The Seven Deadlies: Grasping Greed

Seven Deadly Sins. Last time we have space on this we were slogging it through gluttony, and now we are discussing a little something called greed, which works perfectly because if you're traveling through Dante's Inferno, always have to do I'm sorry, uh, and it makes conversations about Dante's Inferno awkward. But um, but yeah. The third circle of Dante's Inferno is where the glutton's hang out, and the fourth circle is where the greedy hang out. To be more specific,

this is the circle of avarice and prodigality. It's it's interesting Dante is really down on greed. It's not like one of these sin like lust, which he has a lot of sympathy for, well, because he's human. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he has like, he has a lot of sympathy for some of the individuals. That's what I'm getting to. He hasn't he has needs, But when he encounters the greedy he's it's it's a lot harsher. He divides it up. You have the prodigal and the more typically miserly greedy.

So the prodigal, they're reckless fenders. It's coming in and it's it's going out twice as fast. I think that's something we can all, if not relate to personally, we can, we can we definitely witness in the world around us. And then you have the the truly greedy, the hoarders and the misers, the ones that take the money, hold the money, that are just in it for the money itself. Okay.

And so when Dante and his guide Virgil show up and infer, first of all, they greeted by Plutus, which is the god of riches, with a little a little Pluto, god of the underworld thrown in because you know, you know, the underworld, underground, that's where gold and silver come from. And he's beast, he always full of ray. Ginny's babbling and he's saying poppy Satan, poppy Satan Nalipi, which is kind of just nobody. There's a lot of discussion about

what in the heck that means. Yeah, I'm gonna say, like poppy statan sounds a little poppy statan. Yeah, I mean there's a sense like maybe it's something papal, because certainly there's a lot of discussion of sinful popes in the Inferno and then Satan of course. But but this is actually one of the few instances where Satan is actually mentioned, because when you actually encounter the big demon himself the bottom of Inferno, he's referred to as Lucifer.

So anyway, back to these centers, so you have the spin Thrifts and the Misers, and they're all first of all, they're all so shabby, but you can't even recognize them, Like Dante is all like, I'm probably gonna look around here, I'm gonna know some people that I met know from life,

and that your Italian accent very mildly. You're Italian is much better, and the Virgil's like, now you're not gonna You're not gonna recognize anybody, because everyone's so twisted here from their lives, from their their earthly lives full of greed and and overspending, that you're just not gonna be able to wreck it. Is that part of the punishment. Um, it's not as much a part of the punishment. It's just kind of like the reality of the like the

like spiritually there deformed from this. The punishment itself is that they have there. It's kind of a joust between the spinthrifts and the greedy, except instead of having like you know, swords or spears or any kind of typical jousting equipment, they are rolling large objects against each other using only like their chests. And if you look at the illustrations provided by Good Stuff Dora, the large objects

that they're jousting with their giant money bags. So if you imagine these like these hideous looking like naked people and they're all sort of like pushing big money bags, rolling them around with their chest into each other and arguing with each other and calling each other's other names, and so there there there are no demons um staffed here to punish these guys. They provide their own punishment to each other. Okay, so it's like a scene from

eyes Watch. Shut well, I'll no, no, well, you know what, Okay, maybe more accessible is the illustration that you sent me, and it showed a lucky cat to a mountain, and the mountain was there was a little trail going to the very top with a lucky cat is perched and there's mice with big hunks of cheese weighing them down as they bring it to the lucky cat. Yes, I will, I will link to this in the blog post that goes with this podcast and gets you're interested in saying that.

But there there are many artistic interpretations. Now, if one goes into Dante's purgatory and this again is the mountain that connects Earth to the heaven, and well, you're you're you're complicating with lucky cat at this point. There's no lucky cat in this thing. Okay. It's just a mountain the connects Earth and hell beneath it to the heavens above. And if you travel up the mountain, each terrace purges you of a sin so that you'll be clean enough

to enter heaven. So the fifth race is where you would purge yourself of all this greed, and you do it by lying lying face down on a hard rock floor, weeping and praying until the greed has washed away from you. That's your punishment. Yeah, it's kind of. It's not a punishment. Remember, it's a it's a cleansing, Okay, kind of weak sauce. It is it is kind of weaks us. I don't know, maybe maybe Dante just wasn't bringing his a game when

thinking about greed. He's really down on it. But it's it's it's not like they're like, you know, boiling rivers of blood and feces. They're just dudes in help pushing bags of money against each other. And and hear a lot of people praying the eyes being soon shut as in v right, and there's some gas fler ones ahead. But um, let's look to Buddhism real quick again before we get into the real science of all this. In Buddhism, greed, along with delusion, slash, ignorance, and hate, is one of

the three poisons at the heart of all suffering. So if you look at the center of the Debettan wheel of life, the wheel of sam sorrow, which we haven't excellent interactive illustration of in the how Stuff Works article how sky burial works. If if you look at the center of this wheel, you'll find three animals, a pig, a cock, and a snake, and they are all biting each other's tails, forming a ring. And each of these three animals represents one of the three poisons. The snake

is hate, the pig is delusion or ignorance. You see it referred to as is either, and then the cock represents greed. It's interesting how Buddhism greed is very central to everything that is wrong with life here on earth. And just as a side note, some people are really into like crazy burgers. I think it would be it would be fascinating if someone were too concoct a burger that contains three meats snake mate, pig meat, and rooster meat.

And then you could have it be the the three poison burger or the the burger that is the root of all suffering. Well, isn't there already that you're ducan. It's kind of like that, you're duncan, except um, it's

responsible for all of man's woes. Okay, so it's and it's probably a pretty heavy launch two and just throwing that out there if anyone wants to create such a blasphemy or if if you know, next Thanksgiving when that rolls around, you can't take your tur duck in, which is a turkey, chicken and duck I'll roll together, right, and you can offer it up as a way to consume the sins of the past year, because I think that would go over really well at Thanksgiving table. You know,

people don't think about that. So that's kind of the there's the religious introduction, and both of these examples are very down on the idea of greed. But it is this poisonous thing. It is this this awful thing that that distorts the soul and renders this unrecognizable in the afterlife, that is responsible for all of this pain around us. But then there's another way of looking at it, right, well, you write a more materialistic view. Are you talking about

Gordon Gecko? Yes, read from us from the book of of Get all right, Gordon Gecko, the character in Wall Street. We're talking to high eighties here, and I don't know if I can do a Michael Douglas voice. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, greed is good, Greed works, Greed is right. Greed clarifies, cut through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms, greed for life, money, love, knowledge has marked the upward surge in mankind and greed.

Mark my words. We'll see not only telled our paper, but the other malfunctioning corporation called the U s A. Wow. Yeah, okay, greed also fights stains, that's right, that's right. I've got a greed stick at home. Um. But yeah, I mean, this is an idea that isn't too far away from

reality and certain eras of our existence. Certainly in the nineteen eighties, you know, accumulation of wealth is something that a lot of people are concentrating on, and there is this idea that greed is this sort of evolutionary birthright that we can't evolve without continuing to amass more and more and sort of step over each other in order to get to it. Yeah, I mean you can go with the I mean, the classic argument that stuff like India and greed, these are the motivating forces of ambition,

and we need ambition in life. Like on some level, greed maybe is good because I need things to live, right, I need a little money, and a little more is maybe even a little better, So I should want those things, right, Yeah,

but it's the excess part, right, Okay. So there's this guy named Andrew Low, and he's the Harris and Harris Group professor M I. T. And the director of its laboratory for financial engineering, and in a two thousand and nine interview with Freakonomics, he commented on the unprecedented era of wealth just recently that we have right um, and he said that quote extended periods of prosperity act as an anesthetic and the human brain. Okay, So that's here's

one reason why greed isn't so grand. Right. Essentially, he's saying that all of us who were trading in on the real estate based financial bubble, we're in a quote drug induced cooper that causes us to take risks that we know we should avoid. He's saying basically that monetary gain and we've we've seen this before, certainly in the

laboratory is uh. It stimulates the same reward securitary as cocaine and in both cases, again we've talked about this, you know, over and over in terms of this, and since dopamine is released into the nucleus incumbents um and then the opposite of this, this is really interesting. Financial loss activates the same fight or flight circuitry as physical attacks,

releasing adrenaline and a cortisol in the bloodstream. So I mean, here you have different sides of the coin, but certainly you've got dopamine and you've got adrenaline on the other side, and all of this is tied to finance. Okay, so it's kind of like the again he's in the drug example, a young man takes cocaine and then writes a really horrible song or it gets a really or is really

into an idea that is just dreadful. Likewise, a young man who has a financial success us for a short amount of time, during that success, everything is so great he decides, I'm going to buy a sailboat right right, I'm gonna I'm gonna blow my money on this, I'm gonna spend it on this. I'm gonna do this because things are great. This couldn't possibly wear off. And of course both individuals quickly find that, uh, the sensation does wear off, right, I mean, basically, this is deadening that

part of your brain. That means not literally deadening, but certainly the part of your brain that is thinking about the long term is now offline. And you know, your short term brain is like, hey, do whatever, Like let's go buy a boat. It sounds like a great idea. Um, So it would make sense that in terms of economics, there's something happening in the brain that really feeds into greed. Okay, so this question comes up, a greed everybody is greedy to to some extent or another. Right, Um, but who

could be the greediest jerks out there? Is there is there naturally answer to that question? Who could be? Or who who might be? Might be? Might be? Like who out there in the world is the greediest chart? Yeah, well one would. I mean, if you're going with the stereotype, you're looking at people like your Gordon Geckos, like your Scrooge McDucks. You know, the individuals that have so much it's an addiction, you know, like the money and the

money onto itself was an addiction. Okay, So bingo wealth corrupting? Right, And you're right, this is, you know, somewhat of a cliche. But there are some scientists who decided to put this to the test. Or rather, psychologist Paul piff of the University of California at Berkeley. He conducted seven different studies that the seven different scenarios really testing out socio economic

levels and ethics, wondering if indeed wealth corrupts. And I'm just going to highlight a couple of them, because I think that they're interesting, but I should point out and that all seven scenarios, the overwhelming evidence is that people with higher socio economic levels tend to have uh dodgy ethics, or that that was the conclusion that was wrong from this.

Um there was a study in which U. Pif and his team monitored traffic at a four waist stop in San Francisco, and they noted all the makes and the models of automobiles because that's a really good indicator of your socio economic level usually right, um, so guests who more often than not cut the other drivers off the

fancy cars. Fancy cars, I mean overwhelmingly. Okay, So then there's another study that they did, and this was they had test takers asked to imagine themselves being very rich or very poor, and then given an opportunity to take candy from a jar that would next be delivered to children in another lab like really like taking candy from

from a baby. Right. See, all I can think of is the Simpsons episode where well, of course that Mr Burns is another, I mean, if not classic examples of the stereotypically rich, miserly awful person who has been totally corrupted by wealth. But there's an episode, of course where he he actually steals to steal candy from a baby. Well, right there you go. He in this study certainly would

have borne out the results. But so again here here you see the people who are imagining themselves is very rich somehow distancing themselves from their action and saying and taking actually more candy than the other people who imagine themselves is very poor. Uh. And again seven of these different scenarios. Uh. And you'd have to have many more studies in order to have more conclusive data on this,

I think. But I think at least it gives us an idea of the direction of of what happens when you are exposed to extreme wealth and the sort of distancing that you experience. You know, I'm not sure that the lab full of babies or children actually need that candy though, well I have to say I thought that too, because I thought, well, I might be like, hey, you know what those twisty roles, that kid doesn't need it, nobody knows to go to the dentist, And what kind

of can is it? Because there's there's candy, and there's candy, Like if it's if it's like, um, you know, doing all this bank suckers or candy corn, then by all means why their children have it. But if it's upscale candy that's clearly designed for a more sophisticated adult palate, then then I'm not sure taking it is really the best.

I agree. I agree. Um, But there there's this evolutionary psychologist and he's a consumer researcher in his name is Vladisias of the University of Minnesota, and he says this work is important because it suggests that people often act unethically, not because they are desperate and in the dumps, but because they feel entitled and they want to get ahead. Okay, well,

that's exactly what I just did. I laid out my entitlement for the fancy candy, that the that this candy would be lost on these children, and therefore I'm a I'm doing them a favor because they don't need it, and be I am the intended audience for this candy. So I've already I've already rationalized stealing candy from a baby. It's a it's a great day of my life. You know what, all your gold rings with your diamonds are kind of shining pretty rightly. Can you kind of just

take a couple off their Mr money bags? Um? Okay, So what is the opposite of greed, Well, not necessarily opposite, but a reaction that you might have to greed, revulsion,

a sense of injustice. Right, Because we were discussing this the other day, like, like, there's something particularly foul about greed, especially when we I mean well pretty much only when we glimpse it in others, because when we glimpse it in ourselves, we tend to, like everything else, we tend to find more enlightened ways of understanding it or lying to ourselves about it, you know. But when you see greed in another person, it's like, I mean, it all

blows done. The money right, and money on on a on a very crucial level, it's not real, Like even when you're dealing with like gold coins, it's just it's all. It's a ultimately kind of arbitrary. I mean, yes, there's there's a great deal of numbers and mathematics backing it up, but it's all and none of it is real, you know. And then when when we when we when we raise that this abstract thing, this unreal thing above everything else

that is real in life. When we place this in this this made up money above the heads of very real people, it's terrifying and awful and absurd. Right well, when the fantasy of this right becomes grotesque and you can't really see the reality around you, right, I mean, it clouds your vision of your ability to actually accurately

since what's going on around you. That's when I when I think, you know, you make decisions that perhaps and other people creates a sense of disgust, because all of a sudden you become this person who is a caricature yourself to a certain degree. There's something called the ultimatum game, and it's interesting the premises. Okay, I have ten dollars that I can share with you, Robert Land, anyway I choose. Okay, if you accept my offer, then we both keep my

proposed share. If you reject my offer, neither of us sees any of the money. Oh wait, now what's the offer? Okay? Um, okay, I have ten dollars. I will give you a quarter a quarter of the money, or just say, then, what do I have to do? Do you mean you just can you can take or you can leave it? Well in that case, I would take it because cents is better than no money, Right, you are so rational, But

most people would actually reject it. Huh yeah, because you would think, like the rational thing to do is to say, like, um, you know, sure, now we're both richer for this, right, But there's a sense of injustice going on, like someone might think, that's not really why are you keeping and I'm getting but I didn't do anything to earn it.

You just you have ten dollars. You're giving me twenty five cents and I'm and if you give me that cents, I'm halfway to getting something out of the office snack machine. All I have to do is find one more quarter and I'm going to be rolling in granola bar. Okay, Well, if you were a normal, flawed person, you would say, no, I'm going to penalize you for your stinginess. Now I'm not gonna like neither of us are going to get anything. Right.

That's weird. Yeah, even it's understandable, like I can totally I can totally get it. Yeah, like I have. And it is in a way if you think about it, Um, it's sort of a power structure, right, because if that person has the money and they're offering it to you. How do you get your power back if you have nothing, if you don't have really, uh any choice in the matter. Right, So I guess I could I could conceivably make the argument, well, why don't you you know you're keeping nine, why don't

you just give me one quarter more? And then I can go ahead and get that granola bar instead. I'm tempted. I'm with half. I'm here with half a granola bar, basically that I can't eat well, I mean, yeah, I don't know what you're gonna get for honestly, yeah. Yeah. You start to think about that, and what happens in your brain, Uh, the anterior insula starts to get activated. And this is the area associated with negative emotions. And this has been seen by Jonathan Cohen and he's a

Princeton neuro scientist. The interesting thing is that when you up the amount of money, like for instance, if if I said I have twenty three dollars and I'm going to give you eight dollars, then you start to see people go okay, well that's that's a little bit fairer. And the part of the brain, the the anterior insult, actually starts to die down a little bit in terms of activity. As a way to tamp down this is say, okay, let's start to be rational about this because now stakes

are getting a little bit higher. There's a little bit more money here, and it really I think it's very

telling on how we uh make some important decisions. So this is definitely the part of the brain is lighting up when you've just had dinner with some friends at a restaurant and you have to figure out how the bill works, or or even when like far before the bill comes, say when the guacamole comes out, or the pizza's placed on the table and food has to be divvied up, I can see that kicking in, you know, because you're wondering about how things are going to be

distributed and first out and then how are they going to be paid for? Like even if you're not like a stingy kind of person who's counting the slices of pizza as they leave the table, like, your brain can't help but sort of think in those terms, right. Well, And they've seen this in babies, they've seen this in primates too, that there's a sense of injustice. Study after study that people are mentally taking notes on what is being parsed out at that time. Well, because I mean,

we have to live in a community. We have to live in some sort of a group. Be at a primitive group that is just you know, crawling through the grasses and prehistoric times, or a community of people who are trying to figure out how in the heck they're gonna do the tip with a group on discount at a restaurant. Right, Yeah, that's just the recipe for disaster

right there. Yeah, yeah, the whole group on thing. Uh. Not to say that I haven't taken advantage of it's great, but yes, um, you have to come to some sort of point of cooperation. And like you said, that's that's what really makes a society. That's that's the glue of it. We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about why greed sometimes turns us into a bunch of only checking Homo Simpson. All right, we're back. Why do donuts distract Homer Simpson? Why is

homocipson subsets with with donuts? We had to boil this down to a single Oh, I don't know, brain hormone. What would it be delicious? Dopamine exactly. Just the mere thought of the doughnut can can result in dopamine release. Just the the the anticipation of rewarding yourself with those delicious cowards. I have to say, I think I might be salivating a little bit right now. Yeah, I've been

picturing that. I don't even really eat donuts, but I'm picturing that Simpsons doughnut with the pink I sing in the sprinkles. Yeah, dopamine keeps popping up in these podcasts we're doing. I mean, but dopamine pops up a lot because it's anytime we're trying to figure out neurologically why we do the things we do, because dopamine is the reward juice, and uh, most of the not most, but a lot of the things we do are about releasing that chemical, about achieving the reward. Our life is kind

of this game. And when we, uh, we actually hit the points where we get the achieved, that's we get the dopamine. It's not surprisingly would show up here. It show up seems to have shown up in all the other sense. And it's one of these things that we learned a game a long time ago. Primitive man kind of figured out what was going on with the dopamine and figured out, hey, I can actually cheat and get

all the dopamine I want. Right, so we end up with this whole legacy of bad habits and addictions and uh and since if you will, and greed seems to play especially well with dopamine because it's tied up in three of the big needs that we have in life, the needs for safety, the need for approval, and the need for a steam. Right, we need safety because we want to survive. We need approval because we want to live in a community. Uh, and we need a steam

because we want to rise up in that community. And money is it happens some pretty much buy any of those things. And if money you can buy safety for yourself, you want to be approved of, you can buy the right clothing, You can buy the right lifestyle to do that. And if you want to steam, as pretty much any say presidential election or or uh, you know, or any kind canny kind of political kind of gate illustrates, you can buy that if you have enough money and enough

will to invest in it. So money is the ultimate dopamine inducer. If money in and of itself doesn't fuel the dopamine, then it can buy something that will which makes sense again why people would be chasing that high with with wealth or greed, right, um. And it actually plays into something that has been called the scrabble strategy before. And again we're talking about the short term versus the long term, and the scrabble strategy is actually called the

greedy algorithm. And this is a computational mathematics term, and basically it says that you can do well by making whichever moves seems best at that moment and not worrying too much about future consequences. And in mathematics, the greedy algorithm builds up a solution piece by piece, always choosing the next piece that offers the most obvious and immediate benefits. So for us, right, that would translate to dopamine ding

ding ding. Okay, So in the scrabble scenario, the the idea here is that I get a high number value pile like an X or Z or something, I'm better off holding onto it, but instead I play it immediately, right yeah, Because I mean that's not playing the long game, right. It's not like chess where you have to really consider, you know, three moves ahead. You just have to inscrabble.

It really is like, whatever you have right in front of you at that very moment, you have to play and you'll you'll benefit from that strategy, so you know that. That's that's what greed sort of falls into, is this greedy algorithm. Although the greedy algorithm obviously isn't sustainable because at some point you have to uh, you know, inhabit

your future brain and start thinking about the consequences. Yeah, and I guess with human lives, the problem is that by the time you start realizing you need to play the long game, there's not In many cases, there's not that much game left. I don't know, you didn't see that a lot. I mean, it's like, like we said earlier, it's like people end up not caring during the rich years,

during the bouentiful years, which are they there? The grasshopper, right, the grasshopper in the ant That sounds right because the grasshopper, yeah, the aunt in the fable, right is is piling away for the becoming winter, and the grasshopper is like, I'm having a great time and then it gets cold and the ants like I'm set in the grasshopper dies. It's kind of a right, your rosebud, we walked. I don't know.

I can't leap to that logic. I don't know if that actually plays in all that well, but I don't know. He was chasing after greed, Yeah he was, he was. He is another iconic greedy character. But but yeah, when we're in the midst of the of the plenty, we're not thinking about the long long game, and it's easier to think about the long game when there's nothing much game left. I don't know if I'm making sense of that. No, No,

I'm getting it. I'm getting it. If you are obsessed your whole life with cheasing after the precious and uh and trying to battle do battle with the sneaky little hobbits is for the precious. Well, the precious was pretty awesome. It was one of the rings of power. So I mean, I you can you kind of have to side with Gollumn on that one, I know. But the point is that that you could you could waste your entire life, you know, obsessing over the precious, and then you no

longer have a life. You just have a shiny did get to travel pretty well, and he lived a long life. I don't know what's going on here, Robert Lamb. I'm just saying, you know, the greedy got just coming out, don't you know, hate on Sneakle too much because you know, you got to see the world of Middle Earth, and you know, and he and he his spoiler, he dies by falling into a volcano, which is something I kind

of want for myself. So okay, So there we are revealing something about you right now and your affinity for Schneegle. Like imagine if you're if your obituary said something like Robert lamp passed away today when he fell into Mountain Doon, Like, that's pretty right after chasing absolute power. Well, that makes it sound kind of sad. I guess all right, you've got it. You've got a point. All right, let's uh, let's bring over our greed. But over there, overdone? Oh

I don't know, are we Yeah? I think that's it. I mean, that's pretty we were discussing earlier, like the research into degree doesn't go quite as deep to some of the other ones we've we've talked about. Yeah, I was thinking about Dante. I was like, yeah, of course, He's like this is awful, this is bad. It's awful. It's bad, but I'm not really going to devote a lot of time the same thing with researchers so far. I mean, I guess a lot of its kind of

surface level. It comes down to we want money because money makes a lot of things possible. It allows us to have safety, it allows us to to eat, to to have shelter, it allows us to move through life. So of course we want it. And like with all the sins we've looked at, there's like a tipping point between like a normal level of wanting money and an

unbalanced level. You know, what I think would be interesting is some research on the super wealthy and wondering whether or not if you reach a certain point of wealth that you become more altruistic and you actually become more ethical. That isn't because a number of billionaires have taken that pledge to to donate a large portion of their their

wealth charity. And there are for every you know, miserly Scrooge McDuck type individual in the world, you can you can generally think of someone else who is using their fortune, or at least a large portion of their fortune to try and do good things and not just as a tax right off, right right, So, yeah, I would like to see more more numbers on that, for sure, because there are there are certainly some individuals that really make a case for the old adage money corrupts and money

is the root of all evil. But then there are some individuals who seem to stand apart from that and and really give us a little hope. Yeah, And and some people who I'm sure at four waste uff and they're driving a luxury car that that actually, uh, they're not jerks. I don't know. Ye, let me get that. Let Dante have the last word on this though, because there's a lovely little line, and this is of course translated from the Italian and then this is Virgil talking

to Dante. He says, now you can see, my son, the brief mockery of the goods that are committed to fortune for which the human race so squabbles for all the gold that is under the moon, and that ever was could not give rest to even one of these weary souls. He says that as they look king at the torture didn't help. So there you go. All right, all right, now let's call over the robot. Come over here, Arnie and bring us our basket of golden mail. Clink

clink clink. All right, well, here's one related there. Here's one related to one of our sin podcasts. Darlene writes in about our gluttony episode Dear Robert and Julie, as someone who very recently went through gastric bypass surgery, I was obviously very interested in your gluttony podcast. Here's a personal perspective that main interesting. I've always been someone who suffered from extreme gnawing hunger. In fact, my stomach would growl so loudly my dogs would bark at it. A

small amount of food would not mitigate the pain. Not not pains, but genuine pain of that hunger. Combine this with an extremely slow metabolicalism, and you have a perfect recipe for obesity. In the months of study and research prior to my gas would bypass surgery, I read that the hunger hormone garyline becomes suppressed following surgery. I didn't really understand or believe it, But now about six week

suppost surgery, I can confirm this is absolutely true. Like those twin women who always irritated me with their oh, dear, I forgot to eat today, I find that I don't eat on a specific schedule, I to forget all about food. It's a lot easier to lose weight when you were never hungry. I understand that pharmaceutical researchers have been on the trail of garland for suppressor for years but still

haven't been able to nail it. So be kind of the overweight, obese and those who may appear gluttonous, they

may have physical issues that aren't obvious. Thanks Darling. So yeah, we you know, touched on the while I wanted to touch I think we we we definitely tried to stress in the Gluttony podcast that there's a lot more going on with certainly with obesity and issues of just you know, revenous hunger than than oh I like food and I want to eat a lot of them, like it's it's it's a lot more complicated than that that there There's there's stuff going on at genetic level and that true

gluttony it certainly is far as like competitive eating goes really stands apart from the issues of plotting way. Yeah, well, one of the things we didn't get into um is something called ft O, which is a a gene variant that is often seen in obese people, and this is actually responsible for this biologically altered state, much like what

she just talked about in terms of regulating hunger. So, um, you know, unfortunately, there's actually a lot of stuff about gluttony and in diets and all sorts of stuff that we couldn't get to you in that podcast. Um. So it was it was nice to hear from her and to be able to sort of address that right now at least. Oh well, here's another email from a listener.

By the end of of Desolu and Deflu wrote in to share some thoughts on me don't eat the Panda episode, but also mentioned that they found the Cubed Earth episode very inspiring and they wanted to create an RPG roleplaying game module about it. They say, think Star Trek where Earthlings come from different sides of the cube. Woo who so ampt to write it? So I thought that was awesome. Any times podcast can inspire people, I am I'm all into it. Uh. Here's a quick email from a listener,

My name Carlos. Carlos says, after listening to your rat King podcast, I came to the realization that magneton uh and this is apparently a Pokemon character. The evolved form of magnet E is essentially a rat king. I linked some pictures, don't worry. Carlos also mentions that if I enjoyed playing Team Fortress back in college, I should be happy to know that there's something called Team Fortress too, So I will have to check that out, or maybe

I shouldn't. The Pokemon thing was interesting. I looked at the picture. I didn't quite understand it, but it looks, it looks, and then finally here is one from a listener by the name of Maricela and Marcelo right and says, hey, exclamation point. I'm sure this has happened to you, guys. In my head as I listened to you, I make a perfect picture of you, as my imagination dictates, according

to the tone or depth of your voice. The little changes when you're about to say something sarcastic or even a joke, or at least I used to until I saw the Facebook profile picture, which of course is that tough. Just look up the stuff to blow your mind on Facebook at us and uh, it will invent your life. Myself goes on to say, I gotta say, Robert, you're close to what I had in mind or is it the other way around? But I so totally pictured a

blonde Julie. Don't know why it just happened. And now whenever I'm listening to the two of you, Uh, it's so funny to think about it, I just start laughing. Great work with the podcast, the awesome dynamics between you tube really transcends the mics and makes me learn something new every time. Here's now correct me if I'm wrong. But don't you have a doppelganger in Athens, Georgia that is a blonde Julie? I did it one time? Yeah, and also I would one time. Did you slay her? Well?

I don't know if she's still there. Uh, but I was blonde until I swell. But you know, for what it's worth, so you're you're right to some degree, okay. Yeah. And my daughter is like very Nordic working and blind, so I don't know you're picking up on something there, okay. Yeah, but yes, I'm a brunette, proud brunette, okay. And and that I still can do something with the doppel game.

I thought, are you saying that, like I am the doppel ganger and I'm wearing a wig right now, and then when I leave the studio, I take my wig off and I'm blond. Maybe I don't know, yeah, maybe maybe you're you're the doppelganger you play, you replaced the actual Julie. You're completely wrong, but I don't. You shouldn't even think that there's no logic there. Don't pursue that

line of logic anymore. Okay, okay, okay, seriously, I am Julie. Okay, okay, okay. Well, well if you would, if you would like to interact with me or Julie or potentially Julie's doppel game, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter again. On Facebook, we're Stuff to Blow the Mind. Find us on there, like us, follow the feed we updated with all sorts of cool stuff about current and upcoming episodes. You know, we'd love to get feedback from you guys as well.

On Twitter, you will find us under the handles Blow the Mind, and you can always drop us a line at Blow the Mind at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow,