The Tim Ferriss Show - #194: The Magic and Power of Placebo

Starting point is 00:00:00 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now is the appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take

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Starting point is 00:03:11 my irreverence. I've had way too much coffee, and that is my dog attempting to do breakdancing. Sorry for the background noise. This episode, like all episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show, includes a dose of deconstructing someone who is a world-class performer and exceptionally good at what they do. In this case, we have a science writer, but the other half of this show, quite frankly, is purely selfish. It is me exploring subjects that I want to know more about. And in this case, the guest is not a military strategist, not an entertainer. It is Eric Vance, Eric with a K. You can say hi to him on Twitter at Eric Vance. He is an award-winning science writer based in

Starting point is 00:03:50 California and Mexico City. After working as a scientist on research projects dealing with dolphin intelligence and coastal ecology, he became an educator and then later an environmental consultant. In 2005, he switched gears and attended UC Santa Cruz's famed science communication program. Great program. I almost went to UC Santa Cruz for fiction, in fact, and discovered a passion for journalism. Since then, he's built his career around science-based profiles of inspiring or controversial figures. We dig into not only the science, but also his approach to writing and conveying that. His work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Scientific American, National

Starting point is 00:04:29 Geographic. He's also a contributing editor at Discover Magazine. And his latest book is Suggestible You, The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal. In this episode, we cover many topics with equal amounts of the profound, actionable, and hilarious. We talk about the power of placebo and how you can increase the odds of it working for you, if you so choose, which conditions respond well to placebo, for instance, depression, Parkinson's, and which do not, how the mind, religion, bedside manner, and peer pressure

Starting point is 00:05:02 can dramatically influence medical outcomes. And then we get to some stories, and not necessarily in that order. Catching porcupines in South Africa. This story alone is worth the time it takes to listen to this episode. It'll make you laugh out loud. It's awesome. Finding and studying a pigshit sommelier. Yes, you heard me correctly. Why he got electrocuted for half an hour at the NIH laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland. The story of why he chose to be cursed by a witch doctor in Mexico City, and much, much more. So please enjoy a conversation that I very much enjoyed with Eric Vance. And as always, you can find all links to everything mentioned in this episode in the show notes for this episode and every other episode at 4hourworkweek.com, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast.

Starting point is 00:05:53 Eric, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Tim. I appreciate it. Of course. And where does this find you at the moment? I am currently in my office in Mexico city, uh, in the Roma, if anyone's ever been to Mexico city where, uh, where I'm based in the D F and how did, how did you end up in Mexico city? Um, actually my, I told my wife, uh, years ago that, uh, you know, I'm a freelance journalist that I, I can live anywhere in the world. And, um, and, uh, and you know, I wanted to travel with her and she works in the world. And, and, and, you know, I wanted to

Starting point is 00:06:25 travel with her. And she works in development. And, and she came back and told me, Mexico City is where she got a job. And I, I said, I kind of meant like Paris or Venice, you know, anywhere in the world, you know, like London. But we came down here, and I fell in love with it. And so I love it. It's an amazing city. Great food. From what I hear, I've never been, but incredibly incredible food. And you've traveled a lot. You've spent time all over the planet.

Starting point is 00:07:01 And what I'd like to start with perhaps is why biology? How did you get interested in biology? And we'll we'll talk about some of the adventures that then relate to that but how the initial interest uh you know when i was a kid i was never all that good in school uh i i didn't i had some some attention issues and uh i you know when i wasn't issues attention oh attention got it i didn't pay attention real well uh and uh but like when i was out of school like i spent a lot of time like walking through the woods basically looking for dead things and then sort of poking them and opening them up and stuff and uh i didn't realize this was a field like this it wasn't until later even when i'd gone through biology classes i

Starting point is 00:07:40 didn't really realize that that's what we were talking about until i really got to just before college when i realized that you, poking dead things and finding them is actually something people do for a living. And I was hooked at that point. And what did the trajectory look like? I mean, did you go immediately, as soon as you got into undergrad, into the sciences? I did. I got really hooked as an undergrad in, in sort of field biology. There's, there's two kinds of biology. There's a, there's a microscope biology and binoculars biology. And I got into binoculars biology, uh, you know, chasing after animals

Starting point is 00:08:17 and stuff like that and looking at trees. And, uh, I loved it. And I, and I really wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to be, uh, I wanted to be a PhD and publish papers. I just wasn't that good at it. I loved wandering and learning new things, but doing the actual work was not my forte. And so I went through a bit of a crisis and backed away from biology and discovered journalism, and specifically science journalism. And that's where I really found my groove. How old were you when that happened, when you took that fork in the road?

Starting point is 00:08:54 I was 27, I think. I spent a solid five years after college being sort of a biologist for hire and working in some laboratories around the world and doing some different things, but never really, you know, logging in. I kept jumping from one thing to the next. And I was about 27 when I finally discovered science writing and went back to grad school for journalism. How did you make that decision in the sense that, and I also realized I accidentally used a Yogi Berra quote where I said, when you took that fork in the sense that, and I also realized I accidentally used a Yogi Berra quote, where I said, when you took that fork in the road, that's not,

Starting point is 00:09:32 to reach a fork in the road, take it. That's not proper English, folks. I need more caffeine. But what was the moment in which you decided that you were going to bite the bullet, so to speak, and pursue that? I mean, was it a particular conversation, a particular dinner? You know, I always had this sort of scientific sense of superiority to writers. And I always thought writers were kind of a bore. And yet I had written a novel that will never be published and never should be published as a scientist. And I just loved writing, but I just didn't like, like there's something about, you know, that, that process that I just couldn't admit that I actually liked, you know, it was like this, I know I'm a scientist, I'm analytical and, and yet I'm doing all this stuff on the side. And finally, it was really a matter of, um, a single Google search after doing some soul searching where I typed in science and writing into a Google search. And lo and behold, I found

Starting point is 00:10:25 out there's a whole, you know, a whole career for science writers, which I had never really thought of. And when I was a kid, I used to get these little things called zoo books. They're these little magazines that you get, it's like your first mail you ever got when you're a kid. And I was like, you have like the animals, you learn about the animals. I always wanted to be the guy who was like in the magazine, apart sharks or picking up ants and new stuff. And what I realized in that moment was I don't want to be the guy in the magazine. I want to be the guy making the magazine. It was the magazine that I really loved.

Starting point is 00:10:58 It wasn't every month it was something new. And that's what I liked. And that clicked. And then I was off. Now, although you went on the other side of the camera, so to speak, to document and interview and research, you've also spent a fair amount of time in the field, right? And I don't know the answer to this question, but which came first the the pig shit or the porcupines oh the the porcupines came before the pig shit okay so can you can you explain the porcupines please well i had so in my process of becoming a uh of trying to be a

Starting point is 00:11:42 scientist one of the places i went was in south africa um and i basically i needed i needed a um a subject for my phd and so i just figured i'd go to south africa and like catch sharks and do cool stuff and figure out what i was all about um and why south africa i had seen the movie the power of one and i really liked it i thought it was good and so i said that's where i'm going yes and that was literally as much thought that went into it like i was i was an idiot as a kid and so uh and i actually tried to reenact i'd go like through these slums of south africa go jogging and stuff thinking that children would like chase me and i just had people be like dude you shouldn't be here go go away before you get hurt um so but i did so i'm wandering around and i ended up hooking up with

Starting point is 00:12:32 this laboratory at in cape town university cape town and uh sometimes they farmed out uh their scientists to um to uh to like documentaries and uh so I was still a scientist at that point, but there was a documentary. The BBC was doing a, uh, a program on, um, uh, aardvarks and the animals that live in their burrows. So it was really exciting stuff. It's like a thriller. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, they had, you know, they had, uh, aardwolves and, and, and, uh, a bunch of other animals that live in these burrows. And one of them was porcupines. So what they needed is they needed a biologist to go in and catch the porcupines and habituate

Starting point is 00:13:11 them. And that was the deal. And I said, Hey, you know, and you know, they got this, this lame kid sort of wandering around their lab who they were like, Hey, let's just send him. Cause you know, he's not really doing anything. Um, and so they sent me into the bush for 10 days with uh with uh some really interesting characters i mean the people who end up you know signing up for this are are you know a diverse group and it was uh one the guy who's leading the expedition was sort of this uh guy

Starting point is 00:13:39 who'd spent a lot of time in the bush and was was really really savvy, but really quiet. Didn't say anything. And he'd sort of occasionally catch birds with his bare hands. It was just like, that was about all. It's like a praying mantis, although a very large one. Yeah. He was like walking in front of the car and there'd be this bird, you know, like sort of, you know, a crouch and he just like snap out and grab it. And then, and then there was this other dude who, uh, was come, who was in the, in the field to detox from his heroin addiction. And, uh, he was, uh, he was a former Satan worshiper who had become a born again Christian.

Starting point is 00:14:15 And, uh, I learned that it's not actually that different. Actually, you'd think he's like, he didn't actually change much. He just sort of switched sides. You know, he was just, uh, before he'd say, you know, I can feel the claws of Satan, like ripping into my chest and parting the skin of my chest. And, and now it's a bad thing before it was like a good thing. It was like a massage. That was like Saturday night, you know, like it was his normal thing. And he was, and he was really intense and, you know, he still totally focused on satan as a born-again christian which i had never thought about before but it is a big thing and um and he was just this really interesting guy it was sort of me and him and this guy who

Starting point is 00:14:52 never spoke and uh and so we sort of spent our days smoking cigarettes and um uh the the the recovering addict was would like try to catch fish with a stick and a hook that he had found. And, uh, we'd go out with this giant truck and this, uh, and this, uh, this light is like, like rifle looking, um, like flashlights and look for, um, look for, for uh porcupines and uh and i learned a few things about porcupines uh we were not prepared it was day three before someone suggested we get some gloves somebody forgot the packing list like it didn't even occur to us that's how bad it was like it didn't it wasn't that we like forgot them we just never occurred that we might want gloves catching porcupines thank god they called the professionals right this is this is who uh this is who they sent and um and so i mean uh so uh a quick thing

Starting point is 00:15:59 about uh it's porcupines we actually learned there were sort of like two primary defense strategies that porcupines have not surprising to anyone. Uh, one of them, the surprising one, I suppose, was that they're actually really fast, especially when you've been smoking cigarettes all day.

Starting point is 00:16:13 Uh, actually when they started to run, you're just like, Oh shit, this one's running. And, uh, and you know,

Starting point is 00:16:20 they know where their burrow is. You don't. And so you're just, you know, you're, you know, we spent a lot of time just sort of like tripping over, you know, over rocks and stuff. And then like with our hands on our knees, sort of like just catching our breath and having been dusted by some fat little porcupine.

Starting point is 00:16:37 So that was the first technique. The second one was more usable, which was when they just stick their head against a tree, put up their quills and go like, yeah, give it your best shot, asshole. Go ahead. And those are the ones we wanted because we had a little syringe of ketamine, which was endlessly fascinating to the recovering addict. Endlessly fascinating to a lot of people in silicon valley too yeah um it's actually very useful for tranquilizing these animals and so uh but what's interesting what i didn't realize is actually every time when you watch you know a a major film about you know animals like a porcupine like they didn't just stumble upon that animal and like now

Starting point is 00:17:21 they're filming that's not the way it works. Someone went out beforehand and prepped the whole scene. And one of the ways they had to prep it is you catch the animal, you drug it, and then you have to put a tracking device inside of it. Because people on Washington TV don't want to see a radio caller. They don't want to see a Petco Harvey caller around the wild porcupine. Yeah, it kind of kills the mood. It's not great for the porcupine because he has to go through invasive surgery. So we did that with this one porcupine that they named Uncle Eric. And I never really was clear whether that was a, they were making fun

Starting point is 00:18:05 of me or it was an honor of me. It really could have gone either ways. But so we, you know, we did that. And then we released Uncle Eric, you know, sort of back into the wild to lick his wounds. And then what the next step is, is to habituate them. And so basically habituation is like one step down from taming. You basically hang out with a porcupine or whatever animal for hours and hours and hours until they realize that you're not going to hurt them. And they understand that you're not going to feed them. So they just ignore you. Like you're just another tree or whatever in their environment. know, in their environment and they just go about their business. And that's when you bring in the film crew. So it's not at all like a, like a natural setting. Um, but you might wonder like, how do you, how do you do that? You know, and basically just have to talk to him for hours and hours on end. You just have to, you have to get used to the human voice.

Starting point is 00:19:02 Cause when people come in to film they'll be talking so so uh so i sat out in the middle of the classic like empty savannah with you know the huge sky and uh you know scorpions crawling over my feet and uh um and just talked to this this porcupine and you know what, what do you talk to a porcupine? Uncle Eric. Uncle Eric and me hanging out together. And it was like, it was like me and this porcupine. And what are you talking about? Well, you're talking about your relationship problems.

Starting point is 00:19:41 And I was sitting there, you know, being like, you know, and then she told me that she didn't want me to come because her friend was coming, but I didn't know her friend. And, and, and then a couple of years ago, let me go back a couple of years, you know, the porcupine sitting there, you know, listening to me like, bitch, endlessly about this. And what is the porcupine doing? Not sitting on a rock, smoking a cigarette, listening, I'm guessing. No, he's sitting with his head against a tree as he was doing in the first place.

Starting point is 00:19:57 But his spine's up, he's going, please, please, God. She's like, dude, attack me or leave. I can't do this forever. Are you going to kill me or leave i can't do this for forever you're gonna are you gonna kill me or what like what is this and uh and i remember one night i heard the storm coming so i sort of go up on the little ridge and and look out and i said okay i got an hour or so before it comes i come back and then uncle eric's gone i'm like okay like dang it so i grab my my

Starting point is 00:20:22 tracking device flip it on. And he's not popping up on the scanner at all. And this thing has like a hundred yard radius. So he basically cleared a hundred yards in like less than a minute just to get away from me. Like as soon as I turned my back on him, he was like, you know, gone. I'm gone. And he just bolted for the horizon. And, uh, and I remember just like, and that was one of the moments where I really was wondering if I was in the right career or not. So that, so that was on the field biology side. I liked the, the binoculars versus

Starting point is 00:20:58 microscopes. Actually the last interviewee or the last few folks I had on the interview were on the opposite end of the spectrum. So they were actually focused on things like the mechanistic target of raffomycin and looking at mTOR and all this cool stuff. So the field biology, if we then flash forward, you are learning more about science writing. What was the program that you were in? It was actually the Santa Cruz, University of California, Santa Cruz Science Writing Program, which really changed my life. It's an amazing program. Who or what lessons had the biggest impact on you through that course? The program, I should say. God, there's so many so many i mean the biggest thing is as a scientist

Starting point is 00:21:47 you're trying to be exact you you need to be precise and as a as a storyteller you you need to convey a feeling and a sense because people don't walk away people don't read uh journalism or or you know storytelling the same way that they read a scientific paper. And you walk away with kind of an idea, a couple little facts and an idea. And you really have to shift your thinking to tell a story to someone. You have to have characters. You have to have an arc. And that's really hard.

Starting point is 00:22:20 And that's something I think I learned there, but I'm constantly trying to perfect because it's a totally different way. I mean, aside from all the little things like no longer using the passive tense and the technical jargon, all that kind of stuff. It's really about telling a story, and it's not about conveying information. Or it's about wrapping the information in this sugar-coated delight called a story so that you actually absorb it. Yeah. Who are, well, I guess I have so many questions just because I just finished a book myself. So writing is on the brain. What about your writing, besides, say, using the passive tense less improved the most before and after going into the program, coming out of the program? And the reason I ask is I can

Starting point is 00:23:14 think of, for instance, in my own history, going back to a class that I took with John McPhee, which was called The Literature of Fact. And what he really burned into my brain, and of course, I won't even approach 10% of the writer he is ever, but was how visually he thinks of structure. And it would almost speck it out on a blackboard or a whiteboard like a football play. It was really fascinating. Or even like a Krebs cycle or something. It was very, very visual. And I'd never thought of architecting something out that way. So that was a novel idea that I still rely on sometimes when I am stuck, right? When I can't figure out how to structure a story, that's something that I'll still do. Are there any tools or any

Starting point is 00:24:06 particular changes that you experienced in your own writing? Yeah, that's a really good one. Have you ever heard of the Open Notebook? No, I haven't. I should check it out. It's a website run by some really good science writers that's for science writers and they have a session that's a section that's just that it's basically science writers doing schematics of stories they've done how cool and their favorite stories oh that's awesome it's great i did i did one where i i actually like tried to sketch out burkhart buildersers, a New Yorker story he did on a youth cowboy,

Starting point is 00:24:47 a youth rodeo program. It's an amazing story and I just loved it. And so I tried to sketch it out and I sketched out one of my own. You'd love it. It's very visual. It's very cool. Oh, so it's people taking a stab at other authors or other writers' work in addition to their own.

Starting point is 00:25:04 In addition to their own. it isn't their own yeah exactly so it's both your experience as a reader and your experience as a writer and uh um of course i liked his story better than the one i did um so it looks a lot better um but it's very it's very you'd like it there's a bunch of other gems in there too um but the thing that i think i really took away and i wasn't expecting from that program was a love of characters uh of the people you know like i tell the story about you know the the porcupines it's just a weird thing you know but it's like you tell a biologist the story and they're like yeah okay whatever like of course that's our job you know they're weird people doing a weird job and that's what I really fell in love

Starting point is 00:25:46 with was the people who do it and, and, and how they approach it. And so I love for the first couple of years of my career, I just wrote profiles about amazing scientists who I thought were doing cool stuff. And, uh, and, uh, that's really, that's really what I, I focused on was sort of like, who are are these people who are interesting but also can tell a broader story? Like I have something I want to say about gene therapy or chemicals in the atmosphere that sort of via asphalt organic compounds that changed the atmosphere of our forest. I want to tell that story, but I really want to tell it through a person. You know, like, who is that person who can tell that story? And what's their life like? And what do they think about?

Starting point is 00:26:32 And why are they sitting on top of a tree, like, trying to get these air samples? Like, how did they end up there? And that's what I really fell in love with. That program was the people. Like, how do you bring a person? How do you tell a story through a person? Who is that? And it's not always the easiest person to find. Sometimes they're the ones you're not looking for. So that's, that's the best tee up I could imagine for my next question, which is this, I should point out, I mean, these are all new things to me. I don't know the answers

Starting point is 00:27:06 to these questions. The first reporting assignment you sent me a little note was with a guy who studies the smell of pig shit for a living. So probably not sort of the, the Mickey mantle you were looking for for 10 years. Uh, how did that come to be? And, and walk me through, like you graduate from your program. How do you go from there to this assignment? Well, I, you know, you're a young freelance writer. No one cares what you think or what you want to write about. Of course, I want to write about like sharks and, you know, important stuff. They're like, yeah, get in line, pal.

Starting point is 00:27:42 Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. We'll look at your pitch. Yeah, definitely. You know, important stuff. They're like, yeah, get in line, pal. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. We'll, we'll, we'll look at your pitch. Yeah, definitely. You know, and so you have to come up with, you know, stuff they don't have, you know, and, and one of those things is chemistry, you know, like not a lot of people covering chemistry. So I was like, all right, I'll do some chemistry. And, uh, so it actually started, I was working at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Um, and, uh, I got this, the Chronicle of higher education um and i got this where was that the chronicle of higher education in washington dc it's a it's a magazine that like unless you're it's like highly respected among universities and no one else has heard of it there's actually a really great great outlet they do great science writing so uh it was sort

Starting point is 00:28:18 of my my opportunity to really dig in and do cool stories. But one of the stories that wasn't that cool was this sort of a side 300 word blurb about the chemical involved in... Have you ever heard of ladybug taint? I mean, that pulls up an incredible image in my head. I'm pretty sure it's not accurate. So no, I'm going to say no. I had the greatest title for this story that they wouldn't let me use but wait wait okay so now i have to ask what is what was the what was the headline uh stinky ladybug taint that could be your uh punk rock band at this point right uh so okay so no i don't know what lady but like ladybug taint is what is so if you're crushing a bunch, you're from the Bay Area, right? I am. Well, I live in the Bay Area. Yeah. You live in the Bay Area. Well, if you're crushing up a bunch of grapes in a classic

Starting point is 00:29:11 sort of wine crush, it's inevitable that you're going to get one or two ladybugs in there. It just happens. And what happens is if you get one ladybug in a big vat, you kind of get this nice little bell pepper taste. It's this nice sort of hint in the background. If you get two or three, it gets overpowering and it just ruins the whole batch. And it's called ladybugs. That must be hard as hell to deal with. I mean, ladybugs, I don't know how many people listening have been inside a wine vat, but those things are gigantic. I mean, wow. Okay. Well, so you can't, and you can't like drop a ladybug in because you don't know if there's already one in there. So, I mean, apparently it's a big thing. Anyway, what's interesting

Starting point is 00:29:52 is I was talking to scientists who like discovered the chemical that does this. It's an extremely potent, powerful chemical. I think I calculated it. If you took an Olympic size swimming pool and you put a teaspoon in there, you'd still be able to taste it. Like this stuff is brutal. So sharks are the blood, what humans are to ladybug taint in a swimming pool. If a shark smelled this, he'd be the same way. He'd be like, damn, like, no, no, no, no, no. It's potent. And so I started talking to this guy the way I do. And I was like, wow, this is a weird job. How did you find these? Like, oh, yeah, there's some ladybugs in my windowsill.

Starting point is 00:30:29 And I shook them up in a jar and I smelled this thing. And if you ever eat a ladybug, which I'm... Tim, have you eaten any ladybugs? No, I've eaten a lot of crickets, but no ladybugs. I need to expand my repertoire, maybe. There's a reason why you don't. And that's the reason why they're red and black. It's a warning sign because they have this chemical and they will unleash it if you try to eat them.

Starting point is 00:30:48 And that's what it's for. So he, you know, he, he smelled this thing. He was like, oh my God, I got to figure out what this is. So I asked him, of course, you know, well, what's your job that, that you do this? And he's like, well, I mean, I don't actually study ladybugs. I actually studied pig shit. He didn't say it like that, but that's what went through my head. And, uh, and I was like, wait, like, and he, he, he, he specifically focuses on smells and, and, and these like strong,

Starting point is 00:31:09 uh, smells and the chemicals that are involved in, in what we smell. And so, uh, I was like, oh my God, wait, so you study, you know, pig manure that, that you study the smell of pig manure. He's like, yeah, I mean, you know, the aerosol, you know, uh, chemical nature, he had, he had a great way to sort of say, I study smelly pig shit. And, uh, I was like, Oh my God, I have to come out and meet you. You know, I have to like see your laboratory. This is amazing. And so I, um, so I, I pitched nature, which is a very prestigious journal.

Starting point is 00:31:39 It also does a lot of science journalism. And I was like, you have to please let me send, you know, I've done a little work for them before. And then please can you send me out to talk to this guy? And they were like, all right, you know, he's in Iowa. And it's like, all right, please let me send, you know, I've done a little work for them before. And they're like, please can you send me out to talk to this guy? And they were like, all right, you know, he's in Iowa. And it's like, all right, you know, you got a couple hundred dollars, like go out there, come back, you know, get the story. It's the first time I've ever had to, had to, had to like, you know, been on assignment to do like a story like that. I was very excited. And it was the most amazing lab I've ever seen.

Starting point is 00:32:03 Now, now hold on. What did these, so this was, was this your first kind of pitch for a remote assignment? Yes. Okay. What did the, did you do it via letter or email or was it via phone? When you were like, hey boss or hey editor. I said, I mean, I put together a nice like email, you know, like with all the pieces of the pictures to have. and it was fascinating jobs. I sort of caged around people who have interesting jobs and tried to keep the poop humor to a minimum, though I did get the word poop in the journal Nature, and that's what I want.

Starting point is 00:32:38 That's a win. That's a win. That's a win. Okay, so you fly out to iowa so i fly out to iowa and it was actually i flew out to nebraska because i i didn't i didn't actually know the difference between the two uh so i ended up renting a car and uh driving to iowa um because i you know i was how nervous i was when i was booking my tickets um so i fly and i get out of of the car, and you can smell it as soon as you get out. You can actually smell it.

Starting point is 00:33:08 It's a phenol. It's often called, by people who are into this world, it's called Band-Aid or Farmyard. It's the first thing you smell when you know there's a barnyard nearby. It has a very low vapor pressure, so it sticks to anything it it touches which means a little bit of like dust in the air and and and it'll stick to it and you'll it's the first thing you smell it smells a little like a band-aid and it's like oh there must be a farm nearby that one so that's what you know i smell as soon as you get out uh it's a very agricultural area it was up in ames and i go in this guy's lab and he just introduces me to this world of smells.

Starting point is 00:33:54 Everybody's got these smelly pens everywhere, and he has all the students smelling the pens with their eyes closed, trying to really hone their ability to recognize smells that are hidden. And he's got this device called the – let's see if I can do this – Multidimensional Gas Chromatography Mass Spec Olfectometer. Oh, my God. You got one, right? Yeah, I'm looking at one right now next to my tea. This thing is amazing. So you put like, let's go back to wine. You pour some wine in this thing, right? And then what it does is it basically, gas chromatography,

Starting point is 00:34:19 cuts the wine up into different pieces, into different chemical components. And it breaks them up, pushes them aside from each other, and starts giving them to you one at a time it's a little cup that goes over your nose at the same time you have a mass spec giving you a layout of what these things are so you're smelling it the computer's analyzing it and together you can find stuff that no one's found before because our noses are incredibly incredibly sensitive and so like he does this but and he does this with wine and that's like for practice and for some other things, but mostly he focuses on pig shit. Like that's his bread and butter. And he studies like these chemicals that make pig shit like really, really bad. And, uh,

Starting point is 00:34:55 and he's looking for subtle, subtle differences, you know, the, the, the song of, you know, of, of that, that one big dropping that just, you know, that's going to solve it. And he's trying to diminish that smell. I was going to ask, I assume he's not making perfume. I mean, so now why is it important to diminish the smell of pig shit? Well, I mean, and to your point, like his guy has kind of knows he could be making perfumes, like he's incredibly sensitive, but he's doing this because the idea is if you can change the food that a pig eats in order to change what comes out from the other end, then you can diminish the smell of a pig farm. And that's actually the biggest obstacle in building new

Starting point is 00:35:38 pig farms. For zoning and neighbors and so on or anything like that? Yeah, exactly. And not just for whole communities that don't want these things nearby and if you can diminish that well maybe you can build more of them going closer you can build more you can put more pigs in them i mean there's all kinds of opportunities that come up once you can sort of give the pig what it needs without having to get like the worst chemicals and some of these chemicals like with the ladybug are really really subtle like they're really small so uh so he uh that's what he does and he uh and he's got this device and he hooked me up to it and he was worried that uh i wouldn't be able to get all the all of the the nuance so rather than leaving that the sample in the big shit in for uh um a couple 10 minutes, which is what he'd do.

Starting point is 00:36:25 He left it in overnight. So it really was powerful. And he stuck this thing on my nose. The first couple things you smell are actually interesting things because it's broken up into pieces. And there's some nice things in pig shit. There's wet cardboard and taco shell and mushroom. All these great smells. All these things you think are really obnoxious about like wine drinkers.

Starting point is 00:36:46 Like those are real chemicals and they actually, you can smell them separately. This is great. You know, I'm just imagining saying to a date, like you smell wonderful. It's like wet cardboard and mushrooms. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:36:58 Wow. And yeah. And you don't know until you smell it. You're like, Oh my God, that totally is white cardboard. And there's no, I mean,

Starting point is 00:37:04 the pigs haven't been eating cardboard. It's just the same chemical. Uh, and then we get to the sulfates and man, that's the business end of pig shit. You know, like I felt like I was getting like run over by a manure truck and, you know, or had my face down one of those, uh, those, uh, uh, you know, port-a-potties for like, it was just horrible. And as I mentioned, these things have a low vapor pressure, so they stick to wherever they touch the inside of your nose, meaning for the next three days, everything I ate, everything I smelled. Had a hint of, of pig sphincter taint.

Starting point is 00:37:47 Exactly. So you turn in that piece. Was there any turn of phrase or portion of that piece that you were proudest of when you turned it in? Yeah. um yeah i uh uh you know that's the the the great thing about this job is you know you if you read my stories you don't get a you only get a fraction of the experience that that you know that or any any story any science writer or really any journalist you know you only get a fraction of the experience that they had when they're reporting that story and it's so rich and i wish there were more ways to share these things. But the part that I really enjoyed the most

Starting point is 00:38:26 was this gentleman, he had a very, very sensitive nose. And he was able to, if you fart, he could tell you what you ate. Wow, that is a great party trick. It is. It was a great party trick. And his wife a great project and his wife i talked to his wife

Starting point is 00:38:46 while and she was really wonderful woman and she talked about you know she was born in iowa met him in alaska when he was a mountain climber and then ended up moving back to iowa with his very interesting career and uh and she just had a great sense of humor about the whole thing and she's the one who told me that uh and i also talked about how he used to smell when she first met him he's a mountain climber and he smelled great and now now it's like, you know, it's a different reality. We all got to grow up someday, I guess. Now, you mentioned the former Satan worshiper turned evangelical earlier. You are a scientist turned journalist, but you were raised, uh, Christian scientist. Is that right? Or was it more your, uh, one of your parents or both?

Starting point is 00:39:32 Tim, did you just, uh, compare Satan worshiping to Christian science? No, but I think that that's probably what the internet's going to say. No, I was, I was trying to do a clumsy transition with the theme of religion, which didn't really work out, which is why I usually avoid talking about religion. I don't mean to bust your balls in the ass. I just thought that was funny. That's okay. Busting my balls is fine. I did.

Starting point is 00:39:55 I grew up in Christian science. And actually, I mean, I didn't really realize it was all that weird until you get older and you start thinking back on your childhood. But I didn't go to a doctor until I was 18 years old. It was like the first time. And I remember being bewildered by the whole thing. And so so it was. But it was, you know, Christian science is this really weird sort of interesting philosophy. It's also a religion, but it's this thing that people don't often think about because they're not as many as they used to be.

Starting point is 00:40:25 But it's a fascinating religion that basically says – it's kind of like the matrix. It says that all this you see isn't real and that it's actually a construct of your mind. And if you change your mind, you can change your body. really deep belief that what you're seeing isn't true this whatever this cold that you're experiencing or um arthritis that you're you know you're feeling it's not real this is this is a construct of your mind which is kind of wacky when you think about it and imagine growing up in that it's a little weird well i had a uh at least one of my grandparents and i don't think i've ever talked about this was very much into christian. And at the time, I mean, I was whatever, let's call it five years old, six, seven, eight, nine. I was like, oh, something science.

Starting point is 00:41:12 Sure. Why not? And I actually visited the Christian science reading room. I guess they have these reading rooms in different cities at one point, but never really had a ton of direct exposure to it and did go to the doctor a lot because I was a very sick kid growing up. Did you get really sick at any point? Because I've seen at least one law and order about, I think they must be maybe Christian scientists who have a kid with, say, a life-threatening illness or potentially terminal illness, and they won't let their kid go to the doctor, and then they're in court, and it's very dramatic.

Starting point is 00:41:48 Did you just dodge all of the bullets, or did you have any serious issues? Well, I should say, I mean, I did have a very healthy childhood. I think most Christian scientists, if a kid breaks his arm, they're going to go to the doctor. I mean, everyone has their own interpretation. Basically, Christian science there's like a better way to do this. It's not saying you can't. Technically, it says there's a better way to heal something. But culturally, it does end up becoming you can't. That just ends up being sort of the way people interpret it. And that can be problematic. And if you don't go to doctors, it becomes really scary to go to a doctor. It becomes really frightening to make that.

Starting point is 00:42:28 It's built up into some type of mental monster. Yeah, exactly. And you're told all these things about how doctors, I mean, it's not exactly wrong. I mean, a lot of things can happen to you in a doctor's office. People do walk out of hospitals sicker than they got. It happens. And they went in you know that happens but for the most part you know we all know that hospitals and doctors um they're trying to help you but it it it's like this so it is this very difficult thing and and it actually came into play before i remember um i had probably my most

Starting point is 00:42:59 serious disease was i don't remember it because i was uh one and a half. And, uh, uh, at the time my parents thought it was Legionnaire's disease. Um, I've since talked to some pediatricians and some, some scientists and tried to figure out what it was. And it's not clear what, what I had, but it was definitely serious. I was definitely having seizures and, um, and turning colors. My eyes were rolling back in my head. Uh, it was head. It was serious. And my parents wanted to treat it in Christian science. And it was touch and go. And I ended up having what Christian science would call a healing, a rather instantaneous healing when my parents, my mom, got to this point where she just got panicked. I was really, really bad off.

Starting point is 00:43:45 And, and she, uh, you know, she called up a practitioner who are these people who help Christian scientists sort of like, uh, you know, over the phone and sort of like instructors and guides. Uh, and she found a sense of calm and then she walked back in the room and, uh, um, and I, I was better now. And now you've talked on this program about regression to the mean, you know, which is when people tend to get better after they're the worst. And it's easily explainable that way. But whatever it was, it was a very powerful story for me growing up. It was like I would think about this a lot, like what this had been like for me as this little baby and the fact that I had been saved by God. And it was a very potent sort of narrative that I had about myself, which actually leads to the book I wrote because it turns out that's a very powerful thing for,

Starting point is 00:44:39 and you mentioned placebos in that same episode. It's a very important part of the placebo effect is your narrative right so so the placebo effect has been endlessly fascinating to me i mean we might as well go there i mean what was your first what was your first experience with the first-hand experience with the placebo effect well i um I, um, one could argue my, my childhood, right. Without insulting a hundred thousand people. Um, uh, uh, I think where it really hit me and, and actually I, I, I met, um, one of the leading scientists, researchers in the country on placebo is a, is a former Christian scientist. we actually went to the same college uh christian science college and um and that's how i sort of realized that this was

Starting point is 00:45:30 that there was this connection between belief and it's called expectation and this healing and so i really got into this thing and and i one of the earlier reporting trips i did was to the nih um facilities in bethesda maryland have you ever been there? I have not. It's like kind of a scary place. It's beautiful. It's amazing. It's like basically a miracle factory. The amazing research that they do there.

Starting point is 00:45:54 Why is it scary? Well, it's like these big blocky, sort of industrial looking brick buildings with smoke coming out of the tops of them. It's like East east berlin circa 1970 or some really bad movie in which you know like you know kind of like where the where dr frankenstein has his his college you know like but it's actually this amazing place and i i went to this corn tiny little lab uh woman by the name of Luana Coloca, and she's an Italian researcher. And she basically said, okay, I'm going to put you in a placebo research trial. And I didn't really know what I was getting into, but she hooked up with these electrodes to my hands.

Starting point is 00:46:42 And she said, okay, you know, we're going to electrocute you uh and uh we ended up uh so we kind of figured out where on my pain scale was i think it was a seven or six a pretty powerful shock that that like it was so powerful that i twitch you know really really not comfortable and then they had another one that was like a one you know and it was maybe a little pinch and so every time i saw a green screen i get the one every time I saw a green screen, I'd get the one. Every time I saw a red screen, I'd get the seven. And she purposely sort of like would show me the red, and then she'd like wait a beat. And then –

Starting point is 00:47:15 Watch you flinch. Yeah. Because – and this is – turns out this is really important for the placebo because it's creating expectation. And I'd be like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm going to – and you twitch. Horrible. Horrible. And she'd go back and forth you know zipping back and forth and you know and you just come to dread that red screen and then uh on the last run it's felt a little like the the the number one had been like turned up like one it's not like a two if you

Starting point is 00:47:41 look at the the score i was keeping it's like i call it two um and then the red is obviously you know and i'm twitching uh and then she walks in and she says you know that was great job on that last run i gave you the the high one every time huh like and it was just you know and i mean it wasn't just that i felt or i was convincing myself that i had less pain or like i was like, like I had less pain. I was not twitching. Like I was not fooling myself. I'm not an idiot. You know, like it was less.

Starting point is 00:48:12 And I just blew my mind. So objectively, the stimulus was the same, but your nervous system responded according to your expectations. Exactly. My basically my brain filled in the gap. My, my, your brain has expectations and it doesn't want to be wrong. So when it's wrong, it just makes up the difference. And in this case, it released, um, it released, uh, uh, basically a, a morphine drug that's already in my brain in the, in the, uh, in, into the brain. And it basically covered up the pain.

Starting point is 00:48:50 So I basically got a shot of morphine so fast that you almost can't even measure it. It happens faster than my brain can realize. It's in more pain than expected because your brain does not want to be wrong. It does not want to be proven wrong. That just blew me away because I kind of, in the back of our head, we all think the placebo effect at its heart is like people just, gullible people who don't want to admit what really happened. But these are real biochemical reactions that happen, and they are measurable. And I was hooked at that point. So then what have been some of the other, course i'm a human guinea pig i do all sorts of

Starting point is 00:49:27 ill-advised things to myself uh trying to ensure i don't mortally wound myself but what are some of the other experiments that you've done or experiences that you've had involving this personally now there's one you mentioned that i don't have any context on, which was related to a curse of some type. So immediately, this is of interest to me. I've spent a good amount of time in places like Brazil and elsewhere where there's quite a bit of talk about this type of thing. So I would love to just hear the story since I don't know the first thing about it. Well, I'll answer the first question first, then we'll talk about curses. Uh, I mean, I spent a lot of time getting burned, um, poked, you know, prodded. I had almost, I threw up once cause the nausea is also responsive to placebos. Um, uh, and so it's in a nausea experiment. Uh, you know, I've done a lot of these sort of things,

Starting point is 00:50:21 but the thing that's really the most useful for placebo research is pain. And when it comes to placebos, you know, it really affects things like, you know, like Parkinson's, like pain, depression, anxiety, irritable bowel syndrome. Basically, all these things are connected by dopamine and a few other chemicals that seem to really respond well to placebos. And that's why placebos are so interesting is because some things have these like 60, 70% responses and other things, you know, 10, 15%. So there's something going on there. And so because pain, you can't cause depression in a, in a, in a laboratory though, I might argue with the current presidential debate, you could, you can cause depression like on command, but, but you know, it's not something you can really play with, but pain,

Starting point is 00:51:03 you can. So I've spent a lot of time getting burned and poked and all kinds of things because that's, that's what scientists studying placebo effect study is pain. And, and there's actually a lot of implications for that. Um, and when you, uh, so an example of one of these things is, um, and I'm getting to your question. I'm not in a rush. This is not a three-minute morning TV show. We got time. Where was it? Oh, yeah, yeah. So there's a classic experiment where,

Starting point is 00:51:36 okay, so a lot of these things are, they're not conscious, these placebo effects. And you talk in your other episode about how like, oh, now that I know that homeopathy isn't real or isn't effective, it doesn't work on me anymore. Well, that's not true for everybody. Actually, for a lot of people, they can't help the fact that say homeopathy or a placebo works. In fact, you can tell someone this is a placebo pill. It is inert. Give it to them and they will still have a placebo response what's the explanation for that well it's a lot of its classical conditioning um you know how many how many

Starting point is 00:52:13 times have you have you ever like taken a tylenol and been like you know like oh my god my head hurts my head oh my god i'm in so much pain take the time and be like oh god thank you you know oh i can think has that ever happened to you? It happens to me. Sure, yeah. Well, Tylenol doesn't kick in for like 20 minutes. Right, right. So what are you experiencing? Well, that is, you know, and whether or not it's real or not,

Starting point is 00:52:33 like that's basically classical conditioning. Like, you know, you can condition yourself to have the experience. And so you are getting drugs. They're just drugs that are already in your head. They're not from the outside. And so for some people, it doesn't matter what you tell them. It's subconscious. Their brain's going to do it whether you want them to or not. And one of the people who's studying this, she does this, she uses faces, but they flash at you so quickly you can't recognize them, but your brain does. And one of those faces is attached to more pain, and the other one's attached to less pain. And so you see these faces, and your brain goes more pain, and then it responds. Your conscious brain can't tell the difference between these two faces, but your unconscious brain sees it, knows what's about to come. And this is, again, in this case, it was burning pain, but it was pain.

Starting point is 00:53:19 And so that's what underlies a lot of this stuff, and that's some of the really exciting research going on right now is looking at the unconscious nature of placebo effects. And they may follow a totally different path. They may be kind of like Google Maps where they kind of overlap on a couple roads and then they diverge a lot. But it's a whole different thing. And it's really beyond our reach. And one of the big questions that comes up is like, well, are some people able to tap into this and other people not? So I mentioned that you have high pain and you have low pain, right? Well, the low pain is obviously a placebo effect.

Starting point is 00:53:56 You're getting the same pain, the same stimulus, but your brain prepares you. Your brain changes it, so your experience is different. And so there's a low pain, which is like, oh, I don't feel any pain on this one because i saw a certain face um and that's the placebo response but there's also the high pain right the higher pain than actually you should be feeling and your brain's like oh my god this is gonna be very very painful that's called the nocebo response right exactly and almost every study that looks at placebos you also have a nocebo you know piece of that equation. But nocebos are actually really hard to study and they're really unethical to study in the way that we'd want to.

Starting point is 00:54:30 It's like you want to give someone a drug and be like, this is going to make you really, really sick. Or this is going to kill you or something. You can't do that. IRB doesn't like to prove that kind of stuff. Exactly. That has been tried and it has not worked out. So, you know, you talk to these scientists and some of them are like, oh, man, you know, I understand this isn't ethical, but man, I don't like to know. Back in the good old days, it was like Cahill and those folks could fast subjects for 40 days. Can't do that with mice for, I don't think you can even exceed like 72 hours now ah science yeah well that's the thing and like

Starting point is 00:55:06 there are these great stories i've never really able to verify about people you know with with you know being lied told they were having cigarettes being put on their backs and uh uh all these terrible things they do to prison inmates um you know to test the nasibo basically you know whatever this thing didn't really have a name back then uh but um yeah i used to be able to do that kind of stuff so nasib SIBOs are a little thin on researching. When I was writing this chapter, it was hard to fill it out. You know, like you've got so much, there's some really interesting stuff in there. And the SIBOs are definitely more powerful than placebo's. If, if I, if I, you know, if I want to train you to have a placebo response, we got

Starting point is 00:55:40 to do it a bunch of times so that you really get it down, that this is less pain. If I want you to have a no SIBO response, I just have to tell you, this is going to hurt. This is really going to hurt. Get ready. And your brain's just wired for fear. So that's cool. But I needed more. So I really started getting into these ideas about superstition and how you can really cause bad things to happen in your life, just through expectation, just through belief and real belief. I mean, you can't, you know, you can't half-ass these things. They really, really have to, have to feel it. And, and before long I came to curses and I've read about these amazing things that have happened to people in

Starting point is 00:56:22 Haiti. There's, there's, there's stories of people dying from being cursed. In Haiti, obviously, the zombie is a well-known phenomenon that isn't fully understood. There's only been three zombies that have really been documented and none of them are recent. Okay, I have to pause for a second. No, I saw, I think, The Serpent and the Rainbow, which I thought was a great movie when I saw it. I haven't seen it in probably 15 years. But what characterizes a zombie in the clinical sense science. Oh no, was it Royal Academy of Sciences? There's been some papers and mostly they're debunked. But a zombie is someone who has clearly some kind of brain damage that causes them to shuffle and sort of lose contact with reality and sort of become a very different sort of personal way we think of the classic zombie. They obviously don't have brains, but this is a very, very old myth that's sort of really tied into the history of Haiti.

Starting point is 00:57:35 And no one's, you know, there have been a couple of documented cases, but it's, you know, the 30s. And, you know, we don't really have a lot of detail so there's a couple theories one of them in the serpent and rainbow it talks about uh sort of these these uh this puffer fish venom that can cause uh um a uh sort of state of you know catatonic sort of state um and uh the other idea is part of this thing so you basically a zombie is created when you you know when you you you give someone a magic potion, you put them underground, you bury them, and then you unearth them and they're a zombie.

Starting point is 00:58:08 And one of the theories is maybe that there's auction deprivation, but there's another sort of idea that maybe it's just the cumulative power of everyone's expectations on you. This is who you are now that you do it to yourself. Sure. I mean, speaking in tongues, same thing,

Starting point is 00:58:24 maybe same idea, you know, the power. And this is some I mean, speaking in tongues, same thing, maybe. Same idea. You know, the power, and this is some of the latest research that's coming out, and keep an eye out for the National Geographic in December. I've got a story on this, shows that peer pressure can boost the placebo effect beyond anything that you can imagine. This is a hugely large, hugely important part of the placebo effect, like beyond anything that you can imagine. This is a hugely large, huge, hugely important part of, uh, of the placebo effect. And so the placebo effect, obviously, you know, it could be in there too.

Starting point is 00:58:52 Like other people's expectations can affect your body in a very real way. So, uh, I get to this point and I'm like, you know, I really want to experience like, what is that? Can I, I don't believe in curses. You know, that was my problem is I don't, I don't believe in these things. I believe in the power of the mind. Um, but so how can you create, you know, that kind of belief? Like I wanted to have that kind of belief, right? Like, you know how it is. I'm sure you probably feeling the same thing right now. I've always been dying to feel like I'm going to die from curses. One of the tricks I learned about, so I started getting

Starting point is 00:59:25 into curses and I live here in Mexico, so I'm able to talk to what are called brujos or witch doctors. And one of the things I learned is you actually, you can only curse them. The only way to curse someone is you have to tell them they're cursed. You have to do the curse and then you have to tell them they're cursed. That's the only way it works. I found one woman who's like, no, you know, like I'm so powerful, I'll just kill them from a distance. But mostly they say, you know, you have to tell someone they're cursed. You have to inform them. Right. Right.

Starting point is 00:59:49 And which is, which is such a, it's such a, it's such an, in my mind, this is a Nasebo response. Like this is a very complicated, socially enforced Nasebo response. And, and I mean, just what you just said a couple minutes ago like you know i've always wanted to get cursed like there is something even if you don't believe in curses there is something off-putting about being cursed and so i just wanted to know if uh if i cursed myself if if if it would work if i could psych myself out and so uh and so i did i hired a guy to curse me. Now, hold on just a second. So you have in Mexico, I would imagine, a fair number of Brujo options available.

Starting point is 01:00:32 How did you choose this particular person to curse you? Well, there's actually a market here. You looked at his Yelp reviews? I literally, it was even more than that i actually talked to the uh the witch doctor market pr people i uh so uh there's actually a market like a like a like there's a lot of like local markets in mexico and there's one that focuses on brujeria or or witch doctors sort of uh paraphernalia and they got like those these weird little like burned dolls that have evil powers they've got you know coyote skin

Starting point is 01:01:11 i was assuming these things would all be like secret and hidden like like some back room somewhere where like the dark magic is not at all like this is like this is totally up front they're like look you want the farmers the farmer's market of voodoo dolls. It is literally like that. It's like, oh, you want white magic? Go to this person. You want black magic? Go to this person.

Starting point is 01:01:31 And so it's all out in front. And so before I went in, I had to actually, you know, we're talking to people. And they're like, oh, you have to talk to the PR department. And there's like this office in the back of the... Oh, you weren't kidding. I thought you were joking. I'm dead serious. There's this office in the back of the market. And there's these two guys who sort of hang out there. And they're like, oh, you weren't kidding. I thought you were joking. I'm dead serious. There's this office in the back of the market and there's these two guys who sort of hang out there and they're like, oh, you know, and I was like, I'm here with National Geographic and doing this. And they were like, okay, well, you know, sign this paper. And yeah, of course, they're very scary. And okay, there you go. And talk to talk to and they were the same people that were recommended by the pr people uh so uh we talked to a couple different people uh and uh

Starting point is 01:02:11 i sort of chose one of them was genuinely scary i think and genuinely really believed that she could kill people with her curses uh and you know she was she was out there and so like i i didn't actually go with her because uh i was afraid she'd find it insulting you know to to have a curse put on myself um and i went to the other guy who kind of got it oh like a guinea pig okay i i guess i guess i can do this like you know that terrible things can happen but i said okay and so and he was a lot more sort of he was also black magic and and and knew lots of uh evil powers but uh but he was a little more um you know willing to go with me on it and so i sort of chose him and uh i walked around for a week and a half with a curse over me.

Starting point is 01:03:06 And then what? So, A, did anything happen? And then, B, did you have to get it removed like stitches later by the same guy? Or what happens? Well, I mean, you know, I actually, I decided I wasn't going to change anything. I just want to live my life normally just do what I normally would do um and so you know like I went out and drank half a bottle of scotch a good friend of mine and like walked home and I was like okay I'm cursed I have to be careful with cars and stuff like that but you know I was at that point I wasn't really you know worried about curses uh but the rest of the week went by and I logged every bad thing that happened to me and um and not really much happened and i i started to get kind of cocky and uh and um and

Starting point is 01:03:51 i even went rock climbing i i'm a big rock climber and i even went like rock climbing with some friends over the weekend and uh you know and i was leading i was going first which yeah it's not super dangerous i've done it many times before but it's you know it's a it's not a safe thing to do but i you know and they're all making fun of me cause I was, you know, cursed and climbing. But you know, I got, by the time I got to the end, I said, yeah, this has really been a, been a bust, you know, nothing's really happened. I mean, I'm kind of psyching myself out, but not really. Uh, and then I went back to get the curse removed and the guy wasn't there uh he was gone fishing literally he

Starting point is 01:04:26 was like oh yeah like you know the curse he's not he's dealing with some family thing come back next week so i had another like weekend uh and i'll never forget it was in it was uh it was june uh not this last year the year before uh and uh and i had another weekend and i was basically be cursed for that weekend like whatever nothing happened basically going to be cursed for that weekend. I was like, whatever. Nothing happened last weekend. Nothing's going to happen this weekend. And on Saturday night, my wife, who was pregnant at the time, started to feel some painful pangs in her stomach. And by the next morning, it had gotten pretty bad. And we talked to the doctor, and the doctor said, you need to go to the hospital right

Starting point is 01:05:01 now. And they were worried that it was contractions that were starting she was like four months pregnant so like you know this contraction is lethal at that point and so we get in the cab and we're going to the we're going to the hospital and uh uh the only thing that's going through my head is the curse uh and uh it's never occurred to her but uh but i was just panicked that I had killed my child with a curse. And what's interesting is how quickly your mind goes there, how quickly, and it's a logical fallacy that the Romans called the proctor hoc ergo hoc, which is if this, then that. Yeah. after this, therefore, because of this.

Starting point is 01:05:47 Right, exactly. The correlation versus causation. Exactly. And it usually comes up in the case of something happening, and then you can go backwards in time and find a cause for it. And this is the home of the curse. Think of the Kennedy curse, right? Like a bunch of Kennedys die in very tragic and strange ways. And you can go back and people have looked for causes, you know,

Starting point is 01:06:11 going back to Ireland and one of his ancestors stepping on a fairy house. And, you know, because once you have the result, then you can go back and find the cause and, and causes seem to be real at that point. And it's exactly what a man of science, I believe in, in, in logic. And, and, but my brain went there so fast when, when the shit hit the fan, like I was, I was suddenly, uh, convinced that this was going to happen. And I had, I would never forgive myself, uh, if, if, you know, and it would always be in the back of my mind that, that, that I had done this. Um, it turned out, uh, so we went with the hospital and, uh, uh, there was a excruciating couple of minutes where they couldn't find a heartbeat. And, uh, yeah. And then they did. And it turned out the baby was fine.

Starting point is 01:07:02 Uh, it was some bad tacos, uh, from the before. A good friend of mine was going away to party, and she was okay. And I learned that day that my baby, they went up to the sonogram and uh and i just i just realized you know what a wonderful day it had become it was actually uh father's day that sunday was my first father's day and uh uh and i just i realized that you know this thing that was a curse had suddenly become a blessing and it's such a construct of what you see you, and that these things only have power when you give them power and it happens fast. So, so I have a, uh, so follow up to that. Did you go back to the absent witch doctor and get it removed? I did. I did. I did. You know, I'm a man of science, but, uh, how could it hurt? How could it hurt? And and i followed his instructions he had me burn a candle uh and uh do some other smoke on me and uh the curse was lifted and did you tell him what

Starting point is 01:08:14 happened was he like yeah i don't want to kill your kid but i wanted to just shoot a warning shot to let you know this stuff i didn't actually i didn't tell him i thought it might weird him out if he thought that he made because i i see this as being like this this is proper hawk ergo hawk this is this is me looking for a cause for something that happened sure um but he wouldn't have seemed that way and i think he would have i was afraid that he might feel weird about having about having caused you know something like that so i didn't i just said there's some some bad things happened i mentioned it was very potent i i my my electric rate of my potent. My electric toothbrush stopped working that week. It was a practice curse. So a few questions about placebo, right? There are a couple of

Starting point is 01:09:00 things that come to mind that I've always been curious about. Number one is, well, actually, I'll get to the evolutionary question. But the first is, you look at the nocebo effect, which I assume in most cases is an inert substance in the case of, say, ingestibles or some relatively plain vanilla inactive control of some type, but it's going to make you nauseous, it's going to hurt you, it's going to burn you, whatever it might be. In the case of placebo, we have the same thing, right? We might have sugar pills, we might have some type of relatively inert substance. In the case, again, of ingestibles, are there examples or is there evidence to suggest that if you have negative expectations, even if you consume a tried and true clinically tested drug, for instance, that does work, that you can negate the effects of that medicine if you expect to die, if you expect to get worse? I mean, is there any evidence to suggest

Starting point is 01:10:01 that you can interfere with something that has already been statistically proven to work with negative, if you have negative expectations? Absolutely. Yeah. And that's, and that's actually a misconception about placebos. They, yes, the easiest way to measure them is with an inert substance, but they exist with everything. Like I mentioned the Tylenol, like, you know, you can have placebos on top of active drugs. And it's really a great question, like, how do you compare the placebo effect for an inert drug versus the placebo effect for an active drug? Because there is one on top of there. And there are placebo effects too. And so, and this is the thing, this is sort of the thing I keep, you know, trying to drive home is like, you know, a lot of this is tied to bedside manner and how doctors interact with you.

Starting point is 01:10:48 And, you know, it can be as high as 30%. So like a doctor, if he's going to be a jerk to you, like he's throwing away 30% of his cure on top of what he's giving you, you know. And that's a really rough approximation that those numbers aren't really worked out yet. But that, I mean, they're a substantial boost that you can get. Um, and you can also, you can erode the effectiveness of a, of a drug. Um, it's been played with, uh, actually in one of the earliest placebo experiments was with the dental patients and they would, they would tell them they were uh they were getting uh they were either getting uh painkillers or they were getting yeah and they weren't they tell them they're getting they also told them they were getting something that would make them worse

Starting point is 01:11:34 and uh i'm injecting something to make this root canal worse right they're gonna make this thing make this thing worse uh and i think i think they're all recovering uh dental patients but uh but the dentistry actually played a big role in early placebo's so uh yeah there's no question that you can erode uh that you can erode an active treatment with expectation and there's even a bigger question that pain scientists are really struggling to understand right now which is um does your brain get into certain habits? Do you, do you, do you create these pathways? Think of them as like ruts in the road where, you know, you can't get your car out of the rut, uh, you know, thinking about pain and,

Starting point is 01:12:15 and are there types of pain that are strictly neurological that feel like you have pain in your knee, but it's actually in your head. And, uh, and these are, these may contribute to a huge portion of the chronic pain in our country. Yeah. This is something I've explored also for myself. I had chronic back pain for a very long time and there were some structural corrections with specifically gymnastic strength training with this guy named Coach Summer, which helped a lot. But I also read a book, which I'm blanking on the first name of the author, but I believe it's Sarno, S-A-R-N-O. And about a half dozen of my close friends who had suffered from chronic back pain credited this book with fixing their back pain.

Starting point is 01:12:57 And it effectively focuses exclusively on expectations and the mind. And I had about a week of relief after reading that book. So go figure. Of course, NF1. And if we're going along the lines of Richard Feynman, the first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. So a lot of science is trying to prevent experimenters from fooling themselves. But the question that I want to ask in a case like that, where it appears to have, at least ultimately, it had a structural component, right? There was an orthopedic issue that I later fixed, but as an intervention, the placebo or mental training components seem to help. This is going somewhere. You mentioned Parkinson's earlier and that Parkinson's seems to respond well to placebo. And I'm sure it's not across all

Starting point is 01:13:53 patients, but at least a meaningful percentage. And I've read that Alzheimer's on the flip side does not. I don't know if that's accurate, but let's... Okay. So if that's accurate, what is the plausible explanation or mechanism by which one improves and the other does not? And of course, the experimental designs, I'm sure, are different. But I have both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's on both sides of my family. So this is a very personal question for me, right? And I was speaking with someone who's also been on the podcast, Peter Atiyah recently, and we were talking about Alzheimer's

Starting point is 01:14:28 disease. And he's like, well, once something is really denatured, once the egg turns white, I'm not sure you can reverse it. So it may be a preventative game. But how does Parkinson's differ? Is it because it's mediated by neurotransmitters and you can somehow rig that game with an expectation? Long question, I know, but how would you, how do you think about the difference between efficacy of placebo effect in Parkinson's versus Alzheimer's? It's a great question. It's a really great question. Yeah, there is one word answer, and that's dopamine. Parkinson's is, for those who don't know, it's a deficiency and usually goes down to substantia nigra in your brain. It's the part that produces this dopamine and monitors these systems.

Starting point is 01:15:33 It's a deficiency in this chemical. Now, this chemical, not only does it affect your movement, which is why Parkinson's patients tend to shake, but it also affects reward systems. It's very much in tune with rewards. You get jolted dopamine. When someone says, hey, you just won a million dollars, you get jolted dopamine. It tends to feel good in the downstream. The things that it triggers also make you feel good. It's all around a positive chemical that is related to reward. So what is placebo if not reward? An expectation is an expectation of reward. So what is placebo, if not reward? An expectation is an expectation of reward. So basically, it just so happens that Parkinson's is mediated by a chemical that happens to be

Starting point is 01:16:16 really important in placebos. And that's the only answer that I can give you right now, is that it just so happens to be the right chemical that it affects your movement but it also has this other role and because of that and that happens with a lot of these different chemicals like cck which is um a chemical that that affects the nocebo response and it also affects your stomach and so you know irritable bowel syndrome and maybe one of the reasons why irritable bowel syndrome responds so well the placebos but that's and that um that simple fact is plays a huge role and dopamine is one of these big big chemicals in your brain it has it's it has its fingers and everything so uh and and there is not a a mechanism like that in alzheimer's that that leads that

Starting point is 01:17:01 lends itself to a placebo effect it's not to say say that placebo doesn't exist in Alzheimer's, but it's much easier to explain with statistical explanations like your regression of the mean. And it also may damage the fundamental parts of your brain that you need in order to have placebo. To exert the results or to exert the placebo effect upon oneself. That same argument has been made for autism. It's definitely not settled. Um, I have lately seen some, some really interesting studies in autism and placebos. And I know a couple of the top scientists are turning their attention to it right now and but people have often said that for years that that autism is the same way um but uh there is a degenerative uh element to parkinson's that that that is not it's not like you know uh alzheimer's but it's there is a degenerative but what's amazing is the placebo effect can almost i've seen it it almost reverse that. I mean, it's amazing. And it's, you gotta wonder where that dopamine is coming from, but I have seen people, uh, in,

Starting point is 01:18:10 in the book and also in the, in the story coming out in December, I talked about a gentleman who, uh, was really struggling 10 years. And today I think he just climbed half dome this year. So with Parkinson's with Parkinson's now, so, so this, I guess, begs the question, and there may not be, I don't expect a miracle answer to this, but placebo effect, most people would think of as being tricked or tricking oneself, right? So if you wanted to proactively use the placebo effect and you have a parent or a grandparent with Parkinson's and you wanted to help them or they wanted to help themselves, what do you do? Well, first of all, I think it's very important Feynman and all these other folks who say, you know, you can't deceive yourself as a scientist is very important as a patient, throw it out the window, man, like, you know, deceive away.

Starting point is 01:19:00 You obviously want to be careful. I mean, that's a, that's a that's sort of the the the 64 000 question right like this is what everyone wants to know is like how can i use this and and the answer that i've come up with from a lifetime in christian science a childhood in christian science and a lot of years studying this is we already do there's a lot of options out there for studying for using placebos and and it's different for everyone some people you know it's a some product you buy it's you know it's a you know it could be it's interesting if you look at placebos across different cultures um in france um suppository placebos work better than normal placebos uh that's why these let's draw your own conclusions in, uh, in Britain, uh, you know, foul tasting ones work better. Uh, and in, in, in Parkinson's patients, actually, I I've, I've seen studies

Starting point is 01:19:51 that, uh, that show that if you take a pill, um, it's, uh, let's see, I think you get about maybe, you know, average of 15% more movement, more, um, mobility. And,. And if you get a surgery, a fake surgery, it's like 25, right? The sham surgery research is so fascinating. I mean, just for people listening who have never looked at this stuff, do some Googling around sham surgeries, sham surgery experiments. And you find people who have, I mean, legitimate structural fuck-ups in their knees who get fake surgeries where they get opened up and they're under general anesthesia so they're knocked out and then they wake up it's sutured together and they're like yeah doc my knee feels so much better even months later it's fascinating what's what's

Starting point is 01:20:36 hilarious about those and that these are very common in in placebo and i'm sorry in in parkinson's research uh and what parkinson's researcher told me that the greatest breakthrough in Parkinson's research has been the sham surgery. But when you do these surgeries, the doctors, they don't know they're doing the real one or the sham until the moment of. And they have to get the card that, you know, this is a real one. And then they have to actually sit and wait for the entire surgery to be over for a SAM surgery. Cause you can't walk out of the room early, you know, and have the patient's family out there watching you come out after five minutes, you know, to go, to go play, you know, Candy Crush or something like that. Like you have to sit in there and then, you know,

Starting point is 01:21:24 Easiest surgery ever. Huge success guys. Go get a sandwich. It's going to be a while before I wakes up. Exactly. You can't do that. So like, you know, they, they, and they've thought these things through because, uh, in today's connected age, you know, these patients find each other and they compare, they compare stories and they can unblind at study. If you figure out that your, your doctor walked out of your surgery five minutes after it started. So it's really tricky. And I've sat in on some of these kinds of surgeries. And it is – in Parkinson's, it is stunning what can happen with these things.

Starting point is 01:22:02 So, yeah, I was saying across different people, like there's different things um, with these things. So, so yeah, I was saying, uh, across different people, like there's different things that resonate with different people. Maybe it's like, you know, space age technology, maybe it's ancient mysticism, but there's lots of different ways that you can get in touch with your expectations. But the thing is, is this is not hope. This is belief. This, and this is the thing in Christian science that I remember growing up is that people don't say God will heal me. People say God already healed me. I just can't see it yet.

Starting point is 01:22:29 Which are two very different things, right? Very different things. Expectation is triggered by certainty, by a certain level of certainty. Now, there's a great question as to whether it's the same for everybody, whether certain people are just talented with their own expectation. But you really have to believe. How do you manufacture that though? If for instance, and I'm not saying because I think we all overestimate how logical we are in all aspects of our lives, or many of us do. But if you've tried to train yourself to be hyper rational, how do you do that? Do you just need to

Starting point is 01:23:03 become so desperate that you want something to work? So your condition has to reach a point of being particularly bad, or is there another approach? Because I know a lot of scientists, and if I were to try to say, hey, you have this condition, you can't seem to figure it out, you should go try acupuncture. And they'd be like, looked at the data, not compelling, right? If you want to really make a doctor or scientist uncomfortable, ask them this question. Especially someone who studies this. No, it doesn't.

Starting point is 01:23:38 I mean, desperation, the problem with desperation is it, I lay out like three rules, um, of ways not to hurt yourself. And, and, and, and one, and these, these can be dangerous. These are life-threatening, you know, these are life-threatening issues. And we all know stories about people who have relied on, on placebo treatments that have been died from say cancer. Um, so desperation is not a, it's not a great word when I think about these things, it can be fun though. We, it can be sort of an exploration and, and sort of looking into your own mind, things that might be plausible. And one of my rules, I, you know, I say, uh, don't, you know, don't, don't die. I don't hurt yourself. And the second one is don't go broke.

Starting point is 01:24:19 You know, like you have to be careful that like, you know, in order to create expectation, you shouldn't need to spend $2,000 a month on something. And so it's a very tricky- And don't hurt the planet, right? Or don't- That's the third one. And I read a little snippet about this, which is like, don't use endangered animals. And people might be like, what?

Starting point is 01:24:41 Endangered animals? It's like, yeah, don't go to Chinatown and buy like black bear gallbladder extract, because that's why there are these horrifying, I've seen video of this, farms in China that look like concentration camps where they have bears and tigers, their entire facilities with like dozens of tigers hooked up to basically these sort of extraction machines it's it's really terrible it's it's not worth it you know there are other ways or shark fin soup all that bullshit yeah the shark party is like actually it's more kundraten for for sharks for sharks but it's uh but all these things um uh they uh um there are other there are other ways to engage your

Starting point is 01:25:23 expectation there are other ways to create a placebo response. And some of these placebo responses, there is growing evidence, and I'm having a hard time believing it's not true, that some of these things can become permanent. You can, and you've talked a lot about rewiring your brain. Relief that comes from belief can be permanent. I've certainly seen it as a Christian scientist growing up. Um, and, and the trick is sort of finding the thing that, that does it for you and, and doesn't cause damage to you or others, you know, and there are lots of options. Like you want to drink your own urine, like go for it. Like, you know, there's lots of different ways that, you know, whatever resonates for you. Um, these things, it's, it's a, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a delicate game and maybe you have to experiment with a lot of things. And there's some people out there who simply it won't work.

Starting point is 01:26:12 And that's, I think, and there's some really great and interesting research going on again with dopamine into, um, into genetics and the genetics of placebo. And, uh, and there are some people who it seems just don't respond and, and they're just going to be out a lot like hypnosis, right? I mean, very much related, probably very much. It's not as stable. Hypnosis tends to be stable over time. Uh, and, and placebo tends to change from day to day, but, um, because your opinions change, all these things change. Uh, but, um, uh, it does look like there are some people that if you exclude them, and it doesn't really work yet on an individual basis, but if you take a thousand people and you look at their

Starting point is 01:26:51 genetics, you can take out the 300 who are most likely to respond. And it looks like we might be onto something there. Do you know offhand what the markers are or what the SNPs are? Yes. The, the, the most, the most effective one so far, and there's about 30 that have been found, but the most effective and there's another, I'm writing a piece on this right now is, is comped. It's yeah, it's the, the poorly titled warrior, warrior gene. But it's uh it's it's involved with a with an enzyme that eats dopamine so if you have a very active enzyme you have a lot less dopamine you've got a lot more efficient system that takes away all your dopamine and if you have a lazy one uh you got a lot of extra dopamine laying around and those people tend to respond to placebos at a higher rate people who have more dopamine laying around. Extra dopamine laying

Starting point is 01:27:46 around. There's also some personality, I'm sure you're familiar with this, generalizable personality differences between people who are, they're called Mets versus the Val-Vals. This is a classic Mendelian sort of breakdown of like, you know, you've got the Mets, the Val-Vals, and the Val-Mets, and there's

Starting point is 01:28:01 50%, 25%, 25%. You can imagine a little box a little the old peapod thing anyway i'm getting that i love it i love it but like which which which one of those responds best to placebo's uh the met mets the met mets it looks like there's some research out of harvard and it's been it's been it's been backed up in some some ways that have been published and some that haven't been published um that it's super new but it's it's been backed up in some, some ways that have been published and some that haven't been published. Um, that it's super new, but it's, it's really exciting. And it's, it's, uh, I personally am a met Val. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a mix. So I'm the least interesting of the three, cause I'm somewhere in the middle and I've got some lazy ones.

Starting point is 01:28:38 Well, thank God you could have died from your curse. I know. Right. Maybe I wouldn't be here. Uh, I don't, have you done, have you, Have you done, I'm sure you've done 23andMe, right, Tim? Yeah, I've had my full genome sequence, but I don't know if I'm a met-met-val-val or met-val. I do not know that piece. It's a great, I mean, it's a great, and there's a few others. I basically am, I think the scientist who I talked to

Starting point is 01:29:01 called me a, let's see, I think I was sort of a mix called me a mix all across the board. I didn't have anything except for one. The coating on the receptor for opioids in my brain is a little hungrier. It attaches. So no recreational heroin for you then? Yeah, you're right. It's related to addiction. So you do have for you then? Yeah, it is. You're right. It's related to addiction. So you do have to be careful with that one.

Starting point is 01:29:29 And that helps people who are, you know, you see, this is what's interesting about this is like these different chemicals in your brain-related placebos start working with or against each other, right? Because now you've got a big mix and they're all, you know, making noise. And so that's one of the reasons why this is probably so hard

Starting point is 01:29:45 to figure out because it's not one thing. What other conditions that people might recognize like IBS, you mentioned related to, I think, CCK, pain, Parkinson's, what other conditions seem to respond well to placebo based on the data? Depression, anxiety, nausea, and obviously addiction is one that seems to be in this game. A lot of these things are related to dopamine or opioids, internal opioids, endorphins. And there's something like, and there's a couple, and I've struggled to find really good examples of especially low responders responders but ocd seems to be

Starting point is 01:30:26 a pretty low responder to uh to and you also mentioned alzheimer's can be low responders to placebos what if somebody wanted to make a placebo pill as effective as possible uh so i've read bigger pills versus smaller anything else colors any colors, any other, uh, form factor, anything that comes to mind? I'm like, are you French? As much as I love suppositories, I don't know. Maybe that reflects some, some French blood. I'd have to look into it.

Starting point is 01:30:59 Um, yeah, I mean, there's no question that the easiest, the best placebo would be an active placebo. And that's, I make the argument in my book that that's what acupuncture is. An active placebo is a placebo that is inert, but causes something to happen in your body. The easiest one is tingling. Like niacin, which is why so many bunk supplements include niacin or something called beta alanine, because it causes the skin flushing and people are like something's happening and that of course oh yeah yeah it's very common practice that's great uh no i have to look that up i i've turned off all my computers for this interview but i'm going to remember that uh but yeah that's exactly what and there's actually a lot of if you really want to get into it there's actually a lot of debate around it there is no true placebo because uh they used to be sugar pills and and sometimes they use you know a type

Starting point is 01:31:49 of like busy corn or um you know it's not clear what a rice it's not clear if you're allergic to something like rice you know like that's not a placebo it's going to affect you so there is no like real true placebo so it's really hard to create a true active placebo, something that's completely inert except for one effect like your fingers tingling. But in as much as we can do that, we have created some interesting placebos that make your fingers tingle and you're like, oh my God, something's happening. And then whatever expectation you have gets boosted. And that's a very potent way to enhance a placebo effect. It's why pharmaceutical companies don't use active placebos because if they did, they'd never be able to clear any drugs to the FDA. Well, they might not get the results they want either.

Starting point is 01:32:39 That's for a separate episode, but there's some really interesting approaches that companies take to ensure they get the results they want. It's like, what if you run 10 studies and you fund them all, and then you only submit two? Well, that could be interesting. I know we don't have a ton of time left, but I wanted to mention a couple of things. The first is, uh, I was spending some time with a friend of mine, who's a former surgeon, MD, brilliant guy. And he was talking about how he is an end of one tried to use placebo control, uh, which is very interesting. So he would, uh, and of course he could have sort of experiment or blinded this with having say his wife do this for him, uh, which he did in a few cases, but he would put these pills, whether they were or capsules, whatever they might be, and he would encapsulate placebos,

Starting point is 01:33:32 right? So he would actually put something relatively inert, like a sugar or fill in the blank rice flour or whatever, into these capsules and wrap them in tinfoil and then number them. And he would keep track or his wife would keep track of which were placebo and which were active and then look at the results over time. It's a lot of work, especially if you're going to really try to make it defensible. But I guess what I'm wondering is how have you used all the, all the things you've learned and been exposed to? How, how do you currently use that, uh, in your life or how do you plan to?

Starting point is 01:34:13 Well, let me, let me just say, if there's anyone listening who has access to placebo pills, uh, especially different colors and different shapes, give me a call because I would love it. They're actually hard to get a hold of. Most, most, most research institutions sort of have their own little recipe and, and you can buy them online, but I can't really tell what's in those. And, and I, you know, so so I would love to, and one of my plans for this book was to,

Starting point is 01:34:40 was to be taking tons of placebo pills and I haven haven't been able to do that so your friend is amazing and i i'd love to hear what he came up with um so that's one of them i'll tell you is that he actually got pez and uh cut them into the shape uh same color of the tablets he was taking oh that's beautiful i mean that's also i mean you have to kind of be like a necklace craftsman to make that work. And once you spend that much time looking at this thing, are you really not going to recognize it? Yeah. And also, PEZ is not a true placebo because sugar is, you know, it's a stimulant a little bit. And so it could also be sort of an active

Starting point is 01:35:26 placebo of its own sort. Um, so, uh, yeah, that's, um, that's, uh, I would love, uh, to do that. And I'd love to have someone like, give me the, the hookup for like, like you said, colors and size and shapes have a big, big role to play in function. Which colors have you seen in experiments function better than others? Yellow works well for depression. That's been pretty well established. Larger tends to work well, better than smaller, up to a certain size, and then just gets uncomfortable. Then you have to just use it as a supposit story. At that point, you might as well. So, and there have been a few other ones that I've seen, like usually based around marketing.

Starting point is 01:36:15 So like, you know, something that looks like Advil. And that's hard to tell. Diamond shaped and blue, something like that. I've read, yeah. It's Viagra. Exactly, that's right. that one oh there's i have a whole bit on my book about viagra i'm gonna be starting on viagra uh but like uh the other one is uh gel caps versus uh versus um uh this normal sort of white pills and and uh i've seen some very small studies sort of mixed on that one but it's very personal it's a very personal experience it's hard to lump groups of people into put you know into what they like um but and that's part of the

Starting point is 01:36:51 fun or whatever uh of um of this process uh for me i am much more comfortable with the idea that we are suggestible this is real this is this is who we are. And this is across, I mean, part of this project, I went to China. I mean, my photographer went to the jungles of Peru and the highlands of Peru, and we followed pilgrims in Europe. And this is who we are. You almost don't have to try. We do this. Well, that was going to be my evolutionary point. Maybe it's a vestigial dead end of some type, but otherwise, there's a role that this plays. I mean, this is something across cultures that we've evolved to retain for some reason. No question. No question.

Starting point is 01:37:42 And we're not alone. I mean, you can get placebo responses in animals. You can even have immune placebo responses you can program in rats. You can train that through expectation in rats. I don't think it's been done in humans. It's probably going to be, once again, some ethical issues there doing that one. So this is fundamental to who we are. And there's a great evolutionary reason why this might be. One can easily imagine that having, if you imagine sort of a group of people, you know, fending for themselves, having some members of that group being able to be, you know, very clear eyed, very matter of fact, not influenced by, by suggestion at all might have, you know, some benefits for the group and then having other people who are more suggestible, but able to go out after an injury, you know,

Starting point is 01:38:46 after he started healing themselves, their own expectation with blowing smoke in their face and feeling better, um, and being more, um, more responsive to healing could definitely have, uh, also a benefit for that community, that community being a, you know, a genetic population and there'd be a good reason to have both of those elements in different degrees in a community. You know, evolution is all about diversity, genetic diversity. And, and it, it makes a lot of sense to me why we would be programmed this way. And if you're going to choose one, you want to be the second one.

Starting point is 01:39:20 You want to be able to, to heal yourself. Like that's what I, that's something I take away from this is like, I think going in, I think I would prefer to be the second one you want to be able to to heal yourself if you can like that's what that's something i take away from this is like i think going in i think i would prefer to be the first one but coming out of this research man the second one has a lot of options available to them they got a lot of different ways that they can um harness their own healing chronic pain sucks and if you have extra tools to deal with chronic pain, use them, man. You know, and I think that's, uh, that's a, it's a valuable thing to have. Yeah. It's a, it's such a fascinating topic and we could talk for hours about your,

Starting point is 01:39:56 your adventures in Mexican fishing villages and, uh, great with great white sharks and that'll have to be another time. But Eric, where can people find more about, of course, the book Suggestible You, more about you? Where can they say hello on the web or social or anywhere else? Sure. So suggestibleyou.com is the book's website, and you can read about upcoming events.'m going to be traveling in in uh in november and then again in january i'll be in the bay area and uh new york boston uh you know and if anyone has any uh events that they'd you know like to hear more about this kind of stuff i'm happy to travel i love sharing this stuff this stuff is so much fun um you can also check out my old my other work at ericvance.com.

Starting point is 01:40:45 And there's, like you said, I've spent some time in ancient Mayan temples. I've chased sharks. I've had a weird couple of years. And then if you want to say hi to me, I'm on Twitter at Eric Vance. It's with a K. Eric with a K. Yeah, Eric with a K. Eric with a K. Yeah, Eric with a K. And for everybody listening,

Starting point is 01:41:07 of course, in the show notes, I will link to everything as always. So we will have links to everything that Eric just mentioned, as well as any resources that might have come up in the conversation. Eric, thank you so much

Starting point is 01:41:21 for taking the time. This has been a blast. Thanks for having me, Tim. And to everybody listening as always and until next time thank you for taking the time to tune in to the Tim Ferriss Show Hey guys this is Tim again

Starting point is 01:41:34 just a few more things before you take off number one this is 5 Bullet Friday do you want to get a short email from me would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #194: The Magic and Power of Placebo

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #194: The Magic and Power of Placebo

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.