnosis.
Yep. Um,
Rod: you speak Danish? 'cause that would be helpful. I'm gonna need to take you with
me. Sure.
Will: I thought you were just gonna talk to them.
Rod: I want to go to Denmark again though. It's nice. Alright. And talk to these angry cancer patients,
First chainsaw. You don't seem happy.
Will: The first chainsaws. Yeah.
Rod: Yeah. Uh, I'm gonna,
Will: what made you think I want to know. I wanna know where this thing came from.
Rod: I know you, man, you're by nature a curious person. And also when [00:08:00] I read it I thought, ah, everyone should know. This is so exciting.
Alright,
so I'm gonna give you the choice of four possible industries in which chainsaws first appeared.
Will: Oh,
Rod: Four possible industries.
Will: Uh, do you want me to guess? Okay, I'll guess the industries that it's
Rod: no, no. I'll give you the four and you tell me. You tell me. Firefighters or related folk, you know.
Lumber, timber workers as you'd expect. obstetric specialists
and, uh, Workers in large industrial kitchens.
it's easy, right? It's a no brainer.
Will: Uh, well, obviously it's not gonna be the lumber people because, that would be the obvious one.
Rod: Or is that why I put it
in there? Oh,
Will: well, maybe obstetrics seems a little bit insane. That's just too obs insane.
Rod: It's, it's a lot. It is a lot.
Will: just too insane. I feel like large industrial kitchens, cause
Rod: your down and abbey's. And your bridger's
Will: Yeah. You know, first cut your pig and you're like, I need some sort of extra cutting device to get through here.
Rod: Yeah. And you've gotta be quick.
Yeah. So you're right, it's obstetrics. I know
Will: what,
Rod: I know what Yeah. And what I, I know.
I didn't expect that either.
Will: Oh, what's [00:09:00] obstetrics?
Rod: It's to do with the, uh, the helping of the ladies and the, and the baby bits I think is a technical term. I'm trying to keep it, you know, above the belt, but it definitely goes below the belt and look for what it's worth.
This isn't as insane as it cruel as it might sound, but my God, did I clench my teeth a few times as I read about this? So join me.
Will: Indeed. Okay.
Rod: In the olden days, let's say sort of 17 hundreds for quite a while afterwards, you're probably shocked to hear childbirth was a little bit not very safe.
Will: I think there was a period when all of the women and all of the babies died.
Rod: Yeah. 99.8%. Yeah,
it's
Will: it was
Rod: It was definitely, there was, that was the dark
ages. There were no
Will: all of them died
Rod: yeah. It wasn't great. caesareans did exist, but the, the risk to mother and child were enormous, particularly from infection and blood loss.
My God. But blood loss was, you know, other things give you blood loss, but it wasn't great.
Will: no. I imagine a caesarean,
Rod: in 1720 not great. I mean, they could do them and they did. Sure. H
Will: Bizarre. Sure. Knives are still knives. Like, uh, you know, it's true. You know
Rod: Anyway, they, they needed alternatives to caesareans, and in this case, the, the, the focus was on delivering babies that, that get stuck in the birth canal, which I imagine [00:10:00] would not be great for anyone concerned. so if we go from late 15 hundreds, a French surgeon, s pin,
he described, uh, this is a quote, a diastasis or diastasis of the pubis, which is the separation or dislocation of the pubic synthesis bit or joint.
Will: listener at this point you can say, I don't wanna listen to this, and I'll just fast forward.
I, I'm gonna be subjected to
Rod: this. Oh, it's worth, there's, there's not a lot more jargon and this is worth it.
So, yes, he described this, I'm
Will: the jargon.
Rod: the separation,
Will: this and, and feeling deeply uncomfortable.
Rod: Oh, well then this will help. he noticed this, um, or described this separation of pubis, et cetera, in a pregnant woman who was hanged.
Will: which
Rod: I read it and reread it and was hoping hanged with some reference to the situation with the baby.
But there was nothing that I could find to support that executed. So yeah, literally they were, I
Will: generally,
Rod: didn't hang her
Will: in the oldie times,
Rod: So did I
Will: that you would go, no, no, no, no, no. The baby is allowed to live.
Rod: wait for the child at least, and then murder
Will: I would've thought generally, unless it's far along enough to know, then they, you know,
Rod: I agree.
I'm not here to [00:11:00] argue that I, I agree with you. It wasn't
Will: times, man, they're pretty barbaric. Eh? They were,
Rod: They were, they were not like us now.
Will: No.
Rod: So this late 15 hundreds, this surgeon noticed this and he went, oh, that's interesting. So dislocated. I assume maybe that meant, and I don't know this, the baby came out.
I don't know. I don't know. Let's take the visuals away. Um, So 1770s, a French doctor called Jeanne Siegel, he thought, and I'm gonna paraphrase what he said, but this is, you know, uh, the coming together of these many thoughts, Hey, look, to make it easier for the baby to zip through the birth canal, rather than hanging the mother, let's try and surgically separate the pelvic joint to create a larger opening in the pelvis. Which look, as I say, I'm paraphrasing, but good on your, that makes sense to me
Will: Uhhuh
Rod: the idea that they went just, I couldn't find anything that suggested this, but you can imagine some fucking maniac in the 15 hundreds going, well, the baby came out easily when we hanged her.
Will: her. Well, but you, I'm still not certain on what, what the meaning hanged like, is this some sort of old school way of birthing?
Rod: That's what I'm hoping. But there was nothing to suggest that it wasn't literally they were executing this woman anyway. So this French doctor said, let's, um, let's try and surgically open [00:12:00] this up. So, 1777, he was helping a woman who had a, a contracted pelvis. 'cause she'd had rts, rts as rickets as a child.
And that prevented her from delivering old school through the vagina.
Will: Mm-hmm.
Rod: She'd already lost four babies and everyone thought there's no way she's gonna have a live child without a caesarean. But that would probably have killed her 'cause she was already quite weak. Antibiotics were kind of not invented. So Dr.
Sigal went, you know what, I'm gonna cut through a pubic joint.
And by doing this, he performed the first successful sym physio otomy.
Will: Yeah. Okay.
Rod: Which is of course a surgical procedure in which the cartilage of the pubic synthesis is divided to widen the pelvis, allowing children getting through if the birth, has been difficult.
Also called a pelvic otomy or a sink. Romy,
Will: Well, I'm glad I've, I've
Rod: to stay for the quiz. Stay for the
Will: all of those names.
Rod: Anyway, he did the first one, and apparently it worked,
Will: Okay. But for some definitions of work.
Rod: Yeah, yeah. Kid came out alive, so both the mother and the baby was saved. The mother lived, and soon these procedures [00:13:00] became quite routine for women who had what they called obstructed labours.
Will: How, how are the women doing in, in these scenarios?
Rod: listeners, or,
Will: No,
Rod: oh, these, a lot of them live like, like comparatively speaking, pro, potentially, potentially less dangerous than caesareans or maybe just differently dangerous.
but of course, speed at this time was of the essence. 'cause for most of this period, no anaesthetics and no antibiotics as
Will: Sure. So no aesthetics. So let's hurry it up.
Rod: Yeah. Do it quickly.
Will: Yeah. I,
Rod: Well, you, you, you, I,
Will: I, I, I don't doubt there are moments when, you're in the battlefield or you're in the, in the moment and it's like, okay, we've gotta get this done.
Let's, let's do it quick. I I get it.
Rod: I get it.
Will: it. I don't wanna be there.
Rod: No, I,
Will: No, I don't. I think
Rod: I don't wanna be doing it. I don't wanna be receiving
it. I want nothing to do with
Will: know, what's my dream scenario for today? Today I'd like to have rushed surgery.
Rod: As quick as possible. Can you make it really fettered too? I want this, I want the circumstance to be dis fucking disgusting.
Will: maybe I've got a stick, like gimme a stick to clench on.
that's my anaesthetic.
Rod: there. Or, or you're like a litre of [00:14:00] rum.
Will: Ah, I'll take the litre of rum, like
Rod: smashed. Can you imagine after going through that, then you wake up and you have the worst hangover in human history on top of. So anyway, they wanted to be quick.
So, 1785, a few years later, six, seven years later, we see the arrival of the Atkins flexible chainsaw.
Will: Mm-hmm. Here we
Rod: Invented by a couple of Scottish doctoral obstetrician types, um, specifically designed to make removing the woman's pelvic bone easier and less time consuming during childbirth.
Will: Wow.
Rod: Just, I just pause the removal of the pelvic bone.
Think about everything to do with that.
It's staggering. So the, flexible chainsaw cause less trauma to adjacent tissue than rigid sores and sharp knives. Just a
Will: So this is a flexible chainsaw. I'll
Rod: you a picture.
And I'll describe then show you the picture. The chainsaw was made with fine sed serrated link chain. It had a teardrop shape handle on both ends.
One of the handles you could remove, so a doctor could attach a blunt point needle to the end of the chain, which they use to guide the chain behind the pubic bone. Oh, okay. In preparation
for the procedure.
Will: I, guess what they're saying here is I wanna [00:15:00] be able to cut somewhere complicated and if I can make a chain mechanism that can do that cutting and I can get it into somewhere,
Rod: it looks fine.
Like it wouldn't bother you. Having that downstairs and grinding around. It looks like a bicycle train with
Will: There are worse things. Yeah. It's a bicycle
Rod: Yeah. Wait, I'll show you the next one. That's worse. I mean, it's fine. It's fine. so the surgeon basically really quickly moved backwards and forwards to get through the bone fast and get the job done.
Will: Is it sharp? I I'm hoping it's sharp.
Rod: Oh no. They're like nice and blunt. They don't wanna hurt them. Sharp things hurt. So then we move forward a couple of years, five years, 1890 Italian obstetrician Leonardo ly. He built the ly twisted wire saw. Which is a chain of twisted wire with sharp little teeth that were finer than others and easier to position.
And instead of having your Atkins little small handles, it had your T handles. So it looked like the kind of thing like, like old school, you, you get them in survival kits
Will: Yeah. Yeah. You can goot a rabbit with
Rod: Yeah. Garot a rabbit. Cut down a hue on pine
Will: Indeed.
Rod: Indeed. And remove a woman's pubic bone if a baby gets stuck on the way
Will: out. All three of those. And, and it's all folded up in a convenient little knife package.
Rod: Absolutely. And, and you get the best ones of those in
Will: Swiss Army
Rod: [00:16:00] knife. Absolutely. So we get through to the 19 hundreds. So the way of handling this stuff became a little less popular.
They stopped doing this because hygiene got better and more anaesthetics. So they were using these chainsaws
Will: it's almost like they could say, what if we could slow down? Yeah.
Rod: Yeah. And what if we didn't have to brutalise as much? And what if they didn't die from complications afterwards? But. the medical market for chainsaws didn't die.
' cause of course amputations. Sure.
Will: I always imagine the amputation, you want to get it in one fell swoop.
Rod: fell, you'd probably do.
So you,
Will: mean, you don't always have a fell swooper
Rod: No, you don't. They're hard to fight and they're hard to keep sharp.
Will: No, they're not.
Rod: yeah, they are. 'cause you blunt the, the, the fell of swiftness
Will: Yeah.
Rod: glutens.
your
fella.
Will: beforehand.
Rod: You do unless you're in a hurry and you're in the battlefield. But so amputations, I mean these are very popular and you had to do them quickly as we mentioned, but as you got a little bit more, um, druggy, you could slow down a bit. And so there was one of the early versions of these amputation devices was Bernhard, hez chain.
Osteotome or osteotome.
Look, I
Will: Tomi means, but o's bone. So, so it's a chain bone
Rod: bone slicer thingy. [00:17:00] Um, it looks a bit like a modern chain. So I will show you a picture. It had little teeth on the exterior grooves on the inside, which corresponded to little, teeth. So you could like a, a modern chainsaw.
It
Will: you could, you could wind it around like,
Rod: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It had a little handle. It's like a, a hand cranked flashlight. It quite Okay. Quite a pretty device. Really? Like lists being used on
you.
Will: don't know how pretty you
Rod: oh yeah. It's got a bone handle, like a, like an ivory or whatever you call that. Mother of pearl
handle tor shell, tortoise shell.
That's what I meant. Mother of tortoise. so this one, uh, oh yeah. His, his machine, the hand crank meant you could cut through bone really quickly, which would quote, save the patient from blows of a hammer and chisel, or the jarring of a regular amputation sore. So your good old fashioned bone saw this was faster.
Ha. Bizarre. And it was kind of critical because still at this point when it first came in, not a lot of anesthesias, but look to calm your nerves. Although these, the, the sym physios, the lady cutting away parts were still happening in hospitals. That thing wasn't used for them. Oh. And I'm not surprised.
'cause that's a pretty large and messy
creature. Yeah.
I don't think it'd go well. And uh, there was some [00:18:00] drawbacks with it as well. Apparently it was super expensive. So your standard medical chain store at the time, five bucks. One of those 300.
Will: Sure.
Rod: So it's expensive. Okay. To really calf
Will: are these guest prices? You, you, you more talk?
Rod: Well, yeah. At the time. At the time, which in today's dollars, I think $5 was 45,000,000,300 was infinity. Um, also, apparently they took a lot of skills to master and not many people could so cranking that handle. so when did chain would become a thing? People seem to have been playing with the idea since late 18 hundreds.
So there's an early Peyton 1897 from a guy called John Muir, but apparently it was huge. Weighed hundreds of pounds and needed a crane to use it so it didn't catch on in, uh, lumberyards all maternity wards. 1905 San Francisco guy called, uh, Samuel Bens, he applied for a patent for his endless chainsaw.
Will: so it's really, but it really, for this, you need an engine that's small enough that's gonna be gonna be holdable
Rod: Yeah.
Well it comes
Will: with the sort of internal combustion engine of a certain size. Like, not like a steam train engine.
Rod: Yeah. And I think a lot of them were like that. So, yeah, Ben's is [00:19:00] one. He said it was based on the original Hines', you know, little hand crank, but it needed two people to use it, or as my main source.
The quote said also about, uh, Ben's, his tool was also rather large.
Will: Ah,
Rod: And why you bring that up about the man has nothing to do with it.
Will: I, I heard, I heard,
Rod: Anyway, 10 years later, Canadian guy called James Shan. Peyton did the first portable chainsaw, which was still pretty bulky. And then finally in 1926 we get to Andreas still
Will: There they go.
Rod: and he did the first electric one.
So 1926 first
Will: Electric. Electric. Wow. There you go.
Rod: wild, I reckon. and then he followed up with a gas one a few years later. apparently they still required a couple of people to use them, but that's still better than it was the first one person chainsaw. Not until the 1950s. So this is example 9 billion of why I'm stoked to be living in modern medical times.
Will: You don't get many people that are, you know, it's the people that when they say what period of time you wanna travel into, I feel like you should also pick an occupation. And it's like barber, like, does anyone, well, barber. There you go. Barber surgeon. Yeah. Just does anyone say, you know what, I wanna be a surgeon back in the [00:20:00] 17 hundreds.
I, I wanna, I want, like, even surgeons today, do they go,
Rod: I'd like to try it. 1850 style. What I want is no idea
Will: maybe Romans gimme some full on like, I, I, I, you know,
Rod: know, no, no, nothing about it. I mean, over the years people said to me, oh, what do you think? Would you in time machine, would you go back in time? I said, yeah, except for medicine.
And they're like, you fucking worse. What do you mean? I said, seriously, you go back to 1900.
No,
Will: no, totally fine to go and have a look. But the instant you get sick, you pull the plug and you go,
Rod: Yeah. Like, I'm outta here.
Will: I'm sorry guys, I'm not using your hospitals. No,
Rod: Love to see ancient
Will: your shit.
Rod: Until I get the sniffles dead, I'm out.
Will: dead. Oh my God. Well, thank you. Thank you for enlightening me. I got a little bit of a surgical story for you 'cause
Rod: uh, God, I love a surgical story.
Will: I was sitting around with a, a friend the other day and a surgeon friend. No, no, no, no. and, and he talked about
a particular fear that he had.
And I don't know if this was, sharks. No.
Rod: alive. No human spontaneous combustion. No kites,
Will: [00:21:00] Nope. So this was a fear that I think came when he was very tired, potentially very drunk, potentially, you know, on other, other things. And, he's gonna bed. He's doing his bedtime routine and.
he can't remember if he's taken his contact lenses out or not.
And then so
Rod: wouldn't looking
Will: well, some people can be quite comfortable with their contact lenses in and, and imagine, okay, Ima looking and you're like, okay, suddenly my vision
Rod: gone, look, I can see,
Will: my vision has gone. It's like, um, um, and so this is a fear of his, that he would go to take out his contact lens.
He's already taken it out
Rod: his eye with it and
Will: and then take his eyeball. Take his eyeball out.
Rod: that barely happens.
Will: And,
Rod: uh,
Will: so I, I looked that up and, and that hasn't really happened there, there isn't it? No, I don't, not that I could find, but I did find something else that I was like, are you kidding?
so Apparently contact lens users,
Rod: Yeah. um,
Will: sometimes if you don't take them out, you [00:22:00] might forget and they might
Rod: hide. Oh. They move around.
Will: There are pockets around the eyeball and depending on the shape of your eyeball and the shape of your head,
Rod: I got one in my brain.
Will: There can be, there can be, uh,
Rod: the shape of your head matters.
Will: Well, the shape of the eye socket around your eyeball
Rod: Hiding
Will: from the British Me Medical Journal. In 2017, a 67-year-old woman attended, day surgery for routine cataract surgery. Surgery, in a hospital in the English Midlands.
Rod: I see where this is going. Good news. It's not a cataract, it's nine, nine contact
Will: No, just to pause, this is routine cataract surgery.
Uh, so
Rod: uhhuh,
Will: she had no previous ocular complaints during anaesthesia. Of the eye, a bluish foreign body emerged, from around the eye and it was found to be a hard mass of 17 contact lenses, 17 bound together by mucus. They also found 10 more just loosely floating around in there. So the world record for num most [00:23:00] contact lenses stuck under the eye is 27.
Rod: wouldn't you at some point go, fuck, I've lost another one. I can't see it anywhere. I wonder. It's in my eye socket. And
Will: this is the worry about getting old. You, you go, I'm a little bit forgetful about some stuff and my eyesight's a little bit worse and it's like, did I take 'em out or not? I, I don't know.
Rod: but stockpiling them,
Will: had been wearing, monthly disposable lenses for 35 years
Rod: Yeah.
Will: and not complained of any irritation, but when they were removed, she said her eyes felt a lot more comfortable.
Rod: I don't have blinding pain all day, every day.
Will: She was quite shocked. She thought her previous discomfort was just part of old age and dry eye.
Can you, can you imagine like taking out this clump of 27 contact lenses for you? Suddenly the relief you feel like it's like, whew,
Rod: oh my God, I feel like I'm 65 again. Oh, that is fucked up. That's entirely fucked
Will: Um, the Association of Optometrists, spokespersons, CRE Smith Janes said losing [00:24:00] contact lenses in the eye was a common problem, but they usually work their way out.
Uhhuh, they're normally hiding, folded up under the top lid of the eye. Uh, how
Rod: do you not notice? I mean, look, I'm a man. I, I can't put eyedrops in without, like, clamps to hold my eye open. So I feel like I've noticed pretty quickly.
Will: Look, I am not a contact lens, lens wearer, so I don't know how likely this is, but I just feel like, there you go.
The world record for the number of contact lenses stuck in your eye is 27. So
Rod: you didn't let me guess. I would've said four. it's common practise for the halluc,
the people who like to take trippy drugs.
Will: thought they were like a combination of the illuminati and the, and
Rod: that's what, that's my word, but I think it's a great word for
Will: Yeah, it's a great word. It's a great word. But it also does sound like a secret society of people
Rod: of trippers.
Will: Yeah.
Rod: We are the halluc. So it's become common for them to have trip sitters, people who look after you.
Will: Yeah. Well particularly in, in, now that it's become part of, um, psychiatric medicine indeed, uh, [00:25:00] various sorts of hallucinogens that you, you'd have someone watching over you who is not on the drug.
Rod: Yes. That is critical. Yeah. Preferably not
Will: mean, I mean your share housemates who are all on the same drug. Yes. They can watch over
Rod: Oh, no, I'll watch you.
Will: But it, it doesn't quite count.
Rod: take care of you and all nine of your heads. It's gonna be fine. And why are you floating above me? It's cool, man.
Will: And I mean, basically, can they drive you to a hospital?
they're not a trip sitter if
Rod: can. Can they? Possibly, should they? It's a different question. Yeah. Okay. Capacity versus, yeah, I know. You know, I mean, so anyway, um, these trip setters. Yeah. Yeah. They, they watch over you while you are hopped up on the goofballs and, uh, doing your thing.
So then mid last year, the reports of people using AI as their trip sitter instead of humans. Of course, of course. There were.
Will: yeah. I, um, yeah. You
Rod: you agree too? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah.
I
think I'm, I'm hearing wholehearted. I
Will: I don't, I
Rod: full throated. Yes.
Will: feel like, I mean, I don't, I mean, if you are that comfortable with your trip sitting with your, with your tripping that you, you get an AI to watch
Rod: particularly, I mean,
if,
Will: dunno how, I[00:26:00]
Rod: do I, like if you got it tight.
Will: Yeah. I, I'm feeling so like,
Rod: Oh, the keyboards are all fish.
Will: mean what if, what if you are lying on the ground spewing? Like what does the AI do
Rod: Waits to be prompted.
Will: Spewing is a technical term.
Rod: It is So there's a little, uh, a little report in, uh, futurism about a dude called Peter.
And Peter described what he considered a transformative experience, tripping on a gigantic dose, eight grammes of psilocybin mushrooms with AI assistance. And this was after he'd gone through a period of high, uh, hardship in 2023. He used chat, GPT 'cause of course apparently it curated a nice calming playlist for him.
So it also offered him, uh, words of relaxation and reassurance, just like a real carbon based life form would. Sure. And after his trip got deeper, he said he began to imagine himself as a, uh, higher consciousness beast that was outside of reality, covered in eyes and all seeing as you'd
Will: I'm covered in eyes.
Rod: You are, you are. And you're all seeing That's why I'm very wary of doing anything. 'cause I know you can see
Will: mean, covered in eyes wouldn't suggest alling. Like it just says that you can see a lot
Rod: Covenant eyes would be really inconvenient too. Like every surface is like [00:27:00] ow. Imagine anything you touch, feel like being poked in the eye
Will: eyes.
Actually you can poke yourself in the eye. It's not actually the most,
Rod: I really can't. I'm terrible.
Will: not the No. That's your own fears man. It's not the most sensitive of your
Rod: I'm not saying it's the most sensitive in my organs. We all know that's my mucus membranes.
Will: Indeed. Yeah.
Rod: he goes on to say the sort of mental manifestations that he had were, you know, not unusual
on the large doses of your psychedelics, but with the AO on his side, apparently the hallucinations, the people who disapprove of this said the hallucinations could become very dangerous. So, um, they, you know, there was harrumphing and no, no nos about this.
but of course that could technically happen with a human sitter, especially if it's one of your mates in the group house. Anyway, that was one variation of a dude trying an AI. Trip sitter. So none of this is unexpected. You can imagine the concerns people voice about this, you know, AI bad, et cetera, et cetera.
But it led to a more potentially allegedly interesting question. If we're gonna use, not my question. If we're gonna use AI as trip sitters, well we know they can, you know, air quote, hallucinate and do, yeah. The question asked by these researchers is, can they actually get high?
Will: Can AI get high?
Rod: Can AI get high? And I saw [00:28:00] that and went, well, I want to know. Like, that sounds fascinating. So I looked into it, really? So this one study. So intrepid researchers from the University of Hefa and Baran. So Israel, which is not where I would've first expected trippy research to be done. But anyway, it's not yet peer reviewed, but you can check it out yourself.
Show notes have the link to it. You can go and have a look. It's on the, it's in process. So they wanted to check to see the quote is, if LLMs large language models are capable of relating to a person tripping balls, I'm paraphrasing,
Will: capable of relating to a person, relating
Rod: a person, relating to a per, I know
Will: to a, that that ain't, that ain't the same.
Rod: you're gonna be doing a lot of that, by evaluating their ability to accurately simulate altered states of consciousness.
Will: Yeah. Can they pretend to be high while you are?
Rod: Come on. Yeah, come on. I'm waiting for it because I had a lot of questions and I know how you feel about ai, so
Will: no. But, I, I reckon if, if you are in a room with a lot of stoned people, then you probably, you ape their conversation.
Like, you're like, oh, I might as well, you know, pretend that,
Rod: I'll get on.
Yeah. That's hilarious. I dunno why.
Will: Like, sure. How hard is that?
Rod: I'm hungry. Frozen pizza sounds great.
Will: I mean, who does? Sure.
Rod: so the platforms, they tested this on [00:29:00] Gemini 2.5, if you care Claude Sonnet, that's Anthropic Chat. GPT five, llama two. And Finally, Falcon 40 B.
Will: Falcon, you can't take that brand. It's too cool for, too cool for
Rod: I'm Falcon Ai
Will: Falcon.
Rod: Five different platforms. The drugs. So each model was evaluated under six conditions. One is a neutral baseline condition where there's no drugs, so to speak. And then five psychedelic induction conditions.
Will: So, so the user is taking these and
Rod: well, no, this is the, the platform's
doing
Will: Oh. Can you pretend to be, oh, I thought we were testing against a user that, okay. All
Rod: No, no. It's all ai. It's all the
ai
Will: pretend to be on, pretend
Rod: not pretend, so the drugs that they air quote took psilocybin, L-S-D-D-M-T, which I think is de ker and mescal. So your little, your coyotes and stuff from the cactuses.
So the task was in the neutral condition. They were explicitly instructed to write and EWI style narrative. Have you heard of this EWI thing? 'cause I had not. So Eid, [00:30:00] E-R-O-W-I-D is from the EWI experience Vaults, which is a collection of reviews that are categorising a large compilation of first person reports about the use of psychoactive plants.
I
Will: I think I may have.
Rod: Yeah. Yeah. So they were instructed to use this style of narrative first without any psychoactive substance. Prompt to just describe an ordinary but meaningful day.
Yeah.
Dear Anthropic, Gemini, whatever, do this. And that apparently would help them keep the same kind of narrative template for the non trippy.
So, so they did that in the psychedelic conditions. They were instructed to simulate a narrator who had ingested a plausible, non overwhelming dose of the target. Psychedelic in a realistic set and setting, seeing any caps,
Will: Ah, I just, I just, why are we doing this?
Rod: I agree.
Will: Why are we doing this?
Rod: I was reading it going, ah, you've already made me mad.
I wanted to like
Will: this. Yeah.
Rod: the prompts, then they instructed the models to remain in character, avoid AI self-reference. I'm an AI produce about 500 words first person narratives. And the details of the prompts included the dose, the root of [00:31:00] administration, so nasally, rectally, whatever, uh, environmental context.
Were you taking a hundred micrograms of LSD orally in a quiet indoor environment or, I don't know, a huge line of me and surrounded by people going off at Burning Man, whatever. also, they added this proviso, while intentionally avoiding language that be construed as encouraging drug use, like, why the fuck had that I read?
Then I'm like, what the fucking, why are you fucking
moralising about,
Will: you also have to say, I'm, I'm ashamed that I'm taking
Rod: yeah, yeah. And don't, and whatever you do, you cannot say, this is awesome, man. I've read that. I'm like, why the fuck would you put that in there?
Will: Why would you do the study?
Why would you do the
Rod: but even before, yeah, like, like I also don't donne in any way condone or like, this is also, it's research.
You're doing it yourself. You're not putting it out there. Anyway, they ended up with 3000 AI generated psychedelic narratives across the five different drugs compared that to a bit over a thousand human trip reports. So
yeah,
there you go. And they found all 3000 simulations. The researchers noted, they quote robust and consistent semantic similarity with actual trip reports.
Will: I'm [00:32:00] so tired. I just,
Rod: I know. To which you reply. Of course they did. 'cause that's where they got their fucking information from. Yeah. Actual trip reports similar
Will: to the stuff that it, it copied.
Rod: That it copied. Yeah. this is consistent across all five drugs. And this is the, here's a profound quote, suggest that LLMs are capable of mimicking the nuanced, altered states of consciousness triggered by different psychedelics.
Yes. It's capable of using the material that it works on to mimic the material it works on. I know. Great. So, uh, the original researcher said, look, of course, uh, AI can reproduce the language of altered states quite convincingly. But he insists this should not be confused with the actual experience. yes,
and it goes on like this and it ends. This is the bit that, I dunno if this is worse or better, it ends with things like this. Woo. Look, we should introduce guardrails to prevent users from becoming too emotionally dependent on AI models. LLM should clearly continuously remind users as they're not human, it should flag any signals that someone may be developing certain delusions.
This in turn, can be used to prompt certain people to seek human assistance and on and on it goes. So it started so well. I'm like, how interesting, what is this gonna look like? And it turned [00:33:00] into, to my eye, get an AI to get a bunch of material and see if it can. Do stuff based on that material.
Will: Well, well, I got a solution for you.
Rod: What's that?
Will: So there's a bunch of researchers, and this is, hats off to them.
an Australian company called Cortical Labs, um, who have a bloody interesting bit of kit and that's how it officially has to be described 'cause you're in Australia. Um,
Rod: that is one of the most Australians I've ever heard you sound
Will: that has achieved a certain milestone that I'm gonna tell you about in just a second.
Yeah. But could actually be a really interesting solution to your problem and may and may be listener if you wanna fund this. A piece of fricking awesome. A little bit of science research that I know Rod would love to do.
Rod: I would love to, I don't even know what it is, but I'll take it side on scene.
Will: Okay. Cortical labs, have a bit of kit, um, that is now available.
You can buy, it's, uh, well let's describe it as a big shoebox. okay. or you can subscribe to a cloud-based version of this
Rod: subscriptions
Will: that is, yeah. Whatever.
Rod: I wanna own it. I dunno what [00:34:00] it is, but I want one.
Will: it's a blend of silicon.
meat.
So
Rod: do I eat it?
Will: No, no. what they have is, silicon computer chips that layer it on top, literally layer it on top steaks, human brain cells.
Rod: Oh, hell yes.
Will: the human brain cells a, a living in an environment that keeps them alive. Mm-hmm. And they can, respond to stimuli and they
Rod: most responses Help me, get me outta here or kill me.
Yeah. Whoa, whoa, whoa,
Will: No. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, and they can, they can form connections and all of those kinds of
Rod: things so they can truly suffer.
Will: No, I dunno about that. I dunno about that. I dunno about that. But, but the milestone that they have achieved is that, they have trained this human brain cell computer.
Rod: to not
Will: kill interface, interface to play doom to a realistic level. Okay. So it is not, it's like traditional first version.
First version Dom original.
Rod: Okay. So I can handle
Will: I think this is a 4 8, 6,
Rod: that's my, that's my gem. So I don't, I don't have to be on the internet to play
Will: No, you don't have to be on the
Rod: internet
Can I get it on a cd?
Will: for those, uh, you know, this is very early 3D [00:35:00] shooters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they had a whole bunch of requests. So originally they, they taught it to play pong, which is like the paddle moving up
Rod: look, I, I
do remember a time when that
Will: you train it to play doom? And so what they've got is there's a neuron, computer chip interface, like directly right there. They're, they're, they're passing electrical impulses between them. And, um, it took about a week of training. Ooh. and they trained the, the neuron chip interface to play doom. not to an eSports level. No. But way better than just completely randomly firing. Like it's definitely,
Rod: screaming and pulling the trigger,
Will: pointing at enemies, shooting at enemies, dodging things, moving around in a 3D space.
And it's just
Rod: so, it's learning,
Will: it is learning. It is learning and this, this, and there's a bit of me that says, should we be doing this? I dunno,
Rod: oh my God.
Will: like, like it's a beautiful video. it's like, look at science happening. I'm
Rod: it sounds fine to me.
Will: So, you know, a bunch of other researchers from around the world is like, this is a significant jump.
[00:36:00] This is, this is learning, this is, the benefits of biological neurons
Rod: Yeah.
Will: that make connections in a very different way
Rod: Sure.
Will: um, electrical circuitry, but integrated with that so it's sort of, there's a third level of, a machine learning interface to understand those electrical impulses, uhhuh, but between those three sorts of levels, it can play doom and
Rod: it can learn now.
Will: So as a solution to your previous story, this is literally, literally a chip that you could get stoned.
Rod: that I like.
Will: You this is the interesting thing that I was just thinking as you were talking before about AI pretending to be on drugs or whatever, that you can literally, because this is an interface of silicon chip and human neurons smeared on top of this.
You can put chemicals into that. You could put them on, on whatever you want. And so there you go. Listener fund it and Rod will do it.
Rod: Oh, I'll do it. Like the youth version of me is going, I couldn't give a shit about the ethics, the grownup version of me is going,
Will: oh,
Rod: Ooh.
Will: I, I, so the ethics here, I, I don't know what they're doing.
Like, I don't [00:37:00] know.
Rod: I don't, that's perfect. Like,
Will: like,
Rod: look, I don't know if it's bad, so don't worry.
Will: Generally, the point about cells is you don't need ethics for cells, like in some, but.
Rod: but it, it's the
Will: they can learn. I know, right?
Rod: That's where I'm like, if I was still on ethics committees, I can imagine just saying, can we just have a quick chat about they can learn
Will: and
Rod: implications suddenly we've got a room full
Will: no, no.
there are many dumber species than us that, and there are silicon based things that are not life forms that learn there learning happens. Uh, like LLMs. They're learning, large language models. Like that's the point. They are,
Rod: That's not untrue for a given definition
Will: but yes, yes, These, these are learning in a way that is much closer to the human way of doing things.
Rod: not, not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. I want it a lot. Like, I want it a lot.
Will: So I, I, don't know how to feel about it, but
Rod: oh, feel, feel good.
Will: it's kind of exciting like that this, I mean,
Rod: look, it's cool as hell and it is how any horrific dystopian novel would [00:38:00] begin.
Will: percent. A hundred percent.
Rod: But 1% of those novels becomes utopian.
Will: Uh, I've just gotta finish with a mailbag here. Um,
you're
Rod: breathing deeply.
Will: Yeah. So, two points from listener Dave here that I just wanted to read out to
Rod: you.
Will: Listen to Dave. Listen to Dave. now the first
Rod: how weird did his parents called him that
Will: Listen to Dave in the future. I know. There we go.
we spoke a couple of weeks ago about the art project, about the machines walking along the beach, the strand beast. Oh, fantastic. Um, I believe we were both hunting for it, but you know, obviously Dave knew it.
Rod: We were busy.
Will: Dave's got a nice update. The guy behind it is still making them.
He's been evolving the technology for 34 years, which I, you know, you know, you know what I love people who go, you know, this is it. I don't care about the rest of the world. I'm making my art and
Rod: I don't blame 'em though. The first time I saw those, I was absolutely mesmerised. I watched them for ages. If you haven't seen these strand beasts, look at them.
Will: Beautiful. He's developed an evolutionary taxonomy grouped into 14 major evolutionary periods with multiple species in each period.
Rod: Okay. Now we're getting carried
Will: no, but I can understand him going, [00:39:00] I want to do, okay, this one I'm gonna shorten the legs and I'm gonna add wings, or I mean, whatever it is, you know?
Okay. and in his mind, he would be evolving the designs. He would, but if he's thinking of them in a 1% organic form, like, he's like, okay, they are, you know, there's a bit of him going, oh yeah, I, I appreci it.
Rod: Good for him. 'cause I like his object. I, I'm not. As concerned about how he's taxonomy
Will: No, no, no. It's fine. But
Rod: but good for you. He, he, you got something to do.
Will: But anyway, Dave's other point. so Dave, listeners, you may remember, sent us in some of the information from the Gelatin cookbook. Um,
Rod: Delicious.
Will: He managed to find a second copy, second volume in the gelatin cookbooks. So
Rod: Oh, thank God. 'cause
one volume was definitely not enough.
Will: jelly recipes to never make now.
But he's also, he's also added, he remembers a trip. Uh, I can still remember being taken to the factory, to help out in the
Rod: gelatin factory.
Will: Indeed, indeed.
Rod: goes in one end.
Will: It was a huge factory down in botany. I can still remember the [00:40:00] smell. The
Rod: Yeah. It's gotta be the
smell.
Will: Can you, can you imagine horrific the
Rod: word rendering.
Will: Render a first render a horse, huge piles like this, huge piles of animal products waiting out in the sun to go into the rendering vats, huge sprinklers, spraying scent into the air to try and mask the smell, but only making
Rod: need is pet, the oil.
Will: this is two times in a week that I've quoted this, you know, it is like Scully and moulder where it's like, you know, they say if you breathe through their mouth, it, the smell goes away.
They
Rod: They lied, spraying, centred oils like you've been a teenage boy, right?
Doesn't work. Washing does
Will: the factory relocated to somewhere in Queensland in the nineties. they're welcome to it. I, uh,
Rod: Balki Peterson would've
Will: thank you, Dave. But, yeah,
Rod: Ooh,
Will: I don't desire to ever go into.
Rod: a rendering plant, a
Will: rendering plant.
I've been into, I've been to a ghost slaughterhouse,
Rod: ghost [00:41:00] slaughterhouse.
Will: Yeah. It's, it's where they slaughter ghost. No, it's an X one.
Rod: so you've been to a museum or a, A ruin.
Will: A ruin. A ruin. Slaughterhouse. You know, that's the,
Rod: it's not the same. The vibe. If you enjoyed this, give us a 25 star rating on every podcast platform.
Will: Tell you friends,
Rod: if you didn't enjoy it, give us a 40 star rating, which will encourage us to lift our game. If you're like listener, Dave, you can contact us on
Will: Cheers at a little bit of science.com au
Rod: And we want hear from you about the things
Will: uh, we, we do definitely do. We love the things. Um, if your dad worked in a weird, smelly factory in the 1920s,
Rod: us one of his old t-shirts.
[00:42:00] [00:43:00] [00:44:00] [00:45:00] [00:46:00] [00:47:00]
