SPEAKER_02 0:00

People want texture. And again, like I'm sure like normal people apparently imagine these whole like fictional worlds in their brains, right? But I didn't know this was a thing, but I just knew that people like that. I don't really care about it. And so I always at every on the top of every notebook I write like sensory details. And then I write down. I literally record sensory details. I'm like, this carpet is the color of old beast erasers. Or you know, that like it smells like Christmas in here or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 0:34

If you would like to support the efforts and research we are doing here on this podcast, please go to podcast.discoveringyourmind.com and become a monthly supporter. We greatly appreciate your support. Thank you. Aphantasia is a condition characterized by an inability to visualize mental images in one's mind. If you have just discovered that you or someone you love has apantasia, or if you're just fascinated by the subject in general and love learning more about it, you are in the right place. The Discovering Your Mind podcast delves into all aspects of the mind's eye, including aphantasia, hyperfantasia, and everything in between. Enjoy part two of face blindness, stereo blindness, aphantasia, and s dam with Sadie Dingfelder. All right.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Well, you know what it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

Yes, I do. I want to hear you explain it.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah. Oh, okay. So, like many people, I didn't really believe that other people could imagine things, um, could visualize things in their mind's eye. I thought it was a metaphor. Oh, like, so I'm a musician and I would play shows, and people would be like, oh, if you're anxious, like just imagine the audience naked. And for me, that just means imagine the audience could be naked. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, imagine that these are just people that can, but I didn't realize that neurotypical people can literally like undress you with their eyes. They can imagine seeing like boobies or whatever, right? They can do that. And it's actually very alarming to me in retrospect. I'm like, oh my God, how many people have seen me naked just looking at me? And I just had no idea, you know. Another classic one is like um counting sheep. For me, that's exactly the same as just counting, right? I didn't understand, and I didn't maybe it's more like I didn't believe people when they said that they could. And my my best friend Miriam says that not only, I mean, she can, it's the specificity that really is convincing. I think she sees the sheep, and there are specific cartoon sheep jumping a specific cartoon fence on like a green hill, and there's fluffy sheep-like clouds in the sky. Probably she thinks it's probably from a children's book she saw at some point.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

It's the specificity because, like, again, like if you see, so you imagine an apple. I can't, and you can't even do that. And we don't even know what it means. Like, we don't know how to follow the directions, even, you know. So for us, we're thinking just of the abstract concept of an apple. It's not red, it's not green, it's not Granny Smith, it's not a cartoon, it's not black and white, it's not, you know, like there's nothing specific about it. And that is actually our magic trick. That's that is like leads into, I think, our ability to generalize across experiences and to just deal with concepts because that's all we deal with. We are not thinking of a specific Apple. So we are already one level up on abstraction, and so that's just like gives you a little leg up if you're someone who is what you know thinks about ideas and wants to see how they connect to each other.

SPEAKER_04 3:45

Right. I'm a graphic designer, and most visual people, when they find out I have a fantasia, they're like, How in the world do you design if you can't visualize? It makes no sense to them.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Yeah, but you do it on the page, right?

SPEAKER_04 3:59

Right. I do, I do it in real life in front of me. And uh, I think it helps me because of what you were talking about. I don't have a preconceived idea of what something should look like. Yeah, I get to create it and play with it in real life without trying to match some image that I've had in my head. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

And actually, and I think that a lot of Afans who do art, who do visual art, enjoy the it's almost like a prosthetic imagination. The page or the screen allows you to see things that you can't see in your head. And so you enjoy messing around with it in in your vision. And you probably also know, but the um there's a Disney animator who has apantasia. Yeah, and he starts every drawing with a stroke, you know, like with the random line. And that is what gives him, and he had and he's famous for seeing for portraying things in perspectives that no one else would have thought of. So um it's so it gives him like a whole uh he gives them the whole different sort of set of tools for doing the same job.

SPEAKER_04 5:05

Right. And I've talked to artists where they're like they get excited about each and every little brushstroke because I don't know what it's gonna look like if I do this.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Yeah, and actually, and that reminds me a lot of so a lot of people with aphantasia also have S dam, which is severely deficient autobiographical memory, because the relationship is that those people who can do this crazy thing where they can mentally time travel to moments from their past, and this is a very visual experience for them. But if you can't do that mental time travel backwards, you also can't do it forwards, right? And so I, you know, often have things coming up, and people ask me what I think I'm gonna feel or what it's gonna be like. We were supposed to move to India and it ended up falling through, but while it was still in process, uh people were like, What do you think life in India will be like? And I literally, I'm like, not only do I have no idea, like it seems this like a stupid question to ask to me, you know, like I'm just going in completely blind and I don't know how anyone could claim otherwise, frankly. Honestly, I mean, this is probably a problem for planning ahead to some extent, but it's also, I think it's a it's a very fresh way to like experience the world. Like it's more childlike. You're like, what's gonna happen? Who knows? I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 6:18

Right.

unknown 6:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 6:20

Talk about kind of when and how you discovered a fantasia, you know, in relation to the face blindness, the stereo blindness, did it come before or after that? How did all that happen?

SPEAKER_02 6:31

It's funny. I mean, after so I originally just wrote an article for the Washington Post where I worked at the time on discovering I was face blind. And it became like a much better story than I thought it was going to be. Cause I, again, like I thought I was gonna go, I did all these tests, I did all this training, and I thought at the end of the day, they'd be like, Well, you're a little below average and you got a little better with all of our training. Instead, they were like, you were at the bottom of the heap, and you actually got almost to normal, like with all of our training, but it didn't really generalize to real life that well. So I wrote this article for the Washington Post magazine. It was really popular, and so people emailed, lots of people emailed me, and a science library emailed me about aphantasia. That's so basically, yeah, some people emailed me about aphantasia, and I was like, I've never heard of this. And then I did like a little dive into it because a lot like the story of discovering apantasia is the same actually as the story of the discovery of prosopagnosia, which is that it was originally known as a rare consequence of brain damage. They didn't realize that there were actually just people walking around with the developmental version of this, their brains are just not doing it. So basically, yeah, I started doing research and just and like quickly, I mean it's sort of obvious. Like, I feel like aphantasia is one of these things you don't even need to take a little online test. You just ask yourself, can I picture shit with my eyes closed or even with my eyes open? I don't even know what's easier for people. Uh, and if the answer is like no, then it's no, you know.

unknown 7:59

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

But the people who can picture things, I think there's actually a lot of unexplored heterogeneity there because some people can imagine objects in their world, like they could put an apple on my head, you know. Some people see things a very narrow field of view, and some people see a very broad field of view with their imagination. And I'm sure things change depending on your mood or how much you're focusing or anything. So it's so it's really interesting, really complicated. I can imagine, but it, oh my God. I mean, when you said like this makes a lot of sense, like, yes, like so. I mean, I can't follow choreography. I can't remember choreography, and that just seems like something that would be very like helpful if you could visualize something, you know. I think that that is part of my choreography problem. Like, my like, I can't even tell you how bad I'm so bad at choreography that people thought that I was doing it on purpose. Like people couldn't understand, like people just thought I was doing a little dance solo by myself on purpose. And I'm like, no, I'm trying to do it right. Like I'm trying my hardest, and I'm not, I'm trying. I mean, and of course, there's gonna be a fans out there who can do follow choreography, right? Sure. But they probably just do it in a way that's that uses a different toolbox. And that's what's kind of interesting about A Fantasia is that it's it's almost like too heterogeneous, I think, because there's some people who, even though they don't have a conscious experience of visualizing, I think that they're still doing it at a level that is a lot higher up than us. Or they're doing it and we're not, basically. Like my brother, for instance, he plays chess, he plays chess all the time. And I'm like, how do you play chess if you can't visualize at all? You know, and he's like, I think I'd be a lot better if I could.

SPEAKER_04 9:48

I play chess as well. Oh, yeah. And I talk to other people with aphantasia, one of them in particular that is very good at chess. And so that's why it goes back to this horses can't eat meat thing for me. Like the anytime we start getting into absolutes, yeah, they're not gonna hold up. And you're talking about, you know, people on the opposite end of the spectrum, hyper fantasia. It's the same thing. Like we have them in this group, but when you you start going through the individual questions, the differences are just amazing. They're just all over the place.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

And also, like sometimes people like you actually are probably a good example of someone who is drawn to the exact thing they suck the most at. No offense, but like maybe you were at some point you were like, I can't visualize, you know. Let's see what it looks like on the computer. Oh my God, I love this, you know. The most famous portrait artist that I know of, Chuck Close, was totally facelind. And he is famous for doing these gridded paintings that look like nothing close up. They look completely abstract if you're close, but if you walk farther away, right? They they yeah, they like become like a beautiful picture. And I feel like he actually, without realizing it, has given neurotypical people the experience of like being a face blind and like sort of, and if you could be cured of face blindness, it would probably feel like a resolution like that.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

Right. When I was in design school, I found out that about aphantasia, even though it didn't have a name back then, but I found out about the concept of it. Oh wow when I was in design school. But before, I think it was before I I figured it out, I was learning Photoshop for the first time. And it absolutely enthralled me. Like it was the most amazing thing I had ever experienced. I would go in on Saturdays when I didn't have to be at school, yeah, just to play with it. It was like just this endless world of playing with the visual things that I uh and I think that was really why, you know, I had never been able to do anything like that before, where you know, other people who are visual probably have been able to do those kind of things in their mind all along. And so, oh big whoop. But yeah, totally I was just enthralled with it. I could not get enough.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

That's really cool. Yeah, that's neat. Yeah, so you always end up with this little crew of people who are doing the exact opposite of what you would assume. In addition, like I think that that's a re like a chunk of outliers you're always gonna find.

SPEAKER_04 12:25

Yeah. All right. If you can describe what does it actually feel like to have little or no mind's eye?

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Well, of course, it feels completely normal to me, right? Like I've had no other experience of having a mind's eye. But if you are a person with a mind's eye and you could beam into my conscious experience, what would you notice? Like, what's the contrast? That's always the way I try to frame the questions like that. Because when people are like, what is it like to be a bat? Well, you'll never know what it's like for a bat to be a bat, you know, because they've been nothing but immersed in their own lives and it's completely normal for them. But what would it be like if you, Sadie Dinkfelder, could zoom or inhabit the conscious experience of a bat? What would it be like? You know, anyway. So if someone tried to zoom into my brain, given everything I've learned about myself, I mean, the first thing you would just be like is, oh my God, everything's really flat and I can't pick up cups without knocking them over. Like that would be the first thing you notice. And the second thing would be like everyone looks the same. Like it would probably literally, like, if you could, if you were trying to like in a cartoon portray what how I see people, like having everyone have basically the same face would be a good way to do it, probably. In terms of the A Fantasia and S dam, I think that you would never, I assume that people like my dad, when he's working on a carpentry project, he's like, you know, let me imagine how these things are gonna fit together. But it doesn't occur to me to do that, obviously, because I can't do it. And so I'm just all trial and error, right? Like I just go in and try things. And sometimes I try really stupid things because like I couldn't imagine it at all. So again, and because of my stereo blindness, for instance, like actually I remember someone asking me, a scientist asked me, like, if I was carrying a lot of boxes and then trying to get into my apartment, like how and I had to rejuggle the boxes without dropping them, like how would I figure it out? And so apparently he thinks about it visually, like in his mind, you know. And obviously, I just don't do that. So, in general, if someone like could beam into my conscious lived experience, I think most human beings would be like, wow, it's really quiet and peaceful.

unknown 14:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

It's like I'm not really, I don't have an inner monologue, I'm not thinking about a lot of things. All I have is actually like a vague, like I don't have a lot of sense of my own emotions either, which is totally related, like alexithymia. And so for me, actually, I don't even know how I'm feeling or what I think until I say it out loud or write it down. And I don't know if I'm sad until I'm like literally weeping. Like, I'm like, I'm fine, and then I'm like, oh, and I'm like, okay, I'm not fine. As like in the last few years, I've learned how to like sort of intuit that I have a problem about to happen, like a little bit better, but it's really just very physical. It's like I feel like my tear ducts like sort of burning a little bit or whatever. Also, the actually another way I would describe it is like I feel like this is true for all humans, but it's especially true for us, is that you are a big boat with a little rudder. Which is to say, like you have a lot of inertia, you have this whole machine, you're sort of like a CEO that is not real detail oriented. You're a big picture CEO, you don't really want to know all the details. And uh and and you're used, like that's your preferred uh way to deal with things.

SPEAKER_04 15:52

Do you like the analogy of it's a computer without the monitor?

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Oh, that's interesting. A computer without the monitor, you know what though, I do think I use real life to like try things, like you know.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

But a computer without the monitor, sure. I mean, that seems very confusing because how would you interact with it?

SPEAKER_04 16:13

So I like it on some level and don't on some level too, but I like it because it helps me describe how undescribable it is, right? Because the only way you can tell what's going on in the computer is by what's on the screen, right? And my brain feels that way, like everything is happening behind the scenes. I cannot explain how it's doing what it's doing, right? It's but it's on and it's working. I just don't have the visuals attached to it. And so again, yeah, you go into real life to experience the visuals, but in the mind, the monitor is off, but all the ones and zeros are firing and going. Yeah, like that.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

I think it's interesting. It's an interesting metaphor. I'll have to think about it more.

SPEAKER_04 17:04

So, do you experience any of the other senses in your mind?

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Yes, I can hear, I have a great mind's ear, and that is the only reason why I even believe that real visualizers exist, honestly. Like I can extrapolate it from a mind's ear into the mind's eye. What about you?

SPEAKER_04 17:22

I'm a global complete aphant. I don't have any of the senses.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

My brother's like that too, which is kind of wild to me. But I'm a musician and I've always been obsessed with music. And so I have an excellent mind's ear. I can play pieces, I can transpose them, I can like listen to how parts might sound the same or different or how they might work together in my mind's ear, which is kind of wild.

SPEAKER_04 17:45

Okay. So if you have a mind's ear, why don't you have an inner monologue?

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Words are so different than music. In fact, they're so they're processed so differently that people who have completely lost the ability to speak can still sing in words. Isn't that crazy?

SPEAKER_04 18:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

I mean, that's that's the neurological answer. And the thing about inner monologue, so I'm not gonna say I never have an inner monologue because if I'm really stressed out, especially if I'm trying to go to sleep at night and I'm really stressed out, that's when I experience an inner monologue a little bit. Like it's more like fragments. I can almost feel them breaking above the surface of consciousness, you know. And it's not a pleasant experience. It just means I'm like really stressed out and I need to like exercise or chill out or meditate or something.

SPEAKER_04 18:30

But does it feel audible?

SPEAKER_02 18:32

So, no, not really. It's just it's just like word, but it is words though, like it's worded but not audible.

SPEAKER_04 18:39

Right. That's how I describe my thoughts. It's a mixture of concepts and words, but words do appear in my mind, but I don't hear them. I just think them.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Words never appear in my mind unless I'm really stressed out. So for me, it actually is really exciting to talk to other human beings or to write just to myself because that is how I discover what I'm thinking. I have no idea what I'm thinking until it is expressed in the physical world.

SPEAKER_04 19:04

Yeah, I've interviewed a few uh people with A Fantasia that it describe it that way. Like, I have no forethought at all.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Yeah, I think by speaking, and then people are like, Can you think before you speak? And you're like, I don't really know conceptually how to do that. Yeah, and and also people are like, What were you thinking? Like, so one time I stuck my finger in an immersion blender and I got it cut, and it was because there was cookie dough in the immersion blender, and luckily it wasn't plugged in or anything, but you know, a lot of people were like, What were you thinking would happen when you stuck your finger in the immersion blender? And I'm like, literally nothing. So I maybe a neurotypical person would have like previewed that cut finger and not have gone for the cookie dough that looked so delicious, you know.

SPEAKER_04 19:49

Right. I remember when I was a kid, I carved my name into our piano. Like and and one of the things my dad always used to say to me when I was a kid is Shane, think right, because it's I just was like on autopilot. I didn't think things through, you know.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

And I feel like the version where I have learned, like obviously, I'm not just saying everything I'm thinking to people all the time, that would be a disaster, but the version of like sort of self-censorship just has to happen, I think, at a non-conscious level. Like, and I think I can almost feel it in my gut. Like, I'm like, that seems wrong, you know, or something like that, or like, don't say that, Sadie, or this could be a problem. Rethink this plan.

SPEAKER_04 20:36

Right. But in my case, I learned those things through again, trial and error, instead of thinking them through and saying, Oh, like you learn just learn through 50 years of being alive that you probably shouldn't do and say certain things, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Totally, totally. And it is again, like I think for me anyway, like what I've learned specifically is that occasionally I'll have sort of almost a word of thought, but really just a feeling that goes, it'll be fine. And uh I've learned that when I think that, that means I really need to think about what's gonna be fine or not, you know, and like I should probably not do whatever I'm about to do.

SPEAKER_04 21:13

All right, very good. Still with a fantasia, but let's shift a little bit to the school system. So one of the quotes I pulled from your book is the US school system privileges the visualizers.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yeah, and the memorizers. Because visualizers are often the memorizers because they can like look at a page and sometimes really not only remember the fact, but remember where it was on the page, which is wild to me. So if you're a really great visualizer, every book is an open book test for you. Whereas if you are just a conceptual thinker and you can't visualize, then you actually have to really, really understand a concept and have it integrated into all of your other knowledge in order for it to be. Re like testable, right? But the school school systems, especially like modern, I mean, it's gotten worse since I was a kid, where they don't care if you understand anything. They just want you to be able to solve the math problem. You know, and so there's a lot of kids who just get through life by like sort of intuiting what algorithm to apply, but they don't really understand the math. And so this is kind of actually like a benefit of aphantasia in that you're not gonna be able to fake it. You know, you really have to understand things. There's no shortcuts. And I interviewed Craig Venter, who uh for my book, which and I love talking to him because he's clearly a genius and he really saw something that no one else was able to see at the time. He's the guy who, for anyone who doesn't know, he's the guy who basically beat the NIH in the race to sequence the genome. So, like in the 90s, you know, we're like, let's sequence the human genome. And uh Craig worked at NIH, and he was like, okay, the way we need to do this is to buy these machines that shatter the DNA and then use computers basically to piece them together and do the sequencing automatically. And NIH was like, no, no, the only way to do this is painstakingly with scientists doing it like one little strand at a time, you know, one and so it. I mean, I can see why conceptually you might think Craig's crazy, but he's like, no, I think this is really this is the way to do it. And so he quit NIH and just beat them at their own game, basically. At the end, they officially called it a tie because NIH like just started stealing his machines, basically. Like they went to the supplier and bought all these machines that he helped them design. And so they did start catching up when they realized he was right, you know. But anyway, so I interviewed this amazing guy, Craig Venter, who I love. He was called the bad boy of biotech. He pissed off so many scientists. If he hadn't pissed off like every scientist at NIH, he probably like would have like gotten a Nobel Prize or something, you know. But anyway, he has aphantasia and S DAM, and he also wrote a memoir, which is a funny thing for someone with severely deficient autobiographical memory to do. He often was like asked to speak at like a big honors graduation event, maybe it was in California or New York for high school. And he would ask people to raise their hands if they could visualize. And people with like near photographic memories, like very disproportionately were inhabiting this group of salutatorians and valedictorians of high schools. And then he'd be like, Can anyone not visualize? And there'd be like a couple kids, you know, who couldn't visualize at all, but still managed to do very well in school. But he's, you know, that I think that that's really good evidence that the school system is good for people who can do that rote memorization without having to integrate it into everything else you know to really understand something before you can pull it back. And honestly, I'm really bad at even the stuff that I really do understand, I can't pull it back out of context. And my husband's like this too. And we are like the worst people you want on your team for Jeopardy, right? Like I just wrote a story for National Geographic about moose migrations. So you should think that I know everything there is to know about moose migration right now. But if I went to like a trivia and like I just can't out of context pull that information back up, I have to tell you the whole story of the moose migration and how it fits into everything.

SPEAKER_04 25:18

Yeah, I resonate with that as well. Like I said, I was in college when I discovered this. So I started asking my wife about it. And we we were newlyweds at the time, and she's all yeah, I uh during a test, I can just pull my notes up in my mind and reading.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Wow, that's cool.

SPEAKER_04 25:35

I'm like, that is cheating. It is cheating, you know, and I'm like, if I wrote it on my hand, I'd be caught for cheating, but you're doing the exact same thing, you're just doing it in your head, and you know that's an advantage.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

People who can spell really well are definitely visualizers. Like you see them spelling in the air in the national spell. Right.

SPEAKER_04 25:56

You see them look up and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

I feel like I mean, how do we learn how to spell? I don't know how to spell I just I don't know how to spell. I'm a professional writer and I am very grateful to spell check because like I literally would not be able to be a writer. I can't spell shit.

SPEAKER_04 26:09

I can't yeah, and for me, it's certain words, you know. There are certain words, I've spelled them a million times in my life. I still misspell them every time.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Yeah, English. I feel like if you were if you're a person with aphantasia who lives in a culture where the spellings are like highly standardized and make any sense, then you would be closer to okay. But English really doesn't even try to make sense with its spelling. Like our letters are most arbitrary.

SPEAKER_04 26:36

Yeah, it's a mess. I agree. How has learning about your own mind changed the way you think about other people?

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Uh, it's really changed so much about how I deal with other people. Honestly, and it's embarrassing because again, like if people were falling short on something that I found to be really easy, then you know, it's natural, I think, to assume they're not trying, right? You don't assume that actually like their brains are working very differently than yours. And that's exactly the assumption people made about me. You know, they're like, well, it's very easy for me to recognize faces. So if you're not able to, you're clearly just not trying.

SPEAKER_04 27:13

And the other doing well in school, it just means you're lazy.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Yes, lazy. Yeah. And I love the book title that like there's no such thing as lazy, right? Like every kid wants to succeed. They want to. It's like it's clearly what they want. I mean, I'm sure that's not true for every kid. As you point out, there's always exceptions, but most kids do they do want to succeed and they're doing their best. So, like, but also, yeah, so another version of this is like my best friend Miriam. She takes forever to get over breakups, right? Like, she there was this one guy she was obsessed with. She dated him for like a really short period of time. I feel like it was just a few months, but she was obsessing over this relationship for like another year. And I always thought that this was a choice. I thought it was she she just like is choosing to ruminate, is choosing to like visualize this guy and like replay all their moments of their relationship and think about where it went wrong or whatever. I don't even have this cognitive machinery to do that. And that's why I have this really weird. I now I know I'm the weirdo here because I get over, I mean, I've gotten over like years-long relationships, like in a matter of weeks. And I and it's interesting because I always have told people you just have to hide their photos from yourself. And then your brain loses it, it loses its visual representation. That was in my case already very shaky. And that that is the node that you use to remember all of the biographical information about your former love, and so that goes away, and then you're fine, you feel fine, and you run into them in the street, and you're totally fine, and they have a panic attack. And so that's what I thought everyone was just like choosing not to do. And I now I realize it's just my weird coping brain that allows me to do this.

SPEAKER_04 28:57

All right. Can you identify some upsides and downsides to having a fantasia?

SPEAKER_02 29:04

I think that again, like the conceptual like thinking is really helpful. I I'm I love words, and and I think it's because the only way for me to remember anything is through words. And I was always really good at analogies, you know, because it's and they're so obvious to me because I don't have any concrete, I'm not I'm dealing with, I'm always dealing with abstractions. And so that just gives you like a little bit of a head up. Yeah. So obviously for me as a writer, like I don't think I'd be a writer if I wasn't didn't have aphantasia and S Dam. And then the downside is is something that I've actually always been working. Like, I know that I'm not good at it. I didn't realize it was a thing. But um, I don't, when I'm reporting, as a reporter, you know, your main job is to go and witness something and then bring that in words to, I mean, if you're a written reporter, bring that in words to the audience, right? And so, and I'm, you know, a lot of times like I'll do that and I know that I'm only gonna remember the storyline, which is actually very helpful, right? But people want texture. And again, like I'm sure like normal people apparently imagine these whole like fictional worlds in their brains, right? But I didn't know this was a thing, but I just knew that people like that. I don't really care about it, and so I always at every on the top of every notebook I write like sensory details, and then I write down, I literally record sensory details. I'm like, this carpet is the color of old used erasers, or you know, that like it smells like Christmas in here or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 30:38

Share the gift of laughter with your children and grandchildren with books full of funny poetry and silly stories by Shane D. Williams, available on Shane'sBraindomain.com. So you've already told us what SDEM is. Do you think there's a link between aphantasia and SDAM and what is it?

SPEAKER_02 31:01

Yeah, I mean, it's I think that if you can't visualize something and if you don't have a good visual memory, we're such visual animals. So, like, I guess it's possible. I can imagine maybe a blind person reliving moments from their past through sound or touch or something like that. It might be just as vivid, but for most humans, we are, you know, our brain, I forget the percentage, but like it's like 80% of your brain is involved with sight in some way. And so if you can't visualize your past, you are not recording that past in an episodic way, I feel like. So, so again, like there are people who have, if you have aphantasia, if you really can't visualize at all, but you do have like a good or even excellent episodic memory, to me, that means that you're definitely visualizing and you're just not conscious of it, you know, and which is totally plausible and probably describes a large chunk of people with aphantasia. But if you truly, really can't visualize at all, you're it's not happening on any level of your consciousness, then you probably have SDAM, which means that you cannot do this mental time travel, which is so important to so many people because you know, people feel that their whole identity is built on autobiographical memory. And that you know that movie, um, what was it called? Uh Inside Out with the cartoons.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Yeah, like they that was all they represented this little girl's memories as bubbles, they're very precious. You have core memories, they're on a particular shelf, and she can relive them, she can like visit them again. And that is so wild to me because that is nothing, I can't do that. And I'm a little jealous, honestly. Like, I think it would be cool to be able to relive really cool moments from my past. And I and there's clear disadvantages here too, right? Like, I think if you don't have that visceral memory, you can fail to learn lessons of mistakes you've made. Like, there was this girl in college who like borrowed my phone card and then would like rack up like hundreds of dollars talking to her boyfriend in Canada. This was when long distance cost money, and um, and on my like phone card, and she did it like several times, and and then I would like get mad, and then people are like, Why do you keep giving it to her? And I'm like, Yeah, that's a great question. Like, so yeah, I do think that it I like sometimes I don't learn from mistakes because I do get over the stress and emotion too fast, and I don't wallow a little bit. Maybe I should wallow sometimes, like my friend Miriam does without even trying. So I get so the relationship, I think I think it's like almost I honestly think that S Dam is a better, more specific version of aphantasia that would like sort of cut out a lot of the heterogeneity if you want to do that, and then you would find a big subset of people who can't spell, who can't, you know, do math in their head. Like that's this is my guess. And I'm of course, there's always outliers.

SPEAKER_04 34:02

Yeah, I've I've always found SDAM to to be confusing in relation to apantasia because on some level they sound like the exact same thing. There are certain definitions I've read of STEM where like, well, that just sounds like aphantasia, right? But as someone with apantasia, I've never really identified with SDAM because I've always felt like my memory's pretty darn good.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

So if you took a test, okay, so I took this test and it's the autobiographical memory interview. And it's again, like, as you can tell, there's a fine distinction. Like, how do you know when I'm telling you a rich, beautiful, detailed story from my past that I'm not able to like re-experience it? And the and the way, I mean, there's ways to tell. There's ways to tell. And and um, they're they're built into this autobiographical memory test that is like it's a it's an interview-based test, and it's really kind of like you have to kind of be trained to code it. But it's again those irrelevant details that they're looking for, the weather, the day of the week. And so that's how you can tell if someone really is not doing um episodic memory, even though we all probably a uh people with S DAM on average love telling stories about our lives because that's the only way we remember things.

SPEAKER_04 35:21

So, another interesting thing about it is aphantasia and SDAM were being studied at the same time without each other knowing about the other. So, in a lot of ways, I think they were studying the same thing, but focused on different aspects of it.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

The SDM researchers are memory researchers, and we know how memory works. And so they can actually see like how our brains are not consolidating memory in the normal typical way, and they can see actually the structural differences and predict what kinds of structural differences you would have in like certain small parts of your hippocampus. And then another really another finding that I think was fairly robust is that most people, your hippocampus, which is like your memory consolidation mini organ, basically, it tags your episodic memories, it tags like all the elements of it and then replays it for you, right? And so people who can do that are most human beings, and they're you know, in your right hemisphere is your vision hemisphere. And so that area, your hippocampus on your right side, it's going to be bigger. Like so, most people have an asymmetry with a bigger right side hippocampus because memory is visual for most people, very visual. But that they find the opposite asymmetry for people with S DAM. So I think it's a better, it's a better theory, it's a better concept just because it allows you to make predictions about humans because it's more narrow and it's less heterogeneous as a group. Whereas like with just asking people like if they can visualize or whatever, like that you would get just a way too many different versions of that, I feel like.

SPEAKER_04 37:10

Okay. Do you think someone who can visualize can have S Dam?

SPEAKER_02 37:16

Yeah, definitely. You do definitely do it. I don't think it would be likely though, you know.

SPEAKER_04 37:22

I got a comment on one of my YouTube videos. I want to read it to you because I think it's fascinating. He says, I can imagine images in my mind, so I don't have a fantasia. But my memory has always been very bad. And since learning about this, I think it's because I have S Dam. I can remember some facts about my life, but I cannot relive them. I can't remember things from a first-person perspective. And if I try to remember a scene that happened to me visually, I think I must reconstruct the details into an imaginary scene because it's from a different perspective in the room, and I see myself in the image.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04 38:03

Like seeing a movie of myself from another perspective.

SPEAKER_02 38:07

Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah, I think that I think he's probably right. Like he he's someone who can visualize, but didn't his brain doesn't use it for episodic memory for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_04 38:19

So one of the questions I ask people all the time is, are your memories in first person or third person?

SPEAKER_02 38:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:26

And I've had several people answer that they mostly happen in third person, which is always seems weird to me, right? And then later on I ask them, Do you feel like your memories are accurate? I need to go back and look and see if those people are who are seeing their memories in third person feel like their memories are accurate or if they have good memories in general, because again, I just ask the questions and see what they say. But this comment has really helped me think about STEM in a different way than I have before. I I wasn't sure that it could happen without aphantasia. But what he describes is I can visualize, but my memories, I'm reconstructing them into third-person things, and therefore they're not that reliable and they're probably not that detailed either.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

Yeah. Right? Yeah. But you know, the thing about reliability and memory, I mean, there's this paper. I always I want to do like a TikTok on this paper because I'm obsessed with it. They discovered that people, normal, neurotypical people, like have a extremely good memory for recent, relatively actually, I don't know, they even tested it a year later. They could remember. So I did this test and I just was so bad at it, where they made me do like a tour of the art of this building that I was in, like uh the Rotman Research Institute in in Toronto. And so it was like a it was, you know, a guided audio tour, and you went to point one and they pointed out a couple things about the art. And you went to point two and they pointed out some stuff about the art. And then they, and then later they were like, Did you do this thing first or this thing first? Or what did you do after this thing? And I'm like, I have no idea, you know, no idea. And they'll be like, Do you remember the color of the plate? Was this an image of a woman? That kind of thing, you know, and I'm just like, I have no idea, no idea. But the people, the neurotypical people who have this visual ability to replay their memories visually, like are actually really doing it. And it's actually like really good. It's weirdly good. Because like a lot of there's a ton of research on memory failure, you know, as we all know. And and it seems like it shouldn't work because every time you replay a memory, you do overwrite it, right? But we evolved to be able to do this, and the people who can do it, which is most people, are like surprisingly good at it, unless they're in a psychology experiment where people are trying to trick them. And then you can, there's like definitely a lot of examples of memory failures. But if you look at it on a whole, people are astonishingly good. Most people are astonishingly good at episodic memory.

SPEAKER_04 41:05

In this experiment, did you know you were gonna be tested afterwards?

SPEAKER_02 41:09

I totally knew. I mean, I did, yeah, and I and I did I try, yeah, I knew, but I feel like that makes a big difference to me.

SPEAKER_04 41:16

If I know somebody's gonna be asking me about stuff, I pay more attention. If I don't know, I don't, I just I don't pay attention.

SPEAKER_02 41:25

Yeah, but even trying my best, like I failed, like failed, failed.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

Okay. In your book, you talked about how some people have a more difficult time accepting S Dam than they do A Fantasia when they discover that they have these things. Uh, can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah, I mean, uh for the problem is the name, right? A Fantasia sounds kind of cool. It sounds like Fantasia, like the great Disney movie. And whereas S Dam, I mean, it says it has the word damn in it, so it sounds like you're damned. And it it really makes you sound like a non-player character because people believe their memories make up their whole identity. And it's episodic memories that are the ones that are really important to people personally, you know. Like you see, a lot of people when they figure out they have aphantasia, there's a lot of mourning happens where people are like, What other people can do this? I wish I could do that. I feel like I'm I've been cheated. You know, and I'm always a little surprised by that because it's like other people can have a lot of things you don't have.

SPEAKER_03 42:28

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

Like, I mean, other people have yachts, and I don't feel cheated that I don't have one. But anyway, but with S Dam, I feel like it's actually almost everyone is mourning the fact that they don't have this ability to replay memories, and it feels like a real shortfalling. But Brian Levine and everyone who studies it uh is like, no, it's just the it's just an extreme, just like there's on the other extreme is HSAM, which is why it's called S Dam, because HSAM is highly superior autobiographical memory. And again, we are a culture that that worships at the altar of memory, you know, and autobiographical memory in particular. Like we think Alzheimer's is the is the worst thing that can befall someone, you know. I think there's a lot of people who are on the S DAM side of the spectrum, and every person like who's older than 70 basically ends up on the S DAM side.

SPEAKER_04 43:21

I want to talk about HSAM real quick since you mentioned it. I've read a few people's experience with that, and it is mind-boggling what they experience. And when you were describing super recognizers, it kind of reminded me of that. Do you do you think there's any tie there or just two separate things?

SPEAKER_02 43:41

You know what? I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there's like a relationship, a correlation, but I don't think I mean again, like your face recognition system is so special that it's really possible that someone could just have a super souped up face recognition system and not be good at remembering any other kind of thing. And in fact, about half of people. Who are face blind have no other problems with object recognition. They can tell cars apart, they can tell houses apart, but half of us do. And I'm in that half. And I try to get into like anyone else's car, like any red sedan style car I'll try to get into. I've literally broken into people's cars by accident. I've let out a dog one time. I had to chase it around the parking lot and stuff it back into someone's car.

SPEAKER_04 44:26

Oh wow. Okay. Uh now that we've talked about each one of those in depth, uh, let's talk about kind of how they interact. How does face-blindness, memory differences, and imagination differences overlap? And how are they distinct?

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Oh, you know what? It's interesting because like people do say you see a lot of face-blind people who can visualize will say that the faces are fuzzy and in a way that the other things they're visualizing do not feel fuzzy to them. I think that's really interesting. Because obviously, I'm yeah, I'm not really visualizing anything. So I'm I would never notice a fuzzy face. I would be excited if I saw a fuzzy face. But yeah, so that I think that's an interesting interaction. It makes it harder for people to reconstruct faces in their visual imagination. Very interesting.

SPEAKER_04 45:18

Yeah. Why do these differences matter beyond just curiosity? What can they teach us about human diversity more broadly?

SPEAKER_02 45:27

The main thing for me, like the big life lesson, is like we no one is having the same inner experience as me, and almost no one is having the same outer experience as me. That's not the same like lesson you would get if you were fairly neurotypical, but still knowing that there are some people who are really not living in the same world you live in, is I think a really profound thing to think about. And and also I think it's something people don't even do with animals. Like you should really think about like people use it, it's so human to like anthropomorphize dogs, for instance, right? Or cats. Especially, I think cats are especially alien, like to our understanding, because they're not originally very social creatures and humans are extraordinarily social. Cats don't have the emotions, these sort of social emotions that we have. And this is what allows me to that. I feel so bad, but my one of my cats is very skinny and he really wants treats. And I would love to give him treats, but when I do, he barfs and it makes him skinnier. So I give my kitten, who is not allergic to treats, like an infinite amount of treats directly in front of Fuzz, like directly in front of him. And he never takes it personally. And I feel like a dog would, like a dog would, and like a human certainly would, a monkey would, you know. So like if you try to imagine what is it like to live in a brain that really doesn't have jealousy as an option. Like they also, there's also one, it's just one study, but it really seemed accurate to me that cats do not have a sense of causality. So they they had strings that if the cats pulled them, that it would cause, you know, the other part of the string to move and they could get like the treats. And as long as it was, they were like that, the cats got it. But if those strings were sort of crossed and occluded, they didn't get it. Whereas dogs got it, no problem. So I, you know how cats are always knocking things off counters, and people see their cats doing that and they think it's intentional because it looks intentional. The cat looks at the thing, you say don't do that, and they do it anyway, right? And it look, it feels like defiance, but it's actually because they have to keep checking gravity because they don't have a sense of causality. So they're like, what happens today if I knock this thing off the counter? I think this is like one of the ways in which people misinterpret things because they're attributing human cognitive abilities. I mean, humans are very unusual in the animal kingdom for a lot of our cognitive abilities and um a lot of our social emotions and things like that. And it's just not happening with your cats, guys. Like your cat is not retaliating against you. If your cat pooped on your pillow because and while you were gone, like he probably missed you. I don't know why he did it, but it wasn't a retaliation.

SPEAKER_04 48:10

All right. I know more about cats than I used to.

SPEAKER_02 48:13

And yeah, so this is like a big deal to me because I do think that it's fun to imagine other minds being that are so different from yours, and the realization that this includes other humans, it's not just other animals. Oh my god, can I tell you something about horses? Horses do not have language. I mean, obviously, all other animals don't really seem to have language, but they don't categorize and generalize things like humans, but they have an incredible visual memory. So if you have like a pile of farm equipment and one little thing moves in that pile, it you would not notice, probably. Like a human wouldn't notice if like the rake got like fell over or like moved like a quarter foot or something like that. Your horse will 100% notice and it will startle at that thing, like it's a new thing they've never seen before. And like similarly, if you have like a hose, like that's always coiled up in the barn, but like someone like leaves it on the floor, the horse doesn't think, oh, that's a hose and it's safe and I'm used to it. It's like that's a completely new object I've never seen before in my life, and I it could be dangerous.

SPEAKER_04 49:14

Wow, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

Can you imagine going through the world without language lumping things together, you know, and and having language for things changes how you see them. Knowledge literally changes how you see the world, and it what you're paying attention to changes how you see the world.

SPEAKER_04 49:31

Right. And I've said a lot of times that uh aphantasia, just knowing that it exists, has opened my mind to possibilities, and I find myself so much less judgmental of other people.

SPEAKER_02 49:46

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_04 49:47

Again, like I have no idea at all what it's like to be you, no idea. Yeah, so you do you, and I'm not gonna judge you for it no matter what. So I I just think that's a positive that can come from all of this.

SPEAKER_02 50:02

Yeah. And you know what? I feel like the agnosia part of like prosupagnosia, the not knowing is really important. Like, like you just said, I don't know what it's like to be you. And that, and sort of like embracing not knowing something is something that I think could like really improve everyone's life in so many different areas. Because I politically, everyone has an opinion on this or that, you know. Everything is really complicated, and there's people who have written theses about the thing that you're interested in. You don't know. I guess what my point is is that like there's a few things that I feel like I've studied in great depth, and even then I'm like, I know that I don't know a lot.

SPEAKER_04 50:43

Yeah, yeah, I have totally embraced I know that I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 50:48

I'm a science journalist, and so I'm actually always trying to get scientists to tell me facts, and they're they like won't admit, they won't. I one point I was like arguing with this vision research, and he's like, nothing's settled, science. And I'm like, okay, but like it's more settled than not, and he's like, nothing's settled.

SPEAKER_04 51:05

Yeah. Okay. One of the things that you talked about in your book that I liked is you said that you felt like an observer rather than really being in the world. Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_02 51:17

Uh, it's such it's like a level of comfort too. It's so much more, I'm way more comfortable being an observer and versus being a participant in the world. And I've actually really been trying to like break the fourth wall that I've always lived behind. But I think in part, I think it's literally just because I'm stereo blind. And so I'm never truly immersed in the world visually and the way that most other people are. But also, I think if you're kind of an outsider and you have a brain that's not working the same as everyone else, you have that perspective that other people don't have. And that is kind of a gift because it allows you to see things that other people can't see. Isn't it funny? There's so many visual metaphors, but obviously I'm not seeing nearly as much as most people. But but in the conceptual sense, I I have like a completely different angle on the world. But it's also like if you're a little bit aloof and detached, like that is kind of a safety margin. And so I've been trying, actually, like through improv to like force myself to be a participant and not just be an observer, you know.

SPEAKER_04 52:24

Another phrase that you said in your book that I really liked was hidden neurodiversity. So how does the fact that these differences are hidden, how does that affect the study of them and the acceptance of them?

SPEAKER_02 52:40

I mean, I think it's really interesting. I don't, I feel like in the past, people would not have been as accepting of the concept of apantasia, the idea that there are people who can't do like a mental thing that other people do effortlessly, because there's just a skepticism of that for some reason, a real belief, a core belief that everyone is basically the same. And like the thing is, like, from an equality standpoint, that's actually a good way to feel, you know, and and like if you have the sense that everyone's worth the same amount, then you can continue on and be like, okay, but but also people are working with a completely different toolbox, like some people are, you know, and some people are like really impaired in a lot of areas of their lives. And actually, I really feel like this is like my proselytizing, and is that like the neurodivergents out there who are doing great, like I feel like I'm doing great because I've been lucky to have a life that I can build around my strengths. Like my whole career and everything about my life is built around my strengths. Even like things like, you know, I can't remember where I put my keys. So I put my keys like in the same spot, you know, and it's fine, it works great. But if I was like forced to go back to middle school, like it would be a fucking disaster, like it was when I was in middle school. Like I can't find my locker twice in a row, I can't like to get the lock to work, I can't get, you know, the right books out. You know, it's like there's just so many things that in the context of a rigid system, you can't like make work, you know. So, and I think those of us who are thriving, it's our job to like try to advocate for like especially the kids or the people who are just not able to thrive as well. And so that's why I love neurodiversity because it's like it's an idea that's separate from ability or disability, you know, and it's all context dependent. So like you can be disabled in one context, but not in a different in a context, you could be super abled, you know. So I think that I'm really excited about like the increasing acceptance of differences in your brains that is independent of worth, you know, because I think in the past that's how we sort of policed equality is we're like, no, you're the same, we're all the same. But having it's like a more nuanced, better version of equality. But that said, though, I'm honestly like constantly thinking about the our emphasis on intelligence. Like humans are obsessed with intelligence. We love to know what other animals are really smart, octopuses, crows. And we also like really care about what humans are really smart. And we have theory of multiple intelligences to be like more inclusive, even though that theory itself like kind of falls apart fast in the empirical literature. But the point here is that I would like for us to like let up on the intelligence thing a little bit, you know, like okay, fine, humans are the most intelligent, but cats like have better balance. So, like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 55:38

I get it, I get it. Part of me is always a little bit amazed about we're this far into humanity and we're just barely getting to the point where we understand that our internal experience is different than others. And I feel like one of the things that has really helped it kind of become more, at least a little more known than it has been in the past is the internet.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:04

And I know that you talked a little bit in your book too about how the internet influenced the facelind world. So just talk a little bit about the internet and how you think it's influenced all four of these um things that we've talked about.

SPEAKER_02 56:18

Yeah, I mean, honestly, the internet super the earliest internet superusers were people with rare diseases and disorders. They found each other on usenet groups immediately and then they connected themselves with researchers. And it's great when that happens because it advances research and it gives like a more human angle to the thing. Like it could help you figure out your research priorities, for instance. And so this is also true for people with like brain quirks, like things that I wouldn't necessarily call disorders. Well, prosapagnosia is probably fairly disorder, it's it kind of fits in the disorder category pretty well. And the people who couldn't, you know, who couldn't recognize people found each other. And they went and because of they actually they couldn't do the research online yet. They literally went to a university library and found the word prosopagnosia. And then they connected with a scientist who a vision scientist who was studying prosepagnosia the only way it was known at that time, which was through brain damage. And he was like, Oh my god, like congenital or like developmental prosopagnosia is a whole different thing that could teach us a lot about how brain works. Anyway, so that's I do love it. It allows the internet allows little weird groups of people that would not otherwise be able to find each other to find each other. And I and this works in like trivial ways too. Like, so for instance, you know, as a Gin Xer, it never would have occurred to me, like I know that I would like to, I like to put on a fake mermaid tail and pretend to be a mermaid in the water at the age of 40, whatever. It would never occur to me to try to find those other people. But when I met some younger people, it absolutely did occur to them to try to find those other people online. And so now there's this whole mermaiding community, and we're basically just like free divers in costumes, but it's a thing, and we've all found each other, and it's great. So that's one thing the internet is so good at, I feel like. And with algorithms these days, I do feel like people are able to find diagnoses like or near diagnoses or you know, little groups that they belong to that they otherwise would have no idea that they belong to.

SPEAKER_04 58:23

Right. Okay. Um, the other thing I really liked in your book was when you talked about labels. Uh, can you talk about some of the pluses of having these labels and some minuses?

SPEAKER_02 58:36

Yeah. I mean, obviously the problem with all labels is that it they flatten texture. And so, like you say, face blind, and that you know, collects a group of people together who can't recognize faces, and that's helpful to know. And we all have a lot of common experiences, but there's a lot of different ways to be bad at faces. And so the label flattens those differences. Same with aphantasia, right? Like aphantasia people generally use it to mean like visual, right? And I've seen new words floating around for the other kinds, but again, it flattens, it flattens out people and it includes the people who can like pass these rotation tests, you know, or like, and and those of us who can't and can't even understand how the other people are passing it. Yeah. So here's what I think about labels. All labels are imperfect descriptions of reality. And what they give you is like a little group, like they give you a shared identity and they help you sort of come up with workarounds and like share experiences because you're usually the odd person out. And having a label and finding your group is really helpful. The negative side is that when they take on a life of their own, like you don't want to make it your whole identity, right? And I guess like my general feeling about all labels is is like how useful are they and who are they helping out? And if they're helping out the people you want to be helped out, then they should, we should keep using them. And and if they're not helpful, then drop them.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:04

Amen. All right. Last couple questions. I want to ask this in two different ways. So the the first way is if you could wave a magic wand and get rid of your neurodiversity, would you do it?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:17

No, because like that's like literally just erasing me, right? And that's the thing about neurodevelopmental disorders, is all these things get woven into every part of you, you know. And this is why people who are autistic don't like the people first language, like person with autism. It's like, actually, that's who I am. So so obviously, no. Now, would I like to have these experiences? Like, I would love to have the experience to visualize. I don't think that it would be a great new addition to my life, though. You know, like I think it would probably be distracting and annoying because I know how to do all the things already. Anyway, yeah, being able to recognize people. So I've often thought like it would be fun to like have Google Glass that tells me everyone's name and like who they are, but I probably wouldn't wear them all the time, you know. And anyway, we're not gonna get them because they would creep people out, probably.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:06

Okay. If you could wave a magic wand and get rid of one of your stereo stereo blindness, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:14

I would love to see in 3D. I hear it sounds beautiful, it sounds amazing. Being able to like really literally see it would be like being suddenly being able to see color or something, you know, like it would be a total transformation of the visual world. And I think that'd be really fun. It's also really overwhelming to people who have done it and you like want to take a week off work or something because your whole world is crazy and you have to take naps a lot to deal with it.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:41

Okay, Sadie. That is pretty much it. Thank you for sticking with me for so long. Is there anything else you would like to say or talk about before we sign off?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:51

No, it's been so fun. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:53

You are welcome. This one was really interesting and really fun. I learned a lot, and I appreciate your book and your insights and your work that you do. And I appreciate you as a unique person that I'm glad I met. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:07

Thank you. You've got such a good mission.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:12

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, follow, and engage with us, and share it with your friends and family as we continue to explore this fascinating subject. For additional information about this episode or Shane's brain, check out the show notes. Thanks for listening to the Discovering Your Mind podcast. You are beautifully unique.