Stuff You Should Know - 10 Scientists Who Were Their Own Guinea Pigs

Episode Date: September 6, 2011

Over the centuries, some scientists have concluded that the best test subject is looking at them in the mirror. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore 10 researchers, unsung or otherwise, who put their own health second to the advancement of science. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Sometimes science goes too far. Dark Matters. Twisted but True. Wednesdays at 10 on Science. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me at long last is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is special like eight ways from Sunday. This episode is, isn't it? I've changed my name

over the weekend. Nice name. Yeah. I changed the Jan Michael Vincent. Finally. I know, right? You've been talking about that forever, Chuck. I'm glad you finally did it. And you showed me your driver's license and it's official. Pretty neat. And what's cool is you did your hair for the photo. It looks kind of like the Airwolf Era Jan Michael Vincent. Is there any other era? The mechanic. That's true. Yeah. Those are his two eras. Super. Was he in that? Yeah. He was the young buck stuntman to Bert Reynolds, aged veteran. Oh really? He played that role a couple of times then, I guess. I guess so. Okay. Well, that's enough for the Jan Michael Vincent shout outs. Is he around still? I haven't seen him in a decade and he was in pretty bad shape a decade ago.

Was he really? Yeah. From what? I think drugs. I might be wrong though. Or maybe he was injured or something. Because you just told everybody Jan Michael Vincent likes drugs. He's self-experimented. Great one. Thank you very much for that. This is a special episode because we are good friends with the Science Channel and they have a very, very cool show that an ad played for at the beginning of this episode. That's right. Dark Matters. It comes on, it premiered last Wednesday. It comes on tomorrow, Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Have you looked at the episodes? Have you seen any of the video? It's pretty awesome. It is. I was going through the episode guide of the stuff they have coming up. It's like a dark version of Unsolved Mysteries. A couple of the episodes have

stuff that we've covered like Einstein's Brain, C-I-A-L-S-D, and then they have a bunch of stuff we haven't covered. Are they ripping us off? I didn't get that impression but it's possible. They can do anything they want. But imitation is the greatest form of flattery. That's right. Actually, we get assiduous stuff sometimes and you'll know if we really want to do it because we do it. We did this one. This is literally being recorded today. That's crazy. That is definitely different. Jerry's turning this one around. Like hours later or earlier we recorded this. It is as fresh as it gets. It still has the peach fuzz on it. Depesh mode, by the way. Depesh mode is in no way related to a racer. He was a founding member of Depesh mode and later

went on to found a racer. Really? Vincent Clark, yeah. Really? Yes. Wow. Nice. I knew there was some tie. I had no idea. We're talking about this because we were having rarely do we let you in on our pre-record conversation but Josh went and saw a racer this weekend and I knew it was awesome and it was great and there was some tie to another band and I couldn't remember it and it was Depesh mode. Well, it was either Depesh mode or the Pet Boys. Probably. Pet Boys. But I had, jeez, did I just say that? Yeah, that he said the Pet Boys which is an auto parts store. They really get on the keyboards and they have these gigantore heads and tie bodies. All right, so Chuck, you're ready? Ready. We're talking about scientists who self-experiment and we've talked about crazy

experiments before. So this episode actually forms a trifecta with two other previously released episodes that if you haven't heard, you should go listen to. What's the third? There is the human experimentation episode and then five crazy government experiments. Oh, yeah, yeah. All those are pretty well mixed together. So if you listen to that, if you listen to those two in self-experimentation, you're going to have a very robust understanding of just how nuts some scientists are. You know what they call that around here? What? A bucket. Yeah, they do. A bucket of content. Heck, that's almost a channel. That's right. This is good, man. You threw this together like Lickety Split last week and found some really cool things, I think. Yeah,

there's, there's, you could do way more than 10. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Like the guy who cracked his own knuckles for 30 years. Oh, yeah. Just in his left hand, I believe. You found nothing, right? It does not cause arthritis. That's right. We talked before about Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who took the world's first acid trip on purpose on a bike. Boy, can you imagine? Like never having known anything about it. Like I think generally when people do that kind of thing these days, you've heard of it and you know what's coming. Sure. But for it to be this brand new thing, he was probably like, I bet that was a long bike ride. Yeah, like kids grew up on the Great Space Coaster so they know what's coming, you know. But yeah, he said that he, he, he, he

laid down at home and these, these bizarre but not altogether unpleasant visions started coming to him. And yeah, he was whacked out for many hours. But we've talked about him before. A guy who we haven't talked about who I find just fascinating is named Santorio Santorio. It's the, the researchers are so nice, they named him twice. Santorio Santorio? Yes. Yes. Take a check. Well, he was a self-experimenter in one of the, the earlier self-experimenters. We're talking 16th century style and what he did is he wanted to find out about, and I guess they didn't call it metabolism at the time, did they? No, he, he later ended up being, the study. Okay. Yeah. Back then they were, they had no idea. But basically that's what he was doing was kind of learning about the human metabolism

and he did so by being very meticulous about recording what he eat, eat it, what he ate and what he drank and weighing his stools and his urine. And I guess he formed some equation, what comes in, what goes out. Well, he found that it doesn't equal. Well, sure. And you, you can't take into account the weight you put on. There's still some difference and he wanted to figure out where that went and he came up with the idea of insensible perspiration. Which I thought was going to be all about sweat. So I was a little disappointed. Well, it is. Yeah, but really? I mean, it's just like constant little sweat. I guess. You lose weight like that. But the, the cool thing about Santorio Squared is that he lived

for 30 years, Chuck, essentially. He did this for 30 years? Yeah. Every, every day, every, every single day for 30 years. And he basically lived on this machine. It was a huge beam scale. And he constructed like a little chair and like a work table and all that. And he weighed all the food and drink that came on and he weighed all the poop and urine that went off. But he lived on this thing. Well, and what's sad is that he did all this and it really wasn't super useful. No, but it opened the doors though for things like this. It definitely did. And one of the other things that did was he had the idea of insensible perspiration before he did this. So here's one of the first people to say, you know what? I'm not just going to say something. I'm going to

subject this to scientific rigor. I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. I'm going to live on a scale and weigh my poop. Yeah. He's like a stockbroker in the 80s looking for brand, you know? So that's number one. Number two, we come to 1803 is a little bit of a jump there to Frederick Wilhelm Adam Certuner. And what he ended up doing was actually pretty useful for everyone, even today. Yes. Because he, did he discover morphine? He isolated it. Isolated it from opium. Yeah. And through 52 steps got a few friends together. Well, first he tested it on animals until they started dying, sleeping and dying. Right. And then he's like, well, maybe I should try this on people and see what happens. Yeah. Because he said

that animals do not give exact results. I guess that's true. Right. So he and his 17-year-old friends give exact results. All those dying is a pretty exact result. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. So he OD'd a bunch of animals. Then he got three. You pointed out 17-year-olds plus himself. I think he was like 20 at the time. He was? So that's like right in the wheelhouse still today, I think. Yeah. He's middle age back then though. Yeah. And so he does himself and his friends on a low dose at first, about a half a grain of morphine, which is 30 MGs. It's a comparatively low dose to what he took. Right. And that produced a little flushing. He was like, okay, this is kind of neat, but I'm looking for more than flushing. So let me take a little

more. Yeah. After about 15 minutes, took a similar dose, started feeling a little queasy and faint and sleepy, of course. Yeah. And to the point where I guess he thought it might be getting a little dangerous. So he threw up, made all his friends throw up to get it out of their system. Well, yeah, he started to get a little worried that they were all going to die because they took in 90 milligrams of morphine in less than an hour, which today we realize is 10 times the recommended dose. So yeah, he gave everybody like eight ounces of vinegar to drink and made them throw up and save their lives. Yeah, I imagine they probably would have a deed, huh? Yeah. And then he did another experiment later because he had a toothache and he found that

if he just took opium for it, the toothache wasn't cured, but if he took some morphine, it was cured. Oh, I thought he discovered that by accident. Like he was like, wait a minute, my toothaches. No, he kept going. This is not the only experiment. Like he had like many, many brushes with death. As far as self-experimenting scientists go, he was probably one of the, um, one of the toughest ones. Or at least. Or the one able to take a lot of drugs. The one most addicted to morphine. That's right. Yeah. But that was a pretty big contribution to humanity. I mean, that's still like the go to, um, painkiller today. I imagine. Yeah. Or not. I imagine. I know this. It's true. Uh, up next, Josh, we have Henry Head, Sir Henry Head.

And, uh, he got together with his buddy, W. H. Rivas. And, um, they, uh, this one's a little crazy to me. They knew at the time that nerve damage can repair itself, but what they didn't have was, uh, documentation. Right. Because people couldn't describe it. Right. They'd be like, yeah, I guess that kind of hurts. Yeah. And like, yeah. So what they needed at the time, there was no documentation. So they were like, well, let me cut out a sliver of my nerve on my arm and sew it back together. And let's, since I can talk about this stuff intelligently, just, I'll do it myself. Yeah. And not just any nerve. This is a radial that his, the radial nerve in his left arm, right? He was right-handed, which is why he did this to his

left arm. Cause he's no dummy. No, he's no dummy. Right. Um, and he had it surgically removed and the radial nerve dude goes to the spinal column and then all the way down, Branson's all the way down to the hand. So it's like a major nerve and he had a section cut out and then tied back together with silk and then said, okay, I'm just going to spend the next five years paying attention to how the, um, sensation, uh, some meta-ception comes back. That's right. And not only that, Chuck. So dude, I got a root canal the other day, as you know. Yeah. You said it wasn't too bad, huh? No, it wasn't. But I, I was, I was thinking about Henry head because while it was going on, I kind of went off to my happy place. I just like left my body as much as possible. Yeah.

In case any pain did come along, it would be kind of muted. What Henry head did that work was it did. Yeah. You know, like you're not looking for the pain. You're trying to avoid it mentally. Yeah. And it definitely makes it worse if you're paying attention. Yes. He, but what Henry head did was create this, um, kind of trance like state called, uh, negative attitude of attention where he focused his attention inward on pain, looking for it. So he could, you know, I guess experience it more fully and pay attention to the type of pain it was. This guy went on this journey of pain, excruciating pain at times. Yeah. Yeah. We told his wife that. Yeah. What was his quote to his wife? He said, I shall know a great

deal about pain by the time this experiment is over. Yeah. And he was right. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. But he was a bad dude. She's like, what's this bringing in? Are they paying you for this? Eternal pain. But he, uh, you know, that documentation was important because they'd never been able to, to describe fully. They probably didn't follow patients up like they do now, you know, like five years later, right? Well, and this was over the course of five years. So like they, they basically documented how sensation returns after major nerve damage. And he also contributed a lot to experimental psychology with the negative attitude of attention. Basically there's a, the, this whole thing of reverie where you're just basically zoned out

like Ralphie in, um, a Christmas story. Like that, that was never documented before. And basically what Henry had did was say, oh, here's a way to explore that. I don't get the Ralphie. Remember where they're like Ralphie and he like comes to remember his, uh, his little daydream about getting the A plus plus plus plus plus plus. That's a reverie. Okay. Yeah. That's good family comedy. Yes it is. Number four on our list, Josh. I'd like to call the, the dude who loved drugs, Alexandra Shulgin. We talked about him before and he was a chemist for Dow in the sixties. We talked about him in the, uh, Ken psychedelics, treatment illness. That's the one he showed up in. Right. Uh, he was basically, um, toying with, with mescaline and,

and compounds that later became ecstasy, MDMA, MDMA. Yeah. I have a hard time saying that. And he and his wife, uh, took a lot of these psychoactive drugs, had parties in the martini, as the usual method of the sixties, put a little drugs in there. And, uh, you know, that's basically his story. He, he liked the drugs. And I guess he documented all that stuff, right? Yeah. He went just partying. Was he? Uh, I don't know if partying's the right word, but I don't know that he was always documenting. I don't know if it was always scientifically rigorous. How many did he take here? So there's like an estimated 300 psychoactive compounds in the world. And he estimated that he sampled between 200 and 250 of them. Wow. So he, he liked

the psychedelics a lot. He put his big time into the dead. Timothy Leary to shame. Didn't he? They were probably buddies. Was he American? Yeah. Okay. So let's go back a little bit from the drug addled sixties to the drug addled 19th century. Yeah. 1819, right? There was a Czechoslovakian monk who, um, at age 32 became a doctor because, um, he didn't think that the whole recommended dosage thing that was being doled out at the time was he called it, uh, nothing but mysticism. He thought it was way too low. And basically, um, I was homeopathy. Right. I think he had a problem with homeopathy. His name was Yon Perkin. And he, uh, he basically said, okay, I'm going to become a doctor so I can learn more about this. And then I'm going to take as many

drugs as I can get my hands on and, um, overdose and then pay attention to what happens to me. That's right. Because I want to figure out what the recommended dosage should be. Yeah. The coolest part about this guy's story, I think is that after he started doing this, like taking things like Fox glove to blur his vision and then writing about that nightshade, uh, the word got out and people, I got the sense that other doctors were like, Hey, there's this dude that he'll let you do anything to it. Right. He'll take anything. That's how they started doing that. Yeah. One of his, uh, teachers, um, at med school said, Hey, I've got these three different extracts of Ipacac and I need to find out which one's best. So what do you think? Which one? Is there anything that

that does besides make you vomit? Nope. Okay. That's it's sole purpose. Yep. As far as I know, that's it. Have you ever heard of it used for anything else? No, I haven't either. No, I don't ever want to have it, but, um, I want to try it. This. So Jan Purkinje, um, conducted a three week trial of these three extracts of Ipacac. And by the end of the trial, he'd conditioned like a vomiting response where he never saw like a brown powder that looked like Ipacac. He did. Yeah. Yeah. His wife's like, you want some cinnamon toast? Well, you know, it's interesting. His wife died and he became, um, in charge of raising his three boys. And he said, Okay, I'm not self experimenting anymore. I got to, I have to stick around to take care of these, these jokers. That's

good to know. Yeah. It was pretty cool. He said he was leaving it to the younger generation. So he started, but he'd been doing it for 20 years already. Right. And, um, not just Ipacac and, uh, fox glove, but also, um, nightshade. We now use atropine, which is the active ingredient in nightshade to dilate pupils. Thanks to him because he overdosed on nightshade to find out what would happen. And he would also make himself very dizzy to study vertigo on carousels. Yeah. There's the type of vertigo named after him. Oh, really? Yeah. Because he, uh, he studied it and figured it out. So he would just like it on the carousel until it and then stand up and yeah, but rather than, this is a common thread in self experimentation, like with my root canal, or if you're dizzy on a

carousel, you go inward, you, you shy away from it. You don't want to pay attention to any details. You just want everything to end, right? Yeah. What self-experimenting researchers do is throw themselves into the experience and pay attention and gain all that knowledge from it that, you know, any one of us could do if, if we were good at describing things scientifically. Yeah, true. But we don't because we want to avoid pain and discomfort and nausea and Ipacac. These guys did it for us. They did, thankfully. Yeah. Well, that's why we're doing this one too. It's like, hats off to them if you haven't gotten that impression yet. Thank you. Hats off. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug

abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute, uh, 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Before. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Marcel Swiley, that dude and host of more to it, a new iHeart original podcast that takes a deep dive into the biggest topics in sports, entertainment and culture. The journey begins with headline news, which leads to deeper discussions about life lessons that are presented in every story. Each week we tackle subjects and issues beyond the public's perception and narrative to learn more about the stories and about ourselves. Hosted by someone who defied the odds to go from Compton to the Ivy League and then played 10 years as an all pro defense event. This is not your typical sports show with topics ranging from the social ills

that surround us all to the character growth that occurs from overcoming adversity. You'll get inspired hearing stories that highlight the growing pains that fuels anyone on a successful journey. You'll leave every episode with a greater understanding that no matter the story, the person or outcome, there is always more to it. Found on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I just did that and I had like a reverse mohawk or something and I like you couldn't say anything about it. All right, George Stratton is next and he did something a little crazy. He wore reversing lenses in the 1890s so he learned that our visual information comes in in an inverted manner. We all know this. Right. Well, he knew

that but there were theories that said that's how it has to be and he wanted to find out if that was true. Like does visual information have to be inverted for us to see upright because you know it flips over in the brain. Exactly. Right. So can you imagine what he did to his brain by doing this? Yeah, it's pretty crazy. He wore these reversing lenses which basically presented visual information right side up and wore them for eight days straight. So it provided it right side up to the brain but if we wore that everything would look upside down. Yeah. And he did. Like you said, eight days straight. Unbelievable. He said the thing that got him the most was like he would put his hand out. Moving. Right. Well, he had to just sit there for like the first four

days. He couldn't move at all. Oh, really? Yeah. But he would put his, he would stretch his hand out and it would come in from the top rather than the bottom and he said everything was just like a dream. I'd like to try that out for like a second. You know, I'd just like to put some on and be like, oh, right. That's weird. Let me take them right back off. Exactly. Not leave them on for eight days. No. Apparently by the fifth day, everything started to show up as upright again. Oh, really? Yeah. And then if you really concentrated on it, it would go back to being upside down. So did he rewire his brain? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. He proved that the visual information doesn't have to be inverted to be seen upright and that the brain is really capable

of adapting in a fairly short time to basically the most radical changes in the sensations it presented. So I guess that's sort of helped. I mean, it's not like that led to any huge breakthrough though, did it? I think it probably gave, yeah, I would think that it probably formed the basis of like neuroplasticity. Yeah. Surely. All right. Yeah. Plus also, I mean, anybody who does that, that's mind bending, you know? Yeah. He gets a pat on the back for that no matter what. Well, and he also found too that after taking them off that it took a little while to get back to normal, which the price has something to do about your brain unlearned. Yeah. His brain was ticked off. Yeah. He said that he had like glasses at first and he said it was just too much and

couldn't do it. So he blindfolded one eye for eight days and had like basically a monocle, like a little, yeah, just with single lens. And that's the one he wore for eight days. He said it was just too much to have two lenses. So you want to do Carl Lahnsteiner? Yeah. He actually did do a lot of good work. He was a V&E's and he was a physician and he basically came up with the blood typing system, the ABO blood typing system, because he noticed that red blood cells in some people clump in the presence of the fluid component, which is serum, but not everybody. So he thought it's almost as if their blood is a different type from one another. Well, at the time, like they knew that that would happen because you'd give people blood

transfusions and then they die and you'd look at your blood and it was clumped. Yeah. But at the time, everybody thought it was because those people had some unknown disease. And Lahnsteiner was like, I think that people just have different types of blood. So he used his own blood and some of his colleagues. We should do one on blood type. I think we should. Is that true? Like your body cannot literally cannot accept another blood type? It depends. I think O is the universal type. Yeah. So you can accept O. But if you have like A, can you can't have B at all? No, because the red blood cells clump and your blood doesn't flow and you die. So it's like putting diesel in a very much though. Very much so. Yeah. So what, like you said, what Lahnsteiner did was a huge contribution

because he showed, you know, there's different antigens in different types of blood and that creates this different blood type A, B, O or A, B. Yeah. And when you, if you test people first and say, oh, they're A type, right, and we've got some A type blood over here, a blood transfusion will work. And so will organ donation and all this other stuff. Yeah. It was enormous. I bet doctors were like, oh, well, that's good to know. Right. Yeah. He stopped putting diesel in these people. So yeah, he won the Nobel Prize in 1930 for that. Oh, did he? Rightly so. Yeah. He should win it every year. But what's crazy is, you know, he just, he experimented on himself. It's kind of cool. But what's nuts is that he also uses colleagues blood and it just so happened that out

of like five people, they all had different blood types, like all the blood types were present. It could have gone the exact opposite way. Right. And just everybody had A type. And then he said, no, they're the same. Yeah, exactly. So I thought that was pretty cool. It was almost a providence. Well, and he led, that led to Dr. Jack Goldstein in the 1980s to do, he was a biochemist that did more experimenting. And this one confused, not confused me, but he found out that an enzyme in coffee when injected into B blood removes antigen and basically makes it the universal blood type. Right. How did he figure that out? I don't know. The coffee thing coming. I don't know, but he figured it out. But I just injected coffee one day to see what that would do. Right. And

in my blood. Right. So he, he had O type blood. So that this enzyme changes B type blood to O type blood. And he had O type blood. So to prove that this worked, he got a blood transfusion of this treated B blood that was ostensibly now O blood. Right. So he got a blood transfusion, a small one, but he did it himself to see if, you know, his arm would fall off or something like that, or if his blood would clump and it worked. Right. And it's still being worked out. But apparently, you know, that opens up like the donation pool. If you can just take all this B type blood and you need O, which is the universal type, just inject it with this enzyme and I wonder how much blood you have to have transfused before it. Like how much diesel can you put in

there? I don't know. Like if you, if they just did like a vial with that, like what would that do to your body? I don't know. Cause Goldstein did like 11 billion, 11 and a half billion red blood cells. Right. And I, I don't know if that's just a few drops or if that's like half a pine or a pine or what and curious. Yeah. We'll have to find that out in the blood typing episode. Okay. Well, I have, I've been wanting to do the blood one for a while, but it's just like, let's do it right now. It's tough. I'm going to need a little while on that one. Okay. Okay. Do we have a blood typing article? Well, we have an article on blood that's like really dense. Oh, yes. We started to do that. We're like, yeah, we're not doing this right now. It was

much more complex than I thought. I think it was written by an MD. Wasn't it? It read like it. Yeah. So look for the revised version coming in the future. All right. I like number nine. Ebbinghaus. Ehrman. Is it Herman or Ehrman? Ebbinghaus. I don't think he's Portuguese. He was German. Would Ehrman be Portuguese? Yeah. Ehrman. I don't know. He's Herman then. Let's just call him Herman. Okay. He was German and he was the first guy to really study memory in a really, maybe at all, but in a really scientific way, which was, which was unusual at the time to apply scientific research principles to psychological matters. Right. It was like basically taking the way the hard sciences do and applying it to the soft science of psychology.

That's right. But he formed the methodology that's still in use today and proved that it can work. Like, yes, you can study, you know, cognitive faculties like memory. In a science way. In a science way. Science-y way. So what he did was pretty cool. He created, first thing he did was he created these non-syllable, nonsense syllables, 2300 of them with two consonants with a vowel in the middle like nog is one example you used. Yeah. And he had to make them nonsense because there had to be like no association with like previous words that he had learned. They had to be brand new things in his brain. Right. Because I mean, if you, if you have a previous association with a syllable, right, like skate, okay. And you have a great memory of ice skating as a child

and skate brings that to mind. Of course you're going to remember skate. I'm surprised he came up with 2300 of them. I know. That'd be tough for me. So what he did was he basically, over the course of a year, learned these words and then to the point where he could recall them perfectly and then recorded how long it took for him basically to forget them and then relearn them again. Right. And that taught us all sorts of cool things about memory. Yeah. He figured out that, and a lot of this stuff, you know, is so commonplace. We know it. We take it very much for granted, but this guy is the one who figured out that meaningless stuff is harder to learn than meaningful stuff. Yeah. He gave us the idea of the learning curve, the more stuff you have to learn,

the longer it's going to take to learn it. Yeah. I think he was the first person to actually name it too, the learning curve. I think so. It's possible. I believe so. Okay. And forgetting happens most rapidly right after learning and then kind of evens off and slows down. Yeah. And he taught us that cramming doesn't work. That learning is best when it's done over a longer time than, you know, a single true learning session. Yeah. Because boy, I used to cram pretty well. Did you? I stuck at it. I was good at it. I was not. I would just be too stressed out. Well, and I shortchanged myself, though, because I would do well on the test and then forget it, which was, I mean, I wasn't doing myself any favors as far as gaining knowledge,

you know, I took Italian in college and it was the only language that's ever clicked for me. Like I got Italian on a fundamental level. Oh, really? Yeah. And just ace the class until the final. And I studied for the final. I don't think I crammed. I just, you know, I didn't take it for granted that I was going to ace the final, but I, for some reason, I got there and forgot everything when I sat down. And well, then I panicked. Yeah. But it wasn't panicked until I realized that I'd forgotten everything. And I still, to this day, don't understand what happened. And I don't remember. It's not like it came back after the test. It just went away right before the final. You know what happened? What? Centaurio Centaurio. That's what happened. I started weighing

my feces and it chased away all my understanding of Italian. And I stopped after one trial. Did you? Quitter. I'm just saying I've weighed my feces once and I know you got to do it more than once. He also created the Ebbinghaus illusion. Have you ever heard of that? That thing right there? Is it the same size? Yeah. That is not the same size. It is. It is not the same size. It's a very famous illusion where there are two same sized circles. They're not the same size. And then the one on the left has these very large circles around it. And the one on the right has very small circles around it. And it gives the appearance that they're different sizes, but they're not. So Ebbinghaus is a pioneer in experimental psychology, which is pretty cool.

Absolutely. And in experimental psychology, still today, self-experimentation is fairly commonly used because it's not nearly as dangerous as it is in, say, medicine. And for that reason, science today is basically like you can't self-experiment. That's so 19th century. Well, beyond the dangers of it, there's something called double blinds and placebos that, you know, if you know if you're self-experimenting, then that's going to affect the outcome of the experiment. Right. Almost 100 percent. Yeah. The double blind is like a hallmark of scientific inquiry. And you it's impossible with when you're experimenting on yourself. It's true. So if you're looking for grant funding and you're saying, well, I'm just going

to try this drug on myself and see what happens, you're not going to get that funding. But probably we'll get published either, right? Well, it depends. There's this guy named Seth Roberts, who published a paper about his 12 years of self-experimentation. And he's a psychologist. But the paper that he published was about the self-experimenting he did in his spare time. So if you're not an experimental psychologist, probably if you're into self-experimentation, you're either some sort of pro-scientist doing it in your spare time, right? Or you're an amateur. There's a there's been a movement called n equals one, which is, you know, n is scientific notation for the study sample size or population size. Isn't it called quantified cell, though? That's

a movement. Well, that's the that's the website. There's like a group where it's kind of like this hub of like, hey, I wanted to figure out why I have migraine. So I started tracking like my food and they were wired editors, I think who found quantified self. Yeah. Yeah, I did not know that. Well, yeah. Yeah. So there's quantified self.com is basically this awesome place where you can go see how other people are carrying out their own self-experiments and gets a little wacky. Yeah. There's this one lady that drinks her first urine of the day each day that is. She records all that. Are you sure you saw that? I read it. I didn't see her do that. Well, you didn't click on the YouTube? No, there's all sorts. There was a big Forbes. Yeah, Forbes had

a big article on this movement, which is some people call it naval gazing at its finest. Yeah. Other people think it's valid. Well, that's the point that Seth Roberts made. He was saying like, I don't need funding for this because I'm just doing it my spare time. It costs like basically no money. Get off my back. I just pay attention. Yeah. But he also said that he was motivated. He had the motivation of a person looking to solve a problem. Like he wanted to control his weight or mood or make himself a happier person or get better sleep. So he just carried out all these self-experiments and he could conduct more than one at a time. Yeah. So yeah, he was like, get off my back. I think it's kind of cool though. Like I have lactose issues and I could see myself

getting into eating, to tracking that and isolating exactly which foods. I mean, that's basically all it is. That's it. It's kind of cool. And drinking your own urine. I will draw the line there. So we should probably say thanks to some of the sources that helped us with this podcast. Jeff Clark. Oscillatory Thoughts blog. Let's see. Tiffany Watts-Smith wrote, Henry Head in the Theater of Reverie. Scientific American had a cool article, Self-Experiment and Step Up for Science. Alan Nuringer had a paper from 1981 called Self-Experimentation, A Call for Change. Lawrence K. Altman literally wrote the book on this. Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation and Medicine.

Who Goes First. That's pretty funny. A. E. Cohen wrote an article in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology about Sarah Turner's experiments. He and his good time buddies. Salvatore Kaurari. Did he write about Centaurio Centaurio? He wrote about George Stratton. The University of Indiana has a cool human intelligence department, QuantifiedSelf.com, if you want to get into self-experimentation and don't feel like suing us for mentioning it. It's interesting to look at at the very least. Yeah, agreed. And then Seth Roberts, the unreasonable effectiveness of my self-experimentation is the name of the paper. So those are all the ones. And then pretty soon there'll be a list, a top 10 list, on the site. It's not published yet.

It's practically done, I would assume. And Chuck, if you forgot the name of the show that we're promoting on Science Channel, why don't we do a little ad for it? Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Marcel Swiley, that dude, and host of More To It, a new iHeart original podcast that takes a deep dive into the biggest topics in sports, entertainment and culture. The journey begins with headline news, which leads to deeper discussions about life lessons that are presented in every story. Each week we tackle subjects and issues beyond the public's perception and narrative. To learn more about the stories and about ourselves. Hosted by someone who defied the odds to go from Compton to the Ivy League and then played 10 years as an all pro defensive end. This is not your typical sports show, with topics ranging from the social ills that surround us all

to the character growth that occurs from overcoming adversity. You'll get inspired hearing stories that highlight the growing pains that fuels anyone on a successful journey. You'll leave every episode with a greater understanding that no matter the story, the person or outcome, there is always more to it. Found on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. That's true, yeah. Chuck, a couple more shout-outs. Our good friend Wyatt Sinak. Yes. His stand-up special, Wyatt Sinak comedy person is out on DVD. Very funny stuff. Yes. And if you've only seen Wyatt on the Daily Show, he is great on the Daily Show, but his stand-up is hysterical and different than you would think it would be.

It is. He's much more like lively and animated. He's awesome. He's a good guy too. And we have a happiness audio book out. That's right. The Grammy nominated, nominated happiness audio book, the super stuff guide to happiness. That's right. It's up on iTunes for $3.99. You're going to end up selling out more if you're in Australia. We're sorry. Let's see. What else? Oh, it's got all sorts of great sound design interviews. Yeah. It's just cool. We got some experts on the horn. Yeah. My niece. Yes. Searched it out. She let it off. And yeah, it's up on iTunes to search for super stuff guide to happiness. And that will also bring up the super stuff guide to the economy, which is still evergreen and good. Are we going

to do any more of those? I think we should. Just, I mean, I would feel like we should. Okay. I would feel like a quitter if we just had two. Yeah. We need at least three. I would like four at least. Okay. Okay. And then one more administrative detail. We have a cool little thing. If you text SYSK to 80565, it texts you back a link to listen to the podcast on your iPhone without going through iTunes. If you're not in the mood. Is that what they did? Yeah. It's cool. It brings up our RSS feed. And you can just listen to it. I think it's quick time. So it'll work on your iPhone or your droid or whatever. That's our latest marketing invention. Yeah. It's pretty cool. So just text SYSK to 80565. If you ever are having a stuff you should know,

Jones. That's right. Friedrich's turn is not around. Yeah. And by the way, we're working on there's been some issues with the apps, I think, refreshing the podcast list lately. And we are working, our tech department is working on that. So keep your pants on, as they say. Yeah. So this will be up eventually. You can look for 10, 10 scientists who were their own guinea pigs. Love it. In the search bar at howstuffworks.com. You can also type in human experimentation and five crazy government experiments. And they'll bring up those articles. And I said handy search bar finally somewhere in there, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this. Well, first of all, quickly, if you're from Berkeley, California,

and you went to UC Berkeley, we had a slight slip of the tongue. Seriously? We said UCLA Berkeley. We know it's UC Berkeley. We know UC LA is in Los Angeles. Yes. It was just a little slip of the tongue. That's it. We're not dummies. No, we're not dummies. And also, if you live in or have been to Netherlands, Colorado, and are a fan of the frozen dead guy days and are mad we didn't bring it up in our cryonics episode, go listen to 10 odd town festivals. It's in there. It's in there. All right. So back to the listener mail. This is from Steven H. And this was just cool information. I'm a huge fan of the show, guys. Love the depth and breadth of the presentations. I'm not sure how far I am from this week. He's pretty far, but I just listened to the Black

Death episode. I thought you might be interested to know while the plague was a horrible affair with millions of deaths and an interesting effect on our language today, many scholars of the history of the English language, myself included, hold that the plague in England is a major reason why we write in English today. You see, after the Normans, which were French Vikings, took England at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Anglo, Norman, French, and Latin became the two major languages of administration and literature because all the important rich folks were French. Spoke French. However, for reasons unknown, the plague seems to have hit the mid-range nobility harder than other groups, resulting in a desperate need for administrators. The only

people left to fill the jobs were regular Joe's who only spoke English. So the theory goes that because of the plague, the nobility was forced to learn English to communicate with their administrators, resulting in the reemergence of English as the language of law, administration, and literature from Stephen H. Nice. Pretty neat, huh? Yeah. I love supplemental information. Those are my favorite ones. I do too. So thanks a lot, Stephen H. And since Chuck's such a big fan of supplemental information, if you have any supplemental information about experimentation, specifically self-experimentation, we want to hear it. Yeah, if you've done this yourself, I'd like to hear about it. Yeah, but don't do it yourself just to tell us about it. No, because we don't want you to get

hurt. That seems like in the gray area that I'm not comfortable with. But if you've done, like, your own lactose study on yourself, something like that. Sure. Something harmless. Yeah, like you didn't inject lactose. No. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can go on to facebook.com slash stuff you should know. That's our page. Or you can send us a plain old fashioned email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From The Future. Join HowstuffWorks staff as we explore them as promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely

insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just, like, looting? Are they just, like, pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like, what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, the president came after me, everybody, Time Warner was madness. Music was magic, and I had completely burned that to the ground. I realized I'm the forbidden fruit. So listen and follow Where Are You 92 on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.