Wendy Zukerman (Host)
Appearances
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, the insanely weird virus that is measles. For more than 20 years, the US had stopped the ongoing spread of measles. Yeah, I mean, we declared it eliminated. This is Grace Wade, health reporter at New Scientist magazine.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
The vast majority of those, 96%, are unvaccinated, or we don't know their vaccination status. 800 cases. How many hospitalized? How many dead?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
That is insane. That is up to two hours. On top of all of this, Catherine told me that you don't need to breathe in that many measles viral particles to actually end up sick, particularly when you compare it to something like COVID. This thing is seriously relentless. It's like the John Wick of viruses. You can't hide from it.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
I read about this report from the 1991, what they called back then the Special Olympics, where there was an outbreak of measles and it was the athletes where the outbreak had happened and they tracked two spectators, got infected, and they were sitting in the upper decks 32 metres away.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
So, measles is looking like one tough opponent. But after the break, we fight back. Today's Ask Wendy Me Anything is brought to you by Amazon. Whether it's delivering medication to your door with Amazon Pharmacy or 24-7 virtual care with Amazon One Medical. Thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
So I'm here with senior producer Rose Rimler, who has some questions for me from you guys, from our listeners.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
A lot of them are a little bit... Not safe for branded advertising, I think. But maybe one of the most awkward was when we were at the human composting facility and we were looking at this big tub of human compost and I really wanted to put my hands in it and I said, can I please touch that? Can I touch it?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Interesting. Okay, I really like this question, Steve. Thank you for asking it because I feel like... We get actually a lot of people sort of asking us this in this world where science has become so politicised. I think sometimes we get accused, if that's the right word, of being politicised ourselves or only delivering kind of woke science, if you want.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
But actually, when it comes to pitching for Science Versus, the more surprising thing that the science is, the more likely the episode is to get through.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
In the menopause episode, according to menopause social media, saying that hormone therapy increases your risk of breast cancer even slightly, that's the wrong answer. A lot of people are saying that hormones are magic. So that was the wrong answer.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Our recent episode on fluoride had some quote-unquote wrong answers by saying that, you know, the science here is actually more messy than we thought it was. So I guess in a nutshell, no, we do not leave episodes on the cutting room floor because they come to the wrong conclusion. We deliver the science, and that's why you come to us.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And now, online, there's all these people talking about measles and vaccines.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Wendy. Today's Ask Wendy, me, anything was brought to you by Amazon. Thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful. Welcome back. Today on the show, measles. It's very contagious, but we have one weapon against it, the vaccine, and it works well. With two doses, according to the CDC, the MMR, or measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, is 97% effective.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
That's Dr. Maru Shiel again, an infectious disease researcher. Now, concerningly, RFK Jr. recently said that one of the reasons that people are now getting measles in the US is because the vaccine is leaky and its effectiveness wanes over time. Is that true?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Right. I mean, just by virtue of the fact, when you look at the numbers of the current outbreak in the US, if the measles vaccine was leaky and its effectiveness waned over time, you would expect way more vaccinated people to be infected, right? Yeah.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Some say this is bad because measles is so contagious, while others say that measles isn't such a big deal. Why are we freaking out here? There's viral videos where people point out, didn't everyone just get measles back in the day?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
According to the CDC, in the current US outbreak, only 2% of those who have been infected were fully vaccinated. So this vaccine, it still works. And the fact that it works so well takes us to this kind of amazing possibility when it comes to measles. What is super interesting to me that I had no idea about before doing this episode is that measles doesn't infect other animals.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
It doesn't have a reservoir in, you know, birds or pigs or pangolins or bats or anything. And so that means we could potentially eradicate measles.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
So we have this vaccine that works amazingly well over decades. There's no animal reservoir. Why haven't we conquered measles yet? Well, because a lot of people around the world don't have access to the vaccine. And then a lot of other people who do have access aren't vaccinating their children. And a big reason why is that they're worried about the risks here.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And, you know, this vaccine, it is made by taking the measles virus and then weakening it. And we basically inject this weakened virus into people. That's what creates this great immune response. But some worry that injecting a virus into an otherwise healthy kid is a bad idea. And you go online and people have all sorts of things to say about how dangerous this vaccine can be.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
The truth is that there are a couple of real risks, and then there's a lot of crap online you don't have to worry about. So first... Some kids might get a rash soon after the vaccine. Does it look like the measles rash? What kind of rash? It does.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
But important for people to know because that would be quite scary if you weren't expecting it. You give your kid the measles vaccine and all of a sudden they're getting a measles rash.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
The second thing to know about here is seizures. So in about one in 3,000 cases to about one in 4,000 cases, a kid may get what's called a febrile seizure after getting the MMR vaccine. Those figures come from the CDC. Dr Catherine Gibney told me that this does not mean measles is infecting your brain or anything. This happens because after you get a vaccine, it's pretty common to get a fever.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And in young kids, that can trigger a seizure. It's just any time you get a fever, you could get a seizure?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And by that, Catherine means that if you're a parent watching this happen to your kid, it can be really frightening. But according to the CDC, nearly all kids will recover quickly. When we think about sort of vaccine skepticism, I guess we should talk about autism.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
I don't mean to sound dismissive here. And, you know, I am still seeing a lot of stuff online connecting this vaccine to autism and But the thing is, over and over again, studies have compared thousands of kids, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of kids.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
They've looked at those who've gotten the vaccine and those who didn't, and they can't see higher rates of autism in the kids who got the MMR vaccine. Next question. What will it take to stop the outbreak in the US? I talked about this with Maru. So according to the World Health Organization, to prevent outbreaks, we need to vaccinate 95% or more of the population with two doses.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Meanwhile, the head of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is saying that part of what's causing this current outbreak is that the vaccine loses its effectiveness over time.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
When we look at the situation in the US, it's been reported that one county in Texas where there's an outbreak, the MMR vaccination rate is 82%. And then when you look across the US, MMR vaccination rates aren't great. In some states like Wisconsin, Alaska and Idaho, the number of kindergarten kids with two doses of MMR vaccine is less than 85%.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Given these numbers, how do you see this all playing out?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
I mean, given, I was just looking at the news and the messages coming from RFK Jr. and that sort of thing, and there's been really big cuts to the CDC and public health in general. If that's what it takes, you know, as someone, Maru, who's been tracking outbreaks around the world, if that's really what it takes, mass vaccination to stop it, that's really the only thing at this point.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And then, so, you know, we've talked a lot about the US situation where hundreds of people have been infected. When it comes to measles around the world, what's going on?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Wow. Measles is alive and well around the world. I mean, we are not even close to eradicating this.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
That's science versus measles. This episode has 98 citations in it. So if you want to learn more about measles or the vaccine, the MMR vaccine, then just go to the show notes of the podcast and click on the link to the transcript and you can see everything there. We'd love to hear how you felt about this episode. You can find me on TikTok.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
So today on the show, how worried do you really need to be about this U.S. outbreak? What is measles doing in our body and our brains? And I'll tell you what, it's weirder than I thought. And how can we stop these outbreaks in their tracks and possibly even rid the world of measles? When it comes to measles, there's a lot of... If you have to get sick, you sure can't beat the measles.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
I'm at Wendy Zuckerman or we're on Instagram, science underscore VS. This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Michelle Dang, Meryl Horne, Rose Rimler and Aketi Foster-Keys. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Emma Munger, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, Bumi Hidaka and Bobby Lord.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
A special thanks to the researchers who helped us with this episode, including Professor Rick Desfart. And a big thanks to Joseph Lavelle-Wilson and the Zuckerman family. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
If you are listening on Spotify, you can follow us and tap the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come out. And whatever app you are listening on, we would love if you gave us a five-star review because it helps people find the show. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
But then there's science. Science vs. Measles is coming up just after the break. Welcome back. Today on the show, measles. So our first question is, how serious is this illness really? Because the majority of folks who get measles will recover fairly quickly. At first, you'll probably notice flu-like symptoms, coughing, sneezing, fever. This is because measles is a respiratory virus.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
A couple of days later, you might see these tiny white spots inside your mouth. They're called coplic spots. And then, of course, there's that blotchy red rash, which, fun fact, is triggered by the measles virus infecting your skin cells. In the current outbreak in the US, hundreds of folks who have gotten infected, almost 90%, were never hospitalised.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
So you can understand why people are saying... What's the big deal here? But the thing is, even if you get a mild case of measles, What researchers are realizing is that this virus is actually doing something pretty weird that could have consequences on your health for years to come.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
This is Peter Kasson. He's a professor who studies viruses at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Peter told me that researchers have known for a while now that after young kids get the measles and get over it, they're more likely to contract other infectious diseases afterwards. So things like colds and flus. And sometimes this can actually get so bad that the kids get hospitalized.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And so this idea emerged that maybe measles is going after your immune system, or what Peter calls... Immunological destruction.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
It all started when there was this outbreak of measles in an Orthodox Protestant community in the Netherlands. This is a tight-knit community that isn't so crash-hot on vaccines. And so during this particular outbreak, researchers took blood samples from 82 kids who hadn't been infected yet. They then followed the children. 93% of them ended up getting measles.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Under half of those had a mild case, the others were pretty severe. On average, seven weeks after the kids got infected, the researchers took blood samples again. And they basically wanted to know how exactly was measles messing with their immune system? So as part of the study, they zoomed in on these immune cells that make antibodies. I talked to Peter about them.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
On the 20th of January, Texas reported a case of measles, and then another one, and another one.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
These are the immune cells that, you know, if you've been infected with a cold before or the flu or COVID, you have cells that remember this infection so that hopefully next time you get it, either you won't even feel symptoms because your immune system will kill it so quickly. It'll say, oh, I remember this enemy. I know how to kill it.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Or the disease will be much milder the second, third time around.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And this study on the Dutch outbreak, it was specifically looking at whether measles affected something called the antibody repertoire. You can think of it almost like a little library of antibodies that your immune system makes against the infections that you've had. And what they found is that unvaccinated kids who got measles... On average, they lost around 20% of their antibody library.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
But there was this huge range. In the worst case, it erased more than 70% of a kid's repertoire. What does this mean? So next time you get infected with the cold, the flu, COVID, what?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
You can kind of think about it like a computer virus that's getting into your hard drive and deleting all of these programs that help you fight off infections. Some papers even call this immune amnesia. This immune effect where measles is killing off your antibodies, this happens to... to some extent, to everyone who gets a measles infection. This is not just for complicated, serious cases.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Now, Peter told me that if you are unvaxxed and you do get measles, your immune system isn't screwed for life. But you'll probably need to get exposed to all of these viruses and bacteria, the colds, the flus again, to start building that antibody library back up.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
To go back to our hard drive analogy, it's like you've got to boot up the old computer, reinstall those missing programs, kind of one by one. And this could take months or even years to get back to where you were. Scientists are still trying to work all of this out. But still, this is what we know about a so-called mild measles infection. And then there's the more serious cases.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
In the current outbreak, around one in 10 people have been hospitalized. And so I asked Dr. Maru Sheel from the University of Sydney in Australia why exactly a measles infection might land you in the hospital. Like, what is it doing that's so bad? And she said that the most common complication is actually pneumonia.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And now there are infections all over the country. There's a whole rash of cases in more than 20 states. Some of those are just isolated cases. But in other states, the disease is spreading.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
In fact, one of the kids who died in Texas in the current outbreak, an eight-year-old girl, died from lung failure. And it is expected that roughly one in 500 children who get measles will die from it. In around one in a thousand cases, measles can cause encephalitis, which basically means that you get all of this inflammation in your brain and your brain swells up. This can lead to convulsions.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
It can lead to child death or with intellectual disability. And encephalitis is actually another reason that you can die from measles.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
I read that it's possible in rare cases, maybe less than one in 10,000, that the measles virus can get into the brain. The virus itself gets into the brain and can almost learn how to infect the brain.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
This is... I read this case report of a 16-year-old boy who came into a medical centre because he had been feeling weak, he was having some bladder problems. 16-year-old kid, lost his balance and then started having seizures. And the doctors worked out that it was this condition, it was from a measles infection, that he got when he was two months old. So it had been sitting in his body for...
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
in his brain for 16 years, and then he did end up dying from it. That is so terrifying. It's so terrifying.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's the Health and Human Services Secretary, said it's very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Now, if you are immunocompromised, you're sick, pregnant, or you're a little baby, thanks for listening to this podcast, you are at a greater risk of having a nastier measles infection. We also know that the measles death rate is higher in certain developing countries where you might have worse health care and some kids might be malnourished.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
In some cases, people who are in Texas have then spread the virus to other states, but not always. Grace said that the outbreak in Michigan started when someone got infected on a trip to Ontario, Canada, where they're currently experiencing a measles outbreak of their own. In the US, at least 800 people have had measles. That's according to the CDC.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
But Maru told us that even if that's not you, there's no guarantees here.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Yeah. The two children who died from measles in the U.S., I think they were healthy, had no known underlying conditions. Yeah.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
So, is measles scary? Are we overreacting with this current outbreak in the US? You decide. In the US right now, we've got around one in 10 hospitalized, at least two out of 800 dead, and it's hitting kids particularly hard.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And even if you get measles and bounce back straight away, it could muck about with your immune system, making it weaker for a while and putting you at a higher risk of other nasty infections. Now, let's look at how contagious measles is. Because one thing that you hear over and over again is that it's extremely contagious. So what are we talking about here?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
And for this, I spoke to infectious disease researcher Dr. Catherine Gibney at the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, Australia. And she said that all the hype that you read about measles being infectious...
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
Another way to look at it is, do you remember the R0 number from COVID? It's basically the number that says if you are walking around infected with a disease, on average, how many other susceptible or unvaccinated people will you infect?
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
So, yeah, compared to a lot of other diseases out there, measles is pretty R-naughty. Here's how Maru thinks about it.
Science Vs
Measles: How Worried Should We Be?
So why is measles on another scale? Why does it spread so easily? Well, researchers told me that one thing that's going on here is that you're actually very contagious in the days before you even know you have measles, like before you start getting obvious symptoms. But that's not all. Maru told me that this virus is also hardy as f**k. I mean, she didn't put it quite like that.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus. This is the show that pits facts against feeling like you can read someone's thoughts. Today, we are talking about telepathy. And here with me is Science vs. Senior Producer, Rose Rimler. Hi, Rose.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And so, do we know... Why the facilitator was doing that? Yeah.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Oh, okay. So it's almost like this subconscious response, the facilitators. I mean, if they're not actually doing it on purpose, I would have thought it was just really just trying to help, trying to communicate.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
The mom is looking at the pirate and also holding her kid's hand.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And this, I mean, it doesn't need to be intentional, right? I mean, you could be doing this without even realizing it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, I want to watch it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So Kai shows the mom a picture of a crocodile.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
She's moving her hand and in a very deliberate way. Whether she is conscious of that deliberateness. But it's just not, it's not, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Did you ask her why didn't she move them away from each other? Knowing what she clearly knew about facilitated communication.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
What's sort of, I guess, interesting is there is some lovely communication happening between the parent and the child. It's not telepathy, but clearly they have learned a language with each other that when... the parent touches the kid or makes this signal with their hand, they point to a letter. I mean, they have a language together. And that there is sort of something...
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And so, Rose, as you were listening to this podcast, what were you thinking?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
That's right. All of these repeatable studies over decades of research.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Coming up. Today's Ask Wendy anything, ask me anything, is brought to you by Amazon. Whether it's delivering medication to your door with Amazon Pharmacy or 24-7 virtual care with Amazon One Medical. Thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So for our little ask me anything, senior producer Rose Rimler has come to me with some listener questions that have been gathered through social media. Hey, Rose. Hey, Wendy.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Oh, I love this question. Because I feel like we do so much homework on this show that no one gets to see. So when someone asks this kind of question, I'm like, yes! For me, when I'm making an episode, my first step is to go online and try and understand what is the misinformation, or at least what people are saying about a particular topic.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
A diet, for example, you'll start to see people are saying that it makes them smarter and gives them all this energy and makes their body look a certain way. And so I'll start to turn that into scientific questions. Does this diet affect your brain? How does it affect your body? And then I'll just dive into the scientific research and start chatting to scientists.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And I won't stop until I feel like the answers have really started to coalesce. where I feel like I've got the scientific consensus or as close to it as possible, and now I can start to build an episode.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Thank you. So I actually did stand up a couple of times. Whoa. Yeah, when I was doing a job I didn't really like, and I wanted to put some fire up my a**. Yeah, just erred. Here is why I do not do stand-up comedy anymore, because Rose, would you like to hear the one joke that I remember? From your routine? Yeah. Yes, I do. It was something like this. It was something like this. Okay, so...
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Tuna are so amazing. Aren't they these amazing creatures? They're just so majestic in the ocean, just so beautiful. And it's amazing that evolution created this creature that swims in a little capsule with lemon and pepper all in there. So it's so convenient that we could just eat it all up.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Wendy. Today's Ask Wendy, Me Anything was brought to you by Amazon. Thanks to Amazon, healthcare just got less painful. Welcome back. Rose just told us why we really can't believe the telepathy you might hear about on the telepathy tapes. But now we're going to broaden out to the land of how science has tested telepathy problems.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Mm-hmm. And at this point, someone sends... An image of a pirate crocodile. Yeah, exactly.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Bob wasn't really concentrating during the experiment. Yeah, I'm going to throw out his data.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Oh, so this was... You would try to, oh, predict what the computer would do. Yeah. An unknown, an unknown, basically.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Can I just ask, if you got it right, did the curtains open and then you got to see the willy?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay, that's the suggestion being if we were to rigorously test telepathy, putting the skeptics and believers all together, perhaps we would see the same effect. But I guess we don't.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Can I ask, what is the mechanism, the purported mechanism of telepathy?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I mean, I think that the vibes when people say they're experiencing something like telepathy are... are like intuition and other human vibes that are not paranormal is what I would... Whether it is a parent who loves their child, their nonverbal child so much, and there is some communication there and there's something nice being shared, it's just not paranormal.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And when two friends, you know, one calls the other and... one says, oh my God, I knew you were going to call.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay. Okay. So the first thing going through my head is what image would Rose have on her wall? But that's not... That's cheating. That's cheating. Okay, okay. Jellyfish, bird. Okay, but what image is... All right, I'm going to close my eyes. I don't have ping pong balls, but I'll close my eyes. Okay, what... Are you thinking about it really hard?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I don't think you're thinking about hot enough, Rose. You're thinking about other things.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And if anyone wants to... Send us any curtains and let us try and guess what kind of erotic image is behind them.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, So Wiley, Bumi Hidaka and Bobby Lord. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Dr Zoltan Kekec, Professor Stefan Schmidt and Janice Boynton.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Special thanks to Enrique Perez, Isabel Lura, Lindsay Cherner, Lily Kim and Lauren Silverman.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Welcome back. Rose is here to talk about telepathy, inspired by this hugely popular podcast, The Telepathy Tapes, which has really brought this topic back into the zeitgeist. So, Rose, where do we begin?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yes, I am hearing a lot about this podcast. Yes, yes, yes. And telepathy with it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So it's a bit faster than them having to do it all by themselves. Is that the idea? Yeah.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
This idea that they can't speak beautifully, but locked inside their brain is... this huge mastery over the English language that until now they were not able to express. It's sort of this idea.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I mean, so hopeful if you're a parent to be looking at your child and thinking, wow, there's so much in there.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I do have to say as... Uh, hopeful as this is, I am getting a Ouija board vibe here.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, not meaning to necessarily, just wanting to move through it faster. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. D-O, you probably mean dog.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
No, that's right. We decided I wouldn't listen. So hopefully I can stand in for those of you who also haven't listened.