Could ozempic cure addiction?
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What is the main focus of today’s Future Proof episode?
Future Proof
with Jonathan McRae
on Newstalk. Proudly supported by Research Ireland.
Hello and welcome to Future Proof on Newstalk. This is the show where we take a closer look at the world around us. My name is Jonathan McRae. Coming up on this week's program, could we be using GLP-1 drugs like Wego-V and Ozempic to treat things like addiction? If you'd like to get in touch with the show, you can email us, science at newstalk.com. You can WhatsApp us, 087-1400-106. We get to all of those comments in the podcast. Listen and subscribe for free in the Go Loud app. First off, as always, we look back at some of the more interesting and breaking stories from the world of science this week. We're joined by Dr. Laura Hayes from the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies and Philip Smith, broadcaster and science communicator.
How did the hosts explain the optical‑illusion myth of the Parthenon?
You're both very welcome. Phil, our first story goes back to Greek times and the Parthenon.
Yes, Greeks, great bunch of lads and great architects and architects of blocks of thinking and stories and other stuff. And there's a story that's been going around for about 2000 years, giving them credit for creating an optical illusion with the Parthenon that makes it look like the straightest building ever built.
I was actually in Greece at the Parthenon this summer. It is the one thing that every single guide, and like when you go there, of course, it's the Parthenon. It's incredible. You're in the middle of Athens. It's up on the hill. You can see it from everywhere. And so there are millions of tourists, even at the very early age, millions of tourists milling around this thing. And every single guide you miss, they go, isn't it amazing that they managed to create these pillars that look straight,
but they're not. And there's an Oxford mathematician who said... Yeah, they're not straight, but it wasn't them being clever. So these tour guides might be just embellishing a little bit.
I mean, that is actually huge for Athens, for history, for everything. This is a major talking point. Go on.
Yeah, so basically what he's done, he's gone looking for evidence that some of these optical illusions that they're talking about actually happen. And in several cases, he's basically found that he, well, he hasn't found them. I guess that is the biggest thing about it. Professor Alain Gourilly went down what he would like to describe himself as a rabbit hole about the curves. And it's always been measured very precisely. And what he's questioning is why it curves. So he's not disputing the fact that there are curves within the Parthenon itself. The way that the columns sit is called a stylobate, so that it's not completely flat. It rises gently towards the middle by a few centimetres. Yeah, I
mean, it's like those, just to describe people, it's like the old classic sort of Greek temple, big sort of triangular front on the top and then there's pillars underneath and then there's loads of pillars either side. Yeah. Yeah, and on the side, when you look at it, it's slightly tilted in.
Yeah, it looks like... So they were saying, basically, the traditional explanation is the Greeks had made a perfectly high vertical so our eyes would somehow see it, like, not sagging in the middle or going off like that way. So they curved it to compensate. So when he was looking for this supposed effect, like when you're hanging a line, particularly horizontally line, it naturally looks as though it's sagging, but couldn't find more convincing scientific evidence to say that it's seeing that way. So you normally, there's the hiring illusion, which is basically you have two lines that are parallel together. And if you have other lines kind of radiating towards it, beside it, your brain kind of tricks and says, actually, these are also curving as well.
So the geometry isn't right for this to work. The columns that are close together for vertical, the effect should be tiny. So making this optical illusion normally on a flat piece of paper, which you're looking at straight, is easy to perceive. But on the scale of the Parthenon, such a small difference, our eyes aren't able to perceive it.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main focus of today’s Future Proof episode?
0:01–0:47
2
How did the hosts explain the optical‑illusion myth of the Parthenon?
0:47–5:48
3
What are the recent developments and controversies around space‑based weapons?
5:48–8:45
4
How are scientists using human brain organoids in mice to study neurological disease?
8:45–13:22
5
How did AI solve a 90‑year‑old Navier‑Stokes mathematics problem?
13:22–16:06
6
Why are researchers now asking if GLP‑1 drugs like Ozempic could treat addiction?
16:06–22:06
7
What evidence supports GLP‑1 signaling as a way to reduce drug cravings?
22:06–29:21
8
What are the known side‑effects and unanswered questions about long‑term GLP‑1 use?
29:21–36:07