The One You Feed - Ella Frances Sanders on Musings on a Vast Universe

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Ella Frances Sanders is an internationally-bestselling author and illustrator of three books. Her third book, Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe, was the recipient of the 2019 Whirling Prize for Prose and has been translated into many languages.In this episode, Eric and Ella have a delicious conversation about this lovely book that contains all sorts of interesting facts and beautiful illustrations about our universe and how we as humans relate to such things.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Ella Frances Sanders and I Discuss her Musings on a Vast Universe and…Her book, “Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe”Her take on the wolf parable and how it’s about choosing possibility over panicHow moving slowly helps us notice a lot of what’s goodOur relationship to plants and to the sunHow giving plants human characteristics helps us connect and care about themThe challenge in understanding the scale of thingsWe see things through filters without thinking about itHow science works with laws and things that we know are trueOur choices are affected by how we are influenced by the world around us How the universe is moving toward ultimate chaosOur memories are susceptible to alterations and get filtered through the present momentHow we are only remembering the last time we rememberedStressful situations can affect memoryThe half-life of facts is the amount of time it takes for a fact to become untrueElla Frances Sanders Links:ellafrancessanders.comTwitterInstagramIndeed: Helps you find high impact hires, faster, without any long term contracts and you pay only for what you need. Get started with a free $75 credit to boost your job post and get in front of more quality candidates by going to www.indeed.com/wolfTransparent Labs offer a variety of supplements and protein powders that include science-based ingredients and have no sugar, fat, lactose, artificial colors, or sweeteners. Check out Eric’s favorite, 100% Grass-Fed Whey Isolate that comes in many delicious flavors. Visit transparentlabs.com and use Promo code WOLF to receive 10% off your order.Best Fiends: Engage your brain and play a game of puzzles with Best Fiends. Download for free on the Apple App Store or Google Play.  If you enjoyed this conversation with Ella Frances Sanders on Musings on a Vast Universe, you might also enjoy these other episodes:David ChristianSasha SaganSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

you are only remembering the last time you remembered. And what this really means is that our memories are incredibly susceptible to alterations. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast.

Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. On this episode, we have Ella Frances Sanders, an internationally best-selling author and illustrator of three books. Her third book, which Ella and Eric discussed today, is Eating the Sun, Small Musings on a Vast Universe. It was the recipient of the 2019 Whirling Prize for prose and has been translated into many languages. Hi, Ella. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you for having me.

I am really happy to have you on. We are going to discuss, among other things, your latest book called Eating the Sun, Small Musings on a Vast Universe. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and

in the work that you do. So I think about this like a type of conversation, a very ongoing conversation. And this would be a conversation between me and these wolves. And it would be the kind of conversation that you can't pick up exactly where you left it. And this then extends into feeling like the wolves have moved from where you last saw them or heard them and they've gone off to consume something without you. So in my little image of this, I go and I find the walls and I have to sit them down and explain them that I need to do things today and tell them what those things are. So that's kind of what it played out as this little scene in my head.

And then in terms of work and life, I think that feeding of the wolves is choosing, I think about it as choosing possibility over panic, because for me, I think about it as choosing possibility over panic. Because for me, the kind of largest parts of those two wolves are probably fear and anxiety, the kind of flight response to a lot of triggers. And then the antithesis of that, this good wolf would be,

I find it very difficult to think about the right words for it, but it's sort of like an awareness or a belief in my kind of human weight and human substance. And I guess the ability to find myself convincing, sort of I'm convincing to myself in a myriad of ways. I love that. The two things you said there that were great is that the wolves don't stay put. I think that is absolutely true. If they stayed where we left them, it would be easier, but they're always moving and changing just like we are. And then I love that sort of comparing possibility versus panic. Those are good flip sides because they both reflect uncertainty. They both reflect like, well, I don't quite know what's going to happen. And so one way to interpret, I don't know what's going to happen is, oh, bad, bad, bad. The

other is, oh, wow, look at that. I didn't expect, you know, like something came out that I didn't expect. Those are a good balance. And I think a lot of us are in these times in particular, I think that the panic one is getting a lot of attention. We're very focused on the narrative right now is these are very difficult times. These are very hard times. These are challenging times like we've never had before. There's a lot of that narrative. I hear it everywhere I turn. There's very little of the other narrative that says, well, but there's possibility in chaos. There's possibility in change. There's possibility in upheaval. And I'd love to hear a little bit more of that sort of conversation. for this very small-minded focus on only human affairs and only the human affairs that are occurring like right now. Whereas, you know, one of the ways I think to move from panic to possibility, to use your phrase in general, is to broaden out our perspective. And one of the best

ways I know to broaden my perspective is science. Science is an extraordinarily perspective-broadening thing, right? You start talking about billions of galaxies and all that stuff, and you're like, whoa, hang on. I'm part of something really big here. And so that was part of what I really wanted to explore with this book, was a conversation about some of these bigger, more timeless things that can bring about a sense of wonder and awe. And wonder and awe, also, to use your words again, lead us back to possibility. That's a lot to go on. It does overlap hugely and alarmingly, the panic side, with what is going on

globally, and what's going on globally in really every corner that you want to to look in or every stone that you're going to turn over and I think it's in part sort of I mean fear-mongering is maybe a strong word but news excites the kind of human response in often a very negative way. And I was reading an article yesterday, somebody had sent me, and it was talking about Norwegians living in the north of Norway, and how they think about their extreme winters, you know, freezing temperatures, maybe three hours of barely there daylight and you know the way we kind of think about the winter is oh no it's coming what are we going to do will we be warm enough will we be able to do the things we you know enjoy and they're not worried about it they look forward to the aspects of it that are going to be more challenging. They think, oh, we can go skiing in

the dark and we can go outside and look at the stars every morning. And that kind of got me yesterday, actually, because without realizing the last five, six months, you lose track at this point. I have myself been feeding the panic more, even though we're not moving around as much, even though we're not engaging with as many people or as many things. And in fact, maybe it is the staying in one place part that gives, it is that, it's almost when you're in one place that wolf has you in its sights, you know, it can see you all the time, knows where you are you're moving in smaller circles and it is really hard for people to think and feel outside of what feel like very monumental and terrible things and those are happening to them personally maybe or they're happening to people

that they know or they can see them watch watch them, read about them happening. So absolutely with this book, I mean, it was written before much of what is going on was even a flicker on the horizon, but it was about making people feel small in good ways, in ways that maybe push the ego down a little bit or yeah slow them down because unless you're moving slowly and relatively gently you just can't notice a lot of what's good I think yeah that is a very true statement unless you're moving slowly you can't notice a lot of what's good absolutely so speaking of moving slowly that's a great transition. We're going to talk about things that move very slow, but they move, which are plants. that everything we eat is partially made from the sun's energy. So let's just talk a little bit about plants. What are some of the things in your book that you wrote about plants that you find most fascinating? Yeah, so the title Eating the Sun is also the title of one of the

earlier chapters. And I think I write at the end of this short essay that I think I say something like, it's astonishing to think that we've been solar powered, solar powered since the beginning of anything at all. It's all solar powered. And now talking about solar power seems maybe less than the last five to 10 years, but it's a new shiny possibility for greener living. And I thought writing this thing, no, no, no, it's ancient. Yes. And we forget, because we forget a lot of things that we are only here because we can eat the nutrients that plants produce. And so if you're eating plants or if you're eating the animals that have

eaten plants, all of it is sun because they use the light to photosynthesize and nearly all plants do this. It seems kind of, I'm going to lack the right word, but it seems kind of not rude or a bit inflated to presume that we're kind of here on of our own like it's not our own making it is plants so I could have written 51 essays about plants I'm sure and I liked two I didn't really explore this in the essay but for me I thought it quite maybe poetic is not I don't know, too strong, not too strong, but this idea that every time we're eating something or picking something, it's like a story that's been ended. I think I use the phrase stories cut short because all these things growing are stories and they would be part of other stories were we not to, you know,

harvest them, eat them, kill them, whatever it is. Yeah, plants are astounding. You've got a phrase in the book that I love, which is we humans are incredibly short sighted compared to plants, which is great. I mean, certain plants certainly outlive us. They're around a long time. And the other thing that's an emerging field, or maybe it's not emerging, but I'm hearing a lot more about it, is plant neurobiology. And scientists in that field have sort of found out that plants possess characteristics like memory and learning and problem solving. We just don't attribute that level of intelligence is perhaps not the right word, but we'll use it for common purposes. But what are some of the things that you found out that plants could do that sort of stoked your sense of wonder? So I think you're right. It's important to distinguish between intelligence and consciousness.

And scientists, of course, don't use those two things interchangeably. But plants do possess types of intelligence. As a precursor to the things that I'll mention about plants, I think it's important to remember that humans and plants work at very different speeds. For us, you know, signals from our brain to our hand happen incredibly quickly. Signals within the brain fire fractions of a second. For something like a tree, they happen at something like, I don't know, a fraction of an inch in terms of this travel. So very sluggish compared to our modes of these signals. And I think that's important to remember because it puts the

plant intelligence in a kind of context. And then the other thing is that if you go under the soil, you have mycorrhizal fungi. And these are everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. And they have a symbiotic relationship with plants in that the plant can't survive without the fungi and the fungi need the plants to survive because they don't have their own chlorophyll. So one of the more astonishing things about this mycorrhizal fungi and the relationships that it allows plants to have is that they can effectively fungi and the relationships that it allows plants to have is that they can effectively communicate with each other. If you think about different types of tree in a forest, maybe one year an aspen is doing better than a pine and it will effectively lend or give

divert nutrients to these other trees. Trees that are ancient and intertwined have been known to die at the same time because they're so bound together. I think that sometimes giving plants sort of human characteristics can be unhelpful, but to a larger extent, I think it is helpful to give things human characteristics when it's important that we can

connect to them and care about them because that's how we're going to keep them. Yeah, I agree. I think there's a tendency people say, well, we shouldn't anthropomorphize things so much, right? Give things human tendencies, which if we want to be strictly scientific in our understanding of other things can get in the way. But to your point, if what we're trying to build is some sort of empathy with other things, if we're trying to build some sort of connection so that we care more about them, that's the way that we tend to do it. So I don't think it's bad in that sense. And yeah, plants are sort of amazing. I read a book, I want to read it again, because I do not retain facts. We're going to talk

about memory here in a little bit. Things just sort of come in and out of my head, but it was called The Secret Life of Trees. It's astounding. Trees are communicating with each other. They are sending signals via the root systems, warning of predators, doing different... I mean, it's really remarkable in the way that they are connected and that they are together. You have a lovely line in the book talking about how plants and trees share food and help nourish their competitors. And you say, apparently for no other reason than that living becomes much easier when you're helping others rather than simply ensuring your own survival, which is obviously a beautiful idea that pertains

very much to our human realm of living becomes easier when we're helping others. And it really does appear that plants do this too. And that, you know, that a forest is a really useful place for a tree to be. They don't do as well when they're out on their own. No, and they do much better when they are in forests and ecosystems that are varied, that have variety. A lot of what we've done in our kind of modern agricultural, more generous word than the one I'm thinking of, the encompassing of a lot of taking things down and ripping things out and leaching the soil of nutrients. A lot of what we've replaced natural, beautiful, well-functioning ecosystems with

will be trees of, say, one species. It can't work in the same way. It needs the variety in order to stay healthy for what can be thousands of years, which is something that you can think about in the context of humans. And a lot of times in the book, when I'm saying something, and it seems to be a comment about plants, or it seems to be a comment about planets, or it seems to be a comment about the use of language in science, what I'm trying to nudge the reader into is thinking about themselves, and actually, it will relate just as strongly to us. That's wonderful. And I think the thing that I haven't said yet that I meant to say earlier is,

we're discussing your books, and your writing is beautiful and poetic, and yet that's only part of your books, because you're also an illustrator. And there are lovely illustrations throughout the books that this medium, podcasting, simply doesn't allow me to convey. So I think in addition to the writing, I just wanted to say to listeners, they're beautiful books. The way they're written, the way they're drawn, I'm making it sound like it's just this collection of science facts.

And that is not at all what it is. Thank you. That's very kind. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The last thing I'll say about plants, and you sort of used this phrase earlier, but I really loved this sentence. I'll say about plants, and you sort of used this phrase earlier, but I really loved this sentence. And all of this leaves us entirely at the mercy of vegetation. Without plants and what they do, there simply would be no life. It's interesting to reflect back on that at one point, the earth was primarily anything that lived, lived on carbon dioxide. You know, we did not have an atmosphere of oxygen until we began to get plants, you know

behave in our modern loud ways it's remarkable and horrifying and sometimes amusing you have to laugh i say this at the beginning of the book and it may have come up later, but it seems like a good compared to these huge, unfathomable, abstract sizes and laws. But it's so ridiculous that sometimes the only two plausible reactions, I feel, either to kind of sob hysterically or laugh. Sometimes you just have to laugh because a lot of what we experience is absurd. And we walk around thinking this is normal, that is normal. Of course, we go up 47 floors to the office but it's just bizarre a lot of it you can put on these sort of bizarre glasses and then everything is hugely entertaining yes yes and that's back to that idea of perspective that one of the things science gives us is this astounding perspective and your book has lots of that perspective and I always think perspective is interesting because on one hand,

when we look at things intergalactically and time-wise, we are the tiniest fraction of an anything. And then if we go the other direction and we start zooming in compared to an atom, we are huge. We are massive. We are monstrous. It's so interesting that I can go either way with that, either direction on that scale and have a very different perspective of what I am. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I don't know to what extent I've achieved this with the book, but it's really hard for most people to make sense of these kinds of scales. The numbers are unthinkably huge, and you can give things adjectives or diagrams or long science-heavy explanations, but a lot of the time time and you can understand it on an intellectual

level or believed you've understood these things on an intellectual level but your body doesn't really understand them at all right nor is it designed to right i've done a lot of reading and studying on consciousness and the consensus is sort of the way that we view the that is not necessarily a very accurate picture of reality. It is an entirely constructed view that serves a certain purpose. And that purpose is to make us survive, which is lovely, and I'm glad it has happened that way. And yet, we get really lost in thinking that what we see is reality. I've got this program I call Spiritual Habits Program. And one of the principles is we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are. And we have so many differentrating like, we're not seeing reality. Like right now, I don't know the exact numbers, but we are spinning at a crazy fast rate. We are hurtling through space at an insane rate. And our entire solar system is gravitating around. We are in

motion at breathtaking speeds. And yet it seems like we are 100% just sitting here still, you and I having a conversation. Nothing's moving. Well, I think the earth rotates at something like, I think it's over a thousand miles per hour in terms of rotation. I'm full of numbers, so I could have that wrong, but I believe that we are spinning. It is alarming. And if you sit and you try to think about that number

you can't put those two things together because you're right we're still aren't we we're not moving right you know you maybe can think about how fast a car drives or how fast an airplane flies and it's just i think it's that thing of recognizing within the body something to be true or not i liked what you said about filters and about kind of being covered in them partly because it would make for a very interesting illustration to have someone covered in all manner of filters but you don't notice when they maybe arrive and you don't notice when they maybe arrive. And you don't notice, because the change can be quite subtle, you don't notice how your thinking has been kind of shifted or why you're looking at something in a different way. And I think this bleeds into quite nicely the question of memory.

bleeds into quite nicely the question of memory. You can kind of remember, oh, well, I thought about thing last year in such a way. And now I think about this thing in a different way this year. And I'm not really quite sure how I got there, but I did. So I think a lot of it is these little kind of imperceptible journeys or streets, because a lot of people do think that they have things in hand, that they know what's going to happen next week. And I find that incredible and also weird because you have no idea. Science works in terms of laws and laws are the kind of what, if you like. So they're things that we know happen or that we can observe happening. And then things like scientific theory give you the why they happen. So laws, as we know them, those things have been true since the Big Bang. It's like sort of inertia in science you know the idea that

things will keep moving unless they're given a reason to stop everything that has ever happened and that will ever happen is a result of these laws that have been around since the big bang since the beginning of anything so it's almost like they're in control. You wouldn't want to call it fate or you wouldn't want to call it destiny or something like that. I don't really like those ideas. But these laws do decide in a weird way because they've always been there. And we're kind of just milling around down here thinking that we know what we're going to have for lunch. Right. There's a line that you use in the section on the self, which if we have time, we will get to. But you say, though frustrating, we cannot ever choose or control the aspects of

life that ultimately influence what we say, do, or think. And that is a deeply profound sentence deeply profound sentence because it points to that we think that we act upon the world, but the world largely acts upon us. And it's back to that idea of we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are. All those filters that we're talking about, that it's impossible to not see the world through, all those filters are the result of all the experiences that have occurred in our lives, all the things we've been exposed to, the ideas we've been exposed to, the conversations we've had. This is a rabbit hole I don't go down too often, which is the one about free will, right? I don't often go down this rabbit hole because I don't find it a very useful rabbit hole, but I think it's safe to say that there is both more and less free will than we think there is in a lot of cases.

And that it can be profoundly disconcerting, as you say in that line, it's frustrating that we can't choose or control the aspects of life that ultimately influence us, right? Like we're being influenced by the world around us and we don't get to choose what arrives. We just have to do our best to respond to it in a way that is as skillful as we're able to manage. Yes, absolutely. And it goes without saying, but of course we have choices. Of course we can move in the directions we want to move in and there are things about the world that can make that harder or easier and you can practice you know noticing where the hardness and softness comes from and alternately back away from it or move into it and I like chaos too I'd like to mention chaos because people either find this alarming to a huge degree or reassuring. And maybe there are some options

in between, but in general, it seems to fall to one of these extremes. The universe is, this is not my opinion. This is just the facts, the universe is moving slowly but surely, I mean very slowly, imperceptibly slowly, towards a kind of ultimate chaos. You can't put things back. And a good example of this, because people don't really know what that means, a good example of this is kind of mess or things falling apart. So you can push a pile of books or a pile of papers onto the floor. They will fall on the floor, but they're never going to fall back up. This might be too abstract of an example, but there is innate chaos about everything that we encounter and live through.

And so this is something that I do find useful to remember from time to time, because things can feel out of hand, right now especially, for people personally, and then more broadly. And you can kind of think about the chaos that we create and the chaos that we move within, and you think about the kind of road of chaos that the universe is on. It can't compete. សូវាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា I think a lot of people, when things don't stay orderly in their lives, whether that be their house or their habits or their kids or any number of different things, we take it as a personal failing. But the reality is that is the nature of things. Things move from being ordered to disordered. That's the direction they go. Putting order on things takes an enormous amount of energy. We do it, but we're not failing when that order falls apart because inevitably it does. I'm a big proponent. I work with people on coaching, on planning your day. We plan our days. We do our best and yet disorder, chaos,

whatever you want to call it, intrudes constantly. It's not that we're failing. That's just the way it is. And I find that a comforting fact because then it's like, well, that's the way things are. It's not like I'm awful. The distribution of chaos often seems woefully unfair, and it is, but it's still a law of nature. So let's talk a little bit about memory. I guess everything we're talking about to a certain extent can be somewhat disconcerting. And this one is, I'm going to rephrase that from disconcerting to what we are working on doing here is unsettling certainty. So we're trying to shake loose certainty. And so if the world's not already doing it enough for you, here we are helping out. already doing it enough for you here we are helping out but an area we feel very certain of is our past our memories we go that happened this happened to me this happened to me this happened to me we feel very certain about our memories but uh perhaps we shouldn't perhaps we shouldn't indeed i liked your reframing certainty that was good yes this chapter or essay was given the title

you are only remembering the last time you remembered and what this really means is that our memories are incredibly susceptible to alterations. So, and to mention filters again, the memories that we have of the past all get filtered through the present moment. This is because what the brain is trying to do is provide us with information to make the good and useful decisions in the present. It's not concerned about what did happen. It's concerned about now and where you're going to go from this now.

So we have countless memories, you know, boxes and boxes of nostalgia everybody does and it can be disappointing to learn and I was a little bit disappointed to learn this too that you know it's not like for a long time people thought believed scientists thought the memory was like going into a library that was always i'm jason alexander and i'm peter tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight,

welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot

on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's there and picking up a book off a shelf. And these books were there and you could take the book off and you could look at it and then you could put it back that is not the case at all so this is this um it comes back to the title of the chapter really you're not remembering the memory and this is the worst bit for some people the memories that you hold on to the most or that you treasure the most, and this doesn't detract from the beauty of those memories, but the memories you hold on to the most and go back

over and over and over, those ones are going to be changed the most. Right. So in essence, what's happening, you're saying, is every time we remember something, it's like we pull it out to look at it, but we alter it by looking at it. By looking at it, we alter it. And then when we put it back on the shelf, we don't put it back the way it was when we pulled it off the shelf. We put it back on the shelf with the subtle alterations we've made to it. And the more often we do that, you're saying, the more often we pull the memory out, the

more we alter it, which is profoundly disconcerting. Well, it's the reason why people will believe that they have or think that they have a memory of something happening. And it can be very, very vivid, very colorful. You know, memories are often accompanied by kind of senses, you know, colors or sounds, and it will be wrong. They will meet someone else who was maybe part of that memory, and they'll say, no, I remember this happening. That didn't happen. You know, she wasn't there at all. And you can have a handful of people or a room full of people all with the shared memory, and nobody can agree on anything. Right. It's fascinating. And there's a lot of science to back all this up that shows

that our memories just aren't as accurate as we think. Now, I have solved this problem by simply not remembering much of anything. So after reading your book, I used to look at this as a flaw. I used to think it was a problem. Now what I realize is I am just minimizing the amount of inaccuracy that I introduce into my life. If I just don't remember, I can't get it wrong. Do you buy that theory? A little bit, but only because I also forget a lot. The other thing to know is that you only have a certain amount of room for memories and for information, but particularly memories. And so, well, no more information. If, you know, you have to make room, if new things are coming up, you have to make room somehow. And there are people, frustratingly, who seem to remember

everything that ever happened to them in great technicolor detail. In correct detail. Exactly. That we now know. thing that ever happened to them in great technicolor detail incorrect well yeah detail exactly we now know um so so i yeah forgetting i am one and you know stressful situations have an effect on on memory as well on forgetting i found myself struggling more to remember things or retain information in the last six months. It's my entire childhood that just doesn't exist for me, just not there. There's lots of different theories on that. We are nearly out of time, and I can't decide which place I want to take this. So I think where we're going to take it is we've talked a lot about science and the different

things of science. And there was something at the end of the book, I don't say this to be a braggart, but it's not often that I read a book that I'm like, oh, I didn't know that at all. Like I had no idea that thing, you know, like I've just done so much reading, I'm old, I'm all these different things. But in your book, I had no idea of this concept of the half life of facts. And one of the things that I have been bothered by in life is that science. I go, okay, science is factual. And science is, it's good to base our decisions and our ideas on facts and science. And yet I've gone, but science changes. We now know things that a hundred years ago we thought were a fact that we now go, that's preposterous. It's not. And so

I just have always been like, how much of what we know is really true? And it actually turns out that there is some study of this, that there is some predictability to the way that facts change over time. So can you share a little bit about that? Because I found that utterly fascinating. Yeah, I do talk about this right at the end of the book. This is the last piece. And it's the last piece for a reason, of course, because I've written about all of these things given all of these numbers and you know a lot of it's wonderful but I want to be able to get to the end and know that in this kind of bizarre and beautiful way some of it or all of it eventually might not be true so and what you're talking about is something called science entometrics which is wonderfully the science of science there is a science of science which is if anybody ever needed

some reassurance that scientists are knowing what you know they study themselves uh so yeah that half-life usually in science what one would think of is kind of in terms of radioactivity and atoms and things decaying. And you can move this across to information and to fact. So they call it the half-life of facts. And it means the amount of time it takes for half of the kind of informational knowledge to become untrue, essentially. And in the case of, I think I give two examples. I think one of them is medicine. And in terms of medicine, this half-life is about 45 years. Which means that roughly half of what we currently believe to be true in medicine, about half of that in 45 years, we will go, eh facts that we have at our disposal relating to medicine now. Yes. And you think about what Victorians were doing in terms of their medicine, and

it's quite staggering. It's good that some of these facts are moving on. It is good. It's good. Yeah. And then something like mathematics, that half-life is much, much longer. Yeah. Like I said, I find that absolutely fascinating. I'm curious what the half-life is much, much longer. Yeah. Like I said, I find that absolutely fascinating. I'm curious what the half-life of poorly conducted psychological studies on college students are, because so much of my world is psychological and you're like, oh, okay, I'm reporting this fact of a study that was done on eight college students. And the half-life of that

is much less because in that world, there's a reproducibility, you know, the half-life of that is much less because in that world, there's a reproducibility crisis going on, right? We can't even reproduce some of these studies over and over and over again. So the half-life must be staggeringly short there if it exists at all. But I find it really interesting that such a thing exists because, like I said, I love science and I love knowing things out there. And then there's just always this part of me that's going, well, how serious should I take that? You know, how much do we really know?

Is there a place to look up the half-life of different disciplines? I would be fascinated to know. I don't know of one. And I don't know whether there would be because it's not something that is routinely discussed. But if you look, you may find. Yes. What is the what is the half life of diet information? Another area that seems completely fraught with, like, what, what do I actually do here? Okay, well, Ella, thank you so much. You and I are going to continue in the post show conversation, we're probably going to talk a

little bit about the nature of the self, one of my favorite topics, but from a scientific perspective, not my usual Buddhist perspective, as well as we're going to use, you've got another lovely book called Lost in Translation, which are words from other languages that describe very common things in our world. And so we might talk about a couple of those, one of which is, I don't know if I'm going to pronounce it right, J-S. This refers to a joke so terrible and unfunny

that you cannot help but laugh, of which I have told plenty of in my life. I'll tell one right now. I'll give an example. What did the fish say when he swam into the cement wall? I don't know. Damn. That falls firmly into that category.

That fits. It does. Okay. You and I will continue in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to that, as well as an episode I do weekly called a teaching, a song, and a poem, and an occasional joke, that's not a selling point. I know after what I just said, you can go to oneufeed.net slash join and become a member of the community and get access to lots of great stuff. Ella, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed talking with you. I think your books are, are lovely. The illustrations are beautiful and there'll be links in the show notes to them. Thank you. This was lovely to talk. Thanks very much for having me. My pleasure. If what you just heard was helpful to you,

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