FULL EPISODE: Ice, Ice, Fungus! - March 17, 2026

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1:22Hi welcome in, it's the last show you'll learn a lot on the night's program here are some of the topics we'll cover. You're laying on your therapist couch, spilling your deepest secrets, and secretly wondering if your therapist is into you. It's surprisingly common to fall for your mental health professional. In 10 minutes time, we'll discuss what happens when you fall in love with your therapist. Is it real love? Is it projection? And what do you do when it happens? Then after that, for those who decide to become vegan, it's not just a change in diet, it's navigating a social minefield that gets created. Think food and your family and your friends. We'll discuss that halfway through the hour. That is some of what we'll cover on the show. There will be more. Let's dive in. Imagine I told you I could freeze water. Well, if I own a fridge, it's not that impressive. But what if I told you I could do it without a fridge and that I was fungus? Well, there's a form of fungus that can freeze water and we're here to learn about it here with chemistry professor at Boise State University and at the Max Planck

2:23Institute in Germany. His name is Conrad Meister. Conrad, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So this sounds like total science fiction, like something out of a movie, a fungi, a fungus, fungus is, I never know how to say that word properly, the can freeze water. What is going on? Who would paint a picture for me here? Yeah, I think it's been super unexpected for us as well, because I think the journey started actually being us going to some of these very cold places. In this case, it was in Alaska and then when you, when you're Alaska and you see all these lichen, which are basically fungus mixed with some other microbes, you realize that for some reason these lichen can survive freezing super well. And that is of course very nice to begin with. But then you want to know how can they do that. And then we started looking into it and we really found that there's this fungus that's super good at ice making and then we poked a bit further and then we saw it's not the only the fungus is something in the fungus that's so good at ice making. And so

3:26then the real bizarre thing was that these fungi that are so good at ice making, you not only found on the ground, but you also seem to find them basically in the clouds and then precipitation. So that really raises the question of what makes it rain and why does this fungus have this capability? Fungus in the clouds? Sorry, how do you even discover that? What's going on? Yeah, that's the weird thing because we always obviously want to know why does it rain and you know, like what causes cloud precipitation? I think it's the word where we make ice in the clouds so that it comes down. And I think the idea is not completely new because they had found some bacterial, some plant fragments up there and then sometimes they found these fungal spores. But now we're actually starting to understand why and how good these fungi really are at ice making because they are pretty exceptional and they're also pretty much close to being understandable. So that makes it a really, really interesting product as well. So ice obviously needs cold temperature to form. What is the trick here? What are the fungus

4:30doing to create ice in warmer conditions? Yeah, so obviously in high school, we all learn like, hey, if below zero degree, it should be ice above that, it should be liquid water. But in reality, it's almost like you need like, I always say like, hey, you're standing on this cliff and you want to jump in the water because it's nice and warm. But someone has to push you because you're afraid, so you need this what we call like a trigger or a nucleator. And the fungus, they produce these proteins that are basically a bit of like a mirror image of ice. So they have like a pattern that looks almost like ice just built by a certain biomolecule like a protein. And so basically on that, it enables the water to really fit very, very nice in like this ice like pattern. And then it makes ice at a very, very warm temperature. It's sort of like ice is the key and the fungus is providing the keyhole, like a molecular structure so that ice can form. Exactly. So it's like a molecular structure that's basically, so if you think about water in solution, it's like a chaos, it's like

5:32a wild club dancing, like everything is completely randomized. But now if we add these fungi proteins, the zombies, like I forced to dance them more in like this old school middle age dancing. So now they're already all very well-wined because then once they become ice, they're basically stuck in their positions, right? And that's why for instance ice floats, right? Because ice is much more structured. And so you basically enable them with this, with this structure, you create this pattern in effect of this water. And then it basically forces the water to not being let's say a wild discodense about water to be like in a stuck state. Why would the fungus want to do this? Like evolutionarily, what's the advantage? Yeah, that's one big question. And I'm obviously like a canvas, so I don't really know too much about some of the biological questions, but to the colleagues I talked to and when we start thinking about it. So there's a few things that the fungi might benefit. A, it might actually want this ability to get around, because I mean we all want to see places. And if the fungus would be

6:35trapped in the situation and it basically would be on the host and there's not enough nutrients, how would get the fungus get from A to B? And one way could be to actually go all the way in the atmosphere and then rain down somewhere else and that starts to colonize over there. That's one big thing. The other thing is that these fungi are freeze-tolerant. That means at parts of the state they actually can survive being in a semi frozen state. And that could be useful for instance if you have very cold places like the Arctic. It's like at some point there's just simply no food and gets too cold that you don't really want to be around. And so I can go almost in this like dormant state. And if I want to be in a dormant state, it's kind of a very nice way to kind of initiate the freezing outside of the fungus and then slowly pull out the water rather than being frozen right away because then I could damage something that I want to have don't want to have to be damaged. Maybe the fungus isn't thinking on the time scale of humans. It's thinking like, okay, well there was an ice age, I don't know, 20, 30, 50,000 years ago. There might be another ice age and 100,000 years. I got to survive that.

7:37I mean, it's actually a very good idea because there's also these stories that we see that, for instance, with the promo for smelting in the Arctic that there are certain fungi and bacteria trapped that have been frozen for such a long time and we don't really know what's what we're going to get out of those. Could we use this technology or these funguses to seed the clouds to control the weather? I know I'm sounding like a conspiracy theorist right now, but is it doable? It's not only doable, but it's actually something we actively working on because one thing you have to imagine is they're very good at ice making and currently with seeding the clouds or companies that are seeding the clouds, they do that with silver iodide, which is a chemical, which is not ideal on many ways because it's a chemical product versus a biological product. And if you can think about, we don't want to seed with the fungi, but we want to seed it with the active compound out of the fungi. And so that would be a really interesting way to kind of get some form of an environmentally fending cloud seeding,

8:40which I think is a much better idea than using a chemical. Yeah, currently our thoughts around cloud seeding involve what talks are chemicals and things like this? Exactly. That's the current thought. And I think one should also think about sometimes with the cloud seeding, I'm technically not a big fan of saying like, hey, we want to change weather patterns because that's, let's face, it's never a good idea to play that. However, if we could prevent, you know, like if you see there's a really dangerous storm coming towards regions, and you can see that storm earlier so that it's going to go off, let's say over the ocean rather than over like an important aquaculture or ecological part, then I think it's not a bad idea at all. But I personally also still think I'm a scientist. I'm a really just curious, but as you said, why the heck would the fungi be so good at isomic? It seems like everywhere we look like deep ocean where there's no light deep in the in the earth's crust like under, I don't know, tons and tons of

9:41rocks. It seems like these life forms exist, even where we don't think they will. Were you surprised by by the by them existing up in the clouds, this particular fungus? Yes. And no, maybe because you're right. I think a lot of times we we just imagine and we've probably heard about these hydro thermal vents too. We go to the bottom of the ocean and there shouldn't supposed to be any life and it's full of life. And so yes, I'm very surprised that we found so much and such a diversity up there. There is nothing cooler than fungus and I appreciate you coming on the show when talking about these ice making fungi or as it fungus is, I don't know Conrad. I actually think no one would even know us. That's the deep question. Conrad Meister is a chemistry professor at Boise State University and at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Conrad, thanks again for being on the show. Thanks a bunch, Dave. Coming up after the break when your therapist catches your eye, you become attracted to your mental health professional. What is your brain actually doing? And

10:42why mentioning it to your provider might be a good idea. I want to be part of the last show with David Cooper. Call us and join the conversation. One, triple eight, five, five, sixty six, forty four. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd, or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in. With a full lineup of non-alcoholic beer styles, you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stuck the fridge for tip off with a variety of non-alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at AthleticBrewing.com. Near beer, fit for all times. You're sitting in your therapist chair working on your relationship problems and then all of a sudden

11:46it happens. You realize you've developed a crush on the person you're paying to understand you. You've got a crush on your therapist. And then all of a sudden you feel shame, anxiety, their secrets. What happens next and how common is this? Well, that's what we're about to discuss with Laurel VanderTorne, a licensed therapist who runs Laurel Therapy Collective, serving California and Florida. Laurel, what a topic. Welcome to the show. I know, I loved it. I have had a close friend of mine admit to his therapist that he had a crush on her and what followed was this. She handled it incredibly professionally told him it does happen and then talks it through and the reasons for it. It's not as scary as you think if you find yourself in this situation. I guess is what I learned from my friend. Yeah, super common. I've had it happen where a client disclosed to me that they had a crush on me and I wasn't even licensed at the time. I was in training and I was kind of like, oh yeah, this is what they prepared me for.

12:49Because it is so common that it's talked about a lot in therapist training programs and in consultations, supervision. Any therapist worth their salt is absolutely ready to handle it. And it makes sense, right? Even it could be you don't actually have a crush on them. They're not your type. They're obviously not someone you would date. Maybe your therapist is married with kids and the relationship has been very professional. But when you get close to someone, sometimes those wires can get crossed. Is there a fancy term in therapy called transference? And if there is, do you want to maybe define it for me? Yeah, transference is when you kind of superimpose something onto your therapist. So let's say, I'll use an example from my life. My therapist, because all therapists should have a therapist. My therapist has the same haircut as my mom. And so all of a sudden you feel like some maternal connection that isn't there. Yeah, so like stuff with my mom, like we can work on in a slightly different way because of that. And that's like a very kind of superficial example. But you know, not knowing much about her life,

13:53I should actually tell her this when I see her tomorrow. But we often superimpose our experiences onto people that we just met or people that we don't know much about. I have a coach at my gym who looks so much like the person I was in my first relationship with. And I'm having feelings about this coach complicated feelings that they don't deserve. They're just there to like coach me through my workout, you know? So super common to happen in therapy, particularly because therapy is built on a bedrock of positive regard, unconditional positive regard. And that feels really good to receive, particularly for people that have never had it. So I think that there's something in there that's a little bit similar to what we see happening with AI chatbots that like the constant validation and you know, the kind of soothing that they get emotionally happens in a more complex subtle way in the therapeutic relationship.

14:55In addition to a million other things that AI can't do. Of course, AI is side. It may well be attraction. Maybe your therapist is your quote unquote type. But I think a lot of times it isn't, it's kind of like that support and you get those wires crossed. How often does this happen? Because I think when it happens to you, like you're sitting in the chair and all of a sudden it pops into your head and you feel like it's a secret and you feel like if you disclose it to your therapist, somehow it's going to go badly. Side note, it probably won't. It's like you say therapists are trained for this. But I think when it happens to somebody, it feels like it's happening to the first time in the history of humanity and it's this huge secret and there's shame. How often are we talking here? I mean, I think the stats are pretty staggering. Like somewhere around half of people have experienced this. Now, it might be subtle. It might be like, oh yeah, now that you mentioned it, yeah, my therapist is kind of attractive or I do feel like a connection that goes beyond what I expected in therapy. What do you do when it happens as the patient? If a friend of

15:56mine confessed to me that they had a crush on the therapist, what should I advise them if it were me in the therapist chair, what should I do? I mean, it really depends. Do you feel like it's interfering with your work or it's kind of become this elephant in the room that you feel like you're always stepping around, then you absolutely need to say something. If it's just kind of in passing, like, yeah, I guess like, I guess it's kind of hot or whatever, then maybe not. But if you feel like there's something substantive there, I would bring it up. Because therapy is, it's kind of like a lab. Like, you can experiment with things and I don't mean having an inappropriate relationship with your therapist, but you can experiment with a different way of relating to someone as a way to prepare yourself to do that in the real world. So, for example, let's say you're someone who really struggles with speaking up when someone does something you don't like, practicing that in therapy can be incredibly beneficial. And so, I had it happen where someone

17:02confessed that a client was attracted to me. And this client was someone that was working on anxiety around talking to people that they found attractive or had a crush on. And so, I was like, okay, what's it like for you to talk to? Can you practice talking with me? You're making me anxious just listening to this story. It's like a weird, these weird interactions in therapy you can get so much from because all of a sudden it's not about having a crush on your therapist. It's about something in your childhood that makes you feel anxious right now. Yeah, right. So, I talked with this person, but like, while we can use this as a way, like, you know, in vitro exposure to, or in vivo exposure, to something that makes you anxious out in the real world. And that can help you. And there are some people for whom like, it would just be too much. And they can't get past it. And they probably need to work with a different therapist. Now, this is such an awkward for me to bring up, but eroticized transference.

18:03Yeah. Suppose I have like a romantic dream about my therapist. Yeah. I'm just thinking about him right now. That's probably not going to happen. But, but I suppose I did. Is that something you should bring up? I mean, that starts to get really uncomfortable for people. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I'm not someone that did a lot of training in dream analysis and that kind of, like, more Jungian approach to therapy. And so different people are going to have different interpretations of what an erotic dream might mean. My opinion is that often in dreams, a physical or erotic scene with someone is actually a representation of an emotional connection. And it doesn't actually mean you want to be physically intimate with that person. So it just means that you feel a closeness that is represented through a physical act in a dream because that's a very concrete way of exploring it. What if the disclosure would lead to just like such an inappropriate, I don't know, vibe between you and your therapist? That's okay, right?

19:06You can potentially refer out to another provider. So you should never have shame and an inability to bring it up because if it's going to get in the way of the work, there are professional ways to deal with even that. Yeah, absolutely. And because I know some people's minds are going there, I just want to address the whole like dating or sleeping with your therapist. Big fat know. Yeah. Big fat know. Possibly illegal depending on where you live. Absolutely illegal. Wherever you live. Okay. You know better than me. Yeah. Our kind of legal ethical stipulations say that if there's been a two-year gap, you could start a relationship. But the power differential is just too great and it's just so rife with potential for abuse of power that we just don't want to go there. And unfortunately, it's alarmingly common. Yeah, well, that's regrettable. But back to the side where things go

20:07well and regularly, I think it's important to know. And you said it at the beginning of the interview, but it's important to underscore like therapist or trained specifically for this, right? Yeah. Yeah. And hey, if that doesn't mean that there isn't going to be a therapist out there that doesn't get flustered and kind of like not know what to do and like a, of course, like there's no accounting for quality of training. But I think more often than not, it goes better than clients think. Well, Laurel van der Torren is a licensed therapist who runs Laurel therapy collective. That serves California and Florida. Laurel, this has been a joy. A fun topic. I appreciate you going over with me. Happy to be here. Coming up next, here's what we'll chat about. You suddenly change your personal ethics code. And it collides with everyone else's dinner plans. That's right. Going vegan is a social minefield. If you make the lifestyle choice, it can then make family meals a little awkward. There are social trade-offs. So in a few moments time, we'll explore that hidden psychology of going vegan and why changing everything you eat

21:10can change who you are around others. And remember, this shows a judgment-free zone. Want to be part of the last show with David Cooper? Call us and join the conversation. One triple eight five oh five sixty six forty four. Exima is unpredictable. But you can blare less with eggless. A once-monthly treatment for moderate to superior eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four and ten people taking eggless, achieved itch relief and glare are almost glare skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more glare at one year with monthly dosing. Emgless, Libri Kizumap, LBKZ. A 250-mg per 2-ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Emgless can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to

22:11Emgless. A allergic reaction can occur that can be severe. I problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Emgless. Before starting Emgless, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask a doctor about Emgless and visit emgless.lili.com or call 1-800-LiliRX or 1-800-545-5979. We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment. The last show with David Cooper. If you have made the lifestyle decision to go vegan, that's all fine and well. But now you've got to deal with everyone around you who continues to eat meat. And that can be tough. Turns out the hardest part of veganism is not giving up eggs and cheese. It's navigating the social mind field around the dinner table with friends. I'm here with Aya Aboulenyan who is a marketing professor at HEC Montreal to discuss this. She's done research in this area. Aya, welcome to the show. Oh, thanks David for the invitation. It's great to be here.

23:11So veganism, it sounds simple. You just change your diet. But when you go to do that, a lot of shifts can happen with your social interactions. Can't they? That's absolutely true. So vegan, if you ask a vegan about what veganism is, it's not just diet. So it's a lifestyle in general. But when I started my research, the most of the things that people wanted to discuss in terms of the challenges that they're facing in their lives was not really just the food. Is what happens around the food? Because if you decide not to refer, that's like a person of decision. Nobody's involved with it. It's your own decision where you shop, how you shop for it. It's like you're not imposing anything on anybody. But most of my interviews, the things that they felt like most compelling that appeared as the most important thing that they wanted to talk about is how hard their social life has been ever since they decided to become vegan to the fact that a lot of them actually stopped at points in times just because of the social life was so hard. They had so many problems going in, especially with immediate family members like their parents or like their partner, like colleagues at work. So a lot of them with

24:16a social pressure decided to like stop being vegans for a period of time. Some of them came back to veganism. Some of them became vegetarians. Other like they're just keeping it for the future. Like I know I want to become vegan one day. So yeah, that's the that's the biggest challenge. And it's completely understandable. And you've got to have like social skills that get developed to navigate all that. Like in my family, food is big around the holidays. If I go home and I don't eat my mom's brisket, she's going to get annoyed. And that's just one little example, but a dinner party with friends where your friends cooking a meal, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all these parties and social events. You've now got to like, you know, mention your dietary requirements, which can annoy people, even though it shouldn't. It can. Navigating that. What are some of the tricky things that people who go vegan say happen? So let's before how they navigate it, let's just see what they faced, right? So like a lot of the things that they faced probably first was the understanding of people around them. It's not the misunderstanding. It's their inability to understand

25:18how they changed why they changed everything, right? Because when you say your mom's brisket, right? Your mom has been doing that brisket for years. When my mom found out my ex-wife was vegetarian, she's like, oh, so you can eat fish, right? And I'm like, no mom, like you can or oh, you can eat this thing that has like an animal like chicken stock. There's no chicken in it. It's just chicken soup. It's just the broth. And it's that lack of understanding. So that's one thing, right? So that's the very first thing that they encounter most of the time, right? Like they're unable to understand what do you mean by being vegan? You're not going to eat my turkey, but it's not the last three days prepping that turkey, right? So that's this that first shock, right? The second shock is like, why are you doing that? Right? And the majority of the vegans are doing this for the sake of the animals, right? Because they want to be better in terms of like relationship with them, so on and so forth. So the other thing is like, people felt some of like a threat to them as if like vegans are attacking them morally, that they're becoming more ethically superior. That's, oh, are you judging me because I'm eating like the animal, but like you're you've been eating animals or your life. And this becomes this backlash on discussions. So like that kind of like the beginning of why the vegans wanted

26:24or had to develop strategies to navigate that, right? So the very first thing that they would attempt to do on a lot of vegans, like a lot of my interviews would say that we they would do that as an anticipation because they knew that it's going to happen was try to go up armed with facts, right? So like, why do we come vegan? Because like we kill this many animals because they're responsible for this amount of carbon dioxide. So like they become like some sort of armed with the like the things that they're like statistics and proof so that like when you throw a question at them, it's just not my personal opinion. It's like research is saying this to find like some sort of like a backbone to go back to, right? Rather than just, oh, it's just my personal opinion, right? It's just like one of the very first things that they do, right? Because they are also trying they haven't faced like violence or like symbolic violence from the non-vegans yet, right? It's just like their their inability to understand. So they're just trying to educate them a little bit. It's funny. Like let's suppose I'm atheist and I have dinner with my deeply Catholic friend. We're just not going to talk about religion even though we have these strongly

27:26held beliefs that are incompatible. But it feels like when someone says they're vegan, everyone wants to talk about it. They somehow feel attacked in a way that other topics don't. And it kind of sucks for vegans that that happens even if they just want to keep their reasons private. That's very true. That's I'm totally I'm totally on board with that. The other thing as well is because the majority of the people we talk to were non-vegans, right? So they they were raised on the wars. Then they came into existing circles like big or their current family. Like there are their family. And all of a sudden you decide it's oh, I decided to be to be this right? I decided to become vegan. So then the questioning appears, right? So your example is a little bit different because like you're two friends who got to know each other each with their own beliefs and then came together and each of you respecting the differences, right? It's it's different than oh, I'm an atheist. I decided to embrace a certain religion and now you're declaring to your friend who has also been an atheist or have also been following another religion that you changed, right? Then the justification kind of follows. Interesting. Okay. So that explains why this happens.

28:27Okay. So having to explain your choices, this is a new social thing. Are there any other new things that come up in social situations for vegans that they got to navigate? So aside from that, there are other strategies that they try to do to solve the problems, right? So they there's something that we call decoupling, which like they try to do like they gathering away from the food. So they eat before they go, right? So that when they are on the dinner table, like the mom doesn't have to perhaps something different, right? You don't have to really ask whether the salad has cheese in it or like you don't have to navigate that, right? Or that the soup has broth or whatever. You're just you're full. You're just there for the social life, right? There are people who would like bring a dish that they prepped and like they have to make this this fascinating so that everybody would understand a little bit that vegan food is actually nutritious. It's healthy, it's nice, it's delicious, it's everything. And we can like we can co-exist in the same place, right? It's like you with your own dish, me with mine, sort of thing. And these are like the like more on I want to preserve their relationship, right? Like you're important to me, you're my mom, you're my you're my husbands, you're whatever, like I'm like you're important, so I'm going to keep

29:31you. What about withdrawing from social situations? Like I can imagine, those are kind of pro-social, I don't know if I'm using that phrase, right? But I imagine some vegans end up not going to the dinner party at the friends house. And actually there are some vegans who would what we call it a paper divest, which is like cut off the family members that are causing them problems. They cut off their parents, they cut off their partners, they wouldn't go to the mother's house if a certain uncle was there because he always picks up on them. So it's it becomes kind of lonely too, right? So it's like you're forced to make a choice between the people that you used to love for a period of time and now that you have to like kind of get rid either of doing things that you like with them and actually being the same space, there are people who are actually their all others who are like okay, I'm going to meet my family members with away from food, so they search for other activities. So food is no longer shared, I eat by myself, but I go out with them to the cinema or I go out with them to play bowling, whatever, right? So that's another thing that they try to do is like and there's like a tie that I know within vegan communities is not really regarded as vegan,

30:33which we call chameleoning, which is kind of like mimicking whatever your whatever the approach is. So like if you are in a vegan circle, eat vegan because or if you're alone, eat vegan because it's just the way that you do. But if you are in the non-vegan circle, you'd eat the least problematic item on the dinner, but you would not ask the host to do something for you. But then that can go against the moral choice you've made. That was kind of like how I was with my ex-wife. Like we were vegetarian at home and then when we went out, I would just do whatever. Exactly. So within the vegan community, because like so far we've been discussing the problems within the omniverse world, right? But we have not been discussing the problems within the vegan world because they also have problems there. And like if you are chameleoning, you do have a problem with other vegans who are like more strict or like divest from relationships because like it's not the right way to live your life. Like these people do not respect animals, they don't respect the planet. So you have to kind of like convince them to be otherwise. Right? So the fact that you're mimicking their behavior gets you backlash within the vegan community too. Could these dynamics play with things like electric cars or sustainable living or even like I don't know your family has

31:37these really strong political beliefs and you've all of a sudden changed yours. Can these dynamics play out in other areas? 100%. That's what we actually are trying to discuss at the end of the paper is that the paper applies not only on vegans, but like on anybody who decided to take a moral stand that is different from the way they were like they've been brought up their entire lives. Ia Abilemian is a marketing professor at HEC Montreal. I've enjoyed the chat. Thanks for sharing your research with me. Thank you David for the invitation. Up next for some people love isn't built on sex at all asexual people prioritize emotional closeness. And they make us rethink what partnership is beyond traditional dating norms that next. I want to be part of the last show with David Cooper. Call us and join the conversation. One triple eight five oh five sixty six forty four. So don't be a two has come home to Disney plus let's go get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time. New friends. Do it this night. And your last

32:39name? This night. Dream team, new habitats. Utopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2 now available on Disney plus rated PG. Here right now you can get Disney plus and hulu for just 499 a month for three months with a special limit to time offer ends March 24th. After three months playing auto renews at 1299 a month term supply. We work hard to strike the right amount of intelligence and ignorance. The last show with David Cooper. There are those among us who have zero interest in sex a lack of attraction to others asexual folks but they still want closeness companionship connection. It's just not the usual script of romance sex and marriage. So for them what does love and a partner look like? Well that's what we're about to discuss. I'm here with Paula Banga who is a personality researcher at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands to discuss it. Paula welcome to the show.

33:39Thanks for having me. So let's start big picture because I think a lot of people assume sexual attraction is the engine that drives relationships companionships. But what happens when people don't have much sexual attraction and they still end up with romantic partners? Yes there I think it's a common misconception that everybody experiences sexual attraction and yeah but that's not actually the case. There are those individuals that actually never experience sexual attraction or only to a very little extent and those identify as asexual. And I think yeah a lot of research also on like partner preferences or what do you people want in a relationship kind of assume that sexual attraction is a major driving force in that. But then we don't really know what yeah what it's like for those people that do not experience sexual attraction like yeah. People who identify as asexual is there like a lot of psychology research around this group or is it more a new thing? Is it a group that's getting more visibility these days? Yeah for sure it's like it's been yeah it's been like a growing body of

34:43research now but it's still very in the beginning I would say like there are a lot of qualitative studies lots of interviews happening but it's been quite invisible for a while and yet only recently like people are picking up on its in sexual orientation just like bisexuality heterosexuality. Now do people who identify as asexual I think I think the stereotype and I know it's not true is that they would just be alone they would live alone but that's not the case the folks like this can end up in like platonic life partnerships I guess. Yeah for sure I think that's also one of the common misconceptions they but asexual people actually like a lot of them do want relationships and yeah but those relationships can take on many forms they can be as he said platonic partnerships like companion like friendships but asexual people can also be romantically attracted so sexual attraction romantic attraction don't always go hand in hand. So they can also look for committed romantic relationship yeah. How would that work? I you know for the pipeline for like a

35:46heterosexual relationship would be like dating sex commitment marriage it would follow like a like a normal script or a kind of like commonly followed script how would it work for someone who identifies as asexual. Yeah that's a great question I think that's a interesting pod right yeah there's we don't know that much right so we do know that they want relationships and that they might be open to more alternative forms of relationships maybe not so much the traditional the traditional sense but I think they they really just want relationships that do not include sex and that is of course something usually sex and romantic relationships are quite conflated so you really have to think outside of the traditional cultural scripts and see what alternative life pass or like what alternative relationship forms can look like for those people. So what were some of the findings from your research let's talk I don't know start with monogamy could you as an asexual person end up in a relationship that's like not monogamous maybe your partner has some sexual interest they might

36:50date outside the relationship but perhaps you live together or something like that. Yeah for sure so that's also what we found we found that asexual woman actually we're more interested in non monogamous relationships so that might that's just speculating but that might free them up to after the if they're in a relationship with a sexual partner or somebody who experienced a sexual attraction let partner to maybe experience sexual intimacy outside of that relationship but for the asexual person to still have a committed relationship that has all the emotional closeness that normal relationships has but just maybe not includes the the sexual part yes. Kids do they end up happening often in these kinds of relationships or is there less interest in having children? I know it's actually one of the strongest effects that we found that asexual women were less interested in becoming parents than compared to heterosexual women that was quite surprising to us although that fits also with that homosexual individuals also are less interested in becoming

37:54parents and yeah one explanation could be that because yeah traditional yeah having children is often connected to those traditional relationships that include sex and that might just be something that asexual people on its driving for and on top of that finding a partner and also maintaining a relationship by the partner with one one step children with might be more challenging for asexual people because they have to negotiate on the yeah of the level on the level of intimacy they're comfortable with in these relationship and just the dating pool might be a lot smaller so it might also be that anticipating those challenges might already lead to that asexual individuals priorities more these more alternative life paths over traditional life paths yeah when selecting a partner what kind of traits would an asexual individual and a heterosexual woman perhaps what would they look for yeah so what we found is that actually they of course they

38:55do show a lot of overlaps so both one the partner that is kind and supportive that's quite universal and they both value a partner that's educated intelligence but where we do see differences is in those traits that are usually quite emphasized in dating culture like being confident is sort of being physically attractive being sexually experienced there we found that asexual women were just that just wasn't as important to them which for obvious reasons maybe yeah so we really just see this pattern off yeah they're just like put less emphasis on those traits now when we study asexuality and we're learning about a minority group like what are we revealing about the norms that we have now like that the basic basically like the default setting of a heterosexual relationship can we learn things about those from other kinds of relationships yeah for sure I think that yeah they're really nice part about like compared yeah like looking at asexual experiences is that we really see what relationships look like if sexual attraction is not part of it

39:59and often romance and sexual attraction are so conflated that a lot of people cannot kind of grab the concept that they might not always go hand in hand then you can be romantically attracted to someone without having sexual attraction to them is there is there a point to make here is there anything you want people to know around the diversity of relationships because for some people they look at their friends they look at their family and the relationships all follow like a common heteronormative structure but these other forms of relationships are out there is there anything you want to say to sort of the visibility of them or anything like that yeah maybe what we see in our research it's so interesting that asexuality really opens up like this perspective on what relationships can look like and that they don't have to follow this like traditional script right you can kind of see what works for you and you think a lot of asexual individuals also have to figure out what they're comfortable with what they don't want if they're in a relationship with a non asexual person but yeah we also see a lot of diversity within

41:02asexual spectrum so asexuality is this umbrella term that kind of sepsumes a lot of identity so some people do experience sometimes sexual attraction and if they form a like a strong emotional bond to someone some never do so there's a lot of variation and that also likely influences what kind of relationship you're looking for and what you want in a partner well Paula thanks for the chat thanks for sharing your research with me in in having this discussion I appreciate you coming on the show yeah thanks for having me Paula Banga is a personality researcher at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands do you like what you've been hearing but you've missed some of the show well guess what the last show has a podcast and on it you can hear entire evenings of this show in podcast form to subscribe search David Cooper last show on your favorite podcast app like apple or Spotify will pop up you can find us like that or head to our website for more info that's at www.lastshow.pizza that's dot pizza not dot com if you subscribe to our podcast you can catch entire evenings of

42:05the show like I just said or listen to some of the great individual interviews that you heard where you learned something maybe you learned something that'll prove you right in an argument you had with your mother-in-law in that case send the podcast to your mother-in-law or not because it might be weird the last show podcast please subscribe coming up can your income and socio-economic status shape the way your brain looks a massive genetic study says yes and what that means for aging your brain and what postal code you grew up in might surprise you want to be part of the last show with David Cooper call us and join the conversation one triple eight five oh five sixty six forty four life is full of choices but the choice between getting crispy chicken nuggets or a crunch wrap slider isn't one you'll have to make the new crispy chicken crunch wrap slider a taco bell all white meat chicken nuggets breaded into a t-a chips wrapped up sauce and all inside a slider-sized crunch wrap choose from creamy chipotle

43:07or jalapeno honey mustard well there we go life still full of choices the new crispy chicken crunch wrap slider a brand new classic only a taco bell and participating those taco bell locations for limited time and while supplies last smart sharp and slightly unhinged late nights fresh perspective the last show with David Cooper inequality may not just live in your bank but also leave a finger print in your brain what do i mean well there's a study that suggests your social and economic status determines how your brain ages and how it starts to break down let's discuss all this with someone who's done research in this area he's a research fellow in genetic epidemiology at the Bristol Medical School in the UK and his name is Dr. David Hill David welcome to the show thank you David tell me a bit about yourself your research is so interesting before we jump in now yes my work is looking at socioeconomic status and how it may have causal effects on certain health outcomes such as the aging of the brain and in this piece

44:14of work what we've done is we've used genetic data to try and understand modifiable potentially modifiable environmental exposures so what we had to do was to try and get a very good measure of socioeconomic status so we took differences in income differences in educational attainment differences in individual's occupation and differences in the social deprivation in the area in which they lived and we performed something that's called a genome wide association study so what this does is look for individual differences in genetic variation the co-vary with these differences in these four socioeconomic status measures and the reason we wanted to get a genetic measure of socioeconomic status is so that we could perform a technique called Mendelian randomization sounds a bit like a sci-fi concept you want to define that a little bit for me of course of course so Mendelian randomization is the idea of making a causal is to be able to make a causal statement

45:15between two things in this case is socioeconomic status and aging of the brain so in science if you want to establish a causal relationship you do something called a randomized control trial you get two groups of participants equal in every way and you give one of them the treatment of a fact be it a certain kind of surgery and exercise program a drug and then because the groups are matched in every way except for this treatment that you want to assess the impact of the only difference is that treatment and so you can say because there's no differences it must be the treatment that has this effect now with socioeconomic status or education it's not possible to randomly allocate education to someone nor is it possible to randomly allocate income to people or their occupation but with Mendelian randomization what you do is you take advantage of genetic variation within population you don't select your genotype so if you have a genetic variant

46:15linked to let's say differences in income you can then treat these genetic variants at a randomly allocated in the participants in your group so in this way you've got a randomized control trial as a product of natural genetic inheritance. Got it okay big picture are we saying that the paycheck of our parents the the where we grow up can shape how our brain develops is at the basic premise here what we seem to have found is that these differences in socioeconomic status have a causal effect on something called white matter hyper intensities now what these are is very very small lesions sort of lesions in the brain we don't really have them when we're children and young adults but as we age we typically accumulate more and more across our lifespan and these are predictive of cognitive decline and dementia in older age so individuals by the age of 40 if you have more of these white matter hyper intensities you're more likely to develop

47:16dementia in older age is the idea that the stress of having like not as much money or growing up with less socioeconomic status causes these are or I'm kind of missing the link here like how do these white matter hyper intensities develop in that environment well at the moment what we wanted to do is to establish if there is any causal link between these traits we had a number of different brain age in phenotypes and by phenotypes I just simply mean measures of the brain so we had the the white matter hyper intensities as I mentioned total brain volume different volumetric measures for different sections of the brain but nothing seemed to be a product or appears to be a product of differences in socioeconomic status and a cause of relationship there was a correlation but not evidence of causality so we don't know exactly which individual aspect of the environment is the causal element here only that we took our differences in education income occupation and social deprivation and we found then an effect of all four of these but beyond this what we did

48:22is we looked to see if a single underlying dimension genetic dimension could explain the variation across these four socioeconomic status traits now what I mean by this is that if you perform a genetic study on something like education attainment you're not capturing the DNA consequences of getting a degree or not getting a degree but rather you're capturing other traits that lead to differences in how you get the degree so your measure of education might be capturing your level of intelligence your come to ability aspects of your personality other aspects of yourself how do you work how prenumerative disease but we found there's this underlying genetic dimension across all all four of these measures of socioeconomic status and this underlying genetic dimension is what seemed to have the causal effect on brain health as measured by white matter hyper intensities in all the range and you asked the question exactly how that link works yeah could it be like stress

49:24access to health care access to healthier food like there's many such reasons but I'm curious if you have any I don't know speculation as to which one it is or or maybe it's the combination of them all well by finding this underlying genetic dimension what it indicates is that it wouldn't matter so much which of these aspects of socioeconomic status we sought to improve because we'd still be seeing the good effect on your brain health as engaged by white matter hyper intensities that is to say if you increase the amount of education in the population you very well might be also having a protective effect against white matter hyper intensities the same argument as if you increased or decreased excuse me social deprivation in the area so we we seem to have found this broad idea of socioeconomic status having a causal effect we did do in our study to see whether or not we're just capturing differences in cognitive ability because the very long history of cognitive ability being predictive of health especially in old rage the research groups I've

50:30worked with in the past include the Lodium Birthga Houghton Scotland whereby they I chew test of every single 11 year old in 1932 and 1947 in Scotland and they found from the age 11 cognitive ability I chew test you can predict health in older age be it aspects of dementia how long people live a prevalence of cardiovascular disease so in our study we had also used socioeconomic status without the effects of cognitive ability and we still found that this socioeconomic status measure it seems to be having a protective effect against signs of dementia wet matter hyper intensities in older age so at the moment we can't quite pinpoint exactly what's in this sphere of effect but we have we have good evidence that it is causal in some way and our next stage of a mixed age of research is kind of picking this apart to determine where within this the effect is so we're kind of starting to think broad with finding something with a causal effect

51:32and then narrowing it down with this is there a major takeaway here like anything you would have society change so that as we age we'd have better brain health a more equitable society I mean that seems like an easy fix that we could do overnight yeah I mean there's a few things I'm keen to impress upon people from this world the first of which is that yes I use genetic data to understand socioeconomic status and you can use genetic data to predict socioeconomic status but genetic in terms and simply isn't a factor here if you have a genetic variant that is indicative of a low level of education in the future this doesn't mean it's destined you simply change the environment different schools different areas different everything nothing you set in stone with this it's just described how things are currently in the samples that we looked at well David thanks so much for joining me I appreciate you sharing your your research it is an interesting fascinating link and I appreciate you coming on the show thank you so much for having me Dr. David Hill is a

52:32research fellow in genetic epidemiology at the Bristol Medical School do you like what you've been hearing and want to see video clips of it well the last show is on social media watch these interviews that you've been hearing on tiktok instagram youtube and more our handle is lashow.pizza if you heard a WTF moment and want to see it follow the last show on social media to do just that coming up next the massive study on tens of thousands of performers reveals why early prodigies rarely become elite adults why great kids don't always grow up to be great next want to be part of the last show with David Cooper call us and join the conversation one triple eight five oh five sixty six forty four spring is here and the shopping list is long time to make a lows run by three bags get three free if stay green one cubic foot garden soil plus right now members can earn four times the points

53:32on an eligible purchase start spring off strong with these deals and more our best lineup is here at Loves valentine three twenty five while supplies last soil offer excludes the last and why loyalty program subject to terms and conditions silos dot com slash terms for details subject to change point booster subject to exclusions and more terms apply one time only offer exploring both interstellar and interpersonal space time continuums the last show with David Cooper we love the story of a child prodigy a tiny genius with great ability and a big destiny but what if that early grinding and being great doesn't build greatness in adulthood and young people who are great at their craft don't often become the elite performers as much as you think that seems to be the case based on research from sports science professor from Kaiser slaughtern University of technology in Germany aren't a ghoulish aren't a welcome to the program how the David thank you for having me so every parent that has like a top athlete or

54:34top piano player or great child that is a prodigy do they seem to think that their kid is destined to become top tier elite performers yeah many believe so and the reason is that research traditional research did suggest so right so fifty or yeah the decades of of expertise and giftedness and talent research and they suggested that the two critical factors are early performance in abilities and intensive specialized training in your discipline right but they were mistaken as we know today so the point was that traditional research typically focused on youth on young people like secondary students or college students or conservatory students and so on right and so what we believe we were able to contribute was we really examined the best performers of the world in adulthood so at peak performance age and we find that the factors are

55:37totally different so what are some of the actual factors that can lead to someone being a top performer in their field if not being great as a young kid I'm sure there are people who are great when they were young I think Mozart is the classic example there are many such in athletics as well but what are some of the factors that create some of these great people that we see out there yeah and Darwin is a counter-example right or a bit orphan who were not prodigies although they tried to or their parents wanted them to so two points I would like to make the first is most early exceptional performers like youth age do not become adult exceptional performers and most adult exceptional performers were not early exceptional performers they had two discrete populations they're just not the same individuals right the good news about this is for youth for their parents and family and so on that's even if you're not an exceptional performer be it in a

56:42school subject or in playing the violin or in basketball and so on you may still have the potential for becoming an exceptional adult performance a performer in the long term right and the second point we find is that the the the factors that that distinguish the the adult world-class performers from those performing just below is that they had that the world-class performance in their early years had a rather gradual performance development they were not among the best most of them were not among the best of their age and they engaged in various disciplines across various years so an average to give you an example of world-class athletes so Olympic medalists for example they typically did three different sports so it was not as many as possible either right it was their main sport plus two other sports and they did those other sports for nine years and of those nine years they competed in those other sports for seven

57:45years so it was serious engagement it was not just sampling and trying out a bit and so on right so it was serious performance related experience yeah so that's that seems to be the two critical factors that distinguish the world-class performers from those just below and we found the same pattern in world-class athletes in noble laureates in the sciences world-class chess players the most renowned classical music composers of the world so it seems to be quite universal well it's good news for people who want to be great at their craft but feel like they started too late because they started playing piano at age 22 instead of at age four but it's maybe also bad news for parents who have super high hopes for their kids and their kids show a lot of promise at a young age your research does it kind of like challenge ideas of where these great people we see out there come from yeah sure it differs from previous research so this evidence is really is very recent

58:54and especially the news that it's so similar across so different disciplines so poll vote plain basketball and classical music for example they have very little in common but it seems like when it's about people approximating the margin of human capability the end is pattern of rather gradual early performance development but engaging in several disciplines seems to be beneficial and of course staying on like practicing your craft many many many hours really staying engaged does burnout play a role I can imagine a kid at age 12 whose parents are pushing them into gymnastics every day seven days a week training hours every day after school and the kid like gets burnt out in their teens and kind of gives up or or loses interest does that play a role absolutely that yeah that happens and it happens quite often and it happens it is more likely to happen if you specialize in just one discipline and intensified discipline specific

59:58training right so burnout injuries or you're more likely to incur overuse injuries and it may also happen that you just cease to enjoy your discipline and you don't have another one to change to right so these are the risks that are reduced or are buffered if you do various disciplines in addition you become a smarter learner if you have all those learning experiences but it's authentic experiences right performance related multi-year in various disciplines that makes you a smarter learner for later years at a very high level in one specialized discipline in my own experience I only came to like long form interviewing in my late 20s early 30s and before I did that I did stand up comedy I don't do stand up comedy anymore but the skills that I learned about performing being on stage had a constructed narrative these kinds of things they serve me well and you see now your world class of course well I'm I exist in the world and I went to class in

1:01:00school so that is no for a parent listening who has like a nine-year-old hockey prodigy or you know what's what's advice you would give to them if they do want their child to be successful and do want to be in that small percentage of child prodigies that actually grow up to be great right so first if they do achieve high performance at a young age we won't limit them so I mean I don't know if you have children I have a cat though but he's not going to be a great cat performer when they had fantastic marks in school I wouldn't tell them try to be worse in school right so high performance at a young age is not a problem per se but the way we get there is a problem so you you mentioned early specialization early intensification and so on so as a parent yeah it is beneficial if we encourage the the the young people and provide them opportunities to do at least one other discipline if they like to we won't force them to do so either they

1:02:01should be ideally intrinsically motivated but most children want to do different things if they don't it's mostly by by by adult influence right so most children want to do several disciplines several sports several instruments and music and so on so we encourage them to do so and to continue to do so and I think an important point is there is no use just telling an eight-year-old Kevin or Marvin why don't you try ice hockey because he he doesn't know where ice hockey takes place what the schedule is how I get there which bus line I have to take and so on right so I take Kevin by the hand and say look this is David David does ice hockey why don't you get to know David and try out ice hockey is there an importance of finding the right fit like what sport what craft what medium what activity like is is there importance to that to be in great in order to stay motivated and connected to it absolutely so that's that's one of the great advantages if you do

1:03:05two or three disciplines and you have authentic experiences in those disciplines that multiplies your chance of finding a discipline that optimally suits you well Anna Goulish is a sports science professor at Kaiser Slaughter University of Technology in Germany on I've enjoyed the chat thanks for being on the show thank you too in a few moments extreme heat it's thought that it makes us selfish or maybe just sweaty but a new study puts human behavior under pressure bakes participants and finds out if it makes them worse people want to be part of the last show with David Cooper call us and join the conversation one triple eight five oh five sixty six forty four the last show with David Cooper where we utilize non-linear reverse inverse backward thinking protocols it sounds like this there's this commonly held belief that the hotter the climate the hotter

1:04:08people's temper more heat where you live means more conflict and more chaos but a new experiment stuck people in sweltering rooms and asks does heat actually make us worse to each other that is the question we're going to answer it here with someone who worked on this research her name is Alessandra Kassar she's an economics professor at the university of San Francisco Alessandra welcome to the show hi David it's great to be here so let's start with this big assumption that if you haven't heard it we'll define it for people that where it's brutally hot out people get cranky people get mean what made you want to test out this assumption that I think some people had well this is a long held belief even Aristotle I think thought that he thought about people that live in hot climate when it's very hot people get very angry and get annoyed at everything and they are going to start being anti-social and he was looking looking cooler climate no northern places people

1:05:08seems to be way more cool in all senses and that might be maybe even conducive to growth and development instead of wasting energy in being combative and nasty to each other throughout literature throughout philosophy it really at least 2000 years that we have this kind of hypothesis and even in Tukila Mockingbird or in many in many other things there is this idea as we are hot and bothered we become nasty with each other so it's quite a few decades that start in with psychology but also eventually with economists we actually do see a link at the macroeconomic level there is a very strong link for example especially for sub-Saran Africa that the hotter the climate the more conflict there is and this is really a rock solid but just because we have a link doesn't mean it's the heat necessarily it could be a coincidence or something else

1:06:11that is precisely it because the fact that heat makes people seem more violent it could be due to many different channels in premise it could be what if heat and we all have to worry about it giving global warming what if heat basically reduce economic opportunity take a country that whose economy is vastly agricultural with raising temperature you're going to have lower yield you're going to have zones that before were somewhat fertile that becomes the desertified as resource is a sharing especially in agricultural zone that need a particular temperature then when you might start having intergroup conflict so the link is not one hypothesis one mechanism is not necessarily heat make people nastier and violent it could be an economic one but there is this hypothesis that remain that heat just make us nastier and there are some data for example that

1:07:16lots of robbery and rape and murder it seems to be higher in the summer so again this might reinforce the idea there is something special about heat but also that one could be due to the fact that during the summer we have a longer day so it's not just a perpetrator there are also victims that stay out for five more hours a day so there are simply more chances to encounter someone in the street that was already around looking for some prey so it's very cool there are so many things going on so we decided to try an experiment and I love that you took this assumption that's been held since basically Aristotle and thought let's go back to first principles let's try it out how do you design an experiment that do you just basically make a room one hot one on and see how people behave absolutely without telling them anything of course I'm sure our subject understood that something was going on but after we ask them nobody thought that what we were

1:08:21interested in was precisely the effect of heat on prosocial behavior they gave the most outlandish explanation some people thought oh it just break the the heating system just broke but the very it's the very simple principle how do you test it with an experiment you take a bunch of people you design games and with these took some really really classic games that measure prosocial behavior and some group randomly totally randomly some group get to be put in a really hot room you have to cook your subject as hot as our IRB the human subgenetical clearance as hot as we could 34 degrees and and others are in in cool room and then you compare it and how did people behave in terms of prosocial behavior in the hot versus the cold I imagine the hot ones got more tired more exhausted but were they grumpy and mean more so than the ones in the colder room

1:09:23we measure that indeed they got grumpy and less happy and more annoyed but in terms of prosocial behavior in terms of deciding this is a how I make an example this is a cake how do we share it among us this is called the dictator game where you give people some pot of money and you say decide how you want the split you can keep it all for yourself you can give some to a random other person there was whatsoever no difference in egalitarianism how much people preferred to share to keep it all for themselves or to share it with others there was no difference whatsoever in how much people prefer to maximize the pie at the expense of egalitarianism there is often a trade off even in our political system some people prefer to maximize the pie and some people prefer to equalize the pie the the the amount of cake that everyone is going to hit you cannot have it both ways

1:10:24economics know that you cannot have it both ways you cannot have it the maximum and also the maximum egalitarianism it's kind of a trade off in our experiment there was whatsoever no difference did you test with people from different parts of the world like for example someone who lives in a cold climate you put them in the hot room someone who lives in a hot climate put them in the cold room did you find many differences let's say I'm from somewhere in the world where it's extremely hot all the time matter I behave differently so we went in five different countries it was the USA the the US at UC Davis it was Mexico it was Colombia India and Kenya and naturally for example India New Delhi were incredibly hot and people were exactly the same there was no difference in behavior but we did find enormous difference across countries we really did find for example in terms of egalitarianism if anything in India we had the most egalitarianism

1:11:29and the lowest in the United States in terms of maximizing behavior trying to maximize the pie independently on the split the US were really at the top of the scale interestingly we didn't find much selfishness or spitefulness in any of our of our countries if anything a little bit of spitefulness was in Kenya and in India but not that much and another interesting aspect was competitive behavior and we have this result that when you measure competitiveness in a way that I believe is really tilted to register competitiveness especially the way mailed with in a very anti egalitarian way and we can talk about that extensively maybe another time maybe another time I find that in that particular if you measure it that way well you're going to have that man are more competitive than women everywhere for me there's too high level takeaways here one is if we have long held

1:12:32beliefs just because there's some data out there don't just say we understand the mechanism because people for 2000 years have claimed the mechanism works this way and the other quite simply heat in and of itself doesn't appear to make people anti social and if you think about it even in theory as humans we evolved in a way that it makes it very resilient to variability we conquered every possible niches in the world we went as you must say this to various wave of of different temperature so how realistic it is even from a theoretical perspective that we are this automatom that as the temperature go up we become this brutal violence people if anything we are going to cooperate more if anything we are going to realize that we have a common enemy climate change and we have to bind together to be more pro-social to face together distract well Alessandra because Sara thank you so much for joining me I appreciate you being on the show

1:13:34it was great bye David up next you've got to crush on someone there you're soulmate but what if they're just a dopamine dealer in disguise when neuroscientists look at romantic obsession it looks a lot like addiction I'm David Cooper this is the last show when the day is done we're just getting started the last show with David Cooper when you get that electric can't eat can't sleep obsession with someone is it actually love or is it sort of a dopamine loop hijacking your brain the rush of romantic fireworks might be less about fate and more about your brain and its neurochemistry so when that happens to you how can you break the loop I'm here to discuss all of this with Tom Bellamy a neuroscientist and writer check out his new book smitten romantic obsession the neuroscience of limerence and how to make love last that's available wherever books are sold Tom welcome in I'm excited to chat with you great to

1:14:35be with you David we got to start with a definition what exactly is limerence is it just having a crush on someone so limerence is best described I think as an altered state of mind so it's a state a psychological state that people can fall into in the early stages of romantic love so it's an intense desire to form a pair bond with another person it's a state of a very kind of profound infatuation if you like so the word itself limerence was invented so a psychologist in the 1970s Dorothy Tenoff came up with this word to describe this particular altered mental state and she did that very deliberately because of course words like you know romance or addiction or obsession they've got a lot of sort of psychological baggage around and people understand those terms differently so she very deliberately coined this phrase limerence to try and identify a

1:15:40particular emotional state I've been there I've had that feeling like the world will end if I can talk to someone be with someone be in bed with someone is it fairly common do most people experience this it is so about half the population experience limerence in the early phases of love so I carried out a survey where I asked people you know who hadn't been primed you know have you ever experienced this state and I gave a kind of brief description of what limerence feels like and about half of the people who took that survey said yes they had which of course means that half have not ever experienced that state in the early phase of love so one of the common things you know talking about limerence and sharing limerence experience with with other people half the world think well that's just love you don't need a special word for that that's just what love feels like the other half of the world thinks well no that sounds crazy that sounds like a you know an irrational crush it sounds very unstable a little bit unhealthy and that

1:16:43mismatch in expectations about what love is and what people in love behave like I think is an explanation for quite a lot of a heartache in the world because people have such different expectations of how you know their their potential lover will behave that you know those misunderstandings unfortunately lead to sort of romantic fully yeah you know honestly I felt unwell when I've had limerence like I've also struggled with some mental health issues in my past and limerence can feel a lot like mania and I've wondered is it some sort of disorder or perhaps and I think you make this argument it's kind of just a biological trait it's something that just happens to some people yes so I don't think that limerence is a mental disorder it can like many other psychological states it can get out of control and so you can get into limerence and it can be because of you know circumstances either kind of you know your own personal circumstances or just the way that you and this person that you're evacuated with behave with one another it

1:17:48can escalate so you can move from that sort of massive sense of elation and euphoria and excitement about being with the other person and all that kind of romantic promise and the rush the like massive natural high that's kind of like nothing else in life really that can progress and it can get into a state that is very like an addiction so you can essentially become addicted to the other person that the natural high that you get from them is so powerful that it can progress into a habit and a compulsion and you start you know suffering from intrusive thoughts and the kind of involuntary craving to be with them so it stops feeling like the wonderful early honey moon of love and starts to feel quite you know psychologically distressing and hard to manage when you say addiction is that sort of metaphorical or does similar stuff happen in your brain to like if you're addicted to gambling and you're at the slot machine or you're addicted to I don't know cocaine and using the

1:18:50drug is it similar to other forms of addiction in terms of what is happening in your brain yes it is so so what you describe there so things like gambling addiction so that's that's termed a behavioral addiction and I think limerence is exactly like that so it's a natural reward that you become so you know kind of that you desire so strongly that it becomes irresistible and in fact the neuroscience behind this is is quite well understood in terms of the changes within the brain that that mean that your sort of dopamine system is driving you into a state of wanting something so powerfully that it becomes difficult to resist and your executive brain that you know should be sending feedback to to moderate that desire that gets weakened so it's a known phenomenon that there are some natural rewards so gambling is the best studied but you know people often talk about addiction to the internet or to shopping or to pornography or you know various other behaviors

1:19:53that can become addictive now this is different to say cocaine or alcohol addiction or some other drug of abuse because there of course you are introducing a chemical into your body that will directly affect the brain and directly change the operation of the brain so there is a bit of a distinction there but I would definitely class limerence amongst those kind of behavioral addictions so the changes in the brain are real you drive yourself into a state where you want someone to such an extent that it becomes irresistible for some people this state especially if you have required to love if you're if the person that's the object of your affection you're dating them they want to be in a relationship with you I'm sure it's all very healthy and fun and exciting but for others it can be a problem especially if the person you're crushing over isn't returning those feelings or it just gets so intense you don't show up to work you know your whole life falls by the wayside like with other addictions in that kind of more unhealthy case how can we break this cycle sure so you're

1:20:53absolutely right if if you're able to have an open relationship with the person that you've become limerent for then it can be wonderful you can just form a kind of a union an ecstatic union together and and enjoy the fireworks but if you're not able to do that and unrequited love is is a good example of that but even worse is if you become limerent for somebody and there are kind of constraints so there's barriers like professional barriers or social barriers like the person that you're in fact what it is married or you know you can think of examples where you're not able to openly declare your feelings so in that circumstance there is kind of uncertainty built into the relationship and that can be a very powerful force for reinforcing limerence and driving it into that state of addiction so to get out of it what you have to do is essentially reverse that training so you've accidentally trained yourself into this altered mental state

1:21:57so you need to do the things that will reverse that training to help you kind of reestablish your psychological stability I'm on the edge of my seat what are some of those things okay so the three big steps the first is limit contact so you want to try and kind of withdraw the supply so so separate yourself as far as you are able from the other person so that you just not reinforce in the contact the second one is you want to train your executive brain so that's got weakened so you want to do exercises that help reinforce your willpower the third is you want to spoil the reward so you need to break the association between them and a source of reward and one good way to do that is to cut it to remember and focus on the times when you've had bad experiences with them and almost train yourself to break that sense of they offer all this promise and this bliss no instead they also offer pain focus on that for a while so sort of daydream in a negative way something you call day marrying I love it that's right yeah so this is a term I use for that so

1:23:01so where you have a happy daydream about this other person spoil it deliberately change the ending so that they say reject you and and that helps break the addiction check out neuroscientist and writer Tom Bellamy's book smitten romantic obsession the neuroscience of limerence and how to make love last available wherever books are sold Tom I love this chat thanks for being on the show great to be with you that's a wrap on the show thanks for tuning in don't forget to subscribe to the last show podcast search David Cooper last show on your favorite podcast app will pop up or follow us on social media for video clips of the show our handle is last show dot pizza on most platforms I'm David Cooper this was the last show ever seen a musical so good you didn't want it to end like you could live inside it forever then you're going to love shmigadon get your one-way ticket to Broadway musical paradise have you ever felt trapped at a musical like you literally couldn't escape then you'll hate to miss shmigadon because you'll never want

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