The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - The First Celebrity Diet, Animals Adopting Animals, Believing You Are Dead

Episode Date: May 9, 2018

The weirdest things we learned this week range from the world's first celebrity dieter, Lord Byron, to Cotard Syndrome, a mental illness where a person believes they are already dead or do not exist. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/weirdest_thing #weirdestthingpod Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Eleanor Cummins: www.twitter.com/elliepsies Claire Maldarelli: www.twitter.com/camaldarelli Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme Music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by: Jessica Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Jason Lederman: www.twitter.com/Lederman --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So we figured why not share those with you? Welcome to The Weirdest Thing I Learn this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Eleanor Cummins. I'm Claire Maldarelli. So what we do on the weirdest thing I learned this week is go around, pitch a little tease of the weirdest fact we've picked up, And then I'll agree which one we think is just so interesting that we absolutely have to hear more.

We'll all spin our little science yarns and then at the end of the episode we'll reconvene to decide which was in fact the weirdest thing we learned this week. And then you can all disagree with us on Twitter and it'll be super fun. I will start off this week. Mine is about an interspecies adoption. That's it. That's the tease. All right, I'm just going to say like Truman showish. First celebrity diet. Oh, my goodness.

Those both sound so good. Mine is stupid. I think celebrities always go first. Yeah, that's true. That's the perk of being a celebrity. Okay, cool. I win. So this week I was reporting a story on all of these different lifestyle habits that you can have that make you live longer.

And I'm also simultaneously. reporting this longer story about diets and all the dangers of them. And I went down this rabbit hole about I was trying to figure out who was the first celebrity dieter. And I think I found him. It was Lord Byron who lived from, hold on, I need my cheat sheet, 1788 till 1824. And if you don't know, and I didn't know, he was this British poet who was like one of the big romantic poets at the time. He's like very well known. And he also was in the, Greek War for Independence and he died of sepsis at the age of 36. But his whole life he was obsessed with his figure.

He was very vain and had this like ginormous fear of becoming obese. And so while he was at Cambridge, he subsisted on a diet of essentially salt and vinegar, our version of salt and vinegar chips, which is potatoes and vinegar or soda crackers and water. Wait, that sounds great. Was that supposed to be, like, healthy or? Not healthy. I think he wasn't really going for health. He was just going for slimness.

So the idea, which we actually wrote about, Sarah Chodash, one of our other science writers, wrote about the apple cider vinegar diet, and it's, like, play in weight loss. And it really has no scientific basis. There's, like, a few mouse studies that showed that people lost weight on, or that the mice lost weight on the,

on these diets, but no human studies have showed this, even though people today still are obsessed with this apple cider vinegar diet. And it was all started by Lord Byron. And the sad thing is that because people were so, he was like this iconic figure at the time. So all these other poets were like, this is the diet for me. And so they all did it too. And so that was like the start of celebrity dieting. And I think it's terrible. And we should never take advice from celebrities about our health. Wow. I have so many questions.

First off, so was it just other poets that were like, this is the diet of a romantic poet, or did some readers at home get on the bandwagon? I really tried to find that answer because that's what I wanted to know, like, how far it spread. But the only thing I could find was that it was other poets. But I like to think that, like, if, you know, people loved poets and, like, they were these, like,

iconic figures at the time than other like normal people did the same. Right. Like Lord Byron being really into a diet is basically the same as Taylor Swift being really into a diet today. Correct. No difference. The poets of our time. And so I feel like how it relates back to this story that I reported this week on like all these five lifestyle habits. So they're like keeping a healthy body weight, eating a high quality diet, abstaining from smoking and, and, exercising 30 minutes or more a day. These are all just like simple, normal, like normal things that you should do. But why do we, so why do we take advice like eating and drinking vinegar from celebrities

when we have all this like good advice out there from good scientific studies? Like, why do we do it? That is the question. Salton vinegar chips sound so much more appealing than exercise. The thing that is amazing too is like there is this. book by Susan Sontag where she talks about sort of like the origin of like our like slimness obsession and she like traces it back to tuberculosis which like a lot of the same poets of that era were romanticizing because you were literally wasting away and they were like how beautiful

yes that's exactly it everyone just wanted to die exquisitely was that gone away well yeah fair but yeah no it's true that like the the popular beauty standard of the day was looking like You never had to do any work. You never had to leave the house. You were probably dying of consumption. You were glistening from your permanent fever. That's truly wild. I'm going to get some salt and vinegar chips from the veney machine after this.

Oh, you should. I had salt and vinegar chips this week, so it's like, oh, now I'm craving them. We had a story a while ago. I think that you edited Claire that was about, like, can you exist on just one food? and potatoes was a incredible, right? They were, yes. Potatoes are actually, like, they get such a bad rap for being, like, these, like, high-carb foods, but they actually have so many nutrients in them.

And technically, I think it was Eleanor, or Eleanor, you're Eleanor. Ellen Earhart, who wrote it, and she said, like, yes, you might be able to. You would still, but you would have to eat so many of them to get, like, the proper amount of, like, calcium and iron and, like, different nutrients in that it would just be, like, absurd amount of potatoes. to eat. Do potato chips count? Or are they like? I think, I mean, they don't because you need oil to do them, but in my diet book, they do. Yeah, I mean, healthy fats. Healthy fats. Well, amazing. I love that. So just, you know, follow your own diet advice. Use common sense. Everything in moderation. Yes. Including vinegar. Including vinegar. Yes. And too many solid vinegar

Chips, actually, okay, I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but it kind of like destroys my taste buds. Like I ate so many this week because I just like had them in the house and now I can't really like taste anything on the tip of my tongue. Maybe that's the appeal of the diet. Right. You're just like, oh, that's true. Food is meaningless now.

I want to find the poems Lord Byron wrote about vinegar chip. Because you know what? There may not be any that have. survived the ravages of time, but I do have to believe that there were some. We're going to take a quick break to go to the vending machine and get as many salt and vinegar chips as they have, and we'll be right back. Do you wear your pride on your sleeve? Popular Science is partnering with Out in STEM to make limited edition T-shirts with a rainbow Popsie logo. One hundred percent of the profits go to Out in STEM, a nonprofit that empowers the LGBTQ community in science, tech, engineering,

and math fields. Scoop one up before they're gone. And share on social with the hashtag SciPride. That's SCI Pride. All right, we're back for more weird facts. Mine is more of a heartwarming tale this week. Less ginger in horses' butts, more beautiful alternative family arrangements. So I edited this story.

this week about these albatrosses. There are these three species of albatross that, you know, mostly live around islands in Japan, and the most endangered species is the short tail. There are only around 4,200 of them, again, mostly around Japan, but a few individuals will show up at this reserve called Midway, which is technically in Hawaii, though it's kind of an unincorporated island, so, you know, tenuously part of the United States. but, you know, is U.S. Park Service managed? So there are a couple of these short-tailed ablattras,

and there was this one called George, named after Lonesome George, the Galapagos Taurus, who, for those who don't know, died while conservationists were desperately trying to find him someone to mate with. Very lonesome George was. So they named the short-tailed albatross, Lonesome George, which is rude, but George did finally find a mate after 15 years of trying. Her name is Geraldine. And people were very excited.

Eleanor is losing it over Geraldine. That's amazing. That's the fact, just that the bird is named Geraldine. Sorry. You won. Scientists were very excited in the fall when they saw them incubating an egg. There have only been three of these birds born on U.S. West soil, so they were super psyched to see George finally make a baby. And they were in for a

surprise because a couple months ago, the egg hatched. And everyone thought something was a little odd, but they had to wait about a week for the parents to stop, you know, kind of sitting on the baby so much that they couldn't see it. And when they got a good look, they saw it was not a short-tailed albatross. It was a black-footed albatross, which is a much more common bird at that reserve. And they don't know how they ended up with this egg. It certainly has happened before, which I can get into a little bit more in a minute, but, you know, they don't know whether they, like, kind of stole this egg or whether it was abandoned somehow or just got kind of rolled away from its nest. This is like that Angelina Jolie movie, Changeling. It's exactly like Changeling. But so

on the one hand, it's a little disappointing because they thought that this endangered species was starting to thrive on a new island that maybe they could establish a population there because once these birds pick a place, they don't always go back to where they hatched from. For example, George and Geraldine both came from islands in Japan, but once they pick a place to nest, they'll come back there every year. So if George and Geraldine were having babies, it would mean a solid chance that we were going to have short-tailed albatross breeding there. So it's a little disappointing. But the researchers say this is still actually a really good sign for short-tailed conservation

because albatross are like very bad at successfully reproducing and having eggs. I'm not quite sure why. I think it just tends to take them a few tries to get it right. So conservationists are psyched that they have. this chance to practice on an adopted baby. So everyone is saying that, you know, the fact that they have this black-footed chick that they successfully hatched and presumably, hopefully, will successfully raise. So far it's going very well.

It's actually the biggest black-footed chick on the island because short-tailed birds are bigger, so they're feeding it bigger portions of food. That's so sweet. So the chick is getting fat. Lord Byron is rolling over in his grave. So, in theory, they're going to be successful parents, and that will give them a really good chance of having their own egg next year and doing everything right.

And in reading about this, one of the most interesting things to me is that there's this whole question of how this black-footed chick is going to behave. because hatching and seeing a short-tailed bird in front of you and bonding with that bird as your parent is confusing. And it's possible that the black-footed chick will kind of act more like a short-tailed chick, which in a lot of ways doesn't really matter. They hunt for the same things.

They eat the same things. They fly to the same places. But they do these mating dances. And so there's some question of whether the black-footed bird when it comes time to mate is going to be, more interested in other black-footed birds or short-tailed. It seems like the dances are innate, not learned, but, you know, we're going to find out. Who knows?

And there are other hybrids, but they're mostly black-footed males and then the third albatross species, not the short-tailed. So just kind of an interesting question of like what happens when you have these interspecies adoptions and how it changes their outlook for life. It would certainly not be the end of the world if the black-footed chick tried to meet with other species, it would probably do just fine. Maybe it'll even have a short-tailed hybrid, and that'll be exciting. What if it does super well? Like, this is the future of the albatross. I hope so. Also, what's George and Geraldine's baby going to be named? Lord Byron.

Lord. You heard it here first. No, probably like Jeff. Maybe it's a girl. I don't know. I don't think they know yet. It's still a little bebe. Yeah, so I just think cross-species adoption is a super cool topic. It probably happens more than we know of. Researchers have like a few ideas for why this might happen. We know that we're all hardwired to protect the young of our own species because there's this need to pass our DNA along, even if it's not from our direct descendants.

And there are some researchers who think that maybe a lot of species are liable, to mistake creatures of other species for their own or otherwise, like, not care and just want to care for them because it's better than them making the mistake in the other direction. It's better than risking them occasionally not recognizing their offspring as their own and rejecting them, which, of course, still does happen sometimes in some animals.

You know, that's why you're, like, not supposed to touch baby bears because if their moms think they smell wrong, they, like, won't take care of them anymore. And the birds look really similar, right? Like there's just two different colors. Do we know if those birds are colorblind because maybe they just can't see? It's totally possible that they just think that this is their chick. Yeah.

Yeah, that's another thing is that sometimes they might just not know. Even when it's very obvious humans, you know, we don't know how they distinguish from one other, especially with these animals where the dance is so important when it comes time to meet. You know, it's reasonable to assume that, like, that's kind of their primary way of telling one species from another. And, you know, when it comes down to trying to figure out who's a member of your own species for the purpose of mating, it becomes really interesting because scientists think that sometimes individuals of other related species will actually seem more attractive because, like, for example, the Blackfooted albatross is smaller than the short-tailed albatross. but let's say that you're in a group where the biggest black-footed males are considered the most attractive. So then you might get a black-footed female that sees a short-tailed albatross, which is, of course, bigger than the available black-footed albatross. And so that, to her, is very attractive.

So that does seem to happen in some other species where, like, because the males or females of this related species have, like, plume. that just puts the other birds to shame, you know, to them, it seems like a very logical thing. So, of course, hybrids are all over. Interspecies adoptions are all over. And animals are great. It's amazing. So George and Geraldine didn't actually lay their own egg, or is there, like, their baby is now being raised in another family? Maybe we'll find where it is.

Maybe they'll meet and be friends. Yes. Like on switch to birth. That would be amazing. So I did find that one study of white stork. found nest switching in 40% of broods. So like infants will just actually end up in like swapping nests all the time, just totally arbitrary.

Is that just because they can't find home? They're like, oh, this one looks good. Like, you know when you like mistake your mom, like getting picked up at like preschool? I was like, this is my mom. And I was like, shoot, this isn't my mom. I think that's what happens. Also that with the storks, they think it's because they benefit from longer periods of care.

So the infants might actually like purposefully. seek out a nest that's not as far along so they can eke out more parental affection. So smart. In this case, I mean, certainly they would notice of a short-tailed chick had hatched somewhere off in the island because they're so eager for one of those. So if they laid an egg, it probably died or they lost it. But yeah, I'm really curious about how they got the egg. I want to know if there was like a throwdown.

Was this like a baby kidnapping situation? An albatross caper. We'll probably never know. We need another break, so we're going to take one. See you soon. It's been scientifically proven that Monday is the worst day of the week, or at least it used to be, because now that's when you can expect new episodes

of Popsize's other podcasts last week in tech. Every week we recap the big technology stories that you may have missed while you were furiously refreshing your Twitter feed hoping that Elon Musk tweeted something else really ridiculous. You could subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, pocketcasts, or SoundCloud. Now, back to the weirdest thing I learned this week.

All right, we're back, and now it's time for Eleanor's weird fact. All right. So I had a bunch of different ideas this week, and then they all got totally blown up when I found this creepy, creepy fact. It's 1880, and there's this French neurologist, Jules Katard, and he presents a case study, right? So that's where, you know, like, researchers and doctors are like, I think that this example of something I observed in the field is representative of a real phenomenon. I love case studies. Yeah, great source for weird facts.

Absolutely. This is full of case studies. This particular initial case study stars Mademoiselle X. And she believes that she, quote, had no brain, nerves, chest, or entrails, and was just skin and bones. And this was the first. Lord Byron's dream. Honestly, this was the first observation of what has become called Katard syndrome, which is the belief that you are. dead and that no one else is like willing to validate that you are actually a skeleton and that you have died.

And so I got super obsessed this morning and spent a bunch of time like looking through this. It's also known as Walking Dead Syndrome naturally. And basically initially it was talked about as like a marked tendency to quote deny everything, which same. But it has some other specific characteristics. So people report all different kinds of manner of things. There are a bunch of other case studies. There's one from 2008, for example, where a woman was admitted to a psychiatric unit

because she was, quote, complaining that she was dead. And also she believed that she smelled like rotting flesh, and she wanted to be taken to a morgue so that she could be with other dead people. Oh, goodness. Yeah. And so psychologists and psychiatrists and all of these people have had a really hard time figuring out what's the sort of like underlying, you know, mechanism here, like what's causing people to believe that they are dead. It happens every few years. There's like a case study about it.

And no one is really certain, but it's definitely divided right now between two camps. So some people believe that there might be, you know, an organic cause, which is really interesting. There have been some talk of people having these symptoms of, like, you know, catard syndrome after like traumatic brain injury, which is really fascinating. So, you know, it's been proposed that it's similar to capgras illusion, which is the idea that everyone you know has been replaced by an actor. And so that is also something where they've traced that particular capgras illusion to a lesion in the brain. And so people have been like, can we find a similar lesion with Katard syndrome that explains why everyone's like, I'm a skeleton and you're lying to me about being alive. But there has been

sort of mixed success with that. So the other idea that's proposed is the sort of like psychiatric one, that this is, you know, a manifestation of some kind of severe depression or delusion. And so I just thought it was so interesting, not only that people feel this and that it comes up every once in a while, but also that, you know, like, can you imagine like your mom, like, waking up and you having to take her to the hospital because she was like, I smell like rotting flush. I think I'm dead.

Yeah. And complaining that you're. that you're dead and no one will believe you. But anyway, I also then as a result, started looking at all of the classifications of delusional disorder according to the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, the DSM. And that's also super fascinating. So this would probably be classified as a somatic delusion. So those are like beliefs that are focused on your body.

But there's also nihilistic, which this potentially could be, a nihilistic delusion. which is the kind of conviction that everything is like, you know, about to totally fall apart or maybe already has, like, your own body. Where's the lie, though? Exactly. Exactly. I really identify with nihilistic delusion. There's also, like, erratomaniac, so that's where you think everyone is in love with you. Also, where's the lie?

Grandiose, that you have exceptional abilities. Referential, which is the idea that everything that's happening is directed at you, which I find really fascinating, sort of like solipsism, like. you're the center of the world, as well as persecutory delusion, which is that someone's, like, out to get you. And then there's even a further classification, which is that their, like, delusions, all of them are in two categories, bizarre and non-bizarre. And so, bizarre are the ones that, like, normal people. I'm using serious air quotes here, that the sane psychiatrist, they know that that's crazy.

But non-bizarre delusions are just ones that could potentially be real, like, that, you know, You may actually have a case that someone is out to get you. It doesn't mean they're not. It doesn't mean they're not. So that is, yeah, that's the sort of rundown on Katard syndrome. I feel like this is really bad for hypocondriacs. Yeah, definitely. It kind of freaked me out a little bit.

Yeah. Well, I know that with Capgras, one of the potential physical reasons for it is that there's a problem in the brain. that affects your kind of emotional recognition of people. So I know some neurologist thinks that it's because you see the person and you objectively recognize that it looks like and sounds like and feels like your loved one, but because you don't feel the way you're used to feeling when you see that person,

you're not connecting them with the feelings of recognizing a friend. you kind of explain that a way by creating this delusion that someone is pretending to be that person. It really freaks me out that there could be just such a simple, hardwired problem that your brain just creates an elaborate explanation for that just causes you to spiral into this debilitating delusion, which I feel like is how most delusions probably happen. We're like you just feel kind of off,

and our brains are very good at creating patterns and sense out of... Justifying. Yeah. Yeah. Capgras, like, as you're saying, so they've kind of narrowed that down to this idea that there is like a lesion in the sort of like limbic area of your brain. So it's like disconnecting your facial recognition kind of abilities from like the rest of your like experience. So yeah. Have they done any studies or they're just like not enough people who think they're dead?

I think that there are not enough people to think who are like complaining of putrefying. But yeah, it's really fascinating too because, like, there's also been this debate over what's, like, the proper treatment, like, when you're dealing with somebody like this. And so, you know, who's experiencing something like this? And so for a long time, they've been, like, well, electroconvulsive therapy is, like, what you need because, like, you know, it's probably, there's something, like, kind of organic going on and maybe we can, like, help reset it. But there has been some success with just sort of, like, you know, like more routine medication, you know, for various, like, psychiatric kind of issues. So it seems like they have lately been able to help people. I think I read that Mademoiselle X ended up dying very tragically because she did

not think she needed to eat because she was dead. So, yeah. That's rough. Now it seems like we're definitely able to at least sort of, like, I think part of it is giving people some justification. Right. Like this isn't totally like crazy. Like it's possible that, you know, there are things going on that are contributing to

this as well as like offering someone. semblance of a treatment. Yeah. It's really freaky to think about how tenuous the mind-body connection is. The fact I was thinking about using this week that I decided

was to... Bonus fact. On the horizon. It doesn't count in the competition, though. No, no, it doesn't. This is part of Eleanor's story. But I was talking to a friend who's doing a thesis on, I think,

body identity integrity disorder. I can't remember if integrity and identity are switched. But it's the disorder that makes you believe that one of your limbs should not actually be part of your body. So these are the people who end up getting voluntary amputations. And they do actually receive those amputations because otherwise they are prone to doing very dangerous and terrible things to themselves.

And it's a really serious disorder. And some of the most interesting research on it is looking at possible neurological differences. It's a small area of study, but it seems like there is probably something going on in the parietal lobe of people who have this. And their parietal lobe does not activate in the same way when you touch the limb that they feel doesn't belong to them. So there is actually something that doesn't happen in their brain that's supposed to happen. So they literally do not recognize it as part of their body. Interesting. In like the spatial awareness of themselves.

Right. Which of course is very distressing. Yeah. They don't have like the same sense of like physical like possession of the limb. They can feel you touching it. But as though we're watching it or something. That does not feel like it is within the bounds of their body, which, you know, it makes perfect sense that that's incredibly upsetting. Yeah.

So anyway, the whole mind-body connection, brains are terrifying. Totally. And also there's just like some of these solutions, right, seem so reasonable. Like once you understand like the mechanism behind it, it's so reasonable. Yeah. wish that we knew more about the brain that we could. Yeah, offer some, like, people who are experiencing such distressing kind of things, like, more...

An explanation for it. Yeah, definitely. And then also, though, like, I would like some more clear lines about, like, why I'm not going to fall into one of these delusions. Because, like, on some people, like, you're reading them and, like, you kind of, like, get the rationale. Like, how far away are any of us from being, like, everything is about me or, like, there's no hope.

Right. Well, that's when you were reading the list of delusions, I was like, oh, God. Maybe I have that? To what extent? Is that normal? Because of course we all have moments of like feeling like everything's out to get us, feeling like everyone loves us. I don't know.

I feel like everybody has days and moments when they are slightly delusional about how much they are the center of the universe. So I think it is like a little bit, a little bit freaky. Yeah. As long as you know you're not a skeleton, I think you're good, at least for this syndrome. All right. So what do we think is the weirdest thing we learned this week? I'm going to vote for celebrity diet. I may be biased because I have already gone way too deep down the weird brain rabbit hole.

The Lord Byron diet surprised and delighted me. I'm with you, for sure. Yeah. I still think that just the idea that you could think that you're dead surprised me. So I'm going with yours. Thank you. I feel like I'm an extreme hypochondriac and I have never thought I was dead. You know you were alive?

Yeah. That's like my hypochondria comes from knowing just how alive I am and how tenuous that is. But yeah, I vote. I vote for Lord Byron. All right. Well, the weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, PocketCast, or SoundCloud. And if you like us, please rate and review us on iTunes.

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