Today is the continuation of the conversation we started last week about brains, with our guest and Mark’s daughter — Lizzie Pratt. Together, we explore brain science, focusing on the advancements by Elon Musk’s Neuralink in connecting the brain to computers. We recruited Lizzie, a biopsychology student, as our “expert” on the subject, and she shared insights into the interplay between biology and psychology and the significance of the brain in understanding behavior. We touch on neuroplasticity, brain injuries, and the potential implications of brain-machine interfaces, especially considering the theological and ethical concerns.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to first listen to Part 1 of this episode, where we have provided detailed show notes, and links to the resources mentioned in this episode.

Show Notes

• Part 1 of this episode
• Lizzie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizziepratters/
• https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html
  • TLDR: Tim Urban (author of Wait But Why) talking about Brain Machine Interfaces: https://www.instagram.com/tv/Cd4l_3Rg3Zk/
• The Huberman Lab podcast episode discussed: https://hubermanlab.com/dr-matthew-macdougall-neuralink-and-technologies-to-enhance-human-brains/

Transcript

Yeah, I’m curious, Lizzie, and like some of these classes you’ve taken, is there any like mind blowing things that you’ve come across where you’re like, I don’t know, kind of kind of like that kind of stuff or maybe stuff that is new understanding about the brains that kind of blows our minds? Is there anything that’s kind of come up? Or a ton of things and we don’t have time for it? Well, one thing I think you had to talk is I’ve actually really appreciated and part of this is probably because I go to a Christian school, but in some of these classes we’ve had the conversations of monism and dualism and okay, so here we are learning about the brain. Let’s talk about the soul. And so there are these classes of thought which monism is like, there’s no distinction between mind, soul, body, all this stuff, but for dualism.

And also this is probably where most Christians fall, is that there is a difference between our body and then our mind or soul. And even if you’re not a Christian, you can still say you have a soul or a mind. And a lot of these conversations come back to that question of can you separate them? And if so, is it a physical entity that is still just contained in your body? And so my capstone classes I just took is just basically asking the hard questions in science.

And we spent days on this idea of dualism. And if we do believe that the soul and mind or soul and body are different, can they be separated or how does that look in a Christian worldview? And so a lot of times there’s still questions we still don’t have answers to physically, literally, but it does come back to a worldview and look at how I see it, I guess. How do your soul and your mind interact in your body and that kind of thing.

But beyond that, I think I’ve really just benefited from the pathways learning my favorite class was neuroscience and literally just learning the distinct pathways of like this part of the brain to this part of the brain, to this part of the brain, crosses over the brain here, down the spinal cord here or whatever. And also just you’ve talked about this before, but the neuroplasticity of their brains are just crazy. It’s basically the new frontier of like what, what we don’t know, we don’t like.

We pretty much know almost nothing, you know, in comparison to what is to be known. But also we know way more than we used to and even just learning about the different medications and how those impact. I talked to dad a little bit after the last podcast he did about this of like, we have these antidepressants and we know generally what they do, but in the past couple of years we’ve been realizing that they actually don’t work the way we think they would.

And so we have this selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, that they’re supposed to do this, and we think they do this, but they actually don’t work like we thought they would time wise, so maybe they’re not doing what we think they’re doing. So maybe we should figure out what they’re actually doing before we give them to people. Right.

So just, like, how much is fluid and dynamic and what we’re learning and how we’re taking these really great steps, but also, like, know exactly what we’re doing all the time. And that’s what science is. Right.

It’s like hypothesis and then testing that hypothesis, and then when you test it long enough and you’re like, yeah, I think we got it. But that never stops. The testing never stops.

If you move it into real world, like you’re saying, we’ve been using antidepressants for, I don’t know, 70 years and maybe long time. Long time, and yeah, so we’re able to start to see some more of that so science can continue to learn from that. You were talking about the timetable.

How long does it take your yeah, so traditional antidepressants take six to eight weeks to really start kicking in. Like, you take them for that long, and theoretically, they should work on your neurotransmitters like your serotonin and dopamine within hours to days. And that’s another interesting thing, is just the crossover of how interconnected your brain is.

So this semester, I got to do some research with one of my professors and using an antidepressant on potential PTSD symptoms. And because they target similar parts of the brain, but different have different influences or different outcomes and effects, just how because of how interconnected your brain is, how much I think in the future we’ll learn is different things impact different parts of the brain in ways that we didn’t think they would. And you were talking about earlier how you can take some parts out of the brain and you don’t really see an effect, but other parts you do.

It’s interesting because I think in a lot of reading and learning I’ve done is that it really does affect something, even if we don’t know. If you don’t know right now what it is or it didn’t have a great impact on someone’s day to day, it’s more there than I think. We think.

We may not always see it, but there’s something that’s being impacted in such a way that says, yeah, this is still important. Yeah. Especially when coming from a biology background study or whatever, to be able to see well, the body pays the toll, probably in one way or another.

And also, like you said, even our long term thinking or long term ability to trust or believe or whatever it is, I could see how that could be affected and maybe not see it right away. Right. Yeah.

That’s interesting. Some of my favorite doctors, we go to the doctor a lot for Jewel because she has some stuff that she deals with or whatever, but the way they talk about those things people give prescriptions drugs. You look like you were dealing cards there for a moment.

Some ways that they’re like drug dealers, so I guess it’s appropriate. But no, the ones that I respect the most, they talk about it like, well, we’ve seen that when this is done like this, it can have this effect. Sure.

And they’re not like, sure about everything and like, oh, yeah, this is what you take when you have this problem. They are more scientists and they’re able to say, we can only go by what we see. And what we’ve seen is it seems to have this good effect for people in this situation that’s similar to what she’s in.

Therefore, we can say with reasonable certainty it could be helpful. They have a lot of disclaimers. It’s because they don’t know, and they know they don’t know.

And the smartest doctors, the smartest scientists actually are the most aware of how little they know. And that was cool about, again, this podcast of this guy just saying how little we know. And there’s actually a quote from the Weight But blog post I wrote down by a guy named Moran Kerf.

He’s a neuroscientist who said if the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t. Yeah, I was like, wow, that’s really good. It’s like every area of science we start to dip into and we get pretty far in every single area.

It’s like, whoa, it goes so much deeper. And the world’s renowned scientists in any given area will tell you the same thing. Sure.

Which kind of ties back to what you’re saying, how great thou art. Yeah, this idea that this creator had the ability and what’s cool, too, is with this stuff, all this technology, neuralink, all this kind of stuff, everything we’ve gained up to this point as a result. Because, again, we’re all believers and we believe in higher power, God and all creator and creationism is a result of him unlocking certain aspects and saying, okay, you can know this now.

And we like to think we’re so smart and we figured it out. But again, the smartest scientists go, no, we’re not that smart. We’re pretty dumb when it comes to this, but at least we figured this out.

We’re scratching the surface in many cases, is what you tended to hear. And even the areas that we feel like we’ve got that part on lockdowns, like we’ve discovered new things like antidepressants, like, yeah, we’ve been using these for 70 years. We think we know what they do.

And apparently there’s science saying maybe we don’t quite know. And that’s a pretty common theme, I would say, as our technology grows and we’re able to see more about the effects of things. And I thought it was interesting, too, that in that podcast.

The person they interviewed didn’t even necessarily dare cross not dare, but didn’t desire to cross over into the pharmaceutical aspects of what our brain because he was just basically wanting to he understood that there was enough complexity in what they were trying to do with this electrical interface, if you will, that it’s like, now we don’t deal with that technology here. Yeah, like specialized thing. This vein is deep enough and wide enough that exactly because they were specifically, I think it was related to neuroplasticity.

And their brain’s ability to change and say, like, pharmaceuticals and psilocybin, stuff like that, has some pretty insane effects on our neuroplasticity and be able to our minds to be able to change it’s. Like, have you guys considered that? What if you guys tackled that problem too? He’s like, no, the ability that we can do that is so minuscule compared to these pharmaceuticals that it doesn’t make sense for us to study that. We’re just about figuring out when your brain thinks this thing does a signal fire and can we listen to that and then therefore do something, it’s like, that’s good enough.

I think that was pretty fascinating, too, because, again, you think it’s just simple. It’s so typical. The less you know about a thing, the more simple you think it is.

Sure. And that’s why it’s so easy for Clickbait and all these things. It’s like, now I know exactly what I need to know about neuralink, because I read that headline or whatever.

And I think for me, that aspect I really like that imagery of the concert of the mind to where it’s just these little nuances, the piccolo, the flute percussion, all of that just being timed together in our brain. In such a way that all of that timing and I think that’s where the AI part came into was this ability to take this sequences, this sequence of switches being turned on. Turned off and being able to learn.

That in such a way that says, okay, when I create these electrical synopsis, these connections in that order, that moves the cursor down into the left. And I think the part that fascinated me as well, he never said how many of the transmitters they had to put in the brain, but it was like, definitely a number from the way I heard it, that we’re here, here, and here to be able to create these things. And it added to what you were saying until you shared.

I never realized that this connected to this, like a flowchart. It’s like, I knew this area was responsible for hearing this area was responsible for sight from a generalized aspect of the brain. Yeah.

And so much of a lot of the testing they’re doing now and research is using GBC, which is global brain connectivity. And that’s something that they’re using as a measure of health, shall we say, in studies of depression or whatever. The person that has greater GBC from this specific area to this specific area is doing better than this person or vice versa, when there’s this connectivity that is cut off, that is actually a sign of detriment towards that.

And that’s kind of interesting. How much even just like, the connections and the fluidity of the brain is recognized in a very concrete like, they basically measure it in there’s a word, but basically, like, if you think about pixels like minecraft. Pixels of like a part of the brain.

And you measure that thing and how well it connects to this one. And a different part that’s a physical measurement they have now of health and well being. And I think that is a very I was thinking, as you’re talking about the concert of just like so we have this kind of intimidating thought of neuralink and brain control and that kind of stuff, but how much God’s not really intimidated by our questions.

And how I’ve learned a lot about how science is a form of worship and God is just never threatened by us. And granted, there are things that cross the line and are unethical just because not everything that I can do, I should do. Paul says that.

But how much of just our scientific advancement can be seen as just like a worship? And here we are just learning more about our creator and our God and how he made us, and the guy’s just really not threatened by our questions ever. I was thinking about what you were talking about, the GBC, the global brain connectivity. We’re also learning a lot about that.

And I was thinking about isn’t that part of what well, years ago, it was Suduco would help offset Alzheimer’s and supposedly but isn’t that kind of what you’re talking about? We even know how this is connected. And we know that if we’re doing these types of things, that may invariably help that connection to increase. And I’m thinking about it.

It’s like developing your percussion section when you focused most of your life on the windwoods or whatever, the readed instruments. And I think that’s part of our tendency is to focus on the things that I’m good at. And I think at times as humans, we get scared of developing these other parts because it’s like, what if I don’t do that well? What if it doesn’t sound right? And I think to be able to embrace that, yes, you do that well, and I do that well.

There’s something else well, but it’s all a part of my ability to worship when I’m even developing parts that I’m uncomfortable with anything about, even individuals that have lost a sense, whether that’s sight or sound or we have a sensory cortex. And it’s actually interesting because you can lay it out and you can look at it and assign all the different hands and feet and even all your skin receptors have a place on the brain. And of course, you have different senses.

Like, your eyes and your ears are much bigger. But when you lose one of those, the other ones creep into it. And so it’s not just dead space, it’s now augmentation of the other senses that are close by to it physically.

Physically. If your ear sense is closer to your eye sense, you lose your eye sense. Your ear is going to creep into it physically.

Like those neurons are going to be taken over there as part of neuroplasticity, that ability to grow greater connection or enhance. Wow. Which ties into why a lot of times, why people’s sense of hearing or whatever can be enhanced compared to which is fascinating, because, again, it ties into like, the brain’s capability, too, is much greater than we currently use.

I mean, I remember growing up, they always said we use 6% or 10% of our brain, something like that. And I don’t know how accurate that is. I feel like that number has been changed since then.

Very accurate. I’m pretty sure we use the whole brain. It’s just that our brain is capable.

Its capability is unknown. I think that’s more accurate to say. But we use all of it.

Like you said, if you take a little chunk out, it’s not like, well, you still got 90% that you can lose and still have the same function. I don’t think that’s how sure. And I like your analogy with the concert, too, because going back to what Lizzie was saying about if you take out a part so, like, if you remove the piccolo sure.

Right. Don’t remove the piccolo. I’m just saying the piccolo player got a cold and they couldn’t play today.

You might not notice today, but if you listen to this piece every weekend and it’s your favorite piece or whatever, eventually you mean, I really want that piccolo back. Right. And it has a part to play, and it matters.

And the original intention of the creator of that piece of music or whatever, said, there needs to be a piccolo right here. Right. And so without that part playing its part, you will see an impact, it will change things.

And again, you may not notice it on the first run, or you might not be familiar with it or see its impacts, but it does play a part. And I think that’s why I really like that analogy, because I think it does tie into that, too, where every part place is part of the entire concert. Right? Sure.

If you remove a part, it’s not like, well, we didn’t need the piccolo low player anyway. It’s like, no, they’re there for a reason. Yeah, because Mark wants to hear the I do.

I like the piccolo. Do you? Yeah. What does the piccolo sound like? It’s very high.

It’s really high above the flute. When you get into that trilly sound that’s way up top. Yeah.

Interesting. It makes me think of original and Nintendo Mario Bros. Three.

There’s this very high flutey song in one of the parts, and I bet you it was pickled. It could very well be. Yeah.

Lizzie used to play the flute. Yeah. She can describe what it sounds like.

Maybe I’m not going to try that’s a little how I see it pressure for you right there. That’s right. Yeah.

Mark, I’d like to hear you make a piccolo sound. We’ll pass on that. I just don’t know how to other than, like, almost screeching into the spare the listeners.

Yeah. I can hear it in my mind. I can hear it in the concert in my mind.

There you go. Don’t remove the piccolo. Yeah, I think that’s what we’re saying.

That’s one of the things we’re saying. That’s my takeaway. No, but any other parts that just kind of came to either one of your minds from the for me, I’ll set it up.

I shouldn’t just throw that question out there like that. For me, listening to that podcast, it was interesting to see how it went from it was a two hour podcast. Let’s be honest.

I struggled, mark struggle, especially in the beginning when it was yeah, but I want to recognize that first, really, from my perspective, the first half hour to 45 minutes was about neurolink and the brain connection. And then they kind of developed off and they went talked about animals and treating animals kindly and research, really, in that 2 hours, 30 minutes to 40 minutes was about the connecting of the brain. Well, once he figured out all you’re doing is like, all right, what else do we that’s exactly it.

I was just curious if there was something else that either one of you kind of brought in or heard in that that just kind of created a thought in such a way that you really hadn’t thought about. I mean, before I see Lizzie’s thinking, one of the things he talked about had nothing to do with neuralink, but this guy has this implant in his hand. Yeah.

His RFID chip, which I forget what that stands for. Radio frequency identification device. Yeah.

Nice job, Mark. Someone who hates technology. I was awake at that time.

That was honestly one of the things that I was interested to hear about. Yeah. Because I’ll be honest, I mean, a lot of what we do, how I see it, it’s not that we know this information, but there’s passions involved, interests, and I think we all have those.

But yes, back to the RFID. Yeah, that was interesting. And it really has nothing to do with neuralink, but they tied it in in some ways in the sense that you’re willing to do that to yourself.

As a scientist, would you be willing to do some neuralink brain stuff? And he’s like, sure, if we get to that point. But right now, it doesn’t make sense to try and do the things we’re doing for me because I can move my limbs and type on a keyboard just fine. So it’d be kind of setting that back.

But if there was an opportunity to do something, he would do it. But yeah, the RFID chip but you’re basically saying it help. It acts as his car key, acts as a key to his house.

He can store little bits of information on there, like his Bitcoin wallet key, that kind of thing. Passwords. Yeah, exactly.

Which I don’t think the storage amount is enough for a real password. Storage? Oh, really? Yeah, I think the amount of storage is very small. I think you’d be surprised in terms of, like, megabytes.

I think it’s probably megabyte or less. Oh, really? Okay. I could be wrong.

No, that’s okay. Probably wrong. But that’s part of your wisdom there, Justin.

You’re willing to admit you may not know just based on what I know of RFIDs, but that could obviously be changing and they could be making enhancements. And I honestly didn’t even know that was a thing till he talked about he had oh, really? Implant? Yeah. I mean, I knew no, I didn’t really know till I heard.

We’ve been chipping things for a long time. You’d put it signal. Yeah, that’s true.

And I think in some cases, when I hear of chipping animals, it’s like that becomes, from my perspective, based on your end times analogies, it’s like, okay, yeah, in some ways we may not be far off from that technology. The ability to have especially my identification, things that say that verify who I am and I no longer have to produce a driver’s license. And again, the thing is, we already have that with our phones.

When we come to the theological conversation and the end times theology order, I get very fuzzy on it. Like, at what point does it become evil? Right? Because like you said, there’s parts of our phones that are I would say it’s nothing’s inherently evil. It’s our humanity.

That right. It’s amoral. And our humanity is what makes it evil.

So, you know, when it comes to the market of Vs, like, where does that line cross? Because clearly it’s not a device on you that helps identify you and helps you pay for stuff, because we’ve been doing that for a while. Your phone can pay for stuff it can identify. You can carry a picture of your license on your phone and use it for identification.

And it’s that we’re there already. It just happens to be something we carry instead of that’s in a pocket under my skin. It’s in a pocket on top of my skin.

Sure. You know what I’m saying? I do. And I’ll be honest with you.

I think in some cases that is an awareness, maybe that I bring into how I see it to the point of when we have these conversations, there’s a part of me that is basically saying I want to be heard saying, I don’t know. And I think in some ways, technology is very advantageous. It is amoral, and yet there is going to be a line someday, and I think in some ways, it can become like a lie.

I just accept a little bit, a little bit at a time, and suddenly, well, is that really a lie? And I think I may carry the technology right now, but it’s like, well, we’re already doing this. What’s a chip underneath my skin? That’s the part where my mind goes in that conversation. It’s like, same thing, probably more so is where is that line? Yes.

And the fact that we’re chipping animals for identification, so if they get lost makes perfect sense from a science perspective to be able to find somebody. We’re tracking people now with the phone, and I think there is this connection, if you will, here, again, on my understanding, is very limited. If we’re able to go to a digital currency, that all, of course, makes sense as we think about the dollar or currency that we put in our hands, cash, those kind of things, to be able to have this digital currency that everybody around the world uses.

And I can tell how much I have by this chip. And all I got to do is pass it under this reader. All that makes perfect sense.

We already do that. Exactly. And that’s where I’m at.

I can’t tell you the last time I held a piece of paper to pay for something. I honestly can’t remember. It’s all fake numbers that move from this thing to this thing to yeah, I know.

You got your wad there. No, it’s not wad. I’m just saying it’s like I don’t leave home without it as far as cash goes.

But that’s the part that I think well, the question is when you say where’s the line is, the question that we’re probably asking is where’s the line? And are we going to know it when we get that’s exactly right? I think the Bible says that the words are that even the elect might be fooled. It’s something along those lines, this idea that it’s so convincing that even the elect might be fooled. But it gives this to me pretty clear indication that they won’t.

At least that’s my reading of it, my understanding of it, and I trust that I think ultimately I have to just go, all right, Holy Spirit, you’re inside me. You’ll know, when I’m you’ll warn me. And up until that line, no one’s saying, oh, crap, I pay with my phone.

Dang it, I accepted the mark of the beast already. I’m doomed. We’re not at that point, and I guess I’m not too concerned about worrying about that line and flipping over it.

I’m going to trust that it will be clear in me from a spiritual sense, like through the Holy Spirit. When that line is tripped, I think it will be clearer than we think, but I think it will be easy for us to go, yeah, I can see why you’re saying this would be a good idea for all of us, but I believe it’s wrong 100%. Like, I have no doubt, and here’s why.

And I’ll be able to point to and that’s where I want to be responsible in what we’re doing here and saying, I don’t know, and you have to be able to decide that line for yourself. This information, this opportunity is out there, but whether that’s what you need to do, I guess we’re just conveying information at that point. It’s definitely been a passion subject of mine to make science less scary, kind of like what you’re saying it is an opportunity for worship, because what’s the primary job of a scientist? It’s observation, right? It’s just watching a thing and seeing what it does and then testing a theory.

And now watching again. Okay, now that I have a hypothesis, let’s watch some more. Okay, that didn’t work out.

Let’s come up with a new all right, let’s watch again. Watch observer. And that is a synonym for worship, really, observation.

The ability to take in and go, wow, okay. I definitely agree with that. This whole Mark of the beast thing, I think I’ve seen in the church.

I grew up in kind of some of that generation, a fear of technology, which translates into a fear of science. And to me, that’s a passion subject of mine. I don’t think we have to be afraid of science.

I believe that everything we learn, he’s given us. He’s opened that door, he’s turned the page for us. So I’m not afraid we’re going to turn a page and go, oh, you weren’t supposed to see that one right here.

Again, not from a fearful standpoint, but I think with the information, we have to be mindful of kind of the lie, if you will. Did God really say that you follow me? Kind of that original lie. It’s like, well, did he really say you couldn’t do that? And I think that’s where it comes back to each person having that relationship and accountability ultimately with God, regardless of what a culture may do or what you and I say, very much so, which is kind of what you’re saying.

Yeah. And back to that other question. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, Justin, if you’re but did you have any other thoughts that came out of the podcast or even your notebook, for that matter? My trusty neuroscience notes here thick whole semester is worth not necessarily just from the podcast, I would say some of the conversations I’ve had recently surrounding ethics and just like, what does it mean to augment or enhance in? A way that doesn’t the whole question of what does it mean to be better and to do things better and to advance as humanity? Because I think we need.

To be careful of not belittling or saying that someone’s current state is less than because of something that they have. I haven’t talked about this. I haven’t talked about the neuroscience side of things in my classes.

But we’ve also talked about genetics and how, okay, if we’re going to do genetic enhancement kind of stuff, is that saying that someone’s current genetics aren’t good enough? Or is that actually being helpful? And so I’m not making an opinion statement. I’m just saying that this is something that it’s a worthy question to ask of what is the purpose? And I would say, in my opinion, there is a good purpose to a lot of what’s happening and that it is a natural progression of science and just advancement. But also not saying that someone’s lived experience with something that is like a hardship in their life is not worthy of is less than or so we think about someone with, like, down syndrome that has the genetic genetic condition.

Okay. And there’s countries that have eliminated that condition. And maybe you’re not saying that the neuroscience stuff is there yet or thinking about that, and it is more for help than her, but so would other people.

Other people would say that too, about different genetic things. And so just asking the question of, like, what does it mean to enhance or be better advanced in a way that doesn’t say that the current state is less than. Sure.

Yeah. We briefly mentioned the thing about down syndrome in past episodes, and this idea that if you could know and then choose, no, I don’t want my baby to have down syndrome, fix that. I think unanimously, every parent would say, of course we want to fix that.

And yet we’ve talked about parents who have kids with down syndrome and the beauty that comes as a result of that situation in their life. And I can tell you that many of the down syndrome parents that I know would say, no, I would not change that about them. That is part of how God made them.

And that’s beautiful because of all these reasons. I think that’s a good point. Yeah, it’s fascinating.

I think that’s the beauty of our Creator right. Sure. In that he can it’s the work of redemption in our Creator where he can take something that’s bad and turn it to good.

And when we kind of go into that idea of trying to remove all the bad, I think limits some of the opportunities or visibility into his ability to redeem things. Sure. But yeah.

To whether if there was a marker that you could say, I know that this baby is going to have down syndrome unless you do X, it’s something non invasive or whatever. Obviously not abortion, which is I think when you say some countries or whatever, that’s what they do. Hey, do you want it to take care of this situation? Yes, please take care of it that kind of thing, and it’s abortion.

But if there was a way to, say, use that thing, and it will fix the chromosome or, you know, the genes or whatever yeah. Ethically, is that okay? I mean, I think yes, but is it your your piccolo player? Yeah. Comes to mind.

You know, I think, you know, when we miss out, I think on that we’re missing the piccolo player is no longer available. That helps us see things or hear things differently without that diversity of valuing who people are the way they are type thing. And granted, like you say, if there’s a way that a person could be, but I still think about it in the context of difficult situations in some ways.

If we could remove all the difficult situations in our lives, would we? Well, go ahead, challenge. I think we’ve attempted to do that for the duration of our existence, and we’ve done a pretty good job. We’ve come really far about removing difficulties to the point where life’s pretty convenient.

I have air conditioning, I sit at a desk and work, and that’s what I do for a job. Like, I don’t have to go out in a field, remove rocks from a field, and even farmers, right, they have machinery or whatever. We’ve done that.

And yet our existence is still painful. And I don’t think we can remove pain and sin and all these things. You can’t, because sin is the true problem there.

And we’ve talked about this before, but as our culture moves forward, we’re seeing other maladies replace other previous maladies. So now depression and anxiety are at insane levels, because all I’m left to do is consider the existential aspects of my life versus, like, I don’t have time to think about that. I got to go out in the field and remove the rocks.

You know what I mean? I think there’s that limitation that will always exist in that that we have a sinful human nature that will always exist. No matter how much you remove the difficult parts, we’ll find ways it will leak back in in a different way. Sure.

So even if we remove the piccolo player of down syndrome or whatever, I think it’s silly to think that, well, there won’t be another thing. Sure. Yeah.

I don’t know anything else that comes to mind. I don’t think so. No.

From the podcast, I was also thinking about too, they talked about brain atrophy, how to have brain help. I thought that was a good thing. And they did talk about the aspect of there is a definite ratio.

And here, again, I’m not bashing alcohol, but they definitely talked about how there is a direct correlation, the way I heard it, between the amount of brain atrophy that occurs, between a person who does not drink at all and a person who has one drink a week. There’s definitely a correlation. And atrophy or brain shrinkage, and he was talking about alcoholics that would have a brain basically the size of a walnut, if you will.

And that’s kind of sad. And I think being mindful of how we worship God by the ability to take care of what he has given us, not that our bodies become God, but I think that was another thing that I took away. It’s like, okay, yeah, there’s some things that I can do that I do do that affect my brain health and the ability to recognize that in such a way that says, okay, yeah, how am I stewarding what I have been given? So I thought that was kind of just a neat eye opener.

And of course, he mentioned pharmaceutics and so forth, too, and different ones that alter brain ability, that kind of thing. But I thought it was just interesting to be able to think about that. How do we take care of our brains? As in in this in this brain yeah.

Segment? Yeah. Being involved in celebr recovery for so many years, like, I’ve certainly heard a bajillion stories of people who have no right to be thinking, like you said, the walnut brain thing, just the amount of chemicals that their body endured, whether it was drugs or alcohol. To me, it’s also amazing.

Again, it comes back to the incredible nature of our creator and his ability to redeem. Right. And to where someone who has no business being able to even use their brain the way they abused it is now standing in front of you in very intellectually sharing their story.

And like, you just see how God, our brain is not the sum of the chemicals. Right? It’s not the sum of the atoms. There’s also something beyond it.

There’s the spirit and the soul that we’re kind of talking about that tie in and we don’t quite know how it all works. But what I do know is some of the smartest people I know are people who are recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. And just like it’s almost like the out of the mouth of babes thing.

They have a clarity, I think sometimes that it’s like, because of my normal functioning brain that hasn’t been abused by drugs or whatever, there’s some clouds maybe, where I don’t know, I guess the point being kind of number one, agreeing with you. And I think it’s important to steward our brains, but also recognizing, like, how God can redeem. Even when we’ve abused our brains, it’s almost like he knew we were going to mess up, made allowance for our ability.

It’s just grace. Right. And that’s not true of every person who’s abused their brains with drugs and alcoholics.

Some come out scathed. Right? Sure. Not unscathed.

They are clearly they’re missing the piccolo player and the drums and the flu, whatever. And yet again, that’s yeah. I don’t know.

Yeah, but they play the clarinet very well. That’s right. Clearly.

Yeah. Fair enough. Anything else? No.

Well, that being said, Lizzy, thank you for your time. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure to have you.

Yeah. If you want, we can read through that folder there. We’ll be here another couple hours.

That’s all right. To be honest with you, Justin, thanks for the recommendation of that podcast. While it was 2 hours and that was plenty long, I figured you needed a little bit of a nap.

Well, I can come by those. Honestly. He called John to figure out how to put it on one and a half times.

I texted him, it’s useful when you got a two hour. Yeah, but then I had to download an app, and it’s like so I ended up just listening through the link that you sent through the Internet, so I wasn’t able to speed it up. So I think that would have been that would have been helpful.

It had that fast forward 10 seconds, though, for the commercials are killer. Yeah. It’s like, oh, man.

You get listening, and all of a sudden that’s why I’m saying we can’t do commercials. I don’t want to get to that point, but I understand they’re making the big bucks on that podcast, so they got to have endorsed those products. And we make a lot of money, too.

Yes. $0. $0.

Yeah. But that being said, that’s how I see it.