ASM237 5G, Solar Lockdown, and Why Dogs Fear Lightning

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5g solar lockdown and why dogs fear lightning all that and more on this week's episode of ask [Music] welcome to another episode of ask science mike this is the weekly podcast where we believe that every sincere question deserves an honest and non-judgmental response i'm your host mike mccarthy the science mic of the title it's good to talk to everyone this week we are back on the normal show format so this will be four questions with four responses this week right after a couple of announcements uh first of all um we are getting ready to launch a new show uh the team behind ask science mike has been working on something really special is getting close to launch i don't have a specific launch date right now um but i will tell you we're gonna launch something called the cozy robot show which is going to include elements of ask science mike and specifically questions in response and a focus on science and mental health and life transitions especially faith transitions and we're going to do something different with that and mainly that's put cameras in the room and uh it'll be a show that uh is available on youtube and facebook live and instagram tv and all that kind of stuff because um well i've heard that's something you're interested in and uh there's less television content than ever being produced right now thanks to covet 19 so um in addition to the cozy robot show being available as a podcast it will also be available in video formats we're working on a lot of really fun stuff uh creating video is a new discipline for me audio is much more comfortable but i think we're getting really close we had a team meeting today it went really well and i think i think we are on the home stretch of getting that program launched so watch out for the cozy robot show here's the other thing i'd like to announce and this is a this is a brand new announcement i am launching something called the overview program now what is that uh well i started out my work as as a science mic as a as a public figure not with podcasts not with media but by meeting with people uh lunch tables and uh at dinner and and talking through the challenges that people face in life uh the the mental health strain that comes with transitions and a lot of people have been reaching out and asking me if i can offer stuff like that again and i think i'm finally ready to i think we have figured out a system and a model uh that makes it good for me and and good for people this will be a pretty limited program in terms of the number of people i can accommodate uh but it will be out there so the overview program is um basically um kind of like ask science mike but smaller uh it is where you bring to me uh the questions and challenges you're facing in your life and i offer you an evidence-based system for navigating those life transitions there's going to be one you know group called overview stations that's like a 10 person program where we do peer support and collaborative problem solving and then there's gonna be something called overview voyages which is one-on-one just me and you talking about a transition in your life and uh i'm really excited about it again it's an evidence-based system for navigating change it's a non-judgmental supportive space for collaborative problem solving it's really important collaborative problem solving working together getting other perspectives other ideas on any issues you might be facing related to a life change or transition it's motivation and inspiration based on cutting edge insights from behavioral science and its support at the moment you need it most what it is not is going to be therapy or counseling i think therapy and counseling is incredibly important i do not offer it i am not a therapist or a counselor uh it is not a coaching program i'm not a coach and it is not a social group although i do expect we'll have some fun together what this is is a way to get a system and the support to manage life transitions things like new jobs new relationships new gender identities or sexualities uh changes in faith transition or faith background uh all the things that sometimes put us feeling at odds with our friends or our family or our community because we feel drawn to grow or change in some way that our existing community might just not be ready for us to do so this is going to be a program you apply to be a part of we want it to be a good fit for you and a good fit for me so if you go to overviewprogram.com you can learn all about the program and apply to join and of course because it is work i'm doing we designed it from the outset wanting it to be accessible across any sort of economic access barriers so starting at day one there will be scholarships available and a percentage of every program i do will be available at dramatically reduced cost so the group program is going to have spots reserved for people who are going to be on scholarship and i'm going to take on one-on-one clients on a scholarship basis as well so if you're thinking wow i'm really having a hard time with income because of the pandemic you are not excluded and space will be limited for everybody scholarship or non-scholarship this is going to be a very very small program i'm guessing including the small group program i will probably work with 12 or 15 people at a time so uh just uh head to overviewprogram.com if that sounds interesting and uh fill out an application and we will uh you know we'll if it works for you and it works for me we'll move forward in this uh program that i've built and designed again overviewprogram.com uh there are no events for me to share with you as we are still in a pandemic i do want to let you know though i have been doing virtual events not that are publicly available um but if you'd like me to do a virtual event for your organization your college your community your church your conference your virtual conference i i do that i am available if you go to mymcart.com speaking i i uh i have enjoyed virtual events i do miss in-person events sometimes i miss them quite a lot but i'm getting used to virtual events and and had some really great experiences so if that's something that interests you just uh yeah mike mccarthy.com speaking okay and well what do you say let's get it started [Music] hi science mike i have a question for you about 5g um i didn't really pay attention much of anything to do with 5g it was just sort of a thing that was happening didn't really care but now with covid19 a bunch of people are trying to say that it cost covid which i think is ridiculous however i've started sort of just researching anything to do with to 5g in general and i would love to know more about the radiation um non-ionizing versus ionizing is there evidence to show that it could be dangerous um you might have already addressed this i don't think you have but anyways um yeah that's kind of everything and anything to do with 5g it would be great to have more info um the research that i've done has been mainly showing that it's not not harmful but there are some voices saying that it is harmful and i would say possibly voices that could be trusted so um it seems like there's some confusion there um which science should we listen to which shouldn't we listen to um there was two specific sort of conflicting scientific american blog posts or opinion pieces that i saw in october of last year one with someone saying it was harmful and these are the reasons why and citing a lot of studies but then another one completely debunking the previous podca um the previous post saying that saying that the the studies he referred to were not good studies or poorly done studies so anyways um if you're able to give more info on this i'd really appreciate it i hope you and your family are keeping well and um all the best to you i'm sending you peace and love from canada i mean first thank you for the question you know something i'm seeing more and more uh when people send in questions to the program they're saying i don't know this has been answered before i'm sorry if this has been answered before this is the 237th episode of ask science mike this program started in 2015 i think so we're definitely going to cover questions more than once and if people are curious about things there's a system in place um that only questions people are curious about make it to the podcast so it doesn't matter if we've covered a question before we'll cover it again i have talked about uh ionizing and non-ionizing radiation on the show before i've talked about 5g i've talked about 5g in the context of conspiracy theories um and that's okay we can talk about it right now in a different context i really enjoyed you know i went and read those two pieces that you referenced by scientific american one was we have no reason to believe 5g is safe and the second is don't fall prey to scare mongering about 5g i have links to both in the show notes on ask science mike this week and gosh i hear so much about 5g um it's not an exaggeration to say that i get at least a message from the public about 5g every day sometimes many messages and it is generally comes down to three things one is 5g is causing covet 19 or causing cover 19 to spread another one is 5g will cause cancer and the third one is that 5g will be used by the government and by corporations for mind control those are all conspiracy theories so you know let's talk about the word radiation that's an easy place to start radiation seems like a scary word radiation simply means something is produces radiation and radiation is basically a transfer of energy involving electromagnetic waves it is not the same as radioactive where something um has base a nuclear process that emits subatomic particles that is different radioactivity is different than radiation people emit radiation i am emitting radiation right now infrared radiation an uh of a wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum just below visible light so let's talk about that for a second so when we talk about 5g what we are talking about is electromagnetic radiation and light what we use to see the world is a form of electromagnetic radiation specifically optical radiation okay we talk about optics we're talking about infrared light visible light and uv light and then you have electromagnetic fields those are have uh lower frequencies and longer wavelengths than visible light so radio waves are in there the kind of electrical appliances we use are in there wi-fi is in their cell phone networks are in there and these fields are all around us the sun is probably not probably is the most significant source of electromagnetic radiation in your life and then when we talk about radiation we have a a dividing line between non-ionizing radiation and ionizing radiation that happens in the ultraviolet light spectrum so anything with a lower frequency than ultraviolet light that includes visible light that includes all forms of radio frequency activity including cell phone networks including wi-fi including 5g cellular networks those are all non-ionizing radiation now what does that mean it means they cannot break down molecular bonds it means those radio waves those are those those electromagnetic waves under no circumstances will cause the bonds and molecules to break out which is the mechanism by which radiation can cause tissue damage uv light causes skin cancer because it can actually damage and break apart dna and those mutations from that that process can lead to skin cancer right so when we talk about when you go in for an x-ray and they have you put on lead coverings on parts of your body not being x-rayed it's because x-rays are ionizing radiation those break chemical bonds that can cause tissue damage and yet we get x-rays routinely as part of medical care because the cumulative dose over time of ionizing radiation is dangerous so a single x-ray is not necessarily dangerous you are taking a risk anytime you get an x-ray you are increasing your chances of mutations and damage in your dna but if you have an acute medical condition if you have something that requires an intervention like a broken bone the risk of not getting an x-ray is higher than getting an x-ray that is how decisions are made in medical science you take some radiation risk if you walk outside and expose yourself to sunlight you are what you are taking a risk with radiation huh and yet we don't hear people saying ultraviolet light causes covet so when we talk about specifically 5g what are we talking about well uh 5g is basically cell networks trying to become more like wi-fi so based on the length of radiation the wavelength of a given electromagnetic wave it depends on what it will pass through and what it won't pass through your car windows to ultraviolet light are just as opaque as your the walls of your home are to visible light radio wives meanwhile pass readily through lots of things you can for example turn a radio on in your home and you can hear radio being broadcast why because those radio waves are passing right through your home with little difficulty and so when we talk about the the frequency of the 5g spectrum where on the wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum does 5g exist we are generally talking about something in the 30 to 100 gigahertz range compared to wi-fi at you know one to six gigahertz tv below a gigahert radio terrestrial radio being well below a gigahertz we know megahertz when we tune into an fm radio station if i tune to 102.7 in los angeles i am tuning to a specific wavelength of radio wave in which audio has been encoded we can do that with digital data as well and when we increase the frequency the density of information we can fit in a given wavelength increases a given frequency it also decreases the range of transmission so one of the problems we have with wi-fi especially 2.4 gigahertz wi-fi is those radio waves go too far my 2.4 gigahertz waves go into my neighbor's house and my neighbors 2.4 giga gigahertz waves come into my house and they interfere with each other that's if you live in an apartment building everybody's wi-fi is trying to scream over everyone else's wifi well that is a bit at play well in cell networks a given cell on a cell tower can only handle so many phones it's not that many usually between 12 and 22 and so you have to have lots of cells to cover an area but the cells are very long range and that's why sometimes you have signal on your phone but you can't make a call or your data is slow for a moment because although you are tuned in to the right frequency there is not enough capacity on that cell to service your cell phone that's where the word cell phone comes from so with 5g we are creating much smaller cells because these waves get absorbed by more stuff in the environment so that reach is far so there's less interference while also having higher information density per frequency it means because of physics 5g networks both can be much faster than previous cell networks and you need many many many many many many more cells to make a network work you could think of like if you ever looked at electrical boxes in your neighborhood those those boxes on the street that uh transform power for your neighborhood you would need that many or more 5g cells to give your neighborhood coverage and so in urban areas there's a massive build out right now where telecom companies are building 5 g cells and it's creeping people out because the word radiation is spooky and when we hear higher frequency radiation well it is true that higher frequencies of the electromagnetic magnetic spectrum uv and above are ionizing so if we hear 5g is higher frequency we might leap to the conclusion that it is dangerous in the same way that x-rays are which is a valid intuitive leap it's just not true now don't get me wrong any radio waves can cause tissue damage at sufficient amplitude if you've ever cooked something in the microwave you have used amplitude from non-ionizing radiation to cause heating and any time a radio wave is transferring that much energy into your body's tissues that's a bad thing that's why we put uh fences around radio towers because if you climb a radio tower and get right by the transmitter it can be dangerous to your body but those are very specific circumstances and it's pretty easy to measure when a radio wave is at a sufficient amplitude to do that kind of damage 5g won't get anywhere near that by the way if you go sit by 5g cell you're not going to cook your body's tissues so 5g is non-ionic non-ionizing radiation it is it's low enough amplitude to not be dangerous it is going to be relatively easy to block versus other forms of radio waves in our environment when we talk about this this all these conspiracy theories and you know legitimate scientists who have concerns like we see in that we have no reason to believe 5g is safe article what we are often talking about is just poor science methodology which happens gosh all the time that's the point of peer review and what i have seen a lot of these uh 5g is dangerous or 5g causes cancer articles is the very basic notion of confusing correlation and causation let me tell you a statement that is 100 true but based on correlation and that is everyone who drinks water dies every single person who drinks water dies so i could devise a study if i wanted to that validated that in data that showed that every person who drinks water dies it is true if you run along enough study everyone you serve a glass of water will eventually die because everyone dies right that is correlation it is not drinking water that is causing people to die but it is true that people who drink water die and so you can run a study and if you're not careful you can tease out connections that aren't there because of correlation and when we see a lot of the studies related to 5g that's what's happening it's just a simple confusion of correlation and causation through a poor understanding of statistics there's a big problem in science is there's a lot of good scientists who don't understand statistics we need more statisticians in the sciences now that's not to say i don't have concerns about 5g i do i just don't have health concerns i have privacy concerns when i talk about i think about 5g who's going to control that infrastructure is it telecoms well they're not very trustworthy who has access to the data what is the competitive landscape what is the barriers uh to entry in the competitive marketplace what does the regulatory framework look like would municipalities have the option if they so desired to roll out their own 5g infrastructure for the public good the answer to both of most of those questions is very concerning i mean imagine if we have so many 5g towers you have a 5g device like your phone on your body and you turn off the gps for privacy reasons well and we can triangulate based on the number of 5g towers you connect to we get a real good fix on your data that's just or where your location that's just trigonometry that's not rocket science this is stuff in the in the reach of high schoolers if they had the data so i do have concerns about 5g as a technologist and as a privacy advocate i do not have concerns about 5g in terms of my health or certainly not as a mechanism for transmitting covid19 people insisting on being silly are the reason covet 19 is transmitting people who refuse to wear masks people who insist on socially congregating with too many people with insufficient distance apart that's why it's spreading it is not 5g cell networks [Music] [Applause] our next question came in via email and it reads mike why are dogs afraid of thunderstorms i'm specifically curious about evolution here so really i guess i'm wondering would wolves be afraid of thunderstorms wolves live outside so they must be pretty used to thunderstorms and humans are usually scared of things that our ancestors evolved to be afraid of and so avoid like spiders or heights so what happened in the last few thousand years of breeding that my dog does find thunderstorms to be unusual and scary what a fantastic question i love the sense of curiosity i am fascinated with dogs i i just absolutely love them i have been in a 12-year love affair with a weimaraner named ruby uh so i totally get it um and i'll just start with the bad news i couldn't find a lot of published research on observations of wildlife during storm activity specifically um uh it may be out there i was not able to find it i have decent research skills so it's either pretty specialized or i just swung and missed something obvious i did however grow up in north florida in a relatively rural area and i saw a lot of storms uh tallahassee florida is competitive with any part of the earth service for the number of annual lightning strikes and i absolutely see wild animals startled by thunderstorms by lightning and thunder it happens um what i've noticed with wild animals and i haven't seen wolves although i've seen coyotes respond to thunder lightning as kind of a momentary startle panic response followed by a safety seeking behavior and i think now i'm just going to make some conjecture here in the absence of of good studies i'm drawing some lines together myself which can be dangerous i am not a scientist this is if i were this still would not be my area of speciality but i have seen studies that compare dog and wolf intelligence and as you stated in your question wolves evolved in the wild through natural selection and dogs have been domesticated and bred through artificial selection different mechanisms are at play in driving their behaviors and as human beings selected wolves and wolf offspring to breed we tended to pick those wolves which cooperated with us which were not afraid of us which were more interactive with us and that shows up in pretty remarkable ways let me tell you one specific scenario imagine that we put a fence a long fence uh somewhere but it's not a fence around something it's just a fence that you know if you stand in the middle of it it extends a long way in both directions and if you put a wolf on one side of that fence and you put a human on the other side of the fence and there's a human and that human is holding a food item the wolf gets to see it and smell it and then you place that food item on the ground or say under a bucket and walk away well a wolf will begin a seeking behavior to get to that food item they will move back and forth along the fence in increasingly long distances until they figure out wow look i can walk around the fence i can go knock the bucket over i can get the food item when you repeat that experiment with dogs the result is very very very different dogs try to dig under the fence they pace back and forth a little and they whine and they get upset and they are much less able to get that food item than wolves and you'll think wow so dogs lost intelligence in this period of artificial selection but this is what is interesting if you introduce a person in a different way in the experiment meaning the person instead of leaving stays the wolf does the same thing right it runs back and forth it gets to the food item it takes the food item the dog establishes rapport and communication with the person and basically convinces the person to give them the food item so dogs have a social intelligence and an ability to interact with human beings pretty much unmatched by any animal i would argue sometimes unmatched by human beings i've noticed over the years that ruby is an exceptionally talented trainer of humans wolves solve their problems but dogs do one better they ask for help dogs have convinced the most dominant super predator on the planet and in earth history to be their willing servants and they did that mainly with floppy ears and adorable faces right so back to thunderstorms a wolf hears thunder and may be startled by it but then must address the problem themselves a dog hears thunder and resorts to the sort of behaviors that usually cause a person to solve its problem solve their problems for them pleading behaviors panic behaviors panting dogs know when they're destructive in our homes we respond quickly so i surmise i estimate that what dogs are trying to do in their displays of panic is get people to make the thunder stop because in their experience we are nearly all powerful we can cause rivers to flow by doing something up at the sink i mean just imagine water just appears because people want it we can change the temperature we can make it summer in the winter and we can make it spring in the summer using climate controls we can summon food without hunting so of course why wouldn't our limitless powers also include making the scary thunder stop so that's my theory i could be totally wrong i'd love to hear folks takes if you want to tweet me or you know uh leave a comment somewhere i'd love to hear your thoughts on you know why dogs freak out during thunderstorms and why maybe perhaps wolves do to a less extent i also have an article linked in the show notes this week called why your dog freaks out during thunderstorms and what to do hey mike long time listener first time caller this is rebecca marie from portland you may know me from such prestigious appearances as my kitchen my living room my front porch anyway what's going on with this solar lockdown is this a thing we need to worry about i wasn't able to verify it from like sciency places but i don't know what to google for this essentially the there's not as much activity on the surface of the sun and we're going to go into some kind of crazy mini ice age situation i mean i'm sure that's fantastic uh but what's up should we be worried is this a thing thanks mike why rebecca thank you for a fun question i'll be honest as i uh started looking at the question i had no idea what a solar lockdown was or could even be um and i love astronomy i love studying stars i love studying our sun i'm an avid viewer of eclipses and solar events of all kind of my favorite things is looking at the sun through a solar telescope the sun is a fascinating celestial object and it's so close you get to see it do so many things and i was like what in the world is a solar lockdown and it probably took me 15 minutes to figure out what the heck anybody was talking about when they talked about a solar lockdown and that's because well that's not really a thing i think this might be a little bit of like rebranding by the conspiracy theorists trying to keep people away from useful information when people say solar lockdown somehow we're mapping you know pandemic responses to astronomy so this thing is a solar lockdown but when people talk about a solar lockdown they are talking about something real and that's a solar minimum if you google solar minimum you will get lots of results because that is a well-known well-established thing here's what a solar minimum is it is a relatively low period of activity on the sun's surface where we have you know fewer sunspots and we have coronal mass ejections in lower numbers and fewer solar flares we just have less general activity on the surface of the sun although it continues to be a star and produce phenomenal amounts of radiation and send that into space especially in our solar system the solar minimum is part of an 11 year cycle about every 11 years we have a solar minimum and it is when the poles the sun has a magnetic magnetic poles just like the earth except much much much much much stronger and but they reverse about every 11 years they get weaker and they kind of semi-collapse and they switch places and uh the sun's activity is highly highly related to and correlated and in this case caused by its magnet magnetic cycle in its magnetosphere and um and so that's the solar minimum and we really don't have any major impacts on earth from solar minimums you know ultraviolet radiation decreases but that mainly affects the stratosphere and above in our atmosphere which the atmosphere will shrink slightly because there's less energy being pumped into it so satellites use a little bit less fuel because there's less drag on them so that's pretty exciting if you've got a satellite in orbit you get to save on your gas bill that's a joke most satellites you can't refill their propellant when they're out they just fall but you know in a solar maximum the opposite of a solar minimum we do have impacts from that we get some additional rainfall but yeah solar minimum solar maximum happen 11 every 11 years so if you're 22 or older congratulations you've made it through two full cycles between solar maximums and solar minimums so i think i want to be charitable here i think what happens is someone reads about this and i think it starts as like humor someone says oh great in 2020 the sun is shutting down too and it's a joke and then it gets about three degrees of separation from that joke and someone reads it and they go oh my god it's 20 20 and the sun is shutting down and then you get a little conspiracy theory subculture starting up um you know i often wonder with these conspiracy theories how many of them are created like knowingly and manipulately and how many are just sort of innocent misunderstandings that end up often having significant public policy implications you know um i i don't have an answer to that uh i but in this case this one's relatively benign um as long as you know it just is going to cause a lot of people anxiety thinking there's going to be uh you know i've heard people talk about crazy weather and earthquakes and famine and all this stuff from a solar middle note that's not true that's nonsense that's just an 11-year cycle of our sun that has been going on for a long time now if you're wondering where why does this happen we don't know exactly uh one piece of research actually says that it may have to do with a planetary alignment so it could be gravitationally induced which would be interesting i hope that uh the astrology crowd doesn't get too excited that a planetary alignment actually causes something uh in in science but that's still interesting um and that's that solar lockdowns or more properly referred to as solar minimums [Music] [Applause] our last question came in via email and it reads i was raised to believe in heaven i never really questioned it but in 2010 when i was 19 years old my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and within a year she passed away within a few years i developed anxiety and ocd i didn't even go to therapy until just a few years ago which is when i got these diagnosis diagnoses diagnosis i apologize your question is very serious and i can't conjugate that word i've been deconstructing my faith in the past few years and i would say that i'm a hopeful agnostic i want jesus to be real and smiling down on me because i spent my whole life believing he was and to stop believing that now would feel like losing a dear friend but most of all i want heaven to be real my mom was my best friend and it breaks my heart that since she died when i was barely out of my teens i never got to have that adult friendship you get with your parents where you can actually give back to them and take care of them the way they took care of you i still believed in the traditional idea of heaven when she died so during my initial grieving process i didn't even entertain the notion that we might not be reunited someday now in the wake of my deconstruction i find myself grieving all over again because instead of her consciousness being in heaven i have to think about the possibility that she might be bones or whatever in a coffin with no more consciousness to speak of anywhere in the universe long time atheists and agnostics can sometimes view death as something natural or beautiful or whatever but i simply cannot near-death experiences are enough to convince some people of life after death but i feel like it could just be hallucinations what advice or suggestions would you give me that could bring hope thank you so much you're one of my favorite humans in the world virginia virginia i'm so sorry i'm just so sorry that you lost your mom that you were so young when you lost your mom that's hard your pain is so real whether or not there's a heaven whether or not there's a god we know your pain is real so i just want to start there it sounds like you're doing a lot of work you're in therapy then you're getting these diagnostic labels associated with behaviors and that's a lot of work you're learning more about who you are you're learning to grow and to change and to face hard things an essential part of growing up and getting older and it's still really hard and as i read your question oh gosh it felt so familiar to me you know virginia you and i are different people and we have different life experiences and i would never say that my experiences are the same as yours or would be prescriptive to your experiences and yet i felt this resonant resonance in my chest as i read your question my dad's mom my grandmother helen sue mccarg he lost her at a very similar point in my faith journey and one of the most wonderful things about religion is it offers us a set of beliefs and rituals for coping with the inevitable separation anxiety that comes along with death i think that's one of the reasons even fundamentalist religions have often been associated with some improved mental health outcomes i think that is one of the reasons why faith transitions are so fraught with psychological difficulty because it forces us to reevaluate our relationship with one of the most difficult aspects of life and that is death so for some time i was happy enough just to know that i did not know what happens when we die and i came to a realization that that was true of everyone that no one alive knows definitively what happens when we die and i felt great comfort in the fact that everyone was equally ignorant about those things and that meant i could simply be open i could be open to the notion that one day i would appear in some sort of afterlife be welcomed by god and then see my grandmother again or it could be that after i died nothing happened but as i studied the writings of various atheists and they discussed mortality i found it comforting that perhaps if there is nothing after death there's no point fearing it because it's nothing it's not an infinite blackness it's not an infinite darkness you're just gone and that might sound scary but as i contemplated it it sounded rather peaceful because without any awareness without any experience i would not be around to be afraid of not being around and i realized whether there was an afterlife or not i only get one life i only get one chance to be me in this body on this earth i only get one chance to have relationships here and i decided i would live my life in such a way that i would have the fewest regrets about every day that i live and i would have the fewest regrets on that day and that helped me and then i encountered the work of a man a philosopher named douglas hofsteder he wrote one of my favorite books called i am a strange loop and in some of his reflections he talked about losing his wife not in i am a strange loop but in a a different place and he described the way in which our bodies somehow catalog our consciousness and our experiences and meld that together but somehow our bodies can also create a picture of those we know and we love and the better we know someone the more detailed that picture is he described it as a mosaic you know a mosaic is a picture made of little tiles and the more little tiles you have the more that picture looks like the subject the picture is based on and i realized reading that when i imagine how my grandmother would respond to something i can imagine with an incredible accuracy and that's because the connections in my grandmother's brain that made her personality there's a mosaic image of those connections in my brain and that as long as i live in a literal physical sense i carry a reflection of who my grandmother was every time i eat vegetable soup i remember standing in her kitchen and her asking me if the soup needed more salt it was my job and a big family to stand in the kitchen and taste the soup i remember her laugh i remember the way when i was small i would crawl up into her lap and she would read me a story i remember the sound of her voice because of that i can imagine almost any set of text in her tone and her cadence and the way her eyes smiled when she spoke in virginia although i can do nothing absolutely nothing to bring your mom back and i can't tell you what happened when your mom died and i can't tell you what will happen when you die i can tell you in your body is a reflection of who your mom was that i bet if you looked at a piece of text you could imagine how your mother would sound if she read it and i bet if you asked your imagination a yes or no question you could imagine what your mother's answer would be because your miraculous brain learned so much about her and her life was distilled into a series of actions and things that she taught you in word and indeed and those things move along with you with every breath in your body and every beat of your heart you have two things to grieve one is the loss of your mother the other is the change in the way you understand the world and the thing about grief is it takes as long as it takes sometimes it takes forever not a day has gone by since may the 5th of last year may the 4th excuse me where i haven't remembered rachel held evans i still grieve for her every day and she was my good friend she wasn't my mom but i have learned that there's a beauty in grief sometimes in those moments i'm most sad that rachel or my grandmother is gone sometimes those are the moments i feel closest to them in a strange way closer than i ever even felt to them in life and through that experience i have grown to appreciate death whether or not there is an afterlife as the wise have said death is life's great change agent it makes way for life to grow and to adapt whatever happens virginia science is clear to me your mom is still with you and your mom will stay with you every day of your life i hope in the days to come you find more comfort and more joyful memories of your time with your mother take care virginia take care