Michael Regilio
Appearances
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I was like, I'm going to write a happy ending, but not just an ordinary happy ending. I'm going to write the happiest f***ing ending of all time. My goal was I'm going to drive the audience insane with happiness. And I think that what works about that is the one smart thing I'll say about Little Miss Sunshine is that you're creating a false binary.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
at the end where Olive walks out on stage, you don't want her to lose the pageant, right? Because that would be horrible. But you also don't want her to win the pageant because that would be just cheesy, right? And you wouldn't really believe it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And so one of the tricks at a climax is instead of having it be the good guys win or the bad guys win, which is just a sort of thing we've seen a gazillion times before and usually the good guys win, right? is to create a third option that nobody saw coming, like a third door that you didn't even know was there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You open it up and like in Little Miss Sunshine, it was just having Olive come out and like she loses, like she rips her pants off and is disqualified. But that's something that you're misleading your audience to think that the only choices are two choices, winning or losing, right? And then you go, no, no, there's a third option, right? That's going to exceed the audience's expectation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
The other example is in Toy Story 3. Like we did a lot of work
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
to fool the audience at the end so that they thought that woody was still in the car in the college box he was going to college with andy and there's even a few shots pov shots from inside the box so that when andy opens up the box to give bonnie his toys and then finds woody at the bottom of the box it's a surprise not just andy but it surprised the audience right and so
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I feel like humor is dependent on surprise. Like you got to catch your audience by surprise, but also emotion, like that sadness. I think that one of the reasons the end of Toy Story 3 is so emotional is because you don't expect Woody to be there. You're not expecting Andy to give him away. I feel like you can't be too clever about this stuff though.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Like I feel like you can't sit around and play a chess game with your audience and go, oh, I'm going to mislead them here and do X, Y, Z. But if you can, you just have to be aware of trying to create something new and surprising, you know, especially at the end of your story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Well, it's, yeah, no, it's a balance that you have to walk. And you want to avoid defying expectations for the sake of defying expectations, right? You want to defy expectations in order to create emotion. That's the goal, right? You don't want your audience to be bored. You don't want your film to be trudging towards some sort of obvious conclusion.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So you want to keep things sort of up in the air and like, how is the hero going to get this thing to work? But yeah, audience expectations, I don't know. I just don't think about it too much. I'm going for emotion. I'm trying to like figure out like, what is the most emotional story I can tell?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You know what? This is something that I learned making this new video that I'm halfway through making about First Acts. I talk about two things, like how to get your audience on board with a character and then how to get your audience on board with that character's story. And when I sat down to think about what makes a great character and...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
What is going to make a character memorable or a character last? This was something completely new that I just sort of figured out or thought of, which is a lot of times your character and the world they live in are two sides of the same coin. So the example I always go to is Robin Hood, for example. Like you start off in Robin Hood and King Richard is the king.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
It's the fair, just universe, right? Robin Hood is actually just Robin of Locksley. He's his nobleman. He lives in his castle. Like everything is cool. It's only when King John usurps the throne takes over England, right? Starts this reign of abusive taxation, right? That the world tilts, like the world becomes unjust, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And now Robin of Locksley can either live in an unjust world or he can go screw it. Like I'm going to rebel against King John. I'm going to go into the woods. I'm going to gather a band of merry men. I'm going to rob the rich and give the poor. So the world itself, the world becoming unfair is the thing that creates the hero, right? The hero becomes the antidote to the negative values of the story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I think that when I started thinking about it a lot, I was just like, a lot of times what makes a hero very memorable is not the hero themselves. It's the world that they live in, right? And if you're describing the world and a problem in a world, that's something that makes it interesting. Jordan, this is a really good question.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And so the examples that I use are, well, for example, Thelma and Louise. Like in Thelma and Louise, those are two, like when you start the movie, they're just kind of two ordinary women. They're going on a weekend. They're going to have fun, right? Yeah. you create this huge doozy of an inciting incident, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Which is Thelma almost gets raped in the parking lot and Louise comes along and kills the guy, right? Oh, right. And then they realize that they're living in this misogynistic, sexist, hostile world, that no one's going to believe them. And they go on the lam.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I think what makes that story resonant and what makes them great characters was that nobody had seen two women in a Hollywood movie fighting back against sort of this universe of sexism and misogyny and male violence so defiantly, so sort of in your face, blowing up that trucker's rig and stuff like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And that was the thing that made the movie click with people is that sense of the character's defiance. Let me give one more example, which is I think that what made The Graduate such a resonant film for audiences back in the 60s was not really Ben Braddock. Ben Braddock's a nice guy, but he's a bit of a nebbish. He's not that interesting a character.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
What no one had ever seen before was the world. Like we'd never seen Mike Nichols showing us this world of sort of post-war ennui and shallowness and materialism. And so you're creating this sort of tilted universe world of post-war America and the sense of alienation and the sense of conformity. And then Ben is the person who's swimming against that tide, fighting against it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And so when you're trying to create a character, a memorable character, one of the things obviously you want your character to be It's just interesting and be flawed in a certain interesting way. What you're also doing is creating a universe that that character is reacting to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And so in order to find something interesting, to find a new story, to finally get around to answering your question, one of the things you need to do is think about the world that your character lives in and how does that world that you're showing on screen reflect the problems in the real world outside the theater in a way that feels resonant to the audience. Does that make sense? It does.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah, plastics. Like plastics is the line that makes you jump on board with him because he says, like the very first scene in the movie, his dad comes up and talks to him. He's sort of hiding up in his bedroom. And his dad goes, what are you worried about? He goes, I'm worried about my future. I want it to be different, right? So the whole movie is this allegory of conformity and nonconformity.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Like he wants his future to be different. Then you just create this whole tilted universe of conformity, right? And then when he finds Elaine Robinson, she's the one person that he can stand to be with, the one person he can stand to talk to. That's what makes it interesting and resonant.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Let me give you one more example, which is, I talked about this in my new video, like the dude in The Big Lebowski. What makes him interesting is that he's introduced in the screenplay as being like the laziest man in LA County, which makes him pretty high in the running for laziest man in the world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
He's not this traditional hero who has big dreams and big aspirations and is super competent or anything like that. He's just the dude. So why do you like this guy so much? Why is he such a beloved figure?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
The way you get your audience on board with a lazy bum who does nothing but smoke pot and go bowling is that you surround them with this universe of like super competitive, stressed out men, right? You have Walter. You have the big Lebowski himself. You have Jesus, the pedophile bowler. You have the sheriff in Malibu. Eight-year-old dude. You create this whole universe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You create this whole universe of people who are not chill, who are not laid back, right? And then the dude becomes heroic because he's so cool. He's so laid back. He's not trying to achieve anything. He's not trying to become anything different. He just abides. And that's what makes him heroic. That's what makes him like him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So it's a really interesting question of like, how do you find something new? You identify some sort of problem in the real world, and then you create that kind of universe, a tilted universe in your movie.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
It is interesting because he on the face of it would not be a character you root for because he doesn't seem to want very much. But as you put it, hero and world are two sides of the same coin. In your new video essay, you say that film, maybe better than any other medium, gives us characters who embody new ideals for how to live one's life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Now, I don't know if the dude fits into that category, but What ideals do you think we need to live our lives well at this moment in history? Are there any movies or characters that are embodying those values really well right now?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Well, let me just, I'll bring up something which I don't think a movie has addressed yet, right? Which is, I mean, I think one of the problems that we all are dealing with right now is screen addiction, right? Like you walk out on the street, you walk down the sidewalks of New York and everyone's sort of staring at their screen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And there's a way in which we live in this world of self-consciousness where we're performing our lives, right? We're performing for this invisible, unseen audience. Literally in our case right here. Literally in our case right here. And there's a way in which all of us are negotiating two selves. There's our digital selves and our analog selves, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And there's a way in which the digital self of the digital world is a very seductive thing, right? It's where a lot of work takes place. It's where you can make a ton of money. And it's all clean and frictionless. And like the thing with screens is, you know, there's no touch, there's no smell, there's no taste.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Like it's just very, we have this new problem, which is like we are haunted by our digital selves and haunted by this sort of generalized other that we're performing for. I don't think I've seen a movie yet that sort of addressed that problem and turned it into a story that can be compelling and interesting. Does that answer your question? It sort of does. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I mean, it sounds like you have some work to do, my friend. So get on it. But yeah, you're saying that there could be a hero who embodies the values of authenticity in a world where this digital realm is kind of, I don't know, creating an arena, but also destroying us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah. Rebelling. You're just swimming against the tide of like, if everybody's staring at their screen, everybody's obsessed with their digital selves, right? Then you would just want to create a hero swing against that tide and is privileging the world of atoms over the world of bits, basically.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Totally, totally. I think that, you know, I went to film school. I got out of film school. I want to be a screenwriter. So I want to get jobs where I could read screenplays. And the thing that people, young people know, I think don't appreciate is how difficult it was to find screenplays. Before the internet, screenplays were really hard to get your hands on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
There were vendors in New York that would sell screenplays on the sidewalk because it was just really hard to find screenplays. Now you go on your computer and like every screenplay in the world is available. I got out, I got a job at a production company. Then I moved on and got a job with a producer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And that producer was working at Columbia Pictures and her job was looking for material for Matthew. So after I moved on from that job, Matthew knew me and hired me to be his assistant. And it was a great job. Matthew's the nicest guy in the world, like best boss in the world. But it was a great job because back then it was really hard to get your hands on screenplays.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
His agency at CAA would be sending him scripts all the time. So I, and one of my jobs was just to read all the scripts that came in, write coverage on them, recommend whether you should read them or not. And so that was a great experience. Like that was really great. You see what's out there in the marketplace. You see what the agencies are sending out. You see what scripts work or not.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You see how actors are responding to a piece of material or not. So it was a very, very humble experience. position to begin with. We all have our humble beginnings. But it was great training because, again, it was really hard back in the 90s to just get access to screenplays. So it was a great job. And Matthew's a total sweetheart.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I had been with him when people go, hey, Ferris, is it your day off? You know, that kind of thing. He sort of resigned himself to that's going to happen once a week, once a week for the rest of his life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah, not really. I think I grew up. My dad worked in the Foreign Service. I grew up as a toddler in India. And then when I was 10, 11, 12 years old, we lived in Sri Lanka. Beyond that, we lived in suburban Virginia and no connection. Like the idea that you could make a living making movies was just it never even occurred to me that you could make do that for a living.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
It just happens somewhere else. And my dad loved comedy. He would take us to go see Mel Brooks movies. He would take us to go see every new Woody Allen film together. And I think watching your dad laugh at something is always this very... It's just great when your dad just relax and laughs at something. But I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. It was really, I was in high school.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I was very unhappy, but I had always kind of loved films. I remember as soon as I found out there's this thing called film school, I was like, well, that's it. That's what I'm going to do. That created the ladder or at least the bottom rung of a ladder that I could put my hand on and start climbing. So as soon as I found out there's a thing as film school, I was like, that's what I want to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You know, it's funny that the thing that I really fell in love with with movies was I remember the moment it was when my whole family went and saw Apocalypse Now when it was first released. And I remember that opening scene where you do a triple exposure of like the jungle panning across the jungle, Martin Sheen's face upside down and the ceiling fan going and that music from the doors is playing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I was a kid. I was like 14, 15 years old. I'd never seen movies do something like that, you know? And it was so lyrical and so beautiful. I was like, oh my God, this is art. Like, this is art. I had been raised on multiplex fare, right? And when I saw that, and that whole movie just blew my mind. That's just like still one of my favorite movies. That's when I fell in love with movies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Totally. Like, I think that, you know, I'm doing a new thing about first acts, how to write a good first act, how to get your story started off with as much sort of emotional rooting interest as possible, how to kick things off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I really fell in love with the poetry of movies, the visual, the cinema of movies. And I think it's a little ironic that I... have ended up being this sort of story guy. Because when I started out, I kind of didn't care about story. I wanted, I love beautiful, the Black Stallion, like these lyrical art films.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
But just like my first job out of film school was reading scripts and writing coverage on scripts. That's how your brain gets trained, I guess. How many scripts do you think you read in your career? About a thousand. I think about a thousand. I think I wrote about a thousand. Yeah. Wow. You know, most of them don't work.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I think that, I mean, it does get very soul crushing to read one screenplay after another. People have devoted six months a year of their life to writing this and it's just going to get read once and then get put on a shelf. And there's almost no field of human endeavor fraught with more disappointment and failure. than screenwriting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And so, you know, when I started writing my own scripts, I was really determined that that wasn't going to happen to me. And I think that that's why I came up with this very rigorous sort of analytical approach to story. I mean, there's two sides of storytelling. You want to start, anytime you start writing, you're starting with the sort of intuitive, emotional side of your brain, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You're always connecting with something that's very very instinctive, right? But as you go through five drafts, 10 drafts, 15, 20 drafts of your story, you're going to make this transition from the quick thinking, fast, intuitive, emotional part of your brain to the sort of more analytical part of your brain.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So I think that, I mean, my training, reading a thousand scripts taught me, yes, you need great dialogue and you need great jokes and you need all the stuff that comes from your instincts, basically.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I'll just say I had a script that I wrote years and years ago and I sort of did three drafts and then it sort of petered out because I always knew the first act wasn't doing the work that it needed to do. I gave it to people and people were like, I'm not really into this character. And it was a really short first act. First act was like 17 pages.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
But I also feel like you can use the other part of your brain to sit down, put a story up on blocks, sort of x-ray it, you know, in formal terms and going, why is this script working or why is it not working?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Right, because you said it's much easier to get your script read. And I was surprised to read you an interview where you said it's much easier even to get your script made into a movie than it is to write a really good script. Oh my God. So 99% of your effort, you said, should go into writing... A good script. You wrote, what, 10 screenplays before you sold Little Miss Sunshine?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And my understanding is that from the time you seriously decided to be a writer till you sold your first screenplay, it was like a decade, right? It was like 10 years. What kept you going during that time? And why does it take so long to become a really good screenwriter?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So delusional optimism was the thing that sort of kept me going. I think that the one thing that kept me going was that I was told in film school that if you want to be a writer, if you want to break in, it's going to take 10 years. And of course, I thought, oh, I'm smarter than everyone. It'll only take me five years, you know, but it almost- Yeah, that sounds familiar.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And then also I got to enjoy the process of writing. Like I got to enjoy it. Like there is an exhilaration to come up with an idea going, oh, this is going to be really great. I will say that I had written 10 screenplays. Nothing had happened with any of them. None of them were especially great. Although I had written a little bit of Sunshine at that point, I just hadn't quite finished it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I was sitting down to write screenplay number 11. And I was in my 30s at this point. And I was just like, what am I doing with my life? Is there something else that I can do with my life? Because this isn't working out. And the one thing I'll pat myself on the back for is that I just kept going. I sat down. I thought about it. I was like, you know, I love movies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I love being part of the community of movies. And I just want to be part of that, however it is. It was about six months later that I finally sold Ole Miss Sunshine. Wow. Wow. It's hard, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So I just put that script aside and then in the process of doing this video about... first acts, like I go, oh, now I know what's missing. And I went back and I rewrote the whole first act of that story. Now it works.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You think Gwyneth goes to Target? I don't think so.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I thought a lot about this because I feel like when you are a young person, what you're, one of the things you're choosing is you're choosing to enter a field and that field is going to represent your values, right? So if you want to be a Marine, you go off and join the Marines, right? And you go from being a civilian, you become a Marine, right? Or if you want to be a Buddhist monk, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You go off and join a monastery. That institutional monastery is going to change you into the sort of the ideal of Buddhism, like, or the ideal of being a Marine or the ideal of whatever, right? And so when I chose to be a screenwriter, it's not just that you're trying to get movies made and make money and be a success, you're also just joining a community.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And you're finding people who share your values, share your interests. I think that if I hadn't ended up being a screenwriter, I would have been a development executive, I would have been a producer, I would have been something else, maybe a, I don't know, work as an editor or something like that. I would have done something just because I love filmmaking so much.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah, I feel like I've been very, very lucky. And I think you have to acknowledge that luck plays an enormous role in whether you're able to break through or not. So, I mean, I was very persistent. I worked for 10 years. I failed a lot, you know, 10 years of failure and disappointment. But I also felt like I was very...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
deliberate in doing due diligence on all my screenplays and trying to figure out like, does this work or not? And, you know, I wrote a hundred drafts of Little Miss Sunshine, like trying to get it to a point where it was going to work massive and overwhelming force. Like there was no way you can say no to the screenplay. So it's a big risk.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You kind of jump off a cliff, but I also feel like I did it in a very methodical or kind of cautious way. I feel like no one's going to be helped by putting another mediocre screenplay out in the world. And you've got to be hard on yourself. You've got to be hard on your own material. You've got to let it be judged by other people. And you've got to accept their judgments, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Like, I don't know if I'm ever going to go back to that script because it was so long ago, but it is interesting how just studying, studying, studying storytelling and story, you know, it's very humbling and it always makes you a little bit better. There's always more stuff to learn, always more stuff to learn.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Because if 9 out of 10 people don't like your screenplay, it's a pretty good bet that 9 out of 10 people are not going to like your movie.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You don't support me. I feel like screenwriting requires almost... a degree of masochism. It still doesn't work. It still doesn't work. Everyone goes, oh, it's great. It's fine. Send the script out. You go, no, no, you're all lying to me. Tell me what still doesn't work. You've got to really, really kick the tires on your story and you've got to be hard on yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You're hard on yourself so it makes everyone else's job easier. It's going to make the actor's job easier, the director's job easier. The harder you are on yourself, the better your screenplay is, the easier everyone else's job is going to be. And so you've got to... Just kick the tires on your story. People can be peevish, like people can be assholes about your story, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
But you've got to suck it up. Like those are the people who are going to be sitting in your audience. Billy Wilder had a great quote where he was talking about the audience and he said, individually, they're idiots, but collectively, they're a genius. And I think that you have to respect the genius of your audience, right? Your audience is smarter than you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And so you have to be humble and you have to listen to the feedback you're getting. That's what Pixar really taught me was being at Pixar and the big feedback mechanism they have there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Gotta keep taking it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
There's a certain point where you just recognize you're not going to make everybody happy. Well, that's for sure. Yeah. There's just a certain point where you're just like, fuck it. This is a script I want to see. Or I think this joke is funny. I don't care. I'm putting it in there. Like, I think it's funny. There's a certain point where you just have to, you can't please everybody.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
If you try, you'd never make a movie, right? There's a certain moment of madness where you just have to jump off the cliff and go, okay, we're doing this. Or I'm sending the script out or whatever it is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Well, I would say that script is probably like eight or nine in line in terms of like things that I want to make. So, you know what? Actually, I won't say it's probably fifth or sixth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
It was completely out of the blue. I had written the script for Little Miss Sunshine. It was being shot actually in the summer of 2005. So the movie hadn't been released yet. They hadn't even finished shooting it yet. And Pixar had gotten their hands on a copy of the script and they read it and they really liked it. And they brought me up and interviewed me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And they were looking for someone to work with the director, Lee Unkrich, on an original idea that he had. And so I met with Lee at sort of three interviews. I made it over the bar kind of each time. And they hired me. And then that was right before the merger with Disney happened. So when the Disney merger happened, that was when they sort of asked Lee to take over Toy Story 3 and do it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And my joke is that they all go into a meeting and they're like, okay, this is it. We're going to make Toy Story 3. And then at the end of the meeting, they're like, wait a minute, we need somebody to write it. Uh, you. Yeah. What is it you do again over here? Projects assistant, get over here. You're writing the script.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Target bags in hand.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Exactly. The guy standing in the hallway was like, we need some poor schmuck to write this thing. How about you? Yeah, like, I just got to drop off this milk. I'll be right back. Yeah, so I feel like I was really lucky to be at Pixar from Ratatouille to Toy Story 3. It was Ratatouille, WALL-E, up, and then Toy Story 3, and then I worked on Inside Out while Toy Story 3 was still being finished.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I mean, it's just a great, great experience. They really had this great... collaborative culture. I was credited with writing Toy Story 3, but it was really co-writers were Andrew Stan, Leon Critch, and John Lasseter, and then about 20 other people that were all helping to get that script to where it was. So it was probably 10 people for three years working full-time on that script.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So 10 man years of labor for a 93-minute movie.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah. You call it collaborative. It sounds collaborative and loving. And it also sounds absolutely brutal and unforgiving because with that many great storytellers in the room, it sounds like everybody is putting every story element under the microscope and pushing it to the best possible version, which would explain why Pixar movies are so good.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
But what is it like to be a creative in that environment? It's...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
My job is that it's the greatest job in the world, except for the soul crushing anxiety that comes along with it. Because I remember I had been hired to do a Toy Story three. And after like six months, I was like, Hey, I wonder what the Rotten Tomatoes score for the first Toy Story movie is. So I go look it up. It's like a hundred percent. No pressure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I was like, well, I wonder what the Rotten Tomatoes. Yeah. What's Rotten Tomatoes for Toy Story two. And it was a hundred percent, you know? So it's just like, okay, you got your work cut out for you. Also leading up to that, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Up had all been nominated for Best Screenplay, and then Up had been nominated for Best Picture.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
No big deal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Well, and if you don't freaking get an Oscar nomination for your screenplay, you're like, what a loser. The last three guys got a nomination. What's your problem? This one was in the bag, pal. How did you blow this?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
The pressure. The pressure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah. How do you blow it? Listen, man, it was so much anxiety and stress for like three years. I felt like, cause it was also building on the first two movies. Like, and so I felt like I was the guy, they sent the wide receiver down to the end zone and they threw this like hail Mary. And I'm sitting there in the end zone going, please don't drop this. Please don't drop this. You know, like, right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Oh my God. The other thing was that like, we were figuring out the story as we went along. Like, it wasn't like we had this super clear idea right from the start. I mean, we had a beginning, a middle and an end, but there were tons of adjustments that that were made along the way. It's like having a story problem that you can't solve yet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You know, the script is not working, but you don't know how to fix it. It's like having this itch that you can't scratch. It's just, it can be really, really, really, really agonizing, but also like totally exhilarating.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Like some of the best, happiest moments of my life were in those Pixar story meetings where you have like 10 smart people in a room and like the ideas are clicking along and it just like is really, really exhilarating. I feel very, very lucky I was there when I was.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah. I mean, I'm at the point where I have more scripts than I'm going to have time to make into movies. And it's helpful. I was just saying, working as a script doctor, I went out and they gave me the script and I read it. And I was like, oh, based on the fact that I've been obsessing about first acts for the last couple of months, I know exactly how to fix a script.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So torturous but exquisite in certain moments, it sounds like.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I'm quitting the business.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
They asked me, do you want to write Toy Story 4? I was like, I feel like I just put on a blindfold and ran across a freeway and I didn't get killed. And now you're going, do you want to do it again? I was like, you know what? I didn't want to time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
No, thanks. Where's the nearest target, sir? Take me there. But look, I mean, these are some of the most beloved franchises in history, Toy Story, Star Wars. I mean, I have to imagine the pressure you described is stressing me out. I didn't even have to do it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
But also you're trying to honor the history of those movies by, I imagine, offering something new and unexpected while you also take into account those audience expectations you talked about. Do you think a lot about nostalgia and honoring the past while you're pushing things forward? Is it intense to deal with the expectations of these super diehard fans?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
It's funny. It's very important to have fidelity to the universe that you're setting up and to those characters, right? And I remember every once in a while when I started working on Toy Story 3, someone would say like, oh, that doesn't sound like Woody. Woody would never say that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I mean, there's big guardrails on the story, but I think that the danger on something like Toy Story 3 is you're going to resort to sort of cute blandness, or you're going to be sort of repeating yourself a little bit. And I remember my resolution was that I want the script to be funny, not just sort of chuckle, chuckle funny, but really funny. And I want it to be weird also. I want there to be
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
sort of unexpected, strange things that make sense within the logic of a toy universe, right? But that you would never think of yourself. So like, you got Lotso as the bad guy, Big Baby as the heavy, who's his enforcer. And you're trying to elaborate on what's come before, but remain consistent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I think that it's just a balance that you're always trying to walk to remain true to the spirit of the original stuff and still expand on the universe and the characters.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah, it's... Thanks for asking. It's kind of a stupid thing, but I remember I... Man, I worked on Little Miss Sunshine for like four years to get that movie made. Major investment in my life. I wrote 100 drafts of that script. For Toy Story 3, I worked on that script for three years and was very happy that got my name on the movie and it came out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And then this was at the beginning of my script doctoring career. I was hired to work on the film Oblivion as a script doctor. I went and I did two weeks of work, just not expecting to get credit at all. What I did was I changed it from... The opening and the ending, the script I got made it out to be a war movie. It was like an alien invasion. We fought back against them, blah, blah, blah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And when they sent me the script, I was like, this is actually a love story. This is about a guy who's haunted by dreams of a woman that he's never met. So I rewrote the beginning. I rewrote the ending. And that changed the nature of the movie from being kind of just this war movie to being a love story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And very surprisingly, because I only worked on that script for two weeks, the studio elected to give me credit on it. And I was just like, man, these are my characters. This isn't my story. I only worked on this thing for two weeks. It just is a different kind of writing. Little Miss Sunshine came out of me. It came out of my personal experience. It's an expression of who I am.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I worked on it for four years, right? And then with Oblivion, I'm just coming in to somebody else's script. I'm making little adjustments here and there. It just felt like two completely different kinds of writing. And so I thought, I'll just use a pseudonym for stuff that I'm doing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
If I'm not hired to do the full screenplay, if I'm only coming in and making adjustments to someone else's work, I just want to make a distinction between the writing I do as sort of an artist and the writing I do as sort of a craftsman, maybe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You know, there have been scripts, a couple of scripts. I mean, Star Wars was one of them where I was given first position in the credits. You know, when they arbitrate what the credits look like, whoever contributed the most should be in first position in the credits. And I was offered first position in The Force Awakens.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I think that that final screenplay has maybe like three lines of dialogue that I wrote and the rest was rewritten by Larry and JJ. So, I mean, I think that the whole structure that we came up with is, I mean, again, like the studio decided I had contributed more to the final script than Larry and JJ, but I thought, you know, it doesn't feel like it's my story. Like, it's really theirs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
It's their characters. It's all their dialogue. So I elected just to step back and take second position in the credits. They probably appreciated that, I would say, right? Because they probably agreed with you, I would assume, right? Yeah, I feel like I was being a credit hog to try and be in first position when the sensibility that's reflected in the final film is more.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I mean, the story was what we all came up with together, but the sensibility reflected in the final movie is more Larry HHA than it is me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
It's a very sensitive subject, so I'm treading carefully here. I think that within the spectrum of optimism and pessimism... We'll use AI to make you sound better. So whatever you say now, we'll just redo it with AI. Don't worry. Good, good, good. Good, good, good. I think as a screenwriter, you kind of have to be an optimist. Here's an argument that I'll make.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And this may turn out to be not to be the case. And this may turn out to... I could be completely wrong. But I think one of the arguments that you could make is that I had a meeting with a guy who was running a generative AI company. And he said, like, production costs are going to come down like 90%, 95%. Wow. And I was just like, oh, you mean like in 10 years? He's like, no, in like two years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I don't know if that's true, but I think that... There's a lot of screenplays, including a few of my own, that don't get made because the budget doesn't make sense. I had a script about two years ago that made it up to the top of the decision ladder at a studio and I wanted to direct it. And they said to me, we would make this movie if it costs half of what the budget is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah, I think that writers tend to be kind of seen as disposable. You know, you can bring different writers in that have different strengths for things. After I wrote Little Miss Sunshine and then especially after Toy Story 3, I was working at Pixar and Disney Theater Animation was bringing scripts up to Pixar and screening them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I wrote this comedy. It's very dark, very spiky comedy. It's like the darkest comedy of all time. And they were like, we love the script and we want to make it, but it's just too expensive. We can't justify it. If AI can cut the cost of making movies, just even by 50%, right, it's going to allow a lot more movies to be made.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I think it's going to allow sort of fresh voices, sort of spikier or stranger stories to get made. I think it's going to... give writers actually, I'm hoping, more control. So I think that in the optimism and pessimism debate, I totally realize that there's a dystopian alternative, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
There's a way in which like Amazon and Apple and whoever else just start cranking out the McDonald's of storytelling and you're just getting bland, homogenous product. Yeah. You could argue that we're kind of already at that place. Like we're already seeing a lot of superhero movies, stuff that's not super adventurous.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I think that if AI is actually going to fulfill the promise of bringing down costs, to me, what that hopefully promises is that it's going to lessen the importance of the money people, the gatekeepers, the people who are providing the money, and it's going to empower the creative people, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
If films become much, much cheaper, it's just going to take away power from the money people and give more power to the creative people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Here's the most optimistic take, right? Which is I have a, let's say a science fiction film. In the current climate, it would never get made because it's a big science fiction film that costs $100, $150 million. Right. If I can use AI to make that film for a fraction of that, there was a story about a guy, I won't say his name, but he made an independent film, cost $200,000.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
He just invested his own money into it. It was a big hit, made $100 million worldwide. And he, as a director who owned the copyright, owned the negative, made $40 million worldwide. And I think that there is an opportunity, again, like if AI can bring down costs, again, I recognize this is the optimistic scenario. It may not work out this way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And also some Disney live action films were being brought up to Pixar. And they would screen the films and then we'd have a big story meeting and we'd talk and I was very vocal. I have lots of opinions about how stories should be told. So based on that, I started getting hired to come in and do a week or two of work on a script.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
To me, the holy grail is having writers and directors be empowered enough that they can make their own movies and own the copyright, right, and control it. And so we're not renting our talent out to these giant corporations that control the purse strings, right? If AI can bring costs down enough, it's going to, A, let a thousand flowers bloom. It'll be a lot easier to get movies made.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And yes, there'll be a lot of mediocrity. There'll be a lot of stuff, like movies that shouldn't have gotten made and just got made because it was possible to get them made. But I think it's going to allow for, again, sort of spikier, odder, stranger stories to be told or movies to be made. And I think that...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
There's a possibility, and this may be very utopian of me, but there's a possibility that by cutting costs so much, it's going to, again, disempower the money people, empower the creative people, and even the Holy Grail would be leading to artists owning their own work.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I think that, I think that, listen, I know I'm afraid I'm going to get blowback because I'm being Panglossian. I'm being too optimistic about this stuff. And I totally recognize like there's a way in which if things go wrong, right? There's a way in which you just have producers hitting buttons. Give me a mystery thriller. Give me a Superman era movie. Give me whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And that's what we're going to get. And I think that the general, my take is rather contrarian. I think most people tend to be siding on the side of pessimism. And they could be right and I could be completely wrong. Well, time will tell. Time will tell. Or both could be right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I think that there's a case to be made for the fact that it's going to hopefully end up being a tool that empowers creative people rather than disempowers them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So script doctoring is... A lot of times, the script is... You can be writing... The script is about to go into production, or you're writing reshoots. So they've already shot the script. You're going to watch the whole rough cut of the film and go, oh, this story needs to be fixed here or there. So...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
There's already software out there where you can just, you hit a button and you go, give me a song that's a Mid-tempo, blah, blah, blah, with lyrics about blah, blah, blah, and you hit the button and you get that song. But I don't think people are using that. People don't want to listen to just bespoke songs that only they know. Part of the function of art is creating a community, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
People want to go see Taylor Swift. They want to see her sing her own songs. They want to know that she's written her own songs that's based on her experience, her life, her human experience, right? Yeah. It's going to create a community where everybody can go and sing along, right? So we all know these songs. That's what art does, creates a community around us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I think that there's this weird Silicon Valley thing that like now we're all going to get to make our own individual movies that are going to be custom made for us. But I don't think people want that. I mean, this is what happened with Barbie, right? Was it became this cultural phenomenon?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Like you went to see Barbie because it was the Barbie movie and you were going to be able to take part in this broader cultural conversation. And I also feel like Warner Brothers could have just had a synthetic Barbie and a synthetic Kent, right? They come out of a computer. People don't want that. People want to see Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling playing Barbie and Kent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
They want to see human people. So I think there's a lot of panic now in sort of actors being replaced, writers being replaced, because you can just hit a button and have this stuff happen. I mean, maybe there's people out there that are just sitting there like making their own music and only listening to that. But I don't think that's the reason that people...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Man, my career is just stumbling blindly from one obstacle to another in a series of near disasters and close escapes. I don't know how I ended up with the career I ended up with. The goal was always to be a director. I think I have two or three scripts now that I feel like are ready to be shot. I'm hoping I'll be shooting sometime next year. You know what?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
The honest truth is that I feel as though I've only recently really mastered the craft of writing. And I think that I only recently felt really comfortable that I know what I'm doing. That was just only a couple of years ago. And I think for the first 30... years of my career, I was still a student. I was still figuring things out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And usually you're brought in for, it can be one week, it could be two weeks, it could be three weeks. On Catching Fire, Catching Fire was actually a script doctoring job. So I was brought in for four weeks. So I did four weeks of work. And most of the time you don't get any credit for it. Most of the time you're just working kind of anonymously
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I'd written a bunch of scripts, and it was a little bit like throwing darts at the dartboard, right? And when Little Miss Sunshine came out and was such a big success, it felt like I'd thrown a dart and it hit the bullseye. But I was like, wait a minute, how did I do that? How did that happen? Because I feel like I was not... I still didn't understand stories and how storytelling worked.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I think that a lot of my career, I mean, this is what was so great about working at Pixar, was that I was still learning. I was still figuring out how stories work, watching WALL-E get made, watching UP get made, watching all that stuff get made, and then doing it myself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And then making these videos, like the videos have been helpful to me just in sort of clarifying, articulating like the organic logic of a story. How do stories really work? And so the truth is, maybe everyone else is smarter than me and I'm just a dumb guy, but for me, it's really hard to write a good screenplay. Oh yeah, that's definitely it, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
It's really hard to write a great screenplay that you really love. And I think that when I wrote Little Miss Sunshine, I wanted to direct it and that didn't happen. It took me a long, long time to write another two or three original screenplays that I love as much as I love That movie. And so I feel like I'm knock on wood. I'm ready to start directing those things now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
But I think that what's been guiding my career up until this point is kind of the sense of like, I'm still figuring this out because storytelling is so difficult and so mysterious and also powerful. Like I feel like movies have huge influence on your lives. Movies can change your life, right? I think it's an enormous responsibility also. And you don't want to be putting crap out there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So I think that, you know, when I look back at my career, I could have been more bold. I could have been more, what the hell, I'm going to try it. But I think that I was really still invested in trying to figure out sort of how stories work. I'll make my next movie. I'll make a, I'll direct it and the script will be terrible. And people will go like, like, what were you thinking?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You know, you wasted 30.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Exactly. There's been no logic to my career or the direction of my career other than work with good people, take the opportunities when they come along, and always put yourself in a position where you feel like you're learning something. I love that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And if I can just put in the plug for my screenwriting videos, like you can go on YouTube and I think just put in my name, Michael Arndt and screenwriting videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And working as a craftsman, you're taking the story, putting it up on blogs and going, what's working with this thing? What's not working with the story? How do I fix it? How do I optimize it, right? The movie's trying to do something. How do I make it work better? It really is just sort of just trying to optimize what the story itself is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And also I feel like this is, I'm making the videos that I wish I had seen when I was starting out. I'm making the videos that I wish somebody had made for me. And I think that figuring out the knowledge about... external stakes, internal stakes, and philosophical stakes. Figuring all that stuff out took me a long, long time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I would hate to have all that knowledge just for me to get hit by a bus and have all that knowledge disappear. So I wanted to just sit down, make these videos, put them out there, and hopefully people can find them helpful.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
They're such a great resource, and I'm very, very grateful for them. thank you for making them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Thank you. And I think that I'll just say, like, I'm making this new thing about how to write a good first act. It'll probably be about 60 minutes long. The examples I'm using are from The Godfather, Cinderella, Tootsie, and The Bicycle Thief. And all those first acts are just totally dynamite, totally great. And they all work in sort of the same way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
If people are wondering if I'm going to make a new video, yeah, there's one that'll be out in, I don't know, I'm very, these things take a long time, so it'll
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You're invited, man. You're invited. If I'm making a movie, hopefully we'll be shooting in New York. If you're going to be in New York while we're shooting, come by and you can go to the craft service and get all the free food.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Sometimes you'll be brought in to punch up characters, to warm up characters, get the audience to like a character. Sometimes you'll be brought in to fix up the whole thing. Wow.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I mean, usually... The script is heading towards production. Usually there's a consensus that the script isn't working. Sometimes it's already in production, sometimes it's in post-production. And I've been brought in for, you know, the longest job I did was on Hunger Games Catching Fire. That was a four-week job.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
The shortest was I was brought in for one day on a movie and just told to warm up the lead character a little bit in a character's introduction. And that was in post-production. They had already made the movie.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah, I think that, I mean, a lot of times you're very cost-conscious. You're just trying to figure out, like, if they're doing reshoots, what's their reshoot budget? How many days are they going to be able to reshoot? And then you're picking and choosing. You're going, like, big problems, medium-sized problems, and small problems, and trying to, like, address the big problems or not.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And then I'll just say that I won't name the film, but I was brought in one time. There was a film, big-budget film. It had a full cast, full crew. They had rendered the sound stages. They were just ready to start going, and the studio was not completely happy with the script. They thought the script could be streamlined a little bit.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And the director said to me, he said, we're spending three million dollars a week not to make this movie. Oh, God. Wow. You know, I come in and I'm just like cut 15 or 20 pages of the script. But cutting 15 or 20 pages out of script is like cutting 15 or 20 million dollars out of the budget. Oh, wow. You're always trying to be cost conscious.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
You're always trying to find very efficient ways to make the script better. But a lot of times what you're just doing is it can't be cost conscious if you're just, you know, making a script better. My joke is that there's nothing more expensive than bad writing and there's nothing cheaper than good writing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. And if you can come up with a dynamite ending, I'm just telling you like four or five good jokes and that's going to get you an extra 20 million dollars like at the box office. Really?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Individually, they're idiots, but collectively, they're a genius, you know, and I think that you have to respect the genius of your audience, right? Your audience is smarter than you. And so you have to be humble and you have to listen to the feedback you're getting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah. So, I mean, sometimes you're brought in to do a humor pass. Sometimes you're brought in to do a page one rewrite, start, finish, rewrite the whole thing. And then sometimes you're brought in to just fix certain characters or certain scenes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So being a script doctor sounds like an incredible job, but a lot of your career has been actually writing original stories. In one of your video essays where you break down the philosophy of your storytelling and all the lessons that you've learned in your career, you say that the best metaphor you have for coming up with a story is you're trying to climb a mountain blindfolded.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
It's hard because you don't know where you're going. You don't know where the top is. You can't see what's below you. But actually, you say the hardest part about climbing a mountain blindfolded is that you just can't find the mountain.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
That applies to working as a screenwriter in Hollywood as much as it does to like entrepreneurship or parenting or discovering your purpose, really anything in life. So How do you find the mountain?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
That's an excellent question, actually. I think that when I think back on the films that I've written, usually there's a single moment in a story that was the inspiration for it. And I'll give you two examples. One was Little Miss Sunshine. And I was just looking for a good ending to the story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I wanted to write an ending that I made videos about, like an insanely great ending where it seems like the worst thing is about to happen and then the best possible thing happens. I spent six months just like trying to figure out what a good ending should be. And I was like, how can you engineer it? So everyone in the audience thinks the worst possible thing is going to happen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And then in one second, you flip it over, the best possible thing happens. And I was thinking like, you know, should it be a sports movie? But that's kind of a cliche. Should it be like romantic comedy? It's hard to avoid cliches with that. I couldn't figure out. And then I was watching this little child beauty pageant on TV. And there were all these little skinny blonde girls.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And I just thought, God, wouldn't it be great If a little chubby girl got up there and you totally thought she would be humiliated, be the worst moment of her life. And then the music came on and she just rocked the house and just blew everybody away. I was like, that's a good ending. I know that's a good ending. So that was the beginning.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And then you go, like, if that's the ending, like, who is this little girl? What is this pageant? How did she get there? Who is her family, et cetera, et cetera. There's other scripts that I've written that have been based on the inciting incident of the story. I go, oh, that's a great beginning. I know where I can go with this because that's a great beginning.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Sometimes it's like a speech that a character gives and you go, oh, I want to hear a character give this speech. And then you're building the rest of the story out from it. So a lot of times you're finding the spark of inspiration just in a single moment. And then you just elaborate on that universe out from that single moment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I feel like the low moment before your climax is actually the centrifugal center of your story. A lot of times what you're doing with your story is trying to drive your character down to the place where the worst possible thing is going to happen to them. And that becomes the focus of the rest of your story, right? You're just trying to go to the worst possible place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I'll just grab off the top of my head. An example in Fellini's Eight and a Half, right? Like he's trying to figure out a story that he can make into a movie and he's failing and failing and failing. And finally, he goes to this press conference and they're like, what's your next movie going to be about?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And he just doesn't have an answer, you know, and people are mocking him and making fun of him and he crawls on the table and has this fantasy about shooting himself in the head. And then, God, it's such a great, that is such a great ending. That ending is so great.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
But the first two acts of that story and half of the third act is just getting your character to this lowest possible moment where they feel exposed, humiliated. The worst thing is happening. And so, yeah. And then the Houdini trick for screenwriting is to be able to turn things around in a second. And Fellini does that really, really well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
But it's funny because you seem to be interested in a few common themes in all of your movies, but one of them is failure. Like Olive's family gets on the brink of disaster in a number of ways. Woody in Toy Story is constantly at risk of losing Andy. Are you particularly fascinated by failure? Is that a Michael Arndt thing? Or is that a theme that makes every story interesting?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
Yeah, I think it makes every story interesting. I mean, you're looking for the worst, again, like knowing what the worst possible thing for your hero is. What is your hero desiring and wanting and the best possible thing, but what is also the worst possible thing for your hero? It's interesting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I mean, this is something that I've thought of that's really new is that not only do you have a low moment in your third act or a lowest possible moment in your third act, what I call a moment of despair in your third act.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
So it looks like at the end of your story, your character has failed, externally failed, internally failed, philosophically just failed in every possible way and then being able to flip it around.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
The thing that I am talking about in this new video that I'm putting together about first acts is I think a lot of times it's really, really helpful to have a moment of despair in the first act of your story. And you see this over and over again in, well, just an example of Little Miss Sunshine is you build up all this emotional rooting interest. Olive wants to go do this beauty pageant, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
And they've got to somehow get her
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
to california what you want to do is build up all this ahead of steam basically you want like audience emotional rooting interest they want to see this thing happen and then you shut the door so it seems like your hero is never going to get what they want right at the end of the first stack there's no way forward and then just cracking the door open so there's one possible way
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
for the character to get what they want creates this sort of maximum rooting interest, this huge audience momentum in the story. So it's interesting that you can have a moment of despair in the third half of your story, but having a moment of despair in the second half of your story, I think is really, really important too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling
I mean, I grew up in New York going and seeing indie films and being really into David Lynch films and all that stuff. With screenplays, the stuff that I read, I think what I finally decided is that the thing that you're going for is the emotion at the end. How do you want the audience to feel when they walk out of the theater? And I made a very deliberate decision on Lola Sunshine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's crazy to think that you could be on the Supreme Court of the United States and be that imbecilic, I believe would be the correct term. Yeah, I guess IQ isn't everything. Also, the test questions themselves were deeply flawed. Some of the questions on the Yerkes test, for example, are pretty subjective, arguably more about knowledge of culture rather than intelligence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Here's an example straight from the Army Alpha. Test 8, Form 7, Question 31. The author of The Raven is Stevenson, Kipling, Hawthorne, or Poe?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Sure. Why not? Aren't you curious if you'd been an officer or a private? Poe? I don't know, man. Actually, you got it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, how about this? Number 32. Spare is a term used in bowling, football, tennis, or hockey.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I'm OK with it. But perhaps, as you can see, knowing what a spare is and who wrote The Raven shouldn't exactly qualify you as being intelligent or not.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
If I'm being honest, it's because the Simpsons did a bit on Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven in one of their famous Halloween episodes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
In 1917, I would not have gotten that question correct, I can assure you. Look, the fact of the matter is maybe you've read hundreds of other worthwhile poems from countless other authors, just didn't come across Poe. Or maybe you're a mathematical genius who stayed away from poetry altogether.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
But now there are other questions on the Army Alpha test that are less like determining the number of blocks in a stack or what comes next in a pattern. And these types of questions are far more along the lines of the kind of questions you find on modern IQ tests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Everyone wants to think of themselves as smart. It's human nature. And if you're convinced that certain tests are going to tell you how smart you are, you might just go ahead and take those tests to find out. In fact, I have a friend who was quite fond of dropping into conversations that he had a 145 IQ according to one of those online tests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and one day after having heard him drop the 145 brag into a conversation for like the 90th time, I said, you know what, I'm going to ask some follow-up questions. Turns out he had to take the exact same test eight times before he achieved this high score. And he was looking up answers in between tests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
The dude just likes to think of himself as smart, even if he doesn't realize that admitting you took the same IQ test eight times to get your score makes you sound not smart.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I will say that I'm old enough that coming across the information as to the average size of one's wang was hard to come by when I was a kid. Couldn't Google it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
So I've been told. Okay, and look, the fact of the matter is your nerves are going to affect how you take the test. Your environment, your mood, all these things are going to factor in. Imagine being a soldier in 1917 and being stuffed into an exam room and knowing that how you score on this test is going to determine if you're an officer or if you're in the trenches.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And World War I, according to the movies I've seen, particularly brutal. Oof. And these Army Alpha and Alpha Beta tests devised by Yerkes, and Yerkes went off with the data from these Army tests. He got charts in there with what professions scored what number, and then based on different scores, what professions are best suited for certain people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I can't say I saw that particular movie, but you're absolutely right. This is a tricky idea. On the one hand, maybe you can test people for a certain level of intelligence, and maybe some people are better suited for certain jobs than others. On the other hand, how is one test made up of a series of questions going to accurately give you that information?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I mean, as far as determining what somebody is going to do with the rest of their life. When I was in high school, I think they did take the test and I skipped that day. And that tells you all you need to know. Yeah. They were like, don't worry about it. You missed the test like every other test. But we didn't need to give you the test. We have an idea anyway.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I like to joke that, hey, my life might not have turned out the way I thought it would, but it is a little bit comforting to know that my life did turn out the way everybody else thought it would.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
So anyway, after World War One, the U.S. government got into these IQ tests and what they purported to mean. They started using the dubious results in all kinds of shady ways. One can even argue that the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 was influenced by these tests. The Immigration Restriction Act severely limited immigration into this country for people from Asia while favoring Europeans.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
We're talking about America here. So, yeah, let's just go with racism. You could also argue that the whole field of psychology was validated at the time by Yerkes tests and how much the army dug it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I did take one of those tests once, but to be honest with you, I forgot my IQ score, which I suppose goes to show you something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yes and no. Eugenics definitely quieted down, at least for a while. But the notion that you could test someone's intelligence continued, which gets us to talking about the book, The Bell Curve.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
You really can't talk about IQ without talking about the book The Bell Curve, and you really can't talk about the book The Bell Curve without talking about Arthur Jensen, who was before The Bell Curve. Arthur Jensen was an American psychologist who worked mostly out of UC Berkeley.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
In 1969, he published a paper in the Harvard Educational Review called How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? Now, this paper basically set off a bomb in the world of psychology because he suggested that genetics— played a part in black students scoring lower on IQ tests than white students.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Critics were fierce and pointed out that his research ignored the obvious roles of poverty, poor schools, racism and health inequality.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
No, I mean, it struck at people's emotional core that there was something terribly wrong with that, and it didn't go well for Jensen at the time either. I mean, colleagues tried to formally censure him. He had protesters storming into his lectures.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
So it was more than a bit shocking that after all that happened with Jensen, that in 1994, Charles Murray and Richard Herenstein published a book called The Bell Curve, which claimed that genetics was a part of what contributed to IQ and, again... When we say genetics, Murray and Herrnstein broke that down by race. Predictably, a massive backlash followed the publication of the book.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Absolutely. In reading some of the criticisms of the bell curve, I learned a few new things like that intelligence is what's called polygenetic. That is to say, it's influenced by a great many genes, each one contributing only a small amount and that there is no smart gene and that gene expression itself can be turned up or turned down by environmental factors.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
And that's because it actually, apparently, lead paint chips are sweet and they taste good. Ooh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Gross. That's why kids eat lead paint chips. They taste like candy. At least the ones that I ate did.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Exactly. Environmental factors that can influence gene expression are stuff like diet, which we talked about, nutrition, but also toxics and chemicals.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Absolutely. Also, physical activity, sleep, infections, exposure to UV light and other forms of radiation and stress. The stresses that come from living in poverty can lead to chronic stress, which can lead to elevated hormone levels like cortisol, which can affect gene expression like immune function.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I think it's fair to say that people with high IQ scores are more likely to support their validity than those with low IQ scores.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, you definitely got a beach bod. By the way, that field of study is called epigenetics, and none of these arguments even touch on the whole race is a man-made construct and not a biological category.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
And the fact of the matter is genetic differences between people or populations within what we call a race are very often far greater than the differences between any two people in what we consider to be a different race.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Even though some people in America will explode if you profess the idea that race doesn't exist, the modern understanding of race is born out of racism, mostly European colonization. Hierarchies between population groups were devised to justify exploitation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
This isn't to say that population groups don't have shared heritage and culture, but a biologist can't see that stuff under a microscope. And as far as they're concerned, race just isn't a thing. Without rehashing the entire controversy, let's just say the overwhelming number of experts in the field disagree with the findings of Jensen and the bell curve.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that's exactly the horseshoe. And by the way, I did say that to some college kids when I was doing this research. I was at a friend's house and their son was there with his girlfriend. And I said that and she had to leave the table because she didn't want to sit with me anymore because I said that race isn't a biological category.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I do get it because, again, people have a shared culture that they're very proud of. and a shared struggle that they're very proud that they made it through. And so they think that in some way you're coming after that when you say this, which you're absolutely not. I'm just talking about from a scientific perspective. This is just not something that that truly exists.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
If you're good at chess, you want everyone to think that means you're smart. And if you're bad at chess, then chess doesn't mean a damn thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
And by overwhelming number of racist organizations, I assume you mean all racist organizations agree with them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, okay, fine. Let's get back to IQ. IQ tests have been changing for a long time now and working towards getting rid of cultural biases. A test known as the Wexler Adult Intelligence Scale was published in 1955, and modern editions continue to be released, including a fifth edition that just came out in 2024. There's also Raven's Progressive Matrices and the Kauffman Brief Intelligence Test.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
These tests have tried to reduce these cultural biases as much as possible.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, those questions are gone. These tests focus on logical reasoning, pattern recognition, things that anyone could be good or bad at, regardless of background. The goal being to measure general cognitive ability with as little bias as possible. And there's also the idea that there are multiple types of intelligence. There's mathematical intelligence, spatial, linguistic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
There's fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Crystallized intelligence sounds pretty cool. It does sound cool.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Actually, there are some organizations like that, only they aren't secret. Mensa, I know you've heard of that one. Yeah. For example, is the largest and oldest high IQ society. You have to score in the 98th percentile or higher on an approved supervised IQ test. They even have their own IQ tests. There's also the triple nine society. You need to have an even higher IQ to get into that one.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, they're really just non-profits publishing journals with puzzles and poems and helping to provide scholarships to gifted students.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that's right. And more than a few. We still use IQ scores when determining certain public policies. We still consider it regarding military service. And kids still take stuff like SATs, but that's not necessarily IQ, I think. That is just the idea that we can test people's intelligence and that is still alive and well, just with some healthy skepticism mixed in now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. At a basic level, you'd hope that we'd be able to test people's intelligence just generally so we can try to make people smarter or find out what is hindering their development.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, yeah. There's actually a number of IQ tests that have evolved over time. Why don't we start at the very beginning?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
So first off, IQ stands for intelligence quotient, which is a term coined by the German psychologist William Stern, who ironically cautioned against using it alone to categorize intelligence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
It behooves us as a society to try and figure out a way to gauge intelligence, at least generally speaking. I'm not sure breaking it all down into a single number is possible, but you'd like to think that we could come up with some sort of value.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Aha, this is the back and forth playing out to this day. And there are scholars, academics and psychologists, you name it, on both sides of the fence. Some have disputed the idea that IQ has any value at all when measuring intelligence. Others believe it can determine academic potential or has validity for clinical purposes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Others will straight up swear by the results and extrapolate all kinds of things from the data.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
The results and interpretations of long-term studies of IQ among large populations is hotly contested. But there is the Flynn effect. Named after researcher James Flynn, this highlighted increases in IQ scores measured all across the world over time. On average, IQ scores were rising by about three points per decade starting in the first half of the 20th century.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
And not by a little. Three points per decade might be one small step for a 10-year period, but over the course of half a century, that's one giant leap for mankind's intelligence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
And that explanation seems to be environment. If IQ was mostly genetic and fixed, you wouldn't expect entire populations to get smarter over just a few decades. Genes don't evolve that fast.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Absolutely. But other factors play in as well, like better health, cleaner water. And the one that kind of blew my mind was that we live in more cognitively demanding environments. People do more abstract thinking in the modern world. Modern life just requires more problem solving and, quote unquote, out of the box thinking.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Family size is, in fact, one of the many factors experts point to to explain the Flynn effect. there are plenty of studies that suggest that IQ is going up or at least for several decades it was going up crap so are we getting dumber now There is some data pointing to a decrease in IQ in recent years. Norway, Denmark, Finland have all seen decreases in IQ ever since the 1990s.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Stern wasn't the only one at the time working on ways to test people's intelligence. Most people identify the Binet-Simon test published in 1905 as the first real IQ test. It was developed in France to identify which school children had normal intelligence and which had abnormal intelligence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
In Britain, scores started dropping around the year 2004. In the United States, it's a mixed bag.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
But there are hints that scores are dropping for people born after 1990.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, could be. That's the appeal of the IQ test in the first place. If we do have a reasonably accurate way of measuring intelligence, then we can use that data and try and determine variables or factors that can affect intelligence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I'm from a family of six kids, Catholic, go figure. I like to say my mother had three ways of helping me with my homework. First, she tried yelling at me, then she tried screaming at me, and then she tried shrieking at me, and then she was totally out of ideas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
If we don't have a measure of intelligence, at least in general, how can we tell if things are making us smarter or dumber?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Absolutely. And it's helpful to know if, say, an aging person is starting to lose their intelligence and what can be done to reduce that decline. Also, how can we ensure that every school kid has the best opportunity to learn and succeed? How can we identify students who need extra assistance to achieve their potential?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
The standard testing, which from what I remember of George W. Bush's presidency, he may have done a little paste eating himself. OK, politics aside, look, the fact of the matter is no child left behind had good intentions, but became deeply unpopular. And for valid reasons, it instituted standardized testing and schools were often seen as just trying to teach the test.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And by the way, this doesn't mean that IQ tests are completely useless either. They still have some value. An IQ test can illustrate that someone, for instance, has difficulty with pattern recognition or word association. We're not saying that they aren't intelligent, but we can identify areas for improvement.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Maybe a kid has got calculus down but needs help with creative writing. I think the takeaway here is that intelligence is complex. It's a concept that we should remain skeptical about when attempting to quantify, especially into something as simple as a single number.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it was actually pretty harsh. And the fact of the matter is the turn of the century was pretty harsh in general. The original Benet-Simon test was particularly severe. It grouped children into four categories. Normality, debility, imbecility, and idiocy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, in fact, a guy by the name of Akaroy Vaynin from Scientific American copied the exact questions from the Wexler Adult Intelligence Scale and he tested ChatGPT with it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
The verbal IQ of ChatGPT was better than 99.9% of the standardized sample of humans.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Maybe. But like we said earlier, there's a lot of nuance when you're talking about intelligence. As they mentioned in their article in Scientific American, ECRA asked ChatGPT, what is the first name of the father of Sebastian's children? And ChatGPT couldn't get the answer. I tried it when I was researching this and it couldn't get the answer either.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Full disclosure, because chat GPT is getting better all the time. And perhaps somebody from chat GPT read the article in Scientific American. I did it right before you and I started taping. It got the answer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, perhaps you're struggling with riddles, but you're crushing pattern recognition. Doesn't mean you're not intelligent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. I'd say that the Wexler one, the Stanford Benet 5, Raven's Progressive Matrices, the Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test, those are the most highly recognized IQ tests out there today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Exactly. Don't take it to heart. Even though IQ tests have certainly come a long way, they still have a lot of limitations. Real world scenarios, emotional intelligence, unpredictable situations. These are all things that can't be measured really in any of those tests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
AI systems are great at applying patterns based on its training. And obviously, a computer is naturally going to be very good at math. But that doesn't mean that they have the kind of broad adaptive intelligence that humans possess. Crystallized intelligence, if you will. I told you only Master Yoda has crystallized intelligence. Man, such nerds.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. You just won't get into the triple nine society. Which is their loss at this point, I think. I don't know. Exactly. I agree. But in all scenarios, I think what's important is that intelligence is incredibly complex. It's more than a simple three digit number or in some of our cases, two digit number.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
And whether it's emotional intelligence, creativity or problem solving skills, there are many ways to measure it or more accurately to try and measure it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, you know, in their defense, these were technical terms at the time. Schoolyard bullies had yet to put the stank on the words imbecile and idiot. But yes, these were the determinations made by the B'nai Simon test.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Now that you've put it that way, I kind of feel bad that I kind of labeled my friend who took the IQ test eight times as dumb.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
That said, everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, and we all need to be very cautious and skeptical about putting too much stock in any single test or number.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
While IQ tests can offer some worthwhile insights, they're just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. They can help us understand certain cognitive patterns, but they can't and shouldn't define who we are or what we're capable of.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Exactly. And take AI, for example. ChatGPT may ace the Wechsler test, but it doesn't have the same holistic intelligence that we humans possess, at least not yet. Human intelligence is much more nuanced than that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Sounds like maybe you did take one of those tests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I say go for it. Just remember, it's not the end-all be-all. It's just another way to get to know yourself and help your intelligence grow. I couldn't have put it better myself. And who knows? Maybe you will be inducted into Mensa or the Triple Nine Society. Or maybe you'll just take pride in being a great podcast host, Jordan.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
OK, so the test was divided into four sections. The first section was called basic skills assumed of an idiot.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that one was pretty simple stuff like unwrapping a piece of chocolate before eating it. Remember, this is a test for children.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Again, that would be the schoolyard doing its thing. It's funny comedian Doug Stanhope has a great bit about this He says that it doesn't matter what they switch the technical term to people will just co-opt that word to call friends when they do something stupid he's like Did you just put a metal plate in the microwave? What are you, developmentally challenged?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Testing for idiocy was just an early 20th century way of saying basic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, you nailed it. It gets progressively more complicated. But remember, the highest level of the test was normality, so it's not exactly rocket science. For example, one of the later tasks had the tester fold a piece of paper in half twice before cutting out a triangle. Then the child would have to guess what the piece of paper would look like when he unfolded it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, actually, that's a good one. The Binet-Simon test was very limited, as Binet himself pointed out. So work continued on trying to develop more robust IQ tests. A psychologist from Stanford named Lewis Terman took the Binet-Simon test and he adapted it, later publishing what became known as the Stanford-Binet test in 1916.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
yeah and basically what they did was you took the mental age of someone divided it by their actual age their chronological age and then multiplied that by a hundred and bingo that's what an iq score is okay so if you're 40 chronologically and mentally the test says you're 40 you divide 40 by 40 you get one and you multiply that by 100 so your iq is 100
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
So what's the average IQ then? It's actually between 85 and 115. So using the bell curve, that's about 100.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Absolutely. Which is why psychologists have continued to come up with new tests ever since B'nai Simon first published theirs. They've also modified how the number itself is calculated. The whole concept evolved over time, but this is how it started at the turn of the century.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. In fact, you're not far off on that one. Two very consequential tests were even called the Army Alpha and the Army Beta tests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, they definitely were. And in 1917, it was the time of World War I, and a guy by the name of Robert Yerkes came up with the Army Alpha and the Army Beta test to determine which Army recruits were better suited for leadership roles and or other specific positions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
The Army Alpha was a written test, and the Army Beta was made up of pictures in order to include soldiers who didn't read or didn't speak English. Over a million soldiers ended up taking these tests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
That's interesting. I don't even think you need to be a U.S. citizen to join the U.S. Army, to be honest with you. Yeah, there was something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Right. Absolutely. And they use this data to screen for officers, sometimes not even considering someone who scored below a certain grade. Fortunately, this sort of data ended up being used in all kinds of nefarious ways, as I'm sure you can imagine. Remember, eugenics was having a moment around the time of these tests.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Was. I wish eugenics was a was. Sadly, it's still creeping around out there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
But unfortunately, eugenics is not merely a dick pill, as eugenics was just basically racism in a lab coat. Eugenics was the notion that certain traits like intelligence, physical prowess and even moral character were inherited. And society would benefit by promoting the breeding of some people and in America, the forced sterilization of others.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
And by the way, that is the plot of Idiocracy, more or less, or more to the point that super smart people have fewer children, which is true. And see Idiocracy. It's turns out it was more of a prophetic vision of America's future than just a comedy from the.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, no kidding. But you're right. It is super dangerous stuff. And in the U.S., many of these ideas took their darkest forms around that time, the 30s and the 40s. There was a eugenics program implemented in North Carolina that started in 1933 and went on for over four decades.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Over 7000 people are estimated to have been sterilized on account of this program, which singled out people with low IQ or as they called them, feeble minded.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I'm pretty sure the traffic in Los Angeles would certainly get a lot better. Yeah. No more Carmageddon. Some might argue that Michael Regilio would be taken off the roads. But anyway. Several states enacted similar programs, not just North Carolina. In fact, California. I'm sitting right now. In fact, it was another principal state that was enacting this kind of stuff.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
And this whole movement, these programs inspired none other than one Mr. Adolf Hitler. And his view.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
In fact, all over Mein Kampf, there are references to American eugenics and the praise for what was going on in this country with sterilization of the feeble minded. Yikes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, it did. In fact, the Supreme Court of the United States in Buck versus Bell 1927 full on supported the practice of sterilization of people they deemed to be feeble minded. Justice Holmes delivering the opinion of the court wrote, quote,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Oof. He later added, three generations of imbeciles are enough. Wow. What's the three generations of imbeciles? That was the family that their case made it up to the Supreme Court.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
I can't remember who's the bucks or the bells, but.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Way to take a swing at mom and pop and grandma and grandpa at the same time, by the way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
And I've already hinted at this, but guess who ended up quoting Justice Holmes while on trial for crimes against humanity?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, the Nazis got a lot of ideas from America. And in fact, I'll do you one better than just quoting us. Or perhaps one worse than just quoting Americans, Adolf Hitler famously hung a portrait of Henry Ford in his office. Really? Yeah. It's just a fact. Racism and eugenics was very popular in the US. Okay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1159: IQ Tests | Skeptical Sunday
So there was this whole idea at the time that some people were born inferior, feeble-minded, and it was best to sterilize them or otherwise remove them from your population in order to create a better society. And they used none other than these IQ tests to justify these ideas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Okay. One cause of hair loss is stress, which sucks because losing your hair stresses you out even more.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, well, lucky you. Most people over 50 are experiencing some level of hair loss.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Hair loss has probably been happening very slowly since 30, but at 50, you start to notice. Bright overhead lights become your enemy. Hair goes through three stages of its life cycle. The first phase is called the antigen phase, and that's where the hair is still growing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Interestingly, the antigen phase for the hair on your head is up to eight years, which is why you can grow your hair so long, while the antigen phase of an eyebrow is just a couple months.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
As a comic, I have to say I'm very impressed. That might have been the first antigen phase joke in history. Phase two is called the catagen phase. This is where the hair is growing dormant and is dying from the inside out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
We should be celebrating that. Okay. Phase three is called the telogen phase. The hair pinches off and dies. Some hairs can reenter the life cycle. Others can't. Scientists now understand that it's hormones that drive these phases. Hormones are the drivers and the brakes on these processes. Hormones determine if you're a shag rug or a hardwood floor.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Who did they think you looked like?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
I'm getting way outside of my pay grade here, but... dihydrotestosterone, or DHT, which comes from testosterone, is a hormone. And I'm totally oversimplifying here, but DHT can send your hair into the telogen phase, and that's bad.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Well, women, by the way, also have testosterone. In fact, I learned that women have more testosterone than estrogen, but they have more estrogen than men. But testosterone, that's for everybody.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Seriously, what'd you do? Did you put on like a fake nose and try again?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
And you're asking the wrong guy because, again, this is way past my pay grade, but I did actually ask the same question. And the answer I got was that it's the conversion of testosterone to DHT. As men age, they have more DHT, which causes hair loss. The other thing that causes hair loss is decreased blood flow to the scalp. A healthy blood flow replenishes nutrients and oxygen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Understanding these mechanisms built the entire hair growth industry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yes, but let's go in order of potential side effects. This is a good place to mention that a lot of these treatments work best in tandem with other treatments. One thing that works really well with other treatments has almost no side effects, and that is microneedling. Have you heard of it?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, well, I was surprised. I hadn't heard of it either, but microneedling is, it's like a kind of acupuncture for your scalp, except it seems to work.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
And it kind of is. Microneedling is using a roller device of really small needles to micropuncture the skin, which promotes blood flow, which in turn promotes hair growth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, apparently it can. In fact, it can even bleed, which is still better than the side effects of modern drugs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Sure, yeah, there actually are, and they're not all placebos. Some herbal remedies have been studied, like salt palmetto. Oh, I've heard of that. This herb is being investigated for its potential to inhibit the enzyme which converts testosterone into DHT.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
All right. Good luck with that. Look, certain things we do to look good, like working out and eating right, have health benefits. We look good and we feel good. Certain things we do to look good have health risks, like taking drugs to regrow hair.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
We're going to get into the enzyme because it does some really interesting stuff that we're going to get into in a sec. But the fact of the matter is saw palmetto might actually work. So might laser treatments, which are being studied. The lasers are thought to have an anti-inflammatory effect on the scalp and promote hair loss.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
But either way, you're getting zapped in your head with a laser and that's pretty sci-fi, kind of cool. Kind of how I imagined all medical procedures will look like in the future someday.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that would be weird if the cure for baldness was a drug we had all along, like caffeine, which, in fact, turns out to be an effective treatment for growing hair.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Just because I've had a conversation with a Mormon recently about this. It's not caffeine that they're not allowed to have. It's hot drinks, which was interpreted as coffee and tea. And most Mormons are soda pop addicts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Anyway, you said drinking, and that was your mistake, because who said anything about drinking? This is caffeine that you would apply directly to your scalp.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. The best part of waking up is having Folgers ground into the back of your head. Does have a certain ring to it, but no, it's not coffee, but cream, a caffeine cream. Okay. Other new treatments include platelet-rich plasma in which a person's own blood cells are injected into their scalp.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it can. In fact, one study found that some women with breast cancer were more distressed about losing their hair than their breasts. By age 50, 50% of men and women are experiencing some level of hair loss, and 85% of those people experience anxiety.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Okay. So here we go with the stuff with side effects. The active ingredient in Rogaine is minoxidil. Minoxidil was developed to treat hypertension. Actually, it was developed to cure ulcers, but it didn't work for that. But it did lower blood pressure, so it was approved for blood pressure. But it ended up growing hair on people's heads, so they just switched it to that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, pretty much. Minoxidil works by increasing blood flow to the scalp and everywhere else. As one would expect when taking an ulcer slash hypertension slash hair regrowth slash dessert topping medication, there are side effects like ankle swelling, headaches, and dizziness.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Other side effects include reduction in libido, reductions in overall feelings of well-being, and increases of male breast tissue.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's not always an easy choice. Plus, the hair growth is only effective as long as you're on minoxidil. So it's either take it for life or stop at some point and watch your hair fall back out. So minoxidil might not be for you. There's always finasteride. That's the drug in all the other big brands like Propecia. I have heard of that one.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
The history of finasteride turns out to be an interesting one as well. It all started with the study of a group of intersex children in the Caribbean who were raised as girls, then at puberty grew external male sex organs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, that's not quite what I'm telling you. What I am telling you is that these individuals who appear to be female at birth and are raised as girls grow penises at around 12 years of age, and usually they'll switch from identifying as girls to identifying as boys. They're called guevedoses, which in Spanish means penis at 12.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Of course, you're right. And it is super interesting. And it does, by the way, have to do with hair regrowth. incredibly rare everywhere on earth except one small village in the Dominican Republic called Salinas. In Salinas, one out of 90 boys are born with this condition.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Before any of this was understood, one would have been justified in saying that in Salinas, one out of 90 girls born turn into boys at around 12 years of age, which is what people used to think.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Speaking of which, on average, a human has between 2 and 5 million hairs, of which about 100,000 are on the scalp.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Right. And blonde-haired Caucasians have the highest hair density, which I can relate to because as a younger man, I had a thick blonde shock of hair, but no longer. I now have a thin patch bordering on a bald spot at the back of my scalp. This crop circle used to bum me out a lot. Now, it only bums me out a little.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
As we know, at conception, a person destined to be a girl has a set of X chromosomes, while a person destined to become a boy has an X and a Y. Then, at around eight weeks after conception, the sex hormones kick in. If you're genetically male, the Y chromosome instructs your gonads to become testicles and sends testosterone to something called the tubercle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
And the testosterone is converted into... DHT. Ah, yes, DHT. I'm starting to see the connection here. And the DHT turns the tubercle into a penis. And Guevedo says the reason they don't have what we would recognize as a penis when they are born is because they are deficient in an enzyme, which we mentioned earlier, called 5-alpha reductase, which converts testosterone into DHT.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
But at puberty, when genetic males get a second blast of testosterone, they finish growing the penis. This is why people believed that these girls were growing a penis at 12.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
You're right. It does open up a whole host of new questions, and I'm sure we could do a whole episode here. So I'll just hit you with this little fact that I thought was so interesting. Despite being raised as girls, most Cueva Doses grow up to be heterosexual males. So much for the people who think you can turn someone gay or turn someone straight. Sorry, gay conversion advocates.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
But recently, I've noticed that there are a lot more hair regrowth products and drugs being advertised.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yes, right now. It's because Guavidoses had smaller prostates due to their genetic disorder. Scientists used what they learned about Guavidoses to help people with enlarged prostates. It was in studying Guavidoses that scientists were able to develop Finasteride.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Turns out that taking finasteride grows hair. That's the hair growth industry's motto. Someone will accidentally invent something for us. How effective is this? It can increase hair growth by 20%. It can reduce hair loss in 90% of people. It increases hair thickness by 20 to 30%.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
It kind of has the opposite effect because it can also cause erectile dysfunction, suicidal thoughts, depression, and low sex drive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
But those are just possible side effects. For lots of people, these options work out great, especially when done in conjunction with other stuff like microneedling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Guess what? Collagen is all the rage. Influencers and celebrities are downing collagen drinks like crazy. Collagen drinkers claim collagen gives them healthier, younger-looking skin, hair, and nails. And since the natural collagen our bodies make provides support for these very tissues, these claims actually seem plausible.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Collagen is a protein. It's the most common protein found in the body. It is in skin, hair, nails, bones, cartilage, and tendons. It works with other stuff in our body to give our skin its moisture and elasticity. It's also partly what hair and nails are made of. Collagen also helps wounds to heal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, well, our bodies do produce collagen using foods like bone broth, meat, and fish, but old man time, sun exposure, smoking, and drinking decreases the amount we produce.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and that's true. Over time, our bodies make less and less collagen, and no matter what we drink, we get brittle bones and we get all wrinkly. So in our never-ending quest to slow the hands of time, people have taken to gulping collagen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and all these commercials have made me wonder if I'm, like, missing something. Have there been, like, some major breakthroughs? Just how effective are treatments now?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Right, well, you're not wrong. Mostly from cows, pigs, chickens, and fish. Nothing like a big glass of cow-chicken-pig-fish juice.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, several studies have been conducted and results are promising, particularly when it comes to the skin. The others found that taking collagen supplements daily for at least three months improved skin elasticity and hydration and reduced wrinkles.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
In addition, another study found that collagen supplements were linked to improvements in cardiovascular health, including blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
In addition, another study showed that men who drink the barnyard slurry while working out showed increased muscle strength compared to those who just took a placebo.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and you're right. Whey is better for building muscles, but if you're already drinking collagen for skin health, this might be an extra added little benefit.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
No, not really. According to a recent study, collagen is safe and carries very low risk of side effects, even at really high doses. I guess you can safely drink the entire cow. The only caveat I saw is that there's no real evidence that collagen is beneficial to hair and nails.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
I live in Southern California and I can tell you that if you want to look good, there's something to that staying out of the sun advice.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Absolutely. You know what else is in is teeth whitening. And I've seen people whose teeth are so bright you get a tan just from standing in front of them. In fact, I kind of have this public service announcement. There is such a thing as too white of teeth. I'm looking at you, local newscasters.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
That's true. But actually, it's not just as of late. Our old friends, the Egyptians, started tooth whitening 4,000 years ago. They had a paste made of ground pumice stone and wine vinegar. Then, like now, white teeth were a sign of beauty and wealth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, absolutely. But you're going to love this one. Look at the Romans. They had a great way of whitening teeth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
When I first realized my hair was thinning in the back, I was really insecure about it. Then one day, I went to the movies with a bunch of friends, and as fate would have it, I was in the row directly in front of my friends. Why weren't you in the row with your friends? Look, I don't want to get into that. Look, but there they were all staring at the back of my head. Let me tell you something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
They used urine. The ammonia in the urine was the bleaching agent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, yeah. It's gross. And you'll notice, by the way, I did not say they used their urine to clean their teeth. I just said they used urine. I couldn't find where they actually got the urine to clean their teeth. But don't just assume because there were lots of places to get urine in ancient Rome. They used it for a bunch of stuff.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
No, it's not that far off of tooth whitening because, like I said, it's the properties of the urine that whitened the togas that also whitened the teeth. In ancient Rome, there were giant pots placed in front of laundry businesses. Anyone could pee in the pot. In fact, the owners encouraged you to pee in their pot. Later, it would be collected and used to clean clothes or possibly whiten teeth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
That was the Romans. In the late 1700s, the barber took care of your teeth. He did normal stuff to whiten your teeth, like filing them and applying acid to them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, yeah. Luckily, we discovered fluoride in the 19th century, which is better for tooth health than acid. But actually, fluoride stains teeth. But it's not the real problem, like coffee and tea. Tooth whitening works by using bleaching agents. The most common today are hydrogen peroxide and carbamide peroxide.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, there is a risk of increased tooth sensitivity. I did find a horror story of a woman in the UK having her lips swell up like balloons. But after further reading, turns out she just went to some random person's house and God knows what this person put on her teeth. For the most part, it's safe. If you want white teeth, go for it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
I just think super white teeth look weird, especially on high def TV, particularly in front of a green screen weather map. But hey, that's just me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that is a hilarious movie. It turns out white teeth come with half the headaches as a fresh new head of hair in terms of the side effects and all that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Probably not. For one, I'm married, so she's stuck. And for two, in researching this topic, I decided that I disagree with the notion that there's anything about me that needs to be cured. In fact, I was reading... this old British newspaper from the 1700s when they had sham cures for baldness coming out. And the author said that the best cure for baldness is to just not be bothered by it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
And I thought, you know what? That sounds great. Definitely has the least side effects. So that's what I'm going to go with. Unless, of course, a cheaper, more effective method with fewer side effects comes out, then I'm all in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
When you have a bald spot on the back of your head, you might not be able to see it, but you can feel it. Weirder still, you can feel people looking at it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Fine, but look, the fact of the matter is I could feel the heat from their stares, those lasers you mentioned. It completely ruined the movie. I was so self-conscious, but somehow after that night, I was less self-conscious. I didn't need to hide it anymore. Everybody knew. Then I began making jokes about it on stage. Those jokes got laughs, and suddenly I was okay with my patch.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
That is, until this new wave of hair replacement advertisements came along. Suddenly, I started feeling all weird again. I could feel my bald patch again. In the advertisements, all these cool dudes are just taking a pill and presto, they have a full head of hair.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
When I looked at the topic list for Skeptical Sundays, I saw this topic and I thought, let's do it. And while researching this topic, let's figure out if I should try one of these treatments.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, so look, obviously, I'm not alone in wanting to go back to a full head of hair. The history of hair replacement goes back thousands of years. In fact, it was around the year 4000 BCE that ancient Egyptians rubbed their heads with a concoction of ground-up dates, dog paws, and donkey hooves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
I'm not sure why specifically they believed animal feet cured baldness, but in general, people losing their hair will believe anything and try anything. Like another Egyptian cure found in a medical text called the Eber's Papyrus, which instructed people to boil porcupine hair and press it to their scalp for four days. Were they trying to grow the porcupine hair? I don't understand. No.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
I don't know, but I'm guessing most people would take porcupine hair over no hair. In fact, I bet it would look sharp. Ah, isn't that kind of the point? Indeed. Porcupine hair seems tame compared to what the father of Western medicine, Hippocrates, smeared on his big brain case. Opium, horseradish, pigeon droppings... Beetroot and spices.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Right. So in a way, it was a cure. I'm also guessing that once you've rubbed enough opium into your scalp, you'll stop caring about your hair. Yeah. You know what? This was an okay treatment for baldness. Hippocrates did, by the way, tap into the true root of hair loss. For real. He noticed that eunuchs never go bald, and he wasn't wrong to notice it. He was onto something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
I don't know which guy. There's a guy that got his penis cut off. He's got hair, I think. It's been a while since I've seen it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, no, no, no. No, you're right. There is a guy who's got his balls cut off and he's totally bald. So they're playing both sides on this one. But look, as we'll see, testosterone and its byproducts are a part of the hair loss equation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Look, who's to say? In Rome, around 50 BCE, a popular treatment for balding was to rub myrrh berries into the scalp.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
No, but it probably dyed the scalp purple. Baldness is like a real catch-22. There's nothing more embarrassing than balding, except, of course, getting caught with lame attempts to cover up balding. Totally. The Romans who believed a full head of hair was a sign of favorability with the gods, they were particularly snarky to bald dudes, as illustrated in this famous poem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
On your bald pate, no wig you use. You draw hairs on with no excuse. At least no barber needs to trim it. You can erase it in a minute.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, actually, to be honest with you, the Romans wrote poems making fun of a lot of people. And there wasn't just one about bald people. There's also, how can you have so little hair yet have it show up everywhere?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
I'm not sure, but one has to wonder what jokes were made at Julius Caesar's expense as the most famous example of the comb-over.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Those are just the bad comb-overs. I've known some guys who take the art form to new levels. Truly remarkable how effective a determined man in a bottle of hairspray can be.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Man, look, I never did anything that drastic. Except I did once consider converting to Judaism for the yarmulke. Maybe Caesar should have done that. That's not a bad idea. Yeah, well, Caesar tried a bunch of stuff, including a home remedy recommended by his lover Cleopatra, which included ground-up mice and horse teeth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
And after he got the ground-up mice wiped off his head, he opted for the cover-up many people eventually adopt. The hat. The hat, yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, man. You and the ground up mice. Hey, look, the mice thing has legs, so to speak. Ireland, around the year 1000 CE, there was a cure that instructed people to shove mice into a clay jar, seal it, bury it next to a fire and leave it there for a year.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
But look, smearing the dead mouse on his head was wild. But Caesar was onto something with the wreath. I say bring back the laurel wreath. Can you imagine if dudes wore wreaths instead of baseball caps? I'm not dissing the baseball cap. I'm just very pro-wreath. Instead of sweatshops pumping out pollution and baseball caps, we'd have farms growing baseball wreaths and cowboy wreaths.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
I guess so. But hair loss has stumped doctors for a very long time. As recently as 1889, doctors believed baldness could be prevented with exercise, fresh air, and good hygiene.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Totally. You're right. It can't hurt. But if you've got hair loss coming down the genealogy highway, you can't exercise your way out of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Although hair loss is hereditary, that old nugget of wisdom is not necessarily true. So if you're looking at a bald maternal grandfather and worrying about your luscious locks, don't. It might not be your fate, thanks to modern advancements. Starting in the late 19th century, the first real treatments began in the form of hair transplants.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
The early techniques were crude and often resulted in unnatural looking hair.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, the fact of the matter is the cutting edge of hair transplants are starting to look really good. Doctors have been refining the techniques that were begun in the 1950s with the concept of donor dominance. That's a technique that uses hair from the back and sides of the head and transplants them to the top.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Those dead mice treatments, they did a number on you. Yeah, man. You know what? I've actually seen a few hair transplants that did look like someone sewed a dead mouse to someone's head. But the problem with hair transplants is that they don't address the root causes of hair loss. Understanding those causes and creating drugs to counter them have changed the game.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1094: Vanity Products | Skeptical Sunday
Hi, Jordan. You're a recognizable figure. I'm sure there's some pressure to be presentable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that propaganda worked. And not surprisingly, the following year, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. which was written in part by Anslinger himself. The other force behind the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act was the petrochemical industry, the DuPont Chemical Corporation in particular.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yes, that DuPont. In the 1930s, DuPont invented cellophane made from petroleum, as well as nylon made from petroleum. Cellophane was set to become the standard packaging for most American goods and nylon standard for most American fabrics. Around the same time, Henry Ford was promoting chemergy, which fuses industrialization with raw materials, the best being cannabis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, no. Tons of things are made out of cannabis. Hemp is what they refer to as the fibers the cannabis plant produces. And the outer fibers of the cannabis plant can be used to make clothes, fabrics, ropes and packaging. All better than nylon, by the way. The inner fibers of the cannabis plant can be used to make wood for construction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Cannabis was suddenly a huge threat to the DuPonts and other business moguls like William Randolph Hearst. The printer? Yeah, the guy that owns the Hearst Castle, which is... Don't get me started. I hate the Hearst Castle. Really? Who hates the Hearst Castle? Me! Because... You go on the tour and they're just talking about how like he took these ancient pylons out of Egypt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
He basically robbed ancient treasures and shoved them into a castle that he just hoarded to show off to his rich and famous friends. And then when they couldn't pay the bill on this, they dumped it on the California taxpayers. Now we own Egypt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
It is really tacky. And because of whatever agreement they have with the state, the film about him that they play you there calls him like this great man. And then you look into him and you're like, I think you're using that word subjectively. Okay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Gotcha. And so Willie Randolph Hearst owned most of the newspapers and paper mills at that time, and he viewed cannabis as competition. The U.S. Secretary of Treasury, Andrew Mellon, that name sounds very familiar to me as well. Yeah. Carnegie Mellon. So Mellon was heavily invested in the DuPont company and feared cannabis costing him money.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
But they were in luck because Mellon's son-in-law was none other than Anslinger. So Mellon was able to get Anslinger easily appointed to the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which developed the Marijuana Tax Act.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Pretty much. So Hearst, Mellon, Anslinger and the DuPonts had a lot of reasons to hate cannabis. And a lot of those reasons were, like you said, financial.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Right. Reefer madness. Business as usual is what we should call that kind of reefer madness. Except Henry Ford. But he was in the minority. DuPont was the number one shareholder in Ford's major competitor, General Motors. Even the Rockefeller family of Standard Oil viewed cannabis-sourced ethanol as competition.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Henry Ford's first Model T used cannabis to make the acrylic skin, upholstery, and ran on cannabis-based ethanol. Were it not for the Marijuana Tax Act, we would today at the very least be seeing a line of Ford cars run on biofuel.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Instead of tapping into oil wells, we would have been growing plants which breathe in CO2 and breathe out oxygen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
The other opposition to the legislation was from William Woodward from the American Medical Association.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
What he said actually reads rather logical by today because he said no evidence existed that cannabis was dangerous and that outlawing it, quote, loses sight of the fact that future investigations may show that there are substantial medical uses for cannabis, end quote. So he was, of course, defeated. And
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Well, there are actually nowadays there are some that will tell you that it's a shame that you're not high. As you said, cannabis today is purported to have many attributes that are good for you. This, of course, is in stark contrast to just 15 short years ago when we were told that our brains on drugs were not unlike fried eggs in a frying pan.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
On October 2nd, 1937, a man named Samuel Caldwell became the first person in American history to be arrested for selling cannabis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Twenty three million people have followed and continue to follow. Here's the thing. Our government knew all along that cannabis wasn't nearly as bad as the hype. Take the findings of the LaGuardia report. In 1939, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia commissioned a report on the effects of cannabis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
The New York Academy of Medicine issued an extensive research report declaring that contrary to earlier research and popular belief, The use of cannabis did not induce violence, insanity, sex crimes, or lead to addiction or other drug use.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Sadly, that part remains inconclusive. But Anslinger trashed the report, calling it unscientific. And don't forget... Anslinger had a powerful ally, William Randolph Hearst, who put his media empire to work demonizing cannabis, demonizing cannabis and plundering historical artifacts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
American history. Yeah, man. We got some skeletons in the closet. In 1951, Congress passed the Boggs Act, which created a mandatory minimum for all drug crimes. In 1956, the Narcotics Control Act passed, which gave stricter mandatory sentences for cannabis-related crimes. And just like prohibition did for alcohol, these laws were making cannabis more popular. Is that true?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Look, there's no way to say for sure, but there's certainly some correlation. When the U.S. government prohibited alcohol, drinking went up. When they did the same with cannabis, came out of the jazz clubs and into the counterculture. Enter the 60s. In the 60s, both the counterculture of the hippies and the American soldiers in Vietnam became big fans of cannabis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Congress then passed the Controlled Substance Act, which made cannabis a Schedule I drug, incurring all the same harsh penalties as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, etc., as we talked about at the top of the show.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, absolutely. And doing scary, serious time, as we'll see in a bit. At this point in our history, we're just getting to the next bad guy in this story of cannabis, Richard Nixon. Nixon, a bad guy. You don't say this guy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, he was good at being bad. In 1972, the Schaefer Commission, founded by Richard Nixon, found that cannabis was in fact not as dangerous as other drugs and recommended it be decriminalized. This, of course, did not play to Nixon's hand. because arresting hippies was his way of controlling the protests against the Vietnam War and quashing opposition to his administration.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
So instead of decriminalizing cannabis, he did the exact opposite. He declared a war on drugs and established the Drug Enforcement Administration, or what we call the DEA.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yes, it absolutely is. And there's this rather damning quote from former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman that. pretty much puts everything into perfect focus. He said, quote, you want to know what this, the war on drugs, was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Aha. Yes. But the problem being that for the last 53 years, we have classified cannabis as a schedule one narcotic. That's the same as heroin, meth, coke, all the bigs of the drug world. Now, the Biden administration did finally reclassify cannabis as Schedule 3, which means it incurs much lower penalties for possession and use. For example, Tylenol with codeine is Schedule 3.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
It really happened. And actually, it gets worse because in 1975, the Supreme Court ruled it permissible to give out sentences for cannabis offenses. for up to 20 years in prison.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
That is part of what Biden did to reclassify cannabis as Schedule 3, doing with the reclassification, relooking at a lot of people's sentence for cannabis over the years. So there might be some amelioration of that, but we'll see. But let me add this in as we're talking about these harsh sentences that existed.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
African-Americans are arrested for violating cannabis possession laws at nearly four times the rates of whites. Yet both groups consume cannabis at roughly the same rates. And while I'm on it, even though cannabis is legal in many states, cannabis today is half of all drug arrests. Someone gets arrested for cannabis every 58 seconds in America.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
This is despite the fact that the majority of Americans live in a state where cannabis is legal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, look, it is rage inducing. In 1980, Reagan was elected and conservative values came back into vogue. And not like in a lovable Alex P. Keaton kind of way, but Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign, the DARE movement and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America became completely mainstream.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Law enforcement cracked down even harder on cannabis with the previously mentioned racist disproportionality. It's morning in America.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
But it really was a new morning in America at that point because attitudes changed at that point. And they changed fast. I don't know if it was just the bad hairstyles of the 80s that people were running away from. But beginning in the 90s, a real pushback against these draconian cannabis laws began to... Flower and bloom? Exactly. And in 1996, California passed Proposition 215.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
The first state to outlaw the cultivation of cannabis became the first state to re-legalize it, medically in this case.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
So I don't know anyone doing hard time over possession of Tylenol with codeine, so clearly this is an improvement. But it's actually a long road before cannabis is officially reclassified.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Look, and we all know what happened next, because since then, 38 states allow medical cannabis, and of those, 23 allow recreational use.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
OK, so actually, the more appropriate question is, what are we?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Why does cannabis interact with us the way it does?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
I can dig it. Let's do it. OK, so the answer is the endocannabinoid system.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Right, exactly. It's a biological system in the body that helps regulate and balance key bodily functions like mood, energy, balance, and appetite. It runs completely through our brains and our bodies. So it's like the nervous system, receptors and all that stuff? Yeah. Yes, the endocannabinoid system regulates functions through naturally occurring cannabinoids produced inside the human body.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
These natural cannabinoids interact with cannabinoid receptors, of which there are many. So I'm with you so far. So cannabinoids also exist in other places in nature, such as cacao, which is why dark chocolate makes us feel a certain way. It's interacting with our cannabinoid receptors. So is being a chocoholic kind of a real thing? Yes, it actually is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
In fact, I have my six month chip from Chocoholics Anonymous. Sadly, they made it out of chocolate and I ate it. So I'm back to my week one chip. Look, cacao isn't the only plant that produces cannabinoids. Yeah. Is it cannabis? Correct. Cannabis has over 100 different cannabinoids. But for our purposes today, we're just going to be talking about the big two, THC and CBD.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
So I'm pretty sure everyone's heard of those.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
That's interesting. And look, that's CBD, but I'm pretty sure that everyone knows what THC is. It's tetrahydrocannabinol. And everyone knows that THC or tetrahydrocannabinol is the one that gets you high. And CBD or cannabidiol is the one with purported health benefits.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, no, it's CBD is absolutely ubiquitous in California. You probably can get a happy meal with CBD in it, but it's probably actually those products you're talking about. They're probably not doing anything because you need 100 grams of CBD for your body to absorb any of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
And products like lattes and teas and whatever you're giving your dog that you buy at the store, those tend to have around 20 grams or so. So are the effects mostly psychosomatic, like placebo kind of thing? Essentially, that's what my research showed. But I've had a few and it feels like it's more than psychosomatic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
But the point is our bodies and our brains already have the receptors in place to interact with cannabinoids. The thing is, cannabinoids like THC are way more powerful than the ones our bodies make. Thousandfold more powerful. When consumed, psychoactive components are absorbed into the bloodstream and cross the blood-brain barrier.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
These effects are quick, way quicker than, say, drinking a scotch and soda. Cannabis, when smoked, enters the brain within 30 seconds.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Actually, that's interesting you say that because what kind of high you experience depends on the strain of cannabis you've taken.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
You're referring to indica and sativa? Yes, of course I am. And you are right. The two main strands of cannabis are sativa and indica. There's actually also a strain called ruderalis, but it's so seldomly used that we're just going to skip it. Sativa and indica give different highs because they interact with our brains differently. Let's start with sativa.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Sativa plants are taller than indica and have longer leaves. Sativa is considered more of a stimulant. Users feel more alert and focused when on it compared to indica. Sativa is a mood elevator and makes people talkative, and some call it a head high. Sativa does this because it's activating receptors in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Sativa can reduce stress.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
It is believed to have some pain management properties and gives users a heightened sense of importance towards their activities.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
I don't get it. There's head high and then there's body high. Indica is considered a body high. It relaxes you physically. That's why it's colloquially called Indicouch. Indica is more of a sedative. This is because Indica suppresses the amygdala part of the brain and also shuts down the hippocampus. The indica variety of cannabis can lead to defects in memory.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Indica is often used for sleep disorders and anxiety relief.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Not anymore, in fact. because it's actually pretty rare to find pure sativa or indica these days. We live in the age of hybrids. Through plant genetics, growers have souped up that boring old cannabis and crossed sativa and indica into many hybrids that have qualities of both plants.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and the different strains do have different effects, but it's possible that marijuana in general is just not for you. But while we're talking about the genetic manipulation of cannabis, it's worth mentioning that they've also souped up the amount of THC, and that might be what's freaking you out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Whereas the THC and the cannabis we discussed at the top of the show might have been around the low single digits. Modern cannabis is over 20 and 30 percent THC.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
No, look, my father's pot was kept in a coffee can above the fridge and was loaded with seeds and stems. He was getting hosed by his dealer for sure. But as far as modern pot goes, growers have gotten so good at manipulating the plants that there are all new categories of hybrids, type 1, type 2, and type 3. Okay, so what do those types mean? I've never heard of this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Those refer to the THC to CBD ratio. Type 1 has the most THC and a little CBD. Type 2 has less THC and more CBD. And type 3 has very little THC, mostly CBD.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
OK, so CBD, just like THC, is a cannabinoid. Only CBD doesn't get you high, but has other distinct effects. Many believe CBD has many great medical uses.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
OK, let me start by saying that there is a very effective seizure medicine on the market today that is derived from CBD. So, yes, CBD has medical merit. But according to Margaret Haney, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology at Columbia University Medical Center and leading cannabis researcher, the claims are quickly outpaced by the research because cannabis is still a schedule one drug, though.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
This stuff is actually really hard to study.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Well, I mean, most medicinal claims aren't always backed up with hard data. Plus, most of this stuff is just subjective. As we talked about, the placebo effect. If you think it's helping you sleep, it helps you sleep. If you think it's calming you down, it calms you down. If you think it's helping you write good poetry...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Placebo can't help you there. Okay, fine. That part is true, but nothing can help you there. True. But the fact remains that we're in the realm of the brain-body connection, and it's the intersection of things we still have a lot to understand. It's still a murky area for medical science. Let's list a few proven positives of cannabis and CBD.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
There's firm evidence suggesting cannabis treats the side effects of chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis, spasticity, chronic pain, sleep disorders, neuropathy, appetite loss, and inflammation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
They gave me morphine when I broke my rib and they only gave me three pills. To this day, I still have one left because I was so freaked out about having something that addictive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
What do you got to lose? That's all true. OK, so now let's talk about the bad things that are associated with weed. Most of the issues we're going to discuss are from chronic use and chronic use is considered to be more than twice a week.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. No, I know the dudes you're talking about. Actually, OK, a little sidebar, because I bet these guys all fell into this. Before we get on to the really bad things, you won't be surprised to learn this somewhat benign effect of chronic use. Stoner voice and stoner laugh. They're real and documented.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
No, no, no. Chronic users experience disruptions in motor circuitry, which leads to stoner voice. It's not just Hollywood. It's actually real.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
True. But there are real negatives. So let me emphasize this. The most negative effects from cannabis come from when you smoke. At what point in the brain's development you use cannabis. That does make more sense. Right. Let's start with the most crucial. In your mother's womb, it is... Just a bad idea to smoke pot when you're in your mother's womb. Okay, so don't be a stoner, baby.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, little joke aside, that's obviously the mother who's using cannabis. Experts say it's really bad. THC crosses the placenta. Fetuses, like adults, have cannabinoid receptors and cannot handle THC or CBD. Experts are very clear on this. Don't use cannabis or CBD when you're pregnant. Like, none. Zip. Zero. Yet, shockingly, women do it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
And like I said, the problem is the hype on medical cannabis and CBD is way ahead of the data. So there are literally people telling pregnant women to take a little CBD. It's just not good. And if you're fortunate enough to have had a mother who didn't use cannabis, you can still screw up your brain, especially for young men, by using cannabis at the other crucial time in brain development, youth.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Male brains and female brains develop differently. Young men's brains, it's the prefrontal cortex that develops more slowly, which actually is where one of the things is that we can run the movie forward and look at consequences of our actions. That's in the prefrontal cortex, which explains why young men not having a fully developed prefrontal cortex... Do stupid things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
I certainly can speak for myself. And it is in youth that most people try cannabis. And I mean, it's fun when you're young to go out and experiment. And in fact, I did it. Full disclosure, that's exactly when I was trying cannabis. These effects we're talking about are far worse for chronic use. It can lead to depression and anxiety.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
In fact, chronic cannabis use makes people four times more likely to experience depression, especially amongst younger people. Studies show that early use of cannabis on a developing mind can lead to psychosis at later ages.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and for those who use cannabis as young as 12 to 14, the probability of schizophrenic episodes more than doubles.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Studies show that adolescent cannabis use accelerates the thinning of the prefrontal cortex and gray matter in particular. The more cannabis used, the more impaired those neural circuits are. And we talked about the prefrontal cortex and how important that is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I mean, I feel hypocritical saying it, but that's a good idea. But here's the good news. If you're over 25, it's all good. Of course, smoking or vaping anything comes with dangers, and chronic use is never a good idea. But these dangers, the ones we just talked about, they cease to be as serious. But I should mention...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
that for people who are predisposed to mental health issues or violence tendencies, using cannabis can actually trigger these things. If you have these predisposed tendencies, you should never use cannabis. But this is a low percentage of people. If you're over 25, it's generally safe to smoke a little pot.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
I'm going to just say no to that notion, actually, because cannabis historically always had an excellent reputation. And it's been around for like a really long time. The first recorded use of cannabis was in 2737 BCE, or as historians say, a long ass time ago.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
No, probably never. Because the reason the breatharizer works with alcohol is because alcohol is water soluble. Therefore, the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream or in our breath, it's a very good indicator of just how impaired you are. But cannabis is lipophilic, meaning it lives in the fat cells and there is just no good sobriety test. So it will be hard to enforce as states legalize cannabis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
But That one minor problem is insignificant compared to all the good those tax revenues will do for those states, which that's really the good news about cannabis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. No, it's very high, as it should be. Right. I'm all for that. And some of those cannabis tax revenue goes to education related initiatives like school construction, school food programs, before and after school enrichment programs and public libraries, environmental cleanup, law enforcement and drug prevention programs, among actually a lot of others.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And there's also the unseen revenue as well. All the money we're not spending on enforcement court dates and in court and incarceration. Look, I know I've come off like a bit of a Nancy Reagan in this episode, but I believe the government actually has limited rights when it comes to adults doing what they want to do in the sanctuary of their own homes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Ultimately, I think the war on drugs has been a complete failure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
I absolutely agree. I think adults should be free to do drugs or free to not do drugs. But education, that is the key. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate that. Thank you, Jordan. This has been a real joint effort.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and legend has it that Emperor Shang Nang of China, believed to have ruled around 5,000 years ago, so you nailed it, prescribed cannabis tea. The earliest Hindu sects in India used cannabis for religious purposes and stress relief, Ancient physicians prescribed cannabis for everything from pain relief to earaches.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
In fact, Hindus believed that the god Shiva brought cannabis to Earth and not just for humans to use. Turns out the god Shiva was also a big fan of this plant.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
But look, different cultures consumed cannabis in different ways. Some cultures mixed it into food. In India, they made a drink called Bang.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I would be willing to bet that in our lifetime, we will see a sketchy energy drink called Bang.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
But in 1440 BCE, Herodotus wrote about cannabis steam baths. In the second century, Greek Dr. Galen prescribed cannabis as medicine and Chinese doctors used cannabis for surgery.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
I assume so. Although, interestingly enough, that was one of the PSAs of the 1980s that today it plays more like a Saturday Night Live sketch. A surgeon stands over a patient smoking a joint while the narrator opines, if your surgeon was smoking pot, would you still consider it harmless?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
No, exactly. Interestingly enough, the Chinese made cannabis into a kind of wine. It's versatile. During the Middle Ages, Muslims in the Middle East used cannabis, which is very interesting because the Koran strictly prohibited alcohol, but there was no mention of cannabis. So is it true?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, me neither. And I did some research, but let's just be clear. In the olden days, we're referring to it was actually hashish that they were smoking, which is basically a potent extract of cannabis. The first known mention of hash is in a pamphlet published in Cairo in 1123, accusing
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
nazari muslims of being hashish eaters so does that work you can eat it all right i don't know maybe but it maybe just was an ancient insult being like your mother eats hashish i'm not sure i see either way hash was big business with morocco and afghanistan being the biggest exporters of this potent concoction but as far as the modern muslims go it's still debated
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Most people agree that using cannabis for recreation goes against Islamic law, but using it for medicinal reasons is a different matter. In 2014, the Grand Ayatollah Saeed Mohammed Saadeq Haissani Rouhani of Iran... Close.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Really close. He issued a fatwa or a legal religious ruling in it. He stated spiritual plant medicines and psychedelics are halal for Shia Muslims with supervision.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Look, if you're going to trip, I guess you got to do it with your mom. Both the French and the British, by the way, had their colonists growing cannabis in the New World. So our country was founded in some parts on weed. Yeah. And other parts on slavery and misogyny.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
No, I don't think the anti-cannabis people probably would, but I would say they are. I think smoking a little pot would make you less racist and misogynist myself. I feel like our research bears that out, but we'll get there. Yeah. In the 1700s, doctors widely prescribed cannabis as medicine in the Western world. The Irish doctor William O'Shaughnessy popularized its use as pain medicine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
And it probably works about as well as Irish whiskey, maybe lasts a little longer. Yeah, which probably worked better than what I tried smoking in high school because back then cannabis was illegal, which gets me to the first person to outlaw cannabis. It was actually Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
When the little French general learned his soldiers had brought cannabis back from Egypt and were getting high, he outlawed it. So no cannabis for the French. That's correct. Napoleon was on to something, though. He may have been a little harsh on hashish, so to speak, but people in his time realized that drugs and alcohol use was problematic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
In 1868, the British passed the first drug laws banning some drugs. Around this time, people thought that cannabis use caused mental illness. This actually, as we'll see later, that's still debatable. So are we still debating reefer madness? You remember that whole thing? Yeah, well, not so much debating it as looking at the data. That's a better framing of it right now.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
In 1894, the British were concerned about cannabis use in India. In lieu of keeping those they colonized in line, the British established the Indian Hemp Drug Commission. The thing is, They found that moderate cannabis consumption was not detrimental and found no link to mental illness. So no reeve for madness.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, excellent point. But it does indicate that the tide was turning. In fact, the smoke was starting to blow in the other direction as far as cannabis's reputation went. So much so that in 1906, the U.S. government passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which said cannabis was dangerous and must be labeled before being sold.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
And because history loves irony, in 1913, California became the first state to ban growing cannabis. Wow. Well, I guess California was super conservative back then. Maybe that has to be it. Maybe. But look, the whole country was going that way because in 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act passed and Congress tightened restrictions on drugs in America.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
During that period, there was also the Mexican Revolution, which brought many Mexicans north to the United States. And just like any group entering America, they were met with racism and xenophobia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I guess that fine print is on the back of the statue.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Well, speaks to the tribalism that is inherent in human beings, I think. And how arbitrary it all is as well. Yeah, for sure. People aimed their ire at Mexicans. One of the things that people attacked was that many Mexicans smoked their cannabis and they didn't call it cannabis. They had their own word for it. A scary, foreign-sounding word. They called it marijuana.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
The racists seized on this and demonized both the Mexicans and their marijuana. And by 1925, 26 states had outlawed the evil marijuana.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Branding is everything. And that might well have worked. Certainly worked with Freedom Fries. The next blow for cannabis came with Harry Anslinger. OK, he was the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and a racist piece of garbage. And he had cannabis directly in his crosshairs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Oh no, Anslinger was an equal opportunity racist. But don't take my word for it. Take his. Now this is a little rough, but here is a quote I found from him. Quote, There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz, and swing result from marijuana use.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, by the way, Anslinger was not finished. There's also this little gem. Quote, Wow. Maybe we stop quoting this guy. This guy is terrible. Holy smokes. Yeah, no more Anslinger quotes. Okay, mind you, cannabis was still legal in some places. But it was on its way out. Anslinger famously collected wild and exaggerated stories about cannabis use and then placed them in the press.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1142: Cannabis Redux | Skeptical Sunday
And in 1936, the film you've already referenced came out, Reefer Madness. Now it's time for sponsor madness, madness, madness. We'll be right back.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Look, as we head into this brave slash weird new world, personalized medicine could then eventually equal one quality of care for the rich and another one for the poor. You mean like health care is right now in America, basically? True. And here's a really scary one. How about biological weapons that target individuals? Whoa, that's sci-fi crazy talk. Is that actually possible?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
That's actually, yeah, that's a real possibility. And the idea here is to use DNA to create weapons that exploit the genetic differences between ethnicities. Obviously, most weapons research is secret, but rest assured, DNA targeting as a weapon of war is something that's being developed.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Let's take a little break from the dark stuff and talk about the fun aspects of DNA. Figuring out who our great-grandparents banged.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
In fact, tracing the old family tree through home genetic tests is so fun that it's a $3 billion a year industry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's what DNA does. It's uncovering family secrets. In fact, there's a really interesting story. There's an actress, Kerry Washington, and she tells this really heartwarming story of when she was asked to be on the show Finding Your Roots.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. So was asked to be on the show. And as such, she needed her parents to also take a DNA test. And her parents freaked out. She comes to find out that her father couldn't have children and her parents used a sperm donor, but never told her. Ah, OK.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
If I may lay a quick compliment on you, you seem quite healthy and smart. Thank you. I do what I can. Sure, it's important to stay fit and sharp, but the fact of the matter is you had little to do with being healthy and smart. In fact, you had no say in the matter at all. You were predetermined to be those things. You just made the most of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
No, actually, the way she tells it, it's like it strengthened her relationship with her father as she realized that her dad really wanted to be her dad. Like he chose to go through the hurdles and emotions of using a sperm donor. It actually made her feel closer to him. So it's a sweet story. Yes, but DNA home tests aren't all sweet stories as we've talked about. There are so many concerns.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, for sure. Although the Affordable Care Act... A.K.A. Obamacare? Yes, Obamacare, makes it illegal for health insurance companies to deny you coverage or charge a different rate, they can still ask about the health of a customer. But health insurance isn't the only insurance, or even the only institution interested in what's in a person's genetic code. Like life insurance, I'm guessing? Sure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
And there's also disability insurance, not to mention banks might be very curious about the health of the person they're about to give a loan to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, so these companies are aware of these threats. In fact, in 2018, MyHeritage.com experienced a breach affecting email addresses and passwords, but not genetic data, thanks to their separation practices. That is to say, the customer's name and information is in a different database as the genetic information.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Genetic testing companies claim they all take extra care to separate the customer's identity from their genetic information. But once it's in the customer's hands, the onus is on you to protect it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, here's the thing, Jordan. You could never take a genetic test and your genetic info could still get out there. How? How is that possible? Because you're not the only one walking around with this hereditary data in your cells. Everyone you're related to has the same info to varying degrees.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, or how about a sibling who has the exact same two parents and therefore the exact same hereditary information? You can learn a lot about someone by studying relatives' DNA. Just ask the Golden State Killer. That's how they nabbed him. They found a close relative of his through a genetic database and found him almost immediately.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
So you're talking about my genetic predisposition, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. In fact, prospective employers might also like to know who they're about to offer the big job to. Is he a notorious most wanted serial killer or not? Or just is he going to get really sick in the next couple of years and maybe he's not the guy to give the job to? This is scary stuff. It's almost like having a crystal ball. It's definitely not something that you want out there in the world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
It is private information. So brave slash weird new world. Brave old world, too, because genealogists can now trace our earliest ancestors diaspora from Africa to the furthest corners of the world. Turns out that we didn't need written records of the ancient past. The story of the human species is written in our DNA. That's how scientists discovered mitochondrial Eve.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
I love that joke. Mitochondrial Eve refers to the most recent common ancestor of all living humans traced through maternal lineage. A single woman estimated to have lived in Africa around 200,000 years ago. And because mitochondria is only passed through the mother, we can trace everyone's existence back to this one woman.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
See, it's even written in the DNA of our hominid brothers and sisters that didn't make it. So I was going to make a joke about dump poor 40 out. Okay, never mind.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
But that's because scientists have mapped the DNA of Neanderthals with one sample taken from a 38,000 year old Neanderthal in Croatia. And great, great, great grandma may not have kissed and told, but the DNA doesn't lie. Humans and Neanderthals bred with each other around 65,000 years ago.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
That's pretty damn fascinating, actually. Yeah, DNA is pretty damn fascinating. Our understanding and ability to manipulate it is a game changer. For instance, genetic engineers can modify the DNA of the plants we eat to improve diets and food distribution. So GMOs, basically. Yeah, look, obviously that is its own episode, but everything was genetically modified long before we had a word for it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, sure. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule, and a molecule is a bunch of atoms stuck together. This particular molecule, DNA, is coiled up in the nucleus of every cell in our body, and each coiled-up strand of DNA is the complete blueprint to make, uh...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
That's what farmers have been doing for thousands of years. Bottom line, as we look ahead at the changes our planet is undergoing, we are going to need this technology to create drought and disease resistant crops.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
And plus, through DNA, doctors can create truly personalized care for patients based on their individual DNA. Because we're all genetically different. Well... Technically, we're actually pretty darn similar. Humans are 99% genetically the same. But that little 1% does a lot of work to make us unique. But even that could change as we face the realities of gene splicing through CRISPR.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
It made the cover of magazines, newspapers, and won the Nobel Prize for the two scientists who discovered it. And I only mention this because we talked about how Rosalind Franklin was initially denied credit for her contribution to our understanding of DNA. These two scientists were both women, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
And like so often in science, they made this discovery by accident.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
They were studying how bacteria protects themselves from viruses. This also blew my mind. Bacteria can get sick. Really? How ironic is that?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's gene splicing or gene editing. In short, while studying bacteria, these scientists discovered that bacteria have a part of their DNA called CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Palindromic? Like a palindrome? Like the word race car? I think so. And just as a total aside, my favorite palindrome is go hang a salami.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
You talked about these very specific kind of nerds that celebrate Mitochondrial Eve. I think palindromes are probably discovered by a different kind of very specific nerd. I think you might be right. Yeah. So this CRISPR stores a tiny piece of a virus's DNA. And the next time the virus comes back, this CRISPR snips out a piece of the DNA and destroys it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
So these two scientists wondered, why can't we use that technique to cut out genes that are unwanted and replace them with ones that are wanted?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
As I said, this is a huge leap forward, and as such, this technology comes with a huge ethical concerns. Have you seen the film Gattaca?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
It's a dystopian, futuristic tale in which society is divided not by race or nationality or religion, the classic dividing line, but rather by genetically enhanced humans and non-genetically enhanced humans.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
No, yeah, it's a great movie. I love the film. Thanks to CRISPR, that future is now. That's what this technology could, and I emphasize could, do. How? Scientists could manipulate an embryo and turn off the genes for genetic diseases and turn on the genes for intelligence, athleticism, and a myriad of other desirable traits. This is where the debate comes in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
You see, there are two kinds of cells in the human body. There are somatic cells and germ cells. Altering one or the other has different ethical implications. So you're going to need to explain that to me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, if you go to an adult and change their somatic cells, these are genetic changes done to an adult with their consent, and the changes you make to them genetically cannot be passed on to their offspring. Okay, I think I'm following so far. Right, so changes to somatic cells in an adult come with no real ethical dilemmas. In fact, it's already been done. Take the case of Victoria Gray.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Cells are really small, and to illustrate this, let me hit you with this fact. Every time you scratch your nose or rub your arm, dead skin cells fall off your body. Humans shed about 600,000 skin cells per day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Victoria was born with a blood disease called sickle cell. It's a pretty brutal disease that both compromises the quality of a person's life and can dramatically shorten it. For the first time ever, doctors used CRISPR to treat the disease. Doctors infused Victoria with more than 2 billion of her own bone marrow cells that had been edited with CRISPR.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
That is to say, they had cut out the gene for the disease. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, and it worked. Almost all of her symptoms are gone. Victoria is enjoying her life in ways she never could have hoped for before CRISPR.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
I'm so curious. Right. I wish I had an answer for you on that one. Although I do know that in my research that blood diseases are one that they're really optimistic that CRISPR can be a game changer for. So there's something about blood diseases that they think is particularly optimal for using CRISPR.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
I have a list of four reasons why blood diseases are particularly easy to treat with CRISPR. Number one, accessibility of blood. Number two, well-characterized genetics. Many blood diseases, such as sickle cell anemia, are caused by a single gene mutation, established transplant procedures, and rapid cell turnover.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
The dilemma comes from the other changes that could be made, changes to the germ cells, which are changes made to an embryo. That procedure comes with a host of issues.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
The other is that these changes can be passed on to offspring. Since this technology is new, scientists can't be sure what unforeseen consequences might arise. To do it is to literally experiment on people who had no say in whether or not they wanted to be experimented on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
But, and this is a huge but, it's already been done. It has. Yep. This is the tale of He Jiankui, a Chinese researcher who stunned the world when he announced that he had produced genetically edited babies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
So, we're talking tiny here, and the DNA strand in each cell isn't just coiled up in the cell, it's actually coiled up in a much smaller part of the cell, the nucleus.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yep, three babies, a set of twin girls, and another child. In November 2018, he announced that he had genetically altered a number of human embryos in a way he believed would give them resistance to HIV. He made the announcement at the International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
And I'm not sure what he thought the reception would be, but if he was hoping he'd be heralded as a hero, he was wrong. His colleagues went, and this is a scientific term, Ape shit.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Here are some of the problems. Fellow scientists pointed out that there are safer, less potentially disastrous methods for protecting people from HIV. And of course, there's the whole issue that he just blasted right past the ethical concerns without so much as even conferring with his scientific peers. This was maddening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, the story of Dr. Frankenstein isn't really a story of what to do. And the Chinese government wasn't exactly thrilled to have been embarrassed on the world stage by him, so they arrested him. He was convicted of illegal medical practices and sentenced to three years in prison.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And look, in his trial, it was claimed that he had falsified paperwork, that he hadn't been completely honest with the people that were donating the embryos. And the Chinese government has definitely distanced themselves and said, we've had nothing to do with this. But I also don't know that I trust the Chinese government to be completely honest with us on everything.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
That's not clear, because understandably, they are not in the public eye. But for better or worse, the Chinese government now has three test studies on the long-term effects of designer babies. And now we've entered a brave or at least a weird new world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Legit. That is a legit concern. But in this case, what happened was the father donor, actually, because I looked into this, he was HIV positive. The mother wasn't. So what the scientist was trying to do was create them resistant from the get-go. They kind of were exposed to HIV in the womb.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
There's another thing where when the cells separate, as we do when you have an embryo and it begins separating, where scientists were concerned that some of the cells could be genetically altered and others could not be. And so you could end up with a person who's half their organs or half of their cells are genetically resistant and the other half aren't. Again, he jumped the gun.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
He should not have been doing this. There was way more research to do. In addition, there are people who are born with a natural resistance to HIV. So this scientist was simply turning on the genes in these babies that some people already have. Look, 75 countries already prohibit the use of CRISPR in human reproduction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
But I think we'd be naive to think we can put the toothpaste back in the tube on this one. Do we really think Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin are going to be restrained by ethical questions in the face of making an army of super soldiers?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
If uncoiled, a single strand of DNA would stretch to about 6 feet 5 inches long. So it sounds like we're packed pretty tight up in there. Right, right. Now consider that there are about 50 trillion cells in your body. So if you laid end to end all the DNA strands in your body, that would stretch to the sun, and not just once, but 600 times.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's a totally legit concern. Authoritarian states could potentially misuse DNA data on their citizens, like for surveillance and tracking. We mentioned Gattaca. In that film, there was technology that vacuums up all the dead skin cells we leave everywhere.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
In fact, he started every day by using a pumice stone to get all those dead skin cells off of him, or as many as possible, so that he wasn't leaving a trail of skin cells. Because that's just what we do. We leave a dead skin cell trail everywhere we go. In the film, the technology is such that they can instantly identify whose cells they found.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
That speed of identification is not a science reality yet, but it is a reality that that identification can be done, and as to the speed, it's coming.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I hear you on that one. Totalitarian states could use DNA to discriminate against certain ethnic groups. This can lead to a systemic exclusion, detention or worse. Plus, DNA data might be used to create profiles of individuals deemed likely to commit crimes based on their genetic markers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yes. Look, welcome to the future. These potential uses illustrate the importance of strict regulations and safeguards to protect genetic data and prevent its misuse. Then again... When has there ever been a technology that someone, somewhere, wasn't willing to mess with no matter how dangerous? And here I was feeling good about the promise of CRISPR. Me too.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Look, progress always comes with questions and scary worst-case scenarios, including the human race gaining access to the blueprints of life and developing the ability to mess with them. Who knows what the distant future may hold? Maybe people will become genetically altered to live on Mars or a moon of Saturn. Maybe we can remove the genes for mental illness or cancer. I'm an optimist.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
A skeptical optimist. This understanding of DNA and how to manipulate it has already done so much good.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Plus, millions of people now get to add a whole ton of new ethnicities to their dating profiles. Yes, that's right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Wow, them are some bragging rights. It's clear we stand on the brink of unprecedented possibilities, from curing genetic disorders and enhancing human capabilities to ethical dilemmas and unforeseen consequences. The power to edit our genetic code opens a Pandora's box of opportunities and challenges.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
As we move forward, it's super important that we balance innovation with responsibility, ensuring that the benefits of genetic advancements are accessible and equitable. Let's stay informed, engaged, and thoughtful as we navigate this brave slash weird new world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Look, science and reality do not care what makes sense to you and I, or even to scientists. Put it in modern parlance, facts don't care about your feelings. The function of DNA is to tell amino acids how to line up into the correct protein shapes. Proteins combine to make cells. Cells combine to make up tissues. Tissues make up organs. And organs make up living creatures.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
The entire process, as magical as it seems, is all just chemistry. It can be studied. It can be understood. And that understanding took many people over 100 years since we first spotted DNA to really figure out. And of course, there's still a lot to be explored.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
DNA was first discovered in 1869 by a Swiss biologist named Friedrich Miescher. Miescher was studying white blood cells, and he had a nice supply of white blood cells because he would collect all the used bandages from a nearby hospital.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Oh man, that is super gross. Okay, well it's about to get grosser because Misha was studying white blood cells, which were hard to extract from a healthy person, but were in great abundance in the pus on used bandages.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
So he wasn't really collecting used bandages as much as he was collecting the pus on used bandages. And in studying the pus, he experimented and isolated a new molecule he called nuclein and studied it using now from pus to salmon sperm, which might not be exactly as gross as the pussy bandages. Puss caviar, anyone? And so today we call nuclein nucleic acid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
This is one of the building blocks of life. Almost 100 years later in London, a scientist named Rosalind Franklin discovered the double helix shape that we're so familiar with of DNA.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Franklin, although she was appreciated, her day was largely overlooked for her contributions to the understanding of DNA. And most of the credit went to Watson and Crick because men.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Before DNA, law enforcement had a few tools at their disposal, but they were actually pretty imprecise. Starting in the 1920s with blood typing, scientists identified four different types of blood. A, A, B, B, and O. This was huge for doctors because they could now safely perform blood transfusions, but it also came in handy for law enforcement. So to catch the bad guys, yeah?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
No, actually just the opposite, to free the good guys. You could prove somebody definitely was not the crook if there was a blood sample and the suspect did not have that type of blood, but law enforcement could not use it to help identify a suspect beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
And that's far from enough evidence to convict somebody of a crime. But DNA testing has turned that percentage up, like way up, like 99% accurate and higher.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
In fact, the first use of DNA evidence in a crime did both. It all started with Alec Jeffries, a professor and geneticist in the UK in the 1980s. In his research, Jeffries' study of the human family revealed that children had a composite of both their mother and father's DNA. And this finding was widely reported in the press.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
A lawyer read about it and he was working on an immigration case and saw the story and he thought it would be helpful with a client who was having trouble proving his identity. Professor Jeffries, using the mother's DNA, was able to prove his client was who he said he was. And police took note of this. So that was, at the time, quite a breakthrough, I'm guessing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and it opened the doors for criminal investigations. So in 1986, investigators asked Jeffries to help with a murder case. Two 15-year-old girls had been sexually assaulted and murdered. A teenage boy with learning disabilities had been arrested and had confessed to one of the murders, but not the other. The police wanted help pinning both murders on the boy and went to Jeffries.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
And now with no suspects, the cops and Jeffries began to collect DNA samples from local men, but they came up with no matches.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Oh yeah, that gets us into all the ethical questions that we're going to get into in a second surrounding DNA. But yes, this was the UK in the 80s and there were no laws around DNA sampling yet. The cops had no leads in this murder case until someone overheard a local baker named Colin Pitchfork bragging that he had submitted a friend's DNA.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
So the cops grabbed the dude and he was the perfect match.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, they brought out the torches and pitchforks for Pitchfork and he went down and DNA evidence became a thing because in truth, it actually took years for American courts to figure out how and when it was acceptable to use DNA evidence. There were ethical questions that needed to be addressed if they're going to be databases of people's DNA.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Then those databases and laboratories had to then meet the standards that were established. But there was no getting around it. This was a huge leap forward as DNA evidence enabled law enforcement to solve cases that had gone cold decades ago.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
The DNA Identification Act of 1994 authorized the FBI to create a national DNA database that compares DNA found in crime scenes to the DNA of violent offenders.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it was a huge win, and TV writers everywhere rejoiced, and mic drop moments were unleashed on a hungry public.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, TV writers had plenty more to write about as real science continued to catch up with science fiction. The next big achievement came with the mapping of the human genome in 1990.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, and it was a really big project, like a really big project. The project was headed by Francis Collins, and it took 13 years and sequenced 3 billion chemical pairs and maps all the genes encoded in human DNA.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Short answer. Genes are segments of your DNA. Those segments, genes, are responsible for our unique physical characteristics. In short, genes are the units of hereditary traits and contribute... to the traits an organism inherits from its parents. DNA is the complete string of these segments all strung together in a double helix.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, let's start by differentiating between cloning plants and animals. Many plant cells are totipotent, meaning each cell has the potential to regenerate into a whole new plant. Very often, cloning a plant requires little more than just snipping a branch and allowing it to grow into a whole new plant. Cloning animals is different.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
That is when scientists make an exact copy of something using its DNA, that is to say, no sex needed. Some organisms already do this in nature, like starfish, which can regenerate an entire new body from just an arm. Most animals can't do this. But with the scientists' help, just about any living thing can make an exact copy of itself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
In 1996, scientists in Scotland successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Dolly was the only lamb to survive out of 277 attempts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. In fact, until Dolly, many scientists believe mammals just couldn't be cloned. But they can. In fact, right now, there are companies that can clone a pet for you. So if your favorite kitty dies, you can literally get them back. And once again, a panoply of ethical questions have arisen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
In truth, the bigger question is, should humans be cloned? And the answer is, yes. We think primates have already been cloned, and researchers in South Korea and Michigan have cloned a human embryo, but that was only for research purposes. Countries are passing laws about human cloning. Like all things DNA, is mired in ethical questions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, look, we'll get to China in a minute because they are players here. But each of these developments raises a new set of ethical questions. Genealogical databases, that's where tons of private health information is stored. They could be hacked by bad actors. And I don't mean like Nick Cage.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
I mean, somebody leaks your DNA on the Internet and now insurers don't want to cover you because you're prone to cancer or whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
That is so true. And you know what? I saw his movie Pig recently, and it was really weird and good. I haven't seen it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. You know, if he's working that hard, maybe he could use a clone of himself. But look back to the ethical questions like the genetic counseling, which could arise as we enter this brave new world, that could turn easily into eugenics. And eugenics, in case anyone doesn't know, is an attempt to create a superior gene pool.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
And it is widely condemned as racist, ableist and in violation of human rights. And if you needed any more evidence that it's a bad idea, the most famous champions of eugenics were, of course, the Nazis.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1105: DNA | Skeptical Sunday
Right. And I don't know if this company is a sponsor, but I have to say my jaw was on the ground when I first saw a commercial for a company that has a product called Eugenics. Eugenics. So definitely eugenics. Bad. Don't even talk about it. So personalized medicine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Sign me up. Absolutely. I get that. I understand that. But you mentioned the studies and I want to talk about them. Let's start with those studies because you're right. There have been studies and studies do show acupuncture to be effective, but there's a problem and it's a big problem. Most of the studies that prove a benefit were conducted in China.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And these Chinese studies stand in contrast to most studies done outside of China. And scientifically speaking, when you have, that's a big red flag. And I don't just mean the one with little yellow stars on it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
I don't have to say it. China's food and drug regulators unearthed widespread data fabrication in these studies. Oh, wow. Chinese regulators carried out a one-year review of clinical trials and concluded that more than 80% of clinical data is fabricated. And this doesn't just go for acupuncture, by the way. These studies included all the Chinese pharmaceuticals.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Here's the thing. Actually, most studies of acupuncture can't really be trusted because of the impossibility of performing a true double-blind study. That is to say, a study in which both the researcher and participant don't know which is the placebo and which is the actual treatment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Right, yeah, and obviously the flip side of that is how could the person receiving the acupuncture not know they're receiving acupuncture?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Look, to do a proper scientific study, you need a control group. And that's just not possible with acupuncture. So in studies, the control group receives the placebo, right? Yes, exactly. So what some studies have done is to test acupuncture against what they call sham acupuncture. Basically, one group, they use the real meridians, by which I mean the imaginary meridians.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And in the other group, they just randomly put the needles in non-meridian spots. And I'm guessing the problem with that should seem relatively obvious.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And look, that's pretty much what the study showed. And these were large clinical trials conducted in Germany and the US. Yeah, not China then. Right, which is worth noting. And these non-Chinese trials consistently showed traditional acupuncture and sham acupuncture are pretty much the same at decreasing pain levels for migraines, lower back pain, and knee pain.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
I'm feeling peachy, man. Peachy. Interesting. Did you eat peaches to become peachy? Because in traditional Chinese medicine, maybe. I don't know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Absolutely. And you'd be right. But is it the acupuncture or is it the placebo effect? There's actually a widely touted meta-analysis of acupuncture that shows a difference between real acupuncture and sham acupuncture. But in reading about this, there's a lot of critics of this meta-analysis. They point out that the differences are very minute between different people. Plus,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
There was like these huge criticisms of meta-analysis in general that I, gonna be honest with you, I don't understand.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Meridians and chi simply aren't proven, and balancing yin and yang isn't medically sound. And what are the odds that at the end, science ends up going, hey, look, turns out what ancient people believed with no understanding of biology, and they were totally right about all these invisible things they made up?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Not anymore. Okay, look, we need to understand if the act of needles stabbing the skin does something real, like tangible and scientifically provable, or is it just all placebo?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it's awesome. In fact, in researching this episode, I came across several full-throated defenses of the placebo effect by some of the most reputable institutions in medicine. One article from Harvard Medical School was the one that really set me straight on placebos, particularly when it comes to pain management. Pain is in the brain.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Ooh, that is dangerously close to a Cypress Hill lyric, I think. That it is. And I may be insane in the membrane, but the fact of the matter is the way our brain perceives the messages from pain receptors is pain. That's just what pain is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
So if placebos convince our brains to release endorphins, which relieve pain, the pain relief is as real as if you'd taken a pharmaceutical drug without the risks of taking pharmaceutical drugs. Hey, placebos, like seriously, no disrespect. I get you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. So it actually, this is where it gets murky because serious professionals who I respect haven't ruled out that causing micro injuries might be triggering an immune response or sending anti-inflammatory proteins and other infection fighting and wound healing chemicals to these micro injured areas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. Some also propose that these micro injuries might, and you said it, increase blood flow to the area or might activate nerve receptors. Like they're still hypothesizing about it, but there's not a lot of evidence. Gotcha. Yeah. And you're still using the word might quite a bit. Yeah, look, in this case, might definitely doesn't make right. So what if they haven't ruled it out?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
They also haven't ruled it in. Reputable people do wonder if acupuncture is doing something more than the placebo effect. But the fact is, all the evidence suggests that on a neurological level, it's treating pain just like a placebo does. So for pain relief, it sounds like acupuncture gets a solid maybe. Yeah, I don't know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
I'd go so far as to say a solid yes for pain treatment, as long as you believe. For skeptics, I couldn't help but wonder if the placebo effect is less or even null. That might be the study we're looking for. That's the control group. I'd be interested to see in believers versus skeptics.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Look, I don't believe in much either, but I am really determined to find out. And a lot of people have been working with acupuncture. In fact, in 2009, the UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence... That is one of the most British-sounding names ever. Yeah. Look, Jordan, they still have a king. Everything over there is the royal this or the excellency that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
So in 2009, the United Kingdom's National Institute for Clinical Excellence did recommend acupuncture for back pain. But I have to keep saying this, back pain is weird. Specialists have long understood there's a very real mental element to overcoming it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Well, that's interesting because that is the crux of traditional Chinese medicine. A traditional Chinese healer is trying to restore balance between these two complementary forces that flow through not just your body, but throughout the entire universe. According to traditional Chinese medicine, a person is healthy when harmony exists between these two forces.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Just for comparison, I looked up what our National Institute of Health has to say about acupuncture, and I found what they were saying on the subject on their website to be kind of like how polite atheists talk about religion. They were like, it's good for some people, and sure, you can't prove it, but hey, people aren't dumb for believing it, that's fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, you said for some people acupuncture is effective. Okay, sure. It's effective-ish. But for certain things, it can assertively be said it's not effective. And here's the thing. Acupuncture makes a lot of claims. Let's shut a few of those down. Yeah, let's do that. Claims such as...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, the evidence strongly suggests it is not effective for rheumatoid arthritis, stopping smoking, irritable bowel syndrome, losing weight, addiction, asthma, stroke, tinnitus, or thinking you're Napoleon Bonaparte or whatever else they are claiming it works on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
You might say that's like the Dumbo's feather effect. And you asked if it does any harm, though. And I guess that all depends on how you feel about, say, death. Because in extremely rare cases, it can be fatal. I found examples of it. Though, in fairness, the only cases of death I came across were not in the US.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
But a really strange one instance that I found was in rural China, in which it said that the needles punctured the person's organs, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, it was shocking to me. But the fact of the matter is soreness, bruising, infection, those can happen anywhere. And they do happen very often as a result from acupuncture in whatever country you receive it in. But for the most part, it's pretty darn safe here in the U.S.,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And sickness occurs when there's more yin than yang or more yang than yin.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
I would like to see their certification because most states require a master's degree in acupuncture and Eastern medicine. And then there's the state exams and the actual certification process. So yes, it is a process.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Absolutely not. A few states, when I say that you have to get the certification, in a few states, there is no certifications. Only doctors and nurse practitioners are allowed to administer acupuncture. In Oklahoma, they allow chiropractors. Plus, the needles are highly regulated by the federal government.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
They are coming out of sterile packages for one use only, unless you go to the place you went to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yes. In fact, I am not trying to belittle acupuncturists. I've been to a few. They were lovely people. I even allowed students to practice on me at an accredited college here in LA.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
It was lovely, with lovely people. I laid on a bed with needles sticking out of my face and my arms and my chest and legs, and I meditated to New Age music for like 30 minutes. And when it was all over, I felt chill and good. What ailment were you there for? Arm pain. It's kind of similar to me, actually. So did it help? No, not even a little bit.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
We've all seen the graphic representation on posters in teenagers' rooms and on the walls of suburban dojos. For lack of a better example, it looks like a white sperm and a black sperm positioned head to tail in a circle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Unless you account for the fact that over the course of months of acupuncture and not overusing my arms, it got better, which is exactly what happened the second time in my life. I had arm pain, but only took a few months off of strenuous work and did no acupuncture. Kind of turns out that we humans heal with or without acupuncture. But you know what?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
In truth, it was lying in that acupuncturist's office that I first tried meditating. You said strenuous work, but dude, you're a comedian.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, Jordan, there's an old saying inside every comedian, there's a great waiter. And I'm not an exception to that rule. I was waiting tables at that time in my life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, actually, I knew a bunch of servers back in the day when I was doing it who had tendonitis in their wrist and problems like that from carrying those trays around. Oof, yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
I don't know if it didn't do anything and neither do the acupuncturists, which is pretty strange for a medical procedure. Have you ever met someone after having a broken bone set or LASIK surgery or disc replacement in their back that couldn't tell you if it actually did anything? Medicine is a science. It's based on being able to objectively tell if it's doing anything.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, that's what medicine should be, objective results. And look, while I'm on the subject, and again, nothing but love for acupuncturists since I've known a few and they are truly lovely people, but I looked up what is on the California certification exam.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And it's a bunch of stuff about the 12 primary meridians and their acupoints and then something about the eight extra meridians and divergent energy channels. And this is upsetting to me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, an acupuncture board test should be about hygiene and the safest ways to poke people with a needle. And that's kind of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Great question, because those are two totally different treatments. So let's go with cupping first. All right. So the obvious question is, what is cupping?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
I will expand on it, but you're not going to get any further explanation out of me. It's just a hickey. Okay. So it sounds like cupping sucks. Yes. Cupping is a technique in which a practitioner takes a glass container, like a cup, heats the air inside, usually with fire, then places it directly on the skin. When the hot air inside cools and condenses, you get suction.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Right. Yeah. And that's actually the whole point. When you combine the fire show with the cooling air beginning to suck on your skin, it's pretty cool. It looks and feels like some ancient wisdom at work.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
You won't be surprised to learn that it's correcting qi and balancing the yin and the yang. But just like acupuncture, modern people assign different reasons to the benefits than the people who created it. In this case, they say it improves blood flow, which in a way it definitely does if by improvement, you mean it increases blood flow to the capillaries until they break.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. And a lot of them. In fact, anyone who's ever seen a person post cupping knows it's like crazy what it looks like on their body. They look like they've been attacked by an octopus.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Fine. Okay. But even then, these cliched posters I'm talking about, they're just graphic representations of something actually unseen, an invisible life force. Yin is considered the female of these two forces.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. In fact, that's where many people heard of the technique for the first time. In fact, Phelps made quite a splash with his cupping hickeys, huh?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
No, look, you have no idea how hard it was for me to resist the temptation to say I was poking holes in acupuncture.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Because I don't doubt for a second that it makes him feel good. Again, pain, especially minor pain like sore muscles, is partly just perception in our brains. Plus, like with acupuncture, if you believe it and you're getting an endorphin release from it, then it's real. You're experiencing pain relief. So what's the harm, then, with the cupping?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
If it's done repeatedly in the same spots, it can cause permanent skin damage. And if you already have eczema and psoriasis, it can inflame those conditions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
It's like walking into a natural history museum or something when you walk into the Chinese herbalist. And in a way, we have saved the best for last. And I'm not being altogether snarky because with herbal medicine, there is a there there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Okay. To understand herbal medicine, you have to go back, like way, way back. 500 million years ago, the first plants appeared. Plants are sessile organisms. That is to say they are permanently restricted to spend their lives on the exact site of their germination. Can you imagine spending your life on the spot where you were born? It's not just born.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
You're spending your entire life on the spot your parents conceived you. Okay. Gross. It does not sound like a very good deal. Yeah, it's actually really rough. And as a result, plants have to deal with everything life throws at them while totally stationary, like environmental assaults, temperature, drought, co-evolving bacteria and fungi, and animals that want to eat them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And they do it all with one thing and only one thing to defend themselves. Chemistry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And as a result of that, and the fact that they've had 500 million years to tinker with chemistry, plants have developed an absolutely jaw-droppingly massive array of chemicals. Chemicals that can be helpful to humans, They can be hurtful to humans. And some of these chemicals just make people trip their faces off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And like plants experimented with chemicals, humans have experimented with plants for thousands of years. So just statistically speaking, if enough people tried enough plants enough times, it stands to reason they would have figured out a few that act as medicine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yes and no. Most of it is not proven and almost certainly not effective. But a tiny fraction of it is, yes, effective. As effective as pharmaceutical drugs then? No, probably not. But pharmaceutical drugs owe a lot to plants and will continue to as chemists and pharmaceutical companies still look at plants and plant chemistry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Some Chinese herbal medicines have proven to be the basis for modern drugs. In fact, the Nobel Prize-winning treatment for malaria artemisinin is a giant leap forward in treating this deadly disease. And the treatment was first written about in ancient Chinese texts.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, you got that right. In fact, according to a recent WHO report, 97 countries have a malaria problem. About 3.4 billion people are at risk of getting malaria and 1.2 billion are at high risk. So... Not a joke. But thanks to artemisinin, the mortality rate has dropped 42%.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And Jordan, key component to the drug was first written about by Ge Hong in his book, A Handbook for Prescriptions for Emergencies in 340 AD.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Very good questions that, unfortunately, I don't have answers to. But I like the idea of a handbook was called that because you needed your hand servants to carry it around for you. Just as amazing in that handbook, by the way, was his instructions to use cold water instead of hot water to extract the active ingredient, which helps preserve the chemical. So he was like really onto something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yin's opposite won't surprise you either, then, because Yang represents masculinity. Light and warmth actually sound more female than male. Yeah, ironically, they got yin and yang mostly backwards, although the female yin does also represent earth, softness, and rain. So those are nice. As well as blackness, evil, smallness, and even numbers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
This dude was making cold brew almost 2,000 years ago. So take that, Starbucks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Actually, okay, that's where skeptics of herbal medicine point out that in drinking the Artemisia tea, the chemical is eliminated just too quickly from the body. And therefore, the original treatment, as it was written about, only led to a temporary reduction in symptoms. The old treatment just reduced fever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
The new treatment, which exists now, which combines the Artemisia with modern medicine, created a sturdy, stable drug that actually knocks out malaria.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Right, which is why I say that there is a there there with herbal medicine. Plants have been running trial and error experiments and tinkering with chemistry for 500 million years. Some people say Aristotle was the first scientist, but I say plants were the first scientists. And people will accuse you of being on certain psychedelic plants for that opinion, for sure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
That is probably true, but 25% of drugs we use today are either directly from plants or modified versions of molecules we find in plants. So Chinese herbal medicine is kind of real? Kind of. Like with all things, knowledge is built on previous discoveries. So for my money, I'm going with the latest knowledge. I think that's way smarter than putting your health in the hands of ancient knowledge.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
I'm pro-medicine all the way. I'm just saying when it comes to acupuncture and cupping, those were just flawed ideas of ancient people making stuff up about energy flows and meridians. And again, no hate towards the ancients. They were doing the best they could with the information they had.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
But modern people turning to unproven ancient remedies aren't really doing their best with the information they have. They're doing the opposite.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, okay, fair point. And by the way, now an old Michael Richelieu has some everything pain.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. As we'll see, much of traditional Chinese medicine isn't that far removed from numerology, astrology, and stuff like that. Yang represents heaven, sunshine, hardness, goodness, the color white, largeness, and, of course, odd numbers. According to ancient texts, the interplay between these forces make up qi, which is the life force that flows around and through our bodies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, look, after a lot of research, I can only say with some generosity that chi is a metaphor, an attempt by ancient peoples to explain complex systems like nature and the human body. If I wanted to be really generous, I'd say it's kind of like the force in Star Wars, which that's pretty cool.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And traditional Chinese healers try to correct the imbalances of qi and yin and yang through the practices of herbal medicine, acupuncture, and cupping. These practices originated as far back as 22 centuries ago.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
No, because right off the bat, there's a misconception there. Traditional Chinese medicine. So can we just call it TCM? TCM. But people might confuse that with Turner Classic movies. I think it'll be all right. Okay, fine. So back as far as the 1600s, TCM had been written off as superstition in China. And by the 1800s, TCM had pretty much been completely abandoned.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
The Chinese were adopting Western medicine and leaving TCM to the fringe few.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
As my weird social studies teacher at high school used to say, communism doesn't work. And that's what happened. Okay. What do you mean by that? Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party found themselves in a bit of a pickle in the early 1960s. They had promised healthcare to everyone, but didn't have the doctors, facilities, or medicines to make good on that promise. TCM offered a solution.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Practitioners didn't require the same extent of training as Western doctors. The doctor shortage in China was particularly pronounced in rural China, and rather cynically, the Communist Party kind of assumed these, for lack of a better term, hicks wouldn't know the difference anyway.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
So this gave rise to what they called the, quote, barefoot doctors, which were basically just farmers who had taken a crash course in TCM. Chairman Mao was happy as he was able to fulfill his promises. And in general, people were happy as they had medical care. And after a several centuries long break, TCM came roaring back.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah. In fact, Mao himself was an avowed believer in Western medicine. His personal physician quotes him as saying, quote, even though I believe we should promote Chinese medicine, I personally do not believe in it. I do not take Chinese medicine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yeah, I was absolutely not going to guess Richard Nixon. What does he have to do with any of this? In 1972, Richard Nixon famously visited China. And as always, a press pool followed. In that press pool was James Reston of the New York Times, a political reporter. While there in China, Reston fell ill and needed an emergency appendectomy. Oof, ouch.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
And meanwhile, there was an entire room full of anesthetics in the next room over, and it was just this stereotypical evil East German dentist. No, we have no anesthetic. Yeah. All right, fine. He really just didn't like me at all, I think, is what it came to. American, huh? No anesthetic. Sorry, we're out. All right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Chinese doctors gave James Reston, who we were originally talking about, almost entirely Western medicine when they performed surgery on him. He had normal anesthesia, antibiotics, etc. But... As a little showcase for TCM, his post-surgery routine included acupuncture.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Reston, who, as I said, was just a political reporter, he had no medical training or an expertise to judge this, but he went back to America and he wrote a now-famous op-ed in the New York Times completely touting this amazing ancient procedure, acupuncture.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Even though Reston was clear in the op-ed about the fact that the acupuncture was just a post-procedure addition to his medical care, the rumor mill did what the rumor mill always does. And it churned out these fantastical stories here in the US about how only acupuncture was used and no Western medicine. And as a result, TCM in America became all the rage. Yeah. Which it remains.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
With roughly 38,000 licensed acupuncturists in the US, it's safe to say they are everywhere. In fact, it's so easy to find one that just out of curiosity, I asked my phone where the nearest one was. Can you do the same? I'd be curious. Where's your nearest acupuncturist?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Mine says 0.3 miles away is the closest acupuncturist, but then it tells me 0.4 miles away, there are three and a half mile away, there's even more acupuncturists. And when I hit the button for directions, the phone defaults to walking directions. That's how close my nearest acupuncturist is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Yes, I anticipated that you might say that, so I had a friend in Iowa do the same, and he said there are four in his zip code. The nearest one is under a mile from his house. Wow. Point taken, I guess. There's a lot of acupuncturists in America. Sheesh. Yeah, that was a good one. Compare the 38,000 acupuncturists we have here to the measly 18,000 podiatrists in the US.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
It's really wild how many acupuncturists there are in the US. Could you imagine if you went to China and there was a Navajo medicine man on every corner in China?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Absolutely. Acupuncture brought in $27 billion in 2021. So when looking at the reasons these treatments are perpetuated, you really can't overlook the money. And that's not to say that there aren't other reasons.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Okay, acupuncture, like all things TCM, has to do with qi, which, for the record, is spelled Q-I if you're looking to Google any of this stuff we're talking about later. And qi, which again is an invisible energy, it flows through invisible meridians in the body. Meridians are like channels through which the qi flows. According to TCM, there are 12 major meridians that connect to qi.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
organs, tissue, veins, nerves, cell, atoms, and mother-freaking-consciousness itself. And so then the needles are inserted into the meridians to readjust the flow of the qi in order to readjust the balance between the yin and the yang.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1085: Traditional Chinese Medicine | Skeptical Sunday
Fine. Longer answer, hell no. Am I being snarky? Hell yes. Is there more to it? Yes. The big question is if the acupuncture is doing anything or is the relief people receive, is it all in the brain?