[Music] welcome to ear biscuits I’m Rhett and I’m link joining us today at the round table of dim lighting is red lake hey here we are here we are thanks for having us yes thanks for having me yeah and you me is glad to be here with you me is glad with us with us we’re glad to be here with them that could pretty much go on all day but it won’t it’s just the two of us rhettandlink only ear biscuit yeah we’re gonna be talking about something that’s interesting to us and hopefully interesting to you today and this is what we’ve been doing well some of these rhettandlink only ear biscuits lately we have what we’re kind of con like an extended good mythical morning conversation the kind of thing that we would condense down into a list of about 10 minutes now we’re going to dig down get into more detail and have an interesting conversation follow some rabbit trails learn some new stuff for about an hour yeah so strap in somebody actually called us out put your lip balm on using the term rabbit trail and they said it’s not it’s not going on a rabbit trail it’s going down the rabbit hole right part of the country you’re from yeah I think in our part of the country there’s also rap have you been down a rabbit trail you’ll get lost real quick son rabbit hole human can’t even get in a rabbit oh yeah you stick your mic stick your nose in it try stick your hand in it might get bit by a rabid rabbit a little blonde girl can go down a rabbit hole that’s where that’s from it’s right it’s it’s referring to a book later turn into a movie I’m familiar with it and that’s what we’re talking about today misused colloquialism no we’re not we’re talking about acquired savant syndrome also known as accidental genius now this is fascinating because both you and I have been hit in the head pretty badly a couple of times in our life and it has resulted in some great stories especially what happened with link you can go on the internet and look on earth just search links broken pelvis story yeah yeah it’s into you a whole thing the only interesting thing that happen to you is you just began repeating evidently hold on I’m just coming to evidently I hurt my left hip yeah that was fascinating but it was nothing I did not get smarter Oh and that’s what all of these are yes I mean people get hit in the head and becoming geniuses now you said accidental genius but I’ve also never met an intentional genius you either are you’re no I’m an intentional genius I used to be a real stupid trying really hard to be a genius I’ll give you that but I mean I’m a try-hard genius you either are a genius or you aren’t but there’s a but there’s a subset of genius I that don’t think that’s a word are they got that way by getting hit in the noggin and that’s what we’re talking about today so I mean I feel like we might need to put a warning on this I think we are gonna get so excited you’re never gonna be prescribing getting hit in the head we are not prescribing hitting yourself in the head or doing anything to get hit in the head but you might want to be because these stories I’m so excited to talk about it because they’re so fascinating they’re so amazing there’s parts of this that I want for myself I think we should dig into that but all of this is real if we were making any of this up well we’d be more genius than we are I think the warning up at the front is I would say 99.9% of the time when people get in the head in a way that we’re going to describe these people get you let the word hit out you said get in the head get hit in the head okay yeah okay ninety-nine point whatever percent of the time it doesn’t end well you don’t get smart oh so I don’t think this is something you can plan so we’re gonna get into that but first we want to take a moment to tell you about our sponsor Squarespace Squarespace is the easiest way to create a beautiful website blog or online store for you and your ideas Squarespace features an elegant interface beautiful templates and incredible 24/7 customer support try squarespace is squarespace.com enter code biscuits I know it’s not the easiest word to spell there’s a C in it it looks like bisquits but it’s really just biscuits if I know we don’t have to tell you guys how to spell biscuit just look at a Google I’m sorry none of us are geniuses here but we know how to spell things we do so in our code biscuits at checkout to get 10% off squarespace.com offer code biscuits square space build it beautiful all right let’s uh let’s get into this biscuit okay first up is Ben McMahon from Melbourne Australia early 2012 he’s 20 years old and he’s a passenger in a very bad car accident it puts him in a coma for a week he almost dies okay but after one week in a coma he finally woke up and all he could speak was Mandarin well his Australian guy who didn’t speak Mandarin okay let me give you a little bit more information about this because it is completely fascinating but if you speak Australian but but it’s not like there was a Mandarin lesson plan in the DVD player of the car that suddenly got like shoved into his mouth and somehow his brain absorbed it yes because that would have been really cool that’s not what I was thinking okay Ben was an English speaker he couldn’t speak Mandarin before his accident but he did have a point of reference in high school only years prior just you know a few years prior to the accident he studied French and Mandarin and he also traveled and spent some time in Beijing but he can never speak Mandarin fluently until he woke up from his coma so it’s one of those things where he had learned quite a bit about it but had never put it into practice to actually be able to speak it so kind of like I took three years of French class as did I I speak I can say just Swede Renee and I rolled my art which is not even appropriate for French you could I have no idea how to speak French yeah almost said speak France to give you just a point of reference right but I was in class for three years you know supposedly exposed to things and maybe there’s a part of my brain that has it because this guy’s miss Raine we had it right so he wakes up Wow so it’s like him getting hit in the head after the coma it’s like it unlocked that place Rhett where all this information was and here’s how it happens he wakes up from his coma after being in a coma for a week almost dying there’s an Asian nurse I don’t know if that’s a key to this process working but there’s an Asian nurse standing by his side he’s in Australia but he sees an asian nurse and he tells her in Mandarin excuse me nurse I feel really sore here he points I don’t know where he pointed I don’t he’s not I don’t have a video of it that’s not pertinent he then asked for a pen and paper and wrote in Chinese oh wow I love my mum I love my dad I will recover here’s what Ben said about this priorities he said loving those parents I wasn’t consciously thinking I was speaking Mandarin it was just what came out and what was most natural to me and then it takes him two or three days to start speaking speaking English again and now he speaks both languages fluently but his go-to language on the other side of the coma was Mandarin yeah exclusively in a way that it had never been it wasn’t like his brain made a choice it was that it opened up something that had never been opened in a Mandarin valve do we all as humans have a Mandarin valve that just needs to be opened I highly doubt that but but I don’t have him but it isn’t a valve is it a valve that French would come out mmm if it were open for us after three years probably not a valve it’s probably a part of the brain but there’s so little we know about the brain that these anomalies well there is a our window into that well okay and and plumbing analogies I’m certain go a long way in neuro stead of you conjecturing and you know saying that there was potentially a valve that was unlocked I’m gonna tell you what dr. Pankaj saw a Queensland brain institute neuroscientist says about this he said can you tell me in Mandarin no he said the brain has different circuits that assist in language speaking breathing and thinking and he claims it as possible that the parts of Ben’s brain that could recall English got damaged during the crash while those parts that retain Mandarin got activated when he woke up from the coma so we’re not exactly sure what happened during the coma but it’s like he got it’s like his brain compensated and went for the other part that the other language it rewired itself and it wasn’t temporary because listen to this he after this he enrolled in a Mandarin class I don’t why I guess to dominate I know him but he entered an international Chinese language competition he started which exist Mandarin walking tours and even hosted a Chinese TV show he is now known as the best Mandarin speaking Westerner in China and some Chinese people say he speaks better Mandarin than then dude totally capitalizes this freaking he became the most he became a celebrity came a celebrity just by being up on that white do can speak some any better than us he’s gotta be like a TV game show host exactly I mean if I’m gonna like turn a corner after something bad happens to me like it doesn’t get any better than being a TV ho oh no definitely like a game show that is the peak that is that is where you’ve got to go it’s like any it’s like you have a superhuman ability now I’m not gonna fight crime I’m not gonna like let me host the show I’m not gonna fight like technical writing Mandarin crime no I’m gonna I’m gonna be a gameshow celebrity well I didn’t say gameshow that’s what you heard did I say gameshow I thought I said Chinese TV show oh well but I like to say it was probably thinking like Japanese game show I think you said game show and Mandarin in air you didn’t know what is abloom Italy yeah really is a quiet spoke Mandarin you don’t know what you’re saying I think that’s what it was well here’s a question for us but I also noticed that the the scientific explanation used electrical analogies because the brain is electrical impulses but I’m still gonna lobby for the valve plumbing and Alex okay so I’m just gonna keep going back to that even though I know in an electrical world in there maybe his trap was his trap was cloth his english trap was clogged in the mandarin pipe they went in there to let it mother it up the valve yeah we should we should start our own University what’s your question here’s a question for us it is would you willingly be in a car accident mm-hmm that would be this traumatic but here’s the thing you know that you will recover fully okay but you will be in a coma for a week I know this is a totally hypothetical impossible situation but let’s just say I was a magic person and I was and I was the kind of person who could say you can be in a car wreck right now you’re almost gonna die don’t you mean a magician yeah I’m gonna be oh no this is a magic person there’s a totally different category magicians do fake stuff but a magic person does real magic oh wow okay it’s like a genie but is it different okay okay so you’ve got to go through this process but when you come out you can speak any other language fluently but the price you pay is the accident would you do would you sign up for that you have to go through the pain of recovery but you will recover hmm I mean there’s there’s a lot of emotional baggage that comes along with being an accident that I can’t quantify having not done it but I know there’s like I mean that can stick I I can’t quantify that but let’s just say that emotionally and mentally like there’s no repercussions of the accident right and no one else is hurt yeah yeah it’s like rosetta stone but it’s just a wreck yeah would that cost more than the DVDs or less yeah I think it yeah cuz you gotta have a stunt coordinator are you I guess up a doctor first I have to ask what the I have to answer what the language would be you pick the language rosetta stone I have to be I’m to go on a website and you pick the language and then a week later that we pick you up and have a wreck with you I have two answers I’m I’ve already opened up this business I just hope helping you would be on board I think it would have to be Spanish and I think I would have to know the answer to that before I answer the larger question we’ve got to go through it well I don’t know I got to think about game shows now like what type of what land would I like to host a game show and it’s really what your ass is right that’s pertinent so I mean I would love to host Icelandic no that’s not you not a lot of I don’t think there’s a lot of not enough viewers I definitely would do Spanish and I’d host a Spanish frickin game show I would also just speak Spanish in LA which comes in very bright that’s why I first said Spanish but now that I’m thinking game show I’m thinking Japanese they have the best freaking game shows ever I don’t let you and I am going to be that that American dude who speaks Japanese better than anybody and hosts all those Japanese game shows that’s me well you better absolutely this is now an easy you’ve got to get started now though because when my program hits the internet what everybody’s gonna be doing it Rhett’s rosetta wreck rosetta wreck cd-rom series yeah so that’s my idea I am so excited about being in a Japanese game show okay well it’ll it’s five hundred thousand dollars well I mean that’s like a weekly salary for game show host they’re the highest paved people probably outside of Japanese government okay you got something better than that no but I do have Tommy McHugh okay he sounds interesting bar brawler turned art savant savant alright so tell me week you live in Liverpool and spent most of his life causing trouble this dude always getting into brawls at pubs you know how Liverpool Ian’s like they they just brawl in pubs Mulligan’s and he was arrested for drugs when he was like in his 20s picture this dudes like he’s tatted up burly scruffy Liverpool Ian commands man in and out of prison I mean prison tattoo kind of a dude all right not the kind of guy you see drawing pictures of writing poetry I’ll tell you that mm-hmm okay one day back in 2001 Tommy was sitting on the toilet that’s a good place to sit he was not in jail at the time yeah because that’s a bad place to sit I’m gonna get that over with quickly but he had this real bad headache and now I will say I’ve had a few headaches yeah and I’ve been so desperate to get rid of them that I’ve honestly I’ve actually thought I wonder if I just use the restroom if that will help like I’ve I haven’t I don’t get migraines I’m never looking at me like I’m an idiot not connected I don’t suck there’s not a valve between the brain and the rectum I’ve I’ve had headaches so bad I’m willing to try almost anything to get rid of them and I that’s one of the things I’ve tried okay a bowel movement and I know that’s often that’s a rabbit or maybe a BM will help you feel better my mom used to say that so and it it doesn’t really help so I’m just gonna that’s my friendly piece of advice but Tommy had a really bad headache he’s on the toilet turns out it was a brain hemorrhage that’s bad dude brain started to bleed not from one but from both sides due to ruptured rupturing aneurysms and he was immediately rushed to surgery I don’t even know if they pulled his pants up back up before they did it so I hope so I hope you know don’t dude you can’t strain that hard I mean I’m just oh you think this is a hemorrhoid I don’t know I’m just saying if you’re straining so hard that you have a double hemorrhage it is unlikely that I’m gonna be king aneurysms on both sides at the same time he made it out of surgery alive but when he got home he started doing some very bizarre things for the first three months after his surgery he spoke only in weird rhymes oh he’s like he became like a dr. Seuss book like this is interesting like wordsmith from that obscure junkyard cats cartoon that I used to watch as a kid there was a cat one of the cows cowork Smith and everything he said rhymed because he was the guy that did everything on time I just tried to make a rhyme I can’t do it you had an aneurysm no you’re just demonstrating so three months just talking in poetic dot I mean that’s pretty cool well well I get I got to take issue with that because I think it would be pretty frustrating for me if I was his friend because yeah I remember when you came out of your when you had your concussion and yeah we’re saying evidently I hurt my left hip over and over again I was as I telling the story on the Internet 100% sure that you were joking and I was like how long is he gonna let this because we were ended like joking with people and pranking people College so I was like how long is this going to take if you were in an accident and you came out only speaking in rhymes I would be like Linc you gotta end this joke cuz it’s not funny anymore like a a few hours later okay that’s enough few days later okay that’s enough three months later okay I wouldn’t be his friend anymore your brain is different now now he was a construction worker never in his 50 years of getting drunk and fighting people and pubs did he express any level of creativity much less speaking Ron he had never rhyme anything well he started writing down poetry one of which I have here for our enjoyment the empty chair fills me with despair no one is sitting there all three rhymes in the empty room fills me with the gloom till black rose blood bloom the empty bed my love is dead we’re loving words were once said the empty clothes do make me cry costumes of a time gone by my empty heart cannot restart love has gone away I am split into these words are true as I empty myself of you I mean that doesn’t sound like some dude who’s punching in the face in a in a like a pub brawl but if he did that would be like an epic Tarantino character what it’s you know like speaking in rhyme and just like ripping your teeth out with your hike but like a bare-knuckle it’s fascinating that he would have almost a personality change I gotta say personality change I’m not terribly impressed by the poetry I’m impressed by the let me give you more the the shift he started seeing all kinds of images and words in his mind he decided to start sketching them out okay one day his wife comes home to find him drawing alien faces like with their mouths a game like garage situation yeah well it’s kind of like really surprised aliens like turning the tables like we’re supposed to be surprised by anything I don’t know he had this like artistic explanation for everything the dude became the opposite of somebody he would ever be who was obsessed with writing painting it’s called anything our test he became he used his own walls as canvases covered his entire home in paintings this is and there was a construction worker different different guy now he started sending letters out to doctors asking them to take a look at him and of course the letters were written as poems he arrived oh how do you respond to that well a team of researchers put him through every cognitive test imaginable included that yes his artistic output was due to his brain sudden decision to start bleeding which caused some damage to his frontal lobe the exact cause is unknown doctors have named it sudden artistic output I mean I think that’s what doctors live for us like well I’m just gonna I’m able to name this it seems like they could have come up with a better name like I don’t like Tommy’s artist Tommy’s really in the art now syndrome what is B dude that would just be Tommy though any true so but okay I don’t understand what what happened damage to the frontal lobe I mean they don’t know he had some pins put in to stop the bleeding so they couldn’t do an MRI they I know you know it’s just some doctors guessing so it’s one of the it’s the brain there’s just who knows you know the weird thing is that something gets damaged which causes another part of the brain to become emphasized rest a vowel you know the artists valve was in an interesting way because you can’t it isn’t like blowing on a Nintendo cartridge right when you think about that you’re like how does that work how does blowing on a Nintendo cartridge get Legend of Zelda that boot-up in the right way that makes total sense the dust that was on the part that was keeping it from booting up was was was okay honey that does make more sense but it’s almost like creating something out of nothing if you’re not artistic before something gets shut off shutting off of something that turns something else on you can’t make a part of the brain work better by hitting hard right or shaking something loose shaking something right shaking something shaking something into place what no I wear I mean we’re no neuroscientist but it just tells me that like you’re there’s all these building blocks they’re like everything’s there it’s just a question of what’s expressed so meaning that it was in his brain already be an artist there was an artist in there right but it had been sitting it was a brawler in there and it subdued or just one both weren’t expressed like only one was expressed and then it was depressed and then another was expressed I’m using like landscaping terms now I’m thinking like sprinklers we can only come up with analogies because we don’t understand it why we don’t understand it I mean when he explains that he says my mind is like a volcano exploding with the bubbles and each bubble contains a million other bubbles and then another million bubbles of unstoppable creative ideas he also went on to write the anime he actually became a much nicer person and he doesn’t drink and bar fight he wishes he’d always been that way if you could have one part of your brain unlocked assuming that everything that you know about everybody is in all of our brains and you can unlock one part and I had to have a horrible constipation session in order to make it happen yes but what part of the brain would it be like I you know I think we kind of see see ourselves is like kind of well-rounded individuals but cute but if there’s a limitation you know we’re not it’s funny or what you analytical or you know it’s yeah I’ve always said I’m good at a lot of things will happen I’m not your way to make an appointment in the future and unlock certain things right and but you’re not gonna know what’s gonna get locked up in order to create it I allow that to that sprinkler to open when you water the one in the front yard of these the backyards gonna dry up oh no I this is all this is all leading to something inevitably there we’ll be a time in which you will be able to undergo surgery they’ll figure this out and know and you’ll be what are you gonna choose you’re near my question greatness because what I was gonna say is I’ve always thought yeah I’m not afraid to say I feel like I’m good at a lot of things I don’t think I’m great at anything mm-hmm you know it’s like I can hold my own with music enough to enough to write something that’s catchy right but it ain’t is no musical genius that’s for sure hey I think I feel like at this stage in my life it would either be like the ability to write something really incredible you know like story wise or or something musical musical related and I’d have to pick one of those the interesting thing is okay what would you be willing to give up that you’re as decent at as music at now in order to like express the music sprinkler entirely what in the backyard is gonna go dry when the musical front yard flourishes niceness I want to become a total jerk musician that’s really you cannot dial that up it’s sad no I mean can you kidding can’t can you’d sacrifice athletic ability sure yes I would sacrifice that because I don’t use that very often okay I use it a lot of my younger days but I would become you know horrible at anything physical to be a good musician to be a great musician what about you Oh what about me I like the I’ve always said like the varieties of spice of life I’m decent enough and enough things that just I just like to do a little thing and be good and move on to something decent at it and enjoy it and move on like I’m just trying to think what what I could do if that sit down at the piano and like do something amazing how much I can’t it’s hard for me to quantify how much joy I would actually get from it having never cuz I get joy from the little things and then move you know so it’s just it’s almost like it’s a different mentality I don’t think I would say something to a new level though but but it’s giving something else up okay well it’s giving a mediocrity of I would what variety up well I’ve got a guy so that’s what I’m not willing to do I got a guy who gave up nothing Oh in game musical genius his name is Tony Sakura in Albany New York 1994 he’s a 42 year old orthopedic surgeon he goes to a pay phone to call his mom it is 1994 they still had payphones that people actually used he hangs up he sets one foot away from the payphone and he is struck by lightning again not constipation but pretty traumatic struck by like Mia he says he then sees his own body on the ground surrounded by bluish white light so sort of an out of body experience here surrounded by bluish white light yeah Sakura is heart what did he become the payphone uh no I don’t believe so what’s the payphone got to do with it that’s just where he was oh so it has nothing to do with it Sakura’s heart had apparently stopped but he was resuscitated by a woman who happened to be a nurse that was waiting to use the payphone 1994 not only are people using the payphone there’s a line there’s a line for the payphone can you imagine that I can’t even locate a payphone I couldn’t find a payphone if you paid me to find the payphone you could pay me in a payphone I couldn’t find a payphone me neither but okay for the next couple of weeks after the strike Tony’s feeling sluggish first a nurse is also a good person to be there when you’re struck by line yeah it helps and it’s nice to have a payphone because you can’t name one yeah it all works out he’s a few weeks after the strike he’s feeling sluggish sound trouble remembering things is he still watching himself from above no that was temporary that was temporary and I just a little sidebar on the whole out-of-body experience thing just for those of you interested in this it has been this phenomenon has been documented and lots of different people and there’s actually some really interesting explanations the common denominator a payphone that people the experience seeing themselves when they have a near-death experience not necessarily saying that you’re actually leaving your body but there’s an interesting neurological things that happen during that time there kind of help to explain this whole out-of-body thing but regardless of what’s actually happening anyway but these symptoms of not me know remember things and feeling kind of sluggish they go away and then things get weird out of the blue Tony who’s never been musical gets a sudden urge to listen to piano music okay he’s just kind of a technical guy a surgeon now he had played piano for one year just like forced to take piano lessons at age seven by his parents he did not like it though so but he had never done anything else with music okay but he doesn’t just start wanting to listen to piano music he finds that he is hearing piano music in his head his brain and it is he’s hearing it crystal-clear and it’s new original music that he’s hears playing in his head really and then he figures out the composer that he can just sit down having no idea how to play the piano and not knowing how to read or write music but he can sit down and play what he hears in his head well he’s he it’s not he doesn’t have any I it’s not that he doesn’t have any idea he’s reacts essing and opening the valve from the seven year old but then applying some other part of the brain to it to just speak the language of music using his fingers it’s it’s unbelievable and he goes on to become I mean he what this guy does now is he he writes music he’s a musician here is is he like touring with Josh Groban or something I mean is this guy is playing an appropriately named lightning sonata this is in Vienna and you’ll notice right before he plays this I’m not I’m just gonna play you some of the music but right before he plays this he says I received this one from the other side so I can’t claim that I wrote it so from his perspective he’s got he has access to some musical dimension that he’s now accessing and then he’s just writing it and playing it so if somebody paid him will you keep the money or would he send it to the other side I don’t know I don’t know how you send money to that side I think he’d go back to the pay phone right [Music] okay I get it okay he’s good at the piano I get it you know you could have played anything on the pianos oh yeah okay you can play the piano good all right okay here’s the thing I love about this story now I know what to tell my kids when they don’t want to do their praiano practice you know Lily and Lincoln are both doing it because as a kid now I wish as a kid that I would have learned to play piano oh yeah like I I do that’s why that’s what kid of mine earlier because that’s something I wanted to give my kids that I the piano can translate it’s a great way to get into music yeah it translates yeah and you know I was over Lincoln shoulder trying to get him to practice the other night and getting really frustrated cuz I’m I’m so impatient and such a horrible teacher while I wasn’t teaching him I was just trying to get him to do what the teacher was telling him and it’s homework and now I have a story could be Lincoln you’re gonna thank me one day when you get struck by lightning when you’re calling your mama and all this is gonna come back to you and you’re gonna be even better at it than you are now it’s like it’s like it’s like a savings bond of concerto you know you put in a little ten-year-old version of the piano now in your brain and then it’ll grow up and 12 years from now when you get struck by lightning it will it will have mature yeah well it’s about you without you doing anything in your sleep and not just that we have to arrange that you know this is why this is really supports my long-held theory that there’s music and lightning bolts and that’s what we and all you got to do is find that high spot during a thunderstorm you know everybody wants to get down in the ditch everybody wants to be inside get under the tallest tree I mean go there you know if you want to become a master pianist right I hope for the record I hope that no one will actually do that I hope that people know that you think people know I’m being sarcastic if they do I hope they don’t write a letter or tell anyone that’s why and then they die right they can’t tell anyone don’t you didn’t get struck by lightning probably won’t become a mess pianist I’m uh it to me it’s if there was no point of reference for the piano that would just be or Mandarin like though it would just it would be mind-blowing but it I just wouldn’t believe it it’s yeah I mean is there’s a little incredibly cool it’s it’s almost on a brain mechanical level it this is more fascinating because right you know just enough to know it’s not magic mad it’s not magic that it’s it’s in there right and it incubates and but when it and when it manifests itself it’s to a savant level well and this is this guy’s been studied Tony’s been studied by a Columbia University neurologist Oliver Sacks whose conclusion is I cannot provide an exact medical explanation for the course condition yeah I mean isn’t that it’s just fascinating that there’s just so much that we don’t know there’s so much that we don’t know but I definitely feel like these cases in which again we were talking to Kevin who held research for this episode who said that there’s only about 25 cases of this thing happening in the world so we’re just experiencing the very beginning of this thing but there’s absolutely no doubt that a hundred two hundred years from now whether it’s through nanotechnology or just some injection that you’ll be able to rewire your brain to access some new level of potential that whole Lucy movie and that whole like what’s the one with Bradley Cooper limitless that hold that all that’s totally legit man that it may be not exactly like it happened but it’s gonna happen and you know what remind me I want to come back to this at the end but just the thought about our brains and how we view technology outside of our brains that come back to that okay right now we got to take a quick break from these brain stories and tell you about something else that requires a lot of brainpower building a website Rhett named a profession my mind needs websites man Miley mobs needs websites do you know you know of mimes websites yeah mimes no I don’t personally frequent mime websites but I’m just trying to make the point that everybody needs a website could use an occupation that doesn’t speak and just uses really do what mimes do they certainly need a website they need any help they can get to communicate but I could put some video on there of how you know this is me coming out of the box this is me stuck in the box this is me going down the stairs going up the stairs right portfolio website point made everyone needs a website Squarespace provides simple powerful and beautiful websites that look professionally designed regardless of your skill level no coding required and not only does Squarespace provides you with an intuitive and easy way to use tools to create your website but your site will be secure and stable Squarespace is easy and simple they give you 24/7 online support and a beautiful website for only $8 a month you can even get a free domain if you by Squarespace for the year so begin a trial with no credit card required and start building your website today y’all when you decide to sign up make sure to use offer code biscuits to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support of the show offer code biscuits 10% off Squarespace and thanks to Squarespace for their support of air biscuit Squarespace build it beautiful I also want to thank our other sponsor audible.com this I’m totally serious here you’re audible.com has revolutionized the way that I consume books because I’m the kind of person well yeah you used to do it with your eyes now you do it with your ears no because here’s the deal I and the kind of person who loves the idea of reading books but never gets around to actually reading them nearly as much as I like the idea of it but now that I’ve started listening to books I’m actually I’m gonna say that I’m reading the books I am consuming the books I’m learning the things that are in the books and I do a lot of this while I’m driving and it’s much better than those thing I see people doing you know the people who are like reading a novel and they’re holding it up in front of their freaking steering wheel I’ve actually seen this yeah yes people are still doing that and they could just be listening to the book it’s crazy I’ve gone through a more books in the past two months as I’ve been using audible than I have in the previous you know two years easily it’s almost like getting hit getting hit in the head mm yeah that’s a great well you know I’ve been haven’t you listened to a book over 180,000 titles so you’ll find something that will keep your attention the audible app is free and works on iPhones iPad Android and Windows Phone you can also download and listen on your Kindle Fire and over 500 mp3 players a 500 mp3 players are there 500 different types of it is the only one I can hang out with unlike streaming a rental service with audible you own the books you can access your books anytime anywhere right from your smartphone audible.com also has the great listen guarantee if you decide you don’t like the book you chose hey no worries you can exchange any book you aren’t happy with for any other title any time no questions asked also as a special for ear biscuits listeners audible.com is offering a free audio book of your choice and a free 30-day trial membership go to audible.com slash rhett and Link today to start your free trial again show your support for ear biscuits and get a free audiobook in 30-day trial at audible.com audible.com slash rhett and Link that is a indie spelled out not to ampersand that won’t work all right back into this biscuit Jason Padgett is the name of a guy that we went to high school I’m gonna say that sounds like somebody had to high school with but as it turns out there’s another Jason Padgett in Tacoma Washington oh we did not judge it yes big guy real big like muscular I was thinking Jason Batson no Jason Batson was was a different guy different name Jason Padgett we barely knew him but I hadn’t thought of his name until I’m but tell you about this guy who’s not him yeah so we shouldn’t even be talking to a guy but you know how when I’m sorry guys when you when the name comes up man I haven’t heard that name in a long time let me see if I can figure out who it is he’s a big guy I don’t you know you get hung up Yeah right my brain won’t let me let go of this but now we’re gonna shut down the old Jason Padgett part of the brain open up the new Jason bedroom yes we’re gonna Express is a savant alright this dude is a furniture salesman in Tacoma Washington in 2002 two men savagely attack him outside of a karaoke bar before robbing him who’s gonna that’s rough that’s it’s cold someone’s been at a karaoke bar nice singing islands in the stream in the background you’re getting your head in that’s horrible they hit him over the head from behind and left him with a severe concussion and post-traumatic stress disorder I mean it’s bad I mean and he had been doing karaoke like you likely don’t work well no sometimes you come off a good karaoke run I mean sometimes I’ve really nailed it a few times right the incident also turned Jason Padgett the one that we didn’t go to high school with into a mathematical genius who now sees the world through fractals what is it yes this guy’s like the poster child for turning lemons into lemonade yeah I used to just be a guy who sold furniture was singing karaoke and got the crap beat out of me behind the karaoke bar and now I’m a mathematical genius who sees the world as fractals I mean what I I have a I know what a fractal looks like and but it makes no sense to me how do you see the world in fractals well I’ll tell you how he explains it first of all he said he back in school he always hated math but the injury unlocked the part of his brain that makes everything in his world appear to have a mathematical structure it’s like he has a superpower he sees in math that’s it’s like a filter over his eyes he said I see shapes and angles everywhere in real life from the geometry of a rainbow to fractals and water spiraling down a drain it’s just really beautiful well I hope it’s beautiful I want this guy to sell me furniture sounds like it would drive it drive me crazy no I mean he’s in awe of it this is a fractal couch I know you can’t tell but it’s a Miss fractals man he’s a sectional sofa is just full of fractals he just went back to his in my god and he’s just like stare furniture it likes it as if it’s the most beautiful thing you know I’ve never been on acid don’t plan on it but it seems like that’s what this guy would look like staring at a couch like it’s amazing well hopefully he can control a little bit better than that Barrett brogard a philosophy professor at the University of Miami scanned Paget’s brain so you got a philosophy got skin in his brain it showed significant activity in the left hemisphere hemisphere which we’re mathematical skills are known to reside so that makes sense his brain lit up mostly in the left parietal cortex I think I’m saying that right the area behind the crown of the head that is known to integrate information from different senses so I mean we have a little bit more information about this guy that okay there’s this integrate into information integration Center and mathematical skill center and it’s lighting up you know that that’s what you would expect to like this super electric degree that he can he’s tapped into this dormant area again where this resides and everyone like if I could find this place in your brain and stimulate it correctly correctly correct man simulators curricula I can’t speak while doing it but you’re speaking in fractals now you would seek couches you turn correctly into correctly I like an amazing geometry teacher he started sketching but but the stuff that he was the stuff that he was seen he would sketch like circles made of overlapping triangles and he began to understand the concept of Pi in like a mind-blowing way he didn’t have any formal understanding to interpret the drawings that he himself was making he had he was just make me just do it making the drawings out of instinct a physicist happened to walk by him in a mall dude was Jason was just sitting in a mall sketching things that he was seeing furniture a physicist walk there’s a chair here’s a loveseat and he’s like oh that’s he you know he strikes up a conversation and says dude you need to get mathematical training because the stuff you’re drawing is amazing and when you look at it it’s like it’s like looking at us like reline drawings that you could see in a kaleidoscope like perfectly geometric drafting table level precision drawing like something you see a 3d program yeah Euler this guy’s just drawing them out of instinct and and now he’s just he’s a sophomore in school as an aspiring I can’t speak anymore notice like my brain is so overwhelmed with this knowledge that shutting it then maybe my Language Center is shutting down butts and I’m happening room for something else that has nothing to do with I’m anticipating I’m so anxious as to what it might be he’s an aspiring number theorist and he’s like being trained to do it and he loves it this is it’s not resonating with the new brain that he’s got but this this concept of the kind of word that this doctor used was that there was a dormant part of his brain yeah that we potentially have it just makes me wonder why why what why is that there and what do you mean by dormant is this a part of the brain that was used at some point in the history of our ancestors you know way way back like a part you know how your brain has different layers that you have in common with you know other life-forms and it’s like you access different parts depending on certain emotions or certain things you’re doing wait is this part of his brain that he now has access to that we probably have in our brain but we don’t have access to it what is that what does that mean well right I’ll tell you exactly what it means no I mean of course I don’t know I mean that’s the fascinating thing is that even the people who know are we’re still are still guessing and having making analogies and it’s like space exploration well did you see did you see that movie Lucy with Scarlett Johansson no so not a great movie just say right up front not a great movie I saw the one where she was just the voice her witch locked feet was a current movie but in Lucy which also had Morgan Freeman in it she is the subject of some I came from exactly how it happens where there’s like something she takes or something the way she’s operated on I can’t remember but she basically gains access to her entire birth the entire usage of her brain and it’s based on the whole 10% of the brain you know we don’t use but 10% of our brain at a time or whatever that old thing was the idea of being able to access every part of your brain she becomes just this amazing being who can do all this stuff that seems supernatural and beyond just being really smart and just she’s doing all kinds of weird stuff but that idea this kind of gives credence to that it’s a question of is it is it a hidden secret that’s been that’s been placed within the brain to be unlocked or is it the byproduct of biological processes that just happens to be advantageous or we’re on the precipice of unlocking it if we just hit our noggins right well is there some analogy and in like machines or computers that we use in in like oK you’ve got in an oven or a microwave or a blender and you drop the blender and all of a sudden there’s like a new setting on the blender that does just happen you know you drop a blender and like all of a sudden you can’t chop anymore it it isn’t like you can now you can like dice things but that you couldn’t do before well how things because it’s not a living beam it is a little point that out well and it doesn’t have a brain and doesn’t have a brain that has a lot of listed plasticity and the ability to just you know brains are we don’t understand on they’re malleable there’s just so much potential in them we’re not blenders link that’s that’s the conclusion we’re not blenders but maybe if we put our brains into a blender maybe that’s maybe that’s what we need to do well you first okay on with the amazing things that have happened to people Orlando Serrell in 1979 he’s 10 years old he’s playing a baseball game with his friends he runs the first base the baseball is thrown in his direction strikes him on the left side of the head I knew that was gonna happen he falls at the ground stays there for a while unconscious then he gets up and starts playing baseball again he walked it off ok but since that injury Orlando can tell you the day of the week and the weather on every date after this accident ok I understand so he’s a weather man so if you say orlando june 19 1998 almost immediately he doesn’t like even look like he’s thinking he just looks like you asked me a question and now i’m giving you an answer he’ll say Friday sunny it was a Friday I don’t know what the weather was ok can I point out that how would anyone check this the accuracy of this well it well it’s been it has been checked I actually saw this guy in a disco ball Discovery Channel talk to him no he was not at a booth I saw him on a Discovery Channel documentary he’s also been on Dateline NBC or they they visited him and they demonstrated this he can also remember some details about the things that he did that day like oh I ordered a pizza with pepperoni and sausage on that day but he says that he’s not remembering it he’s when you give him a date it’s like he’s reading it he says he can see the details right in front of him just like on it like he’s accessing information from a screen Wow now this is he’s not thinking this is fascinating but it’s also sad because so what you know it’s like what good help you I’m trying to I’m trying to help the guy I’m like how could it this is rich is like I get you on television get you on it gets you’d be a subject matter on your biscuits I know that’s not bad about that he’s like a very specific he’s just a database I mean he’s a weather database but you know sometimes I think about weather database I yeah but yeah I don’t when you have Orlando as a friend you never go to weather calm but he can’t tell you the next that you can’t tell you tomorrow’s weather so I guess you still know since when have you gone to any where to ask for when the weather was what was the weather has I don’t know Farmers Almanac Minh is an anti weatherman he’s a negative weatherman I think it’s like the Farmers Almanac he can predict the next year pretty accurately but I could always just go based on historical data so daylight NBC invites Orlando to Columbia University in New York to perform a functional MRI test on his brain so I want to see what lights up during the procedure they videotaped Orlando undergoing undergoing the MRI and then use it to compare his brain functions to that of normal people so they asking questions about dates in the past you know same thing like June 19th 1998 and the control group when you ask them about the weather of a day in the past their responses so what I I don’t know why you know who cares and he is told to only think about the answers but not say them out loud here’s what they find it’s really fascinating in addition to using the part of the brain that normal people would use for computation Orlando was also using the limbic area of the brain which is associated with emotion okay but dr. Hirsh who was the doctor who was doing this concluded based on the scans at Orlando is not using the memory part of his brain when calculating the weekdays he’s using emotions basically I think the answer is we don’t know what he’s doing but he’s using his brain in a way that normal people don’t he’s not doing something better because me and you if you ask us a date we’d have to like get out we’d have to it would take me an hour to do a bunch of math and to like dried it all out to like just go back to like you know three months ago to figure out what day of the week something was mm-hmm he’s not doing that he’s doing it alternate processing time yeah he’s not moving through computations quite faster he’s doing he’s accessing the information immediately using a combination of the compute the computation part of his brain and the emotional part of his brain they basically don’t really understand what’s going on he was able to observe that it’s different here’s what I want to know how they discovered this you know it’s probably not just he can tell you the web with the day of the week and what the weather was it’s probably more generic than that or more general there’s other things he can remember like you said he can remember it’s not just oh he he’s there’s some special unlocked valve in like the weather day data bank no big rain yeah it’s it’s probably more broad than that he can remember other things but that’s just how it’s being packaged for Dateline and for us well it’s like I think well it’s it’s like he’s constantly playing a recorder that he can immediately access the information but the thing the minute waiting it records is the day in the weather yeah it’s like his brain is doing something totally different it’s like his brain became a different tool than what a typical brain would be so but the fascinating thing is is it’s obviously this isn’t a it’s an amazing thing but I agree with you that it’s a relatively useless thing it’s amazing that it happened but let’s just say the principle is you know getting hit in the side of the head with a baseball in the perfect way when you’re 10 years old can unlock something fascinating if you could unlock some powerful memory technique what would it be like you know what if it was every song I’ve ever listened to I don’t know all that I’m that that would be awesome and talk let’s talk about karaoke you know I mean all of a sudden you gain there that is very useful there sports people who know all that kind of data I don’t know I don’t know what I would know trying to come up with something ultra useful not something just ultra cool and I think I would want the ability to read a book and be able to access all the fall the facts on them you’re a lot better at retaining information and I am so I feel like if only one of us can get this has got to be me like I’m really hurting for this like I need this one so that’s a good one or you take it now but you know another useful memory skill you know how when something happens to you and then into settings to everybody and then you want it to sit down and tell the story and you can’t quite get everything right being able to remember exactly how something happened to you like almost for the sake of like telling a funny story at a party only a witness stand yeah that was also be that would be just being able to remember detailed events with great accuracy I’d be I get hit in the head with a golf ball for that it’s it’s difficult when you can’t apply to other people’s situations like I’d much rather be you know if it only applies the things you’ve experienced you can’t help with so many people but if you know a lot of things you could help out other people let me tell you about this this guy that I’m really interested in because I would much rather have what this guy has okay Alonzo Clements from Boulder Colorado was always good with his hands at the age of two he could sculpt and mold play-doh for hours at a time but when he was three years old he fell down and sustained a serious head injury okay changed his life forever he was four years he was unable to speak tie his shoes even dress himself doctor said he had an IQ of 40 well to this day Alonzo I mean he’s made tremendous strides in terms of his quality of life but he still can’t read because that part of his brain it just won’t allow him to the the damage that he suffered however if you put a piece of clay in his hands you will be amazed what this guy can do with it he there is a genius part of his brain that’s been unlocked to sculpt things he can look at any animal a horse a dolphin a bullet giraffe name it just a few moments and then using only his hands in clay he can create an insanely detailed three-dimensional replica out of clay or wax like perfect um this is not like a work of art like oh that looks cool an approximation of a horse this is a perfect proportional rendering anatomically correct externally he doesn’t get the organs inside right just like from the look it’s like perfectly super realistic sculpture of anything the images in his mind are the only thing he uses for for reference like he’ll look at a horse once if you like I saw footage of him like outside of a horse stable and he’s like sculpting a horse but he’s not looking at the horse he looked at the horse for a sec got it I got any horse Yun it’s like a 3d printer this guy is a 3d printer he is a human 3d printer that’s exactly what I need one made this guy the images inter- only clay though in his mind are so accurate he even Incan sculpt in the dark without even looking at what his hands are doing from here it’s just all by feel that’s what they say man for years his work was only based on photographs so his sculptures didn’t have as much dimension because he didn’t he only saw the the pictures but then he started going to zoos horan horse stables like people would take in the manimals and then he was like spitting out like a 3d image you’re exactly right this guy would be like the ultimate zoo companion you know the corner yeah every guy’s yeah I did I’m a big on the zoo it’s always a disappointment there all the animals are always hiding you need a sculpture so be like listen man I know that the Lions are gonna be back there sleeping behind the rock but so when we get there can you just like sculpt one he is it’s not even that he is able to do it he’s compelled to do it like he can’t help do help but do it that’s it’s like so strong of an urge and some of that like neurological explanations I’ve read have said things they’ve described it as this we all have this ability but that for for most people it’s overwritten by complex speech abilities that have been erased for Alonzo and it kind of exposed something so it you know I don’t know why they say this but they describe it as something that’s been exposed or opened up not something that’s been created by trauma again you’re saying that we could do this if we could only access that part of the brain yeah savants like Alonzo can store information in their memories just like regular people do but unlike most of us they can retrieve incredible amounts of information from a very strong small range like spatial data he can retrieve it just like the piano guy can retrieve details or the weather guy can retrieve that those specific details it’s did you sell this stuff they sell a website yeah he has a website Alonzo Clemens CL e mo NS dot-com like he’s selling like a hippo mama and a hippo baby for $1,200 oh wow this is all like bronze stuff it’s not cheap but it’s super inspiring I got you know the videos online if you just search his name they’re very inspirational so yeah I mean he’s he demonstrates his sculpting at schools to help inspire children and he’s also had a hobby as a power lifter and was in the Special Olympics for doing powerlifting dudes amazing thing here’s the thing in general I mean the brain so fascinating this kind of has given us a window into oh yeah if you want to call it the untapped potential okay you know I the mystery that is our brain is so fascinating so amazing so enthralling what we we look at technology and we’re like oh I gotta have that next thing that’s amazing that now we’ve created that thing but this has given me an appreciation for this device that is nestled under our everybody’s skull like we all have this device that’s so mysterious and so amazing and untapped and unfathomable to a lot of degree inexplicable that we’re cute we’re just carrying it around on the top of this so what I’m gonna do heap of daunting human Matt walk walk alert walker thing well inside the Walker thing in order to get to the but it’s right up here we all have it and all we gotta do is push real hard while we’re using the bathroom get struck by lightning don’t wear a helmet while playing baseball don’t wear your seatbelt while driving car what other things what other things yes sir or just just fall over and aggressively all just fall if it were only that easy right well I mean I really think about I mean growing up the huge televisions we had in the 80s and if it didn’t work what would you do you go up to the side of it and you’d hit it yeah and it worked like even in Mad Men in the last season I don’t know if you remember that but there’s that moment where I can’t remember which character it was goes up and hits the side of the television and that’s one of the things I love about men man is that it triggers these memories you can’t do that to a television anymore cuz because this it’s too thin you don’t want to hit the screen you need a box they need to bring the box back so you can just really hit it that’s because it wasn’t I mean I’m not gonna even say why cuz I don’t know but had something to do with the tube but you know it’s I I’m not gonna say well I’m gonna try really hard to unlock this potential but it’s just knowing that I have this thing up there that’s it’s like carrying around like the depths of the ocean or the depths of space long between my ears plumb the depths between your ears that’s that’s the motto but I’m using your plumbing analogy of us I’m bringing out our motto I’m bringing it full circle plumb the depths between your ears I don’t know if that means you know put more stuff in there – Utley don’t think it means don’t wear a helmet but I don’t know just sit around and wait for the nanotechnology pill that’ll make all this easy I hope you’ve been fascinated I hope you’ve been inspired to appreciate and begin to plumb the depths between your ears today on this ear basically please do that let us know what you think tweet at us use your brain at rhettandlink has tagged ear biscuits to access the emotional and computational and memory parts of your brain and access that part of the brain turn it into language it could be Mandarin it could be English you can make a sculpture of what you think that we look like right now while we’re doing this take an Instagram whatever do it plumb the depths between your ears must be catch you next week [Music] [Music]