Aphantasia: Missing the Mind's Eye

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus.

Speaker 1 So we all know that everyone's different, right? We're all special snowflakes.

Speaker 1 But every now and then, you'll hear a story, or maybe if you're a nerd like me, you'll read a scientific paper that makes you realize that we're different in these ways that you didn't expect, that you never thought about.

Speaker 1 Turns out it's not just who loves Tayte and who thinks she's just fine.

Speaker 3 And today's episode is all about this.

Speaker 1 Not Taylor Swift. The idea that we're different in these unexpected ways.
It comes to us from Radiolab, and it's a story that we heard and we just really loved it and wanted to share it with you.

Speaker 1 So we're going to jump in just after the break.

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Speaker 4 All right. All right.

Speaker 9 I'm Lulu. I'm Lotif.

Speaker 10 This is Radiolab, and today's story comes to us from producer

Speaker 10 Sindhunyanasambandan.

Speaker 11 Okay, so this story, it sort of found me.

Speaker 4 Okay. Okay, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 11 Last year I was working on this episode about memory, and I was talking to this neuroscientist, Mark Whitman. That's too bad.
And as a sort of aside, you can sort of cut this out anyway.

Speaker 11 He asked me this question.

Speaker 12 If you close your eyes and you think about, let's say, a red apple,

Speaker 12 Now, open it again, your eyes.

Speaker 13 Can you tell me what you saw?

Speaker 12 What did you see?

Speaker 11 There was a leaf on it.

Speaker 4 It was two-dimensional.

Speaker 15 I didn't think in 3D.

Speaker 12 Did you see a color?

Speaker 11 No.

Speaker 11 I don't know what it would mean to see a color with your mind.

Speaker 4 So, who knows? Wait.

Speaker 16 So, even though he told you red apple.

Speaker 11 I saw nothing. But you saw a leaf, right?

Speaker 11 I know. I just, I felt like I had to say something about an apple.
You were lying. You were cheating on the test.
I mean, I wasn't lying. Like, this has come up a lot in my life, okay?

Speaker 11 People are, like, visualize something. And so I just always thought it was a metaphor.
Like, I just did my version of that.

Speaker 16 Which is what?

Speaker 4 Like a word cloud kind of thing?

Speaker 11 No, it's not a word cloud. It's it's like an abstract knowing.

Speaker 11 Like I know

Speaker 11 I love someone. Like I just know that an apple has a leaf.
There's a part of me that knows that that is true, but it's not seeing it.

Speaker 11 Like if I close my eyes and think about it, like it's, like it's really just black.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 11 But of course, the thing that was surprising for me was not what's going on in my head. Like I know I've lived in that my whole life.
Right. The thing that blew my mind open.

Speaker 16 I'm picturing a red delicious apple.

Speaker 11 Was what's been going on in everybody else's head. It's got a little yellow shine on the bottom left.

Speaker 8 Like the ones that are so shiny that they look kind of waxy.

Speaker 11 After that interview, I started obsessively asking everybody I came across a red apple to describe their apple.

Speaker 16 Not perfectly red, but it's a red with little streaks of yellow and green.

Speaker 11 And do you actually see the color?

Speaker 4 I think so. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And every time...

Speaker 6 What do you mean? The image is in my head.

Speaker 8 How could I not see the colors?

Speaker 11 I don't know. Your eyes are closed.
People would say they could actually

Speaker 1 see it.

Speaker 4 No, I'm definitely seeing the colors. Wow.

Speaker 11 Do you see it?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Yeah. It's like a shiny red apple.

Speaker 10 Like I am seeing it right now.

Speaker 11 In the way that you see things in real life? Like how vivid is it?

Speaker 10 I mean, it's decently vivid. Like it, it's on a white plate on a kind of cafeteria style table.

Speaker 10 Like I went, I went middle school. I know the grade I went because it's when I had Miss Patcholi, so it was sixth grade.
I threw it into that particular cafeteria soft touch.

Speaker 16 You got that from an apple?

Speaker 10 Yeah, when she said picture an apple.

Speaker 11 How about yours lettuce?

Speaker 16 Okay, mine, mine is actually, mine's not that vivid, but mine's like, it's kind of a cartoon of an apple, I think.

Speaker 16 Like,

Speaker 16 I don't know.

Speaker 9 The more I think about it, I'm like, am I seeing it?

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Like, what does seeing in the mind even mean?

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I guess it is just words. Like, how do we know?

Speaker 10 Maybe I see the same blur as you, but I get all excited and poetic about it. And you're just like, meh, there's not much there.
You know, how can we be sure?

Speaker 11 I mean, well, for a long time, we couldn't be sure.

Speaker 12 We had to sort of take someone's word for it that that's what they were imagining. That's what their experience was like.

Speaker 11 But then I found this guy, Joel Pearson.

Speaker 12 I'm a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of New South Wales.

Speaker 11 Who sort of like stumbles into this way of showing that there really is a difference here?

Speaker 12 It was almost an accidental discovery.

Speaker 11 So one day he's in his lab.

Speaker 12 He was programming an experiment actually.

Speaker 11 He was playing around with this thing called binocular rivalry.

Speaker 12 Rivalry. And it's an amazing illusion where you present very different pictures.
one to each eye.

Speaker 11 Basically, you put on these sort of like VR goggles that give each eye a different image. So let's say your left eye gets a green square and your right eye gets a red circle.

Speaker 10 Wait, okay, so each eye only gets one of those.

Speaker 11 Yeah, exactly. Each eye can't see what's going on in the other eye.

Speaker 1 Okay, got it.

Speaker 11 And, you know, typically when you're just looking around at things, like your eyes are getting slightly different images.

Speaker 12 Right, your brain's fusing those two different images together.

Speaker 12 But like when those images are very different, like this experiment, your brain can't do that.

Speaker 11 So instead, you get these beautiful oscillations. Your brain just sort of like randomly switches between the two.
It's like green square, red circle.

Speaker 7 Green square, red circle.

Speaker 12 Huh. So literally your consciousness is changing back and forward in this sort of

Speaker 12 really random manner. So I was programming an experiment to look at that.
And for some reason, and today I don't remember why, I thought, huh, I'm going to imagine one of these two pictures.

Speaker 11 Before he turns on like the images and the goggles, he's like, okay, let me just imagine a green square.

Speaker 4 And then he turns it on.

Speaker 2 And I was like, huh,

Speaker 12 I saw the thing that I imagined.

Speaker 11 Joel only sees the green square. What?

Speaker 12 No, this can't be. Let me try that again.
Now I imagine the red one.

Speaker 12 Huh, and now I saw the red picture in the binocular ivory.

Speaker 11 Oh, it's like just imagining the red circle made his brain actually choose to show him that one. Like what he thought actually changed what he saw.

Speaker 12 Turns out that what we imagine does change our visual perception. It literally changes how we see the world with the caveat: you know, if you have mental imagery.

Speaker 12 If someone like me does it, we don't see that same response.

Speaker 11 My mind doesn't linger on the imagined object. It just kind of switches between the two.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 12 It was actually the first first sort of objective method to measure visual imagination. Since then, we've developed a few other ways.

Speaker 11 And Joel's continued to find these like objective ways to see a difference.

Speaker 11 Like he did this one experiment looking at people's eyes.

Speaker 12 If we look up at the light, our pupils contract, right? When you're in the dark, of course, your pupil opens right up.

Speaker 11 People who have imagery, if you ask them to imagine, say, looking at the sun, your pupil actually constricts. As if they were actually looking at the sun.

Speaker 11 But if someone with no images in their head does this, you don't get these effects. Not at all.

Speaker 12 Not at all. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Wow.

Speaker 11 And there's even a name for this for not being able to see in your head.

Speaker 11 Aphantasia.

Speaker 4 Hmm. Aphantasia.

Speaker 10 What does that word mean? Just so we really fancied.

Speaker 11 Aphantasia means imagination. Okay.

Speaker 4 And aphantasia means no imagination.

Speaker 4 Wow.

Speaker 4 I know.

Speaker 11 So there's like about 1% of us who don't see anything. Most people see something, like maybe vague lines or cartoons like you letif, or even more vividly, like you, Lulu.

Speaker 11 But then there are these other people.

Speaker 19 I would fabricate these stories and I would see them. I would see them like they were movies.

Speaker 11 Who say their imagery is as vivid as real seeing.

Speaker 19 Create this entire world where I'm like flying on a Pegasus back, you know, and it's as real to me.

Speaker 11 It's called hyperphantasia. About two to three percent of people have it.
And when you ask these people to imagine staring at the sun, they're pupils super constrained.

Speaker 17 I can go into the backyard. I can walk to my friend's house.
I can walk to the Catholic school where we used to play on the tree.

Speaker 11 One guy described being able to like walk through his childhood world.

Speaker 17 I can run into old friends.

Speaker 4 I can just keep walking. Wow.

Speaker 11 It keeps me company. So like I never actually feel lonely usually.

Speaker 19 This woman described reading books being like as if I was watching a film, except that I'm standing in the film.

Speaker 11 Being in a movie.

Speaker 2 Whoa.

Speaker 11 And when this other person reads, the visuals are so strong that he'll sometimes just leave the page.

Speaker 17 Like I'm just over here in the saloon and going upstairs. The story doesn't even take place up there.

Speaker 16 Oh, so it's like it's in the world of the book, leaves the page of what the author is saying and just is like, I'm just going to go explore this fictional world.

Speaker 17 I just wanted to know what it looked like.

Speaker 19 I cannot hear music without having a complete, I guess you could say, music video.

Speaker 19 I've had the experience of like trying to find a music video that then I find out doesn't exist. It was just in my mind.

Speaker 11 This woman described having these like images that just constantly play in the background of her mind. Like in the middle of the interview, I asked her, I was like, Are you seeing something right now?

Speaker 19 It's like a really touching like love moment between two characters. She passes away and visits him before she dies and he thinks it's a dream.

Speaker 19 And then she climbs up onto like a unicorn. She's wearing a most beautiful dress and then he wakes up to watch her ride the unicorn into the wall and disappear.

Speaker 11 So you are experiencing that in your head while you're answering my questions. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Yeah, that's just happening. It's like, it's like I have a TV on in the background.

Speaker 10 Wow.

Speaker 16 And when you were talking to this woman, like what, like, like what is the are you feeling jealousy are you feeling like like they're getting something you aren't oh my god are you kidding i am so jealous just to know that there is this like

Speaker 11 a whole part of being a human that i will just never get to experience yeah

Speaker 11 Like I was listening to this old Radiolab episode.

Speaker 4 Never heard of it.

Speaker 16 What show is that?

Speaker 11 Anyway, it's like some old episode called Who Am I with

Speaker 4 Robert.

Speaker 11 And he goes on this little

Speaker 11 actually, you know what? Do you guys want to hear it?

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 18 Any human being

Speaker 18 can take a white car and make it in their imagination.

Speaker 18 But a monkey you don't think can do. He cannot do it.
And this is so simple for a human being to do. And let's run through a quick exercise.
Okay, imagine for me a bird in your head.

Speaker 18 Got a bird in there?

Speaker 11 I'm just going to cut forward a little bit.

Speaker 18 Only a human being could do this because only humans can take images from the real world, pull them into their heads, divide them into parts, and then start turning those parts into abstractions.

Speaker 18 Monkeys, says Ramachandra, can't do that.

Speaker 4 And you're sitting there like, ah.

Speaker 9 He basically just called you a monkey.

Speaker 11 No, like monkeys can visualize. Like most of them just can't change the image.
Robert says I'm worse than a monkey.

Speaker 11 And like, I know it's funny, but like it's just, it also makes me sad.

Speaker 11 I want to disappear into books. When a book is like really descriptive, I'll just read the same paragraph again, like five times and nothing will enter my brain.

Speaker 15 Right. Dense wall of words.

Speaker 11 And also,

Speaker 11 yeah, just thinking about, oh, I don't get to,

Speaker 11 I just don't get to hold memories the way that all of you get to.

Speaker 11 Like my memories aren't places I go. Like I don't get to see or feel or touch them.

Speaker 11 I don't know. I almost want to make you guys

Speaker 11 like picture someone you love right now.

Speaker 11 Got it. And just like share

Speaker 11 what you see and how it feels.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 It's weirdly like intimate, but just yeah, because you're just picturing, I mean, I'm thinking of Grace, my wife, and I'm thinking of like the little peach fuzz on the, on her high part of her cheek and like a little crinkle, like the crinkles around her eyes.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 yeah, I'm just kind of imagining her like

Speaker 10 softening after a long day.

Speaker 10 Like I could picture the bathroom door light on behind her, and she's turning back, like that moment where like the stress of the day melts, and it's just like a little like ha, like a laugh, a little

Speaker 10 face shifting, duties are done, quick moment of connection. And yeah, it's very vivid.
It's just like her face at a three-quarter profile.

Speaker 16 Okay.

Speaker 16 I had this flash to my

Speaker 16 great-grandmother. Like she has bright red hair because she would like Hannah dye her hair.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 I can picture her sitting on a chair, just sort of sitting there and like kind of laughing.

Speaker 11 Like that, like I want that. Yeah.

Speaker 11 You know?

Speaker 4 And it's like, ah, hmm.

Speaker 11 And at one point in that conversation with that scientist, Joel.

Speaker 12 Can you give someone who has aphantasia imagery? Yeah.

Speaker 12 With with the right approach?

Speaker 11 I think it would be possible, yeah. He said he thinks he can give it to you.

Speaker 4 Whoa, wait, how would he even do that?

Speaker 11 Yeah, so Joel found that when he ran this like very low electrical current through people's visual cortex, their imagery actually got stronger.

Speaker 4 Whoa.

Speaker 11 Now, he does think it would be more complicated for people who are starting out with no imagery.

Speaker 12 I can't stimulate your brain and you can start speaking a new language. You have to learn that content first.

Speaker 12 You have to learn how to connect your frontal cortex with your visual cortex to drive visual cortex.

Speaker 11 But I think there are ways we can do this. With practice.

Speaker 12 Training with brain stimulation over some time could probably do it. Have you tried? We haven't done that yet.

Speaker 12 If you took someone who'd never had imagery and you gave them imagery, let's say in a week,

Speaker 12 I think that could be quite a dangerous thing.

Speaker 9 What?

Speaker 20 Why?

Speaker 11 I'll tell you why

Speaker 2 after the break.

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Speaker 15 If I want to

Speaker 15 experience flying, I can imagine it and it's kind of like really flying.

Speaker 15 There were stars coming from the center of my vision to the outer edge of my vision.

Speaker 15 Or even planets. it depends on what i'm passing by

Speaker 15 large clouds uh that are like pink and yellow and maybe a little bit of blue mixed in there

Speaker 15 i can feel the coolness of the air as it as it hits my skin kind of like a

Speaker 15 sound

Speaker 2 Lulu?

Speaker 16 Lutth, Radio Lab. We've been talking to our producer Sindhu, who cannot make images in her mind.

Speaker 2 That's right. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And the person you just heard, his name is Derek, and he is the opposite of me. Like when I asked him to describe his apple, his description was wild.

Speaker 13 I could make it red or I could make it green or golden. I could make light radiate off of it.

Speaker 13 Like right now, I think it's interesting to like make a cloud of thunderbolts coming off of the top of the apple.

Speaker 13 And now there's like a village with people and they're like running away from the storm because there's a tornado dropping down from the cloud.

Speaker 13 And there's one guy that jumped off of the apple, and now he's falling into this ocean down below the apple.

Speaker 10 Wow,

Speaker 10 what?

Speaker 11 And earlier, we learned that there's a scientist who like maybe could give me that ability to be a little more like Derek.

Speaker 14 Right.

Speaker 16 But he said it could be dangerous.

Speaker 11 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 11 And the reason I'm telling you about Derek

Speaker 11 is because he's actually the one that helped me understand why.

Speaker 4 Huh. Okay.

Speaker 11 So Derek.

Speaker 13 Let's see. He's about my age.
I'm about to be 30.

Speaker 11 He was born in New England. Massachusetts.
Moved to Texas when he was eight. And he says as a kid, he loved having this supercharged imagination.

Speaker 13 I could just live in my head and imagine whatever I wanted. It was like living in virtual reality or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 11 Which was nice for him because real reality was pretty hard.

Speaker 13 My mom and I, I,

Speaker 13 we were pretty poor. We stayed in a homeless shelter for a short while.
We didn't really stay in one place for very long, so I never got to know people.

Speaker 13 And it was very, you know, here and there.

Speaker 11 But whenever Derek got sad or scared or like even just bored, he would close his eyes and just go into his imagination.

Speaker 11 Or sometimes he'd even do this thing where he would take something from his mind and plop it out into like physical space, like out into the physical world.

Speaker 13 Yeah. So I would be in a car and I'd be looking out the window.
I would imagine this man. He would look like a superhero or something.

Speaker 13 And he would just be running really fast along all of these cars and then jumping and flying and like doing flips.

Speaker 13 And by focusing really intensely, it's almost like I can switch to primarily the visualization and it can start to replace what I'm seeing more fully.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 And you can always tell that it's a projection and not reality.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I can tell it's a projection.

Speaker 11 But at a certain point, he said that started to slip.

Speaker 13 I graduated high school a year early

Speaker 13 and I didn't really want to go off into university. So I ended up moving to Seattle.

Speaker 13 I was really wanting to be somewhere more open-minded where the tech industry was prominent because I am into computer programming.

Speaker 11 But the first job he got was at the Dollar Tree.

Speaker 13 Couch surfed for a while.

Speaker 11 And a few months in, it wasn't going great.

Speaker 13 Yeah,

Speaker 13 I was sleeping in a bed in someone's laundry room in their basement. So it was very much just like being on the sidelines of life, really badly wanting to find some kind of escape.

Speaker 11 One day, he's sitting in his room and he has this idea.

Speaker 13 I remember I had these coins.

Speaker 11 He picks up two dimes he has lying around and he decides he's going to play a little game with himself. Flipping both coins, trying to get them to land the same way.
He flips them in the air.

Speaker 11 Looks down at the coins and they're both the same. They're both heads or tails.
He doesn't remember which.

Speaker 11 And then he flips them again.

Speaker 11 They land

Speaker 11 The same.

Speaker 11 He does it again.

Speaker 2 The same.

Speaker 13 I was flipping over and over again.

Speaker 11 And he starts to believe that he can control them.

Speaker 13 That I could make them land on whatever I wanted them to.

Speaker 11 Like using his mind.

Speaker 13 If I wanted them to both land heads up, then they would land heads up. If I wanted them to land heads down, they would land heads down.

Speaker 11 So he'd flip the coins and think to himself.

Speaker 13 Heads up.

Speaker 11 And he'd see they were both.

Speaker 13 Heads up.

Speaker 11 Do it again.

Speaker 13 Heads down.

Speaker 11 And they'd both be.

Speaker 13 Heads down.

Speaker 16 Heads up.

Speaker 13 I remember feeling like. Heads down.

Speaker 13 It was some superpower. Heads up.

Speaker 13 Heads down.

Speaker 9 Heads up.

Speaker 11 Derek says what happened next gets kind of foggy.

Speaker 13 Unfortunately, I don't remember much from the night. I don't remember much from the psychosis.

Speaker 11 But he now knows that as he was flipping those coins.

Speaker 13 Whenever they would land, I would project onto them whatever I wanted them to look like. So I would see them heads up if I wanted them to be heads up.

Speaker 13 But whether or not they were really heads up, I don't really know. I see.

Speaker 11 So you stopped being able to tell the difference between an imagination and reality.

Speaker 13 Yeah, basically.

Speaker 11 And at some point later that night.

Speaker 13 I couldn't tell you what time it was, but it was dark.

Speaker 11 Derek's roommates kicked him out.

Speaker 13 You know, I wasn't hurting anyone. I wasn't harmful or anything like that.

Speaker 13 They just didn't know what to do with me and they didn't want to, they didn't want it to be their responsibility because they couldn't get me to go to the hospital or anything.

Speaker 11 Derek wandered around all night. and actually ended up living on the street for several years.
Wow.

Speaker 11 He does eventually get a diagnosis, schizophrenia, and he gets on medication for that. And he says that things are better,

Speaker 11 but he still sometimes experiences psychotic episodes.

Speaker 10 Is the hyperphantasia a common symptom of schizophrenia?

Speaker 16 Or like common co-occurrence? Yeah.

Speaker 11 So according to neuroscientist Joel Pearson.

Speaker 12 You see this link between very strong imagery and schizophrenia.

Speaker 11 They do seem to be correlated.

Speaker 11 And it's not just schizophrenia. It broadens beyond that.
This is clinical psychologist and neuroscientist Emily Holmes. People who are highly disposed to think in images may be slightly more anxious.

Speaker 11 She brought up certain anxiety disorders, things like phobias. For example, if you were afraid of spiders, you might experience bits of imagery of spiders with terribly big teeth and fangs.
And also.

Speaker 11 Perhaps the Hallmark disorder is post-traumatic stress disorder in which people relive vivid mental imageries of events that have been traumatic in the past. past.

Speaker 11 Now, of course, having strong imagery doesn't mean you're going to have any of these disorders, or not having it doesn't protect you from them.

Speaker 4 Right, okay.

Speaker 11 But it does seem that being able to make really vivid pictures in your mind makes them more likely.

Speaker 19 Laying in bed and remembering stupid stuff you said when you were like in third grade or eighth grade or, you know, times you were bullied.

Speaker 11 The people with hyperphantasia that I spoke to, they also told me about these other ways that mental imagery actually makes their life life harder.

Speaker 19 Very difficult to listen to news where, you know, there's a war going on,

Speaker 13 you know, when

Speaker 19 there's a mass shooting,

Speaker 19 when the boys were trapped in the mine in Thailand, like I am like in the mine, you know, it's just like the sound of the water dripping off and falling into water below and like the boys being stressed and their breathing and the humidity, like anybody suffering at all.

Speaker 19 I cannot not see it.

Speaker 17 I can visualize, you know, being yelled at. I can see the looks on everyone's faces.
My muscles will tense up. I think when I was a child, I think I was a little bit more in the moment before

Speaker 17 I had stacked up layers and layers of trauma.

Speaker 10 So whether it's looking back in sort of like PTSD or looking forward in anxiety, like a potential worry, like a worry, it's just so visual that it

Speaker 10 kind of like drums up the body's emotional.

Speaker 11 Yeah, exactly. Like imagery can really turn up emotions.

Speaker 10 It is, I mean, it's like it's the whole blessing and a curse or like a gift, but not without a cost. Like you get an escape hatch, like Derek can just fly off into space.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 And that can be a gift, but then it sounds like you get this sometimes these hauntings that then you can't escape.

Speaker 16 Well, and that it's kind of a control. Like if you can control this, this is an amazing superpower.
But if it controls you,

Speaker 4 this is

Speaker 16 terrifying.

Speaker 11 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And actually, like, part of what Emily does is teach people how to gain some of this control.

Speaker 11 So if we take the spider example, you could shrink it or turn it green, then push it away like it's more distant, like literally, visually.

Speaker 11 And it's a way of showing I'm controlling you, you're not controlling me, and you're not real.

Speaker 4 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 16 It's like she's like the real life,

Speaker 16 you know, Professor Xavier teaching the X-Men how to control their powers.

Speaker 14 That's so cool.

Speaker 16 But what about you?

Speaker 16 Do you still want imagery?

Speaker 11 I mean, after all my reporting,

Speaker 11 like honestly, no.

Speaker 9 Really?

Speaker 11 Yeah, I mean, I have no practice with it.

Speaker 11 I feel like it could be kind of a bad trip that I like can't get out of.

Speaker 16 Well, what if you could just get like a little bit?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Yeah. Although, you know, the more I've been thinking about it, the more I'm like, I just have such a clean, empty

Speaker 11 space inside of me.

Speaker 16 Oh, so it's like, it's not the fear of having the pictures. It's like appreciating.

Speaker 11 Not having them. Yeah.
Huh. Yeah.
Like I, I

Speaker 11 am not going to see poetry the way you see poetry or, you know, experience my memories in some sort of like rich sensory way.

Speaker 11 But, like, I do have a meditation practice, and I was like, whoa,

Speaker 11 like, there's so much more to quiet if you're dealing not just with words and like ideas, but actually, like, images. Right.

Speaker 10 More stuff to sweep out of there. Yeah.

Speaker 11 So I think I'm good.

Speaker 10 You're good with where you are. You reported your way out of lust.
You were like, actually, I don't want it.

Speaker 11 But also, just beyond myself, I really do think it's a good thing for the world that there's a spectrum and

Speaker 11 there's all these different brains thinking in all these different ways, you know?

Speaker 14 Hmm.

Speaker 16 But there's also a kind of like

Speaker 16 the diversity means we're more like marooned in our own heads a little bit. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Like where there's a novel that you'll love and I'll like look at it and I'll be like, I haven't like, I just, I can't even even, like, I don't know.

Speaker 10 I can't read this description of a road desert bush.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 16 Or, or even a memory. Like, it's like we were both in the same place at the same time, experienced the same thing.
And then a year later, we're talking about it.

Speaker 16 And it's like, we remember it in a totally different way.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I don't know. Like, which is, there's, there is something sad about that.

Speaker 11 And that. probably leads to like so much miscommunication and misunderstanding and conflict.

Speaker 4 And conflict. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 11 You know, it's like being like, why are you so obsessed about this thing that happened? It's like, why can't you see this?

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 11 But I think for that problem, it's like we all just need to understand

Speaker 11 better, I think, just how differently our brains work. Right.

Speaker 11 Wait, can I play you guys one last thing? Yeah, of course, go for it. Okay, so you know, I was just talking about meditating.
It's something I love to do.

Speaker 11 Well, when I was talking to Derek, the guy with that super intense imagery, I asked him what he likes to do, like what he does for fun. And I just need to share it with you.

Speaker 15 I also practice harsh metal vocals

Speaker 15 just for fun.

Speaker 15 People have told me I should try and get into a band, but I don't think that's really my goal or anything.

Speaker 11 What is harsh metal vocals?

Speaker 15 Do you want an example? Yeah.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 15 Prepare your eardrums. Okay.

Speaker 4 Whoa.

Speaker 15 Or

Speaker 22 That was an episode from Radiolab. Full credits are in the show notes, and the team at Radiolab actually have a new family-friendly show, which is called Terrestrials.

Speaker 22 There's episodes about stumps, sharks, and Arctic squirrels, and loads more. So, go check it out.
Science Versus will be back next week. I'm Wendy Zuckerman.
Back to you then.

Speaker 20 Used to describe an individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained. One who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly.

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Speaker 20 They know the rules, but behave as if they do not exist.

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Speaker 20 Mutine, adjective, used to describe an individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained, one who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly.

Speaker 20 They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions.

Speaker 20 They know the rules but behave as if they do not exist.

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Defined by you.