Your Brain Is Making Decisions Without You | Dr. Melise Edwards

In this episode of Curiosity Theory, Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer sit down with neuroscientist and evolutionary biologist Dr. Melise Edwards to explore the biology of behavior and the limits of human control.

They discuss how genetics and environment interact to shape conditions like autism and schizophrenia, the role of bias in medical diagnoses, and what evolutionary biology reveals about differences in aging and disease.

The conversation also dives into behavioral plasticity, sex differences in the brain, and whether free will actually exists, raising deeper questions about how much control we really have over who we become.

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Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We did not come from chimpanzees. We did not come from bonobos.

SPEAKER_04 0:04

Judges were giving out the harshest punishments for the same crimes just before lunch.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

How much bacteria you have in your gut has a massive impact on your behavior.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

Having a good friend will literally make your brain better.

SPEAKER_05 0:46

What's going on, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Curiosity Theory. It's your co-host, Justin Schaefer, also known as Mr. Fascinate, joined with my main man, Dr.

SPEAKER_04 0:56

Dakota Tyler, astrophysicist, physics professor. And with us today, we have a very, very special guest that we would like to introduce to you all, Dr. Melise Edwards, who is an evolutionary biologist, neuroscientist, and just fascinating person to talk to.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Hey everybody. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

Today, on this episode, we're going to be diving into some of Melise's research and various different programs on birds, on uh dimorphism, right? Sexual dimorphism and behavioral adaptations, uh, the concept of free will, the concept of uh the mind versus consciousness, and you know, where she stands on all of these things. We get really, really nerdy on this episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:45

Uh you're definitely gonna fascinating conversation about sperm whales.

SPEAKER_05 1:49

Also, that. Also, sperm whales. All right, everybody, stay tuned. We're gonna jump in right now. So, yeah, yeah, we gotta talk about motherfuckers.

SPEAKER_04 1:58

Uh, so we were talking about well, would do you wanna kind of recap it? You get it was very interesting, but I don't know how much I don't know where we we caught it. You were talking about the diagnoses of like autism versus schizophrenia, or and like how well you you want to go into it, like how that there's like misdiagnoses that fall along racial lines.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Yeah, absolutely. And this is like, you know, my field, and we'll get into this a little bit later, is like sex differences and aging. So this is a little bit outside of my purview, but like you, like I'm a curious person, so I love researching everything in my field and trying to communicate that to people in the public because I think that the more we know about our brains, you know, like the more I think maybe free people will feel, like knowing like, ah, this all of this has like genetic and genomic underpinnings that are constantly like interacting with our environment and our culture, et cetera. And so I went to this talk at the NIH and this woman gave a phenomenal talk, and it was basically about autism spectrum disorder, which we know is like childhood onset, you know, developmental condition. Um, and you know, she was kind of talking about how this one gene, which is NLGN4X, is on the X chromosome, that when it is um experiencing something called copy number variants, which is that like the section of the genome is either like expanded or deleted entirely. And so for some for this particular gene, there are copy number variants that when they are super deleted, they are more associated with schizophrenia. But when they are expanded, they are associated with autism spectrum disorder, even though schizophrenia is like adult onset, um, you know, later in life diagnosis, but they do share genomic and sort of genetic underpinnings.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

All right. Hold hold up. Let me sorry to cut you off. I probably understood like 35% of the words that you said. Uh shoot. Okay. Um so in the genome, right? So this is like in your DNA.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 3:50

Basically. And you're saying that sometimes things contract and sometimes they expand. What is that? What is that?

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, think about the example I love to give people is that your genome is kind of like a massive cookbook, right? It's got all the information for making every, you know, protein, every you know, molecule in your body, basically, right? And uh the individual pages of that cookbook are like your genes, right? So this is like specific instructions for one protein that is going to, you know, it can be coding or non-coding, but let's just pretend that it's for a specific protein that can really define these cells and their function, right? So when we talk about copy number variants, it's just a big term that says, hey, there are some regions of this cookbook or genome that are expanded. So maybe instead of one page for one gene, you have five pages for the same gene. So that gene is copied or duplicated at this particular region of the genome. Um, and other people, that page could be completely missing, like that gene is you know deleted, right? Or that segment of the genome is deleted, causing in that gene to not be functional. And so that is what the copy number variants are referring to. The copy number variants are some of them shared between things like autism spectrum disorder, uh, schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.

SPEAKER_04 4:58

Okay, so those so the way that that manifests can be uh in something that we would call like a some sort of personality disorder or something like that. Is that the right term? Is personality just is that even the right term for like bipolar or autism spectrum disorder?

SPEAKER_02 5:18

I think for bipolar, but schizophrenia would be considered like a psychiatric disorder, and autism would be considered a developmental uh condition, right? Or disorder. So they all, yeah, the terminology is very like, you know, this is the best of our knowledge in 2026, right?

SPEAKER_04 5:34

So I sort of take it all with a grain of salt, but it can it can uh but it can like okay, so it can manifest in a bunch of different ways, but um you're and you're talking and like a part of the problem or I or a part of the job of health professionals is to um be able to diagnose like behaviorally what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 5:57

And it and that's obviously like not an easy thing to do, uh, but that for like young black boys specifically, there's a higher likelihood you were saying for them to get misdiagnosed with like in uh a psychiatric disorder that's more common in adults that happens like in maturity, as opposed to typical like um developmental disorders like autism, which uh manifest earlier, like in childhood. And that that in my mind, um am I and I wonder if I'm making the right connection that there's this thing where young black boys are seen as like older or more mature, or like there's the there's like a the they uh aren't seen as children in the same way that so like a doctor may go in with this this implicit bias and that actually end up in them misdiagnosing young black boys.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

Adultification, which is like treating young black children as if they are much older and much you know more like older than they actually are, right? The adultification of young black children is a huge, I think, component of that. Um, but yeah, the studies that I was reading were saying that black children on average are misdiagnosed, so given a you know, schizophrenia diagnosis when it is actually autism or diagnosed later in life. And that's a lot of that is like you know, like the systemic bias in the healthcare industry, or how close do you live, you know, to like a top-tier facility that can actually provide these diagnoses. The diagnoses aren't, you know, particularly cheap, you know, it's a significant time and money, you know, uh investment as well. So I think there are all these factors that some of these papers were alluding to, which kind of result in these later in life diagnoses and misdiagnoses for black children. Yeah, it's pretty wild, right? Um that is a little bit out of my wheelhouse, but I do think that it's fascinating just knowing that they share these genomic similarities, right? Um, but because of society, culture, all of these things can result in vastly different diagnoses. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:14

Yeah. Um, so in to get more into your wheelhouse, you said that specifically you study aging, or you you say it.

unknown 8:26

You tell me.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

No, and thanks for making me slow it down and make sure it's it's understandable. That's the hallmark of a good uh communicator, is everybody gets on the same page, right? So I study uh at high level sex differences and aging from an evolutionary perspective, right?

SPEAKER_04 8:43

Okay, so boy, uh and then to to just like boil that down, essentially that well, like aging is something that everybody does. It's something that all mo the the vast majority of living organisms age and they like kind of die out, they have life cycles, whatever. And that there are observable like scientific differences in the aging of men and women, or I guess maybe I I would say like males and females. Um, and like so you study those specifically. Could you could you like highlight at a at a high level what some of those are?

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Yeah. So I've worked with you know primates, mice, rats, uh, in human data and looked at what some of these like sex bias outcomes are. So we know that like for diseases like Alzheimer's disease, um, some dementias, there are sex bias outcomes. And um, we can look at sex at multiple levels in the body. You know, I'm of the mind that sex is not a binary phenomenon, you know, um, you know, chromosomes or hormones, those do not follow like two one of two peaks, right? It's not a bimodal distribution. Um sex operates at multiple levels in the body, and those are often uncoupled. And so what we try to do is understand like what aspect of sex, like one measure, like chromosomal organization, how is that sort of related to aging trajectories and disease? So for people who have two X chromosomes for um example, why are they overrepresented in Alzheimer's disease uh diagnoses? And so we can study that at the genetic level. Okay, what is interesting about two X chromosomes that then makes those people disproportionately represented in this disease profile?

SPEAKER_04 10:19

And are those are there are there are are these things like features or bugs? And that's which I want to like get uh dig a tiny bit deeper into why I'm asking that. Um you know, there one thing that I'm familiar with is like the different immune approaches that different animals have, right? Um, you know, you have like an animal like a mouse that's not gonna live that long. Uh they have very short lives, they're like one or two years. So they don't have like super robust immune systems to like fight off disease, which is why it's like when there's a lot of rats, they can spread disease easily. Because if you're a rat, why invest a bunch of energy into like being able to fight off a bunch of diseases? You're gonna get eaten very soon or you're gonna die very soon. Whereas something like a human or a whale or an elephant, something's gonna live an extremely long time. And it takes it takes like two years for an elephant to go through gestation and have a baby. So it's like very important. This is an animal that wants to invest a lot of resources into having a very robust immune system that is like constantly learning over the course of its life, right? And so you can um, you know, those are like those are like different features of immune systems that can apply more broadly to like the evolutionary outcome of uh an animal. And I guess I'm what the question I'm trying to ask is like are these are these outcomes that tell us something evolutionarily about the difference in um males and females, or is this just one of those things where it's like nowadays we live to be a lot older? That was never something that we were like selected for in evolution because our ancestors were dead by 40 or 50. And so, like, this is just something that's popping up, and maybe you maybe there isn't like some deeper evolutionary connection.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Ah, that's an amazing question. I think that it's potentially both, to be honest. No, I love it. Like, yeah, the great questions. It's like, but I think it could be potentially both, you know, like I've studied um species that last shared a common ancestor with humans 50 million years ago, right? Um, or 10 million years ago, or three million, right? And at each of these different junctures, we can kind of see that there are these sort of sex bias outcomes in um things like behavioral plasticity and cognition and um along the aging trajectory, like as we get older. And so it could potentially be sort of like this is just, you know, and at different levels, right? Like if you're talking about genetic, uh, there is something really interesting about having two X chromosomes for species that have that sort of system, right? Where um there are epigenetic processes, meaning that like one of the chromosomes has to be silenced, you know, or else you can imagine if you have someone with X X chromosomes versus XY chromosomes, some somebody would be getting like double the amount of gene expression, right? So part of this is what we call like dosage compensation, which is like there have there had to be evolved mechanisms to silence that second X chromosome so that you wouldn't have disparities between XX and XY people. So that's like one example of like an something that has evolved to help us, right? To help us live longer and be like healthier. But along the like abnormally long aging trajectory in humans, that process starts to sort of erode and now you start to get double the gene expression you should, especially in older age. So I think it's probably a feature and a bug, honestly.

SPEAKER_05 13:58

Interesting. Uh Mayle, so you used a term that I haven't heard before, but it sounds intuitive. Behavioral plasticity.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:06

Can you define what that is for people too?

SPEAKER_02 14:08

I'll try. Yeah, it's basically like I worked at this lab in undergrad where we were studying uh eastern bluebirds and how their behavior changed under different uh resource availability and environmental contexts. And so, you know, it was an animal personality lab. So it's like, okay, personality is a measure of like a behavior that is relatively consistent under all these different domains. Um, so the sort of behavioral plasticity is the ability to sort of have this like you are who you are, right? But it can kind of be adaptive under different environmental contexts. And so we kind of saw that in bluebirds, like if you give them a lot of food, suddenly the males become really aggressive, but the females are actually pretty not behavioral plastic, right? They're like not behaviorally plastic, they're pretty consistent in their behavior regardless of the environment. But for some species and some like the male bluebirds, their behavior, behavioral plasticity varied a lot under different conditions.

SPEAKER_05 15:06

Yeah, okay. So that's yeah. Yeah, that that's that's fascinating. It it kind of makes me think of, and I mean, I'm obviously reaching here, neuroscience is not my field of expertise, but it kind of makes me think of this idea that the modalities of behavioral plasticity that one could exhibit could have a positive correlation with uh, you know, like a framework for intelligence, right? Like thinking of how smart an organism is based on how plastic or adaptable its behavior is in response to different stimuli and circumstances.

SPEAKER_04 15:39

But like in this case, uh, in that there was a difference between males and females of the same species in one specific circumstance, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're both right in one specific context, right? For so this is the the study design was basically going around to these hundreds of uh nest boxes for eastern bluebirds in North Carolina and like giving them extra mealworms. These are very like nutrient-rich, protein heavy, and it was reliable. We were doing it every single day for months, and like they expected this, you know, resource-rich reward. And so, you know, it is like you can kind of think of it as like an evolutionarily advantaged, advantageous thing to be adaptable and flexible. And given the environment, you can kind of adapt your strategies for survival. And so the males were like, we basically kind of measured how aggressive they were to us as humans when you got extra food, or if your condition kind of stayed the same, and the males got way more aggressive the more nutrient-rich food that we gave them. Whereas the females, they were invested in their offspring no matter what.

SPEAKER_04 16:41

Oh, that's so interesting.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Oh, here's the kicker. So the males who were more aggressive actually ended up foraging more for their offspring, too, and their offspring were heavier. So there was like a reproductive fitness, right? This uh that was passed on to their offspring that made their offspring heavier and more likely to survive, too. So, again, different context, different environment, different behavioral plex like plasticity, different reproductive fitness for your entire lineage, right?

SPEAKER_04 17:08

Yeah, that's uh that's really cool because there was this study. So you you're also an evolutionary biologist, you have a background in evolutionary biology, which is probably my single favorite science outside of astronomy and astrophysics. So very, very cool. And also explains like why you get interested in like the differences in people or in animals as they age, right? Because it's like to some extent, um, trying to figure out the way things are now from an exploit explanatory uh perspective isn't really possible without understanding the the past history of the last hundred thousand years, million years, um hundreds of hundreds of millions of years. And there was this uh um experiment that they did a couple decades ago with this specific type of lizard, I forget what it was called. And what they did was they they put the they you know they took like a hundred lizards or sixty or something, and half of them they gave these p uh placebo dead empty implants, and the other half they gave these testosterone implants that like administered a steady excess of um testosterone. And one of the things that they uh observed was that the males that had additional testosterone, they were more aggressive, they engaged in more risky behavior, and they were more they were they like came around more, they saw them out in the open more, which is a risky thing if you're a small lizard, right? Because that means that you're opening yourself up to predation. You're also opening up yourself to be able to find more mates, right? Or and like show yourself off and attract other uh like the female lizards. I just thought that that was such an an interesting uh thing that if you just like if you toggle this one hormone, you get like a vast difference in behavior. And one of the other things that they noticed was that they all lost weight. And uh, I guess like the interpretation there is that having more testosterone led to more energy intensive behaviors. So they were burning, they were basically burning more energy because they were like running around, they were being seen more, they were dying quicker. And I just thought that that was like that's such a fascinating thing. Because here now you have in this example that you um brought up with the birds, it's like if you give birds more uh nutritious food, they kind of they have more energy. They perhaps the males uh engage in it sounds like more I don't know if risky is the right word. I will I don't know, I'm interested in what your um interpretation would be there, but being more aggressive it kind of is like a more risky behavior, but their offspring were like benefited from it, right? And so when there's less resources, maybe they they like scale back a little bit, but when there's more, they have this like evolutionary uh tendency to try and maximize that for their offspring. And so, like literally the chicks are getting fatter because there's more food for them because the males are being more aggressive and like finding food, and then apparently like fighting you all, like would they would they attack you or something?

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Oh, definitely. Like I was in the field all the time, and birds are like diving at your head. I used to scream at first because that was hard to get used to like these birds, even the their con specifics, which is like not the same species, but tree swallows, they're around, right? And they're they're beefing for you know resources all the time, and so you just get dove at by everybody.

SPEAKER_05 20:53

Um so you're doing field research and these birds are diving at you, you're screaming, and then you're recording that as aggression. Oh, one more of those, one more of those dives. I feel that's that's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:07

One of the I guess one of my thoughts when I I guess I think about how that field research is conducted is I wonder how birds would react to size differences among humans, right? Like if you were Shaq, you know, would would they behave respond a little bit differently towards you than you know you being out there doing the research? And like, is that is that something that is even easy to account for in this?

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Amazing question. That's like, oh, I wish you had been there with us so we could have factored that into our analysis. We were all like five foot five, you know, so I don't think we didn't bias anything there. But that's true. I mean, I'm not sure what they would have done. I think it depends on the species too. Like, tree swallows are notoriously aggressive. They will not care who you are. They're gonna dive and like protect each other. Uh, bluebirds, I'm not sure. Um, that would be an amazing thing to test. But you're right in that it's a risky behavior. I could swap them and you know, seriously hurt one of them. If I wasn't so scared, but like it is a risky behavior, but I guess they're sort of assessing in real time like the risk is worth the reward. The risk, the reward being the safety of my offspring, the safety of my, you know, supplemental nutrition, whatever. But what I thought was also fascinating that I forgot to mention is that the males who are getting more of this supplemental extra nutrition were also better uh caretakers for their offspring. So I think probably because they had to spend less time maybe foraging, um, or they're just like getting their needs met, they were able to spend less time sort of like guarding the nest, foraging, and spend more time um in biparental care. And that's an interesting thing about bluebirds is that the mom and the dad are both caring for the offspring. It's not like a um one parent doing all of the work, you know, with the caregiving. They're uh uh socially monogamous, they stay together, you know, for their most of their lives and they raise those offspring together. So yeah, better parents, more aggressive. Um, it even changed their color, you know, their coloration is like dependent on uh they have kind of structural coloration and then melanin-based coloration, and all of it is sort of signaling to the females, oh, I'm like a good mate. The brighter you are, you know, which is also a function of your nutrition, tells them, Oh, I'm a good mate, like please choose choose me as I'm the brightest male there is, you know.

SPEAKER_05 23:18

Wait, what so a function of your nutrition? So you're saying you they consume more nutritious foods and that leads to this kind of phenotypic difference in expression. Yeah. How does that how does that work? Do you do you know how that works?

SPEAKER_02 23:32

I forget the exact mechanism and whether it's the melanin-based or structural-based uh pigment, but basically there is like something about the extra protein in this uh mealworm that enables them to become brighter. And I forget the exact you know, mechanism. I can send you some papers later, but um, it is like for a lot of these species that are sexually dimorphic, meaning that the males and females are usually different sizes, maybe different colors, um, bluebirds are extremely sexually dimorphic. So the males are usually pretty bright blue and the females are like a drab, kind of like gray, like you know, typical birds. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:06

The males, yeah, yeah. The males that that's so interesting because it's like if you think about it from the the species as a whole, if you're getting more nutritious food as a male and that makes your colors pop more, and the females are choosing the males with the colors that pop the most, this is like a good thing for the females to be able to choose the males that are getting the most nutritious food. From a male's perspective, um, you I would you know, individually, they would just probably want their colors to pop regardless of what they ate. Right. But so it's like this thing that's happening between them that overall is beneficial for the offspring of the species and like survival as a whole, but like on an individual level, it's not necessarily like from an individual male's perspective, it's not better that it can only have these beautiful colors if it eats like more nutritious food. I don't know. I I think it's interesting how this like you see the like these knobs work for your whole species to succeed.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:13

And it seems it seems most uh and maybe you know some other examples of this, Melissa, but I the one that comes to mind is pea foals and and peacocks, right? Or pea was it pea hens and peacocks?

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Yeah, forget, but yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 25:25

Yeah. Um where yeah, there's like this huge inefficiency that occurs as a result of them basically, yeah, just having all of the stuff that they're dragging around. Um, as a result of. I wonder, I mean, I don't know if it's the same as with the blue with the uh bluebirds, uh, you know, whether that's a correlation with nutrition and you know how beautiful their display is. Um, I know that's supposed to also correlate with their fitness and uh obviously how they ultimately get selected as mates.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

That's fascinating. I don't know about peacocks, I'll have to look it up, but I think you're right a hundred percent that it's like it's energetically expensive to like invest in this like coloration that is again dependent on nutrition.

SPEAKER_04 26:03

It's a flex.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

It is, it's a flex, it's expensive to flex. It's a flex.

SPEAKER_04 26:06

It is a it's a big flex. It's a big flex. But another hierarchy, right? Sorry, go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Oh, yeah, I was just gonna say it signals hierarchy. Like the in a lot of these like very um species where there is sexual dimorphism, males, females looking looking different, there's a lot of signaling that's not only happening for the females, but to the other males. Like, I'm the brightest and the biggest, like, do not mess with me. So that is like it really signals hierarchy and it signals like so many different things that females are able to like kind of like select for and choose when they're choosing um a mate.

SPEAKER_04 26:34

So yeah, yeah. Another one of my favorite examples of this in birds, and I'm actually curious before I even ask that, why what is it about birds that where that has led to this thing where like the males kind of go down these uh extremely bizarre rabbit holes of looking a certain way? I'm thinking of like birds of paradise. You'll have like in the jungle a super bright neon blue bird that has these like incredible patterns, and it's like no matter what the species is, all the females look gray and they almost look like the same species. You almost can't tell any of them apart. And then, but the males, you can, you know, some of them are blue, some are red. There are some that practice dances all day with their friends, and they'll have like backup dancers, and you'll they'll and it's crazy. Uh, and all day they'll literally just practice this, and then like a female will show up looking gray again, it's like you don't even know what species it is, and then she'll like, no, he like he messed up there on you know his one two step and will fly away, and they'll just go back to practicing, and it's like that's their entire life, being performative males, yeah. Yes, nature's performative males.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

That would be hilarious. You need to do a segment on the evolution of performative males. Um, it's incredible. It's incre it's incredible to see like how that has been selected for over the course of so many, you know, different hundreds of thousands of, you know, potentially years, millions of years, right? Um it's yeah, I'm not sure, like especially for some of these extremely elaborate, like that is like the most energetically expensive thing you could possibly, you know, do. Maybe they live in environments like bluebirds are unique in that they have they were almost wiped out, right? The reason we had to do nest box surveys are that like those were artificial homes built for them because a lot of their natural habitat was completely wiped out, you know? So maybe for species that live in like these very safe, remote, nutrient-rich areas, they and that have been untouched by humans for a long time. Maybe it's slightly, slightly different. Um, but I also love the fact that like sexual dimorphism is not inherent in nature, right? Not every species has different size, male, female, um, like our closest living relatives, right? The bonobos. People think it's chimpanzees, and it is, but chimpanzees, bonobos about the same, right? Um and uh they're actually like not sexually dimorphic. And I think it might be sort of partially due to whether it is a male-dominated sort of society or female-dominated. Like bonobos, they you cannot really tell male and female bonobos apart, right? They look almost identical. Um, and it's a female-dominated society. So it's like a matriarchy, right? The females group together and form these kind of coalitions to stamp out any sort of aggressive behavior, and they resolve all conflict through like food sharing and um you know, sex, and that's even between male and male. Yeah, female, female, male, female. It's like everybody is resolving their conflicts like in a very like non-violent way. So you see that in other species too, like matriarchies versus maybe more patriarchal species, you know, it's like they assume different dimorphisms, and yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:48

So yeah, and one of the interesting I want to go back to the to the bird thing I was saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, because you bring this up in about yeah, the same as like the pygmy chimps, which bonobos are also called pygmy chimps, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:02

I think that might be a a little bit of an outdated term, but people do use that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:06

Oh, they're completely different species, yeah. Right. So bonobos and chimps are we're like almost almost equally related to both of them, right? In terms of uh lineage in the past. Yeah. And the bonobos, so the you know, the closest species alive to us, bonobos are matri a matriarchal uh uh species, and chimps are the opposite, though. The chimps are a patriarchal species and they resolve their conflict by fighting each other.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:34

So you've so like the closest animals to us, you already see that it's not it's not clearly one or the other, right? They they all they're almost opposites, which I think is um extremely interesting because a lot of times people will try to use like the nature or the evolutionary biology argument to be like, no, like humans are supposed to be a certain way. Usually it's something patriarchal with like men at the top and uh women being like subservient and this sort of thing. And it's like in nature, sometimes you do see that, and sometimes you see the exact opposite. And we've talked about this before. Sometimes you see an opposite that's so extreme it's hard to believe. Like um the female anglerfish is like a big thing that goes around and does stuff, and the male spends its whole life trying to find a female to like attach to be a sperm pump, and then just be, yeah, and it's like talk about a performative male.

SPEAKER_05 31:30

I mean, it's just one performance.

SPEAKER_04 31:32

One performance. Yeah, yeah. And uh, yeah, it's just it's so fascinating. I guess like one of the things that it seems like with humans is that we have this incredible range uh to live in many different types of ways. There's so been so many different uh cultures and I guess like philosophies and in the way people lived, and it's it's very cool. But uh yeah, I I don't know what's your what's your take on what I don't I don't even know if I want to use the word like natural, but like what what's your take on like if if if we could reset society and like forget all of the the history, which we can't do, but you know, we're we're like incepted with what we've known from our parents and their parents and their parents. Like, what do you think is like a more natural balance that humans would find? If that that may be not even be a good question.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

No, I think that is a it's an amazing question, and that's actually like the basis of so many different scholars' work, especially some of these like naturalists and black feminists who like again, they're kind of science and the humanities. I think those need to be interconnected way more to answer some of these, you know, philosophical big questions. Um, you know, I think that there are a lot of indigenous communities too who like were existing fine and had great, you know, conflict resolution and natural relationships, not only with each other, but like the earth with other animals, right? Like this has existed before. We have the blueprint and templates for this. Um, but I think, you know, recent histories of uh colonialism and different forms of supremacy have sort of like completely like nothing about what we're seeing right now is natural, even though to your point, people love to be like, oh, we come from chimpanzees and they're aggressive, therefore we're aggressive. It's like we also come from, like you said, bonobos. They are some of the most gentle, nonviolent, you know, peaceful conflict resolution species, um, some of the most intelligent species as well.

SPEAKER_04 33:32

Uh so I think just to just to tag on to what you were saying there, come like we share an ancestor with them equal distance uh in in time, as opposed to like, because I know that that's a big misunderstanding that a lot of people have with evolution. It's like it's not that we come from that like chimpanzees led to us, right? It's that like us and chimpanzees have the same like great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. Yeah, and they branched off and then we branched off.

SPEAKER_05 34:03

It's that diagram, man. It's that confusing diagram. It's as I think it's a name for it, right? With the basically the ape transitioning into the human. Oh, yeah, like seems so linear, yeah. Yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_04 34:15

You can make that though. You can you can look at the uh the the fossil record and you can like sort of recreate that. It's never a chimp, right? Because we weren't we didn't come from chimps, but it's like it's like this Austral Australopithecus. It's even before that. I think when we got by the time Australopithecus comes around, chimps had already branched off, I think like many millions of years before that. So yeah, it's it is the one that is like commonly shown for like Darwinian evolution is is misleading because it does start with a chimpanzee. Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Yeah, we last shared a common ancestor millions of years ago, you know, and that is our last, our most recent relative based on that shared common ancestry, but we did not come from chimpanzees, we did not come from bonobos, we just shared a relatively recent common ancestor. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 35:07

Yeah. So, Melissa, I know your background is also in neuroscience, right? And a lot of it focuses on um, you know, like a lot a lot of the content that you create focuses on neuroscience with humans, right? And so I guess I'm curious about whether it's this past research that you've done with birds, or maybe some of the implications of other research that you've participated in where you're able to derive some outcomes around sexual dimorphism leading to behavioral differences in humans. I know sometimes it's hard to extrapolate those kind of conclusions uh from working with other species, but I'm I'm just curious where where your work is at with that.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

Oh man, yeah, such a good question. Like, there's so much I could say, like my brain is like spinning, but like I think it's really hard to distill because I'm studying things at the genetic, molecular, cellular level often, even though in the past, like you said, like you just heard, I have studied behavioral levels of uh, you know, sexually dimorphic behaviors. But I think it's really hard in humans because, like you said, like this is not necessarily natural. A lot of our um sort of gendered behaviors, for example, are learned. They are gained through socialization, through upbringing, through cultural norms. And gender as a construct has, you know, is performed differently across every continent on earth, every community, every culture. So it's really hard to say, okay, I see this neuroscientific, you know, sexual dimorphism in the brain, you know, maybe with a region that is um, you know, really involved in like hormonal production, right? Or um that's heavily involved in uh menstruation, right? Okay, we can say there there are like these underpinnings of our brain, but to relate that to behavior is sometimes I think a little bit challenging given the like socio-cultural implications of gender, if that makes sense. Um but I guess for me, like yeah, the sexual dimorphisms looking from other species, I think does inform human uh therapies, human um contexts, I guess. Like I've studied like bluebirds, primates, whales, and I think we can learn so much from not only their behavior, like the matriarchies, the way that they um, you know, form their societies, but also like the way that they've evolved these like unique resilience mechanisms to aging. Like we should not, we actually should not be developing this number of diseases and cancers and things like that. Some of that might be a product of lifestyle and truly just like a oppression, you know, um, uh, from our societies. But uh yeah, it's I don't know, we can go in either one of those directions.

SPEAKER_05 37:34

So I'm I'm curious about that. So I mean, I I guess the notion that um we should not be developing cancers or other negative health outcomes. Um, I mean, so I guess I want to push back on that a little bit. And obviously I'm not an expert in this space at all, but um, from my understanding, um, you know, we are at a like we're at a time period in history where humans, uh, not in the US but in other parts of the world, are living longer than they've ever lived before.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 38:02

Uh and so, you know, we are encountering um degradation on a molecular level, uh, which, you know, the the basically the di the accumulation of damage of DNA is how we understand aging today, right? And aging kind of leads to uh this uh I think inability of the immune system to identify threats like cancer uh as problems and eradicate them, right? Um, and you know, these are kind of aging-related issues that we're encountering more of because we're living longer. Um, but it sounds like what you were suggesting, and hopefully I didn't misinterpret it, is that maybe we should not be having these experiences uh for some reason. So I I'd be curious about kind of why we shouldn't, you know, if this is kind of unprecedented, at least in terms of human history, like us living this long.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

No, you're you're a hundred percent correct. Like I think that I was thinking more of like um rates of cancer and disease that are purely along like racial, ethnic, and gendered lines. Like those are abnormal, but you're a hundred percent correct. Like we are the longest living humans ever to be, you know, had with our advances in medicine and uh agriculture and things like that. So like we are, like you're right. It's twofold. I think we are, we should be expecting these rates of like cancers and uh dementias and things like that later in life, especially after the age of like 70 and 80, because that's profoundly long time for humans to be alive, right? Um, especially like given our recent histories. But I do think that the rates of things like cancers and dementias may be somewhat artificial, just purely based on modifiable lifestyle factors. Um example, I don't think that it's like women are uh cishender women are usually two times more likely to have Alzheimer's. I don't think that's natural. I think that's a likely a byproduct of potentially some of the genetic and genomic things that I'm studying, but also the influence of like our environment and you know, what does it mean to sort of be um have less maybe political power or face a lot of microaggressions in your life? And what is the culmination of all of those experiences on a human body? I think that is where I kind of say like that is not natural. I think some of it is natural and some of it is, I think, artificial.

SPEAKER_05 40:08

Wait, wait, you said cisgender women are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's?

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:13

Wait, compared to a cisgendered men, is that is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Yeah, exactly. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 40:18

Wait, I thought that I thought that men had higher rates of dementia and Alzheimer's than women.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

So dementia is kind of like the big umbrella term for all different types of neurodegenerative diseases. So men usually have higher incidences of Parkinson's. That's almost like as a huge male bias. Um, Alzheimer's is actually showing a um women's bias, even though women are typically living longer lives. When you adjust for uh lifespan, you still see like a greater prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and a greater rate of um the development of like the pathology, which is like the protein aggregation in the brain, um, etc. So yeah, and it's along other marginalized communities too, like LGBTQ, you know, plus fulls, interesting African Americans, like you see these higher rates of disease that that's what I was kind of referring to as not not natural.

SPEAKER_04 41:06

Yeah, so there's this um, I know that like one thing that I've looked a lot into, and I know that you're into fitness as well. You do you climb and lift? Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 41:17

I used to be, yeah. I used to be a semi-professional rock climber, and now I just lift and run and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04 41:22

Yeah. And um, this is like you can you can look up in almost anything that's associated with health, you will find that there's a study showing that some sort of physical activity uh is correlated with it, with the better health in that thing in old age, which is very, very interesting. And like, so I've looked a lot into this, and there's like all of these mental, there's like mental health benefits for right now. There's like protective brain benefit health, uh brain health benefits for when you get older. Um, you know, muscle uh muscle, muscular strength, retention is is way up for people that live throughout their lives. And but one of the things and perhaps like the only thing that seems to have a stronger correlation with your brain health and old age is like your the quality of your social relationships. Which I think is a fascinating, a fascinating thing. Uh, because if you maintain those close relationships throughout your life, you're literally like less likely to, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, you're like less likely to experience this kind of like rapid decay of some of the uh brain degeneration that that goes on. And I mean, that was that was just like a fascinating thing to me. It's interesting enough that fitness i is impactful there, but the fact that just like having a good friend will literally make your brain better as you age is crazy.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

You're a hundred percent right. Like that is like social community um and the strength of those ties does like help prevent like the risk of developing some of these dementias. That's why like I read this study that ballroom dancing for um people who are uh getting older is one of the like best things that you can do because it combines a physical activity that is also memory-based, like keeping that your brain active and constantly having to learn new things, and the community aspect. So it kind of encapsulated both of those things in one activity. And that was like somehow associated with like longer lifespan and less prevalence of dementia, too.

SPEAKER_04 43:22

So cool.

SPEAKER_02 43:24

Yeah, I wish people knew this, you know. I think it's good to get that out there for sure.

SPEAKER_05 43:28

Yeah. I mean, we we talked before about the cultural notion, especially in America, right? Where we have this hyper-individualist society, but also the way that we treat our elderly varies widely from how elderly are treated in other countries. Yeah. We kind of, because we're so capitalist, we look at a lot of our elderly, especially after they've retired, as kind of like economically non viable. They're kind of like almost like leeches on you know the resources of the country. And a lot of times they don't have a strong role. Role in like a patriarchal or matriarchal role in a family where they're kind of sought, their counsel is sought, their wisdom is sought. A lot of times it's like, well, let me just put put grandma in a home. You know what I mean? And um and yeah, I think like my understanding is like a lot of those places um are also rampant with diseases, including STIs, but also um those are places that also have faster rates of cognitive decline uh as well. And I I might be I might be wrong about that.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

I don't know if that off the top of my head, but I wouldn't, it would not surprise me, right? Like you're saying, kind of feeling discarded, especially like in a capitalist society where your worth is tied to how much you produce, right? How much money you're making for the country, I guess, or for people or for yourself. And so I imagine that like stowing people away. And I've worked with some of these folks uh when I lost my postdoc and then was looking for jobs. I worked as a caregiver for some of these folks, and it is like tough. People who are in the like most vulnerable moments of their life, and they are completely isolated, they are completely like kind of discarded, and it really is like I would imagine that that would be an extremely difficult place to um weather some of these already like like you're to your point, already occurring age-related um sort of phenomenon. So, yeah, the privatization of these like uh caregiving facilities too is like not helping because then it introduces this like class barrier where it's like, can you afford for someone to come and help you out? You know, a lot of people might not be able to if they're just living off of a you know, maybe a couple hundred dollars a month social security check or something like that, you know? So it really is a huge, huge um issue in our society today.

SPEAKER_05 45:37

Yeah, it's and you know, this is, I think, one of the more kind of like spiritual takes on a lot of these things that I think is fascinating and also, at least to my knowledge, understudied in neuroscience. Yeah. Of like feeling good vibes, right? Like feeling like you're around positive energy, like you have community, uh, like, yeah, like this feeling can lead to positive health outcomes. If you're hospitalized, have family support, people want you to get better, you're hearing this from them. Like it and then there's like a correlation between that and this willpower to live. Like one of the things that we talked about, I think in our very first episode, was the uh anterior mid-singulate cortex, which is uh, from my understanding, like a relatively recently researched region of the brain that it correlates with a person's willpower, that you know, the size of it, uh and you can create, obviously, correct me on the nuance of this, but the size of it increases, um, you know, the density of it increases uh in correlation with like daily struggle, like working out, exercise, um, but also uh your will to live in situations that might be dire. Um, you know, this this region of the brain kind of has an influence over that. Can you shed some light on the phone?

SPEAKER_04 46:52

How would you measure a person's will to live? How do you measure that?

SPEAKER_05 46:57

Uh I'm again I remember reading the research paper a long time ago.

SPEAKER_04 47:01

No, like I no, just like a thing that's coming up is like, how do you actually measure willpower scientifically?

SPEAKER_05 47:06

That's a good point. I guess we should yeah, it's a good question for the neuroscientists. That's like that dog, right? It's like like I I feel like I got that dog in me, but it's like, is the dog a chihuahua? Is the dog a burdain? Yeah, it's like you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_04 47:17

How do we attack the dog? How do we attack that scientifically?

SPEAKER_05 47:20

Right. It's like it's in me. Like you can't really observe that, measure it at the same time. It's kind of like, you know. Well, we measure your mid-singular cortex. Is that what it's called? Mid uh the anterior mid-singulate cortex.

SPEAKER_04 47:34

Okay, okay scientifically, it seems like you have a puppy in there.

SPEAKER_05 47:38

Well, like proverbial you, but me, me specifically, not necessarily, but yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:44

Uh yeah, what's yeah, no, we just threw a lot at you. No, it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

It's like, yeah, it's a lot to think about, but um, it makes me think of this book that I think you've read Dakota too, The Determined by Sapolsky. And oh, yeah, I love that. About a lot of these things, like you know, intent, intentional systems in the brain.

SPEAKER_04 48:00

And um you want to um give like a little brief overview of determined and like what that's about?

SPEAKER_02 48:07

Yeah, sure. So this is like a book by uh Sapolsky, um, I think it's Robert uh Sapolsky. Yes. And he's like a scientist who basically wrote this book called Determined a Life, a science of life without free will, or something to that effect. And basically he kind of goes through and summarizes that like no one field, no one research paper will ever be able to conclusively say free will doesn't exist. But his argument is that if you look across all of these fields, like evolutionary biology and neuroscience and sociology and psychology and et cetera, that a lot of these cumulatively, I guess, make a great argument that free will is if we have free will, it's certainly not as much as we think. And he's on the far extreme that says, I really don't believe that free will exists at all. Uh and I probably lean more towards that camp myself as well.

SPEAKER_04 48:53

Um, and like what are some of the different angles that that makes sense to you? Because you can really go, and he does it in the book at every level. You could think about the way we evolve, you could think about literally the neurochemical responses in your brain in a given moment. You can think about how your brain functions as a system in your life in society and how that is like shaping it as well.

SPEAKER_02 49:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:15

Um, yeah, if you could like talk about some of those different things that makes you feel that way.

SPEAKER_02 49:20

Absolutely. I mean, I think that it's um it's very fascinating to see as a society. Number one, what our idea of free will is and how it came to be. Like, I think it's largely like this very religious, evangelical Adam and Eve in the garden and Eve shouldn't have eaten that apple. She had free will. Like, that's where a lot of this is kind of coming from. You know, it's not necessarily rooted in a very scientific or like heavy intellectual academic um definition, um, even though I can understand it. And I think that um for me, when I think about behavior intention, I'm not thinking about just you in the moment of a certain behavior. I'm thinking about what happened in your body, minutes, seconds, days, weeks, years, decades, and then, like to your point, evolutionarily, millions of years ago, that have created and shaped you, the person in 2026 at you know, 12:30 p.m., right? Um, he mentions in the book things like the fluctuation of hormones, like right, like testosterone usually peaks at midday. So probably right now we have the highest testosterone. We're like ready to talk about science, you know, we're activated in this very particular context. Whereas if you were asking me these questions at 6 p.m., um on an empty stomach with my hormones at different levels, I'd probably have a slightly different response, right?

SPEAKER_04 50:32

He gave a a specific, sorry to interrupt you, but he gave a specific example in the book of this hormone fluctuation as it pertains to the last time you ate. And judges, this is something that they uh studies have been done. Judges were giving out the harshest um punishments for the same crimes just before lunch. And after lunch, they were be they were more lenient. And it's like, you know, they tried their best to like remove all of the potential biases that could have been in there, and that that was something that and then they could also test. I don't know if they actually tested the the hormone levels, but you know, this is something I guess that's known if you have breakfast, how your hormones are gonna fluctuate, and then if you have lunch, and I thought that that was a crazy thing. Like, imagine you know, you did you and I did the got caught for the same thing, whatever, uh I don't know, speeding or something, whatever it was. And literally, by just the time that the judge ate food is causing them, and if you ask the judge to explain it though, the judge is not gonna be like, ah, well, I was kind of hangry. No, like the judge will go through and they'll give you a logical explanation for like why I can't be trusted and I need to learn my lesson, and why you kind of just need another chance, right? And it's like you messed up, and that would and it's just directly correlated to the hormone fluctuations throughout the day. 100%. That's insane.

SPEAKER_02 52:07

But to your point, everyone thinks that they have complete control over themselves and their brains without any sort of knowledge about even like interoception, the way that your insides feel, right? Like, do you have any inflammation or immune, you know, autoimmune diseases, right? Those can even influence your brain, your gut brain access, how much bacteria you have in your gut, has a massive impact on your behavior. Um, I like to think about this too in uh in abnormal context. Like, have you ever heard of the split brain patient studies?

SPEAKER_04 52:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

Yeah. So like a lot of those folks too, like they're like what happened in what what are what are the which one are you thinking about specifically? Um, so this is for the uh patients with epilepsy who had the corpus callosotomy. So their brain region, their brain hemispheres were severed from each other surgically. And so they have like this kind of verbal dominant left hemisphere that is completely separated from this right hemisphere. Um, so when they would flash, you know, our visual system is sort of lopsided, like your right visual field goes to your left brain hemisphere, and your left visual field goes to your right brain hemisphere. So that's an interesting model to try to test like their cognition basically after this surgery to kind of see how your brain perceives the world around you with this two independent hemispheres. And even those split brain patients, they would flash like a funny image to the left visual field, right hemisphere, and the person would start laughing, but they couldn't actually, they were not conscious of what they had just seen. Only one hemisphere saw it. And so they'd ask, like, oh, why did you just start laughing? And they'd be like, Oh, you know, I was just thinking about something funny. They were make they were they would make it up.

SPEAKER_04 53:35

Yeah, they wouldn't have to be able to do it up to explain it, yeah, not knowing at all. Yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

Like they were a hundred percent in control, and that's the part that I think people need to understand. Like, you think at all times that you are a hundred percent in the driving seat, completely unaware of all the subconscious processes that are going on in your body and in your brain that influence your behavior on a second-by-second basis, you know?

SPEAKER_05 53:56

Yeah, I think it it makes me think that we need to let go of this historical notion that this concept of the mind exists above the brain and is separate from the brain. That you know, we have this like thing above it that's in the that that's the driver that's in the driver's seat. And then it's using the brain to achieve all these things when in fact what you're describing is the brain, body, and everything, the hormonal fluctuations all acting in synchronization to derive outcomes, derive thoughts, and ultimately lead to behavior.

SPEAKER_02 54:34

A hundred percent. You know, I like, yeah, beautifully said, because I think that is like a philosophical neuroscience psychology debate of like the mind, the self, the brain, you know, and then who are you holding accountable in the event of, you know, a crime, right? Uh the mind, the self, the body, the systems that, you know, led us to kind of believe these, I think and behave in these ways from a very young age, you know. Um, I think that I don't think uh Sapolsky touched on this in the book, but even things like these um psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, right? Like they did studies of like people in Western societies like ours versus uh people with schizophrenia in Ghana and India. And only in our society do we sort of have these um symptoms that are largely like angry voices, right? Or fears of technology, like people spying on you with cameras. But in Ghana and India, some of those um, you know, hallucinations or voices were actually quite kind or funny or associated with like spiritual, you know, um knowledge, you know. So even like those things too, it's like those are things you didn't control, but the way that the culture impacts your brain and your behavior is like um underappreciated, I think, for sure.

SPEAKER_04 55:43

Yeah. Yeah, I know that right now there is this big push, or you know, maybe it's not a big push, maybe this has always been the case, but there are a lot of people who want to believe that consciousness, because neuroscience can't exactly describe exactly what it is and exactly what's happening, that it's this other thing that exists like beyond beyond the brain, right? And this is uh in alignment with the idea of like a soul, or that when you die, like all of that, even though your memories are stored in your brain and the neurochemicals are like influencing your behavior and your thoughts, that even without all that, there is still like this other consciousness. And people will go so far um as to like invoke quantum mechanics or quantum physics. It's people that don't understand typically, like on a mathematical like what quantum mechanics actually is. But the idea, I think that that is such a good book, determined. It's like if you think that can that like consciousness is this thing that is really extended beyond our brains, I think the book makes an interesting, like very scientific case for what we actually do know about the brain the brain and how it um is associated with our behavior and our thoughts and that sort of thing. And it just it doesn't, and I maybe I'll like ask you this, but to me it doesn't make any sense at all whatsoever. Even with like a basic understanding of of super basic understanding of the brain, that there that like there is a a consciousness that like we tap into that exists beyond our maybe does that make sense what I'm saying? Yeah, I think like it can't like it can't be this uh like like there's just a pool of consciousness, like avatar, and then we tap into it, like with the uh yeah, yeah, yeah. That there's like this deep consciousness in the planet, which I think is a cool thing, but even that is actually that is a physical thing though, right?

SPEAKER_05 57:38

Yeah, a why.

SPEAKER_04 57:40

But they're tapping into a thing that exists, physical network, almost like a mycelial.

SPEAKER_05 57:44

So that's different.

SPEAKER_04 57:44

Oh yeah, that's like not exactly what what's happening because we're not like you know, touching a physical network. Um it seems like a lot of like the I the the the uh like conjecture behind consciousness is that there's this like pool of thoughtful energy everywhere, and then we it like the quantum energy, yeah, and it gets injected into our body, and then it's like a shell that we have for a while, and then that goes back and our consciousness like goes back. Um what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 58:15

And I'm you know, the thing is is that I have a lot of neuroscience background in education, but I also have my own biases and belief systems that you know you know they are not shared by all scientists, but I'm kind of of the mind that like I don't like you said, Justin, I don't think you can separate the mind from the self from the brain. I don't think consciousness is a separate thing and then our brains exist outside of it, or you know, I think we are sort of kind of co-creating these realities and hallucinating them in real time. And I think that, you know, when you're when you pass, it's just goes dark, you know. I think that we're just every other animal or species on this planet. I don't think that we're we're unique in a lot of ways as humans, but I don't think that we're as unique as we maybe need to believe in order to like uh function in a healthy society. Um, but that that's just me, you know?

SPEAKER_05 59:00

Yeah, and I I think it's it's cool that you're you know comfortable expressing that, Melis. Like I think one of the things that we talked about on Curiosity Theory in the past is there is a spectrum of belief systems that people in all the sciences may have about things like death and souls and and spirits. Yeah. Um, and like all of those things can hold true and don't take away from the competency of a person as a scientist. You know, one of the things that uh we talked about before is like there's a lot of non-scientific beliefs that we hold on a daily basis that help us get through our day that maybe aren't so religiously oriented or spiritual in nature, but like this idea of like I can do anything I put my mind to.

SPEAKER_04 59:43

Yeah. Or like that's not a scientific fact. Yeah, I really can't do anything I put my mind to.

SPEAKER_05 59:49

But I don't want to think that.

SPEAKER_04 59:50

Yeah, but we yeah, that's not how you want to think about it, right? You want to that's you want to have that as a genuine belief, right?

SPEAKER_05 59:56

Or or you, like you believe you have that dog in you. Like scientifically, there's no context.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:01

I got an x-ray the other day, and they didn't they didn't see the dog in there, you know, but it's like um it's like the Carl Sagan dragging in my garage. It's like, well, it's an invisible dog. Yeah, you can't see it. And they're like, oh, well, maybe if we listen with the stethoscope, we can hear the dog bark. Nah, this dog is this dog knows sign language. It doesn't bark like that.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:23

Like scientifically, Dakota doesn't have that dog in it.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:26

You have to take my word for it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:28

But isn't it funny how you just believing that, right? That's like the psychology of it, is you just believing that something is true can actually sometimes like affect your reality, right? Like I mean, that's how society works. Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:40

No, I was I was gonna say that's how society even functions at all. We have to believe in companies and money and state boundaries and countries for this whole thing to even work.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:51

Yeah, social norms, right? These are not social norms, are not it's not like protons and charges and chemistry. It's like these are made up things that um, yeah, that that exist. It's uh super interesting. So we didn't, I want to be sure to loop back to this because I was uh very excited to talk specifically with you about this. Is um um the bower birds. Um the specific type of bird, I forget where they live, but there are these birds called bower birds that build these things called bowers, and like the males will grab little sticks and twigs and build these little like mounds that are called bowers. And the females of the species fly around and they look at them, and if they like them, they'll mate with the bird. And if they don't like it, they'll fly away. And importantly, the female doesn't like live in it, uh, she doesn't get extra food. Like, that's it. It's just do I like this thing? If I do, we can mate, and then I'm leaving and we'll never see each other again. And if she doesn't, or and if she does like it, then yeah, they'll make it, or whatever I said. So we're mate with him or she'll leave. And it's like a very interesting thing because on the surface you may think, oh well, she wants that nice thing. But she doesn't get it at all. It's not it's not in any there's no transfer of anything. Resources, there's nothing. The only transfer is in the genes from the male. And then so you have to like think about why is that valuable? Why is the genetic material from the male that built that thing specifically valuable? And it's like kind of hard to say. And you can think about natural selection, but I think an important thing to think about there is like sexual selection, right? Which is different. And I feel like that's something that especially when we talk uh get into like humans and we start having these evolutionary biology explanations, we actually over um overlook the sexual selection thing, right? Because you know, I don't have to be attracted to somebody because I think it's gonna, you know, because of survival. There can be something completely unrelated that I'm attracted to just because it evolved to be something that we were attracted to.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:08

Like playing a musical instrument or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:10

Right. And it's like, what's attractive about playing an instrument musical instrument? And I think that these bower birds are a very good example of thinking about how this extern some external thing can actually tell a female a lot that she's unaware of that she may want for her offspring. And it's like a male bird that can build that bower is clearly strong enough to like fly around and pick up the sticks. Yeah, it's smart enough to figure out how to balance them and do like bower bird engineering, right? It's like it's clever enough to not let other male birds knock it down while all this is happening. It's also completely able to feed itself. So it must be like a pretty proficient hunter, that sort of thing. And for the for the female bird, she doesn't even have to know any of that. Those may all be qualities that would be good for her offspring. She doesn't have to know that at all. All she has to do is develop a sexual attraction to the one who makes the best power. And she'll like get all of those things by proxy. Right. And I think that that's so that's so interesting because I think about like for humans, what are those things that we have where it's like we are we're attracted to certain things, and people have all sorts of strange fetishes that we may that we may call weird. We don't kink shame on curiosity theory.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:33

Yeah, no shame.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:34

Yeah, no shame at all. But it's like all sometimes you could it could be completely arbitrary, right? If it doesn't harm anything and you just have a weird sexual kink, not that it's weird, but you know, whatever. Yeah, uh, then that's fine. But there could also be like some deeper like biological benefit to the thing. Um, like Justin's obsessed with feet. I wasn't going, I wasn't going, I wasn't going to put it, but I mean, since we're being honest right now, this is uh he doesn't mind, he's a transparent guy.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:04

It's the first time I've ever heard this.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:06

And it's like, well, why is he so into feet? It's like, oh, well, maybe there's like this deeper thing where when Justin sees a nice pair of feet um that is like strong and looks healthy, that tells you something like, oh, you know, maybe um our offspring would have would be like well balanced or something like that. You know, I don't know. You could probably explain it better to me.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:26

Well, yeah, man. No, I think, you know, I let me speak for you. I saw you have the you had the dogs out a little earlier, and I just kept thinking, like, let me get it.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:32

I told you I got that dog in me. I ain't say where it was.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:36

I just I kept thinking it was in the back of my mind. I don't know how you kind of just read my mind there. I was almost like telekinetic, which I know Lisa could easily debunk, but you know, yeah, it is what it is, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:47

Um, but yeah, I think that the the Bauer, the Bauer, like we just folding in this idea of sexual selection and like how that we see how that leads to all these strange things with uh male and female birds. And I mean, presumably this happens with all animals and with all life forms, you know, including humans, including lions and tigers, et cetera. Uh, do you have like a specific favorite animal or from an interest perspective, you know, based on what you study?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

Oh, I mean, definitely. So like I thought I was gonna be the Jane Goodall of like both bonobos and whales. So like that's that's still a dream I'm holding out for. Um, and I think that's because some of their they're like the species that flip that on its head, right? The species are whales are sexually dimorphic, especially the sperm whales. Uh bonobos not so much. Um, but I think the conflict resolution and the matriarchal kind of like orientation of these societies is what kind of drew me to them.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:44

Um sperm whales also matriarchal?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:46

Yeah, the sperm whales are like female-dominated pods. The males are usually like by themselves in the ocean, just like, you know, kind of like as soon as they reach a certain age of maturity, they're like pretty sad, you know, like a lone sperm whale in the ocean until they can find a mate, basically. Um, but they they're really interesting because they have this like intergenerational care, right? What we talked about earlier. The matriarchs, the older grandparents, stay around and they help take care of the young, you know. So I think they're like probably the coolest species besides our, like we're always interested in primates as a species, you know, because of uh similarity, but they have, you know, culture, they have communication, they can talk to each other spanning like hundreds of miles.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:27

Um through those clicks, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

Yeah, the kodas, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:30

Insane.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:31

It's it's my favorite. You said it can go hundreds of miles, literally, like they can talk to each other in like seemingly different oceans. Um, and the clicks they share. Like there are the sperm whales in the Caribbean, for example, have a slightly different coda repertoire than those who are in like a different ocean, right? So it's just like they're, I think they are. We don't give them enough credit for how intelligent they are. And there is a team called Project SETI, C-E-T-I, who is trying to use machine learning to decode their language like in 2026. And so for sperm whales as well.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:01

That's a new one.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:02

Yeah, because we we know about SETI as the search for extraterrestrial. Well, that's S E T I, that's not the oh, you said C.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:08

I yeah, um, but we know of a different large language model that's being applied to dolphins, dolphin gemma. Oh, yeah, dolphin gemma, yeah. Uh, which it so it sounds like they're also doing that for sperm whales. Yeah, so it wouldn't surprise me, you know, in this case if all of those um, because they're all related, right? Dolphins are technically whales.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:30

Uh they're all they're all cetaceans, yeah. Cetaceans is dolphin, corpus, whales. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:36

They had a they had a history of being land mammals prior to going back into the ocean.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:41

100%. 50 million years ago, it was their last, you know, common ancestor decided to wade into the water and exploit this like super nutrient-rich ocean with like very little competition, you know, and so that's kind of like the origin of whales, these little like deer-looking, you know, things pedaling in the water for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:59

It's very cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:00

Yeah. But to your point about sexual dimorphisms and humans, I mean, I think that that's it's so complicated with us because we have this extra layer of like psychology and upbringing, and you know, um what you like is not necessarily only influenced by biology, biology and like reproductive fitness of your offspring, but also just like like who raised you, you know, like that could inform like who you are attracted to and all these very super complicated psychological, sociological sort of things. So yeah, I don't know. It's a it's a really good question uh and topic for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:34

Something that came to mind when you brought up how in these matriarchal um species like uh whales, the sperm whales, is that the the matriarchs, the older females are like a wealth of knowledge for the younger uh group members in the pod.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:55

And that that also before reading and writing the you know, the wisdom of older um humans, it was like it was invaluable. And like you said earlier, you know, we throw our our elderly in the nursing, they almost look in our society, in a capitalist society, your value plummets with age because like you can't work and be productive. But for the species, the elders are the most important and like the survival, if you think of like a hunter-gatherer tribe, the survival of your tribe may literally rest on like the one 70-year-old that lived through a um a famine, like a drought or something, or remembers 60 years ago when they were 10 years old, they had to traverse across somewhere, uh, and they needed to like go find some, and like that was it. And whether or not you survived was gonna be whether or not you had one person that could remember that stuff. And then so that also like taps into having the like full brain function at old age from being a very important member of this small society and having those strong social relationships. Uh-huh. And that like just the system that we've created today is so anti to what our what our ancestors went through and like what is mo, I guess, most natural and and most uh closely resembles what we have evolved for. And it's really sad uh because you almost are seeing you almost see like the opposite of what our bodies want naturally.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:34

Yeah, or even what would help, like I think we have this notion in our society that capitalism is competition is good and it makes us better and it makes us have better products. When in fact, like I think that we could probably derive an incredible therapies and you know have more efficient societies and everyone could get their needs met. Like, I think that's the exciting people think you know, activism and revolution has to be like rah, rah, negative, and we hate everything. No, it's actually like radical imagination that this could be so much better for every living person on earth, uh, including our earth, right? Our environment, if we kind of dream of different systems that really allow us to flourish, right? Um, and I think like to your point too, the citations, like I was fascinated with them about their behavior, their culture, their intelligence, but also the fact that like they undergo some of the most stressful daily acts of any species on earth. They dive like 10,000 feet into the ocean to hunt for like giant squares. Yeah. And those big brains, like they they are kind of like an anomaly. Like they to be able to dive at a depth that literally forces your ribcage to collapse under the pressure of the ocean and to hold your breath for two hours, you know, um, and then to come back to the surface and reoxygenate, and your brain is not succumbing to like stroke. They're not seeing um incidences of like dementia-like pathology in the brains of dolphins and whales, even though some of those whales live to be like bowhead whales live to be 200 years old. So it's like that is actually the perfect model to study age-related brain health and sort of translate that to humans. And that was the topic of my postdoc. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:08

Um, so that's fascinating. Yeah. Wow. That is so fascinating. So there's like because I mean, you you described dementia earlier in the episode as this umbrella term that kind of describes all these neurodegenerative disorders.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:23

And it sounds like you're suggesting your research is indicating that there's almost no signs of that after 200 years of these cetaceans being alive.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:34

Right. And I think, you know, it is a little bit confounded by the fact that it's rare to get some of those brains, you know. Like when I was a postdoc, I had a Google alert on my phone for every beached whale on earth. Like, you know, as we would want to go and collect those tissues. And I even did necropsies on uh sea leopards to try to understand, like, okay, how do I do this when I get a whale?

SPEAKER_05 1:13:52

You know, like that was always so you would get like a notification somewhere in the world and you would just pull up and then just collect the brain?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:59

We have legal uh jurisdiction for the United States. Um so I was aware of the world, so I could contact researchers in other places if we could collaborate. But our like legal, like we have to do a lot of documentation to get these samples, they're protected, thankfully, you know. Um, so I would get it.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:15

Are you going to NDA, Melise? Can you tell us the craziest place you've been? It's to get a whale brain.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:20

Well, I didn't get to go to a lot of these places um enough time, but we did get we did collect samples from uh Hawaii and off the coast of California, like basically all up and down the west coast. And um, what was really cool is that the people who are involved in this collection effort did so in a way that wasn't super extractive. They were working with indigenous communities in Hawaii to like give them ownership of the research. Like you're gonna name the samples, you're gonna tell us, you know, when we can go out and interact with these animals. In some cases, they did um tagging. So they don't have to be beached whales. You can go out on a boat and like take a little skin sample from a whale with like a it's like this dart, but the dino doesn't go down that far. So it's kind of like a superficial, it'd be like a mosquito bite for us, right? You can take a little sample of skin cells and then we take those back to the lab and we can proliferate them and keep them alive and let them divide indefinitely. And so that's what we had this huge collection of whale cells from some of these beached whales or dart, you know, um samples.

unknown 1:15:15

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:16

I wish I could have drawn. Yeah, my my dream is to, I still have kind of like connections with divers and like eventually, like I would love to start my own lab to have like whale cells and look at the behavior of whales in the wild and their sort of genomes and biology in the lab because I think we can learn a lot from you know matriarchies and also like genomic uh resilience to a lot of these stressors.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:38

Do you think that we'll ever be able to communicate with some like some of these whales? I'll use whales as an example because they definitely seem like they themselves are communicating with each other. Using something that I feel like personally we may find one day could be considered a language where certain things mean, like certain sounds mean certain things.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:06

I think we're getting there. Like I think that's what Project SETI is trying to do, you know, like decode their language and then be able to use CODAs in like an interactive way with them somehow, you know. I don't think that's it sounds sci-fi, but I think that could be possible.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:18

It's like one of the uses of uh AI that I think is would be amazing and almost like transformative for life on earth. If we could, what do you think that that future would look like if we could actually communicate with whales where they knew what we meant and we knew what they meant?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:38

Oh, that's an amazing question. I genuinely don't know, but I think from my understanding from Project Study, they talk about how learning their language could help us like be better advocates for their rights, you know. Like if whales could say, Man, all of these deep military submarines that are literally affecting our ability to eat, right? Our fishing industry that is hurting so much marine life, like that could be like a court argument.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:02

Like this whale is like represented in court to be like it almost seems like they would have equal, like way, those would be the rights uh that it seems like they would have equal rights. That would be something that you know could be argued.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:15

I'm trying to hear some whale trap music also. I don't know why that came in, but like I want to hear some entertainment that they mean that that's way less I wonder if they sing for fun. Yeah, so let me ask you this, Melee. This this is a thought-provoking question. Because this is something that you're so passionate about, if you could easily communicate with a whale, what question would you ask it? Uh first was the first question you'd ask.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:39

Oh, such a good question. I don't know. Like, I think there's this book called Um Undrowned, and it's called Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals. And she talks about like our shared, especially for I think a lot of indigenous communities and African American communities, and how we have this similar um relationship with capitalism, right? Like the whales uh were trapped almost like some of them were almost completely extinct by humans, right? The whaling industry. And we know the transatlantic slave trade literally altered the migratory pathways of sharks and other animals because it was so disruptive and so um cruel, right? So I guess I'm not really sure exactly what I would ask them first. Um I I would I guess sometimes my mind goes to like, how have we impacted you, right? Like, how can we like live in relationship with these animals in a way that is just? Because I think in society today, we think of justice as like an outcome, you know, like if someone hurts me, you go behind bars, that's justice, right? And I don't think that I don't, I'm not really of that mind. I think that justice is like a set of relationships between people, between species, between the environment. And so I think the first question would be like, how can we engage like a just relationship with these animals, right? That is neither exploitive or harmful to them. Because that's what we're doing right now as humans, unfortunately. What would your question?

SPEAKER_05 1:18:55

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:55

Yeah, what would you ask?

SPEAKER_05 1:18:56

I think that's a I think that's fascinating. Um, you know, what I think about obviously, I think this that's the most important question, or one of the most important questions. Um, but I guess like almost from a lore standpoint, we talked about is this I mean, you have the species that can live for up to 200 years. Yeah, they probably passed down information, uh like like maybe I'm anthropomorphizing them a little bit, but maybe they pass down information through storytelling in some kind of way that's similar to ours.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:22

And I would want to know like what are some of the greatest stories that you know they've told of you know their history. You know, like maybe there's things that have been passed down prior to the existence of human civilization that whales have observed us doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:38

That or or maybe like let's not make it so human-centric, like whales that have have done themselves.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:43

That you know were 30 happened 20, 30,000 years ago, hundreds of thousands of years ago, that are I don't know, just like phenomenal stories. That's so cool. Such a fascinating thing to uncover.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:53

Yeah, that would that would be that would be super interesting, right? That could be an amazing book, too.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:58

Yeah, like interspecies and wisdom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:01

The tales of the whales.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:03

Oh, that's the book. That's the title. Yeah, like maybe they they imagine like sort of magical creatures that could leap out of the water but and like stay there or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:13

Ooh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:14

You know, for them, they think of like a uh, you know, a whale that could go on land and like defeat the enemy, the the human enemies, you know, that are like the ups. Yeah, right. Uh that is that is super interesting. I think something that I would um be interested in knowing is like how they how they see or think of, if they can like communicate in this way, how they like see or think of other species that they also recognize are like intelligent and communicating in their own way, right? So like maybe how I know that there's a lot of interactions between sperm whales and orcas. I know that I uh I hear that orcas are kind of kind of like the menaces of the uh of the ocean. But one of the animals that they can't uh really mess with, and uh please let me know if this is wrong, is sperm whales. Like if there is an apex predator above orcas in the ocean, to my understanding, it's it's sperm whales.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:13

Because they're giant, like you can't mess with them. That's like the size of like four school buses, like an orca doesn't stand a chance. Their tail alone could knock them out, you know, and that's like the one species that orcas. I mean, bowhead whales are other really, really big species.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:26

What about blue whales? Aren't blue whales the biggest ones? That's true. But they they'll don't they eat their babies? They can't blue whales, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:34

Because there's like a certain advantage, like I think sperm whales are this really interesting size and they have the largest brains on earth. And so, like, I think that maybe blue whales, it's like being able to navigate and escape and also guard your young, you know, especially when it's like maybe just a mom and their calf, right? But with sperm whales, you're having to go up against like six old ladies, you know, and they're all quick and maneuverable and they're intelligent and they're, you know, like an intelligence is like, okay, how do we define that? But I think in in effect, like work is probably fear sperm whales a lot because they're also tooth predators, right? Some of these other whales.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:07

Yeah, they have teeth, they're not just eating like um whales.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:12

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they I mean their teeth are massive, like they could really do some damage. Whereas other whales, it's like, uh, we can probably quickly grab your calf and then run off with it, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question, too. Like they have relationships. You can see, like, um, I've done some whaling trips where just going out on a boat and like trying to observe with binoculars and stuff, and you can see the whales like they all be in the same region of dolphins and kind of interacting with each other. So that would be really cool to see. Like, what do they think of dolphins? What's their relationship with these other species, you know, that are really intelligent too?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:45

Yeah, like they do they consider each other what you know, something like how we would think of friends, or is it more of just like acquaintances, or they did they just kind of see them as a part of the environment, but it doesn't really matter? Yeah, I don't know. It'd be interesting to know like how that because we you know we've developed relationships with lots of animals. You think of cats and dogs and that sort of thing. Um, yeah, very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:08

Are dolphins the dogs of whales? That's yeah, that's kind of funny. Yeah, but yeah, it's kind of like you know, I think the idea of like these aging cetaceans is kind of like Pito's paradox. Like, why do they they're like a thousand times, they have a thousand times more cells than us, their brains are so much bigger than ours, not getting all these incidences of cancers, despite being in an arguably like more stressful environment where you have to hold your breath every waking second of your life. You know what I mean? Like they're not an oxygen-rich environment, they're constantly underwater. So um, you know, we talked about a little bit earlier, like copy number variants at the genome level, we can see the ways that they've evolved. Like they have there's this one gene um in mink whales um that are deep divers. I think it's like OGT and P R XD. You don't need to know what those are, but they're involved in like um oxygen metabolism and glycogen and like um getting uh energy very quickly. And so you can see that in the whales, they have like 11 copies of this gene, whereas in cows and humans, we only have one. So these are kind of like looking at evidence at the level of the genome, their organs, uh, cellular, molecular, etc., they have evolved incredible mechanisms to tolerate some of these stressors. So yeah, I think that's gonna be an amazing uh future lab one day.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:23

Yeah, very cool. Very cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:26

Man, this is this has been absolutely fascinating, Melis. Uh, one of the questions that we always like to ask our guests before we wrap up is what is one question that you wish you would have asked yourself sooner?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:39

Ooh, gosh. Like in sciences or life or just however you interpret the question. Oh, that's like God, that's such a good question. One question I wish I would have asked myself sooner. Um man. I guess it's like hard to think of a question. I can think of a lot of life lessons I would have told myself earlier, you know, not only in the sciences, but just like just living, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:06

What kind of maybe like what kind of question could you have sort of socratically asked yourself that may have helped your younger self figure out that conclusion without having to actually go through the hardship or you know, the lesson in real time?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:25

I've got a couple. I think one is whose lens are you seeing yourself through? Are you seeing yourself through the lens of yourself or are you seeing yourself through the lens of a parent or a church or a uh institution, right? I think sometimes I judge myself very harshly because, especially like someone who's like kind of neurodivergent, you know, was bouncing off the walls in schools and um, you know, didn't always kind of fit into maybe some of these institutions. I think I always was so hard on myself of like, I'm not fitting in, I'm disruptive. I'm internalizing all of these things from people around me who are kind of um, whether it's real or projection, kind of painting me in a very negative light. You know, I remember being in church, uh, even though my family is not religious and I'm atheist, uh, I would ask all these questions and be like, oh, the adults, you could just see the hate in their eyes. Like they were just like, someone shut this kid up. And um I saw myself through their eyes a lot of my life. And so I think that being able to understand that I was seeing myself through the perspective of people with maybe um class privilege or race or racial privilege or other forms of privilege or other identities, that I didn't have to embody or internalize those beliefs about myself. Um, and that I was allowed to think and feel differently about the world around me, um, even if people were calling me disruptive or naive, or even some of my talks about prison abolition, you know, people are like, oh, that's never gonna happen. And that's how how could you ever say that? You know, it's like, but I'm allowed to kind of think expansively and creatively, even if it makes some people kind of uncomfortable. I would guess so whose lens are you seeing yourself through would be a big one.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:57

Yeah, that's uh that's great. Thanks for sharing that. And I think that that's that's such a big one. And one thing that I uh talk about often that I think is is kind of directly related there is that in astronomy, you know, as time goes on, we develop better and better tools. Uh 500 years ago, telescopes didn't exist. Then we uh uh invented the first telescopes, and then as time went on, we started to you know invent these really um sensitive detectors, and now we get you know we get better and better and better and we can see more and more and we can uh uh learn more and more about the universe. And the new things that we learn are just because we are seeing things better on our end as humans.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:48

But they have never changed what anything actually was in the universe. And I feel like that's sort of a good lesson to keep in mind when you think about the way that other people see you. Right. Like the limitations that other people have for seeing something or not seeing it shouldn't be something that weighs heavily on us as individuals. Right. Like whether or not we have the right telescope to detect a star with a planet a billion light years away shouldn't really matter to that star system or the aliens on that planet. That's our limitation.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:26

And um, you know, that planet would be better better off just forgetting what what we think about it because maybe we'll be able to understand it one day and maybe we won't.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:35

And I feel like that's the same thing, right? It's like exactly what you were saying. If you're judging yourself based off of the perception of others, I mean, this is a very arbitrary thing. Uh and sometimes you could just ignore it completely and treat it as what it is, which is a limitation of somebody else. Yeah. It's much better to like build your own perspective and have your own value system and uh like attribution of your flaws or your weaknesses and kind of like forgetting what other people think about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:07

100%. I think I can't remember if it's Tony Morrison or Audre Lorde who said, like, nothing that I accept about myself can be used against me. So I think as a child and or young adult, like those things hurt very deeply. But now it's like, I know my flaws, I know that I don't know everything, and I know my strengths, you know, and it's like I can walk into an institution now, head held high, raise my hand, I don't care if you like it or not. You know, I'm gonna ask the question, and I think I'm really proud of that now. But I think that did probably stop me from um being more honest and truthful and maybe raising up you know better points in in discussions because I was so afraid of how uh it would kind of be perceived for sure. What about your own?

SPEAKER_05 1:29:46

Oh, Dr. Millie's we're getting close to time. I know this has been a riveting conversation. Um definitely want to have you on again. Uh I mean, this is this is absolutely fascinating. And you know, we we love your anomalous example uh of kind of getting into your space, getting a doctorate, being able to share that work with the world. People need to hear about your story. We're so glad to have you on here to tell us about some of your research, but where can people go to find more about you?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:14

Oh, um, I guess I have uh Instagram and uh TikTok. I'm very unserious as a person, so I need to change my handles probably. My TikTok is I need a little treat. Um my Instagram is Melissimo, so we definitely need to tighten it up a little bit. Um, I'm working on a website right now, so yeah, you can find me um online and I have a Substack. So kind of working on integrating all these things together. Um, but the Substack is where I post if I do a TikTok about a topic like neuroethics or prison abolition, I usually put those resources on my Substack for people to learn about the you know books and articles and YouTube things that I'm reading to synthesize those videos. So that's where you can check it all out.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:55

Cool, cool. Well, thank you again for joining us, and we will see you on the next one. As we always say, everybody, stay curious.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:05

All right. See you.