Listener Mail: Strange Sleep and Past Lives

city and what have you. But uh so, once again we wanted to take an opportunity to devote one episode it just uh conversing with you the listeners, uh, you the readers, etcetera, and uh and and sharing some of your thoughts on topics that we've we've recently touched on. Yeah, so it's about high time that we got our house in order, and we have a bevy of feedback that we want to read because we think it's really interesting. And uh, what should we check it off with. We

have a couple of themes. Oh well, I really like this one on reincarnation. So let's call the robot over and I'll read you what John had to say. John says, I listened with interest to your recent thoughts on reincarnation and I always struck with the thought that the idea example of reincarnation with persisting memories of a past life

would be the Dali Lama. I think, uh, maybe to be corrected, that when a Lama dies, the search for the child who contains the spirit of leader begins and there are tests to prove that they have found the correct youth. I think these include tests check for signs of a reincarnated spirit. Uh. Does anyone know of this? And I'll take a break and say, yes, this is actually the Dali Lama. Uh situation is a is a

really excellent example of of reincarnation worldview in effect. And uh and and to the point where we really should have mentioned it in the podcast because it's so strong. Um. Anyway, John continues, Um, I don't know where I read this. I also enjoyed your recent podcast about Stone Hinge, as I have visited this in other monuments in England as

that is where I live. I prefer Avebury Circle as it is large in diameter, if not in size of stones, and the different rings and ditches that even encompass the village and their position in relation to other barrows and earthworks locally, give a much more impressive vision than of those who devised and built these monuments. At a bury, you can get amongst the stones and walk the ditches,

allowing a more connected feeling with the whole area. These monuments need to be seen topographically to really impress with the relation to the land and what else it contains. Simply looking at a picture only gives you a very small part of what they are. Thanks for keeping my truck driving night full of interesting thoughts. Look forward to future shows. John. All right, Well, so that first part about the Dalai Lama. I do remember seeing a film

in which I believe Kiana reeves start. Do you know which one I'm from? New MATRIXI Lama? Uh No? In it documented um the search for the Llama, and they were giving him some of the test. Do you recall any test? Third, administer, I I do not. I remember seeing the documentaries, uh one document in particular about the about looking for the Llama, looking for the chosen youth that would would have the spirit of Vallama. But but

I don't recall the details of it. Offhand and in terms of the Stonehenge information that John had given us, which was really great. I wanted to read an email from Diane who says I love the Stonehenge episodes because they reminded me of a project I did when I was in fourth grade. I had a great teacher who did a Stonehenge project where we created stones out of modeling clay and then had to transport them one by

one across the table by rolling them on pencils. Once the stone was off the last pencil, it was moved to the front and repeat across the table. There was time consuming, but fun. It was a cool project to show what sort of work went into cutting and transporting the stones. Stuck with me for twenty years. What a

great project for for kids to do, I think. Um. She says she's been a long time fan and she's been meaning to write and suggest a future show, And she said that she became involved with a nonprofit called the Cancer Research Institute, and she said that cancer immunotherapy is a cool field of research and treatment for cancer that uses the immune system to fight cancer and has really started to take off in the last couple of years.

So she suggested that as an episode and that seems like great fertile terrain for us, and I appreciate your suggestion there, Diane. Yeah, yeah, we we could stand to do a few more sort of health centric episodes in the future. UM. Space is another area I want to

get back to. So if anyone out there has specific requests for space related stuff to blow your mind content, uh, do hit us up with those those suggestions, because sometimes it's kind of difficult looking at at space, so looking at health because I feel like we stuffed to bow your mind. We we kind of have that caveat that it needs to it needs to really like shake you, it needs to really awe you in some way a perform.

But so if you have any ideas that might lead to a sober stone or moments did you with space, let us know. Yeah. Alright, here's another a bit of listener mail, Thank you Robot. This one comes to us from Tracy. Tracy says, I absolutely love your podcast. I love your topics, but almost more than that, I love your chemistry. You play off each other really well and your interaction never slides into corny banter. I love your inventive metaphors. Uh, the intensive research you do is evident

from your solid grasp of the information you present. You rarely stumble in your knowledge. And to top it all off, both have voices made for radio with no annoying vocal kicks. You post nothing but fascinating articles on your Facebook page. You kick, But I just wanted you to know you have a huge fan in Miami. If you ever find yourself in South Florida, I hope Miami's Vice City Rollers, the roller Derby team I volunteer with, is playing. I'll

give you comp tickets. Well, thank you, Tracy. Indeed, if we're ever in the in in South Florida, we may have to look you up. Indeed we will. And that just minded me of the Roller Derby Microbiome episode we did in which they looked at Rolling Derby teams and how they are swapping microbiomes and how interesting that is

and tracing that's really kind. Um. I do have to say that I think that both of us have a couple of malapropisms in which we butcher language, and that is an episode which will be forthcoming at some point, because it's really interesting about how your brain that listens in your brain that is anticipating speech. They have to work in tandem, and a lot of these malapropisms um result from that sort of little disconnects that happened when

they're trying to do this bifurcated action. Yeah, and I think I've said before I feel like I have very much have a writer reader brain and uh and therefore when I'm speaking, I often fall into various traps. I guess I've gotten better at it over the years, but still not all the traps have been marked and and eliminated. Alright. The next one comes from Richard, and he says, I love stuff to play your mind. I listen while working out at the gym, and as a high school science teacher,

I enjoy bringing the program into my classroom. Good job, and thank you. I fear you may be incorrect on hibernation. Uh, I belause there's an episode of republished episode in January that he's referring to. He says, let me do this in two parts. Your recent discussion of hibernation violates a basic principle of physics and engineering, the law of squares and cubes, less formally, the relationship of surface area to volume.

This universal principle deserves a separate treatment on your program, and to make it less technical in more podcast friendly, I bring to your attention that virtually all monster movies get it wrong. For a summary of why, read the great biologist JB. S. Haldane's essay on being the right size. The law of squares and cubes can explain numerous physical

and biological phenomena. This brings us to point to While it is true that ground squirrels can reduce their core temperature sufficiently to go into a state of suspended animation, larger animals like bears may lower their set points slightly, but cannot radate enough body heat to get a truly suspended state. They're easily aroused even during winter rest, although I do not suggest you try the experiment for rather

obvious reasons. By the way, you can extend this analysis to demonstrate that large dinosaurs probably approached warm bloodedness even without internal constancy. If you want to get summary on the issue and it's specific relations hybernation, there's a helpful lecture by Steven Stearns from his Yale course on evolution in Ecology. So I just want to say thank you Richard so much. UM. I do think that that probably deserves its own upcoming episode, because we'd like to get

into this topic a lot. Hibernation, suspended animation, What we can learn from hibernation, how we could apply it to humans, either through emergency situations or even through space travel. Now, I know that we have discussed the morphological limits of gigantism before, particularly in terms of of say, Godzilla and King Kom, Barbie and Barbie. Yes, that was a separate, separate episode, but but we have touched on those topics before. All right, we can take a quick breaking when we

come back, more listener mail on a number of fascinating topics. Alright, we're back. Let's take some more feedback and then get into it. All right, This one comes to us from Valerie. Valerie says, I just finished up your episode on Night Janitors. It made me feel much less lame for needing nine hours of sleep to feel good. Now, I have always fallen asleep anywhere if I am tired, in loud rooms, standing up in a boat, and other odd of places.

Whenever I do anything that would loosen my inhibitions, like drink, all I want to do is take a nap. Turns out most of my inhibitions are how inappropriate it is to sleep all the time. From now on, I am going to imagine I have very demanding night janitors and we are waiting at the doors, being like, can you hurry up? And there we have a job to do, ready to take advantage of my weakened state to start

work early. Also, I was wondering if there is anything to this idea of animals getting a taste for humans. I feel like I hear that all the time. I wonder if it is like when I finally have a chance to try something and it's especially tasty, like when I got a taste for star fruit. I also think about one group of orcas it was on a documentary I watched that were really into sea urchins, even though they're much harder to eat and harder to get than

other food. Could we be a delicacy of the animal world. I thought it might be interesting to hear a podcast on animals becoming man eaters after getting that first taste. Warm regards Valerie in Austin, Texas, PS, you guys are great. Well now I want to do an episode on man eaters. That sounds perfect Well, you know, I thought this is so timely because the other night, my daughter asked, she gets to ask one question before she goes to bed, and that's her way to She's always trying to distract

us from actually getting her to sleep. So that's the way that we try to manage that. And so her question was to do alligators to eat people? And so my answer was because I tried to be as as honest as possible without like going into some weird territory, and I said, well, no they don't, but I'm sure it has had been by accident. And then that was so I shouldn't have even said that, because then she was like, when who what happened? And I thought, oh, man,

that's it's true. It's it has happened by accident and sometimes um, people have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And she went on to ask like, do you think the alligators like the taste of humans? Well, there you go. I think we'll definitely have to do an episode on that. And I also have to say that we were dangerously close to talking about cannibalism. I just felt it. I felt like, the next question is going to be the keetmans eat other humans. So you're

just completely low on energy right at that time. That's when she starts throwing out questions about cannibalism and yeah, what why do people kill each other? Why do people don't I mean this? Yeah, she throws out the heavy stuff. We have another email here from Kevin and he's talking about the Night Janitors, which is again this episode that dealt with this idea of all these toxic by products that our brains make and how do we usher them

out of our system? Um. That has long been a mystery, but we have new information that this happens when we sleep, and only when we sleep. Um. Kevin says, I have an interesting study I conducted last semester on my own. I was nineteen at the time. I read about polyphasic sleeping, where you can reduce average sleep to minimal hours, sometimes to a day. I try to and reduce my average from about eight hours to five hours. For thirty consecutive days, I would do three and a half hours at night

and three equally spaced naps during the day. During this time, I had lucid dreams the first time, which I still seldom have to this day, and had felt a new feeling of euphorium. Midway through. I found it was very well, possible, but I stopped with my neighbor, who participated in twelve actual sleep studies, said I was adapting to become and insomniac. This leads me to question whether we can adapt to a large amount of waste in our brains, or does

maybe the night janitor become more efficient. Good question. Also, thank you for your exciting and inform national discussions. They have changed my intellectual life for the better. Thank you, Kevin. All right, well here's another little bit on sleep. This one comes to us from Ann and says Dear Julian Robert. During college, I had a lot of trouble with insomnia. I was prescribed ambien my senior year. I made the mistake multiple times of taking it but not immediately lying

down and going to bed, which is recommended. This led to some interesting Internet comments. The biggest problem I had was sleep cooking. I didn't just sleep eat whatever snacks were in my apartment. I somehow felt they need to make ramen noodles or spaghettios, or on one scary occasion,

to cook a full meal of pasta. I boiled a pot of water, cooked the noodles, cooked, the sauce, drained, the pasta, poured the pasta and sauce onto a plate, covered them with parmesan cheese, ate the whole plate of food, and then and then left the empty plate on the floor upy my bed. I woke up next morning boggled by the plate. I am relieved to say I never left the stove hunt. I quit taking Ambien and several

years later quit drinking entirely. Sobriety has had a huge impact on my sleep quality and worked much better than ambient for me. I learned that while alcohol can make you fall asleep pass out, the sleep you get isn't RESTful or restorative sleep or reduces rim sleep. But people often think they're sleeping better because they fall asleep sooner.

All my best and thanks, and yeah, I have to second that since I quit drinking year and a half nearing two years ago, I will say that my sleep has been so much better and now I'm hungry for it. Played a spaghetti. Yeah, it's uh We mentioned uh am bien before, and it's the effects it sometimes has on people.

I do want to want to go ahead and throw out though that if you know, let let your doctor, your trusted doctor, advise you on what you should and shouldn't take and use that as your sort of call point rather than, you know, any kind of horror stories you've heard about one medication or another. Well, yeah, because some things can affect another person in entirely different ways.

So yeah, because I've encountered people before who desperately needed some help sleeping, at least for like a small portion of their time. And uh, and they were scared to even try some thing because they'd heard somebody knew somebody who had heard about somebody who you know, ate a

bunch of cigarettes while on ambient or something. Yeah. Well, and if you've ever suffered from insomnia and you know that point in the night where are like, man, I wish someone would just hit me over the head with a pan and knock me out, you know that that's when you're in a desperate place and you need some help. Yeah, So anyway, thanks for sharing that with the sand all right. The next one has to do with leeches. We recently did a podcast episode about leeches and how they've sort

of redeemed themselves in the medical community. And this is from Ashley. She says, I recently listened to the podcast about leeches. I thought you might be interested in my experience with them. I'm a veterinary technician at a large specialty veterinary practice and we currently have a small colony of leeches that are being used to treat a couple of feline patients. These two kitties have a condition called polyspthemia vera, in which their bodies make too many red

blood cells. This results in very thick, sludgy blood that can lead to seizures, a taxia, blindness, and other neurological symptoms. There are men occasions that decreased red blood cell production, but the side effects aren't good. One other treatment is blood letting every week, but one of these cats is not very friendly, which makes drawing a large amount of blood from her very difficult and stressful for her and

imagine others. Um There's only one study and one cat that leeches have been used on for this condition, but our doctors decided to give it a try. The cat can sit in the owner's lap and have leeches feed for about thirty minutes, can go home. Both cats have had multiple treatments, are and are doing very well. So it looks like our leech experiment is a success. Thank you. For reading. Ashley ps. We keep our leeches and fish

bowls on a shelf. We learned the hard way that the bowls need to be covered more than once leeches rained down on the person using the computer below the shelf they were housed on. That's a little bit nightmaric. Just to create a new word. Alright, I'm just gonna wind up here with two quick ones. This one comes to us from Annie in New Orleans. Any He shares of her experiences with dentist dread and dental anxiety, which

we talked about in an episode. But then she closes out and says, I listened to a lot of house Stoworks podcasts, and I love them all for different reasons, but I've almost started thinking of yours. This my mental health cast. I developed some slightly debilitating anxiety and depression problems this last year. For example, my fracture teeth were very likely caused by clenching my teeth in my sleep. After my crowns are in my dentist is going to

make a mouth guard to sleep with. Because if your many informative episodes surrounding anxiety, I've decided to seek out professional help. In addition to trying things like meditation to quiet the constant screeching of my default mode network. I'm feeling more hopeful for my future happiness than I have in as long as I can remember. You guys are great. Well, that's that's very good to hear. For First, I want

to say mouth guard. I myself were a mouth guard when I sleep every night, and it's made a lot of difference for me. So UM, definitely stick with that as much as you'll want to spit it out at times. Uh and uh and and kudos for seeking, you know, professional help to help balance things out. I think that's you know, that's often the bravest uh and at times the hardest thing you have to do for yourself is

is saying, yes, I'm gonna actually see somebody about this. Indeed, and you know, I've said this several times, but the episodes that we've covered the topics, a lot of times I find myself turning to some of the things that that do help. UM. And that was interesting that she brought up the default mode network, because I really think that that is sometimes the problem with with a lot of what ails me is just kind of quiet that part of the mind and there's so many different ways

to get to that point. Indeed, indeed, all right, here's the last one here. This one comes to it from Ashley actually says, Hi, Robert and Julie, I'm listening to some of your older podcast via iTunes and came across Lucid Dreams. During the cast, you mentioned some sences not being activated during dreams, and the food isn't usually a part of lucid dreams because the taste isn't active. Well, I had a very unusual dream of law back where

I was an intergalactic social mixer. I had a conversation at the bar with a green, jellowish male and drank the most perfect glass of pineapple juice. I've also had a recurring dream where I am at a family reunion type gathering with my children. At some point I fall out of favor with my family and they want to have me committed and take out custody on my children. At this point, I take flight like a bird, not superman. Think of the We Fit chicken game where you flap

your arms to fly. I've been having this dream on and off since two thousand two, prior to We Fit, so I don't know why or where this dream came from. Okay, well that's it. Thanks for keeping me company while I work, study and take mom breaks. I put myself in a time out. I love you much, Ashley. Oh, thank you very much, Ashley. I really would like to have a lucid dream about food now, Yes, I as well, because I don't think I can remember an instance where I

had like a very taste uh centric dream. Yeah, and just to be able to experience that in a lucid way might be pretty amazing. I don't know. I'm gonna put me to like some sort of sprig of basil in my mouth before I get a sleep, yeah it, or you know, or have someone else like stick basil in your mouth on your sleep to trigger it. That would be perfectly normal. Yeah. All right, So there you go. We've managed to catch up a little bit on our

listener mail. You guys and gals are always sharing such wonderful thoughts with us about the topics that we cover. You have wonderful suggestions for future episodes, and we just wanted to again take take time once more. You just go through some of these listener mail catch up, and then start brush to some new episodes. The next week. All right, So you want to get in touch with us, you want to get in on this, well, you can

find us in a number of places. Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot Com is our main homepage, and that's where you'll find blog posts, videos, all the podcast links out to our various social media accounts. Now our Facebook page. If you just look on faceboobook for Stuff to Blow your Mind, that's where we are. We're pretty strong following there, and a lot of people get in touch with us via Facebook and we do read those messages, so bear

that in mind. And then there's always an old fashioned way you can get in touch with us as well. But before I tell you about that old fashioned way, I want to tell about YouTube, in particular Mind Stuff Show. If you go there, you will find videos that Robert and I have toiled away on. In fact, I probably have the most jacked up Marilyn Monroe wig that has ever existed in one of those videos, and you can

check that out at My Stuff Show at YouTube. In the meantime, you can send us an email at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Doesn't how Stuff Works dot Com