Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowWhat if you could take a pill, an injection, or a series of substances to make you fundamentally smarter? To gift yourself with eidetic memory, superior reasoning skills, and higher cognitive function? In the second part of this continuing series, Ben, Matt and Noel explore the bleeding edge science, grifts and innovation within the world of nootropics -- better known as 'smart drugs.'
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Pauled, Mission controlled decand most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. We are returned. We are made whole stuff.
That don't want you to know. The return.
Yes, please do call it a comeback forget ll cool Jay. Here's a question to start tonight. Who doesn't want to be more intelligent? Do you think anybody would a local question? Yeah, on this question, who who would ever be given the opportunity to say have an intuitive grasp of quantum mechanics and respond by saying, nah, I'm good.
Maybe it's not your thing, I think there could be, or just maybe it's too much power, too much pressure to know all these things about the universe.
I give it a pass.
I totally see what you mean. Like I think, I think overall everybody would love having a little more of an edge on whatever it is they're doing, right, whatever it is is making them money or making their family prosperous in the future of that kind of thing, Well.
That's more general. I'm talking about quantum mechanics specific, but yeah, I.
Mean, well, yeah, or even that superpower level kind of thing, right, We've seen that associated with super human movies, right.
Sure, Limitless for instance, is.
That the one where He's limitless?
Yeah, I'm gonna make that joke every time it's from the office, but I love that.
But there is something to this I think that we should ponder as we go throughout. Often some of the most genius human beings that have lived ride that line between madness and genius, right where maybe knowing more and more and more could make you either more depressed or you know what I mean, that's absolutely true.
All right, Yeah, no, I hear you.
I think it's a balance.
I don't know.
Yeah, I mean it's sort of the more money, more problems, or the intellectual or spiritual version of that, like, the more you know, the more problems you see, then the more.
Like insane things make you because you know what's possible.
You know, the more complicated everything becomes.
In real time.
The more you know, the more you know, and those are not necessarily a good end result. Right, so we arrive at this question. It's funny, this kind of idea of a Faustian bargain. Uh, the majority of human beings, I will posit would, up to a certain level, make some sacrifices for the idea of easily acquired acumen, expertise, or knowledge. You know, if someone said, Uh, if someone said, would you would you give up the ability to speak aloud if it made you good at math? Not everyone would say yes. But if if they said, if they said, for instance, would you sacrifice your left pinky toe to any instrument? Because at least.
Important to yeah, the instruments that require the use of your left pinky toes.
That's where the monkeys has a finger curled out tonight. In tonight's episode, we are continuing conspiratorial exploration of a very controversial thing known as the modern dietary supplement industry, and we are focusing on this idea of improving a thing people still can't define the nature of intelligence, the idea that the ingestion of certain substances can improve the function of your brain. Right now, these things collectively are known as new tropics in oo tropics. Get ready, folks, it's a weird one. Here are the facts, all right. People have always been trying to sort of get better, right, or get good as we say, in the world of gaming.
Man, I had a really fun conversation with our buddy Frank the other day about how like the human ear or like the human hearing abilities is represented by a certain range, and he positive that what if there were a thing you could do to make your brain perceive a larg arger range of sound, Like is it a question of the equipments, you know, limitations, or is it a question of the programmings limitations like firmware updates, you know, on a piece of hardware.
I don't know the answer.
I do think maybe the human ear mechanics is limited to a certain age.
There are other things that maybe we have the abil.
The potential to be able to do, but there's not the programming, not the you know, the software ware.
Well yeah, that's because the brain is in a lot of ways, it is hardware, right, but it is software based. Because if you think of language and all of these things, we'll get into it. Because the language hasn't always been around, right, Humans have been around for a long time, and they've been trying to improve since they started, since we started.
I'm a fan of man hashtag new Devil's Advocate. I am a fan of the human.
Strive, you know, Like I thought you said, I'm a fan of man, like I like the soft drink Fana the best.
That's my best. I thought you were doing a thing. But I'm a fan of man as well.
Who you carry those bricks for, Kevin. Human history has been a study and self improvement since the first time they domesticated fire, and we got to get this out of the way. Modern humans, to your point, Matt, predate what we recognize as documented history, Like you go back far enough so the average Like if you're listening to this and you're human, then your Homo sapien Esque or whatever early mixtape it goes back to. It goes back to three hundred thousand years or so, basically, and documented human society is a very small portion of that. So a great deal of human invention, innovation, trial and error. It is lost, it is gone, It is restricted to myth and legend. If you look back post by cameral mind argument, then we'll see that the human ancestors were just as intelligent as the modern humans today, and people still don't know what intelligence is. Like it's easy for us to look back in twenty twenty four with the benefit of retrospect, and we have to realize that as you are listening to this now, you are standing on the shoulders of ancestors, the vast majority of whom are dead. And all the modern benefits, all the things that make humans seem quote unquote smarter, now they're a result of a lot of people screwing up, you know, and maybe one out of just cocktail math here, maybe one out of one hundred thousand figured out something cool.
I guess that's part of my question or my point maybe is like about the nature of human physiology over time, Like certainly we've developed parts of our brains that over time have gotten bigger, you know, because of certain tasks we no longer had to do, and then parts of the brain that no longer need to do that thing can evolve to do another thing, and etc. So I mean, I'm not a brain scientist, but I know that there are studies that look at the development and the evolution of the human brain. But the majority of that stuff is caused by ideas and exchanges of ideas and concepts and things that are learned behaviors.
Right, the modern human benefits from things like better control over the environment, better access to education, progress towards the eternal struggle for sanitation and public health. Like you know, let's be honest, if you were hearing this now, fellow conspiracy realist, please please understand, you would not be some crazy, awesome wizard if you traveled back in time. And that's not a ding on an anybody. It's just noting that most of us today as individuals do not understand the breakthroughs from which we benefit. We would be hard put to replicate those breakthroughs and innovations if we like, if you travel back before the invention of steel.
Do you know how to do that?
Do you know how to make steel? Right? I mean, I think we just civilization maybe looks down or looks as scance on people of the past. And it's especially rich when we understand we do not have actionable definitions for intelligence or consciousness. We do know some people appear to have knacks for certain genres. We could call them of intellect, Like some people have innate musical talent right now, as you're listening, We're very privileg to have some real titans here. Like, no, Matt, I'm not blowing smoke. You guys are incredibly talented musicians. You're super good at it to a level that not everybody can attain realistically.
Even that's a nature nurture question too, because I mean, I grew up with musician parents and I was constantly surrounded by it. But I mean, I don't know your situation, but you know you certainly made choices early on to improve those abilities. Maybe you had some of it innate, but then you got good at it by repetition and by like being in the jazz band and then playing drums and being in bands and stuff.
Right, Yeah, a lot of those kinds of skills end up being, like you said, a choice to improve. But I I would just say, anybody who is skilled in those things deals with the same things that are also innate to all these humans that follow that trail all the way back. Things like boredom, like mental boredom, physical stress, and like being tired, right, and like being exhausted and worn out, and all of the things that you know, we could if we could improve right, not getting bored, not getting tired, those kinds of things that you could use drugs for. There could be major, major benefits to anyone's trying to improve in one thing or another, whether that's music or you know, understanding mathematics more or whatever the pursuit is.
Yeah, great point, Matt. Also, some people seem to intuitively understand math. In colloquial I guess Western society they call it having a knack for a thing. We also know the human animal is out of all the animals living. The human animal is the thing that said, I don't have to spend millions of years evolving and create tools. The human is the great artificer. The human says, I will build things to better my experience. The human is the machine that seeks to hack evolution. It is a machine that is built to improve upon itself, which hadn't happened before improvable history. And you know, humans have spent a lot of time on this endeavor, on this hustle. You know, there are efforts like eugenetics, which is problematic deep stain or racism and pseudoscience, and then there's stuff like you know, humans always figure out how to do more with less remote work is an example of that. Drone warfare and mass surveillance are examples of that. Social media manipulation, certain chemical substances. Humans love a chemical substance. They're not alone in that one. Dolphins get high, you know, elephants get drunk.
Is.
Humans are figuring out some really weird stuff.
Yeah, Speaking of the music side of things, I actually had a really interesting interview when I was traveling into this music festival and these two really incredible producers, Guy ag Cook and the sud goes By Sego Bodego. We're having this really cool conversation about their creative process.
And Sego Bodega, who's.
This uh thing, he's Irish producer whose name, real name I don't remember. He was saying, like, you know, a lot of what inspires him as this idea of why do we have to sleep? Like the question of why can I supply myself with all the nutrients that I need to subsist and be supposedly, you know, have enough death of calories or whatever to keep me going, and yet no matter what, eventually, inevitably I am going to have to sleep. And people take drugs like amphetamines and uppers and even energy drinks to try to not sleep as long as possible, but inevitably that bill comes due and the human machine to power down at some point. So that's the whole limitless idea is what if we could do something like get rid of the need to sleep entirely.
Think about how much more productive we'd be, you know?
Or if you could remember absolutely everything that you read?
Yeah? Right?
Can you? Can you take a substance that gives you a more photographic memory?
Ah?
And here we get to the crux of it. We're not talking about substances like LSD or you know, synaesthesia producing whose synogenics. We're not talking about recreational drugs. It might alter your mind state in an enjoyable way that makes you maybe feel a little better at things than you actually are. We're talking about a group of compounds that could, in theory, make that you a better you, higher executive functions like you're talking about matt better attention, better listening skills, and ability to focus, to retain, to synthesize information, perhaps even onto the idea of ediotic or graphic memory. This brings us to new tropics and attempt to fix processes or improved processes the humans do not yet fully understand. So tonight's question, can a pill really make you limitless? Will pause for a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. I guess it defined. I guess it depends on what we mean by fix fix.
Yeah, we have seen new tropics defined as in a bunch of different ways. We've got a couple here that it's pretty much what been described right before we went to the break. These are substances, an umbrella term for substances that purport to boost creativity and memory and cognitive abilities of all sorts, any brain function basically, or anything you could tie to your brain having power over whatever it is. New tropics might and probably would fit under that. And they're supplements, by the way. They they're not drugs. There's some of them, there are few, but most of them are just supplements you get over the counter.
Yeah, the question is, uh, what the question? People miss In a lot of these excited pieces of ad copy and these weird Silicon Valley ted talks, they're conflating cognitive function, which we do understand, with intelligence, which we do not. Cognitive function is best to find as a series of distinct abilities and the measure of those abilities in your brain. So new tropics are often called on the street. Smart drugs are memory enhancing substances or cognitive in answers. I would like to give a very special shout out to our long running shadow producer. One of my favorite new tropics caffeine.
Yeah, okay, wait really so yeah. When I'm talking about like the ability to stave off sleep or to sharpen our mental acuity a little bit, I guess my initial go to is something like caffeine or nicotine or you know, cocaine. You know, I mean stuff that like like the soldiers would take so they could go, go go and like never have to back down.
Right, Yeah, it's always a blitz, right, it's always Halloween in America.
Well, and for me, jumping in with caffeine is stuff like vitamin B six and B twelve, nice riboflavin. I'm not really sure why.
Tarn hauene would be another ye.
Chromium that sound dangerous?
Could you shoot some chromium right into my neck? It sounds like apptop. You know B twelve people get that, like, you know, touring bands for example, like rock and roll lifestyle, Right, they'll have a doctor on staff that'll shoot their ass up full of B twelve when they're flagging a little bit.
Scientology will force you to ingest superhuman amounts of niocin. Also, uh, the active I think the real kick people get from things like five hour energy drink is a composition of vitamin bees and vitamin bees. Makes me think of ingesting just bees. These folks don't eat bees. Let them make the honey.
Eat the honey. That's very unpleasant thought bees called me in the morning. You never it might sting a little going down, but I promise it's worth it perfect.
Uh. Neo Tropics are Nootropics are again, as you were saying, Matt, they are a dangerously vague umbrella tur The term includes prescription medications, but also it also includes a lot of supplements that have no sort of oversight whatsoever. They are in general going to be called nootropics if they again purport to improve some aspect of your cognition, your thinking, your memory like Saint John's will make you in a good mood, et cetera, your attention, your creativity, your motivation. And we know that by far the most common nootropic substances are at this point stimulants and the ones that are prescription their FDA approved. The Federal Drug Administration in the United States is currently on board with a bevy of neotropics as long as they are aimed at improving attention DEFICI, hyperactivity disorder, and symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer's. Those are the only ones that are kind of real.
Yeah, if you want some amphetamine salts, you can get those if you get a prescription, which is harder and harder to get nowadays.
For like I would, but I keep napping, Matt Man, Chris slacking off, dude, get to it.
Get limitless every two hours, like you take twenty minutes or whatever.
It adds up, right, How people attempted things like that, or like there's like, you know, kind of hogwash lore about CEOs that only nap five minutes in the time or something like that.
Well, I know we dabbled in it, Ben, I think you went harder on the paint than I did. I tried for a little while back in the day doing that. I forget who we learned about. It was somebody really famous that we learned about. Did it pretty effectively.
Talking about polyphasic sleep.
Yeah, not for me.
Man, Genetically, I am one of the folks who doesn't doesn't jibe with the eight hour every twenty four hour formula. So you know, yeah, we'll see how it works out. But the only time will tell. Only time will tell.
Uh.
The issue is that outside of the prescribed stuff, outside of those you know, like the Adderalls, the Riddlins and so on, there are a lot of self proclaimed new tropics that make some pretty bold assertions and a lot of the Even though a lot of the prescribed stuff, a lot of the stuff the FDA and other regulatory bodies agree to, they still encounter what we'll call off label use. Maybe we talk a little bit about off label use, most famous example recently being no zembic.
I mean, I've had a lot of experience with off label use everything from like this is sort of a thing for this but it kind of works like a type to pressant.
It seems to be really positive for some users.
And you know, I think I've been open about the fact that I tried, like, what's a compounded version of one of those zepic.
Type drugs that it didn't work. Wasn't for me.
I read too much about it, and it freaked me out and I discontinued very quickly.
But I'm shocked.
I went through a period of sleeplessness many years ago where I had really bad insomnia and the doctor was more than willing to prescribe me something off label that would help with my insomnia.
It didn't at all, But it was shocking to google.
It and realize what it was originally for, and they seemed completely unrelated, and just I don't know, goes to show that it's really is kind of practicing medicine.
What are you loving?
Look at? Ben was given just this really interesting Oh I know, I know. I'm sorry you were so concerned about like like, oh my god.
Those pastors tried to judy you know.
That's the thing and I've talked about I recently talked about to like, you know, my father, institution of him being prescribed stuff off label for certain you know, psychologics.
I just don't care for it. It's like, that's what I'm getting at. It seems very improvisational. This is what I'm going is what I'm implying.
Yeah, it's medicine. The space for jazz Ooh.
Yes, maybe it moves to the beat of jazz.
It's a real cosmic gumbod.
I was just watching Rewatching the Righteous Gemstones, and there's a moment where Jesse Gemstone is like celebrating and he goes behind his desk and he's like, all right, baby, I'm a popin Adderall. But like as though it's just a drug that he has that he's not using for actually what he is supposed to be using it for. It's just he's going to celebrate with it.
I guess, yeah, yeah, Adderall, when you're here your family, Yeah, sorry, Adderall. Is also, of course, I love that we're alluding to this, the the historical weaponization of these substances in times of war, right, like methamphetamines obviously played a huge role in World War Two for sure and in later wars. And spoiler you don't have to write in if you don't want to, folks, but we have it on good authority. There are still some US Air Force and US Navy folks who are prescribed amphetamines for some long range.
Flights or something very similar.
Yeah, something not quite there, But these medications. When we're talking about off label, what we're saying is some of these stuff that is used to treat dementia and ADHD. It's improving a what is seen as a problem or a misstep. Yet in the off label use, these medications can also be used by healthy adults as an attempt to boost mental functioning beyond what they see as its normal baseline. We go to the history is nuts, all right. So there's a guy named c Georgia. Georgia pronunciations it's great, No, it does see Italian or Romanian. Perhaps it sounds like us saying Georgia the state with Georgia.
I'm a fan of mia from Georgia.
Who you're carrying all those bricks for Georgia. This guy's a Romanian chemist. He's a psychologist. He's often called the father of neotropics because he developed something called parasitam, one of the first known and proven cognition enhancing drugs. It's part of a group called race tam And this stuff is developed originally to treat motion sickness. Kind of like, how what was it? Viagra was originally meant as some sort of cardiovascular medication.
Well, yeah, it's about blood flow, life.
Flow, Yes, sir, improving it. Give me all the blood flow you got and.
Then damn it it up in one very.
At all these guys, all the people in those uh in those early studies who died, they died with the best boners of their lives. Uh.
If you want to use the scientific word pri episms, yes, like trotten that one out.
I like that word.
A troubling erection, a direction that lasts more than what is it.
Stats? I just do know that is the scientific word for a for a boner.
It's the boner that doesn't stop. It's the marathon.
Yeah, which again, you know a lot of people that don't have a rectile dysfunction take those pills as a sex enhancer, like it's a big thing. And in certain communities it's it's considered a party drug, you know, in a way it's like poppers and boner pills, y'all.
Huh do you like my erection selection? That quote? That's fair you can find it.
Yes, famous friend of the show, that Paul Rudd, connoisseur of erections. Also also young forever by the way he's getting into acting here, I love alright, So uh.
Neotropics ageless though, speaking of New tropics, was that guy got going on bathing and children or something?
Everything was a.
Rumor, I know, but I know it was.
But it's alright, it's you got some people though, how they just look young forever?
Is it just clean living? Is it, you know, genetics?
Is it a combination of the two or these people just have the best suit, secret spy doctors that are giving them all the good drugs behind the scenes.
Okay, come, and we can say that the etymology of new Tropic comes from the Greek. So this Romanian doctor figures out parasitam and says this is a whole new type of drug. The Greek word is noose for mind and trippyn for to bend. In other words, this literally translates to mind and drugs.
That's so cool.
So Georgia said that no tropic drugs should have these following particular qualities, these characteristics, and you're gonna hear a lot of the things we've already been talking about in this list, things like enhancing of ability to learn and memory, also enhancing the ability to I guess reject negative learned behaviors. So I guess this would be maybe in terms of like breaking addictions or you know, patterns of things that are you know, not beneficial to us as humans.
Yeah, breaking those also protecting the brain against various physical or chemical injuries, such that if you got a real wallop on your cranium, the new tropic could perhaps help you bounce back a bit better.
Whoa, And also chemical injuries. So it kind of reminds me of those specific PB pills that we learned about that were taken or at least given to soldiers to prevent neurological effects of neurotoxins.
It's an interesting and fascinating, if ambitious part of the classification. Also talking about the ethic increasing the mechanics of certain regions of the brain, different mechanisms like tonic cortical control mechanisms.
What the hell is that?
It's We're very fun at parties. Tonic cortical control is the idea that your brain can it can improve the self regulation of certain things while other chemicals intrude into your.
Usual program, So maintaining stasis in the face of uh, maybe outside stimuli, right then maybe yeah, in drug form even right.
They should also yeah, to your point, no, they should also not include the adverse effects of other established what we call psychotropic substances.
Wait a minute, they should be all good, positive stuff that makes you better with none of the side effects. This sounds made up, guys, I don't know. I think there is usually a push pull in these things. If you, you know, get improvement in one thing, then something's coming down the line to kick you in the pants later.
I don't absolutely not.
I don't mean to pooh pooh this stuff, but it does feel a little too good to be true. That's how I feel about the hole ozempic thing. And you're starting to hear it with people that are like, oh no, and now my stomach's digesting itself and I can't eat cupcakes anymore or else like, you know, want to vomit wildly. That's a side effect, y'all. I hate to tell you that is a side effect.
And just to point out here, it's listed that sedation as in, you know, a lot of the actual over the counter substances that we get prescribed will make you a little more sedate in order to do something like improve your body's ability to repair itself or fight off infections or things like that, right, or motor stimulation adderall caffeine, you know, all these other drugs that would be kind of considered nootropics at least have been considered Neotropics are gonna do that thing where maybe you're a little more jittery, or maybe your body is your heart is beating a little faster.
That's true. A great example, Prestem is not approved by the FDA here in the US, but in the United Kingdom it is a prescription drug primarily used for condition called mile clonus, which is a little twitchy, well like the muscle regular muscle twitching.
Wow, But yes, I mean that thing you're just describing, Matt.
You know, that dormant that you're making you a little sedate so that your body can go into sort of a standby mode and repair itself.
What does that remind you of a sleep? Maybe? You know it's another stand.
In for the nearly high road.
But I'm sorry, I thought you were going to say, like, just turn turn us off and then turn us back on.
Right, Yeah, yeah, three starts.
I mean even computers need it every now and again. That's where there's out the cobwebs.
That's where the blood flow medication comes in.
Right there we are, And so as we're noting this is original uh specific criteria, but the term new tropics now refers to three large groups uh entirely comprised of any quote natural or synthetic substance end quote that may have have a positive effect on mental skills. If you're looking for the three categories, they are dietary supplements, synthetic compounds, and prescription drugs. Favorite sponsor this show Just Rug, Just just drugs.
Brought to you by I think guys, I've got a now tagline for drugs.
Drugs. Just take them.
You know.
They're good for you.
Drugs doing real, useful, good rapid.
Ah.
Yes, yes, we're gonna pause for sponsors, and we've returned. So let's go to some of the experts. John Hopkins Medicine. You know they got a lot of offins ledagg heads. One of them Barry Gordon, I mean, MD, PhDs, the director of the Cognitive Neurology neuropsych Cology Division there.
Yeah, awesome, No, I'm joking. It's amazing. It's amazing. Smart people are amazing.
He strikes me as education is non intelligence. He strikes me as a very humble, very very well thought out dude. And he says, there is he said in a very diplomatic way. He advances the idea that this may be a bit of a gilded turd in some situations. He says, there's no strong evidence that supplements being sold now right, the first of our big three categories, there's no strong evidence that their supposed powers of efficacy are helpful. And he says further, there's not even a lot of science showing us that those are safe in the massive amounts in which they could be consumed. You know, like if you are if you are looking at provable, provable efficacy for these sorts of substances, then you are looking generally at things that are mitigating what we would call human cognitive dysfunctions treating ADHD. Right, if you don't have ADHD and you take adderall, then you're kind of taking speed.
Absolutely just infetamine salts. Maybe that's what they do.
Conjacks you up.
But I've always thought it was bizarre, mean to your point about off label stuff, right, Even that term to me disas to exist constantly.
With quote finkers.
But like, how come if you genuinely have this condition, this stuff calms you down, but if you don't, it just does the exact opposite. I've always found that fascinating and bizarre.
And here in the United States, new tropics are a lot like other dietary supplements. They seem to promise a great many things, but they don't have any consequences for lying to the customer. You know, it's not prescribed medicine. There's not formal testing nor verification by reputable independent entities. Just a few years ago, the FDA and the FTC said hey, everyone in the world, please watch out. There are frauds and scams afoot.
Yeah. I mean, just as we talked about with supplements before, the FDA will generally or you know, the FDA doesn't regulate right, but generally you can get away with putting whatever you want on your supplement as long as it's not crazy, right, as long as it's not super out there, and you can have a study, let's say, a clinical study that shows one particular component in your specific neotropic drug had some effect on some mice in one study at one time with brain cells. There were maybe mice brain cells that were taken out putting it into a petri dish. This substance, maybe amongst others, was applied to that Petrie dish and something good happened. So so Now what was it, Matt?
What was it? What could happen?
Well, there's an article in GQ written in twenty eighteen by this guy, Jay Willis that took a bunch of different new tropics and tried them all, and he just pointed out that you can you can write on these bottles or these packages stuff that sounds great, like improves memory, and just tie it in some way or another to some you know, one off study. And as we've learned in this show, one off studies generally don't mean jack unless you can do it over and over and over and over again.
Yeah, like longitudinal studies.
Yeah, studies.
Yes, No, it's true. It's it's basically like a sample size of one.
You know.
It's like, oh, if.
This it just I think you said it best, Matt. It absolutely, it's absolutely meaningless. But also a lot of these supplements, while they are regulated by the FDA, they don't receive the same scrutiny and need for like clinical trials and anything like that as something that would be prescribed. And in the United States, it feels like the line between those things sometimes really blurs too, because some of the stuff think is prescribed starts to feel a little more like pie in the sky, you know, kind of sorcery.
Right, yeah, Well, and if you don't have to label.
I'm gonna keep harping on that it means mad.
Well even if just think, if you don't have to do a double blind, placebo controlled study, then your substance. All it has to do is fifty percent of the time make somebody feel like their memory is better for shadow, right, sorry, as low.
As thirty percent.
Oh yeah, just if it has just an uptick a little bit in your whatever studies you did internally, then you're good to go write it on there and think about how much people want the stuff we've been talking about today.
Well, I'm so solution oi, And I'll tell you what if this startup, if this startup just needed me to only sleep two hours out of twenty four hours, then we would get all the venture funding capital we need.
Think about cocaine, So listen, he's gonna look kind of like an anthropomorphic sperm and have little Olympic rings around his tail and have giant cartoon eyes and oversized sneakers.
Sell it.
What about the torch.
The torch doesn't do flames.
It does stars.
We're so smart we're talking about the nineteen ninety six Olympic Atlanta mascot.
Oh yeah, and also they're giant robots, but they're also cars and they're aliens. It's gonna be awesome.
Well, I got a question. How many explosions are there? Let's up the explosions. Get the numbers up. So anyway, should be no surprise that new tropics are a cause celebrate in Silicon Valley new tech world overall. There was this great Atlantic article by Olga cousin credit where it's due, that has a profile of a guy who founded a company that distributes new tropics. It's called New True in oo tro of course, is really cute.
New tropics already sounds goofy as hell.
It sounds like, I don't know, it sounds like a cream or something you would put a rejuvenation rejuvenating cream.
Oh yeah, they they haven't sold the cream yet. But the topical application of neotropics is a very interesting field. You may be the first to post on this one.
Oh jeez, always on the cutting edge.
So Eric Motzner, he is, he's it's twenty eleven and he is running a one man startup. Basically, he's doing all the code. He's right, n ad copy, he's teaching himself. He's taking calls with you know, angel investors and whatnot. And by his own admission, he's dependent upon prescription amphetamines and then later anti narcolepsy drugs. And he has this moment, this revelation, Paul, can we get an epiphany? Sound perfect? He says, I don't need to just stay awake for longer. I need to be able to learn more quickly, to retain and to synthesize information.
Well like freaking about it.
Almost called him Johnny namonk like Neo in the matrix you know, or is that he knows kung fu.
Just download that right into my brain.
Yes, a way to help him instantly memorize and synthesize new information and furthermore, to encode that in long term memory. So Kazan notes that he switches to good old Georgio's hit Parasitam, and then he notices he says, look, my attention SPAN's improving, I'm better at listening, my reaction time is better, and so he starts going deep into like the wetwear biohacking forums. So we've talked about previously and he says, I want to make a better stack. A stack is the A stack is.
A full stack, baby.
A stack is what we call the regimen of substances that people ingest in an attempt to improve their cognitive function.
All this stuff really too makes me.
I know, it's highly influenced by the matrix and a lot of this kind of cyberpunk writing. But the game cyberpunk, you know, it's all about these implants and these wetwear and how can we you know, jack them up and add more implants to allow us to be limitless, you know, to have and only the wealthy can have the higher quality implants. They're always kicking the asses of the poor kids.
Yeah. It also goes back to the art and science of coding rights like coding, because if you think about the term stack in that realm.
It's what I was saying, full stack.
Yes, it's a.
Series of pieces of software you were going to use to build out.
Your code, exactly right.
And if we're thinking about these substances as literally changing our software to improve I guess our hardware, it makes so much sense.
So we were saying all this at the top of the I mean, it's absolutely yes, it's so interesting, terrifying, and then the whole gatekeeper aspect of it becomes part of the conversation.
Now, who can afford it? Who gets the best drugs.
It's becoming the case already with things like Ozeenpeic so expensive insurance won't pay for it. You're starting to see all these celebrities taking it, but like your average person that maybe are morbidly obese and could benefit health wise, not just aesthetically, can't afford it, or they don't have the right diagnosis to get insurance to pay for it.
It's just a tip of the iceberg with this kind of stuff.
Yes, agreed, unfortunately, and it does. Look when this guy launches New True he is motivating.
Sounds like he is.
Motivated by what he feels is his personal lived experience, and if you listen to the speeches he's made, if you read the interviews, he wants to bring this to the people. And twenty fourteen he launches this company, he relocates the San Francisco Home of great Ideas. Anyway, these businesses are operating in a gray area, and a lot of them obviously are being run in good faith. These folks are not necessarily trying to sell harmful snake oil or fake panaceas. But in this gray area between dietary supplements and prescription drugs, business is booming. It's a very young industry. It is no surprise that not all these claims up to scientific scrutiny.
Guys.
I have another good tagline for San Francisco. It's where ideas go to kill us All.
I like it?
Sorry, yeah, San Francisco. Can you believe it was on purpose?
Things about it that are cool? Boy is it been overrun?
And boy is it this like it's this gold rush on these kind of half baked, biotechy, implanty not you.
Know, AI kind of not fully thought out ideas. It's it, can I.
I want to be real with you, guys. I've never watched a documentary on San Francisco. I've never looked that deep into I guess.
The vitory of it as a city, well, the.
Major movement out there as Silicon Valley, right, I think of maybe maybe a little bit, but I can't recall any of it. I need some new tropics, guys. But it strikes me as a super interesting place because of the climate there, because of the weather there, it's a little bit colder, and especially when you're thinking about having giant server arrays or something where you don't have to spend so much money on all the cooling. I mean you do, but not in the same way as if you were in a giant you know, la great affection.
I don't think there's sweat in the air conditioning. Just yeah.
I think it's more about the marketplace of ideas for whatever reason, they converged there at some point. You know, because if you've ever watched that show Halt and Catch Fire, which is excellent, sort of like a fictionalized version with some real stuff thrown in alternate history, I guess there was a Silicon Valley of Texas.
It was the Silicon Prairie.
And then there was the Silicon Valley, you know, out in out west and and you know obviously how West one. But I don't really know either, Matt, what led to San Francisco be becoming such a ground zero for that. Maybe you have to having to do with the program at an institution. Then you think it'd be mit, you think it'd be somewhere like Boston, which also is a huge you know for that kind.
Of stuff with Boston dynamics and all of that.
I just need to learn more and I need a substance that will help me do.
It, Yes, or a substance that will help you feel that you are doing better at the thing.
I'll take it.
Yeah. There's a literature review in Nutrients, which is a great scholarly journal, and a literature review is just when well educated or well read on experts look at all the stuff and then say, what's the skinny. It's an executive summary, right, which tech bros love and I do want to say before we continue that I find Eric Matzner quite impressive. I think his mind is in the right place. I don't think he's trying to be a con man. It's important to remember that. But in this scholarly review in Nutrients, what they found is the evidence for long term safety and effectiveness of many things called new tropics science is just not there. It's not saying they're bad for you, it's saying we don't know whether they actually work. And this brings to mind the ever present implications of the placebo effect. You haven't thought about the implication placebo means placebo's means I will please. In Latin drugs that purport to treat a condition. The story of them is pretty interesting. The name comes from basically hiring people to pretend to be sad at funerals, and the mourners were fake, and the term then like it made you feel that your loved one was actually loved and was being grieved.
It makes you feel less weird about grieving openly.
Probably right now you are one of several what a good person has passed, and this eventually came to be applied to fake drugs.
Yeah.
And then there's the lesser known but equally and oppositely fascinating no cebo effect, which is a situation where a negative outcome happens because of belief that the drug or intervention will cause the negative outcome.
Irrelevant, I think it's interesting. Just woted to throw it in.
Just read The Secret, you'll get all of this.
And if you haven't read The Secret, you're not thinking in the right way to attract that book. It's a secret just to know about it anyway, So yes, Secret, the fight Club of metaphysics. Whatever. So I love your pointing out no cibo effect. Check out our earlier episode. Is the placebo effect getting stronger? What we know is that physicians do use placebos, typically in the form of vitamins that are not necessarily going to be bad for you in moderate amounts.
And literally just sugar, right or just.
Yeah, blue skypills, just sugar pills. We do know, going back to the earlier port, that placebos acquired what we would call a meta efficacy because in double blind studies they are useful for proving whether or not an actual drug works. Do we want to explain what the double blind study is.
It's kind of like the yeah, like the pepsi challenge, right basically, but give.
It to them with scientific terms.
Matt, Oh, well, yeah, you have a group of people that you're going to be testing this new drug on. You give half of them your actual drug, you give the other half sugar pills, let's say, and you don't tell anybody who's got the real drug. And then everybody reports their findings how this drug is making them feel. And you've got on your little secret list which which of these folks actually took the drug and those are the ones that you well, actually write it all down and then you have to compare right well, and.
It's you know, obviously an important method, but It also can suck because a lot of these things are clair trials where the people that apply to be part of the study really want the real drug, it's the one that could maybe cure their cancer or whatever, but they get the sugar pills, and that's that's the risk or the you know, the roll of the dice there. It's not inherently cruel, but the outcomes can be, you know, not great.
Well, yeah, it depends what you're testing.
But the band say, has never been a study of individuals.
Fair enough, It's very true, and it's also been a little cold, just in a way it has it has to be. But the whole point is, in those double blind tests, your substance has to beat that placebo effect, to beat that sugar pill by.
An order of magnitude, right, I mean like it's like, how do you even measure beating? I guess you're measuring lots of different metrics, and and you're comparing them all, and there's lots of different criteria for the comparison.
I'm sure.
And if it doesn't work out, just turn it into aspartame and put it in the.
SODA's corn syrup. Had yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, what if this engine oil is actually edible.
You know, we were doing this, we were doing this research on this medication. Everybody got a boner, even the placebo guys a priapism.
Wait what did you say?
You mean.
So we're gonna be billionaires? That is what you're saying.
Yes, yes, yes, And as many as one third of all people respond favorably to placebos when they don't know their placebos. And this proves to us most importantly that the mind is a drug all its own again, one of the first machines that seeks to actively improve itself. So we see the shadows of limitless, we see the shadows of flowers for Algernon. It is possible that people may be spending money on the chemical equivalent of monkey shines, but they feel different. They feel their memory is improving, and perhaps through the act of practicing memory right, perhaps through the cognitive exercise of using the mind, you are in fact improving. But you didn't need the magic pill. It's like that old story about the magic ballerina shoes. You know what I mean.
Oh yeah, that was one of my favorites growing up.
All right, Actually I don't know that one.
I don't either. I'm joking.
Well, the idea is this kid gets magic shoes and it turns out that the shoes weren't magic.
Yeah, okay, that old chestnut.
Got it, got it.
Well, I'm just saying, by simply repeating, repeatedly challenging the brain toward the accomplishment of mental exercises like puzzles, you improve your chances of avoiding certain types of cognitive decline. So if you were part of a test, right, if you're in a double blind study and you are taking the placebo, but part of the study is asking you to do puzzles, then by the nature of doing those puzzles, your name benefit, get the benefit, or get some sort of benefit.
Do you think that any of this applies to like superstitious rituals that people do where they like, you know, baseball players wear the same pair of socks because it makes them believe that they're going to be.
Better and therefore they are better.
Yes, yeah, I mean we need more science on it.
This is a science on that.
It's the pretty early stuff.
Yeah.
To be clear, I'm not saying we need to smell more baseball player socks.
Science.
That up science science. Oh this is for science, baby. But but we we do see certain substances do appear to make improvements in the way brains communicate, retaining, and synthesize information. However, we do not have a silver bullet for the humans like we don't We don't know what the ideal dosage is to mitigate dementia. We don't know. We don't know all the variables that are included in each little little recipe that is a human mind. It shows us there's an opportunity for grifters, but it shows us I think, pretty exciting and maybe maybe frightening horizon of possibility. Also, you know, it's like our earlier conversation about virtual reality. Humans are attempting to improve something that they don't fully understand from the beginning.
Exactly with the eyes stuff too, I mean, you know, and it's these young money obsessed whipper snappers in Silicon Valley that are the ones, you know, pushing that agenda on the rest of the world and like pushing that technology out there while fully acknowledging often that they don't understand where it's going, and having people encouraging them, counseling them, no, maybe pull back a little bit, not jump right down this rabbit hole yet and that's okay, Well we'll deal with the outcome later. You know, let's push it, kick the can down the road. It's another example of that.
Let's talk about one particular substance that was I think interesting to all of us, medophanol. I think is how you say it. This is this is the one where well, let's say the United States military and several other countries' militaries were using amphetamines to you know, what do they call them go pills and then the sleep. It was like uppers and downers. So when you're we talked about this before in one of our episodes where we talked about drugs and war. Amphetamines back in the day were to get you up when it was time to be on duty or be you know, in battle or something like that. Then you take the essentially a sleeping pill or a sedative to get you that downtime and sleep you need if you've only got let's say four hours six hours to be down before you have to go and do all that stuff again, or if you're a fighter pilot or flying a bomb plane, you know, halfway across the world to go drop bombs on somebody. They were using these drugs like amphetamines and sedatives. Let's say medophinil came in, and that was supposed to be the brand new thing that is not as addictive as an amphetamine would be, right, well, and it's but I mean theoretically it's supposed to be safer, and that's why it was developed.
Yeah, like oxycotton.
Uh, yes, say it's it's fine, it's not addictive, it's better, it's good, go ahead.
But it was a drug to treat other things. So we ben you you mentioned in the this I think we did. We talk about it in this episode already where it was for narcolepsy or it was one of those drugs that was to treat exactly.
Uh.
But then this thing took on a life of its own as basically the new amphetamine that militaries and only a few select militaries in countries still approve it and its use. But it's still there and pilots still use it, and it's still it's it's tried and tested basically in the minds of people who control a bunch of other human beings that are in militaries. What do you guys think about stuff like that where it's a drug that does seem to have positive effects. It does have negative.
Effects, limited positive effects.
It's a balancing act, as with anything.
And to your point about the go pills up or downer thing, all of that still doesn't replace sleep, does it. It makes you go, go go when you're up and maximize, but then you're jacked up at the end of the day still because you've taken all these you know, goofballs that you got to take something to be able to get down, you know, and you're you're essentially supplementing and replacing systems that already exist within you, and you're kind of causing your your whole you know, mechanics of your brain to go haywire.
But if you're a company that can synthesize a substance like this and then package it, give it a cool name, give it some cool advertising, then you are literally creating a billion dollar or billions dollar product.
Pressing money my friend.
Well, and you can just really see the as we talk about a ton on this show, the incentive for profit that exists here because it is fairly easy to say whatever you want if you're going the supplement route right and make a magic substance that's going to let everybody who sees your website or your YouTube ad or here's Alex Jones talk about you, or all the one the way, all of these different new tropics have been introduced to the world over the past what twenty years, I don't know. It seems like there's a ton of room for abuse.
Agreed. Here's the other question. If you could take a pill every day of your life and in doing so save yourself from native decline, would you do it?
I think that's a yes.
Uh, more more so than the astrophysics question you posited at the beginning of the episode. I mean, that's something anyone could get behind. But then does is that the fountain of youth?
Though?
Is that living forever or is it just going to.
Keep you from dying, you know, not knowing what the hell's going on because you've got dementia or like some extreme, you know, version of mental decline. I think anybody would want that for their loved ones. But then again, it becomes a matter of who gets it first and who stockpiles it. And if everyone gets it and everyone's living longer, maybe it's not going to cause a burden on you know, resources. There's all kinds of questions about this kind of stuff.
I don't know to Another question, especially in that maybe this is the future episode the idea of military weaponization of drugs. We've talked about it in the past and previous episodes. Question for the group of those of us playing a little at home as well, how often do you think that military medical professionals have been out of supplies and given someone a placebo?
That's an interesting question. I have no idea.
If you know they're gonna die and the actual drugs.
I see what you're saying. Yes, that's a good point.
Yeah, like why waste a morphine serrand if if you're if you know.
That's rough because they're part of that.
All these even in films, seems to be an act of humanity, you know, to to let your fellow man down easy, to let you know and not suffer in that final agonizing moment.
But in the case of these drugs, it's more about making sure that individual is alert enough to know where fire is coming from.
Right. You know, you're talking about raising awareness for limited time, the cost benefit ratio being that they the individual under the influence of those things will physiologically pay for it later if not cognitively. Yeah, and that still happens. That's a very good point. I'm glad you made it. The I think the most maddening question if you discovered something that could make any old Charlie Gordon Flowers from Algernon type into a Nikola Tesla, you know, even if just for a limited amount of time, even if it absolutely wrecked their brain within, you know, like over the long term, would you be allowed to propagate this to the public. Would you be allowed by the powers that be to put a genius drug out there knowing that it could up end civilization? It is just possible. As something like this exists. They're on the bleeding edge of science.
And if you want to do your own research, there's a great place to start. Definitely not the end all, be all location, but if you head on over to the New Tropics subreddit that's reddit dot com slash r slashno t R O p I c S, they've got a beginner's guide that lists out most of the known new tropics that are out there. It's not all of them, but it talks about stacking. As we mentioned this episode, which wants to try. We do not recommend anyone take drugs ever, but if you are interested in this stuff, especially the supplement side, that's a good place to begin your search.
Agreed.
And while you are online, we would love to hear your experiences. Full disclosure, Folks, Paul, Matt Nolan and I may have differing personal experiences with this kind of let's call it gray market field, but we do want to end with this. We are not medical professionals. As Matt said, do your own research. Your brain for now is your own. In the meantime, while you are online, we would love to hear from you. We would love your thoughts in lieu of beaming them directly to us. Now, I'm try transcreenally to TCDs. I am a huge fan of that as well as TMS. I love tgif in lieu of that, find us online while people still use their hands to type, you.
Can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist on Facebook or we have our Facebook group.
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