DTG Recommends... Immune by Philipp Dettmer
Added 2024-04-06 03:19:38 +0000 UTCWe often have a lot of criticisms when it comes to the gurus and sometimes people ask us for recommendations for alternative 'good' sources.
Here is one!
This is an advance release video for Patreons, ahead of edits, so apologies for the vocal tics!
Comments
Got my copy of Immune shipped! It looks like it will be fun.
Linda Sears
2024-04-09 21:13:17 +0000 UTCThat’s certainly one of the specific scare tactics of anti-vaxxers. But anti-vaxxers tend to hop from one objection to another and have done ever since vaccines were first used. If not adjuvants, then preservatives, such as thimerosal, and if that has been taken out, they complain about too many at once, such as MMR, and if given one at a time then too many injections. Look at Jordan Peterson’s latest anti-vaxx diatribe with Destiny. First he was whining about mRNA not being a vaccine, then he skips to whining about “80 vaccines at once!” . They like to, as ‘Matt says about gurus, “put the wind up people”, so they like to scare people with the fact that some preservatives have a form of mercury, despite the fact that it is a completely different form. It’s like trying to scare people by telling them that they have put sodium and chlorine on their fish and chips. So take any objection that an anti-vaxxer claims to be worried about with a mountain of sodium chloride.
Robert Andrews
2024-04-09 20:02:06 +0000 UTCI think it’s important to point out that the anti-vaxers are also (possibly primarily) concerned with the adjuvants, not just the virus/bacteria bits
Robert Roots
2024-04-09 19:05:19 +0000 UTCYou might like The Overstory, by Richard Powers, but it is a fiction book.
Linda Sears
2024-04-08 12:14:13 +0000 UTCI thought of one more. Linda I think you would like this one if you haven't already read it. The Hidden Lives of Trees. This gave me a whole new appreciation of plants! Just to explain for this group of cynics, when he talks about trees being social he's not implying any unscientific new agey stuff. It's more of a metaphor. But trees live in interconnected groups and they have a number of mechanisms through which they support each other for the collective good. Like a hole in the canopy is bad for all the trees, so if a tree gets sick the trees around it will feed it through their root systems. https://www.amazon.com.au/Hidden-Life-Trees-Communicate-Discoveries/dp/1863958738/ref=asc_df_1863958738/?tag=googleshopmob-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=341793933245&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11323462171568468855&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9112713&hvtargid=pla-675622987583&psc=1&mcid=82a3c7b92b07302abdc486b9df119812
Emma
2024-04-08 01:07:10 +0000 UTCSomehow I think this book would freak out Joe Rogan.
Linda Sears
2024-04-07 18:23:57 +0000 UTCIt really is so good! I think you'll enjoy it :-)
Emma
2024-04-07 15:02:04 +0000 UTCYou might also like How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication. I haven’t read it yet, but my twin did, and she liked it.
Linda Sears
2024-04-07 14:29:28 +0000 UTCThe book about the song birds of Australia looks fascinating. I think I’ll buy it for my twin’s birthday, which means I’ll get to read it too. 👍🦜
Linda Sears
2024-04-07 14:15:48 +0000 UTCYes, spirituality and the use of rituals have done many of the things you mentioned and much more, so I don’t discount it as a powerful force for humanity. From my understanding, awe is a feeling one experiences in the presence of that which is unknowable, fear-inducing, and powerful, which causes us to treat it with respect. I guess I’d say there is much we don’t know and things more powerful and frightening than us, like hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, giant gas planets, and the sun, so I show those forces respect without believing they are living entities. The same ideas can go for the word sublime. Edmund Burke, a British philosopher of the mid 18th century, wrote about the sublime in similar ways. He added to the definition our attraction to the sublime in spite of our feelings of fear. He also created a distinction between the classical notions of beauty (order, regularity, feelings of pleasure, and cerebral contemplation) and the sublime. Artists, musicians, and writers of the late 17th and early to mid 18th century embraced these ideas to create works we consider to be romantic today, including Gothic horror stories, so the sublime in that sense was definitely spiritually meaningful. Personally, my biggest issue with being spiritual/religious is it often feels too human-centric. I rather like the fact that all the living and non-living beings in the universe are not like us and couldn’t care less about us. It is quite liberating to be a bit player on the stage of life. Intellectually, I’m an agnostic, because, what do I know? Emotionally, I’m an atheist because I just don’t feel anything beyond what is. But what is, is pretty dang cool!
Linda Sears
2024-04-07 13:42:14 +0000 UTCNot listened yet, but looking forward to it. I remember you (Chris) saying you got this book for your son about a year or more ago in another podcast episode thinking that it would be some coolly illustrated picture book in the style of the author's channel, Kurzgesagt. I think I bought the book about the same time (using an Amazon gift certificate I got for participating in a psychology experiment!) for my own son under the same misapprehension. I only got a few chapters in, so wondering if you have spoilers in this episode.
Robert Andrews
2024-04-07 12:13:46 +0000 UTCRemember this moment when we're all buying DtG Bath Water
Níall Faughnan
2024-04-07 10:37:13 +0000 UTCTaking a cue from Dave Snowden and adding a healthy(?) dose of cynicism, I'd say that believing in higher beings that you can pray to or blame for mishaps reduces the cognitive load on the brain. That saves energy, which can make the difference between survival and starving. 😈 Somewhat less cynical... for a species that evolved to maintain complex social relationships, it might be a decent strategy to anthropomorphise things outside our control. Makes it easier to figure out how to deal with them. I recently finished Tyson Yunkaporta's "Right Story - Wrong Story". The book is written with a strong background in indigenous thinking. A major theme is to get into good relations with the land you're living on. Thinking of the land as an entity (Mother Earth), or populating it with spirits, seems to me like a way to achieve that. Also, gods and spirits make for good stories, which you can tell children to teach them the culture they're growing up into. You wrote "awe-inspiring"... isn't "awe" itself a spiritual concept? Serious question, I'm not a native English speaker. In "The Gothic Reader - A Critical Anthology" edited by Martin Myrone and Christopher Frayling, the feeling induced by Gothic horror stories is associated with that experienced in gothic cathedrals or their relics. "The Sublime" is mentioned there as well.
Roland Weber
2024-04-07 07:43:56 +0000 UTCI’m glad y’all mentioned the misunderstanding that a person can have about “strengthening” the immune system. Immune system caused inflammation is no fun!
Linda Sears
2024-04-06 23:21:58 +0000 UTCThese sound v interesting! Will check them out :-)
Emma
2024-04-06 21:58:51 +0000 UTCNo but it does sound up my ally! I'll look it up!
Emma
2024-04-06 21:56:51 +0000 UTCThanks, that was a very enthusiastic and entertaining review! I already have a stack of unread books lying around, so I'll keep this on the backlog for the next time I get sick and have to stay in bed for a few days. 😃🤒 Some ideas that came to my mind while watching... Hard science explained to laypersons by good analogies, while dutifully pointing out the limits of those analogies: Matt Strassler: Waves in an Impossible Sea I'm currently three quarters through this Physics book on elementary fields, which eventually explains how the Higgs field gives mass to electrons. This is my first dive into subatomic particles (wavicles), and I'm learning a lot. Found this book through Sean Carroll's podcast a month ago. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/03/04/267-matt-strassler-on-relativity-fields-and-the-language-of-reality/ Delivery took three weeks, so I'm reading it quite fast. If you're more interested in humans: Andy Clark: The Experience Machine - How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality He's a proponent of the theory that the brain runs a model of the outside world, predicting what sensory input it's going to receive. Problems arise when the error correction between the model and the senses fails. There are also new ways of treating some health issues based on this theory. Mind-boggling stuff 😁 The discussion about the border between self and outside made me think of Nora Bateson and her "Where is the edge of you?" cue. She had an interesting Dinner&Talk with renowned (redoubted?) sensemaker Daniel Schmachtenberger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi5-90TnI3Y
Roland Weber
2024-04-06 21:06:57 +0000 UTCYou’re right about that. Some of my favorite music was written by people inspired by faith/spirituality, and I understand people are very different. Perhaps I’d be a much happier person if I was a believer. I just don’t think I can make that leap.
Linda Sears
2024-04-06 20:57:45 +0000 UTCThat is a pretty binary statement. Humanity is more complicated than what you suggest.
John Pohl
2024-04-06 18:41:18 +0000 UTCYou convinced me! Ordering book now.
Leslie
2024-04-06 18:26:58 +0000 UTCGreat review. Enjoyed
Shane Partington
2024-04-06 13:33:46 +0000 UTCI fail to understand why people need gods and spirits to give life meaning when life is so incredibly interesting and awe-inspiring on its own.
Linda Sears
2024-04-06 13:02:46 +0000 UTCEmma, have you ever read Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke? You might enjoy it.
Linda Sears
2024-04-06 12:57:22 +0000 UTCI love to get a good book recommendation from you and I just downloaded it from Audible!
Lucy
2024-04-06 12:02:26 +0000 UTCI also only know about the thymus from Robert Sapolsky's content.
Emma
2024-04-06 07:49:46 +0000 UTCAnd of course for me 'Behave' by Robert Sapolsky... But I think Matt & Chris might have a different view on this one.
Emma
2024-04-06 07:16:53 +0000 UTCGreat little chat guys. Always fun to see other people experience the same sense of awe/mindblown-ness when learning about super intricate/complex systems like this and just how unfathomable it can all seem. Really does cement my appreciation for science and the work of so many smart people throughout the ages, while at the same time amplifying my disdain for what the gurus get up to.
Jarod S
2024-04-06 07:14:21 +0000 UTCThe Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet https://a.co/d/78GNC3K
Emma
2024-04-06 07:11:18 +0000 UTChttps://www.amazon.com/Where-Song-Began-Australias-Changed/dp/0300221665/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1MUA1CRP2SJHR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.etWnuWdHqDyGHf7Lk5UFpIguwj6CvfKLcGRm0YlmG2nN124PE8YNUgvZxXFds8Ps-PjQnW2GN7ikYVhaRroIMsJ4DilAkhZXNl3kc_MZYi7oeR4nk46LW_lPF34wcTIBPEyYwmUpkTl3wozoyqJiMgzR7lborQvv_2y7BqIBJjcBKKRU6EpMm7dN2XLpKJINj-gXCEQaVxF924MFp1wc4A.UFcPxVsEBdRU_-88Wyab-g1QLhP_hCDTwA_RyKCSfDs&dib_tag=se&keywords=where+song+began&qid=1712387412&sprefix=where+somg+bega%2Caps%2C321&sr=8-1
Emma
2024-04-06 07:10:58 +0000 UTCOn the topic of popular science books which really give you this whole new appreciation and interest into a particular field of study. I thought of a few. Not for gurus pod to cover but just as fun book nerd chat.
Emma
2024-04-06 07:09:04 +0000 UTCI enjoyed this! My first degree is biology although I'm pretty rusty now as my career went a diff direction. But this book reminds me of how cool and mind blowing it is to try and wrap your head around the inner workings of our bodies! Also the book is just really beautiful! Good recommendation!
Emma
2024-04-06 07:05:17 +0000 UTC
