# Falling from the Ceiling: The "hypnic jerk" and other random stuff

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 8 Apr 2025, 59 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/65259689/podcast797_hypnicjerk.mp3

Why does the body jerk awake while sleeping? Why do Brits say "Cheerio" instead of "goodbye?" Why are daytime dramas called soap operas? These and other probing questions answered! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
[0:13] Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
[0:18] Speaker 1: I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because.
[0:22] Speaker 2: I put my hand on a book and made a.
[0:24] Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth,
[0:32] Speaker 2: Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 2: I had a choice to make today that we can
[0:59] Speaker 2: do another of authoritarianism, the assault on the constitution, Christian
[1:06] Speaker 2: Nationalism Project twenty twenty five, the lawlessness and the grift
[1:10] Speaker 2: and the sociopathy, and you know, I just thought I
[1:14] Speaker 2: need a break. I've been talking to some friends of
[1:17] Speaker 2: mine about how to cope and those of us, and
[1:24] Speaker 2: I think you may be included. Those of us who
[1:26] Speaker 2: are activated and concerned about all of this. We have
[1:31] Speaker 2: a hard time disconnecting from it, and so it's a
[1:35] Speaker 2: fire hose to the face every single day, and it
[1:38] Speaker 2: just wears you down. You become exhausted in your heart
[1:41] Speaker 2: and your mind and your body, and self care I
[1:46] Speaker 2: think is hard for people like us. Every day we
[1:50] Speaker 2: doom scroll the worst of the worst of the worst,
[1:53] Speaker 2: and it takes a toll. And I think we are
[1:57] Speaker 2: no good to anybody else if we are not caring
[2:00] Speaker 2: for ourselves. I think it's the classic caregivers conundrum. You know,
[2:05] Speaker 2: we often are so busy focused on the outside that
[2:08] Speaker 2: we neglect the interior. And I've tried to make a
[2:13] Speaker 2: point to not doom scroll as much, not lock my
[2:18] Speaker 2: eyes onto the headlines and see the worst of the
[2:20] Speaker 2: worst and fall for every click baity thing. But I'm
[2:23] Speaker 2: going to take some time and I am going to
[2:25] Speaker 2: stop away and I am going to do self care,
[2:30] Speaker 2: and I encourage you to do the same self care.
[2:36] Speaker 2: And this means sometimes fiviolity inconsequential stuff, the good stuff.
[2:45] Speaker 2: And that's what this week is going to be. We're
[2:48] Speaker 2: going to learn things because hey, we're scientists, right, everybody
[2:52] Speaker 2: can do science. We're going to expand our knowledge base
[2:55] Speaker 2: and a general knowledge show and I do these from
[2:59] Speaker 2: time time, So consider this good medicine. You're going to
[3:04] Speaker 2: learn stuff, You're going to have some fun, and you
[3:06] Speaker 2: might have some conversation pieces as you engage in discussion
[3:10] Speaker 2: and discourse out there in your own life. Okay, we're
[3:14] Speaker 2: going to talk about cap uccino and other coffee terms.
[3:19] Speaker 2: Where those terms come from? Why does our body sometimes
[3:24] Speaker 2: feel like it's falling when we're going to sleep and
[3:27] Speaker 2: then we jerk away flopping around on the mattress like
[3:30] Speaker 2: a fish? Why does that happen? What's going on in
[3:34] Speaker 2: the brain? There is a term for it and potential reason.
[3:38] Speaker 2: Speaking of fish, why do we call misdirection in a
[3:43] Speaker 2: story a red herring? We know it's misdirection, But where
[3:47] Speaker 2: did the fish correlation come from? I'm going to get
[3:50] Speaker 2: into that. Why does our skin itch? What causes an itch?
[3:56] Speaker 2: Why do we call daytime cereals soap op bris? I've
[4:01] Speaker 2: never questioned it. I just thought, oh, it's the daytime soaps.
[4:05] Speaker 2: Why isn't a soap opera today? You are going to
[4:10] Speaker 2: know the answer to this deep and probing question. Why
[4:16] Speaker 2: do and I guess this is much more common in
[4:18] Speaker 2: the UK and elsewhere. When people say goodbye, they don't
[4:22] Speaker 2: say goodbye, they say cheerio. Natalie and I hooked on
[4:28] Speaker 2: a British television show. It's on Prime it's called the
[4:33] Speaker 2: Yorkshire ve and it focuses on a veterinary practice. Actually,
[4:38] Speaker 2: there are three of them in close proximity in the
[4:41] Speaker 2: lovely countryside of Yorkshire and people just bring their animals
[4:47] Speaker 2: into these lovely veterinarians and usually the animals get fixed.
[4:54] Speaker 2: I mean, we watch this show. We're in season twelve.
[4:58] Speaker 2: I think they're up to four fourteen seasons. When we
[5:02] Speaker 2: hit the last episode and we're caught up, there will
[5:05] Speaker 2: be grieving in this house. What are we gonna watch
[5:08] Speaker 2: until season fifteen is released? We will grieve because it's
[5:14] Speaker 2: good medicine. We're sitting back, we're propped up in bed,
[5:16] Speaker 2: the dog's in our lap. Maybe I'm munching on some popcorn,
[5:19] Speaker 2: and Natalie's got whatever. And oh look, somebody needs to
[5:23] Speaker 2: pull a tooth on an alpaca. A cat has an
[5:28] Speaker 2: infected eye and can only see out of one side
[5:31] Speaker 2: of its little head. That's terrible. Can his eye sight
[5:35] Speaker 2: be restored? There's a horse with the wonky foot, a
[5:40] Speaker 2: cow that is lame. Somebody's got a chicken that ate
[5:43] Speaker 2: too much corn feed and it's all jammed down in
[5:46] Speaker 2: its body. So they gotta go. They gotta go and
[5:50] Speaker 2: fix the chicken. I don't know how. I'm trying to remember.
[5:52] Speaker 2: Did they open up the chicken. I think they opened
[5:54] Speaker 2: the chicken's body. They anesthetize it and then they literally
[5:59] Speaker 2: just yank all this stuff out of the chicken. Puppies
[6:02] Speaker 2: last night there were puppies born. Somebody brought in this
[6:06] Speaker 2: precious little frenchy. A French bulldog couldn't deliver naturally, so
[6:11] Speaker 2: the dog goes in for a cisarian and doctor Julian
[6:14] Speaker 2: slices the dog open and outcome the cutest let all
[6:18] Speaker 2: boppies you have ever said. Seven puppies and they're making
[6:22] Speaker 2: that puppy sound that the lead, you know. They're whining
[6:25] Speaker 2: and their little tongues are sticking on. Their eyes are closed,
[6:28] Speaker 2: and I just want to hug them and squeeze them
[6:30] Speaker 2: and take them all home and adopt them. This is
[6:34] Speaker 2: what my heart needs the Yorkshire vet. And I'm just
[6:39] Speaker 2: making that recommendation for free. But anyway, time and again,
[6:44] Speaker 2: whenever the patient is leaving the vets or whoever, say
[6:48] Speaker 2: cheerio and that means goodbye, have a good day. But
[6:52] Speaker 2: where does cheerio come from? So much that you and
[6:56] Speaker 2: I are going to learn the today. So let the
[6:59] Speaker 2: entering and fun and lighthearted science begin. First off, I
[7:10] Speaker 2: want to talk about a term that we use often.
[7:12] Speaker 2: We talk about people being in the lime lights, meaning
[7:17] Speaker 2: that they are the focus of public attention. Right, Well,
[7:22] Speaker 2: they were in the lime lights during this occasion or
[7:25] Speaker 2: over this event or whatever. The lime light. Why do
[7:30] Speaker 2: we call it that? Well, let's find out. In eighteen sixteen,
[7:35] Speaker 2: the British government was trying to survey Ireland for reference.
[7:40] Speaker 2: Those surveyors were using the tall mountains as points of reference,
[7:45] Speaker 2: but there was a problem. Bad weather was common, lots
[7:49] Speaker 2: of rain, lots of clouds, and this reduced visibility. Sometimes
[7:54] Speaker 2: the surveyors couldn't see the mountains. Well. It was around
[7:59] Speaker 2: this time that an English inventor, a guy named gold
[8:02] Speaker 2: Worthy Gurney, developed a new and unique kind of lamp.
[8:07] Speaker 2: It was a blowpipe that burned oxygen and hydrogen to
[8:11] Speaker 2: create a small but extremely hot flame, and when he
[8:16] Speaker 2: directed that flame toward calcium oxide, it made a very
[8:21] Speaker 2: bright light. Calcium oxide was known as quick lime. Now,
[8:28] Speaker 2: the science and the chemistry behind all of this is
[8:31] Speaker 2: pretty thick, but in very basic terms, quick lime has
[8:35] Speaker 2: a very high melting point, which meant that the atoms
[8:39] Speaker 2: would vibrate rapidly, but they would not disintegrate, so you
[8:43] Speaker 2: could burn that light for long periods of time without
[8:47] Speaker 2: the quick lime melting away. And it was an engineer,
[8:52] Speaker 2: a guy named Thomas Drummond, who was the first person
[8:56] Speaker 2: to make serious practical use of this new technology and
[9:00] Speaker 2: those dark and often stormy mountains of Ireland. He and
[9:04] Speaker 2: his survey crews would place these lime lights on the
[9:08] Speaker 2: tops of mountains visible from as far as sixty eight
[9:13] Speaker 2: miles away. The surveyors again had their reference points for
[9:19] Speaker 2: the mapping of Ireland, those lime lights showing the distances
[9:25] Speaker 2: with their white, hot flames. In eighteen thirty seven, theaters
[9:31] Speaker 2: started using lime lights to illuminate their auditoriums. The gas
[9:36] Speaker 2: lights that they had previously been using were not very bright.
[9:40] Speaker 2: It was hard for actors and audiences to really see
[9:43] Speaker 2: what was going on. The gas lights were also major
[9:47] Speaker 2: fire hazards, but lime lights, with those little blow pipes
[9:52] Speaker 2: and quick lime cylinders at the ends, they were a
[9:56] Speaker 2: much better alternative. Traditionally, there would be one limelight for
[10:01] Speaker 2: the main stage and other limelights scattered throughout the seating area,
[10:07] Speaker 2: depending on the size and shape of the auditorium. Now
[10:11] Speaker 2: there were downsides to the limelight. The little block inside
[10:15] Speaker 2: each of these lights had to be constantly adjusted, so
[10:19] Speaker 2: a monitor would have to be there tweaking it. And
[10:23] Speaker 2: of course there was still an open flame that was
[10:25] Speaker 2: very hot and deadly. Fires were still a danger, But
[10:30] Speaker 2: the limelight was a much better alternative than the gas light,
[10:34] Speaker 2: and it was used frequently for decades until a guy
[10:38] Speaker 2: named Thomas Edison came along. Edison's first practical light bulb,
[10:44] Speaker 2: produced in eighteen seventy nine, effectively snuffed out the lime
[10:49] Speaker 2: lights in favor of electric illumination. Still, our references to
[10:56] Speaker 2: these little flames continue in modern day language. If somebody
[11:01] Speaker 2: is the center of attention, they are in the lime lights,
[11:07] Speaker 2: and in that way, those tiny calcium oxide and white
[11:11] Speaker 2: hot flames continue to burn today. Here in the United States,
[11:23] Speaker 2: we often smile when we hear our British friends say
[11:27] Speaker 2: goodbye using the word cheerio. Something about cheerio just sounds
[11:33] Speaker 2: so friendly, old fashioned in the best sense of the term.
[11:38] Speaker 2: And I wish this was a word I could get
[11:41] Speaker 2: away with. You know, I'm an Oklahoma boy here in
[11:43] Speaker 2: the States, and get away with goodbye bye, see you later.
[11:48] Speaker 2: Take it easy or whatever. But if I was to
[11:50] Speaker 2: try cheerio, people would just stare at me like I'd
[11:54] Speaker 2: grown a second head, right, But the British they can
[11:58] Speaker 2: totally get away with it. What does cheerio mean? Well,
[12:04] Speaker 2: for the answer to this question, we go back to
[12:06] Speaker 2: the twelve hundreds and an Anglo French word cheer chre
[12:13] Speaker 2: that was used to describe the countenance of the face,
[12:17] Speaker 2: in other words, the expression of emotion your look. Cheer
[12:23] Speaker 2: itself was derived from a late Latin word kara cra
[12:28] Speaker 2: Kara means face, so cheer would refer to your frame
[12:33] Speaker 2: of mind, your feeling, or your mood as expressed on
[12:37] Speaker 2: the face. By the late fourteenth century, the meaning had
[12:41] Speaker 2: expanded to mean a bit more. The quote state or
[12:45] Speaker 2: temper of mind as indicated by expression. This could be positive,
[12:51] Speaker 2: it could be negative. If you were in a bad way,
[12:54] Speaker 2: you had a dreary cheer, and if you were happy,
[12:58] Speaker 2: of course, you were a person of good cheer. Seventeen
[13:03] Speaker 2: twenty we saw the first reference to cheer as something
[13:07] Speaker 2: called a shout of encouragement, possibly used as a nautical
[13:12] Speaker 2: gesture between sailors on the ocean. The greeting. What cheer
[13:18] Speaker 2: made its way across the oceans, as Puritans used the
[13:21] Speaker 2: term in southern New England. It was picked up by
[13:25] Speaker 2: the Algonquin Indians and spread outward as far as Canada.
[13:31] Speaker 2: By the early twentieth century, cheer had evolved with a
[13:35] Speaker 2: little more flair, first noticed in eighteen ninety six as
[13:39] Speaker 2: cheer oh, and then in nineteen eighteen as cheerio. Cheers
[13:46] Speaker 2: my friend's encouragement to you, may you have a good
[13:50] Speaker 2: frame of mind and a good day, a good life
[13:54] Speaker 2: all around it. And of course a version of the
[13:58] Speaker 2: original cheer can also be heard when we lift our
[14:02] Speaker 2: glasses in salute, we toast someone, we say cheers. And
[14:08] Speaker 2: on another related note, there's that famous breakfast cereal, which
[14:13] Speaker 2: debuted back in nineteen forty one as cheery Oats Oats
[14:19] Speaker 2: Cheery Oats, which four years later was shortened to just
[14:24] Speaker 2: be cheerios. Most coffee lovers enjoy a good cappuccino, but
[14:39] Speaker 2: have we ever stopped to ask what a cappuccino really
[14:43] Speaker 2: is beyond the espresso, the steamed milk, and the foam.
[14:48] Speaker 2: We hear cappuccino and we think italy rite the Italian word,
[14:52] Speaker 2: but The drink itself actually originated in Vienna, Austria. Back
[14:58] Speaker 2: in eighteen oh five, there was a coffee house located
[15:01] Speaker 2: in Vienna, and it first listed on its menu a
[15:06] Speaker 2: coffee with milk and cream. People tried it, they enjoyed it.
[15:13] Speaker 2: Other shops in the area started serving something similar, doing
[15:17] Speaker 2: their own rifts on it, adding various flavors and spices,
[15:22] Speaker 2: and the drink spread out of Austrian borders. Of course,
[15:27] Speaker 2: it went into Italy, where it was given the name capuccino.
[15:32] Speaker 2: Why did they call it a cappuccino. The drink was
[15:36] Speaker 2: actually named for its color, the same color as the
[15:41] Speaker 2: robes of Capuchin monks. The Capuchins were a sixteenth century
[15:48] Speaker 2: order in central Italy. They were reformed Franciscans. These monks
[15:55] Speaker 2: emphasized the simple life, a life of prayer and quiet templation.
[16:01] Speaker 2: And yes, they wore those types of robes that you
[16:05] Speaker 2: and I envision when somebody says, monk that milk chocolate
[16:10] Speaker 2: color of brown. There was a cord with three knots,
[16:14] Speaker 2: which represented their three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
[16:19] Speaker 2: The cord tied the hood of the robe, and the
[16:24] Speaker 2: hood was called a cappuccino. The invention of espresso machines
[16:31] Speaker 2: in the early nineteen hundreds caused cappuccinos, the drinks, not
[16:36] Speaker 2: the robes, to become known and loved far beyond Austria
[16:41] Speaker 2: and Italy all around the world. But now, when you
[16:45] Speaker 2: sip your hot, delicious espresso frothed with fluffy milk, and
[16:50] Speaker 2: you see that distinct milky brown color in your cup,
[16:55] Speaker 2: you will see echoes of the old capuchin monks, the
[17:00] Speaker 2: men humbly contemplating all things in thinking brains covered in
[17:06] Speaker 2: those capuccino hoods. By the way, American soldiers that were
[17:13] Speaker 2: stationed in Italy during the Second World War often wanted
[17:18] Speaker 2: a coffee, but they weren't always fans of the Italian espresso.
[17:22] Speaker 2: They said it was just too strong for American taste buds.
[17:27] Speaker 2: They wanted something less intense, more like the drip coffee
[17:32] Speaker 2: they enjoyed back in the United States. And so local
[17:36] Speaker 2: baristas in Italy started adding more and more and more
[17:41] Speaker 2: hot water to the heavy espresso, maybe tossing in some
[17:46] Speaker 2: milk and sugar if desired, and then they would serve
[17:49] Speaker 2: them to American troops, and that drink became known as
[17:53] Speaker 2: the Cafe Americano, which is why our Starbucks men use
[18:00] Speaker 2: and almost all coffee menus offer Americano coffee today. And
[18:08] Speaker 2: one last coffee note, this one about the machiato. An
[18:13] Speaker 2: espresso machiato is made with one shot of espresso diluted
[18:18] Speaker 2: with one to two teaspoons of steamed milk. A latte
[18:23] Speaker 2: machiato has maybe a half shot of espresso with steamed
[18:27] Speaker 2: milk and a taller glass. It is a sweeter drink.
[18:30] Speaker 2: It's more layered. The small amount of milk is supposed
[18:34] Speaker 2: to add a little bit of sweetness to it, but
[18:36] Speaker 2: it's not enough to knock the punch out of the espresso.
[18:41] Speaker 2: Some people say the machiato is just too bitter. Others
[18:45] Speaker 2: say they just prefer the stronger, straight espresso. But the name,
[18:49] Speaker 2: the Italian word machiato translates marked or stained. The added
[18:57] Speaker 2: milk and sugar leaves a mark or a stain on
[19:02] Speaker 2: the espresso. And because machiato means marked or stained, the
[19:08] Speaker 2: espresso has been marked or stained. It is a machiato.
[19:17] Speaker 2: Can you feel the pressure inside your skull as the
[19:21] Speaker 2: brain expands? We are evolving? Oh yeah, I can feel it,
[19:27] Speaker 2: and we're just getting started. More to come next. I'm
[19:38] Speaker 2: going to be speaking for the Friday night banquets at
[19:41] Speaker 2: the upcoming American Atheist National Convention. That's Easter weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
[19:48] Speaker 2: Big events on the way as well, Calgary, Alberta, Seattle, Washington, Wichita, Kansas, Nashville, Tennessee, Sarnia, Ontario,
[19:57] Speaker 2: and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Not speaking at all these,
[20:01] Speaker 2: but they're just great conventions and free thought gatherings that
[20:04] Speaker 2: you won't want to miss if you're in the area.
[20:07] Speaker 2: Details at the Thinkingatheist dot com slash events. Okay, right
[20:16] Speaker 2: now we're back to some general knowledge learning stuff about
[20:21] Speaker 2: random stuff. Joe Woodland was sitting on Miami Beach and
[20:30] Speaker 2: he was thinking about dots and dashes. That's just how
[20:34] Speaker 2: Joe was wired. He was an analytical guy. He had
[20:39] Speaker 2: learned Morse code in the Boy Scouts many years before,
[20:43] Speaker 2: and so there he was sitting in contemplation on the beach,
[20:47] Speaker 2: poking his fingers into the sand. He was writing things
[20:51] Speaker 2: in Morse code. Now, there may be a lot of
[20:56] Speaker 2: younger folks who have heard the term Morse code, but
[20:59] Speaker 2: they have no idea what I'm talking about. Morse code
[21:02] Speaker 2: is a communications method which uses dots and dashes, known
[21:08] Speaker 2: officially as dits and does international Morse code translates the
[21:13] Speaker 2: twenty six basic Latin letters A dizy into these little
[21:18] Speaker 2: characters of dots and dashes of various combinations and lengths.
[21:23] Speaker 2: And you can use Morse code with sound or flashes
[21:26] Speaker 2: of light. In fact, here is the sound of audio
[21:29] Speaker 2: morse code spelling out the word hello. Now for obvious reasons,
[21:42] Speaker 2: Morse code takes a lot of time to use, but
[21:46] Speaker 2: it was used. And Joe was there on the beach
[21:50] Speaker 2: and he was poking his dots and dashes in the sand,
[21:53] Speaker 2: and he had his fingers submerged in the sand, when
[21:57] Speaker 2: for some reason, he pulled his fingers toward him and
[22:02] Speaker 2: he looked down at the pattern he had created, and
[22:06] Speaker 2: he saw that he had four lines. And he realized
[22:10] Speaker 2: that these could be wide lines or narrow lines, since
[22:15] Speaker 2: that of just dots and dashes. And then he took
[22:18] Speaker 2: those same four fingers, still in the sand, and he
[22:21] Speaker 2: swept them around into a circle. And he thought, hmm,
[22:26] Speaker 2: this is a new kind of language. And Joe had
[22:30] Speaker 2: been looking to create a new language, and I am
[22:36] Speaker 2: guessing you are already ahead of me. Joe Woodland had
[22:40] Speaker 2: graduated from Drexel Institute of Technology with a degree in
[22:45] Speaker 2: mechanical engineering in nineteen forty eight. The head of a
[22:50] Speaker 2: local grocery store chain came to Drexel in the hopes
[22:54] Speaker 2: of developing a new way to read product data during
[22:58] Speaker 2: checkouts of the school said Nah, I'm not interested. But
[23:04] Speaker 2: Joe Woodland and his classmate Bernard Silver were interested, and
[23:09] Speaker 2: they seized the opportunity. And it was Joe's gliding fingers
[23:15] Speaker 2: in that sand that became ground zero for a new
[23:19] Speaker 2: kind of product identifier, his original version shaped in the
[23:24] Speaker 2: form of a bullseye. On October seventh, nineteen fifty two,
[23:29] Speaker 2: the two engineers received a patent for their invention with
[23:34] Speaker 2: a catchy name. It was called Classifying Apparatus and Method,
[23:39] Speaker 2: and it would find its first use in a grocery
[23:42] Speaker 2: store in Ohio in nineteen sixty six. Joe Woodland went
[23:49] Speaker 2: to work for IBM in nineteen fifty two. We stayed
[23:52] Speaker 2: until he retired in nineteen eighty seven, and he further
[23:56] Speaker 2: developed his system with laser scanning to technology and computer
[24:01] Speaker 2: micro processors as they were becoming more popular. In nineteen seventy,
[24:07] Speaker 2: product makers standardized ID codes for common grocery items, and
[24:13] Speaker 2: Joe would go on to receive the National Metal of
[24:16] Speaker 2: Technology and Innovation in nineteen ninety two, inducted with his
[24:21] Speaker 2: partner into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in twenty
[24:26] Speaker 2: eleven for bringing us those bars, the bars which were
[24:31] Speaker 2: his riff on Morse code the bar code. That first
[24:38] Speaker 2: grocery store, the one that first scanned a bar code,
[24:42] Speaker 2: was located in the small town of Troy, Ohio. This
[24:46] Speaker 2: is where the checkout equipment manufacturer National Cash Register was located.
[24:53] Speaker 2: NCR invented all kinds of cash register innovations like weighing
[24:58] Speaker 2: and pricing machines, and it introduced that first barcode friendly
[25:03] Speaker 2: register and it scanned its first item just after eight
[25:07] Speaker 2: in the morning on June twenty sixth, nineteen seventy four.
[25:12] Speaker 2: The item was a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum. The
[25:17] Speaker 2: first major company to integrate the UPC or universal product
[25:22] Speaker 2: code was Kmart. The technology exploded in the nineteen eighties
[25:27] Speaker 2: and the instant retail ID that was the barcode changed everything. Today,
[25:34] Speaker 2: they are used by about ninety percent of the top
[25:37] Speaker 2: five hundred companies in the United States, all because a
[25:43] Speaker 2: man who was once a boy scout made dots and
[25:47] Speaker 2: dashes in the sand in that moment, from a single Troy,
[25:53] Speaker 2: Miami grocery chain to the cash registers of the entire world.
[26:00] Speaker 2: Woodland literally cracked the code. Here's something I've wondered. It's
[26:12] Speaker 2: not a big deal, but it's just a short one
[26:15] Speaker 2: I thought you might be interested in. On aircraft carriers,
[26:19] Speaker 2: the runways aren't straight, like the ship isn't like here
[26:24] Speaker 2: to there, and the runway just goes linear. It's always
[26:27] Speaker 2: kind of cock eyed. Why are runways angled on aircraft carriers? Well,
[26:34] Speaker 2: this alteration came about because of the jet plane. Previously,
[26:41] Speaker 2: with propeller aircraft landing on carriers, straight runways were easier
[26:47] Speaker 2: because the planes were much lighter and they were a
[26:49] Speaker 2: lot slower. So even if the plane was trying to
[26:52] Speaker 2: hook onto those arresting wires to stop and missed, there
[26:57] Speaker 2: were barricades that could stop a prop plane that overshot
[27:01] Speaker 2: the mark. It wasn't that big a deal. But then
[27:04] Speaker 2: came the heavier, faster jets. This became a problem. So
[27:09] Speaker 2: carriers were soon built with the runway's angled by about
[27:13] Speaker 2: ten degrees for landing. This resulted in fewer landing accidents
[27:19] Speaker 2: that meant less risk to pilots, fewer repairs, the saving
[27:24] Speaker 2: of lives and money. The angled runway also freed up
[27:29] Speaker 2: a section on deck for parked or staged planes, and
[27:34] Speaker 2: some carriers were big enough to be able to accommodate
[27:37] Speaker 2: multiple launching catapults with separate launch decks, which meant more
[27:43] Speaker 2: planes in the air in less time. And then if
[27:46] Speaker 2: somebody bombed part of the deck of the ship, they
[27:49] Speaker 2: wouldn't necessarily knock out all of its launching capacity. So
[27:54] Speaker 2: that is the story of the angled deck on aircraft carriers,
[28:00] Speaker 2: result of heavy jets, the desire for more planes and
[28:04] Speaker 2: better efficiency on deck. Have you ever been lying in
[28:15] Speaker 2: bed and you're drifting off to sleep. It's bliss right.
[28:20] Speaker 2: The lights are off, you're snuggled, you're hibernating. You know,
[28:25] Speaker 2: you've got the big comforter, and you're just there. Maybe
[28:27] Speaker 2: you've got a fan on or something, and you're just
[28:30] Speaker 2: almost there. You're almost asleep. You've fallen asleep, but just barely.
[28:35] Speaker 2: And then suddenly you have the feeling that you are
[28:38] Speaker 2: falling out of the sky and you jolt awake on
[28:43] Speaker 2: the mattress. Maybe you flop around a little bit. I do,
[28:46] Speaker 2: and Natalie. Natalie is always like, what the hell, I'm
[28:53] Speaker 2: just laying there. I was falling. I was falling in
[28:56] Speaker 2: my sleep. This happens to a lot of people. I'll
[28:59] Speaker 2: bet it's happen to you. What is going on? Well,
[29:02] Speaker 2: there's a name for this. It is called the hypnic jerk. Now,
[29:09] Speaker 2: the hypnic jerk, also known as a sleep start, remains
[29:14] Speaker 2: a bit of a mystery. There's a lot of speculation,
[29:17] Speaker 2: but science has not yet determined outright what causes this.
[29:22] Speaker 2: It is suspected that when you and I are falling asleep,
[29:26] Speaker 2: something is misfiring in the reticular brain stem. This activates
[29:31] Speaker 2: a startle response when there's nothing actually there to startle
[29:36] Speaker 2: this there's like a short circuit. It is also possible
[29:40] Speaker 2: that we are having some kind of reaction to dream
[29:43] Speaker 2: like imagery. Maybe we've already started to dream and something
[29:47] Speaker 2: kind of rattles our cage or surprises us, and so
[29:51] Speaker 2: we react physically. Because the body is not yet inert
[29:56] Speaker 2: when you and I are dreaming, of course, the brain
[29:58] Speaker 2: paralyzes the body so that you know we're running in
[30:02] Speaker 2: our dream, we're not actually running around the house, right.
[30:05] Speaker 2: The brain actually makes the body not move. This is
[30:09] Speaker 2: a good thing, but if we haven't quite fallen totally asleep,
[30:14] Speaker 2: then we might see a little bit of a flash
[30:17] Speaker 2: of an image or a dream and the body will
[30:19] Speaker 2: react even more. Certain factors make the hipnick jerk more
[30:25] Speaker 2: likely to happen. Too much caffeine or other stimulants in
[30:30] Speaker 2: the body. Nicotine is another substance that kind of wakes
[30:34] Speaker 2: up the brain even when the rest of our body
[30:37] Speaker 2: is tired. Exercise is really good for us, and it
[30:41] Speaker 2: often helps to improve sleep. But if you exercise really
[30:46] Speaker 2: close to bedtime, it's possible that your brain is still
[30:50] Speaker 2: really activated and super alert even when you close your
[30:55] Speaker 2: eyes and turn off the lights. Of course, this is
[30:59] Speaker 2: not a surprise. Stress and anxiety, chronic insomnia, sleep deprivation,
[31:07] Speaker 2: this can be a big factor. It can also affect
[31:10] Speaker 2: our mood and our focus. All of this stuff combines
[31:14] Speaker 2: to make us a little bit more agitated. When we
[31:17] Speaker 2: finish the day, we are more likely to have some
[31:20] Speaker 2: kind of a brain misfire which shocks us physically. The
[31:26] Speaker 2: hypnic jerk is commonly experienced in much the same way.
[31:30] Speaker 2: The feeling of falling sometimes hallucinations, a flashing light, a
[31:34] Speaker 2: blinding light, the sounds of banging or snapping. When you
[31:39] Speaker 2: jolt to consciousness, it's almost like somebody pounded on the
[31:42] Speaker 2: wall or the bedpost. But the hypnic jerk is usually harmless.
[31:48] Speaker 2: So the next time you feel like you are falling
[31:52] Speaker 2: and then you land hard on the mattress stone, worry,
[31:56] Speaker 2: You're not broken. You are just hip nick lee jerking.
[32:03] Speaker 2: And the upside is that you can just tell your
[32:05] Speaker 2: formerly sleeping partner that it was involuntary and not your fault.
[32:22] Speaker 2: I was getting a haircut last week, and I'm sitting
[32:25] Speaker 2: in the barber chair is it a barber, stylist, technician,
[32:29] Speaker 2: whatever you call them, and you know, they put that
[32:32] Speaker 2: bib on you. They tie it around the neck and
[32:34] Speaker 2: then you've got the big sort of body tarp to
[32:38] Speaker 2: keep the hair from falling all over your clothing. And
[32:41] Speaker 2: I'm sitting there with my hands under this bib and
[32:45] Speaker 2: I suddenly got an itch on the end of my nose,
[32:50] Speaker 2: and I don't know why, but I did not want
[32:51] Speaker 2: to reach up and scratch it. She wasn't going to
[32:55] Speaker 2: cut my finger off with the scissors. But for some reason,
[32:59] Speaker 2: I was really shy about it. I'm sitting there totally still.
[33:02] Speaker 2: The itch is getting worse and worse and worse, until
[33:05] Speaker 2: finally I could not take it. I'm like, hang on,
[33:07] Speaker 2: I've got an itch, and so I yank my hand
[33:09] Speaker 2: out and scratched the end of my nose. Sweet relief.
[33:14] Speaker 2: But what caused the end of my nose to itch
[33:20] Speaker 2: like that? Well, according to the Mayo Clinic, there is
[33:24] Speaker 2: a name for itchy skin. It is prroritis, which is
[33:30] Speaker 2: hard to say. So I'm just gonna stick with itchy skin.
[33:34] Speaker 2: The itch itself is often caused when our skin gets dry,
[33:39] Speaker 2: and dry skin gets worse as we age. The skin
[33:44] Speaker 2: sometimes cracks, these tiny little microscopic cracks, and then it
[33:48] Speaker 2: gets irritated. Nerves will respond to this with something that
[33:52] Speaker 2: isn't pain, but it's discomfort, like a precursor to pain
[33:58] Speaker 2: and irritant. Other causes for the skin itch might be
[34:03] Speaker 2: the condition exima. This is a pretty serious thing, and
[34:07] Speaker 2: a lot of people dry cracked irritated skin chronically. Maybe
[34:12] Speaker 2: you brushed up against an allergen or an irritant, sometimes
[34:16] Speaker 2: resulting in a reaction like a rash, psoriasis, is a
[34:21] Speaker 2: condition that causes flaky patches and even scales to develop
[34:25] Speaker 2: on the skin, and that can kind of rub and
[34:27] Speaker 2: irritate Inflamed hair follicles might be the culprit dandriff, that
[34:34] Speaker 2: dead skin that kind of hangs out on the scalp,
[34:37] Speaker 2: or the hair parasites like head lice, those can be
[34:41] Speaker 2: really itchy. A viral infection like chicken pox or athlete's foot,
[34:48] Speaker 2: overactive thyroid might be to blame, or maybe some other
[34:52] Speaker 2: internal condition that causes itching sensations. Hormonal changes might trigger it,
[34:59] Speaker 2: or even psychological conditions like depression could make someone feel
[35:04] Speaker 2: skin discomfort. There are so many complex possibilities. The National
[35:11] Speaker 2: Institute of Health has some recommendations for chronic itchers. Instead
[35:17] Speaker 2: of scratching the itch and potentially aggravating the problem, just
[35:22] Speaker 2: pat it or tap it with your fingers. I've tried this.
[35:27] Speaker 2: That's just crap. There's nothing like a good scratch. I've
[35:32] Speaker 2: also heard scratch around it, not scratched, they at scratch
[35:36] Speaker 2: around it. I've never had success with that. Also from
[35:39] Speaker 2: the NIH, put a damp towel against the area, use
[35:45] Speaker 2: unperfumed moisturizer, whar loose cotton clothing or something that is
[35:52] Speaker 2: non abrasive fabric, and of course check that laundry detergent
[35:56] Speaker 2: to make sure there is not some chemical in there
[35:59] Speaker 2: that is making your skin all angry. Here's an origin
[36:10] Speaker 2: of an everyday thing that I thought you might enjoy.
[36:15] Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety one, the University of Cambridge, England, two innovative
[36:21] Speaker 2: men invented something so unique, so novel, so groundbreaking, so
[36:26] Speaker 2: useful that you and I would see around eight billion
[36:31] Speaker 2: versions of their invention in use all around the world today,
[36:36] Speaker 2: the webcam. These two researchers worked in a seven story
[36:41] Speaker 2: computer lab at Cambridge and they were trying to make
[36:44] Speaker 2: a locally networked surveillance camera that would broadcast video from
[36:49] Speaker 2: one location to computer monitors throughout the entire building. Now
[36:55] Speaker 2: this seems so quaint today, so easy to do. Modern
[37:00] Speaker 2: webcams are built into our entire lives, our home and
[37:04] Speaker 2: office computers, even our cell phones. And they're amazing technology.
[37:09] Speaker 2: Full color, four K resolution, enhancements to take out the
[37:13] Speaker 2: background or ad decorations, all kinds of bells and whistles.
[37:17] Speaker 2: But this was way back in nineteen ninety one, the
[37:20] Speaker 2: time when radio stations were playing both grunge bands and
[37:24] Speaker 2: color me bad Converse was the popular tennis shoe. The
[37:29] Speaker 2: Soviet Union was dissolving the big computers at that time,
[37:33] Speaker 2: the Apple II, the Commodore sixty four, the Radio Shack
[37:37] Speaker 2: TRS eighty standard IBM office computers PCs often ran on
[37:44] Speaker 2: Windows three point zero, the installation of which required seven
[37:49] Speaker 2: separate discs that would be loaded one after the other
[37:53] Speaker 2: into a drive. Installation could take hours, and the National
[37:57] Speaker 2: Science Foundation had just opened the Internet for commercial use,
[38:03] Speaker 2: introducing the World Wide Web and eventually connecting billions of
[38:08] Speaker 2: US in real time. Nineteen ninety one. This was the
[38:12] Speaker 2: time of the Intel four eighty six microprocessor, where a
[38:17] Speaker 2: twenty five megahertz processor speed and four meg of memory
[38:23] Speaker 2: were revolutionary. Now compare that twenty five megahertz then to
[38:29] Speaker 2: four gigahertz today, four meg of memory then to perhaps
[38:35] Speaker 2: thirty two gig of ram today. It's funny. Computer culture
[38:41] Speaker 2: a quarter century ago was both the time of Enlightenment
[38:45] Speaker 2: and the Dark Ages. And something like a networked camera
[38:49] Speaker 2: sending a single video feed to a building of computer users.
[38:55] Speaker 2: Nothing like that had ever been done before, but these researchers,
[38:59] Speaker 2: Quentin's Stafford Fraser and Paul Jardetski at the University of
[39:03] Speaker 2: Cambridge set themselves to make a webcam so they could
[39:08] Speaker 2: give their fellow researchers the ability to surveil the happenings
[39:12] Speaker 2: at point A, streaming to their individual monitors at points BCD, etc.
[39:19] Speaker 2: Quentin wrote the software using the X window system protocol.
[39:23] Speaker 2: Paul wrote the server program. The camera feed was a
[39:27] Speaker 2: staggering one hundred and twenty nine gray scale pixels and
[39:33] Speaker 2: it wasn't actually video. This camera would only be able
[39:36] Speaker 2: to snap three photos a minute to send up the chain.
[39:40] Speaker 2: And remember this was two years before web browsers could
[39:44] Speaker 2: even display images, So Fraser and Jardetski had to write
[39:49] Speaker 2: a specific program just to allow visuals to stream to
[39:54] Speaker 2: everybody's computer. But they did it. They built it, they
[39:58] Speaker 2: programmed it, they activated it. They connected researchers at academics
[40:04] Speaker 2: in a seven story Cambridge computer lab to a three
[40:08] Speaker 2: frame a minute webcam feed that these people would obsess over.
[40:14] Speaker 2: They would obsess over it, and not just because of
[40:18] Speaker 2: the ground breaking technology you see computer innovation, code writing,
[40:25] Speaker 2: et cetera. These things require lots of hours behind a computer,
[40:29] Speaker 2: hard work requiring a focused brain, brains which crave stimulation.
[40:37] Speaker 2: But people were tired of walking the whole building to
[40:41] Speaker 2: one specific break room only to find that the coffee
[40:48] Speaker 2: pot was empty. That's right. The first webcam was built
[40:55] Speaker 2: so that a building full of Cambridge researchers could see
[40:58] Speaker 2: if there was any coffee made before they got up
[41:02] Speaker 2: and walked all the way down to fill their mugs.
[41:04] Speaker 2: Programmer Quentin Stafford Fraser actually called his custom program ex
[41:10] Speaker 2: Coffee and it saved thousands and thousands and thousands of
[41:15] Speaker 2: needless steps down halls and stairways. It also let everybody
[41:20] Speaker 2: know when someone needed to make fresh coffee. The ex
[41:24] Speaker 2: Coffee camera has become part of technology history. It actually
[41:29] Speaker 2: has its own wiki page. It is listed on computer
[41:33] Speaker 2: history chronologies. And when that laboratory was moved in two
[41:38] Speaker 2: thousand and one, the primitive little webcam, the first webcam,
[41:43] Speaker 2: was finally switched off for the very last time. The
[41:47] Speaker 2: story of that turning off was covered in The Times,
[41:51] Speaker 2: the Washington Post and elsewhere. The last of that series
[41:56] Speaker 2: of coffee machines in that breakroom monitored by webcam. The
[42:00] Speaker 2: last one was eventually sold to a German news website
[42:04] Speaker 2: via eBay. It was restored and switched on in the
[42:08] Speaker 2: magazine's editorial office, and that coffee maker now sits in
[42:12] Speaker 2: the hinz Nixdorf Museum. Oh what a marriage coffee and
[42:18] Speaker 2: the ability to see remotely whether or not the coffee
[42:23] Speaker 2: is made. That love of the sacred java provided the
[42:27] Speaker 2: launch point for the webcam we used today in zoom meetings, webcasts,
[42:33] Speaker 2: FaceTime with family and friends, all of that from coffeecam.
[42:39] Speaker 2: The late author and humorist Terry Pratchett once said, coffee
[42:44] Speaker 2: is a way of stealing time that should buy rights
[42:48] Speaker 2: belong to your older self. Thirty five years ago to
[42:52] Speaker 2: Cambridge programmer's bought time for seven floors of coffee drinkers.
[42:58] Speaker 2: How could they know back then that their coffee cam
[43:03] Speaker 2: would change the world. Next up, let's get serious about
[43:11] Speaker 2: the soap opera. Why don't we call them a soap opera?
[43:15] Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you next. I am so thankful
[43:25] Speaker 2: for you for listening, for supporting the show, spreading the word,
[43:30] Speaker 2: and for being a patron. And if you aren't a patron,
[43:34] Speaker 2: I would so welcome a patronage from you. You can
[43:38] Speaker 2: decide how much you want to support me with how
[43:40] Speaker 2: many shows, what dollar amount, etc. You can just go
[43:43] Speaker 2: to Patreon dot com slash seth Andrews and I bow
[43:50] Speaker 2: in your general direction. Continuing our broadcast today, just some fun,
[43:56] Speaker 2: general knowledge and a break from the crazy world daytime television.
[44:02] Speaker 2: What are we talking about there, right? Game shows, talk
[44:05] Speaker 2: shows and soap operas? Right, Well, we understand the words
[44:11] Speaker 2: game and talk But why our daytime drama is called soaps.
[44:18] Speaker 2: To find the answer to this deep and probing question,
[44:21] Speaker 2: we again go back in time, this time to the
[44:24] Speaker 2: early twentieth century, to the era when radio was king.
[44:30] Speaker 2: In fact, the first program that was ever called a
[44:33] Speaker 2: soap opera aired before the age of television. It was
[44:38] Speaker 2: a show called Painted Dreams, a radio show which debuted
[44:43] Speaker 2: on the twentieth of October nineteen thirty on wg INN
[44:48] Speaker 2: in Chicago, and this radio drama aired every weekday in
[44:53] Speaker 2: a fifteen minute time slot. The target audience was housewives.
[44:59] Speaker 2: The storytory line of Painted Dreams involved in American widow,
[45:04] Speaker 2: a woman named Mother Moynahan and her unmarried daughter. Other
[45:10] Speaker 2: radio soaps to follow included shows with titles like the
[45:14] Speaker 2: Affairs of Doctor Gentry Against the Storm and Amanda of
[45:20] Speaker 2: Honeymoon Hill. The first daytime TV soap in the US
[45:25] Speaker 2: first aired back in nineteen forty nine. It was called
[45:29] Speaker 2: These Are My Children, kicking off a whole genre of
[45:34] Speaker 2: daytime TV serials designed to draw viewers into the lives
[45:39] Speaker 2: and loves and loyalties and betrayals, the scandals, the deaths,
[45:44] Speaker 2: even the resurrections of familiar characters. Soap operas, of course,
[45:50] Speaker 2: are shot cheaply, they're shot fast, and they usually happen
[45:54] Speaker 2: in common indoor sets. Serials are about quantum, not necessarily quality,
[46:02] Speaker 2: but they remain popular all of these decades later. Today,
[46:07] Speaker 2: the most watched soap opera in the United States is
[46:11] Speaker 2: The Young and the Restless, which of course features beautiful
[46:16] Speaker 2: people who are very young and very restless. Okay, fine,
[46:21] Speaker 2: but why do we call them soap operas? Well? The
[46:26] Speaker 2: early radio and television shows were often funded, not with
[46:31] Speaker 2: various commercial breaks and a whole bunch of different advertisers.
[46:36] Speaker 2: Shows were funded with one single sponsor, and a bunch
[46:41] Speaker 2: of those daytime serials were sponsored by soap makers. As
[46:48] Speaker 2: The World Turns is brought to you today by Colgate
[46:52] Speaker 2: Paul Malive, right, that was the whole show. One sponsor.
[46:56] Speaker 2: Guiding Light is brought to you today by pro in gambles,
[47:01] Speaker 2: oxidol and ivory soaps. And it was the promotion of
[47:07] Speaker 2: bath lathers and household cleaners advertised to a female audience
[47:13] Speaker 2: in the mid twentieth century of housewives and homemakers that
[47:17] Speaker 2: caused daytime serial shows to be known as the soap operas.
[47:25] Speaker 2: They were dramas funded by detergents. Okay, you're watching or
[47:35] Speaker 2: you're reading a story or listening to a story. It's
[47:39] Speaker 2: some kind of a maybe a murder mystery. Okay, it's
[47:42] Speaker 2: a yarn, a complicated puzzle where the pieces are not
[47:47] Speaker 2: all put together, and the story uses something or someone
[47:52] Speaker 2: that will mislead or distract you from the real cause
[47:57] Speaker 2: or culprit. Oh, sure was actually Colonel Mustard with the
[48:02] Speaker 2: revolver in the library, but the clues had made it
[48:06] Speaker 2: look like the killer was Miss Scarlet with the dagger
[48:10] Speaker 2: in the study. Indicators pointed to Miss Scarlet, she wasn't
[48:16] Speaker 2: the one. She was a red herring. Well, why do
[48:21] Speaker 2: we call this kind of thing a red herring? To
[48:24] Speaker 2: find out, we have to travel back to the year
[48:27] Speaker 2: eighteen oh seven, talking about an English politician and writer,
[48:33] Speaker 2: a guy named William Cobbitt, and he wrote a fictional
[48:37] Speaker 2: story that criticized the media, as the press was totally
[48:41] Speaker 2: fixated on the defeat of Napoleon. It was all they
[48:46] Speaker 2: talked about, Napoleon, Napoleon, Napoleon prematurely saying that he has
[48:51] Speaker 2: been defeated over and over again, ignoring everything else that
[48:54] Speaker 2: was going on. He was irritated, and so he wrote
[48:58] Speaker 2: a fictional story that sort of served as an analogy
[49:03] Speaker 2: for this kind of distraction. His story was the tale
[49:05] Speaker 2: of a boy who was trying to throw hunting dogs
[49:09] Speaker 2: off the scent of a rabbit that the dogs were
[49:12] Speaker 2: chasing it. So the boy grabbed a stinky fish, which
[49:16] Speaker 2: was a red herring, and he dragged it on the
[49:19] Speaker 2: ground and he rubbed it on the trees and all
[49:21] Speaker 2: that stuff to distract the dogs. And so the subtext
[49:25] Speaker 2: there was that journalists had been distracted by the stinky
[49:30] Speaker 2: fish and they had taken a wrong turn toward Napoleon
[49:34] Speaker 2: when they should have been talking about other more important
[49:38] Speaker 2: domestic issues. A herring is a silver colored fish. It
[49:44] Speaker 2: is most abundant in coastal waters off of the North
[49:47] Speaker 2: Pacific and North Atlantic. When you cook a herring on
[49:51] Speaker 2: a smoker, it changes color from silver to a brownish red.
[49:59] Speaker 2: Long before the the invention of refrigeration, the process of
[50:03] Speaker 2: smoking meat was one of the ways they would preserve it,
[50:06] Speaker 2: sometimes for months. Effective but also really really smelly, and
[50:13] Speaker 2: the silverfish turned red. Legend said that using the herring
[50:18] Speaker 2: had lots of applications. You could drag the fish on
[50:22] Speaker 2: the ground to train hounds to hunt prey. You could
[50:26] Speaker 2: acclimate horses to intense smells out on the prairie so
[50:31] Speaker 2: they wouldn't get spooked when they were on fox hunts.
[50:34] Speaker 2: Escaped prisoners might cover their tracks with fish smells that
[50:38] Speaker 2: would confuse the dogs. But it was the idiom that
[50:43] Speaker 2: was started by William Cobbitts way back in eighteen oh
[50:46] Speaker 2: seven that became the red herring reference we used today.
[50:51] Speaker 2: The red herring defined as quote a detail or remark
[50:56] Speaker 2: inserted into a discussion, either intense or unintentionally, that side
[51:03] Speaker 2: tracks the discussion. So if you hear something that sounds
[51:09] Speaker 2: like misdirection and your brain suspects an inappropriate detour, you
[51:15] Speaker 2: might have just sniffed out a red herring. We humans
[51:28] Speaker 2: have long wondered what happens when our dogs stare at us,
[51:32] Speaker 2: or tilt their heads or bark and wine, even dream.
[51:38] Speaker 2: Sometimes we can into it what our fairy friends want
[51:42] Speaker 2: or need. It's time for dinner, they want a snack,
[51:45] Speaker 2: or a walk, a car ride. Maybe they are communicating
[51:49] Speaker 2: discomfort that needs medical care. But do our dogs love
[51:55] Speaker 2: us the way we think they love us? Or do
[51:59] Speaker 2: they really of what we do for them, especially when
[52:02] Speaker 2: it comes to food. Well this became a question for science,
[52:08] Speaker 2: and in twenty seventeen, doctor Gregory Burns, a neuroscientist at
[52:14] Speaker 2: Emery University in Atlanta, decided to find out. His experiment
[52:20] Speaker 2: would include dogs, treats, lovely words, and an MRI machine. Now,
[52:29] Speaker 2: if you are picturing a dog tied to a bed
[52:32] Speaker 2: while one hundred and thirty decibels of vibrating magnetic coils
[52:37] Speaker 2: blast into their sensitive ears, relax. The whole process was
[52:42] Speaker 2: safe and comfortable and pretty ingenious. Doctor Burns got the
[52:48] Speaker 2: idea at the strangest time. It was just after the
[52:52] Speaker 2: Navy seals had dropped out of their helicopters and had
[52:55] Speaker 2: killed Osama bin Laden. Part of that sealed team was
[53:00] Speaker 2: a canine, a dog named Cairo. Cairo had leapt out
[53:05] Speaker 2: of the chopper alongside his humans, and Doctor Burns thought
[53:10] Speaker 2: to himself, man, those choppers are incredibly loud. If they
[53:14] Speaker 2: can train a dog to ride a helicopter, maybe I
[53:18] Speaker 2: could train a dog to sit inside an MRI machine
[53:23] Speaker 2: for what goal? Because doctor Burns was hoping to literally
[53:28] Speaker 2: read a dog's mind. MRI scans have long been used
[53:33] Speaker 2: to detect activity in human brains. We can see emotional
[53:38] Speaker 2: processes firing up based on various stimuli. Of course, humans
[53:43] Speaker 2: go through the machine with ear protection and using wraps
[53:47] Speaker 2: and gauze and fabric and other things. Ear protection would
[53:51] Speaker 2: be provided for any dog put inside the machine. Doctor
[53:55] Speaker 2: Burns built an MRI simulator in his own basement. He
[54:00] Speaker 2: purposefully made it noisy. It was shaped like the real thing,
[54:05] Speaker 2: with the big disc and then the bed that slides
[54:07] Speaker 2: inside of it. His family terrier CALLI, was slowly acclimated
[54:14] Speaker 2: to it. Those practice sessions went on for three months,
[54:18] Speaker 2: and then doctor Burns did a kind of casting call
[54:22] Speaker 2: for volunteers or I guess more accurately dog owners who
[54:27] Speaker 2: were volunteering their own pets, but many were appropriate for
[54:32] Speaker 2: the experiment. They did very well with the conditions, and
[54:36] Speaker 2: so the tests began. No drugs were ever used on
[54:41] Speaker 2: these dogs. They were never tied down. They could get
[54:44] Speaker 2: up and walk away at any moment. These tests were
[54:49] Speaker 2: humanely done by responsible dog lovers. One of the big
[54:55] Speaker 2: questions for the scanner was do dogs love us more
[55:00] Speaker 2: than they love food? Or do they fake love because
[55:05] Speaker 2: they want food? Or maybe we just come in second
[55:08] Speaker 2: in the love hierarchy. To answer the question, dogs were
[55:13] Speaker 2: placed in an MRI machine. They were resting comfortably relaxed,
[55:18] Speaker 2: their ears bound and protected, and researchers would alternate two
[55:24] Speaker 2: different things, either food or praise. The food was a
[55:29] Speaker 2: doggy favorite, hot dogs. The praise was what you might expect,
[55:36] Speaker 2: probably what most of us do with our own dogs
[55:39] Speaker 2: at home. You know what, a good puppy, sweet little baby,
[55:43] Speaker 2: You're doing so good. Who's the best boy, Who's the
[55:46] Speaker 2: best girl? Daddy loves you so much? That kind of thing.
[55:50] Speaker 2: By the way, in my humble opinion, this is the
[55:53] Speaker 2: only way to speak to dogs. Anyone who does not
[55:57] Speaker 2: babble like an idiot is probably a sociopath who should
[56:02] Speaker 2: be avoided at all costs. But I digress. Back to
[56:06] Speaker 2: the experiment, Doctor Burns and his team discovered some fascinating
[56:11] Speaker 2: stuff like dogs have dedicated parts of their brains just
[56:17] Speaker 2: for recognizing faces. Faces are a critical part of how
[56:22] Speaker 2: dogs interact with the world. Scientists also discovered that certain
[56:28] Speaker 2: dog brains are more prone to fear and anxiety from birth.
[56:33] Speaker 2: This makes them much more sensitive, much more appropriate to
[56:38] Speaker 2: calmer environments, and a bad choice for chaotic ones, certainly
[56:43] Speaker 2: not appropriate as service dogs. That information might help us
[56:47] Speaker 2: better rehabilitate shelter dogs who have been traumatized by abandonment
[56:53] Speaker 2: than abuse. But if you are still waiting to find
[56:56] Speaker 2: out if Daisy the snuggling golden Doodle really means it,
[57:02] Speaker 2: you will be pleased to know that the majority of
[57:05] Speaker 2: dogs responded to food and praise equally, almost straight down
[57:13] Speaker 2: the middle. Pleasure was pleasure, Goodness was goodness, and flavor
[57:19] Speaker 2: on the tongue was on par with sweet words to
[57:22] Speaker 2: the ears. In fact, and I know you'll be glad
[57:26] Speaker 2: to hear this. Of the small percentage of canines that
[57:30] Speaker 2: warn't fifty to fifty, those dogs preferred you and me
[57:37] Speaker 2: love language, sweet words spoken in a sweet cadence to
[57:43] Speaker 2: our sweet little furry babies. They preferred us over those
[57:49] Speaker 2: meaty treats. Doesn't that feel good? Now, go hug your dog,
[57:55] Speaker 2: or your cat or alpaca, you know, your hand, amster,
[58:00] Speaker 2: your chicken, whatever, Go hug your whoever it is or
[58:04] Speaker 2: whatever it is. Go and get some self care time.
[58:09] Speaker 2: I hope today has been kind of a nice reprieve,
[58:12] Speaker 2: but I'm serious, take some time prioritize you and your
[58:16] Speaker 2: mental health. You're not going to fix the world in
[58:19] Speaker 2: a day, and neither am I. We got to take
[58:21] Speaker 2: a little time, decompress and get ready for the next
[58:27] Speaker 2: day and the next fights ahead. Okay, it's been so
[58:30] Speaker 2: much fun today. Thank you for listening. Take care, I'll
[58:33] Speaker 2: see you later.
[58:34] Speaker 1: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[58:37] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
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[58:48] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.

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