Something You Should Know - Consciousness: What It Means to be You & What Really Makes Every Dog Happy

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Becoming a homeowner is a big goal for so many people. It is part of the American dream. But is owning a home always better than renting? This episode begins with some interesting facts that may make renting more attractive. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/so-you-think-owning-a-home-will-make-you-happy-dont-be-too-sure/ Also, here is the link to the home ownership/rental calculator: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html What is your consciousness? What does it mean to be you? I know it sounds a little out-there - but I want you to listen to Anil Seth. He is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, Author of the book, Being You: A New Science of Consciousness (https://amzn.to/3DvkibU). Listening to this conversation will really make you think about how you experience the world and why your experience is so different than everyone else’s.  Did you know that for many breeds, dogs are living shorter lives than they did just 10 years ago? Surprising huh? Also, there is new research about what is most effective to help your dog live a long and healthy life. Listen as I discuss all of this and more with veterinarian Dr. Karen Becker author of The Forever Dog: Surprising New Science to Help Your Canine Companion Live Younger, Healthier, and Longer (https://amzn.to/3aBK0yQ). She also describes how she found a dog that lived to be 30 years old and the reasons for such a long life. Air fresheners supposedly clean the air and get rid of odors. But do they really? Are they even safe? Listen as I discuss what the EPA says about commercial air fresheners and what you need to know to keep your family safe. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360132316304334 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.  Go to https://backcountry.com/sysk to get 15% OFF your first full-priced purchase! Get $15 off your first box of premium seafood when you visit https://WildAlaskanCompany.com/Something Grow your business with Shopify today - go to https://Shopify.com/sysk  right now! Omaha Steaks is the best! Get awesome pricing at https://OmahaSteaks.com/BMT T-Mobile for Business the leader in 5G, #1 in customer satisfaction, and a partner who includes benefits like 5G in every plan. Visit https://T-Mobile.com/business 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance! https://geico.com Happy GEICO-ween! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, is owning a home really better than renting? Maybe not, and I'll explain why. Then, the fascinating world of consciousness, what it means to be you, and what happens to you when you sleep or are under anesthesia.

Under general anesthesia, it completely knocks you out. You are gone, and then you are back. And there's no indication of whether it was five minutes or five hours or 50 years that you were gone from. You were simply not there in the same way that you weren't there before you were born. Also, do air fresheners really clean the air? from, you were simply not there in the same way that you weren't there before you were born. Also, do air fresheners really clean the air? And new research about helping your dog live a long and happy life. The more opportunities we can give our dogs to be outside, run at full speed, dig in the dirt, you know, sniff other dogs' butts. Those are all really great opportunities for both physical exercise, but also the mental and emotional stimulation they need to be calm and well-mannered. All this today on Something You Should Know.

Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy,

it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named the Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel.

The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hello and welcome to Something You Should Know. You know, I think for multiple generations at least, the idea of homeownership has always been a goal that owning a home is better than renting. It is part of the American dream. But hold on just a second here. Researchers at the Wharton Business School a few years ago discovered that homeownership isn't all it's cracked up to be. For example, homeowners

tend to be more miserable and fatter than renters. Homeowners report that their house causes them a lot of emotional pain. Plus, they report that they spend less time on leisure activities and socializing with friends. And that's presumably because they're spending more time working on their houses. The idea that renting a home is throwing away money that you'll never see again, that just doesn't really add up. In fact, if the home you own loses value or you lose your job, owning a home can become an incredibly stressful burden on your finances. And a lot of the fees and interest that you pay on your home loan

is money that you will never see again that is conceivably being thrown out the window. So if you rent, don't think of yourself as one of the have-nots. Maybe you are one of the lucky ones. And in fact, a few years ago, the New York Times published a calculator that will tell you when you plug in your information whether you're better off owning or renting. And I'll put a link to that calculator in the show notes for this episode. And that is something you should know. So here's a big question. What does it mean to be you?

As you sit there or stand there, you are aware of who you are and you're aware of your surroundings. You are you. You're a conscious being. And you're different from every other conscious being. You have a sense, a consciousness, as to who you are. Yet when you're asleep, or say when you're under anesthesia, you are not you. You're not aware during that time. So where did you go? I know all this sounds a little woo-woo and philosophical, but it isn't when you hear it discussed by my guest, Anil Seth. He is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and he is author of a book called Being You, A New Science of Consciousness. Hi, Anil. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Thanks for having me, Mike. It's a pleasure. So, define consciousness for me. What is it? I mean, I know what it is because I have it, but how do you define it? That's probably one of the best definitions, actually. It's really hard to formally define it in a way that everybody agrees. But for me, consciousness is any kind of experience whatsoever. It's what you lose when you go under general anesthesia or fall into a dreamless sleep. And it's what returns when you come around or wake up in the morning. For a conscious organism, there's something it is like to be that organism.

That's all consciousness is, any kind of experience whatsoever. And you're aware that you're aware of it. That's where it gets interesting and difficult and people start disagreeing i don't think so i think there's something that's something quite specific and it's certainly something that us adult humans do you know we have an experience and we know that we're having it i'm aware of the experience of talking to you now which means i'll be able to talk about it later too but that may not be true in general. Young infants or other animals may have conscious experiences without being aware of the fact that

they are conscious. One of the mistakes we can make, and it's really difficult to think our way out of this mistake, is to assume the conscious experiences of other animals or even other humans and maybe infant humans, young children as some version of our own adult human consciousness. And I think this is often very misleading. We have a very distinctive way of experiencing the world. And as a vast space of possible minds, of possible other ways of experiencing things. The inner universe of an octopus is going to be very, very different from the inner universe of you and me. And as you said, one of the very distinctive things about us humans is what we might call extensive mental time travel.

We can remember things from long ago, and we can project out into the distant future things that haven't even happened yet. And in our rolling mental lives, these past events and possible futures, they play a quite dominant role in a way that probably isn't the case for most other animals. But even if you and I are in the same room experiencing the same thing, we're not really experiencing the same thing, are we? We have two very different experiences. And it's a super interesting question, how different our experiences would be, were we in the same room? I don't know if you remember, or your listeners may well remember,

a few years ago, there was this internet phenomenon called The Dress. This was a badly exposed photograph of The Dress. And for half the people in the world, more or less, this dress seemed to be blue and black. But for the other half of the people in the world, it seemed to be white and gold. And this was so compelling that the blue and black people just could not believe that it was possible for somebody else to see it as white and gold. I remember myself being mystified that this was happening, but it really happens. And that opened up a little fracture, just a suggestion that, okay, if we can be in that much disagreement about something so simple, what are the most subtle ways in which our inner worlds differ all the time? I think there's a vast unexplored territory of the diversity of how

different people experience the same thing that we know surprisingly little about. So what you're calling consciousness isn't really a thing so much as it's the result of processes that we experience. That's right. That's right. I mean, people have been interested in consciousness, I think, since they've been interested in pretty much anything. It's one of the questions I think we all have as a kid, like, who am I? Why is it like anything to be me? And what happens after I die? What was going on before I was born? And there's an intuition. I think not everybody everybody has this intuition but it's kind of a common intuition that there's a there's this thing that is you there's an essence of of self an essence of mike or an essence of anil that is perched inside my head somehow looking out through

the windows of my eyes and gazing out onto this this external world that's full of objects with shapes and colors and so on. And in that view, consciousness is just this reading out of this external world. And there's this conscious self somewhere inside the head that's doing the reading. But what's actually happening, at least what I think is happening, building on a rich tradition in neuroscience and philosophy is not like that at all. There are just unfolding processes in the brain that are interpreting sensory signals that themselves have no color or shape or sound. And it builds this picture. And the self is not something that's looking at this picture. The self, yourself or myself, it's part of the picture. We're part of our own inner

movies. When you say these things like have no color, well, of course they have color. I mean, the red tree or the red leaf on the tree is red. It's red to me. It's red to you. It's red today. It's red tomorrow. So how can you say it doesn't have color? Well, actually, the red that you see might not be the same red that I see. It might be a subtly different shade of red. We might have different experiences. But the redness that we both, let's say we both perceive some kind of red. Does that mean that the leaf is actually red? Well, no, there's no inherent redness to the leaf. Redness is something that the brain constructs. There are leaves, there are real things in the world, but color is

something that it takes a brain for color to exist. Surfaces reflect light in various ways, and the brain keeps track of how surfaces reflect light. And it creates color as a sort of way for the brain to keep track of these things. But they don't objectively exist out there in the world in the same way that some things exist whether there's a mind involved or not but other things like colors require a mind and this isn't just neuroscience it says this the the painter suzanne long ago said that color is the place where the brain and the universe meet you're saying that what I perceive as the world and my consciousness and all of this is probably not what's really going on, but so what? It's my perception. It works for me. It's

a good working definition and it gets me through the day. So why is it so important to look at what's really going on? There are a number of reasons why I think this is important. The first is just plain curiosity. I want to understand, and I think a number of people, many people want to understand, what is the relationship between what we experience, what we see, and what's actually going on? How accurate are our perceptions? How closely do they track the real world? And so we need to look under the hood and figure out how perception actually works. But there are also some more practical reasons why all this is important. One of them is we can begin to understand, as we

were discussing earlier, that different people can have different experiences. I think this is important, even just at a high level to recognize this helps us build empathy, helps us recognize that other people, just as other people can believe different things if they listen to different news channels, we can't always assume that people see things the same way that we do. And this goes down very, very deeply, right down to the way we see colors. And then finally, and a little bit more at the extreme end of all this, understanding perception as this act of construction, this top down reaching out from the brain to the world, gives us a new way to think about a variety of mental illnesses and

psychiatric disorders that are usually expressed by people having unusual experiences of the world or of the self. And the more we can understand the mechanisms by which this is happening, the more promise there is to develop new approaches to diagnosis and treatment. So my consciousness, my sense of who I am, that I'm here, that I'm experiencing this. When I go to sleep or when I'm under anesthesia, where did it go? Well, it's just gone, isn't it? This is, for me, a remarkable thing. And actually, sleep is very different from anesthesia.

This is something that's always struck me. That when you fall asleep asleep you might lose consciousness completely and then you start dreaming or something but when you wake up you know that some amount of time has gone by i mean you might be a bit confused about exactly how much time whether it's you know five or six hours but you roughly know that some amount of time has gone by but under general anesthesia if it's general anesthesia that completely knocks you out five or six hours, but you roughly know that some amount of time has gone by. But under general anesthesia, if it's general anesthesia that completely knocks you out, you are gone and then you are back. And it seems like no time has passed at all. And there's no indication of whether it was five minutes or five hours or 50 years that you were gone from. You were simply not there in the same way that you weren't there before you were 50 years that you were gone from. You were simply not there in the same way that

you weren't there before you were born and that you won't be there after you die. And for me, this is a really deeply personal lesson that consciousness can go away. It's sort of the natural state of the brain is to generate no experience whatsoever. And the amazing thing, of course, about anesthesia is that you turn a person into an object, but then the object gets returned back into a person afterwards. We're talking about what it means to be you. My guest is Anil Seth. He is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and his book is called Being You, A New Science of Consciousness.

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Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared.

It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for.

Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Anil, I assume that this is part of this conversation of consciousness, is that my perception of my reality, my consciousness, is that as I get older, time seems to go by faster, even though objectively I know that time moves at the speed that it always has. But my perception is that it's going faster. Yeah, this is a very common thing that people will say. And I think there is some truth to it. But it depends on the timescale, right? It may seem that the years go by quickly, but do the minutes go by more quickly? Do the seconds go by more quickly? Probably not.

In fact, the experimental evidence that we have in psychology, it doesn't reveal any differences in how people experience time at the level of seconds or minutes, but at the level of years, that may be true. And one possible reason why that might be true is that the older we get the less new stuff happens broadly speaking we get set into routines we've already experienced a lot and so the the experience of how long a year takes let's say that might be partly constituted by how many different new things have happened in that period of time. And that's going to be just less the older we get.

Is my consciousness, my experience of my life, my own creation? In other words, I could get up and go outside and then my experience would be very different than sitting here talking to you and i have seemingly have the free will to go out there but i'm not going out there i'm staying here so what so what indeed you've hit on probably one of the thorniest issues in all thinking researching about consciousness this issue of free will. Do we have it? What is it? Why is it important? It certainly seems to be. We go about our lives with this experience that we're in control of our actions, that indeed I could decide to stop talking to you now and go and make a cup of tea instead, do something like that, but I don't do it. I continue talking to you. But we do make voluntary decisions. We do it all the time. And these decisions, these actions seem to come

from within. So what's all that about? Well, I think there's a wrong way and a right way to think about free will. There's a sense of free will, which I don't think we have, and I actually don't think makes any sense. And this is the sense in which the self-consciousness, the soul, is something that is completely independent of our brains and our bodies and comes in and pulls the strings somehow so that we do the things that free will decides that we should do. It's a sort of new force in physics. It swoops in and changes the course of the physical events in

our brains and bodies that's a kind of spooky free will that i don't think we have but also i don't think we need so we are complex organisms our brains are capable of controlling our bodies in all sorts of ways and making plans and responding to things very flexibly. I can see a mug of tea in front of me. I can pick it up and drink from it. I can take it to the kitchen. I can do all sorts of things. And when the brain is controlling voluntary actions of this sort, these are actions that are caused by processes in the brain and body that are largely internal, that come from within, that are aligned with the beliefs and desires that me as an organism has. I'm English. I like tea. I make tea rather than coffee. But I didn't choose to like tea. I didn't choose to have

the beliefs and desires that I in fact have. And so everything that I do that is voluntary is just a natural consequence of who I am, of the brain and the body that I have. And I experience actions as being freely willed when they're not imposed on me by a hypnotist or by somebody moving my arm from the outside or zapping my brain somehow. And that kind of free will is real. We can make voluntary actions and we do, and we experience them as voluntary. And all that is fine, but it doesn't require any of this spooky stuff that swoops in from another realm and changes the physical flow of events in the universe. But if you're going to have a discussion about whether or not we have

free will, then the discussion at some point turns to, well, if we don't have free will, is there some sort of master plan and it's all predetermined? And if that's the case, whose plan is it? Who or what is determining our will? I think a lot, I think it's actually in many ways simpler. People argue about free will in all sorts of directions. People wonder whether, like if the universe is deterministic, right, that everything just unfolds according to a predetermined plan, then surely we don't have free will. None of this really matters, at least in my view, none of it matters at all. In general, for a healthy adult human, we are indeed in control of our actions. And this, in a sense, is pretty obvious because we are not something that is separate from our brains and bodies.

We are just a collection of experiences that are part of the ongoing flow of conscious experience. So of course we can be in control of our actions because that's part of what it is to be a self in the first place. So a lot of this goes to begging the question of if it, so if we have this conscious experience, we are who we are and we know we are who we are. What happens when we die? Does it just shut down? It turned off? Gone? See you later? beliefs about this. We have religious and cultural backgrounds that lead us to think in different ways. And I think it'd be wrong for somebody to parachute in from science and just say this is what will happen or this is what won't happen. But having said that, this experience or non-experience of anesthesia gives a very strong clue that the kind of consciousness that we have in our daily lives, even though it

changes as we age, that does go away when we die. Everything that we know from neuroscience and from science in general shows that normal conscious experience depends in a very intimate way on a normally functioning brain. And when the brain stops, then you stop too. This is probably an unfair question, and you can tack this on to a discussion about almost anything. But if we're born and we have our consciousness and it develops and we go through life

and our consciousness is is our consciousness and then we die well so what was the point of all that what was what then why are we here what if it what's the point what's the point well i i'd almost throw that back in in almost the opposite way imagine that that life went on forever and that you just no moment of experience had any particular meaning because the next day there's always another day. There's always a new experience you could have. You could have every experience that was available in the universe of experiences over time. You could say that if life went on forever, that would be the thing that would drain the meaning and purpose out of our existence. It's the fact that there is finitude to life, that we exist in this world as a conscious

creature, a self-aware creature, for an astonishingly brief period of time. That's what gives our experiences in the moment the value that they have. One thing I did want to ask you about is that it does seem that for as long as there have been people in their consciousness, there have been attempts to alter that consciousness through drugs and alcohol and things like that, as if our consciousness isn't good enough or is too painful or for whatever the reason people do that, but it seems like they've always done that.

And why do we do that? You're right. I think the history of people and societies using mind-altering substances is about as long as history itself. And interestingly, it's not only humans. There's quite good evidence out there of other animals eating mushrooms of various sorts for reasons of their own, which is very hard to understand. We can't even ask them. It's hard enough to know why we as humans do it. I suspect it's not all about just alleviating the pain of the everyday. I think there can be a grandeur and a wonder in exploring the wider space of conscious experiences that are possible. And there are many ways you can do it i mean that the um for me the most interesting history and future of mind alteration are with things like

psychedelic substances now that they're not addictive they're not toxic and they what they do is they open up dramatically new kinds of experiences and in a sense they show us quite directly that the way we experience the world should not be taken for granted that there's more going on both in the world and in our minds but of course but of course we should be very careful too with with any of these mind-altering substances. These are powerful interventions. practices that made the consumption of these substances more of a positive thing than happens when they get pushed underground. Well, but that brings up a question of what's real.

Because when you take a mind-altering substance, like a hallucinogenic or, you know, an LSD or something, where you actually, you know, where the desk turns into a hallucinogenic or, you know, LSD or something where you actually, you know, where the desk turns into a bowl of soup or, I mean, I've never taken LSD, so I don't know if that happens, but the desk didn't turn into a bowl of soup by most objective viewpoints. So what's real? What's conscious? Just because my brain sees that doesn't make it so. No, that's right. Just seeing something does not make it so. And I think when on psychedelics, the bowl of soup turns into a flower, or I can't remember what the example was, but things turn into things that they aren't. That is quite good evidence that the way we perceive things is not just a direct readout of what's there.

I think part of the experience of a hallucinogen is this recognition that the experiences that we have are partly due to what's out there in the world and partly due to what's happening inside our brains and by altering the brain's contribution to this process and seeing how it shapes and changes and melds our experience that can really foster this recognition that what we see is not a direct picture of what's actually there and that this also applies to the experience of being a self one of the other common experiences under hallucinogens is that as of ego dissolution the experience that the boundaries of the self become unclear or even completely absent and we no longer experience ourselves as separate from the world, as observing the world from a first person point of view, but that the self and the world become more continuous. And I think that's

also a really important sign, a clue that neuroscience is aligned with that tells us the self is itself a kind of perception. It's not just the thing that does the perceiving. So there's a lot of ways in which these experiences align. As for what's real, yeah, things exist in the world. But what reality really is, that's a question for a physicist, not for a neuroscientist. Well, I love conversations that make me think, and this has certainly made me think about, you know, what it means to be me and what my consciousness is. Anil Seth has been my guest. He's a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex. And the name of his book is Being You, A New Science of Consciousness.

And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Anil. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Mike. That was a wonderful conversation. which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. If you're an animal lover and or dog owner, as I am,

you're going to find this next conversation really interesting. You see, there's been a lot of research into pet health, particularly dogs, and some of what is being discovered is very surprising. For instance, in many breeds of dogs, the dogs are actually living shorter, not longer lives. And how we routinely take care of our dogs as dog owners has a huge impact on how healthy they are and how long they live, and in ways you probably wouldn't imagine. And what you are about to hear about dog food, and it applies to cat food as well, will shock you. Here to discuss all this is veterinarian Dr. Karen Becker, who, along with Rodney Habib, are authors of a new book called The Forever Dog, surprising new science to help your canine companion

live younger, healthier, and longer. And wait till you hear her talk about the 30-year-old dog she found. Hi, Karen, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. So I know I've heard that a lot of dogs and probably cats like people today are overweight and sedentary and as a result, not especially healthy. So where are we? What are you seeing as an animal doctor? Certainly, as a veterinarian, I see animals that are, a lot of animals, plagued with disease processes.

And we as veterinarians see a lot of animals getting, maybe not with life-threatening diseases, but a lot of conditions that are plaguing them. So their overall health and health span is not overwhelmingly fantastic. And then research backs up the fact that many purebreds are dying younger than they were 10 years ago. There's a study done by the Kennel Club out of the UK demonstrating that on average, we've lost about a year in many of the most popular purebred dogs. So this prompted us to want to learn more and figure out why that is. And we know that historically dogs lived longer, but also with fewer health problems. So we were intrigued to

determine why that is. And certainly genetics play a part of that, but epigenetic factors play a big, big role in dogs' healthspan and lifespan. So we started looking at those two factors, genetics and epigenetic factors. What does that mean, epigenetic factors? So epigenetics are environmental influences or triggers that speak to our dog's DNA. And that's both positively and negatively. So it's the environment around our dog's DNA. And when I went to vet school 25 years ago, they also weren't teaching us about epigenetic triggers. But in essence, these epigenetic influences

are really responsible for about 90% of the diseases that dogs get, that other 10% being genetic. So these epigenetic triggers, when we went to the Broad Institute and asked the top longevity experts, you know, what are these for dogs and humans? They said they come down to kind of five factors, an obesity and sedentary lifestyle, pollution exposure, pesticide and chemical exposure, heavy metals included with

that and nutritional deficiencies. So that group of environmental influences really does play into longevity. And that's something that's both empowering and terrifying, depending on how healthy of a lifestyle you have. So what is the answer to the question, why so many breeds are living shorter lives? Is it just, you know, we've all heard about inbreeding and that that causes problems and that's why you don't marry your cousin. But is that it? So here's the good news, at least with our species, it's either illegal or immoral to, you know, we should all think twice before marrying our cousins. You're spot on. The bad news is, is in the last 400 years when we've

created all these magnificent dog breeds, part of the reason that we have hairless dogs and blue eyed dogs and this mass variety of these unbelievable diversity within the different breeds is because humans created that thing. So we did breed, and still are, in many puppy mills, we're breeding father and daughter, brother, sister, mother, son. That is not a good idea because that narrows the gene population, the gene pool. And with a smaller population with smaller genes, obviously there's a whole lot of unwanted genes that get expressed. But bigger than that, Mike, there's actually what we call gene deletion. So yes, inbreeding is problematic and is responsible for the heartbreak of genetic diseases causing

dogs to die sooner. But the other 90% of the reason why dogs are dying younger than ever before is the fact that these epigenetic triggers basically through poor choices and a toxic world that our dogs live in, those epigenetic influences are negatively affecting our dog's genome, which is creating both physical degeneration as well as a myriad of health problems that ultimately lead to a shorter life. Some of the things you mentioned, like a dog's exposure to heavy metals, well, how would you, as a pet owner, how would you remedy that? Such a great question. So twofold.

First of all, we think about like where would dogs have access to heavy metals? This is so strange, but heavy metals in the pet food industry is a big issue. When we look at commercially available dog foods, there are some recurrent reasons why pet foods are recalled. And believe it or not, heavy metals is among that list, as well as mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are invisible, naturally occurring funguses, byproducts of fungi that grow on crops and crops that harbor these invisible toxins. If mycotoxin levels are checked for the human food chain, but they're not checked for the animal

feeds and anything that fails mycotoxin testing or heavy metal testing for humans goes into pet feed. So heavy metals and all of the contaminants found in animal products are part of the reason that contributes to animals not having long, healthy lives. But heavy metals also actually come in through the water. And dogs bioaccumulate toxins in their environment faster than adult, bigger-bodied humans. So the recommendation would be filter your dog's water. That's an easy, common-sense solution for removing heavy metals. So then when we ask these top geneticists from around the world, as well as longevity experts, what are some other ways that we can kind of help with these epigenetic triggers? The key is, Mike, just to go down the line of all of these

insidious causes that are negatively impacting our dog's healthspan and lifespan, and basically check those boxes that we're covering our bases and doing what we can to remove those particular risks in our dog's environment. One of the things that I was surprised to learn from you is that most dog food is mislabeled in that it isn't food, it's feed. Because I think people sense that if it says dog food, it must be fine, that it's fine. Especially if you buy like senior dog food for seniors and puppy food for puppies, that it's fine, but not necessarily. And you are correct. And this is probably one of the biggest frustrations and biggest regrets that pet parents have is when they really start diving in. When they get beyond the unbelievable packages that are beautiful.

And when they get beyond the truth that the FDA regulates the packaging of pet food. In fact, pet food packaging is highly regulated. The font size, the information, what isn't regulated is the raw materials on the inside of the product. And what I mean by that is, of course, everything that fails human food inspection becomes animal feed. But even within that category of animal feed, once those raw material suppliers have sold their products to pet food manufacturers, even though we would like to believe that dog food is scientifically formulated, we do know that it does contain enough vitamins and minerals to sustain life. But the actual quality of the raw materials going into pet food is not stellar. And it's not approved for human consumption unless it's labeled as such.

And then it's so expensive, the vast majority of pet owners could never afford to feed it. So it is a little overwhelming when you think that what you're feeding your dogs is this great quality, same quality of your human food. But when you do the research, it's really disheartening to learn that one of the reasons so many people are moving to not only homemade diets, but specifically looking for pet foods made with human-grade ingredients is because they've been made aware of this massive quality control issue within the pet food industry. So what's in it? What is pet food? What is dog food made from if it's not made from food that people eat?

What is it and how is it packaged and prepared or whatever, cooked or whatever that makes it not food but feed? So feed and food, the difference in terms of an inspection process is at least in North America, in the United States specifically, when all of our food is inspected and everything that passes inspection, whether it's produce, vegetables, meats, everything that passes USDA food inspection goes into the human food market. Everything that fails USDA food inspection goes into the feed market, which is what we feed to factory farmed pigs, cows, horses, but also pets. So pet food actually is mislabeled and a misnomer. It should be correctly labeled as dog and cat feed because it has failed human

inspection unless otherwise labeled as such. So what goes into pet feed, Mike, is a lot of carbohydrates. So a lot of corn, there's a lot of grains, a lot of byproducts from the grain industry go into pet food, of course, because grains are an inexpensive filler that we can use to bulk up in terms of reducing costs from meats. Meats that fail human inspection from slaughter plants also go into pet feed. There's a whole lot of carcass and trim after an animal's been slaughtered. All of the good meat that is appropriate and healthy and clean goes into the obviously human food market and everything left over goes into the pet feed market. Those carcasses are ground up in a process called rendering. They're heated up,

and then the tallow fat and meat are all separated, and then those individual components are what ultimately come together to create a recipe for pet food. Obviously, those raw ingredients are heated to high temperatures, which not only denatures the proteins, but also reduces a lot of the vitamin content. So the end of multiple rounds of high heat processing, the end result is kibble and canned food that then has to be refortified with synthetic vitamins and minerals because the high heat process has, of course, reduced a lot of the nutritional content. That's what the average bag of kibble and canned food is. So obviously, a lot of pet parents are saying, you know, once I learned about this, I don't really want to be feeding that all the time to my dog. So

what are some other options? And that's been really the unfolding of these alternative pet food categories. And Mike, you might be familiar with them. You know, for the last 100 years, we mostly had kibble. But you've noticed now recently, we've got freeze dried and dehydrated and gently cooked food and human-grade raw frozen foods. We have all of these brand-new food categories, and those all are really a result of human influence on the pet food industry saying we're demanding better quality, more species-appropriate foods. What about the dog food that you can buy from your vet? It's like prescription dog food. You would think, well, that must be really good stuff.

Is it? So prescription pet food actually doesn't contain any prescriptions in it. There's no drugs. There's no pharmaceuticals. There's nothing that's controlled by the FDA going into that food. The reason that we call it prescription is because you have to buy it from your veterinarian. And these foods are specifically formulated by veterinary nutritionists to meet some type of health goal. But the biggest frustration in learning about the prescription or therapeutic pet food market, once you realize, oh, drats, I thought I was buying something medicinal per se,

you aren't. And probably the biggest letdown is that it's the same feed quality ingredients. It's not made with better quality raw materials. It's the same rejected feed quality materials that goes into regular pet food. The difference being you have to buy it from your veterinarian. So sadly, there isn't a whole lot of difference, Mike, in terms of quality. The difference is that there may be macronutrients rearranged, or there may be a supplement added to call it a prescription, thereby making it available only through your veterinarian. So let's talk about the sedentary lifestyle, because I think just because of the way we live our lives, people get up in the morning, they go to work, their dog sits at home,

doesn't do much. Maybe they take them for a walk. But I remember talking to somebody, and it just always stuck with me. They said, you know, every dog needs a job. That if your dog just gets up in the morning to go lie in the living room all day and then gets up from there to go lie in bed, that's not much of a life. And we have to remember that our dogs are basically the equivalent of really smart toddlers. They're smart. They're energetic. They need to move their body.

And so we, of course, most of us living very busy lives, we love our dogs, but they stay, I don't want to say trapped in our homes. We may have a doggy there so they can go into the backyard and kind of walk around. But generally speaking, just as your toddler needs a lot of engaging exercise and brain games and ongoing opportunities to learn and use their hands and use their bodies, dogs need the exact same opportunities on an ongoing basis to be able to vet their energy, use their brains, use their bodies, and you are spot on. Many dogs love having jobs, and if not jobs, Mike, hobbies, which means we have bred lots of our dogs either to be in water or for a specific purpose. We have hunting dogs, we have retrieving dogs,

we have water dogs, we have all of these different breeds that still maintain many of their natural desires to, let's say, herd. So if you happen to have a herding breed, you'll notice that that breed has herding tendencies. So creating opportunities for dogs to not only have jobs, but do things that they naturally love doing, giving our dogs more opportunities to actually be dog is not just good for their brains and bodies, but research shows that actually help extend their lifespan because they have decreased stress. So the more opportunities we can give our dogs to be outside, run at full speed, dig in the dirt, roll in the snants, you know, sniff other dogs' butts, those are all really great opportunities for both physical exercise,

but also the mental and emotional stimulation they need to be balanced, calm, and well-mannered. Yeah. And you know, I think often when people take their dogs for walks, and I've been guilty of this myself, that, you know, it's, let's hurry up, hurry up, they'll stop to sniff a tree, and, oh, not, you just sniffed the last tree. But you say that you really should, you know, that's heaven for them. Yes. In fact, think of it kind of like happy hour for us. Dogs do need cardio, Mike. Cardio meaning heart thumping, muscle building. Our dogs need rigorous muscle toning exercise, not only for their cardiovascular fitness, but for their muscles, ligaments, tendons, metabolism, lymphatics, no doubt.

But in addition to physically moving their body a lot and a lot more often than most of us allow our dogs to, we do forget the fact that dogs have a nose and that their sense of smell is how they identify with their environment. And it's a huge part of their environmental ability to know where they're at, who's around them, as well as enrichment. So letting your dog sniff, Dr. Alexander Horowitz calls these sniffaries, at the beginning and end of your cardio sessions when you walk your dog, allowing your dog choice, giving your dog the option to sniff the telephone pole. If he wants to sniff five minutes on a telephone pole, think of

that at like you're giving him, in essence, a really great opportunity to be a dog. And as much as we would say, oh my gosh, you just sniffed the last pole and didn't we just stop? Giving your dog five minutes twice a day to do whatever they want in terms of sniffing is a really great way to satisfy their desire to identify what's in their environment.

So do both. Run your dog and then during the cool down, let your dog sniff whatever the heck he wants for five to 10 minutes. In your research, you found a dog that was, what was it, 30 years old? Yes. Crazy, huh? That's Maggie, the beautiful Kelpie from Australia. She was 30. How did that happen? When we asked Brian McLaren, the owner of Maggie, if he wanted to like relay her life and what he did and didn't do, and if he had any tips or tricks or secrets about her lifespan, it was so interesting, Mike, because basically Maggie's

dad told us exactly what Dr. David Sinclair, which is one of the top most cited geneticists from Harvard University Longevity Lab, he's one of the most eminent geneticists in the world, they gave us the both of them, gave us the exact same advice. Maggie's dad said, listen, I believe Maggie lived to be 30 because she got daily exercise. She walked about eight hours a day. She was able to make a lot of her own choices. She ate more than just ultra processed food. She was a happy dog. She enjoyed her life. We could see that she was, she made choices to do fun things. And she did that her entire life. And when we asked Dr. David Singh, oh, and the last thing that Maggie's dad said, when we said, if you could give one piece of advice to dog owners everywhere, what would you say? Brian said, feed your dog less. Everyone overfeeds their dog and dogs're the top geneticist in the whole world. Give us your best tips. He's also doing research on dogs. So we said, listen, you're the top human geneticist, but you're doing

research on dogs. Give us your top advice. If you were going to engineer the oldest dog in the world, Dr. Sinclair, what would you do? He gave us the exact same advice. He said, move your dog every day for as long as you can. An hour is good. Two hours is better. More of that. Give your dog a rich social life. Feed your dog more than ultra of that. Give your dog a rich social life. Feed your dog more than ultra-processed foods. Give your dog a hobby. Get your dog out and have him be social. And above all things, don't overfeed your dog.

And I just found that so interesting that an awesome dairy farmer from Australia who owned the oldest dog in the world had the exact same advice that he came to those conclusions with common sense as one of the most educated geneticists in the world. Well, this is really great information for dog owners. And I know you told me before we actually started the interview that what you said about dog food also is true for cat food as well, which is interesting news for cat owners too.

Veterinarian Karen Becker has been my guest, and the name of her book is The Forever Dog, Surprising New Science to Help Your Canine Companion Live Younger, Healthier, and Longer. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Karen. Appreciate you coming on. Well, thanks, Mike. This has been great. That air freshener that's labeled rainforest mist or fresh summer day that you spray around your house might not be that at all.

That smiling lady on TV who is simultaneously spraying and breathing in that air freshener is actually getting a lung full of toxins, kind of like those found in paint. Not only are they bad to breathe in, but there's evidence showing that some fragrances can even have an addictive effect on people. Commercial air fresheners can also coat your nasal passages with an oily film that can diminish our sense of smell. You're actually better off going with natural deodorizers, such as simmering spices, or placing small dishes of baking soda or vinegar with lemon juice around the house that absorb odors, rather than spray commercial air fresheners. That's according to the EPA, and that is something you should know. We've been getting a lot of really nice reviews on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere. If you haven't

left a review, or even if you have but haven't left one in a while, I invite you to do that. It's a great way to show that you support this podcast, and we read all the reviews, so it helps us do a better show. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group.

Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Contained herein are the heresies of Redolph Buntwine. To be continued... a loving God, and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine,

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