Parasites. They’re everywhere in biology. They make their living exploiting the bodies of their hosts. Surprisingly, they routinely exploit their behavior as well. All parasites "zombify" their hosts if they can, changing their behavior to benefit the parasite. This brings their effects into the realm of psychology. The host can end up behaving and thinking in ways that go against its own interests.
In Part Two of this three-part podcast we see that viruses—the tiniest of parasites—also zombify their hosts. To the extent that they can, they transform them into living things that really aren’t the same critters anymore. It may seem odd, but understanding this transformation can clarify how we humans end up doing destructive things, things that don’t fit our image of who we are.
Participants. Returning for Part Two are Joan Landers, a Texas licensed professional counselor, and Dr. Bill Whitehead, a clinical psychologist and CEO of the North Carolina based company TherapyAppointment.com.
Parasites. They’re everywhere in biology. They make their living exploiting the bodies of their hosts. Surprisingly, they routinely exploit their behavior as well. All parasites "zombify" their hosts if they can, changing their behavior to benefit the parasite. This brings their effects into the realm of psychology. The host can end up behaving and thinking in ways that go against its own interests.
In Part Two of this three-part podcast we see that viruses—the tiniest of parasites—also zombify their hosts. To the extent that they can, they transform them into living things that really aren’t the same critters anymore. It may seem odd, but understanding this transformation can clarify how we humans end up doing destructive things, things that don’t fit our image of who we are.
Participants. Returning for Part Two are Joan Landers, a Texas licensed professional counselor, and Dr. Bill Whitehead, a clinical psychologist and CEO of the North Carolina based company TherapyAppointment.com.
An acorn is something you can hold in. The Palm of your being an acorn under the right conditions will grow into a mighty Oak tree, even. So you wouldn't want to tell somebody you've got a mighty Oak tree in the Palm of my hand. They might think you're crazy. They know the difference between a seed and a full green tree, but when it comes to viruses, almost everybody confuses the seed with what the seed grow to become. In this age of Karuna Barnes, we've seen lots of images of virus particles. These images are misleading though. The particles are just the seeds of the verse, looking at a seed, doesn't tell you what will become. So what do you think the bar's see and what in the world did viruses have to do with psychology? Welcome to re-imagining psychology. Psychology is an important science one that can really help us live better lives. Day to day. In this podcast, we look at what parts of psychology work well and what parts don't. If we dare to look closely, we can see ways to improve this science. You're invited to travel with us down a surprisingly twisted path, a path that leads to a better, more useful, more satisfying psychology today's episode, really zombies part two viral Zomba vacation. This is the second part of a three-part podcast. Part one was about how parasites zombify their hosts, changing their behavior in ways that serve the parasite parasites can make their hosts do things that aren't good for them. Even when the host is a human being like us. That's a strange topic and a disturbing one, feel free to listen to part one, if you haven't already. But today in part two, we're going to look at something even stranger, how viruses the tiniest of parasites, zombified their hosts, transforming them into living things that really aren't the same critters anymore. It may seem odd, but understanding this transformation can clarify how we humans end up doing destructive things. Things that don't fit our image of who we are returning for part two is Joan Landers, a Texas licensed counselor. I, John also phoning in is Dr. Bill Whitehead, a clinical psychologist and CEO of North Carolina based therapy appointment.com. Hello bill Tom. And I'm your host, Tom Whitehead, a licensed professional counselor with an abiding interest and out of control behavior. In part one, we went over some examples of peracetic Zomba. Fication parasitism is a popular lifestyle. Parasites, vastly outnumber non parasites in the animal kingdom. That's because it's much easier to rip off others' resources than to develop them yourself. Parasites come in different forms and sizes, no matter what it's formed though, every parasite makes use of its host in order to complete its life cycle and individual parasite. That's good at controlling both the body and the behavior of its host is more likely to survive. So evolution by natural selection pushes parasites to exert ever greater control. As a result, the infected host ends up doing things that are good for the parasite, but aren't necessarily good for the host. That's why some biologists call this process. Parasitic Zomba, fication. Last time we mentioned the parasite toxoplasma gondii, which forms chemical emitting cysts in the brains of warm blooded animals, including humans. And we discussed evidence that this parasite can, without our knowing it change both our personalities and our behavior. So I'm curious, what did you guys think? It's
Speaker 2:Very interesting and kind of troubling? Well, I was waxing philosophic about it and thinking am I as a human being a parasite? I mean, I, I do things to broccoli that aren't good for the broccoli. Certainly
Speaker 1:I've wondered the same thing myself. Where do you draw the line?
Speaker 2:I guess your point is, is it that they do it without the host's awareness? Is that a part of what makes the distinction, I guess there isn't a clear line there isn't
Speaker 1:A clear line, but I think the criterion is the parasites. The things we normally think of as parasites are actually in or on the bodies of the hosts. So if he got inside the broccoli, maybe it would be different.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to have to lose some weight. I think,
Speaker 3:I don't think that would work
Speaker 1:Just as in part one, I'm going to do a little intro to kickstart the discussion and here it goes, we think of viruses as infectious diseases, but there's really no dividing line between diseases and parasites. Every infectious disease is really just a small parasite. And one of the tiniest parasites is the forest. They'll last time you pointed out that the common cold virus influences us to do things that help the virus spread from one person to another said it makes our noses run and makes us sneeze and cough spreading the virus to others. And that's pretty typical. Parasites always exploit the hosts already existing capabilities, repurposing them to serve the parasites interests. Of course,
Speaker 2:That's the scary part. You know, I guess I'm used to the idea that a lion might out there stalking me or the a snake may be defending its territory, but part of my own behavior influenced by something else. It's frankly, a new idea, I guess, as I mentioned last time, I'm, re-imagining my role as being the captain of my own shipper. I think, as I said that the driver of my own bus, well, it makes me feel like sometimes people aren't really responsible for their own behavior.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is pretty creepy. And uh, I guess that's why the, uh, zombie, the zombie metaphor is very appropriate because it is kind of like being a zombie. When you end up doing things you didn't choose to do against your will, and that aren't good for you or the people around you. So there's another, there's an example. We can use another viral example. That's a pretty good one that we can use. Uh, about 10 years ago, some researchers who already knew that the larger parasites zombified, their hosts wondered if the tiny flu virus, which is much, much smaller. They wondered if that could influence our behavior. When the flu virus invades at first, there's a couple of days where the person is infectious, but doesn't feel sick yet. So these researchers guessed that the virus might take advantage of this first phase of the illness to change the patient's behavior in ways that help the virus spread to other people. They thought I might see an increase in social contacts. Well, it wasn't really ethical to infect people with the flu, just to see if it changes their behavior. So cleverly, they use the live, but weakened the virus the very one years to vaccinate people, the experiment they set up, went like this. They had people keep track of their social contacts a couple of days before they got vaccinated. And then for a couple of days afterwards, and they compared the records, the results were shocking subjects. Didn't seem to be aware that we're doing anything different, but their pattern of interaction changed dramatically. The average number of people contacted almost doubled increasing from 54 to 1 0 1 and incredibly the average time they spent with each contact dramatically decreased from over 30 minutes to less than three minutes. Each, uh, subjects were flitting from person to person like manic, butterflies, and a field of daisies. This change in behavior could hardly be more helpful to a highly infectious virus.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting how people's behavior may change just by being exposed to that. And now we're getting really spooky. I mean, when you think about your social context, I mean, you're not thinking I'd like to go over to see Joe today because I'm infected, you know, you think, gee, I like, I kinda like Joe and his wife makes great spaghetti or something.
Speaker 1:So it took to thank that. Some things like that are going on completely under the radar is a frightening thought that was in 2010. That, that, that study was done just recently in 2020, there was somebody who commented. I think it was our blog citing that study saying, now that Corona virus is here, this is really a, a topic we need to investigate because well, first off, those, both those viruses are in the same family. So if one is actually doing that to us, then probably the other is to her. You could guess that it is anyway. So that's vital information that recommendation came out and, uh, 2020 and nothing has happened
Speaker 2:Well and, and requires such a dramatic change in your thinking. And again, the very, just tasteful change, uh, uh, that I can imagine that people would be inclined to,
Speaker 1:Wow, this kind of brings up an important point and that is, there's a big hole in psychology that has to do with parasites and parasitic exemplification. All these things could be going on, but nobody's really paying attention to them right now. And the reason for that is partly because psychology doesn't have the ideas embedded in it. It's not one of the tools that people who are using psychology end up using to make sense out of things. The same thing was going on in biology for many, many years, they ignored the influence of parasites. We know Darwin for example, was disgusted by the idea, you know, that loss that, uh, injects venom and its eggs into caterpillars. And so that the grubs grow up eating the caterpillar from the inside out Darwin, put notes in one of his documents. And one of his manuscripts about how disgusted he was, that whole thing. He, he sidestepped the issue. And as a result in biology in the focus has shied away from those things, parasites and parasitic exemplification, and is just now starting to wake up to the facts. So there's a lot of controversy in the field right now,
Speaker 2:Of course, you know, it's offensive. It's like, gee, you know, you haven't paid your dues. You're using somebody else's resources. It's like a criminal. It got away with a crime. We always, we want to see them caught and punished, want to see them eating. Of course, I guess they, they say, uh, fairness is a human invention. It doesn't exist in nature. Like
Speaker 1:The world is swarming with parrots and we're trying to make our way peacefully across the ocean. And we're being attacked at every turn or all animals are being attacked because that's the easiest thing to do to take advantage of someone else or something.
Speaker 2:And, you know, we're slowly getting used to the idea, or at least I am about the unconscious way that advertisers are influencing my behavior, that, you know, this product placement in movies, it's not defined as an advertisement. And suddenly I want a Coca Cola just because I saw Coca-Cola in this movie. And somebody seemed happy after they were drinking their Coke. And I'm slowly acknowledging that. But again, this is, this is at a new level,
Speaker 1:Partly because the, the way it almost always works is under the cover of awareness. Well, that kind of depressed me a little bit, drink a Coke. You'll feel better.
Speaker 2:It's like, we're not responsible for our own behavior. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, uh, that's, that's the question who's responsible. Is it the virus? Are we responsible? The issue is so convoluted. I think that's one of the reasons why people avoid it as we discussed last time. I think it would wreck the legal system. So moving on, there's the question of what is a virus? Let's talk about where the name virus came from. Cause that's actually kind of interesting. The word virus really means something that causes a disease. So the word violent, meaning infectious, it comes from the same root word. Let's use the example of the tobacco mosaic virus. That's a virus that attacks tobacco leaves and causes discoloration and ruins the tobacco crop. When they first were investigating this, the smallest things they knew about at that time were bacteria and there were no bacteria. So somebody came up with the idea of filtering the juice from a tobacco leaf, passing it through a porcelain filter, very fine filter and seeing whether it would still be infectious cause they knew the juice was infectious. So they did that. And in fact it was infectious even after it passed through that porcelain filter. So the term built real bull virus came into being. And what that meant was it's an infectious agent that can pass through a filter. That name over the years got shortened until finally it ended up just as virus. So something that just met an infectious agent in the beginning came to mean specifically a kind of infectious lifeform. So it doesn't have a concrete, tidy, scientific meaning. It just means something very, very small that has a big impact in terms of what it parasitized. Some authors have pointed out that there are lots of things that are kind of like of viruses that maybe aren't even made of DNA or RNA that still are infectious. And there are other things that are virus light just
Speaker 2:As a sidebar, fascinating to think that years or decades before we had the electron microscope, actually see what a virus looks like. Here's a decades before we knew what DNA was or RNA was. And that happened within my lifetime. I mean, they had this fascinating to use a porcelain filter. That's just the way you use the tools that you've got. I guess I got my hats off. Yeah. Was very
Speaker 1:Creative. And I guess you, you have to do that until you get the technology to really tackle a problem. When we think about things like MRIs, which are like magic to me, they didn't exist just a few years back. So the take home message here is that sometimes things that are simple and very, very small can end up having a big impact in terms of disease dysfunction, our misbehavior, you could ask the question, well, if a virus, particles just a seed, what does it grow up to be? What does that look like? Really doesn't look like anything because when a virus infects a cell and that's what they all do, then the cell connoisseur keeps looking like a cell, but it isn't really the same critter anymore. It's not the same organism. And the reason I say that is from that point forward, it's working to reproduce the bars and not itself. So the mature form of a virus is a cell that's been transformed into a kind of a Frankenstein like creature it's part virus and part cell. So
Speaker 2:They just assumed somebody else's. Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker 1:They don't really need like an acorn grows into a tree, but a virus doesn't have a mature farm except the body. It steals.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. I guess it just jumps one, one post to the next right.
Speaker 1:And one guy who talks about these things gave it a name. He said it they're Varo cells, viral cells, part Barus and part cell and 99.9, 9% of everything that the viral cell does comes from the cell and not the virus, which is a kind of an interesting thing. Can we talk a minute about how viruses lightly come into
Speaker 2:Being? Yes. It's a fascinating idea. I mean, we think about it, this critter that can't live on its own, that can't reproduce on its own. How on earth? What's the Genesis of that? It's like coming out of nothing
Speaker 1:Since there can't exist by themselves. Like how could that possibly be? How could something that can't stay alive, survive and evolve. There is an answer to the question. Actually, there are three answers. There's still controversy in this field. So I'm going to go through these three possibilities real quick. One is that viruses evolved in the same primordial soup as the rest of the organism. So, you know, originally there were all these little bits of DNA and RNA floating around and some of them got together and formed organisms and others didn't. They ended up preying on the ones that did that's one hypothesis. There's another hypothesis that goes, well, we know certain organisms when they become parasites, they start to evolve in a negative direction. They get simpler and simpler. And finally they're totally dependent on the host to stay alive. And a good example of that would be the chloroplast, the, the low organelle that's in a living plant. So there's very good evidence that that evolved around it was originally an infection inside the plant cell and evolved backwards so that it lost its ability to replicate independently. That's another possibility. A third one is the most likely one. And that is that, you know, when you have a cell, you have DNA in the cell and the DNA and the normal in the cells, normal operation, the DNA has translated into messenger RNA, which is just an intermediate product. And that, that gets translated into protein. So the protein is what has an effect. So the hypothesis here is that the messenger sometimes gets a defect. It mutates, and it acquires the ability to reenter the production process and reproduce itself. So rather than just deteriorating, as it's supposed to do her enzymes force it to do it ends up surviving. And that becomes what's called a, plasmid a circular snippet of D DNA or RNA living inside the cell, but unable to reproduce outside the cell, people who study these things have noticed that in fact, there's a series of steps between those simple little snippets and actual viruses. And in fact, some of the snippets have become actual viruses. They know that it can either be in the cell as I plasmid that little circular piece of DNA, R it can acquire a shell and go outside. The cell
Speaker 2:Makes a lot more sense. As you say, you know, we, we already know that defects occur in the translation of RNA to DNA. I'd rather DNA RNA all the time. So that's a perfectly good explanation. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a, it's a much better explanation than the others. I think the it's bolstered by another observation. And that is when you look inside the simplest kinds of cells, the bacteria are archaic. It's another kind that looks like bacteria. They're littered with these little separate circuits of DNA or RNA, they're all over everywhere. So it looks like it happens pretty regularly actually. And these plasmids have some unusual abilities that make you think, Hey, wait a minute. They're, they're acting on their own. For one thing, they can arrange to form little tubules to connect to other bacteria so that they can make a copy of themselves and should it bend to the other man. And it makes you think, you know, something, they really are separate little parasites and a lot of them can't do that, but a lot of them can too. And it's called conjugation. When that happens at first, they thought, well, that is just the bacteria. It's having sex because it's connecting up with this other bacteria, but no genetic material from the bacterium itself has transferred. So it looks like it's, it's the plasma doing the dirty work
Speaker 2:And easier for me to stomach. They idea that little tiny creature that can't think any way it could be taken over and do things outside of this. I just don't want it. My not in my house. And I have a vague memory from biology class years ago that there's some part of each human cell that we is there originally was separate organism. And that I remember that it divides at the same time as our DNA, but it doesn't, it isn't a part of our DNA. I think it's the energy source for the cell. Is that the mitochondria or is that something the
Speaker 1:Mitochondria? So they look like little cells inside of ourselves and there are lots of them in there and there's pretty good evidence actually, that they were originally an invading organism and lost their ability to live outside the cell. And I don't mean this happened when they were ourselves. Actually, this, this happened a long time because in order for there to be multicellular animals, the cells had to develop into what's called you. You carry Arctic cells and only you carry out conform complex bodies by teaming up. Interestingly enough, um, the eukaryotes developed a nuclear membrane to enclose the nucleus where in bacteria, it's just floating around inside the cell. Some people say, and I believe this is true. That the reason that happened was to stop these plasmids from spontaneously springing up the messenger. RNA has to go outside the nuclear membrane through a little poorer in the, in the membrane, and then it can't get back in. So there's no chance for it to come back around to be reproduced again.
Speaker 2:Interesting. And do you know, that's a critter I can live with because it's mutually beneficial. You know, we help it. It helps us. I, I wish the flu would take a lesson from that.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, it, it may seem like we've gotten off track with all this biological stuff about plasmids and how they might be the origin of viruses. I mean, this is supposed to be a podcast about psychology, not biology, but there really is actually a connection you can think of plasmids as part of a cells, biochemistry that has escaped its control, the messenger RNA, which becomes a plasmin is really a normal and essential part of the life of the cell, but it's gone rogue and in taken on a life of its own, this it's come alive. Kind of thing is actually business as usual and biology, parts of living, things that are repeated a great deal, sometimes mutate, and then they start evolving in their own interest as parasites. And one of the most important jobs of the immune system is to detect and eliminate these rogues as they crop up before they can get completely, I hand the, the bottom line is that embolic, anything that's repeated a lot will eventually mutate and it may mutate into a form that will go parasitic. For example, a perfect example actually is when the cells of our bodies duplicate themselves too much, divide too much, they can mutate to form a cancerous cell. And then that cell begins to act as a parasite and its own interest with the rest of the body serving as its host. And then when it duplicates or when it replicates it forms a tumor, which SAPs the resources of the person with,
Speaker 2:Well, it sounds like not a very good parasite and that essentially killing its host
Speaker 3:Parasite, do
Speaker 2:That until it hit escape and gone into another organism to live on. So it's a one-shot deal for is parasite.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's kind of like what we were talking about with the parasite of bees that are causing part of a colony collapse phenomenon. But again, remember there's no way for the cancer to know that it's going to die if it goes too far. And
Speaker 2:So there is a kind of interesting parallel to psychology because people love to think of themselves as immutable and, you know, having their own opinions and, and gain driven by their own ultimate goals, completely ignoring that, you know, we're influenced constantly by other things,
Speaker 1:You know, we like to think we're masters of our own fate.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so this is kind of, um, the body does the same thing in biology that it says, no, no, I'm not going to let you, you know, I know what I'm doing, I'm going to live on my own. And so I've got an immune system to try to get rid of the ego, biological organic.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And because the animals that succumb to cancer die out, the ones that have some kind of immunity naturally are the ones that persist to pass those characteristics on to their progeny. And over a period of time, a lot of time, that's how immune systems developed. Yeah. I heard something interesting this morning and, uh, it was mind boggling to me, you know, since people have been scared of the coronavirus, they've been taking all these precautions. And whereas normally we have like 30 million flu cases in a year. In the last season, it was like Dan to the thousands.
Speaker 2:Right? All the masks have been helpful
Speaker 1:Right. In the awareness of the possibility of transmission and avoiding touching things.
Speaker 2:I'm certainly washed my hands more in the last year than any previous year. Me too. This is kind of all is
Speaker 1:The kind of abstract. And I apologize, but you have to go through it really to understand how this relates to behavior. The whole idea of disease is really important. And biologists have been slow to grapple with the idea of parasitism and, and its real impact on the whole world of biology. So even now, even a hundred, couple of years after things got started in biology, they're still trying to sort out and accept the fact that parasites could control entire ecosystems and that everything that we thought was happening, but just because of honest competition and in natural selection, actually a lot of it's to manipulation. So that's in the world of biology and you can step over the fence between biology and psychology. And that's what we're doing when we talk about parasitic Zomba fication, because something that's happening in the world of biology has an impact on our behavior and our thoughts, but there's no awareness at all in psychology of the issue of parasitism and actual diseased habits and biology, they're starting to accept, yes, there can be parasitic organisms and they can influence everything. But that idea hasn't even appeared in, in psychology. And yet diseased patterns are appearing one after the other, we look at them and we're like scratching our heads, but we can't come up with any answers because there are no concepts that would cover in psychology. Well, it's time to sum up a little bit. And part one of this podcast, we looked at the way, parasites zombified their hosts and park to this part. We've been talking about viruses, what they are, where they come from and how they zombified the cells. They infect parasites just can't help Zomba find their hosts. That's what they do. Blame natural selection. The ones most likely to pass into the next generation are the ones that happen to change the host behavior in ways that help them reproduce. So natural selection always pushes parasites, including viruses to change their host behavior. Even when the host is a human being like us, that's certainly something worth knowing. But part three is where things get really interesting. The focus of part three is a different, very special kind of parasite. I say special because it's the one kind that causes the most trouble for us humans. It's the only kind that could actually wipe us off the face of the planet. It's the weirdest kind of parasite mindbogglingly strange that's because the parasite is a biological form at all. Instead it's a parasitic habit, a habit that's so out of control that it started to relate to us in the same way that a virus relates to a host. And even though it is just a habit, it's a real honest to God parasite one that zombifies us, the way all parasites do. Alcoholism is a prime example. And it's one that we're going to use. And part three, the psychology we've got now is absolutely clueless about peracetic Zomba foundation. So psychology doesn't even have a name for this kind of virus like habit. It doesn't give us any way to understand such things. Maybe this three-part podcast will help fill this empty spot. The stuff we covered in part two will serve as a lead in for part three. So as a kind of review, I'll ask an answer three questions. First question. What is a virus? A virus is a tiny genetic strand that transforms host cell into a zombie after the transformation, the whole cell, which is now a viral cell works to reproduce the virus. The virus cell is what the virus seed grows up to be second question where to viruses come from occasionally a mutation and a normal cell product comes alive as a parasitic plasmid it takes on a life of its own. This kind of coming alive happens quite a lot in biology. And one of the major jobs of the immune system is to spot rogues like this and get rid of them. Final question, how come little viruses have such big power. Once they've come alive, plasmids start evolving on their own, through natural selection. They get more and more sophisticated in exploiting their host cells. Some of them evolve ways to infect other cells and some of those become full fledged viruses in part three. We'll see that though. They're just behaviors, virus like habits come alive the same way. And zombify us the same way. Please join us for that conversation, which should be out in about a week. A big thank you to Joan Landers and Dr. Bill Whitehead, who will be with us next time as well. Meantime, friends, please stay well.[inaudible].