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- Hey, welcome to Internet Roundup.
Josh is shaking off the schweepies
and I'm wide awake,
because I have three espressos.
- Yeah, you're into coffee now, huh?
- Yeah.
- That's great. It's about time, man.
I've been worried about you for years.
- I know, I started drinking coffee
because we did a show on caffeine,
and they said it's, you know,
if you drink a couple of cups
of coffee it's good for you.
- I've been telling you that for years.
- I know.
- You didn't listen to me.
- I know, I'm drinking it now.
I was also like, "I don't
wanna get addicted."
So every morning now I'm like,
"I'm not addicted to coffee,
"but I sure would like a cup." (laughs)
- Yeah, I just need it.
It's easy to get addicted to coffee,
and it's a drag to come off of it too.
- Yeah, I bet.
- Every once in a while you
do have to kind of be like,
"I need to take a day or two off,"
and then during that
day or two you're like,
"Ugh, my head, and I hate everybody."
- I'm trying to not have it
every single day to thwart that.
- I still drink it every day.
- Eh, that's fine.
- But espresso's the bomb, isn't it?
Do you have an espresso maker?
- Nah, I just have the thing here.
- [Josh] Oh yeah?
- I mean, I do have that at home,
but I go this morning from the
mega machine in the office.
- I can tell a difference.
You seem shinier.
- Oh, well thank you.
This is called coffee talk.
(laughing)
Wait, that's been used.
- That was great.
- This is Internet Roundup.
Did we even say that yet?
- No, we started talking about
coffee right off the bat.
- Off the rails.
We round up the internet two at a time
in the studio where we do our stuff.
You should know podcast.
Both of these stories today
relate to episodes we've done
and that sometimes we
follow up here in the,
I guess the visual studio?
What do you call this?
- The studio, it's still the studio.
We're just filming in the studio.
- All right.
- We follow up on Internet Roundup.
- That's right. That was clumsy.
- That's all right.
- Recently we did a show
on LSD, the drug, acid.
- This probably won't
come out before, so yes.
We recently did a drug--
we did a show on acid.
- This year for the first time
ever in the world's history,
in antiquity,
the brain of someone on LSD,
this article says, was laid bare.
- Which is a great way to put it.
- In examination.
- These guys at the
Imperial College of London.
- Yeah, 'cause they're
allowed to do this over there.
- Actually, the former drug
advisor to the government,
like the head honcho,
I guess the US's drug czar
would be the equivalent.
- Yeah, Wavy Gravy is who argues, right?
- (laughs) Right, Wavy Gravy
got funding for a study
and approval for a study over there
through the Imperial College of London,
and you said in the episode
that they put a call out
and had asked people who
had already tripped before,
so that they knew they
could handle their business,
because they were going to be
put in a very claustrophobic
MRI machine on acid.
- Yeah, you can't just give
someone who's never had acid
acid and throw them in an MRI.
- Just be like, "Good luck pal,
"we'll be back in eight hours."
- (laughs) Yeah.
- They injected them
with 75 micrograms of,
I would guess, pharmaceutical-quality LSD,
and put 'em in an MRI.
75 milligrams, that's about
three times the minimum dose.
- Micrograms.
- Micrograms, yeah, gees.
(chuckles) They would have one
wild ride on 75 milligrams.
- Yeah.
- They started looking at the brain,
and the brain just lit up of the people
while they were on LSD.
- Yeah, can we show that picture.
- The control is the
same people on a placebo,
because they went twice.
Once they were given the placebo,
and once they were given the LSD.
I'm pretty sure they
could tell the difference.
- Take a guess which
one is the brain on LSD.
- They found out some amazing stuff.
A lot of things that were
basically just anecdotal about LSD
were confirmed by these images.
- Yeah, and it really
all kind of makes sense
when you look at what's going on.
They experience information
from many parts of the brain,
not just the visual cortex.
One thing that they found out,
and what you hear often
times from someone on LSD
is that the ego has dissolved,
and you become one with the
person that you're with,
or with nature, and you
feel a stronger connection
with things other than yourself.
It was kind of proved out with this MRI.
This ego dissolution is what they call it.
- Yeah, there's a region of the brain,
or a network of the brain
called the default mode network
and it's responsible for day dreaming,
autobiographical stuff,
thinking about the past,
the thoughts of the self.
It's where the self comes from,
they're starting to understand,
and LSD goes in and
basically deactivates that,
but at the same time,
other regions of the brain
that don't normally talk to it,
want to start communicating like crazy,
so you literally think differently on LSD,
these images show.
- It literally opens up neural
pathways that aren't there.
- Noramlly.
- [Chuck] Yeah.
- [Josh] Yeah.
- One of the researchers said
that one of the scans suggested
that they were, quote,
seeing with their eyes shut, quote.
These images, literally, were
coming from their imagination.
- Yeah.
- Not the visual cortex.
- Yeah, and they talked to
one of the participants of the study
and he said, quote, oh wow.
- (laughs) Why are they
doing all this, Josh?
Just to say drugs are awesome and fun?
No! I'm being coy.
- Okay.
- Because 50, 60 years
ago when they outlawed LSD
and LSD research,
they were just starting to
get to where they thought
maybe this could be used as therapy,
and a therapeutic measure
for mental illness, PTSD,
end-of-life care, and now
they're getting back on that
and say this could be a valid thing.
- [Josh] Yeah, and it's
also showing us a lot
about human consciousness as well.
- [Chuck] Absolutely.
- Pretty amazing stuff.
- I think it's neat.
- That's LSD, and go
listen to our LSD episode
on Stuff You Should Know.
It's the longest one we've ever recorded.
- I know, it's real bust.
Then this is also a follow-up of sorts.
We did an episode on lead.
That was your pick, and when
I first saw it I thought,
"Lead, how boring."
- (blows raspberry) Lead.
- It turned out to be really interesting.
- Yeah.
- Especially lead poisoning
and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan,
which is what we talked about quite a bit.
- I think a lot of people have heard,
most people have heard that
something really horrible
went wrong in Flint, Michigan,
with the drinking water,
and a lot of people,
basically the residents of
Flint, Michigan, as a whole
were exposed to lead
poisoning for 18 months.
As the overly corrosive water
that was flowing through the taps
leeched lead out of the old lead pipes
and brought it right into
the people's drinking glasses
for a year and a half.
- An their bath tubs and their showers.
- During that year and a half,
the local government and the
state government, in fact,
basically obfuscated the truth
that there was real
problems with this water.
Told everybody they were
following standard protocol,
procedures, everything was fine,
the water was perfectly safe,
and it turned out they were lying,
and some of them now are being indicted.
- I'm gonna call these three people
Patsy One, Two, and Three.
- Yeah, but they make the
point that the investigation
is expected to broaden,
so I'm hoping it doesn't just fall
on these three people's shoulders.
- I'm pretty cynical about this,
so I'm hoping so too, but
this just reeks of patsy.
- It does.
- A patsy is when someone
lower down on the food chain
takes the blame for stuff
that people higher on the food chain,
do we need to explain that?
- I don't think so,
but I think you explained it really well.
- Great, so these charges
were filed against
two Department of Environmental
Air Quality officials,
and a local water
treatment plant supervisor.
That's what's disheartening.
I'm sure that they had a part in this,
but these decisions come
from much higher up.
- Yeah.
- They aren't the deciders on
how this is done, you know?
- Yeah.
- Someone at the water
treatment plant is not the one--
- Yeah, a supervisor at the local plant.
- [Chuck] Yeah.
- [Josh] No.
- Interestingly, Governor Rick Snyder,
this came about from the Attorney General,
they started the investigation
while simultaneously defending
the governor's office
over lawsuits.
It's kind of weird.
- Well, I mean it's the state attorney.
- I guess so, but I don't
know. It seems like a conflict.
- It's probably the state attorney's job.
That's why they appointed
a special investigator,
a special prosecutor
because they were like,
"We're just too involved in this."
- I didn't know that. That makes sense.
- On the other side.
- That's good at least.
- Yeah, I guess.
- We'll see.
It's all pretty disheartening
though that this could happen.
- It really is.
It's true, a lot of people
need to fall for this.
- Other people had retired
or were shuffled around
to different agencies
sort of as a cover,
but we'll see if this
thing's broadened out
and it goes up the chain at all.
- I read a really interesting article
by one of the scientists who said,
"No, this water is all kinds
of screwed up, unequivocally,"
and really blew the
lid off the Flint thing
with the help of some of
the residents of Flint
who educated themselves,
but this guy wrote an
article basically saying
that public science is broken.
The local University of
Michigan, Michigan State,
all of their scientists
failed the people of Flint
because basically, they
were worried about funding.
It's not just these local three,
and it's not even just
the local government,
and it's not just government.
The guy made the great point
that public science is broken
because it depends on
funding from the very people
it sometimes supposed to investigate.
- Wow, well hopefully they can all learn
and be better for it, right?
Do things right?
- (laughs) Right, and hopefully
everyone just works the lead
out of their system through calisthenics.
- That's Internet Roundup for this week,
and we'll be back in the studio next week.
Good day.
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