In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes: This Is One Way Psychopath Brains Are Different, According to a Harvard Study Scientists Created a Holographic Brain Device That Can Create False Sensations You Won't Believe Why Cities Are Full of Squirrels Plus, you can read about Frederick Law Olmsted in the book "Devil in the White City" here: https://eriklarsonbooks.com/book/the-devil-in-the-white-city/ Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes:
Plus, you can read about Frederick Law Olmsted in the book "Devil in the White City" here: https://eriklarsonbooks.com/book/the-devil-in-the-white-city/
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-cities-have-squirrels-how-psychopath-brains-are-different-and-a-holographic-brain-device
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you'll learn how psychopath brains are different, a holographic brain device that can create false sensations, and the surprising reason why cities are full of squirrels.
CODY GOUGH: Plus a bonus follow-up on Francis Drake. Let's set aside some curiosity. Ashley, do you know any psychopaths?
ASHLEY HAMER: Ah, probably.
(TOGETHER) [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: Well, a recent study has found one way a psychopath's brain is wired differently. They overvalue immediate rewards. So your average brain probably thinks about the consequences of rash decisions. But this study used the brain scans of prison inmates to show that a psychopath's brain is wired in a way that doesn't consider repercussions.
The study's senior author, Joshua Buckholtz, is an associate professor of psychology at Harvard. And he said this is a big deal because for a long time, we've been focused on the idea that psychopaths can't generate emotions, and that's why they do terrible things. But the feelings they have or don't have, I mean, that's not really what people care about, right? It's the choices they make.
Psychopaths commit a lot of crime, and it's really devastating types of crime to victims and society as a whole. So this team has shown that a psychopath's lack of emotion might not actually be the primary driver of these bad choices. Buckholtz said, quote, "The same kind of shortsighted, impulsive decision-making that we see in psychopathic individuals has also been noted in compulsive overeaters and substance abusers. If we can put this back in the domain of rigorous scientific analysis, we can see psychopaths aren't inhuman. They're exactly what you would expect from humans who have this particular kind of brain wiring dysfunction," unquote.
ASHLEY HAMER: Huh, psychopaths are people too. [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES] Are you allowed to say that? Can we say that?
ASHLEY HAMER: Of course, why not? [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: Uh, yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Psychopaths are people. Cody, you like the movie The Matrix, right?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. The first one only.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure. Well, in that movie, the machines that rule the world have plugged all the humans into an interface that makes them think that they're living in this other world, but that's not actually the world. They're really just living in pods, right? They make them think, feel, experience things that aren't actually happening.
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, we are one step closer to that nightmare.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, can't wait.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's not really a nightmare. It's actually a great thing. Researchers from UC Berkeley have created a holographic brain device that can simulate false sensations. They made this device using optogenetics that involves putting genes that produce light-responsive proteins into specific cells in the body. That lets researchers use specially targeted light to alter the cell's behavior.
And the Berkeley team did this in the brains of live mice, specifically on 2,000 to 3,000 neurons in the somatosensory cortex, which is responsible for processing sensations like touch, pain, and temperature. They had to use something with a super precise focus because neurons are obviously really small, as in smaller than the width of a human hair. So they used computer-generated holography-- holograms, basically-- to target individual cells that bends and focuses light to make a 3D pattern. And they could use it to hit lots of different sets of neurons up to 300 times a second.
The team used these light patterns to make the mice feel whatever sensation they wanted them to feel in touch, vision, and motor areas of their brains. Because the researchers did this while the mice had their heads locked into a device to keep it still, they couldn't actually see behavior changes. But they could see changes in brain activity, which we've got pictures of on curiosity.com So the next step is for researchers to train the mice in a way that lets them see changes in behavior too. And eventually, the team hopes to create a device for a human brain to help control a prosthetic limb or replace lost sensations after nerve damage.
CODY GOUGH: And then when the machines take over, they can just take the ball and run with it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Plug us right into The Matrix.
CODY GOUGH: Wow. Dystopic long term, but kind of nice short term.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yep. [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES] Ashley, do you like squirrels?
ASHLEY HAMER: I love squirrels.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, rabbits have recently taken over the squirrel population in my neighborhood, and I actually like the rabbits better. But--
CODY GOUGH: They're both pretty adorable.
ASHLEY HAMER: They are.
CODY GOUGH: Do you know why cities are full of squirrels?
ASHLEY HAMER: Why?
CODY GOUGH: We're here to satisfy your curiosity about this.
ASHLEY HAMER: Perfect.
CODY GOUGH: So we did the research, and here's the answer. We put them there.
ASHLEY HAMER: What?
CODY GOUGH: And you can partially blame this on influential city planner Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted designed a ton of green spaces in the Chicago area, and you can also thank him for Central Park in New York. Olmstead is also extensively written about in the book Devil in the White City, which is a really good read.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm a terrible Chicagoan. I haven't read that.
CODY GOUGH: Are you serious?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: It's so good. I will lend you my copy if you want.
ASHLEY HAMER: Perfect.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. It's really good. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. Anyway, Olmsted said that having squirrels in cities was a matter of ideological principle. According to him, having squirrels around gave an urban population a direct connection to nature that would prove beneficial all to their physical and mental health.
There were squirrels in Manhattan before there was a city there, sure. But by the mid-1800s, they were pretty much gone. And then in 1877, the city planted squirrel-friendly nuts trees and installed cozy squirrel homes, then released a handful of chipper grey squirrels to run wild in Central Park. A year later, they released 30 more pairs of squirrels. And by 1883, the park was home to at least 1,500 squirrels.
And they were really popular. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the care of squirrels was viewed almost as a moral imperative for New Yorkers. Some opinion columns might equate feeding squirrels with helping the homeless, while others weren't really big fans. But now that we're stuck with them for better or for worse, maybe take a second this weekend to stop and see the squirrels, which you do. So good job on that.
ASHLEY HAMER: They're adorable.
CODY GOUGH: A few weeks ago, I misspoke on this podcast and said that Francis Drake, not Frank Drake, created the Drake equation. We made a correction in an episode last week, and I clarified that Frank Drake is an astronomer who is still alive, and he wrote the Drake equation. And I, in my correction, said that Francis Drake was something else, and a listener called me out on it.
ASHLEY HAMER: This is just the Drake that will never end.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. So anyway, we received this email from Kevin. Hi, Kevin. He wrote that I inadvertently slandered Sir Francis Drake by calling him a slave trader and pirate. So in regards to the slave trade, he wrote, quote, "There is no evidence of that, although some sources still expound this falsehood either out of ignorance or personal bias. It is possible that this narrative comes from Drake's earliest years, possibly his first one or two voyages, learning to sail under the tutelage of the Hawkins family when they may have transported slaves. But as a captain, and eventually the admiral of the British Navy, Drake is most famous for being the first European to circumnavigate the globe and for conquering the Spanish Armada. And then he continues to come full circle here-- circumnavigate, if you will. We see what you did there. Drake actually had a reputation for freeing enslaved people, both of African origins, but especially those Caribbean, South American, and Native Americans enslaved by the Spaniards," unquote.
We've looked into this and have found this is pretty much on the money. Drake's cousin, John Hawkins, was definitely a slave trader. It's pretty generally accepted that Drake sailed with him, and they worked together in various capacities. But yeah, in 1573, Drake actually raided a Spanish mule train with help from some escaped Spanish slaves. So it's not like he was always on the bad side of things.
Now I also called him a pirate. Kevin wrote that technically, Drake wasn't a pirate. He was a privateer because he had a letter of marque from Queen Elizabeth I, which gave him legal state backing. But I was technically correct if you consider that he was branded a pirate by the Spanish. Now Encyclopedia Britannica actually describes a privateer as, quote, "a pirate with papers, unquote."
So I stand by my label of pirate, though I should note that in the same article, Britannica says that, quote, "The most famous of all privateers is probably English Admiral Francis Drake, who made a fortune plundering Spanish settlements in the Americas after being granted a privateering commission by Elizabeth I in 1572," unquote. Basically, thanks for the email, Kevin. [CHUCKLES] We sincerely apologize if we besmirched any of Francis Drake's descendants.
ASHLEY HAMER: If you ever get in trouble for online piracy, just tell people you're a privateer.
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES] You can read more about everything we talked about today, other than Francis Drake, on curiosity.com. What else can you learn about this weekend, Ashley?
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, you'll learn about a new discovery that makes Stonehenge even more mysterious, how changing your diet can lower depressive symptoms, and the world's largest hot spring.
CODY GOUGH: Plus the personality traits shared by people who live to be a hundred, three-eyed lizards, and the philosophy of legendary martial artist, Bruce Lee, plus so much more.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again Monday for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Have a great weekend, and stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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