March 14, 2023
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Kris Tyte & Sean Snodgrass
Wired for Life - Natures Secret Code
In this wandering-yet-profound episode, the hosts explore the interconnectedness of life-natural and artificial-through stories about pollen, memes, IT nerds, elephants, strip mall economies, and gut bacteria. What starts as a walk through muffler-laced streets quickly dives into deep symbiosis: how trees may chemically communicate, how gut flora shapes our identity and choices, and how memes might be distracting us from climate collapse. Along the way, we meet the "Gigachad of IT nerds", examine fecal transplants, explore breast milk vs. formula, and ask if free will is just another chemical illusion. It's science, sarcasm, and social philosophy, all tangled up in data-both digital and biological.
Quotable
“Cold, crisp air will, like transmit, sounds further and louder than warm, humid air.
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Cold air allows sound to travel further and be louder compared to warm, humid air. This is due to temperature inversions and the way sound waves interact with different air densities.
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Civilization as a living system.
Quotable
“Facts have become the vegetables of the intellectual world.
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Commentary on how modern culture prioritizes entertainment over rigorous thinking, framing information consumption as intellectual nutrition.
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Article detailing the nutritional content of fast food and its long-term health effects, supporting the metaphor of "facts as vegetables" in intellectual discourse.
Follow Up Notes
There is no credible neuroscientific evidence showing elephants view humans as pets in the way humans view dogs as pets. Elephants are highly intelligent and social animals, but their interactions with humans are complex and cannot be accurately described as pet-like relationships.
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Pollen as a metaphor for data transmission.
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Scientific paper providing updated estimates on the ratio of human to bacterial cells in the body, challenging the commonly cited 10:1 ratio and suggesting a closer to 1:1 ratio.
Follow Up Notes
C-section babies have altered microbiome seeding but can still breastfeed and receive beneficial bacteria from their mothers. The long-term health impacts of C-section delivery on the microbiome are still being studied, and many C-section babies develop healthy microbiomes through breastfeeding and environmental exposure.
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Peer-reviewed overview of bidirectional communication between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain, including immune, neural, and endocrine pathways.
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Scientific review on how antibiotics impact microbiome diversity and long-term health outcomes.
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Overview of the widely accepted theory explaining mitochondrial origins.
Quotable
“Even something as simple as alcohol and drugs goes into your body and changes your overall disposition toward the world.
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Discussion on psychoactive substances altering perception, mood, and behavior.
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Research linking diet quality to cognitive function and mental performance.
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