9-Volt Nirvana

Episode Summary

Episode Title: 9-Volt Nirvana - Journalist Sally Adie tries out transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), which sends a small electrical current to the brain, at a military training facility. - With TDCS, Adie goes from being bad at a virtual reality sniper simulation to getting 100% accuracy. - Neuroscientist Mike Weisand explains TDCS may work by boosting neural circuits related to a task when you stumble upon the right approach. - There are many DIY TDCS videos online of people using 9V batteries to stimulate their brains to enhance skills like language learning. - Experts say TDCS is promising but research is still early, with potential risks like burns or blindness from improper use. - Adie felt TDCS switched off her anxiety and self-doubt, leaving her feeling content and focused for days. - The technology raises questions about the ability to order up mental states and whether that removes gratitude and gifts.

Episode Show Notes

Learn a new language faster than ever! Leave doubt in the dust! Be a better sniper! Could you do all that and more with just a zap to the noggin? Maybe.

Back in the early 2010s, Sally Adee, then an editor at New Scientist Magazine, went to a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) conference and heard about a way to speed up learning with something called trans-cranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). A couple of years later, Sally found herself wielding an M4 assault rifle to pick off simulated enemy combatants with a battery wired to her temple. But that got then-producer Soren Wheeler thinking about this burgeoning world of electroceuticals, and if real, what limits will it reach.

For this episode, first aired back in 2014, we brought in Michael Weisend, then a neuroscientist at Wright State Research Institute, to tell us how it works (Bonus: you get to hear Jad get his brain zapped). And sat down with Peter Reiner and Nick Fitz, then at the University of British Columbia, to help us think through the consequences of a world where anyone with 20 dollars and access to a circuit board and a soldering iron, can make their own brain zapper. And then checked-in again to hear about the unexpected after-effects a day of super-charged sniper training can have on one mild-mannered science journalist.

Episode credits:

Reported by Sally Adee and Soren WheelerOriginal music by Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra

Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

 

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

 

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_15: Radiolab is supported by Apple Card. Apple Card has a cash-back rewards program unlike other credit cards. You earn unlimited daily cash on every purchase, receive it daily, and can grow it at 4.15% annual percentage yield when you open a savings account. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on iPhone. Apple Card subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility requirements. Savings accounts provided by Goldman Sachs Bank USA. Member FDIC terms apply. SPEAKER_03: Listener supported. WNYC Studios. Crack cocaine plagued the United States for more than a decade. This week on Notes from SPEAKER_10: America, author Donovan Ramsey explains how the myths of crack prolonged a disastrous era and shaped millions of lives. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. SPEAKER_15: Hello Lulu Miller here. This week on Radiolab, we are rewinding to a faraway time, a time when our North star, our editor in chief Soren Wheeler was but a young and green producer out in the field getting tape, making it happen. In this episode, Soren tells the strange science fiction story of how the nine volt battery can turn a mild mannered journalist friend, Sally Adie, into a somewhat lethal weapon. It's also a story about how the public used electricity from real nine volt batteries to order up states of mind. But before I let you achieve this nine volt nirvana, I wanted to let members of the lab know about some bonus content coming your way. Landing very soon on the members feed, you'll hear a few more secrets from whales. This is a companion conversation to our recent episode, the humpback and the killer. In this bonus conversation, producer Annie McEwen learns about how whales appear to have family reunions and it's really lovely. So if you're not a member of the lab, but our lab curious, go to radiolab.org slash join and sign up not to miss out. And now onward to our story, nine volt nirvana. SPEAKER_01: Right. If you want to sit there, okay, just stick the phones on and start saying hello to someone. And I don't know, can you hear anyone? Can I hear anyone? I don't know. Can SPEAKER_06: you hear anyone? Oh my God. Hi. Thank you. Yes, I do. This is Sally Adie. She's a old SPEAKER_06: friend of mine. How are you? We went to school together a long time ago. But these days, she's an editor at new scientist in London. And the reason I called her into the studio SPEAKER_06: is because of something that happened to her when she was working on a story for them. SPEAKER_14: Yes, this was a story that I'd been chasing for years and years. It began for her. In SPEAKER_14: 2007 at DARPA Tech. Which is a big gathering of like weapons developers and researchers. SPEAKER_14: It's like 5000 guys all, you know, looking like Agent Smith from the Matrix, you know, looking at the latest war toys. Drones, bazookas. Anyway, at some point, she starts talking SPEAKER_06: to this woman. And she was telling me about her program, which was that they had figured SPEAKER_14: out how to apply sort of electrical current to the brain in order to accelerate the learning process. And I was like, no ******* ****. So what Sally had stumbled into was something SPEAKER_06: called TDCS stands for transcranial direct current stimulation. The idea is you take a couple little electrodes, you place them on your scalp, connected with wires to a battery, you send a little bit of electricity into your brain, and then all kinds of things happen if you believe the claims. But for Sally, it started with a casual afternoon of sniper SPEAKER_14: training. So after that conversation at the conference, she tracked down a group in Carlsbad, SPEAKER_06: California. It's about an hour and a half south of LA. Who were using this brain zapping SPEAKER_06: stuff to train snipers. And I actually got new scientists to agree to send me to LA from SPEAKER_14: London, which is not an insignificant expense. After a late night international flight and SPEAKER_06: some LA traffic. I haven't slept. I'm sleep deprived. Sally found herself at a place called Advanced Brain Monitoring where they have a little room. This little room where they've set up a SPEAKER_14: little sort of 360 degree training simulation. So it's kind of like a video game, but it's like the full kind of like the full room in front of you. And so wall is a screen. Yes. Not only that, SPEAKER_06: she says, but all around you in this room are these props. You're behind real sandbags, SPEAKER_14: you know, in proper position, they teach you how to hold the rifle properly. And the rifle, SPEAKER_06: except for the fact that it shoots blanks, it's basically the real deal. Yeah. And then it's got SPEAKER_14: a laser laser sight. And they tell her, you know, okay, before we do this brain stimulation thing, SPEAKER_06: we're actually going to have you do some training without it. So they get her all set up. They put her behind the sandbags and they hit go. You know, at first it starts out with really easy SPEAKER_14: stuff like you're shooting virtual targets that aren't people. Then it's quite, it's realistic. You get the kickback from the CO2 cartridge and then you get this like ding sound from when you hit, you know, the virtual metal target. And then it starts getting harder. So there's people SPEAKER_06: instead of targets and then more and more people. Until the highest level is you are at a checkpoint, SPEAKER_14: like an Iraqi checkpoint and everything's fine. And then all of a sudden the Humvee in front of you blows up. And then from all over the place, dozens of people in suicide bomb vests start running at you with their rifles, shooting you. And I'm just being blown up. I can't, I can't make the decisions fast enough. She said there were just too many of them. She couldn't SPEAKER_06: figure out who to shoot first. It was so, Oh God. And I was so tired and I was so jet lagged and I SPEAKER_14: was so bad at it. And it's funny because you think like, Oh, whatever, that's a video game, but it's amazing how stressful that gets. And at a certain point, the stress started getting to her. SPEAKER_06: I was like, all right, stop. Let's just end this. She started thinking like, what the hell am I SPEAKER_06: doing here anyway? Like, Oh my God, this isn't going to be a story. And really you just flew out SPEAKER_14: to California for this. She was not very good at it and it kind of stressed her out. And then this SPEAKER_06: guy walked in the room. Yes. Mike Weisand. Mike Weisand. He's a neuroscientist. It looks like SPEAKER_14: Greg Allman. He's got that like super long hair. I am fairly clean cut at the moment, but I had SPEAKER_05: hair down to my belt buckle. So Mike Weisand has put together this contraption. What is that big SPEAKER_07: box that's sitting in your lap there? So this is a big red toolbox that we got literally from Sears. Mike was actually passing through New York City. So we invited him into the studio and we have electrodes, uh, that allow us to deliver current. You have a bunch of wires I saw and a whole bunch SPEAKER_05: of batteries. So we take a set of electrodes. One electrode is attached to my right temple and the SPEAKER_14: other electrode is attached by a different wire to my left arm. And we turn on the juice. SPEAKER_06: Did it hurt? It wasn't so much that I suddenly tasted metal in my mouth. It tasted like I had SPEAKER_14: licked the inside of an aluminum can. And then he's like, all right, try it again. I'm like, Oh, I'm not exactly expecting different results. So they start me out again, right at the really hard checkpoint one. The thing blows up and then, um, people start coming from all over the place. And I feel like they must've put it on an easy setting. Everything's just a little more straightforward. It's more obvious who I should pick off first. And I'm thinking to myself a little bit like, you know, when is this going to get really hard again? And then the, you know, intern or whoever comes in and turns on the lights, she's like, okay, you're done. I'm like, well, wait, that's not, that's not what I've only been here for like three minutes. She's like, no, no, no, that was 20 minutes. Like, no, that's not true. And I look up and the clocks have all shifted by 20 minutes and I swear to God, it was three minutes. Almost every person that we put SPEAKER_05: this on says they get into what they call a state of flow where they don't recognize that the time is going by. They're just boom, boom, boom, boom. And I was like, did you guys make it easier? SPEAKER_14: They're like, no, same, same level. I'm like, I think you guys made it easy. When Sally did it with brain stimulation, she performed at 100% accuracy. SPEAKER_14: A hundred percent. I didn't leave anyone alive. SPEAKER_07: Now what was she before? SPEAKER_05: I don't know, but she wasn't very good. Roughly three out of 20 the first time and 20 out of 20 the second. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. SPEAKER_07: So wait, so you're saying with just a little electricity, she went from being like totally inept to like a trained killer? SPEAKER_05: Well, it's an N of one. So we can't go too far, but I mean, this was just Sally's experience SPEAKER_06: during this one demo. So it's not like a controlled study, but Mike has now used this device in a bunch of studies for the military. For example, you had one study with people looking at those granny black and white radar images, trying to pick out, you know, what's an enemy vehicle and what isn't. And if he puts this device on their head while they're trying to learn how to do that, we can double the rate of learning. Really? SPEAKER_05: Well, how? I mean, what is it doing? SPEAKER_05: Okay. So what I think is that early on, when you are learning something, Mike says that when you're trying to learn how to do something, that's kind of tough. SPEAKER_06: What's happening is that you're trying a bunch of different things. You try all kinds of different ways to solve the problem. SPEAKER_05: And occasionally your brain is stumbling across an ideal sequence of neurons. Every so often, SPEAKER_06: as you're practicing, all of a sudden your brain is like, oh, this, then this, then this, and this. That's it. But then it struggles to find that again and it keeps messing up and whatever. And if you look at an expert brain, you'll actually see that preferred circuit dialed in. Like they just do that over and over and over again, no more stumbling around. And so what Mike does is he figures out where that circuit is and he gives it a little extra juice to an in essence, prime the pump. So that that expert circuit is more likely to fire. SPEAKER_06: And you're more likely to stumble into it. And when you do stumble into it, you're more likely to stick with it. That's right. That's how we think it works. SPEAKER_07: But are you, are you sure of what you're hitting? I mean, like you're putting electricity on the outside of people's heads. So are you able to target just a small cluster of brain cells or is it a region that you're hitting or like a thousand cells? What I'm talking about is millions of cells. That's a lot. SPEAKER_17: Is that precise enough to target the place where a task is being done in a brain? If it's a million? SPEAKER_05: In our work, yes. And Mike claims that even though it's a blunt tool, yeah, this is not a scalpel. This is a sledgehammer. If you know the right group of SPEAKER_06: neurons or region of the brain to target, this can work with almost any task. If you want to target a visual spatial learning, for example, searching an image, SPEAKER_05: you'd put this on the right side of your head, roughly near the temple. But if you wanted to learn textual material, you can put this on the left side of your head and it will have a similar effect. If you want to learn textual material. It can't be true. SPEAKER_17: You mean if I want to learn irregular verbs in French, I get one of your things, I stick it on the part of my head that is good over grammar? SPEAKER_05: We haven't tested it with learning foreign languages, but if a native English speaker is learning a long English sentence, they can recall it with greater fidelity if they have this on their head while they study those sentences. And if you go right parietal, back over just behind your ear and up above your ear, you can learn math better. We were all kind of like, eh, I don't know. But since Mike had his device there with him, SPEAKER_07: should we try it? Sure. I'm ready. We thought, no, let's try it and see for ourselves. Do you want to do it, Robert? SPEAKER_07: I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Robert actually pretended he has an appointment. He left. But me? Taking them for the team here. I don't do fear. Don't you need to be seated for this? Yeah, you should be seated. SPEAKER_17: Stick around because we are going to put electricity right into the man's head. I'm talking about Chad. SPEAKER_15: Lulu here. If you ever heard the classic Radiolab episode, Sometimes Behave So Strangely, you know that speech can suddenly leap into music and really how strange and magic sound itself can be. We at Radiolab take sound seriously and use it to make our journalism as impactful as it can be. And we need your help to keep doing it. The best way to support us is to join our membership program, The Lab. This month, all new members will get a T-shirt that says Sometimes Behave So Strangely. To check out the T-shirt and support the show, go to radiolab.org slash join. Radiolab is supported by Capital One with no fees or minimums. Banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with no overdraft fees, is it even a decision? That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See Capital One dot com slash bank. Capital One N-A member FDIC. Radiolab is supported by Apple Card. Apple Card has a cashback rewards program unlike other credit cards. You earn unlimited daily cash on every purchase, receive it daily and can grow it at 4.15 annual percentage yield when you open a savings account. Apply for Apple Card in the wallet app on iPhone. Apple Card subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility requirements. Savings accounts provided by Goldman Sachs Bank USA. Member FDIC. Terms apply. After but her emails became shorthand in 2016 for SPEAKER_08: the media's deep focus on Hillary Clinton's server hygiene at the expense of policy issues, is history repeating itself? You can almost see an equation again, I would say led by the times in SPEAKER_13: Biden being old with Donald Trump being under dozens of felony indictments. Listen to On the Media from WNYC. Find On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. SPEAKER_07: All right, so you've got here in front of me, you have two little circles, electrodes. Is that what these are? Yep. Red wires and black wire. So I get two of these on my head? One on your upper arm. One on my upper arm? For the demo, Mike showed me a bunch of stereograms. SPEAKER_07: All right, so what am I doing here? I'm looking at a bunch of marbles, a million of them in some kind of repeating pattern. Like you know these things Robert, like where you're staring at this 2D picture of like a repeating pattern of marbles or something. And you're supposed to unfocus your eyes in just the right way so that a 3D picture will somehow emerge from the background. Yeah, make me my eyes go batty. So the idea of this demo was like, let's see if I can train my eyes to figure out how to pull the 3D picture out. You see it? I didn't get it. Yeah, I got nothing. SPEAKER_07: I have never been good at these. I mean, I get headaches when I go to 3D movies, and it took me like 10 minutes to get one. There's a butterfly. There he is. Whoa, that's cool. To see like just one. Wow, look at that. All right, so now you can juice me. SPEAKER_05: All right, I'm going to turn it on. Okay, okay. I don't feel anything yet. Oh, SPEAKER_07: yeah, okay. There it is. Ah, what's it feeling? It feels like a bunch of mosquitoes are biting me in my temple. It's, I could taste it now too. So people get that. All right, so now I'm going to look at the stereoscopic images one more time. Here we are. We've got a green and pink. Whoa, that just became a world. Look at that. Suddenly a 3D globe just pops out of the background. Okay, next one. All right, so now I'm looking at a big green grass. Blades of grass repeating, repeating, repeating. Let's see. Whoa, swans. I see swans. Origami swans. 3D swans. Next one. Now I'm looking at a good, sort of a trippy paisley background and Bambi. 3D Bambi. Next one. All right, now we have flower background, sort of yellow and pink flower tiling background. Whoa, boxes, boxes floating in space. Next. Whoa, a little ballerina doing a hand stand on the balance beam. Robots. Little Hershey's Kisses popping right out. A star. They're coming out really fast. Big pretzel. This is awesome. Coiled snake. So anyway. Wow. That's the, SPEAKER_05: that's what it feels like to get your brain juiced up. Okay. I definitely felt like I could, SPEAKER_07: you couldn't give them to me fast enough. I was like, I was like, another one, another one, another one. Uh, so maybe that's a flow state like you were describing. I don't know. SPEAKER_07: I feel very, very awake. Okay, so in the end I ended up doing something like 50 stereograms in a really short amount of time. So I definitely think something was going on, but I have to be honest, I mean, I was, I was skeptical. You were skeptical even when you were flying free? Well, SPEAKER_07: it's like, it's, I don't entirely trust the experience I had cause it could simply be like a placebo. It could be adrenaline. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It just, SPEAKER_06: no matter what, it just seems like the next flavor of new age thing. So I started calling around. SPEAKER_03: My name is Peter Reiner and I'm a professor at the university of British Columbia. Cool. So, SPEAKER_06: so Peter Reiner actually studies this whole field. He looks at public perception and the quality of research and I just basically asked him, you know, is this for real? Like if you have a healthy brain, you put a little electricity into it, has it been proven that that will enhance learning or whatever else they claim? Well, maybe the best way to answer that is that part of the SPEAKER_03: reason that there's all this interest is that TBCS appears to be relatively effective. And he says, SPEAKER_06: this is based on a lot of different studies in a lot of different areas. But the key to what I SPEAKER_03: just said is relatively. And so the caveat that I have to add is that pretty much all of the studies that have been done to date are relatively small. He says it's early days and the studies SPEAKER_06: have been done, have only been done with a few subjects. Maybe 20 people, larger studies, 40 or SPEAKER_03: 50. Now a lot of these studies do find a positive effect, but if you're a hard-nosed scientist, SPEAKER_06: you know, those small sample sizes aren't enough to make a very big claim. Even so, SPEAKER_11: moment of truth. The cat's kind of already out of the bag because if you go on YouTube, SPEAKER_06: white flash, really brief, really quick, that's cool. You can find a surprisingly large number SPEAKER_06: of videos of people experimenting with these devices. I instantly feel very good, very calm, SPEAKER_11: very safe, not really worried about anything. A lot of the videos show you how to make your own. SPEAKER_07: First we'll start with the circuit diagram. You just go to Radio Shack and buy a few simple parts. SPEAKER_06: There's the battery. That's going to be your 9 volt. And here's a few alligator clips, SPEAKER_16: since I don't have any solder with me, although I have a switch in the circuit. I mean, SPEAKER_06: YouTube just seems to be filled with people who are trying to hotwire their own brain. SPEAKER_16: For the past year, I've been wanting to increase my brain power since I have probably below average brain power compared to normal people. I want to study neurosciences, but as many of you, SPEAKER_09: I don't have the resources to go to school right now. So what I like to do is I like to use TDCS while I'm learning my vocabulary list. All right, so I want to give you an update on using SPEAKER_11: TDCS to learn a foreign language. People are using this for a whole range of things, given how SPEAKER_04: flexible the technique is. That's Nick Fitz. He works with Peter Reiner, the guy we talked to SPEAKER_06: earlier, and he says not only can you do a lot of different kinds of things with this device, on top of that, it's dirt cheap. So let's say in the time that it takes me to listen to one of your SPEAKER_04: episodes, I could probably go to the store, come back and build a TDCS device for around $20. For $20? Right. And so I'm, as I said, I mean, is that something that makes you nervous? I'll say first, I think the DIY community is quite thoughtful, but it does make me nervous. There's some people that report loss of consciousness after using it. There are people that are reporting feeling burns. There's actually one report of somebody going SPEAKER_06: temporarily blind. This guy on YouTube, young Asian kid. I've been experimenting on where, SPEAKER_16: where, which places on my head would improve memory. He talks about how he spent a year kind SPEAKER_06: of experimenting with it. He put it in one place and after about five minutes, I felt really like, SPEAKER_16: really angry and depressed. Put it in another place. That got me a really high score on the animosity. And I've only been stimulating my brain for about five minutes. It's like he's SPEAKER_06: playing Russian roulette with that thing. Oh yeah. Which brings up the larger point, you know, that this device is kind of impossibly hard to regulate because a kid like this can put it anywhere he wants in his head. And if he moves it just a couple of inches, it could have a drastically different effect. And that's really what is a concern because according to Peter Reiner, SPEAKER_06: while we might like to think of the brain as being a bunch of separate circuits that do separate really, it's an ecosystem. Every part affects every other part in some way. SPEAKER_03: And when you put your electrodes on the head, you affect in theory, a small area of the brain right under the electrodes, but it's already been shown that that effect can then multiply and spread throughout the nervous system, even down to your spinal cord. I mean, there's a theory out there SPEAKER_06: it's called the zero sum theory of the brain that some people use as a framework for thinking about all this, which is like, you know, one part goes up, another part goes, like there's only so much juice in the brain. So if you send juice one direction, there's less juice somewhere else. SPEAKER_07: So then if you were enhancing one part, you're by definition diminishing another. Maybe. And to be honest, there was definitely an after effect. SPEAKER_06: This is kind of why I ended up talking to Sally about this, why I got so interested in this piece in the first place is because of what happened to her after the sniper training. SPEAKER_14: So driving down from LA to Carlsbad to go do this was an absolute nightmare. I hadn't driven in like a year because I've been living in London where I just do public transportation, but on the way up, it's kind of like, I mean, I hate to compare it to Mario Kart, but it's just this extremely pleasant experience. I feel like I drove better that day than I ever drove before. Like it was very obvious where I could pass people without irritating them. And just, I don't know, it's a weird memory, but I think I had more fun driving that day than I ever did since. And at some point she realized it wasn't just about her driving ability. SPEAKER_06: So I would say that, I mean, I don't know how much I want to get into sort of in public on the radio, SPEAKER_14: about being a bit anxious. I mean, I guess that's not particularly controversial. Probably all writers are sort of riddled with anxiety, but I have this constant struggle with all the little angry gnomes in my head, populating my head and telling me all the things that I don't do right. And all the things that I've done wrong that day, they just keep this incredibly comprehensive tally of them. And then, you know, the ones who worry about the future, and then, you know, the ones who tell me I'm going to be living in a cardboard box in a year. I mean, it's just like an amazing cacophony. SPEAKER_06: But she says, sitting in that car? SPEAKER_14: They were just completely turned off, I think, for a couple of days. And it was a really, you know... Really? For a couple of days? SPEAKER_06: For a couple of days. And to tell you the truth, it was kind of like everything just... SPEAKER_14: I was just this person that I hadn't experienced before, and I thought, maybe this is the actual sort of core person who I am, when all my baggage isn't just weighing on me. It was like somebody had wiped a really steamy window, and I was just able to look at the world for what it was. And I was curious whether there's a connection there, that to be a good performer of some task, SPEAKER_06: goes along with shutting down the parts of yourself that say, I don't know, I don't think, maybe I can't, maybe I shouldn't. And that there's actually a real connection between amping up one and tamping down the other. SPEAKER_07: It makes sense, because if you're giving one circuit more power, you might be taking away from other places. It's funny, I mean, I find this, since you and I have just been on stage, Robert, one of the things I struggle with most during the performances is, I'm sitting there, we're both sitting there, we've got our scripts, and I have this box of buttons, and I have to remember which buttons do what things, and there's the musicians, and I just figure out where they come in and out. And all of these things, they become competing voices. They become these little chattering gnomes that Sally puts in my head, and I'm like, wait, when does that come in? Where are we? What's happening? Oh my god, you're messing this up. Chad, come on! Why do you keep doing it? And I get kind of crazy. Sometimes during a show, I can't actually even focus on what you're saying. It's not a good feeling. And then there are other times where something happens, it's almost like a mode, and suddenly it's like, right there, I know I'm right with you, it's the easiest thing in the world to listen to what you're saying and respond instinctively and in the moment. And they literally feel like different chemical modes, or maybe electrical modes, you know what I mean? That's really, that's very interesting to me, because I mean, going back to the performance stuff, SPEAKER_00: SPEAKER_17: you can't really make it happen. I mean, I guess you could, I suppose, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like it's somehow... It feels like it's a gift, you know? Like, oh, thank you, universe. SPEAKER_07: I feel really awake and present right now, thank you. What happens when it's an expectation? You know, what happens to the way in which we move through the world, if we can just, if we can create that on demand? And order it up. Yeah. But I mean, I think the gift SPEAKER_06: versus ordering it up is pretty deep to me. I mean, I don't, I feel like in a world where you order things up, then you're in a world where you think you deserve things, or you think you've earned them, or you think other people haven't. I agree with that completely. That's a world that's empty of true gratitude. To tell you the truth, one of the really worrying things to me SPEAKER_14: was afterward how much I craved doing it again. It felt like a drug with no side effect. I mean, I don't know if I'm going to get addicted to electricity. Seems unlikely. Gotta get some, man. Shoplifting batteries. Licking them. SPEAKER_07: Licking them. It's in the supermarket corner, licking 9 volt batteries. SPEAKER_06: Thank you, Soren. No problem. And thanks a lot to Sally Eighty. SPEAKER_17: So time to say goodbye. I'm Robert Krowitch. I'm Jad Abumrad. Thanks for listening. SPEAKER_12: Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Susie Lechtenberg is our executive producer. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bresler, Rachel Cusick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz-Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyanisabundam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khare, Ana Raskawit Paz, Sarah Sambak, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster, with help from Bowen Wong. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. This is Joel Mosbacher calling from New York City. Leadership support SPEAKER_02: for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. SPEAKER_00: WNYC Studios is supported by On Being with Krista Tippett. I'm Krista Tippett of On Being, where we take up the big questions of meaning for this world now. In our new podcast season, we're going to have a different human conversation about AI and also the intelligence of our bodies, grief and joy, social creativity and poetry, and so much more. A conversation to live by every Thursday.