ASM112 Shacking Up, Climate Change, and Spiritual Waves

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shacking up climate change and spiritual waves all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemic [Music]

welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life i'm your host science mike a basic nerd with no academic qualifications whatsoever but i do work hard at making the science on this program accurate to the point that scientists will say what i said was good but uh let's do a show and get it started [Music] hi science mike my name is timothy i have a question about language and music i speak german fluently and i lived over in germany for 10 years but when i was learning german i noticed that whenever i heard a song sung to me at the very beginning stages of learning german it was more difficult for me to understand what was sung to me than when it was spoken to me and i was wondering if that had a difference from where language and music interact in the brain if there's something along those lines also along with music i noticed that whenever i worship with music it affects me in a way more powerfully than just talking or studying or reading dust what does music have to do with our brain and how does that affect worship and language i know that's probably a two-part question there but thank you so much for all that you've done and for the positive influence you have had on my life timothy that is a fascinating question uh i'm going to do my best to give you a great answer from the science as it stands today but let's talk with a little primer on neuroscience or start with a primer on neuroscience because we haven't actually been able to image a living brain for very long at all so and until you know recently when we looked at a brain in detail it was through dissection that's obviously a you're you're looking at a brain that's undergone some period of decay some um extremely invasive procedure to be extracted from a human body right so it's it's a it's not necessarily an ideal way to learn about a brain and you're seeing it at rest and because of the complexity of the brain it's difficult to learn about a brain at rest it's not you know you can look at a car at rest and figure a lot of things out but the brain's a lot more complex than a car and so when we look at brains today we're using technology that's actually pretty primitive the most precise non-invasive systems we have to look at brains group neurons together by the hundreds of thousands or millions um so the the resolution that we're looking at is relatively low and this is this is important to know and to remember when thinking about and discussing neuroscience studies that are based on brain imaging the resolution is low and the sample sizes are small you don't actually have that many participants in these studies why because this equipment is incredibly expensive and it takes a long time to do brain imaging so you know the your grant is burned up very quick with just you know maybe maybe a few dozen participants and sometimes less than that and sample size if you have any kind of a statistical background you know is very important in getting data that can be projected accurately to larger groups of people that's how science works larger sample sizes are more helpful okay so based on the way we do brain imaging it's it's very difficult to get large sample sizes in neuroscience neuro imaging research okay another common problem in neuroscience is mistaking correlation for causation so we see this part of the brain fires or has increased oxygen absorption or whatever metric we're measuring in imaging becomes active during a certain type of stimulus and that's a correlation that's not necessarily a causation you know that part of the brain could be activating for an unrelated reason or simply because another part of the brain is responding directly and it's an indirect response we have no way to to really tease that out today and then when people write about neuroscience in popular media the findings are typically very over generalized and this happens even among respected institutions even publications that specialize in reporting on science because the findings in neuroscience tend to be subtle they tend to be nuanced they tend to have a lot of conditions attached and that doesn't make for very interesting reading or make it easy to summarize and when i research questions for this program i generally start with papers academic papers publish papers about work and then i'll try to find a popular piece to put in the show notes that is is accurate enough you know to be useful and with your particular question this week timothy that wasn't the case i basically just have papers uh because this is a question that is still very much being explored in the sciences you know there's no consensus on how precisely our brains process speech and music and how much similarity there may be in those processes like are they identical is it exactly the same hearing speech and music are they different or distinct or some mixture of the two most of the popular models about how the brain processes sound would tell us that there is significant overlap in how the brain processes speech and music now many neuroscientists think of sensory processing as a hierarchical process so there's like a first stage where effectively you know in uh earlier parts of the auditory cortex say hey oh wow that's a sound is it dangerous and if if it's a dangerous sound then you know we go we go straight to alembic activation to the gunshot if it's a crash we search for the source of that loud bang uh but if it's not then we'll we'll do um we'll avoid that pathway into that immediate fight or flight emotional activation and we'll go into second stage processing which they would call abstract processing and in fact one relatively recent mit study did find some parts what they call populations of neurons in the auditory cortex responded to music but not to speech supporting the idea that there are differences in the way that the brain processes speech and music another study supported this idea by finding a parts of speech that when clipped and played in repetition sounded musical so it creates a very similar similar stimulus makes it easier to study and in this study they found that the early auditory areas of the brain remember that hierarchy idea do in fact respond in the same manner to speech and music but but actually quite different secondary networks were activated uh depending on whether the sound was interpreted by the brain as speech or music so there's there's some support here that in fact different secondary networks in the brain engage to process these two different types of sound now what we're talking here is simply about speech or a vocalized melody music is extremely powerful and emotionally poignant even if it doesn't have words or a vocal component at all music whether it's happy or sad stimulates the stratum that's a part of the brain strongly associated with pleasure and reward we know that heart rates rise that pupils dilate that the brain's cerebellum and cerebral cortex become more active when listening to music so music creates this intense emotional and physical response in people now sometimes speech when played over music can carry a more powerful response think about how many speeches you've heard in movies that were just moving and powerful you thought why don't people speak like that in the real world why don't real presidents or real leaders sound that way well they aren't scored [Laughter] they don't have a composer and an orchestra creating power behind their speech because of the way that people respond to music by the way this is a big trick we use on the liturgist podcast my partner michael gunger goes through and he takes what we're saying and he composes and attaches music to that which heightens people's emotional response to the content so why in worship do you have this intensely powerful response to language because humans have a powerful response to music now in terms of the other part of your question is there a difference in the brain and how we process uh music and speech it appears probably yeah that that's a reasonable interpretation of the data today and that may impact discernibility especially when learning a language because when you're learning the language uh you're using a lot of neocortical function you don't you haven't created pathways in your brain that make this an automatic process yet but i can't give you like a more specific well because of this part in this part and this network i just couldn't find that i don't think it's out there yet but maybe it will be i've got tons if you want to read further three really interesting papers uh in the show notes this week as well as a popular piece on why music is so evocative in the show notes at asksciencemike.com our next question came in via email and it reads what is the science of cohabitation i was part of a conservative evangelical church for many years that taught that cohabiting is not only ungodly but also that it is unhealthy for your relationship and self-worth as it can reinforce the idea that you must perform and be on your best behavior to earn the favor of your roommate since you have no formal commitment like a marriage binding you to each other the pastor even cited secular psychological research supporting his message the research supposedly linked cohabitation with higher divorce rates for those couples who eventually decided to get married after first living together is this true is it true that moving in together before being married reduces your relationships chance of surviving thank you i really appreciate your work uh well you know it is common that science gets misinterpreted from the pulpit uh or twisted subtly or not so subtly to fit a religious narrative in this case i think your pastor probably made a good faith effort to accurately represent psychological research and sociological research because there's a large body of research that does say or indicated with the conclusion is cohabitation has a negative effect on marital success rates it has a strong association a measurably statistically significant association with an increased risk of divorce so the traditional answer would be probably yeah cohabitation that doesn't make for a healthy marriage that's overstating it cohabitation leads to an increased risk of divorce would be a better way to phrase that but newer studies and analysis of existing studies are questioning that assumption quite well because what we found is many studies may show higher divorce rates among people who cohabitate before marriage they have failed to adjust for age and their findings younger people are more likely to move in with each other before they get married statistically and younger people are more likely to get divorced even if they don't cohabitate first older people if they cohabitate if they marry if they don't marry at all and simply stay living together are more likely to stay together the later you get married the uh stronger your chances for marital success with severely diminishing returns but i won't pull apart those data curves because i found some variation across studies either way there is a trend that you have an increased chance of staying together if you just wait longer to get married if you just get older i think that makes a lot of sense older people have figured out more generally of what they want in life of what they really value maybe have additional communication skills in describing that to a partner and maybe increased resolve they've been in more relationships probably and if this one doesn't work out that's okay we can try again with someone else so uh your pastor accurately cited research from a dated perspective and a more contemporary look in psychology and the social sciences would say no cohabitation does not increase your risk of divorce but getting married younger does which you know i would be really surprised to hear that from a pulpit because at least in my experience uh growing up in the church there's a strong implicit encouragement to mary young and uh definitely a lot of favor and the structure of church is toward married people um if you're not married you get lumped into this this singles dynamic so there's like finely age-graded small groups depending on where you're married but if you're if you're singles we just have this this college career and then this giant you know multi-decade spanning singles group a little bit of a rant but my point is there's a cultural association with marriage and getting married young being a positive thing in the church and the science doesn't necessarily support that it seems that um according to the research waiting to get married can lead to better success in marriage [Music] okay it's another mid-show advertisement for my events i'm putting these in the middle of the program so hopefully people will listen i'll make it quick may 13th saturday i'll be at christchurch in greenwich connecticut may 16th tuesday i'll be at buckhead church in atlanta meeting with a singles group september 15th and 16th los angeles for the liturgist gathering october 6th boston for the liturgists gathering october 21st the rubicon conference in dublin ireland october 27th the liturgist gathering in seattle november 15th the ripple effect conference in lawrence massachusetts now uh the liturgist gathering go the liturgistgathering.com to learn more about that it's a thing for people who listen to the allergies podcast they're exploring a new world of science and faith and questions and and they kind of feel left out in both secular society and the church we all get together in a room figured out tons of fun and as you know i'm putting together a uk tour in october as well london locked down we got the midlands in england locked down still looking for that stop in scotland so glasgow or uh edinboro edinburgh edinburgh here's the deal i can't say that correctly until someone invites me to the city so i'm going to need you to uh go to ask sciencemike.com click on the button that says speaking fill out the form and it's really like this is not going to be an expensive way to get me there i'm already going to be there there's not like flight expenses so you could host an ask science mic in your community very easily uh just reach out come on we got to make this happen i i really i'm genetically uh significantly scottish like really significantly basically scottish and irish is all i am uh shocking that my family's been here since before the revolutionary war and uh we've just kind of stayed scottish irish um either way i'd like to visit my homeland i'd like to do a live podcast there so go click that speaking button and we'll talk soon and you can tell me how to pronounce the name of your city [Music] hi science mike i really love your work um i think you are so gifted at explaining difficult scientific theories and ideas to the average person like myself um up until i discovered the liturgist podcast i didn't have much of an interest in science i always thought of myself as a highly creative type and even though i was able to do well in school those other subjects always seemed foreign to me i now understand that that is silly as science is a highly creative and fascinating thing for instance i find it so intriguing that our five senses allow us to experience the world in so many ways my question is along the lines of if a tree falls in the forest and no one heard it did it make a sound if for instance human beings did not have ears or any other organs to perceive what we call sound waves would sound even exist sure sound waves can be felt physically through vibration but if we had no hearing wouldn't we likely chalk those vibrations up to something else and with that in mind is it possible that there is some physical organ or type of mechanism of perception that we don't currently possess that could be the gateway to experiencing the spiritual realm a sort of sixth sense if you will could this help explain mystical experiences as random moments when the spirit realm is perceived by the human realm i know this is a pretty far-fetched idea but i'd really love to hear your thoughts on it thanks for all your work i love this question i love it so much i started ask science mike with the idea of inviting people into the joy of science people had grown up in religious traditions where science wasn't taught or respected or was twisted and distorted creative people who don't view themselves as scientific i just love science and i thought uh just answering people's science questions to the best of my ability could open their eyes to how useful how awe-inspiring and how amazing the discipline of science is it was only later that the show seemed to turn into an advice column um which you know i'm again it's also about creating this this space for people so i'm going to answer whatever questions you want me to answer even when i feel like gosh i have no my opinion is irrelevant here but i love especially the last few episodes i've noticed a real resurgence in the science questions and they're just fun they're lots of fun so uh let's talk about your fascinating question would sound waves exist if we didn't have ears sure i think they would here's why we detect signals and forces that are invisible to our senses all the time right we can't directly perceive infrared light for example with our eyes although our skin is sensitive to it we can feel heat uh ultraviolet light exists even though we we don't see it and we can use uh ir and uv photography to visualize uh those signals radio waves completely invisible to the human experience until we built radios and now we have radio telescopes and we image the sky geiger counters uh you can't detect radiation with your senses but it is super useful to detect it with a scientific instrument since it is extremely dangerous to humans so we have a great uh history as a species of using technology to translate information that's invisible to us into something that our senses can process so we could totally do that with sound even if we couldn't hear it we could translate sound into something we could perceive now if that's the case if there are spirit waves it should be possible for us to detect and transform that signal into something our senses perceive how would we do that how do we know if spirit waves exist well let's ask the scientific method and roughly here's the steps to answering a question with science one you make an observation two you ask a question three you make a testable explanation called a hypothesis four you make a prediction based on the hypothesis five you test the prediction and six you iterate using the results to make a new hypothesis or prediction or if you just nailed it now you have a repeatable phenomenon and a hypothesis you're well on the way to creating a scientific theory okay so let's do this in our heads as a thought experiment i don't actually have equipment here we're not going to run a test but we'll do a thought experiment on how we could test spirit waves or spiritual energy using the scientific method our observation is what well people have spiritual experiences that's true that's a thing we can observe that's a thing we can test so let's ask a question why do people have spiritual experiences now we need to form a hypothesis maybe there are spirit waves our senses can't detect and maybe those waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation because light is so fundamental to religious texts and traditions so then we make a prediction based on the hypothesis there are electromagnetic events during spiritual experiences so now we would test that prediction by placing sensors on and around people and then waiting while they create an environment where they have a spiritual experience and then we see what happens to our dials and knobs now i'm oversimplifying this in a proper experiment we would have a control group and a test group with different criteria that's important to sciences is having have any control and having tests and then based on the results we would either say oh good job we were right let's dial that in further or we would say gosh nothing happened we need to try a different hypothesis we need to try a different route here okay now people have done this kind of research people have looked for external signals during spiritual experiences and so far i really haven't seen anything that supports that lots of research has been done in um identifying brain activity during spiritual experiences that's really exciting it's a field of study called neurotheology that fascinates me endlessly it's a good time i've always enjoyed studying neurotheology and from that hypothesis their hypothesis would be spiritual experiences are a function of brain activity they're doing a good job of demonstrating that hypothesis so is it possible that the spirit realm or spiritual energy is something beyond our senses yes but if that's the case it also means because we experience the effects in the physical world there must be some measurable effect on reality that we can test with the scientific method and that's how we do science our next question came from stephen and samantha on patreon the people who support this show financially guess what they can put a question on the show and stephen and samantha have done so so here's the question hey mike i have a question for you regarding climate change i don't know if you've answered this before so i apologize if this is a repeat it's just such a hot topic these days that it's really hard to sift through people's political or agenda-fueled opinions versus what might actually be going on scientifically my question is mostly about the direct impact on climate change as it pertains to the grand scheme of our planet's history i'm not a scientist but i've watched enough nerdy paleontology documentaries to know that the climate on earth has changed enormously and quite frequently in the grand scheme of things over its evolution i've even heard theories that places like antarctica could have been temperant at one point in earth's ancient history obviously most of these huge changes happened before humans were even in the picture don't get me wrong i'm pretty sure that humans are terrible to our environment and i'm also pretty sure that our current energy use systems will have some sort of awful repercussion that very well could end us as a species someday if we don't do anything about it i'm just curious if we can tell if our global warming and glacial melting really is due to human influence or if it's just some part of the natural climate change cycle thanks so much for all that you do love your work fantastic question timely question useful question uh and it's such an important question we're doing an entire episode on this topic for the liturgist podcast that will come out sometime this summer or fall there's a big episode one of our mega episodes so those take a long time to do we've already recorded stuff for it either way and you're right the climate does naturally fluctuate between ice ages and warmer periods in the earth's history we're in an ice age right now and a lot of people don't realize that we're in an ice age now we're in a warm period in an ice age but during an ice age you have you know persistent ice on the earth which we do have at the poles we have ice all the time that's an ice age during temperate periods in the earth's climate or hot periods there's no ice on the poles uh and for the entire time humans have been on the planet it's been an ice age we've never been here when it's hot and there's some significant question on how we would handle that now the thing you understand is most the time the climate changes relatively slowly and sometimes it changes quickly and when the climate changes very quickly that's when you lose a lot of species to extinction slow change species adapt quick change species die out go extinct and we're going through a rapid change right now is what the data is telling us why because we're having a massive change in greenhouse gas levels which is what we've seen those things that tell us we've had different climate eras on the earth well they also let us understand the atmospheric competition composition in those periods and when you have palm trees on the poles so to speak you have lots of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere well where are the greenhouse gases coming from in our atmosphere today human activity we're burning ancient plankton and algae in the form of fossil fuels and in doing so releasing carbon that was captured by photosynthesis millions of years ago we're raising a lot of livestock and that livestock releases huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than co2 it just doesn't last as long in the atmosphere but so we're releasing a lot of co2 we're releasing a lot of methane and the climate is changing that's why there's an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that a climate change is happening and b humans are driving the majority of that change now there is significant debate among scientists about the degree of human influence as well as how quickly these effects will play out you know some climate scientists very alarmist the media tends to highlight those perspectives and they'll say by 2100 you know we're all going to be underwater [Laughter] and that's not a consensus we don't know how quickly the seas will rise or what changes will happen when we don't have that kind of granularity that's why climate science is important what we do know is the climate is changing the climate's changing quickly and historically that hasn't been a great thing uh for species on the earth so i would encourage you i've got a couple links on ask science mike about this one is the skeptical science that's a great site that will take you through point by point argument by argument cited with data and help you understand climate science as it pertains to climate change and i also included a specific article about what does past climate change tell us about global warming and that'll let you get started understanding what is one of the most pressing issues of our time our last question came from jacob in melbourne florida who asked if there were a film adaptation for finding god in the waves would you want to play protagonist mike mccar now i want to be very clear i didn't put this question in it it won fair and square when the patrons voted on questions for the show this week this is not an inside job it's a hilarious question i cannot imagine anyone making a film of my book i just really can't i can barely imagine that my book is a book in the first place uh much less that there would be a movie about it it'd be a really strange film i just imagine like scene after scene of the protagonist sitting at a desk and reading i mean that was one of the hardest things about writing that book is my journey is is a story about me reading a lot it really is like life event dramatic interesting okay that's 12 minutes of film and then i just read and then i like go to this conference and there's the beach thing but it's like the the the second act of the film would like be me at the library like just a montage i guess a book after book after book oh man sorry i'm overthinking it but yeah it'd be really funny if that i think it's a great book we managed to make me reading an interesting part of the book but uh i don't think you could do the same on film in terms of who would play me i can honestly tell you i've never given that any thought whatsoever so uh i thought about you know some people say i look like chuck todd uh he's like a journalist on msnbc um i don't see it i think in the past when he was heavier and uh and more goateed and i was guilty i could see it but now i don't see it a lot of people say i look like adam savage uh formerly of the mythbusters i've actually intentionally changed some of my appearance to look less like adam savage but both of them are older than me and uh don't have any film backgrounds so i don't think they would uh be in the film especially as you'd be playing me some years ago so i think we should give up on you know the fidelity of who looks like me and instead go with what i'd like i'd love a will ferrell movie about my life it would be absurd but i laugh at every single will ferrell movie same thing as seth rogen wanted to write direct and lead in a film about my life that would be amazing my last my other choice uh probably my favorite would be to have wes anderson do finding god otherwise he would retitle it i'm sure uh and then of course owen wilson would be the lead it wouldn't matter it's just owen wilson would be the lead maybe bill murray would pay play rob bell [Laughter] i don't know if you watch wes anderson movies if you do you know what i'm talking about if you don't it's probably a little confusing right now that would be amazing wes anderson movie about my life i i can't like do question i can't do the question justice with my answer i talked to jenny my wife because she's really into hollywood and who would you want to play me in the in the movie of my life and she said chris hemsworth obviously i look nothing like the the god thor from marvel's uh cinematic universe uh but my wife uh would just like to meet chris hemsworth so i think there was an ulterior motive there uh fantastic question really fun place to end the show this week thanks for listening to this program honestly thanks for saying in your questions if you haven't send me a question please go to ask sciencemike.com you can send in a voicemail and then you'll hear your voice on the program you can type a question as an email both of those right on ask sciencemic.com you do have a better chance of getting on the show if you send a voice question than a text question we get way way way way more emails than voicemails and i like i like the voicemails the best so i make sure we get at least two every show but you you can you can be on the show if you want to help pick the questions for the show donate through patreon uh people do i love it i like i pay my mortgage it's fantastic that's how i do this show is is the patrons on patreon this show believe it or not takes a ton of time i know it sounds haphazard and and uh roughshod but uh this is actually is like my job uh and i spend a lot of time trying to make sure i have good answers to your questions so you can you can you can join me on patreon and pick the questions every week along with a couple hundred of your closest friends i want to thank greg nordine for producing and sound designing the show i want to thank andrew golucky for sorting through your questions when they come in for coordinating our together groups by the way if you haven't been in a together group go click the together icon on ask sciencemic.com and you can connect with us science mike listeners in your area i want to thank my patrons for making this show exist every week i want to thank you for listening keeping it going you know it's really funny uh the numbers have been going back up again they were kind of kind of uh stabilized for a while and now they're starting to tick up again and so for all of you who are new i don't know how you found me they don't exactly advertise the show really at all but i'm glad you're here i hope you enjoyed it and uh i'd love to hear your questions so send those in and i'll talk to you next week