Rose Rimler
Appearances
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
But here's where the story takes a weird turn. And this is why I wanted to talk to you about it, Wendy, for this episode that we're doing now, which is not about milkshakes or ultra-processed food or sugar. No. So around the same time that this study came out, a reporter from The New York Times reached out to the researchers asking for an interview.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
So the lead scientist on this is a nutrition researcher named Kevin Hall. He's very famous in the world of nutrition. He's interviewed all the time. We've interviewed him here on Science Versus. And I reached out to him again recently about all this. We talked over email.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
So the protocol that he follows before these interviews is he reaches out to his overlords at the NIH to let them know about the request and that he wants to do the interview. But this time, for the first time, according to Kevin, the NIH said no. They denied his request. He also says that they quashed a press release that was going to come out about the study.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
So it seemed to him that the NIH didn't want to publicize the study at all. You know, eventually they agreed to let him answer some written questions from the Times reporter. But then they reviewed his answers and they changed them. Kevin says that their changes kind of downplayed the results.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
So he interpreted this to mean that the powers that be at the NIH didn't like this finding that milkshakes are not necessarily addictive. Kind of wanted to bury it a little bit.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
Yeah, it's not like there's none of like deep milkshake throat like being met in a parking garage, you know. Sanding over government secrets. Yeah, it seems very weird. Because usually when the government has some issue with some research, it's like there's corruption with industry pressure. There's like a government screw-up that's trying to get covered over.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
This one doesn't appear to make any sense until you start to pay attention to what the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been saying recently about ultra-processed food and sugar.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
Uh-huh. This is a big talking point for Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again platform. Here he is talking about sugar at a press briefing recently.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
Yeah, I mean, that's what Kevin suspects. And he ultimately quit over that. He said on Twitter that he felt his work was being censored to fit, quote, preconceived narratives of my agency's leadership about ultra-processed food addiction. Uh... And we asked, you know, HHS about this. They pushed back.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
Their head of communications told us in an email that, quote, it's disappointing that this individual is fabricating false claims. NIH scientists have and will continue to conduct interviews regarding their research through written responses or other means, just like Kevin Hall was allowed to do.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
And they said, another quote, any attempt to paint this as censorship is a deliberate distortion of the facts. I asked him to be more specific about what was false here, and I didn't hear back on that. Okay. You know, to me, I would be surprised if Kevin was making this up because, you know, he didn't want to quit. He was very reluctant.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
He told me that before all this, he and his wife would joke about how he was probably never going to retire. But he went into early retirement because he felt he had no choice. It was either that or, you know, compromise his research. And also, you know, Kevin is not the only U.S.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
Okay, so this all started a couple months ago. Researchers at the NIH, that's the National Institutes of Health, they published a study where they gave people ultra-processed milkshakes. So these are vanilla shakes. They were loaded with fat and sugar, like all milkshakes, but also emulsifiers and artificial flavorings, that kind of stuff. And then they put these people into PET scanners.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
scientist who feels like they're being muzzled right now or that their work is being suppressed in some way just because the federal government doesn't like it. Which is why I wanted to tell you about it, Wendy.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
All right. Milk shaker. That's my Q to leave. I can't condone that pun. Get out of here. Goodbye.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
They were testing out this idea that certain foods might be as addictive as drugs. So, you know, you often hear people say that about sugar. Right. And it's also an idea that's out there about ultra processed foods, that they might be addictive. So what the scientists at the NIH wanted to see was whether drinking a milkshake could cause someone's brain to send out a big whoosh of dopamine.
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
In the same way that you might see with addictive drugs, right? Like that happens with cocaine, for example. So was the milkshake... Bringing all the dopamine to the yard?
Science Vs
The War Keeps Raging Against Science
No. So as a rule, drinking the milkshake did not lead to a big rush of dopamine. Uh-huh. And that doesn't mean that ultra-processed food or sugar is considered healthy now, but it throws a little cold water on the idea that these foods are addictive in the same way that drugs are addictive.
Science Vs
Narcissists: Are We Surrounded?
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Narcissists: Are We Surrounded?
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Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
How often do they find it was, in fact, the person with autism who was doing the communicating?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Wow. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, so in the case with Betsy, the investigators concluded that the sex abuse allegations were totally unfounded.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
In the Betsy case, we do know what's going on here because the facilitator like came out and talked about it, wrote a paper about it. And she explained that, you know, she'd had some doubts in the beginning, like, oh, am I really am I moving Betsy's hand or is it really Betsy? It's kind of hard to tell.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But there was so much momentum and it was so exciting to think that she was making breakthroughs with her student that she kind of let herself believe in it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, I think that's usually what people think is going on. It's actually called the ideomotor effect, the Ouija board. You don't, everyone thinks they're not, well, I don't know. I would sometimes move the planchette on purpose, but... Many of us just think we're not moving it, but then it does move and especially might move to a letter that makes a lot of sense after the previous letter.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And how does that happen? There's also something called the Chevrolet pendulum illusion where you think you're holding the pendulum steady in the air. But when you think about moving it to the right or to the left or up or down, suddenly it starts moving that way. And you're like, I'm not even doing that. But it's just like your brain is sending these very tiny signals to your hand.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And that is enough to make very small movements that can have very big consequences, you know?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. Because just to be clear, these abuse allegations we're talking about, that's part of the Frontline documentary, not the telepathy tapes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Exactly. Yeah. So that's the question, right? Is that what they're doing? Yeah.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yes. In all of these cases, the person with autism is speaking via a facilitator. It varies in exactly what the facilitator is doing and how they're communicating, but there's always somebody else there that has to be there. It's not fully independent. And it's typically the parent who's the facilitator. Oh! Yeah. So the... The one whose supposed mind is being read.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, yes and no. So what they're doing in the telepathy tapes is not technically facilitated communication in the classic sense because they're not literally holding the person's hand and hovering it over a board. What they're typically doing in the telepathy tapes, they hold up a letter board and then the person with autism points it. And then they call out P-I-R.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And in fact, the host of the podcast, she said, she just said at one point, like, oh, there was this controversy with facilitated communication, but this is different. This is different. And the big thing that they point out is we're not really touching the kid in the same way that they were touching them before. This method is often called spelling to communicate or just spelling.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, she points out that it's problematic that the facilitator is also the transcriber of the message. Like if you're holding a letter board, A, you can move it around slightly, and B, you can say, oh, you've selected the letter P. Oh, now you've selected the letter I. That gives you a lot of latitude in deciding where exactly the person's finger went.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And also they are often touching. So like there's a hand on the back or in the case of the mom and the daughter from Mexico, the mom is often touching the daughter's forehead or holding her chin. In the telepathy tapes, did you watch the videos? I did. So there are videos available for some of the tests. You have to pay a small fee and become a member, but it's on their website.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And I did watch them. In fact, I watched some of them with Katherine. I didn't see any obvious examples where you see someone pointing at a T and the facilitator calls out P or something like that. But it's clear from these videos that typically the facilitator is really involved in one way or another.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So we watched one where the daughter is sitting next to the mom, but they have a partition between them. The mom is shown a random number generator on someone's iPad, and this random number, 978, is generated. Here I'm watching it with Catherine. The mom sees that the number is 978. They take away the partition. She's kind of gently touching her on her forehead.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
It really is. So Kai Dickens, that's the host. That's who we just heard from. She is typically a documentary filmmaker, but she heard about this phenomenon and she wanted to study it, document it. And so she ends up visiting a lot of people who have had this experience with autistic people in their lives.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Easily. We know that's true. And actually, the fact that this could be subconscious really explains a lot, I think. If the person facilitating is spelling out their own thoughts but doesn't realize they're spelling out their own thoughts, that explains why they might genuinely think, oh, my God, this person is reading my mind.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But there was one case that didn't really make sense. And I couldn't figure out how it was possible. This is a young autistic man and his mom. He seems to be able to read his mother's thoughts by typing them out independently on a keyboard. So in this case, no one's holding up a letter board for him. Kai describes them as not touching. And I watched the videos online. And that's true.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
There's nobody. They aren't touching. So their telepathy really does look pretty convincing. So for this, I called up Jim Todd. He's a professor of psychology at Eastern Michigan University.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Like with Catherine, I watched one of these videos with him. Can you see my screen?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So in this video, the son is sitting next to the mom. And he has like an iPad sort of device that when he touches the letter, the device says the letter out loud in like this robot voice. Uh-huh. So in this test, the mom is shown an image. The son can't see it. It's a picture of a crocodile. Okay. And the son is asked to spell out what his mom can see.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And we can see him pick out letters on this device. And the computer starts spelling out crocodile.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Did you see it? Did you see what Jim saw? Yeah. From the mom. Uh-huh. She played again. Okay. And look at the mom, not the son.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Every time he moves a, he selects a letter just before that she has moved.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I did reach out to Kai to ask specific questions like that. But her team said that she was too busy working on season two of the telepathy tapes and making a documentary about it as well. So she couldn't get back to us.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. I also reached out to the mom in the crocodile video and I didn't hear back from her either.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I will say, in the episode, they say a lot of stuff about how, oh, we can do this across the room. And then they start to do that, but then the son becomes uncomfortable and doesn't cooperate. And so they say, well, he needs to sit next to his mom for the emotional support. So, stuff like that happens. I mean, what's...
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
You can make that argument. I mean, in that video we just saw, it does seem like the young man is having a good time, like enjoying being with his mother. But I've seen plenty of other videos from other sources that show this technique where it doesn't really go that way. And Catherine has too.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
You know, I have noticed that, but I don't really understand necessarily what I'm seeing. I don't know much about people with severe autism. So when you see someone like kind of trying to get away or calling out or saying, I'm sad. There was a video of a girl who was doing this. I'm sad. I've seen it. That seems like she's saying she's sad. She doesn't want to be doing that.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, it certainly does. And in fact, a professional organization called the American Speech Language Hearing Association has explicitly said, don't use... These methods of communicating, this facilitated communication, the newer ones that are sometimes called like spelling to communicate or rapid prompting method, don't use them. The stuff happening on the telepathy tapes. Yes.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And one reason why is that they say these methods strip people of their human right to independent communication.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, yeah. As far as the whole people with autism are telepathic thing. Because, you know, the show goes on to say a lot of other stuff, extraordinary stuff. But all these extraordinary claims, they're all hinging on this supposition that the folks with autism can send messages to their parents or their teachers.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But we know now that the way they are doing this is with these like letterboard methods or similar methods that are totally bunk. And we can't trust that it's the kids' message coming through. In fact, we shouldn't expect that to be the case based on all we know about how unlikely this is to work.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, the stories were interesting and honestly really intriguing. Obviously, there's been skeptics here saying that something else is going on to explain this. So I wanted to find out what exactly was happening. And I got especially curious when I heard a scientist interviewed on the show say this.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I don't know if I'll be listening. But, you know, this doesn't put a cap on our episode because there is a lot more to talk about when it comes to the science of telepathy. There's a lot to tell you. I did promise you that, right?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, and I looked into that. So after the break, I'm going to tell you about telepathy The pretty like bonkers way that scientists have tried to test for telepathy and the results that are actually quite surprising.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Our first question comes from Kelsey on Instagram, and she asks, how do you wade through all the misinformation and inaccurate information to get to the truth?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Sounds good. Someone named Nishala, also on Instagram, she asks, have you ever considered doing stand-up? There is talent here. Oh!
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
That's five out of ten, I'd say, maybe. We'll let Nishala be the judge of that one.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, I talked about this with Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Chris French. Until recently, he was the head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths University of London. Okay. Anomalistic psychology means stuff outside the norm, maybe even the paranormal. Right, right, right.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Chris has spent much of his career looking at paranormal stuff in kind of a rigorous way. So he tries to figure out if it's real or if there's a more mundane explanation. So you're a professional party pooper?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay, so one common way to test for telepathy involves something called the Gansfeld Protocol.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So the Ganzfeld protocol, and by the way, Ganzfeld is German for whole field. So the experimenters set someone up in a very controlled, very subdued environment so that the telepathic signal has as much of a chance as possible to come through. So the people in the experiment will wear headphones with white or pink noise playing.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
They make sure there's nothing for them to see by putting on these goggles on their eyes.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So someone's in another room. In another room. In another room, and they're looking at an image or maybe a video clip. And they're really focusing on it, and they're really trying to send it to the other person.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So then after some time, the person takes off their silly ping pong goggles, comes out of the room. They're shown four images or four video clips. And they say, which is the one that was being beamed to you? So they pick one. And so if you were just picking by chance, you would get this right 25% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But lots of these studies find that people pick the right image or the right video clip more than 25% of the time. How much more? 32% of the time. Okay. That number comes from a meta-analysis that came out just last year. They looked at over 100 experiments done in the Gansfeld condition over the last 50 years. Uh-huh.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
It includes some studies on clairvoyance and other psychic phenomena tested using the Gansfeld protocol, but it's mostly tests of telepathy. And the authors concluded that there was a small but statistically significant effect here.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
That's not all. You can find something similar with other tests that have been done, like these telephone telepathy tests. You tell people that they're going to get a phone call from one of four specific people, and they have to guess as the phone is ringing which of these four people is the one calling them. By chance, they should get the right person 25% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
A lot of studies find they get it right more often than that, 30 or 40% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, so this meta-analysis, this Gansfeld one, it made a big splash among the telepathy crowd. No doubt. It was definitely referenced on the Telepathy Tapes podcast. And so I asked Chris about it. Did it rock your world?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. This isn't Chris's first radio, and it's not his first Gansfeld meta-analysis claiming a 30% hit rate. Okay. He said that there was actually something very similar back in the 90s. He was younger and more naive then, right?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Hi, Wendy. So, by telepathy, we mean the concept of beaming thoughts directly into someone else's brain or being able to read other people's thoughts.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, there's a few funny things that are going on here. So we know that in studies about paranormal stuff, if the test is done by a believer, they tend to find an effect. Well, if it's done by a skeptic, they tend not to find an effect. Like, imagine that you're more of a skeptic, like Chris, and you run one of these telepathy experiments, and you find that people guess right 25% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. 100%. And that's what I've been doing. So the last, you know, month or so. And it's, you know, it turns out scientists have been studying this for some time. And I learned a lot of really interesting stuff. Wendy, like, this has just been so fascinating to work on. It's been surprising. It's been infuriating. Sometimes it's fun. So there's like a lot to unpack here.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
As a skeptic, when you get a result like that, you might say, oh, okay. All right. No effect here. Done. Right? If you're a believer, you might look at that and say, I'm going to go look through the data again. I would have expected something else to happen. Hmm. So I'm going to go and I'm going to look through the raw data. Maybe I'll get rid of some outliers.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Maybe I'll find a piece of the data and I'll just look at this subgroup.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And vice versa, you know, if you're a skeptic and you get a result that says telepathy is real, you might start combing through that data very carefully, you know?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So to avoid this, there has been a movement, and this is especially true in psychology research, to pre-register your study. So you basically publish a protocol ahead of time saying, this is how I'm going to do the study. This is how I'm going to analyze my data. And then that can't happen, right? This like tweaking and nudging after the fact.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And when you look at that meta-analysis, they're not looking specifically at studies that were pre-registered. So it's really hard to know if we can trust them. Oh, no. This makes me so sad. I'm like, scientists, do your job properly. I know. Well, funny you should mention that because not long ago, there was a very concerted effort to do a proper study on psychic phenomena. Okay. Yeah.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So specifically, they were trying to replicate a study from 2011 on precognition. So like predicting the future, basically. Yes, yes, yes. The way this study worked, they had a computer program they were showing to people with a picture of two curtains. And they asked people, of these two curtains, which one has an erotic image hiding behind it? Oh.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So that people would guess and then, only then, would the computer program assign the erotic image randomly to one or the other slot.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yes. Okay. Wow. In the original study, people got this right more than 50% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Which the authors suggested could mean they were actually predicting the future.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay. There was a lot of attention on this study at the time. No doubt. Yeah, and skeptics said...
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I believe so, yes. They actually controlled for people's sexual preferences. So if you wanted to see a willy, you might get to see a willy. If you wanted to see a boobie, you might get to see a boobie.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, so because a lot of skeptics said, like, we don't like this part of your methodology or this thing you did about your stats, what basically happened is that the skeptics and the believers got together, designed a new research protocol, designed a new study they both agreed on. They pre-registered it. They said, this is the protocol we're going to use. Great.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And this is how we're going to do it and how we're going to analyze it. Yes. It took five years. It took 10 labs participating. Yes. 30-ish authors, skeptics and believers working together to look to see, is there an effect here? Wow, a new future is possible. And what did they find? When all this was said and done.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And I'm just like excited to tell you about it. Great. It's all coming up after the break.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
We don't have the same exact thing for telepathy, but a lot of the... issues that this precognition study we're confronting are very similar to issues that people have with telepathy research. So I don't know. I think it's pretty damning to telepathy as well, but would love to see a similar group effort doing some of these studies.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that. Yeah. Yeah. Are they reaching for quantum physics here? Yes, they are. Quantum entanglement specifically, which is about like this weird connection between subatomic particles where they seem to influence each other. And it doesn't matter how far apart they are.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And I did actually I did talk to a physicist who I was referred to by someone who's who's sort of telepathy friendly as a physicist who's also telepathy friendly. He's open minded about it. And I asked him, does quantum entanglement, could that explain how telepathy works? And he said, no. And I said, do we have any known physical explanation for how telepathy could work? And he said, no.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And he's like, look, maybe it happens. But if it's happening, it's happening outside of physics as we understand it. And I'm open to that. That's what I'm open to. Like there's stuff about the spirituality we don't understand.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
All right. So especially considering that there's no known mechanism that this could work. Looking at the research, the Gansfeld, the telephone telepathy stuff, you've got to believe one of two things. One is that the telepathy vibes are there. They're just very weak and very fickle. Or you can believe that there are no vibes. Right. What do you think, Wendy? Weak, fickle vibes or no vibes?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, which I think we underestimate when we come up with a paranormal theory.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
explanation the human mind the human body common shared humanity you know whatever that is like that is impressive enough to produce a lot of these incredible things that happen between people uh and that's good enough for me personally do you want to try all right we've been working together for a long time do you want to try send me uh think of an image think of an image okay i'm looking how about this i'll look at a painting on my wall
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay. I'm looking at it really hard. Wendy, I want to send this image to Wendy.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
A cat. A cat. No, but you know what's so funny? It's an ocean? No. You mentioned a jellyfish. You mentioned a cat. I do have pictures of both those things in my apartment. I just am not happy. That's not the one I'm looking at. I'm looking at a painting of flowers, poppies. Oh. The cat picture's right here. So if I'd happened to look this way, you would have gotten it right.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
They can click on the link to our transcript. That's where all the citations are. And that link is in the show notes. Excellent.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay, so first we're going to talk about some of the specific claims made in the show, The Telepathy Tapes. Then we're going to zoom out and talk about the body of research that scientists have done on telepathy. Great. Let's do it. So the show is about people with autism who are non-verbal or who speak very little.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
That's an idea that's been around for centuries, but it's having a bit of a moment right now, probably because of this very popular podcast called The Telepathy Tapes.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
What you hear over and over again on this podcast is that their family can never speak to them or really communicate with them until they learn this method of communicating where the non-verbal person points at letters on a board or picks at keys on a keyboard. And essentially they learn to painstakingly spell out words and communicate that way.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And then all of a sudden, this is where the telepathy comes in, they start spelling out things that they shouldn't know. So they'll like tell their parent, oh, I know that you went to Target today. But the parent's like, I never told them that I was at Target today. Or they might say, I know that you brought me cookies for a snack, but you left them in the car.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And that person's like, I never told you I was going to bring you cookies. I didn't tell you I left them in the car. How do they know these things? And they start thinking, this person can read my mind. Huh. So if that was all the podcast offered, these like little anecdotes, or there could be a million little explanations or coincidence or luck, you know, that wouldn't be that interesting. Okay.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But where it gets really interesting is that the host of the show doesn't just take people at their word for this. She goes and she specifically does tests to test that they are in fact telepathic.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, so for example, in the first episode, she goes to visit a young woman from Mexico who is supposedly telepathic with her mom. And so like I described, this is a nonverbal autistic person who communicates by pointing at a board with letters and numbers on it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And so this is the kind of test that Kai sets up. So she'll show something only to the mom, make sure the daughter can't see it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And, you know, the the daughter can't see it. Sometimes she's blindfolded or they'll put a partition between the mom and the daughter. So the daughter can't see the picture. But then the mom says, OK, what am I looking at? Read my mind. What am I looking at? And we hear and I'll I'll play a little bit for you.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
The daughter, even though she can't see the picture, she starts pointing at letters and she slowly spells out. Remember, this is a picture of a pirate or pirata in Spanish. Who?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yes, it was the top podcast on Spotify earlier this year. It actually knocked Joe Rogan off the number one spot briefly. And it's all about how telepathy is real.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, hearing the cameraman's reaction is pretty compelling because you're like, wow, he was actually in the room and looking carefully, right? And he said it seemed real. But the thing is, when autism experts hear about this, they immediately see a problem.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And it goes back to how people are communicating and the history of people trying to communicate with those who can't speak. I talked about this with Katherine Beals. She's an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere. And I talked to her specifically about this case. So does this impress you?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
The perfect storm to see what's actually going on here. And Catherine says we got to go back a few decades. Actually, the story starts in Australia, Wendy. You'll be happy to know.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Someone there had invented a special way for people who can't speak to communicate. And in the 90s, this technique spread from Australia to the U.S. And it really took off here. It's a bit different from the way people are communicating in the telepathy tapes. With the letter board. The letter board. This is called facilitated communication. Here's how it works.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
The non-speaking person sits in front of, you know, some kind of keyboard. Right. Next to them is a facilitator who gently holds their arm or their wrist and helps them select the letters on the keyboard that they want to select.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Not exactly. For some of these folks, they actually need someone to help guide their hands to the letters to use the keyboard, or they don't do it at all. Oh, okay. And so once this method started being used more and more, these incredible things started happening.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. If you look at the comments, you'll see people saying, this is revolutionary. This has moved me to tears. I'm a believer. My life has changed because of this podcast. And so, you know, I was very curious. And so I listened to it. I listened to the whole thing. Wendy, I know that you haven't listened to it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. And this, as you can imagine, that's a huge breakthrough, right? And it got a lot of attention. It was all over the news. It was on TV. There was a primetime live episode. It eventually won an Emmy. Diane Sawyer reported on this as like this breakthrough. And you can hear how powerful this seemed.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
If only I could find a way to communicate. Yeah, your child has never spoken to you, has never said I love you. And now there's this thing that says there's a lot going on in their head and they can tell you about it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, that is a concern that people were actually people from the beginning. Some people did have that concern because you're holding someone's arm and potentially moving it for them, even if you don't think you are. So it could be that the facilitator is controlling what this person is typing.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Exactly, that kind of thing. And there's always some skeptics out there. But for a while, because this is just so cool to people, they just kept chugging along. But then the cracks started to show in these very dramatic ways because in some cases, people were spelling out very disturbing messages. Some of their stories were told in a frontline documentary. It was called Prisoners of Silence.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
It came out in 1993. And here they are talking about a teenage girl with autism named Betsy.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Social services were called. Betsy was taken out of her home, put in foster care. An investigation was started. But the people working this case were like, can we really trust these allegations? They came from this unusual technique. Someone else is holding Betsy's hand and helping her point out letters, type. So what they wanted to know was, who is writing the messages?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Is it the autistic person or is it the facilitator? So they set up tests. for Betsy and Katherine describe the kind of test that they did.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Kind of, with a key difference. They're showing two different pictures. They're showing one picture to the facilitator, so in this example, a picture of a shoe, and one picture to the person with autism, in this example, a hat.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Very fishy. Because that's what the facilitator saw, not what they saw. Yes.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay, so let me tell you the premise. This show is about a very specific group of people. This is people with autism who are very limited in how they communicate and who require a lot of support. And the show says that people in this group are able to communicate telepathically with their family and with teachers and other people. And in fact, here is the show's tagline.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
In the telepathy tapes, the person with autism is being asked to spell out what someone else sees. And here they're being asked to spell out what they themselves see.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
The Frontline documentary is really useful because it actually shows what these tests were like. And they talk about what happened when they ran tests like this with Betsy.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And that happened in every test they tried. Every single test.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
In studies as well. Every single test? Yes, there was an autistic program in New York that had been using facilitated communication with 12 of their autistic students. Getting good results, they thought, but they said, oh, maybe we should test this, make sure. They tested each student in the same way. I asked Catherine what happened.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
I think it's really, everybody can find their own recipe. Find something to do that you like, like taking a long bath, going for a walk with your dog. Something that's for you is very relaxing. Personally, I love to go to see every metal concert. I find it very relaxing. And a good way to release anger and I play video games because I get out of my head and I really focus on one task.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
If you have a flu or a cold, your immune system is fighting against this virus. You feel it. With that kind of bleh feeling when you have a cold.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
Yeah, and generally you're not going to feel like going running or doing a lot of like super hard activities. You're just going to be like, I'm going to stay in bed. I'm going to rest.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
Not only I see it, but I know I'm the first person in the world ever to see it. And so the first time I saw it, I was very happy. I went to get a couple of IPAs because I thought that was really cool.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
What we do after that is we house them in the same cage and they have a plastic transparent divider so they can see each other and smell their holes. So they don't physically interact, but they see the big bully on the other side. I say it's a bit like in the schoolyard, you know, when you see the bully on the other side of the schoolyard, you don't know if it's going to come for you.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
You have these tiny holes. So instead of having a long line, you have these tiny gaps here and there. So this is where the barrier is broken.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
Yeah, exactly. And this is where the inflammation is sneaking.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
Yeah. And so we were able to see the same phenomenon in the human brain as well of individuals who died by suicide.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
Healthy control. So healthy control would die from other reasons. For example, a car accident or something that was not related to depression.
Science Vs
The Real Anti-inflammatory Diet
It's not going to be good. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm ready. The barrier of the brain became way more leaky in those individuals who had very strong case of COVID. And then even with the brain fog, the long-term COVID, they see this weakness of the barrier. So maybe the inflammation was so intense that the barrier became a bit more fragile.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah. And then... And then to get this idea of how much could possibly be in the whole brain, you've got to multiply it out.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
I'm going to tell you about that after the break.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Oh, well, I hope everyone's excited. They should be excited. because today we're gonna talk about a paper that makes a very extraordinary claim. I'm just gonna play you some of the headlines here.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
That's right. And even the people critiquing the study and other studies like it, they say that there probably is some plastic in our bodies. But right, we want to know how much. So there are other techniques that are used to look for microplastics in the body. They're not perfect, but some of the scientists I talk to think that they're more reliable.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
No, and literally, they don't use that technique. They basically shine a laser. This is very oversimplified, but it's a technique that uses light to identify molecules instead of what we talked about before. And they look for individual particles. And the most reliable papers that have used those kinds of techniques, they do report microplastics in different parts of the body.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
They have found microplastics in human lungs. They've also found microplastics in unhealthy livers from livers from people who have cirrhosis. But here's the thing. These studies that use these other methods, they report small amounts of plastic.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
So for example, this one study that found microplastics in lung tissue, they reported an average concentration of less than one microplastic particle per gram of lung tissue. And most of these particles were smaller than a grain of sand. I know microplastics are small, but it still doesn't sound great? It doesn't sound great.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
And it would probably be better if there weren't any, but it's not like the mass of cutlery, you know? Right. Right. And Oliver isn't freaked out by it. If we could collect all the microplastics and nanoplastics from our body and wad it up into one thing, what would it be? You can write that headline. What do you think?
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Which kind of makes sense, right? Because I don't know if you remember this, Wendy, but in our episode on microplastics, we talked about there was a stat that I got around that we eat a credit card's worth of plastic a week or something. Yes. In reality, the better paper that tried to estimate how much we eat, they found that it would take 23,000 years to eat a credit card's worth of plastic. Wow.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
If it takes 23,000 years to eat a credit card's worth of plastic, then how would a spoon show up in a single human lifetime, right? Right. Because that's, like, roughly the same amount.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
You know, and some of these more reliable studies have found microplastics in our poop, which suggests that we are eating some plastic, but we're also getting rid of at least some of it. So, I don't know, on the bright side, like, we're not totally helpless here. Like, our body can get rid of stuff.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
I mean, I think not that much, really. Even one of the authors of this brain paper told me that he thinks that the media hype has gotten a little out of control. And it's like freaking everyone out when they probably shouldn't be that freaked out. I mean, I think that it's still worth limiting your exposure to plastics, especially around your food.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
And that's because of the endocrine disrupting chemicals that can come off the plastics. But as far as like worrying about this idea, I think that's out there that we're becoming like plastic people. Yeah. That we're, you know, half human, half plastic. Yes. I think that's just hype. I don't think the evidence is there.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
So I don't know, I guess my takeaway for the audience is like, the next time you see a headline that's like, there's a He-Man action figure in your prostate, you know, don't believe, take it with a grain of salt, I would say. So more studies will come, there's gonna be more information, but like, I'm just saying there's nothing to panic about.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
And the plastic spoon thing in your brain thing, that is panic level information. And when I asked Oliver for his takeaway, he agreed.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Worrying about the plastic spoon in your brain is the bigger problem.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
And that concludes our first segment of Viral Papers. Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Wendy. Should we cue the jingle again?
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
They should check the show notes because there's going to be a link to the transcript of the episode there. And all of our citations are in the transcript.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah, it got a lot of American press, but internationally, it was everywhere. It was, you know, down in Australia, where you are, India, Brazil, Mexico. France. It got a ton of attention on socials as well. And that's because it sounds terrifying, right?
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah, but, you know, Wendy, my reaction here was less alarm and more like, really? Like, I was very skeptical. Tell me more. Well, we did this episode about microplastics last year. And in the course of working on that episode, I just came across a lot of bullshit, including like bullshit in the science and papers. We're talking really sloppy math and overestimates.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
There's even a case where it looked like the scientists forgot to convert kilograms to milligrams. And then they overestimated this thing that they were trying to estimate by six orders of magnitude. What? That's a primary school era.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah, exactly. And there's also all that stuff about how much of the chemicals and black plastic cooking utensils were like leaking into our food. Yeah. That made a big splash. You know, people were throwing out their spatulas. Yeah. But turns out that those researchers also screwed up their math.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
And in fact, the chemicals that are leaching out of the utensils are way lower than what first got reported. So I'm just skeptical of this whole field. Which takes us to the plastic spoon paper. Yes. And as it turns out, the science here is also kind of fraught. Actually, in a way that has big implications for a lot of the headlines that we see about microplastics.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
As wonderful as that melody was, I don't remember it. I would have to listen again. Wasn't an instant earworm. It was not an instant earworm.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Well, we've been hearing about microplastics for years. We've been hearing that they're all around us, that they're in our food and our water and even in the air that we breathe. Right. And now we're hearing that they might be getting into our bodies. And that's alarming, you know, because we know that plastics kind of come hand in hand with endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
We talked about this in our episode last year. That's right. The chemicals can interfere with our hormones. Yeah, there's also early evidence that microplastics could irritate the immune system, like causing inflammation. So we don't want a lot of microplastic in our bodies, even beyond the fact that it's gross. Like that could be really bad.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah. I mean, believe it or not, yes. Science is on our side. Great. With that gut feeling. So let's dive into this paper. Let's find out what's going on here. I talked to a bunch of scientists about this. One person I spoke to was a professor of chemistry named Oliver Jones. He is at RMIT University in Australia.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Do you remember when you first heard about this paper that said there's enough plastic in the human brain to add up to a plastic spoon?
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yes, yeah, just like me. He thought to himself.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
So why suspicious? Well, to understand that, you have to understand exactly what these scientists did. So they got little pieces of brain tissue from dozens of people who had died for a variety of reasons. And they were looking for evidence of plastic in these tissue samples.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
And the way to do that is, you know, there's no magic wand that you can wave over a tissue sample and it beeps like, boop, boop, plastic detected. There's nothing like that. So what these scientists did is they used this technique that's called pyrolysis. What is it?
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Which I feel like I could imagine there's like a Lin-Manuel Miranda rap to be written about. Gas chromatography, mass spectrometry.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah. Well, the very first step is pyrolysis, which is what it sounds like.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Hi, Rose. Hi, Wendy. I also have the honor of debuting the jingle for this new type of episode, which I know you had asked our very talented sound engineer to mix up a jingle. He sent it to me, and I have it here for you. Yes!
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah, so they literally get these bits of brain and then burn them. And the game is to try to search for evidence of plastics in the gas that comes off. Oh, that's cool. So you take the smoke that you've created, you run it through a machine, that's the gas chromatographer, It separates and sorts all the different components of the gas, all the separate molecules.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
And then the mass spectrometer weighs those molecules. And that helps scientists identify them.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah, it spits out something that looks like a chart where all the molecules that are present in the sample are broken down by weight. So the scientist gets this printout that looks like... It's a lot of lines of different lengths. And then, so then what do you do with that? How do you go from that to like, oh, this is what the material is?
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah, basically. They're looking for the molecular weights of different types of plastic. And in this study, they reported that they did find this in these brain samples. In particular, they said that they found evidence of a lot of polyethylene. And that's the kind of plastic used for plastic packaging and plastic bottles and stuff like that.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah. And to lay people like us, that sounds pretty irrefutable at first. It's like, dang, okay, they found plastic bits in these brains. But there's a problem here. Remember that the first step of this process was the pyrolysis, the burning part?
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
So of course you remember. The thing is that when you burn your sample up, you've changed its identity from what it was originally. So what was initially polyethylene, for example, would now be a handful of different molecules. And the problem is there are other materials that can break down into those same molecules when they're burned. So it's...
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah, it's like if you were to see a line for flour and you're like, aha, I know this was a souffle. You're like, well, no, it could have come from something else. It could have come from the pie or something. Yeah, I guess I'm going with it. So I'm approving that analogy. Excellent. And bringing us back to plastics. Yes, yes. So here's what the polyethylene could get mistaken for.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
That's kind of a big problem. Fat. And here's Oliver.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
The brain is very fatty. Uh-huh. That feels like a huge problem. So I asked Oliver, could this supposed plastic spoon in our brains just be normal human fat?
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Human brain has human fat in it. Yeah, it doesn't really have the same ring to it.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
And it's not just Oliver that's raising alarm here. There's a group in Australia that was so concerned about the problems of this technique that they really put it to the test. They spiked blood samples with microplastics. So like they had a known quantity of microplastics. They put it in the blood and then they ran this analysis to see could it accurately read how much was in there.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
And they found that it couldn't. And actually, they concluded that this technique is, quote, unsuitable for looking for these particular plastics in our bodies.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Well, yeah, so I reached out to them and they did acknowledge to me, this is a quote, that the paper is a single study and the science is nowhere near settled. Mm-hmm. But they also say that they tried to solve this problem by trying to remove all the fat in their samples before they put the samples through the spectrometer at all.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
So basically before they burned it up, they soaked it in a solution to break down all the organic matter, and then they centrifuged it to get rid of that stuff.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yes, but other scientists I spoke to were skeptical that they did work or that it worked well enough to get all the fat out, like not even a little residue left behind. And just in general, more and more scientists are looking at this technique and they're saying, hold up. You know, one scientist I spoke to, he was very blunt.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
He said that papers that look for microplastics in human tissues using this technique are, quote, garbage. Ooh. And the thing is, a lot of the studies that you see that say things like microplastics are in our testicles or this or that part of the body, they use this technique.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Yeah. That paper, that was, we looked at a paper that found microplastics in the arterial plaque that got scraped out of people's arteries. Okay. And that, I'm sorry to say, did use this now controversial technique that we just sh** all over. Uh-huh. Okay. Interesting.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
When I asked the authors of that paper about this problem, they pointed to the fact that they had looked at their samples under a powerful microscope and they had seen what looks like little jagged pieces in the cells, which they think must be bits of microplastic. So they argue that that meant their findings were legit. Right. And interestingly, the plastic spoon brain paper did the same thing.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
They also looked at their samples under a microscope and they also saw some irregular shaped pieces, think that they're plastic. But the truth is that we don't actually know what those bits are. And even if they are plastic, it doesn't mean they got in there from the person eating or inhaling microplastics while they're alive. What do you mean?
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
You can't just throw out a great melody like that. Or vocal performance.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
It could be this other very simple but very, like, infernal problem that researchers in this space have to deal with. And that is the problem of contamination because these samples, they're analyzed in a lab and labs are full of plastic. You've got plastic tubes, plastic equipment, plastic fibers that can shut off lab coats. And at any point, any of those things could have snuck into the sample.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
Right. I could even have come from the medical examiner's office as the brains are being harvested, you know? I doubt that's a plastic-free zone. So the authors tried hard. They talk about it. They thought about it, and they tried as best they could to keep plastic away from their samples when they had the opportunity to, but it's pretty hard to do.
Science Vs
Is There Really a Plastic Spoon in Our Brains?
There's actually a plastics research group that has set up a lab that's supposed to be as plastics-free as possible, and even they can't get contamination down to zero. Wow! So if some plastic particle or fiber got into the sample, then that means it could have really blown up these results.
Science Vs
Methamphetamine: The Most Misunderstood Drug?
I do have to play this bonkers ad that my editor remembers hearing a lot when she grew up in the Midwest.
Science Vs
Methamphetamine: The Most Misunderstood Drug?
I tried that for one report that I did. This was not for Science Fest. It was for something else. And I just was so embarrassed and thought I sounded like such a fool. I never did it again.
Science Vs
Methamphetamine: The Most Misunderstood Drug?
And now that I know the evidence, it's definitely a naughty drug. It's in the naughty pile, but it's just a drug.
Science Vs
Methamphetamine: The Most Misunderstood Drug?
But... ..you might catch me humming a little ditty about it.
Today, Explained
Methamphetamine: The most misunderstood drug?
DMACC on Insta wants to know if you have had previous experience casting your voice for podcasts, radio, TV, what have you in the past. And they say that it is perfect.
Today, Explained
Methamphetamine: The most misunderstood drug?
Wow. Not feminine enough? Is that the idea? That is the idea.
Today, Explained
Methamphetamine: The most misunderstood drug?
I'm so confused. You're either speaking too low or too high or like you just can't get it right. Like you can't do anything right. It's impossible to get it right.
Today, Explained
Methamphetamine: The most misunderstood drug?
Wow. So thank you, DMACC. Yeah, DMACC, you're healing old wounds here. Okay, another one is from ThatCrazyMrB on Insta asking, what episode do you think about the most?
Today, Explained
Methamphetamine: The most misunderstood drug?
Now I have to set them aside and I see them there. Yeah, I love ruining things for everybody. I don't eat my canned chickpeas anymore. What about you, Rose? Oh, I think about Meryl's toothbrushing episode a lot because sometimes I'm like, do I really need to brush my teeth? I guess it's just made me aware of like, there's no magic to toothbrushing. It's just like exposing your teeth to fluoride.
Today, Explained
Methamphetamine: The most misunderstood drug?
Therefore, like, I feel like I can let myself have chocolate on my teeth for longer. Giving me some weird and bad habits, I would say.
Today, Explained
Methamphetamine: The most misunderstood drug?
Somehow it's made me like loosier, goosier with my oral hygiene.