Before we jump into today's episode. We've been teasing it a little bit, but the time has finally come. We have a planetarium film that is coming out on November sixth. Okay, it's called Remix The Unexpected Side of Science, and we would love if some of our very very cool friends that are listening to our show right now would be a part of it. If you head to the link in our bio on Instagram, we have a really cool way for you to incorporate yourself into our planetarium film.
I'm TT and I'm Zukiah and this is Dope Labs. Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. Have you seen that trend on social media that's like propaganda I'm falling for. It's basically people listing the things that they love that may be a scam or not very popular, but they don't care.
You know.
I have seen it, and I'm like, what's on my list? What's on your list? I got a few things. A probably that soda is not that bad for you. I don't even know if there's anything out there that says that, but that's what I.
Tell so.
I think I've had some shifts. I know, I've looked at the evidence and I'm like, coffee is good for me. Do you remember that that it was a wife swap episode or where they switched the wives out and the families and that little boy was like, bacon.
Is good for me. I feel like that a lot of sad.
About all the things I love, and I'm like, of course, even if there's evidence that tells me it's not, I feel the same way. I mean, I also believe that barrel jeans are cute. Now. I know that that is a polarizing topic right now because of the shape of them. Some people are like absolutely not me all the time.
Yeah, I love a barrel jeane.
You know, I think the mind is such a curious place because, like you were like, oh, they're calling it propaganda, but is it propaganda if you know it's not necessarily true and it just fits your belief Like, what's propaganda?
Straight up and down? What is it?
Right? Propaganda is a communication tactic that is used to influence people to further some type of agenda, and we know it works one hundred like almost one hundred percent of the time. We've seen it work throughout history. Actually, even when we think about how maps are drawn. We talked about that in our map episode. Yes, or I should say cartography. I lend a new word, Russia being drawn the way that it is, how it's really really large, Like when you look at a map, it's really big,
it's actually not that big. And that was propaganda that was put in place a long time ago in order to make Russia seem like really big, so that they seemed like a really big threat. Imagine you see this whole big country, it's taken up so much of the map, and you're feeling like, oh, these are aggressive or people that are trying to change your way of life. It instills a little bit of fear in your heart. Yeah, that makes sense. And that's not the only place where
we see propaganda at play. This week, we're putting ourselves under the microscope. We've talked about it before in little bits and pieces, but right, I think we just got to say it once and for all. Understanding objectivity or the perception of it, does not make you immune to bias.
Right, You not too smart to fall for the okie doke.
Okay, never you can have all the number studies, results and everything else in the world. And you know, all those tables don't move like a good story does.
You know, look at the Jesse Smole a story.
Man, what happened there is cause it was like everybody was behind him and then they were like then they were like nah, and then everybody's behind him again.
Some people were like, I stand with Jesse.
And there's a documentary that came out that I have not watched yet, but I need to because everybody's saying it's really good.
M So we have to find that out.
And you know, I think like when you see something like that, that's a prime example.
I stand with Jesse.
What would make you put on a shirt to stand with somebody that you don't even really know? Right?
Right?
But our brain prefers these like anecdotal sensational stories. And really it's just evolutionary psychology, old brain, old world brain. It's hijacking current modern day brain. You know, we got to reset. We need a new operating sys. Listen on our.
Brain, no upgrades. It is terrible.
And I think it's interesting because we have a brain that takes vivid stories, so whether it's rewarding or painful, and it don't even have to be rewarding and painful physically. It could be socially rewarding or painful. Your brain says this weighs the most, like this is the most important thing. This reminds me of Lab thirty eight.
So anxious.
When we had Wendy Suzuki on the show, she talked about anxiety and how before the anxiety system acted as a way for us to deter threats out in the wild.
So back in the caveman that.
Yeah, different things like hearing some stuff, wrestling.
I think you were with me.
That was just yesterday, just yesterday, those leaves were blowing and I was like, what is that.
When we were together? Gonna scare my friend?
Those evolutionary leaps have not occurred yet from my no, not for any of us.
It'll running from rustling.
But think about when you see like a silhouette or you think you see something and you kind of jump.
All of those things, even.
What feels like social discord, Like even if it feels like, okay, maybe this person is not having a good time, or oh they about to start fighting, you know, all those things triggered physiological changes in our bodies. And back in the day, Like we're saying that bought you time. Okay, faster heart rate, I know, to be more attentive. My muscles are gonna be ready. You know, all that anxiety system triggered all of that, so you could be like, all right, I'm ready to escape if I need to,
or ready to fight, so fight or flight? Yeah, and so present day this translates to It might be something like you get a text message from somebody who's like, oh, we need to talk or I need that, which is what the kids are saying these days, where it's like be gonna fight, you need that. That's what they say. Somebody text me, you need that. I'm not responding, no fight or flight. You're not responding to the text, but your body is responding.
Mine is freeze, fight or freeze. I'm freezing.
And I think that's so interesting, Like our brains haven't made the leap, but our environments have so before you know that kind of thing, it was slow information, nothing to be alarmed about until there was real threat, and that worked great for our brains working like that was great. But now it's constant feedback, constant alerts. Is what's that sound outside? Is that the trash been or is that
an intruder? Like so many things, there's a lot going on, and I think one of the things that I know for a fact that I fall victim too is like availability heuristics. Have you heard of this? Like what is most recently available in your mind? Like events that are easy to recall and that feel emotionally intense, they seem way more likely than they really are. I have this problem. Okay, I'm susceptible to this. This is when we started talking about, Hey, you're not immune to bias.
I'm not immune to this.
If I watch something and they're like, oh and the person, Now you know. I love a lot of true crime and false crime too, just fiction. If there is an episode of something I watch and there like, oh, and the body was chopped up and was on a trash bag in the side of the road. Every time I see your trash bag, I'm gonna be like, is it body shaped?
What's it looking like?
You know, it's just like whatever I last saw, And I'm like, oh, yeah. It's like when people used to send those emails that would be like don't step outside the gas station. They under your car, they swiping your tearing your achilles steel and all this, and I was like, you gotta jump to get in your car. Yeah, it's wild and those things still exist. It's not even back
in the day. Like you go on TikTok, you can find people who say, oh, if you see a piece of tape on your wheel, it's because they're trying to traffic you. And hey, that works on me. I'm gonna start looking at my tires before I get in the car because all those things make me nervous. Yes, I'm falling for it, especially when it comes to my safety. Yeah, yes,
I'm falling for it. But I think that's because what we see is there is some truth there right now, what the odds are that something like that is happening. Let's say tape on your car, tape on your car, that somebody might have had tape on their car and they got abducted and they were killed. That's a sad story.
Maybe it's too graphic, but also somebody had tape on their car and it was just to hold that back windshield down because they went through the car wash, right, And what your brain says is, here's this tragic case. I remember that and that dominates, like what you think about and so your risk perception is like, oh nah, this is risky tape on here, call the whole lice, call somebody you know. And even when the information when it says, hey, crime is really low in your area,
it doesn't matter. Your brain is just subject to this, right, And that makes me think of our monkey pox episode where that was Lap seventy six for anybody that's trying to go back and listen, where we talk about how sensational headlines how it impacts epidemiology, like showing how intense or memorable coverage can inflate perceive risk to base rates.
And I remember there was a video that was going across TikTok and instagram reels of somebody on a New York train who had like bumps on their skin and people were like, look, this person's got monkey pocks.
That person did not have monkey pocks.
But I did not see a follow up video also going viral correcting the story, because the sensational thing is always gonna catch people's attention, but the correction was never as sensational. That reminds me, Okay, you said Lap seventy six, Lab eighty two in your feed where we talked about social media, and in that lab we unpatch how like attention hacking or like virality, things that go viral, and
like kind of how your algorithm may be curated. So you're gonna see the things that other people are like, Oh my goodness, let me share.
You can see.
Sometimes I see stuff and I'm like, this is wild. I see how many little envelope paper envelope paper presser. Yeah,
I'm like, people are sharing this. And so then you layer that things being shared and pushed in the front of your algorithm or the top of your feed, layer that on top of that, recall, right, And so it makes those top of mind stories that have the sensational thing about them they feel even more common or true because also when you tell it, somebody's like, yes, I saw that too, right, And it just confirms it in
your mind even though I know these things. I think back to Lap thirty seven in Denial where we had doctor Gil Sinatras and Barber Hope Ford.
That was such a good episode. I love that one.
And they talked about why like these kind of vivid narratives and beat tables and charts. I don't want to look at tables and charts. I want a real with animation. Okay, right, And I think that's how anecdotes that you hear steer your judgment more so than like comprehensive evidence. These last few episodes over the past few weeks have just been showing me more and more how I am a victim to this brain and body. So already my brain is ancient. You said it had made evolutionary leaps. Now I didn't
hear you say that yours hadn't made evolutionary leaps. So I don't know how to feel about it.
You know what, To be fair, mine hasn't either.
Mine has not either, because let me tell you, I will jump six feet into the air if I hear something while I'm sleeping, and it'll just be my dog's toenails on the ground.
The other way.
Okay, I'm jumping to conclusions, all right, swan diving into them, like if you said this, then it must mean you think this. And so all of this really makes me think about what's been going on recently with this whole Acetamenafin Talanov situation, you know, and how that this can lead to a lot of misinformation going viral and really hurting.
A lot of people.
Yeah, so if you haven't seen this in the news, which I'm pretty sure you have.
So RFK.
Junior is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and he recently put out an alert that basically said that pregnant people should not be taking talanaw when they're pregnant to reduce their fever because it leads to autism in the child, which there's no proof of that. And so there's there's two things. There's two things that I'm just like jumped out of me at first, which I'm like, Talinow's a brand, right, explain that for people that don't
understand that don't know. Talanaw is a branch of a company that creates medicine Aceta menafin. Talanaw is the brand. It's like Kleenex, you know what I mean. Kleenex is the brand, but the product is tissue. The product is tissue, like for blowing your nose, and it's just or what's another and if that's good? Because if blowing your nose was bad, you wouldn't say don't just use clean, you would say don't use tissue to blow.
Your nose, exactly exactly.
And so using talanol as the word that we are using is it just lacks all scientific integrity on its face because of that. But if we're talking about a sea of menafin that pregnant people use if they get sick when they're pregnant to reduce their fever, because when you are pregnant, you are carrying a baby in your belly. If you get a fever and it goes too high,
it can potentially like really damage your fetus. And so what pregnant people do is take talan all to make sure that they keep their body temperature low so that they don't have any adverse effects on the baby that they're carrying. And so telling folks not to do that is one going to incite a lot of fear in the people who already have been doing that or the people who feel like they have to do that and are not sure what they could do to make their
temperature go down. But then you're also hearing things from the current president of the United States saying you gotta like tough it out. That's not how that works. It's not an issue of toughness at all. And so, and when we're talking about biases and falling for the okie dog, this is coming from the highest office in the land.
And it's scary. Yeah, it is.
I think it's so interesting, like where people draw the line. You know, there are some things and people are like, oh, I see where they're going, or that's not for me. This what do you think we're seeing there with Talanow? Do you think it's just oh, people already had something against Talanow before. You think it's fear? Do you think it's like I think it's fear, and it's tapping into the fear of fear that a lot of people have
about the health and wellness of their kids. Yeah, because autism is something that people are like, there was an autism back in my day.
Yes, there was. They just didn't have a way of diagnosing it and.
Or a name to call it, or.
A name to call it.
You know, you know, you might have said, oh, so and so is a little bit special, a little bit different. We didn't have the vocabulary, the words, the classifications that we have now. And they're looking for a silver bullet is not the right term, but a scapegoat is the right term. They're looking for a scapegoat so that they could say this is the reason why, Okay, we'll just stay away from that, so people can feel a sense of like comfort from that. Yes, and that's not wise.
It's just not wise at all because it doesn't get to the fact. And the more we wave our hands and say, okay, it's probably a seed of menafin, it's a set of menafit. And he's also pulling funds away from research. You see where I'm going like, this is dangerous territory because like you're putting out things that have not been proved scientifically, but then not funding the science
that can get us too actual fact. I think this is really interesting because there feels like multiple things at play. You know, you mentioned statements about things that haven't been proved, and I think even if there are things that have weak associations, you know, we've talked about causation and correlation being different, and I think another thing that we know about these brains is like they like to hold one story.
They don't like to hold multiple things. So even as if we think back to what we saw at the top of twenty twenty when we were trying to make sense of a global pandemic, our brains don't like to hold multiple things. And so when you give someone a single storyline. That's a lot neaterer. That's a lot easier to think. And also when you layer social components on top of it, like, well, if this comes from someone who is part of this political party, if I am
part of this political party, then I believe this thing. Right, you can really think about think and not even just group think. Is like when you go along with the crowd. This is like group identity, Like my identity is tied to this. I am a person who because I believe
these other things, then I must believe this. And I think we are seeing more and more over time these odd things that are tied to group identity, Like I feel like group identity used to be like we celebrate Christmas or we don't, you know what I mean, And now it's tied to I wear an American flag pin or I don't and or I put a stick room this kind of stick room on my car or I don't like.
It's all these little tiny things that.
Feel so yeah, abstract and UNRELI how is that related to identity?
You know?
And then I think when something else that you said about in the case of a sentiment offin that felt really interesting to me, reminded me of what we talked about with Lindsay A Joe who did our episode on pain,
and she talked about the expectation of relief. So if I tell you, hey, that's what it is, so you won't have to worry about this anymore, whether that's true or not, if you expect that, Hey, when I don't take a see of minifit, I don't have to worry about this thing that gives you immediate relief in your brain, your brain can start to think about like, Okay, well I can stop worrying about that. I can worry about something else. And I think for some.
People that may feel good. I know, I like to take task off my plate, just clear it.
I don't want to see it control all the league. What you're saying completely lines up when we start talking about crime, when we see people that are saying like whether or not we need you know, these different groups showing up in these various.
Cities that we've been seeing recently.
When we talk about health, when we talk about it, see the minifit, access to vaccines, this and that, like all of those things, we see these same kind of thought processes and cognitive biases playing out. And another place where we see that that we don't talk about often on this show, but something happened recently and we got to talk about.
It is religion. That is very true, very true.
We know that religion could be very sensitive for a lot of people, which makes it. But recently there's been some virality around people thinking that the rapture was upon them. So, for those of you who don't know in Christianity, I'm not sure which or which branches of Christianity, but I'll say Christianity as the big umbrella that the rapture is. When Jesus decides to come back, he takes the souls of all of his believers to heaven and leaves behind
the non believers. And so people were saying that there are signs that this is going to happen. Even though in the Bible it says that nobody will know the time or day that the raptor has happened, these folks said that they did know the time and the day, and people were selling their cars, they were getting rid of their apartments, they were getting rid of all of their worldly possessions waiting for the rapture that did not come. I think that is another prime example of group identity.
You know, it's hard for me to reconcile. It's easy actually now that we're talking about to step away and reconcile it. But when it was happening, I was like, it was easy for me to judge, right, and that is that exact same thing I was talking about. I was like, where I'm not immune to this kind of bias. I'm like, I'm a person that reads the literature and figures this stuff out. And so even if you read your text, it says you won't know the day or time,
the day or the hour. So if somebody knows the day or the hour, then they're not the person that aligns with this text.
Obvious. It says it in the user manual.
And I'm like, girl, get off your high horse, right right. Think about how people may be feeling. Think about how overwhelmed people are because of the state of the world, yes, yes, because of the state of the world, and how excited you might be about the relief of being in a
better place. Happen to worry about all of these things, And I just think one of the things I've been asking myself is how to meet these moments when I see these things and I'm like, well, that obviously doesn't make sense, and I'm you know, turning into Caddie Zakiyah. How do I meet those moments with some more compassion because I know there are plenty of people looking at the things that I believe and say and do and are saying, girl, it's not lining up, it's not adding up.
And so this show working with you us talking to experts and being exposed to this information, I'm like, try, I try to infuse it in my mock patterns when I am reading information interacting with people all of that.
It's so true, and I think that's a great place for us to land, you know, where it's like understanding each other in the grander sense, like everywhere all around the world, that we all are in search of belonging, and we're all in search of happiness, and that in pursuit of that, we might, you know, try and get some shortcuts to happiness and belonging and fall for some biases that might not necessarily be true, but you know, sometimes it's just propaganda that you're just gonna fall for.
And it's okay, mm hm, you gotta you gotta fall for something.
Because we're all gonna do it. Yes, Yeah, It's.
Just part of living. That's how these human brains are wired. And so I'm like, hey, you mad at this person for being human? And that's the real that's the real question I have to ask myself. This reminds me of doctor Harrison just a few weeks ago saying the ultimate show of humanity is compassion. And so I've been trying to carry that put in my pocket a little nugget.
Yes, yes, I love that.
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