Learn why Einstein worried that science can’t explain “the now,” how high-impact exercise is actually good for your bones, and why in Haiti, zombies are more than fiction.
Learn why Einstein worried that science can’t explain “the now,” how high-impact exercise is actually good for your bones, and why in Haiti, zombies are more than fiction.
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Einstein Worried That Science Can't Explain "The Now" by Ashley Hamer
High-Impact Exercise Is Actually Good for Your Bones by Ashley Hamer
In Haiti, Zombies Are More Than Fiction by Cameron Duke
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/einstein-worried-that-science-cant-explain-the-now
ASHLEY HAMER: Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes. With curiosity daily, from curiosity.com. I'm Ashley Hamer.
NATALIA REAGAN: And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today, you'll learn why Einstein worried that science can't explain the now, how high impact exercise is actually good for your bones, and why in Haiti zombies are more than fiction.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
NATALIA REAGAN: You're listening to this podcast right now. I can say that even though I don't know when you'll listen to this. I can't say you're listening to it tomorrow or yesterday, but I can say you're listening to it Now that's how special now is. And yet, for all the thought that's been devoted to time, science doesn't consider now as different from the future or the past. In fact, Albert Einstein himself struggled with this conundrum.
Scientists hardly touched the concept of time until Einstein came along. Though he couldn't explain time itself, he did show some peculiar things about it. That, to a stationary observer, time flows more slowly for a moving object. And that the greater the force of gravity, the slower time flows. But neither he, nor anyone else, could explain what made the present moment objectively different from the past or the future. And that bothered him. A friend once wrote that this problem, quote, "Seemed to him a matter of painful, but inevitable resignation." end quote.
A lot of this comes down to the fact that science centers on objective reality. And the present moment is defined by your experience of it. Because of that, some scientists say, the present moment doesn't actually exist at all. It's just an illusion. Others don't see it that way, though. They say the present moment isn't an illusion, but evidence that we need to include personal experience in science's physical description of the world. After all, every observation is filtered through our human experience in some way. It's possible that science is at the same stage of understanding the now in the 21st century as it was in its early 20th century understanding of gravity.
Einstein wanted to come up with a single formula that would unify all the forces in the universe, but couldn't. That's because there were several other forces we hadn't yet discovered. Now, we're finally getting close to explaining gravity. In the same way, now that we understand more about how space and time work, we might have the tools to understand the now. Whether that understanding gets to objective truth, or just gives individual experience more credit. Well, we'll just have to wait until then is now.
ASHLEY HAMER: From yoga and Pilates, to aerobics and bootcamp classes, the exercise industry loves to tout the low-impact nature of workout routines. But hold up, you might be doing yourself a disservice by avoiding high-impact activities. It might seem counterintuitive, but high impact exercise helps build stronger bones. And the good news is that you're never too old to start.
Everyone knows that you need to stress your muscles to make them get stronger. What you might not know is that the same is true of your bones. In 2012, UK researchers published a study in which they analyzed data from 700 teenagers who wore activity trackers. The activity trackers also recorded G-Forces, a measure of impact.
The researchers found that teenagers who experienced impacts of 4.2g or greater had significantly stronger hip bones. That force is equivalent to jumping onto a box at least 15 inches or 38 centimeters high, or running at a pace of 10 minutes a mile or 6 minutes a kilometer. The frequency of the impacts didn't matter. Having experienced them at all seemed to be enough to strengthen their bones.
Another study on tennis players found that the bones of each athlete's racquet arm were around 20% wider and contained 40% more bone material than their other arm. And yet another study found that women who did high impact sports had a bone mineral density up to 29% higher than their non-athletic counterparts, and higher than athletes who did low impact sports.
There are good reasons to strengthen your bones. Your body is constantly getting rid of old bone to make room for new bone. And until you hit age 30, it creates more bone than it breaks down, but after that you start to lose more bone mass than you gain. The more bone mass you have when you celebrate the big three O, the less likely you are to develop osteoporosis later in life.
But even if you're already over 30, all is not lost. Several studies show that high impact exercise can improve your bone health after that age. One particularly impressive study of postmenopausal women with knee osteoarthritis found that doing high impact exercise three times a week improved the quality of their knee cartilage after a year. That said, if you do have a bone or joint condition, definitely, ask your doctor before starting an exercise routine. But the science is clear, if you want healthy bones, go for a sprint, grab a tennis racket, or lift some weights. Impact has an impact.
NATALIA REAGAN: In most parts of the world, zombie sightings are limited to George Romero movies and episodes of The Walking Dead. But in Haiti, zombies, well, they're common. There are nearly 1,000 reports of zombie sightings per year. What's up with that? Are people really coming back from the dead? In Haiti, zombies are taken seriously. In fact, the Haitian Penal Code considers zombification, a crime on the level of murder.
Local legends describe zombification like this, someone becomes sick with a mysterious illness caused by either poisoning or sorcery. The family recognizes the person as being dead and puts them in a tomb. Only to have the person stolen by a Boko or sorcerer, and reanimated as a zombie. Many people have tried and failed to determine the nature of the poisons the sorcerers use. Even the author, Zora Neale Hurston, wrote about this process in a book where she described a poison that brings people to a death like state. Still, she was never able to find any. Maybe that's a good thing.
In the 1970s, a Harvard ethnobotanist named Wade Davis was finally able to analyze a sample of sorcerers zombie poison, which came in a vial of black powder. When he analyzed its components, the ingredient list did not disappoint. It contained bits of tarantula, frogs, human bones, and tetrodotoxin, a poison found in pufferfish. Wow! Tetrodotoxin is up to 1,200 times more poisonous than cyanide. When it's absorbed into the bloodstream, it paralyzes the muscles by blocking nerve impulses. In low doses, it can paralyze a person for 8 to 12 hours. Making them seem dead when they're very much alive. This is like a nightmare come true. Considering that Haitians are usually entombed above ground within a day of their death, that's certainly enough time for a sorcerer to retrieve the body.
But poison alone isn't enough to make a zombie. You need culture for that. Researchers studying the topic found that zombification involves a whole chain of events that are deeply rooted in local religious beliefs. Religious beliefs that not only involve the existence of zombies, but also stigmatize them. Zombification itself may be a form of religious punishment designed to deprive a person of their free will. Hollywood tends to focus on living people fleeing from zombies. But what may be even scarier is rising from the dead yourself.
NATALIA REAGAN: All right, well, let's recap the main things we learned today. Starting with the fact that as brilliant as Einstein was, he had problems with understanding the meaning of now. As does, pretty much, every scientist today. And even now, as you're listening to me speak, we're still determining if now is real or a subjective idea created by the human mind. Now that is a trippy concept.
ASHLEY HAMER: I just love how everything is really relative, though. I mean, that's something that we have to consider. It's like when we consider who does the science, and what biases they bring to it. What if somebodies now is somebodies then?
NATALIA REAGAN: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Or somebodies will be.
NATALIA REAGAN: It just completely breaks open my brain, to think about now, now. No. Now.
ASHLEY HAMER: Now
NATALIA REAGAN: No.
ASHLEY HAMER: No.
NATALIA REAGAN: Now, is now. That was then.
ASHLEY HAMER: No. A friend of mine, years ago I was doing that Bigfoot show, it was the day of the finale. And I was having a rough day. And my friend, Scott, gave me a card. He's a gaffer, but he's also an artist. And he makes these beautiful cards and signs that actually are all over the United States now that say, all we have is now. All we will ever have is now. And it's about being in the present, more than anything.
NATALIA REAGAN: That's great.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those beautiful things. And in that moment he kind of looked at me, and he said, you're going to do fine tonight. And he gave it to me. And I put it in my back pocket. And the show was great. Maybe that gave me a little boost of confidence or luck. Just sort of living in the moment. But really, I think sometimes, and-- you know, I mean, even when we record this stuff, it's a performance. And sometimes, it's easy to not be in the moment and be in the present. It's good to embrace the now.
NATALIA REAGAN: It is. Actually, that's one of the reasons that I really love recording day. Because it does put me in the moment. It does make me just think about right now. I just close my door, put my cat in the bathroom. Nobody can message me, or ask me to do anything, because I'm just here. I'm here with my science. I get to talk about my science. It's not my science. It's other people's science. But still, I get to talk about science. It's great.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I think also one of the things to remember is humans have this weird scheduling thing. I mean, and if you go out into the wild, I don't know about your cat, Aglet. But I don't know if she's sitting there going, OK, tomorrow, what do we got going on? I'm going to lay on the bed.
NATALIA REAGAN: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm going to poke my mom, when I want her to wake up. Then I'm going to go do a litter box and do my business. Like they are living in the moment at any given time. And then when you go, really, in the wild when-- I just had a conversation with a squirrel outside who was freaking out because a cat was stalking it. They're really in the moment because as soon as you kind of go, oh, what am I doing tomorrow? Guess what, you're getting eaten. You become someone's lunch. so it's an eat or be eaten world. So you've got to live in the now, or else you're going to become cat food.
NATALIA REAGAN: Going to become cat food.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's the moral ASHLEY HAMER: that story, I guess. We also learned that high impact exercise, despite what some people think, is actually good for building bone mass that will eventually keep osteoporosis at bay. Especially exercising before you're 30 years old. So if you're a young one, get out there. Pound some pavement. And if you're older, you still got time. You still can get out there, and you can prevent some injuries by just getting active.
NATALIA REAGAN: Yeah, I think it's becoming more common to recommend weight training to the elderly, which is a wonderful image. I want to see a 75-year-old woman, just bench pressing, like 200 pounds.
ASHLEY HAMER: You know, I have a funny story. I lived in Venice Beach for many years in my early 20s. And I remember going to the gym. And my grandpa lived on the West Side. And I look over, and there's my grandpa [LAUGHS] on an exercise bike with this babe-alicious trainer named Heidi. And I was like, Grandpa, when did you join Gold's Gym? He's like, I need to do something. And I was like, yeah, I see why you got the motivation. But it is true. In fact, my grandpa is still with us, knock on wood. But right now, the big thing is to get him walking circles around the house, to keep pounding the pavement very slowly. Don't move it, you lose it.
NATALIA REAGAN: That's right. We also learned that scientists have studied zombification in Haiti. Using a Sorcerer's poison that contained a toxin that could paralyze a human, so they appear dead, but they're actually alive. When you combine that toxin with religious beliefs, you get the belief that they really are the walking dead. This is so terrifying. I was reading some of the descriptions. It's horrible for the family and the individual. They watched their family member die, and they mourned them and they put them in a tomb. And then they just see them again, walking around. How-- what is that going to do to your brain? Oof.
ASHLEY HAMER: Boom, explode. I don't know. I can't handle that. That's a lot.
NATALIA REAGAN: It is a lot it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Is a lot. And also, just to be that individual. That'll teach you to make a sorcerer mad,
NATALIA REAGAN: Right. I mean, they don't. The problem is, they say, oh it just, the toxin lasts for 12 hours. But it's not like you're just fine and dandy after that. It has lasting effects. And you are not the same person afterward. And oof.
ASHLEY HAMER: The moral of this story is to be nice, especially to sorcerers. Today's stories were written by Ashley Hamer and Cameron Duke, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
NATALIA REAGAN: Scriptwriting was by Natalia Reagan and Sonia Hodgin. Today's episode was edited by Natalia Reagan. And our producer is Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Be nice to sorcerers, and join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
NATALIA REAGAN: And until then, stay curious.
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