And we don't stand, and just to be able to talk to yourself, you can say so on that vantage point. Maybe next time you'll be right here. We can have you all start. Alright, so our first speaker, Arthur Kaye, is going to talk about the staff. There have been many famous associations. In history, I wanted to talk a little bit about the ones that made me ridiculous in some way. The first one is Mr. Kirsten from the National Council of Maine. I'm going to say you're here during the 30 years' work, which he describes as a soldier and military officer from New York.  They have a lot of energy, so if not, you can remote torturing them if you wanted to kill them. What is kind of fun is celebrating, and that doesn't sound so fun, but the group of people who attacked him were all dressed up for carnival, and they were led by a guy, you know, Bear Sue, who's the only man in the national photo. And the other one, at the beginning of the younger, this was the mother of Amber Aero, infamous Amber Aero. Kaye came here for when she was fairly young, so she sort of took this regent kind of role, but as he got older, he liked that less, and there was a lot of power struggles going on, and he decided that it might be best to do away with her, but it wasn't as easy as near a lot of enemies. There were definitely multiple attempts to make, there were some poisons, there were lots of different accounts, but one account alleged that he had her bed rigged up so that we should lay down on it, the ceiling would collapse on her. But as we realized that his key gymnastic and self-illeging father always had a slave to lay down on the bed first to perform it for her. So, yeah. So not to, you know, if you're not wondering about Aero, I invited her on a boat trip, and he had to boat rigged up so that the ceiling would collapse. So, anyway, he went into that. But that didn't work. Don't lose it. Kaye apparently gave in, depends on what account you're reading, she may have done the default triangle method, you're not supposed to do where she lay down next to a couch and didn't get crushed, so the crew of the boat hypothesized it and attempted to drown her, but she still made it to shore. So, finally, Aero just sent some assassins to kill her, which worked, and he received a flood of congratulatory letters from the standard and the pediatricians and others, so impressed. Finally, we have this guy, Giuseppe Onasek-Fieski, that's how we pronounce that. So, he this age tried to kill Kaye Mootlick of Brandt in the 1830s. What makes it interesting is that, not content to just try to be a marksman and shoot the Kaye, Kaye and his accomplice built this device, an inferno machine of all the guns. There were 25 different guns, and basically just like, take them together, attached them together so that they were all fired at the same time. This is the actual thing. Yeah. Impossible later to work, and of course it actually kind of did. He did not kill the king or the king's family, but he did manage to kill 18 other people and 22 additional people, and he also severely injured himself and lost a couple fingers, and Ronald Dain arrested king's celebrity during the trial and was eventually executed. It's so ambitious. It just seems to be one bullet, but it doesn't look right. Quarrel V did manage to fire like 400 projectiles from this thing. Almost every barrel is like 4. All right, so those are some highly amusing assassination attempts, but we're going to back up again to the earlier time around the crusades, and Arthur Kay is going to teach us about Hashashin. Oh hey, okay. This is a live mic. Hmm. I should probably get to myself and explain to you. It's cool. Hi, I'm Arthur. Actually, I'm not going to use the mic stand for the mic, but I'm not here. Seems okay. Okay. Yes, he hits it. Theater of assassination. Welcome to the show. So, the history of the Middle East and the Near East, a lot like the history of Europe, is dominated by warfare and conflict and death. This is a map showing after the birth of the prophet you can see the spread of Islam spanning all through the northern border of Africa, through the entire Arabian Peninsula, and then through Iran, and really ultimately down and spilling into India for a while. And although it was all Muslim land, there was also a lot of interstitial warfare going on, and we're going to talk about one little segment of that. Here we're zooming in a little bit. The person who founded the Hashashin was born in this town, just sort of a little pot on town, but he was a very active scholar and he was very intellectually curious and active. He was very charismatic. And after he had basically gone as far as the town locals could get him, they said you should go to Cairo which is a seat of great university college, and you should head that way. So he did. He took some number of years to make what could have been a three month trip. Some scholars report that the reason he did this was because he was trying to avoid conflict, growing bandits and what not. I'm just going to say that he was a late teenager, early 20's guy out on his own for the first time, and he just wanted to meet people. It is pretty clear that as he was traveling around he made friends, and he just listened to the things that people had to say. And then when Tommy's married way, for sure during his travels he encountered the ideas of Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism and a lot of other things that were not exactly kosher. He was that terrible with respect to Orthodox Islam, but they were strange ideas that he was kind of young and adventurous and curious enough that they really stuck with him. And ultimately he made his way to Cairo, beautiful Cairo where he introduced himself to the local theocrats, the members of the government looking for a place where he could continue to learn and where he could have a job in the local government. He made friends with this guy, a fellow called Nizam Amalik, so I should point out this is our friend Hassan we've been talking about him a lot this is his temporary friend Nizam Amalik who was a senior ranking member in the local government relatively conservative, very respected very well placed and the two of them became friends. In the sense of the older established guy who already has his position set, who was making friends with the younger up and coming weirdo guy which is a thing that happens. But then at one point there friendship stopped and it stopped very, very abruptly and very dramatically. Different historians account different reasons why some of them say that it was a person of a trail, other people say that treason was involved I'm going to resort to an old big cave in the bad scene song and say that what almost certainly happened was Hassan i Sabash showed a red right hand he basically said listen I'm interested in forming a secret organization that's kind of heretical and that's ultimately entertaining over the government and that might involve murdering some people, but you know a well established conservative member of the government nobody will ever expect you of being a murderous heritage, it's the perfect plan what are you saying? and what he said was no are you out of your mind? and he said you need to go to jail which is what happened Ms. Ahma Malik had the young Hassan i Sabash thrown into jail for treason and heresy then the historical accounts differ again and I'll do my best to distinguish between legend and falsified legend and plausible stuff we know that there was some kind of problem with the jail and some historians right to the back end of the jail broke almost certainly by this time Hassan i Sabash the young upcoming conspiracy master would have had friends already and it's possible that it came in literally broken out of jail whatever the case there was a break with the jail and he was able to sneak out the back his former friends flipped every kind of table was extremely angry we do know for sure that after the young Hassan had escaped the older in his arm said you have to catch him he's a dangerous enemy of the state kind of heritage, you have to go after him but ultimately it was just one guy's word against another guy's words and he was a 19 or 20 year old kid he really cared about that much so he just got away where he got away to was to try to return to home he is out of jail but he's still on the run to the left of the state which is a really bad thing to do in any country let alone this regional world during that period died so he went back home and it was clear that he was looking for a place where he could set up shop and he found that in all of them and if you've ever played the I'll go ahead and say excellent series of the Hashashim during that period of time there are a couple of times during this presentation where I need to move I love this stage thing which is why I use it where I need to go full screen and here is the now ruins of Alamut modern photograph and there are a couple of things that are worth pointing out the one is it's at the top of a very tall hill so that you can see enemies coming from a long way off you can also see that the I'm stepping off camera but the live audience is right there so you can see that the approach is very narrow which means that if you're outnumbered which he knew that he and his people were always going to be it's a lot easier to defend the narrow approach that it wouldn't be something much broader and then finally although this isn't the best picture you can see even on this political agriculture what that means is that if you're a group of heretics hanging out in a fortress and people come to try to destroy you you can just harvest up all the food because it's right there and you can take it into the castle to be relatively safe but of course there's trouble which is that people already live there so that was the ruler of the castle and this is a castle and then people in the village down below over the course of two years the then still young Hassani Sabah made friends with the local villagers and he was very personable and then after he had become friends he basically just straight up asked them to join our wonderful secret society and it turns out a lot of them said yes so then they snuck into and infiltrated the fortress and then they snuck him in and when there were enough converts in the fortress they confronted the ruler and said listen we don't think this is your fortress anymore it's basically you're outnumbered all of us to one and they let him go which is sort of against the known legends of the Hashashin and I'll return to that point later but they let him go historical accounts differ in some cases they just let him go in other accounts they actually paid him for the fortress less like a seizure and more like a forced sale here's fair market value for your castle we don't bear you any ill will we just need your castle in whatever case then now pushing through the Middle Ages again especially through this period of time Masami Sabah took over and literally never left the castle again there are lots of different legends almost all of which are false about what they then did with the castle there's one legend that the word Hashashin is based on Hashishin that they all eat drugs it turns out that it's almost certainly not true there's another legend that they had a pleasure garden with aqueducts that ran with water and milk and they were trying also almost certainly not true it turns out the really hard core sects of Islam also tended to be very straight-edged and we know for a fact that Masami Sabah after he was old enough to have children actually had one of his sons thrown out to be caught in the glass of wine so it seems really improbable that they would have a pleasure palace and walking drugs and wine built inside but they did have to go for sure and we know this was a really sweet library and as a part of the Hashashin public outreach program they actually invited scholars from nearby areas to scholars who had recorded that they had decided that the Hashashin was a violence heresy to ever exist on the planet and absolutely needed to be eradicated also said, that's a damn good library find out about where it is again sweet library they did also train the famous killers, the assassins which came up not too long afterwards because meanwhile back in Cairo former friend Nizam Ali was continuing to pitch every possible kind of fit right, I told you he was dangerous, I told you this was going to be a problem we have to kill him and it turns out he had said those things long enough to not only put concentric circles on him itself, but to become their first victim the histories are pretty consistent Nizam Ali was walking around town who were dressed as Sufi mystics came up loudly enough that they were allied with the Hashashin and shanked them along the spot and then they went to jail which is the thing that happens the basic rules with the Hashashin this is very much a modern paraphrase, but the first rule is you don't kill unless absolutely necessary the second rule is you only kill your real enemy and the third rule is you do it publicly and with total commitment which gets me to my second, I have to pull away from the stage graphic for a minute but it would actually be irresponsible of me not to contrast what the Hashashin were doing with terrorism which is a thing that we're frankly awfully concerned about these days as a general form, any sufficiently large group typically has a decision structure that goes like this at the top you have your apex decision makers in a government or military this would be the king, the president top military brass, the governing legislature, whoever then you have the people who are in the middle your officer corps if it's a corporation it would be middle management, if it's a corporation the people on top would be the C-suite and then down towards the bottom you have people whose jobs it is all thanks to them to be the soap for abuse in governmental and military terms this is basically your customer service department whose job is just to listen to and create people all day and then outside of this organization you have everybody else, you just have the general public you can probably see where we're going but let me make this really explicit if you're the Hashashin, the people you hit are on top, it's the people who are actually making the decisions that they want you dead modern terrorism doesn't do that they go to the people who are unrelated you just want the random people who are on the bottom it is true that in both cases the people who perpetrate it often do it publicly and with total commitment but with the Hashashin you go up and the terrorism you go down and the distinction is relevant enough that the guy who wrote the definitive text Bernard Lewis this book is called The Assassins a radical sect of Islam he wrote it in 1967 it consists of being translated into a book is how definitive this book is considered and in 2003 he wrote an entirely separate preface basically just saying listen some of the translations of this book that have come out in other languages trying to make out that the Hashashin were terrorists and that's just not true if you want to judge them, that's totally fine they were heretics and they were rulers just make sure that you're judging them for the right things so it was certainly worth the moment of my time to clarify that and there's a decent story about the spread of the Hashashin that I think illustrates that point so here's the map again we've already got Oliver in the bag now let's take Yerukuk I don't have a lot of slides about this that's alright because it's brief Yerukuk has a number of huge advantages if you're the Hashashin looking to expand one of them is that it's very close to Oliver so that if you control four fortresses and somebody comes in and taps one of them you can reinforce from the other one and they're in time it's also got a very narrow approach so it's easy to defend if you're outnumbered which again you're always going to be it's got a nice fertile valley and then if you're interested in infiltration the fortress of Yerukuk was also kind of run down which makes it easy to seek into so one of the local officials saw the writing on the wall and went to the other town officials and said listen, if we don't do something we'll still boost this place so the other town muckity muck said fix it up so he got together the money to make the relevant repairs he stocked up with a certain amount of supplies so that if the Hashashin showed up you could just hide out in the fortress for a while there was some number of hand-selected guards so that you could guard against infiltration and when everything was ready to go and it was an all-spickin' span looking perfect that guy revealed himself and every one of the hand-picked guards the servants of the Hashashin thanks for the fortress but so again if you can find some way to do what you're trying to do without killing do it and it's really interesting and kind of funny and all the better so I'll go ahead and get cool with the other regions in that part of the what is really now what you're on all happened while Hassan-e-Saba the original the founder was still the Grandmaster of the Order a title that just became known as the Old Man in the Mountain fast forward about 60 or 75 years now and the Hashashin set their sights on the Mediterranean and in particular our fortress called Masya there are a number of different reasons why you would want if you were the Hashashin to be in Masya and one of those reasons is the Crusaders in spite of the fact that the Hashashin were definitely a heretical sect of Islam they were still Muslims and they hated the freaking Crusaders as much as anybody else did and this is where the action was happening so they kind of wanted to be there the fortress at Masya also had some problems one of them was that the owner of that particular fortress owned a bunch of other fortresses and he didn't need to have enough money or troops to guard all of them like what not well another problem is that Masya is north of Jerusalem what that means is that every time the Crusaders decide to come through to reinvade Jerusalem they go by Masya so there was this weird thing where the Crusaders would come and they would take Masya and then the guy who was the owner would have to get a bunch of guys from other fortresses to come and kick the Crusaders out and retake the fortress but then he never had enough guys to really rear me again so a bunch of times so probably when the Hachashin actually showed up the owner of the fortress probably thought something like great this is just my another headache but remember you don't kill what the Hachashin said was yes we're interested in your castle but we're happy to buy it and be paying cash so the owner basically said great here's a client it's your place now good luck and the Hachashin kept it and were very secure until Saladin showed up who was no joke but Saladin first began his ascent to power over basically everything in that region he had identified three crucial enemies of Islam that needed to be eradicated the Crusaders kind of obviously number two was a group of Muslims in the northern region who had basically turned traitor and allied themselves with the Crusaders and the group was the Hachashin which again will put giant concentric circles on you when you are at the top of the Apex Decision cluster and you're saying the Hachashin had to go and in fact they had tried to kill him at least a dozen times historians Brown may agree that it was at least a dozen attempts on his right and he had stopped every one of them and now finally it was Xi Jinping and then the guy who was at that time the master of the Hachashin man who's known as Sinan got together with Saladin and they had some kind of encounter and this is where the histories get really really wacky and there's a bunch of different legends about what exactly happened I'm going to share two of them with you now these are my two favorites for sure the histories agree that Saladin had built a special pavilion bed that was and he was the only one who was allowed to sleep in it so he would climb up inside and he kept a sword with him so that if he ever felt the thing shaking like somebody was trying to climb up into it he would just kill that person whoever you are, you're dead so and he also had guards posted and he's in the middle of the army so the one legend he goes that Sinan who was again the grandmaster of the Hachashin at the time snuck out of the fortress and snuck through the army and snuck by the personal guards and snuck into the tent and this is my favorite part left a dagger stuck in a stone as a way of saying I could have killed you but I didn't how about we talk instead and when Saladin woke up the next morning he was I think understandably a little distressed and decided maybe talking would be a good idea the other version of the legend goes that Sinan met with Saladin and a pair of Mama guards the Mama's were the elite slave warriors I don't know if you're familiar with the Game of Thrones series but if you are the unsullied are almost certainly based on the Mama's they were incredibly dangerous and incredibly loyal and the story goes that Saladin and just the two guards met with Sinan and then the Mama's revealed themselves as servants in the Hashashin and basically said listen boss we like you a lot but this whole going up in the Hashashin business has to stop how about we just talk instead and that was enough for Saladin to say okay maybe that's what we should be doing anyways whatever happened for sure while Saladin was sieging the fortress at Masya the third and his whole army were on their way down out of Europe and into the Holy Land and Saladin knew it and he did not want to be stuck sieging this little pulled up fortress when they were waiting, waiting for their fish to fry so some kind of agreement that arrived that Saladin pulled up his entire sieging force and then told everybody else who he was in charge of which was again almost everybody the Hashashin are basically okay and to just leave them be in this part of the world and let them do their thing so I have to show you this map because it's so delicious this is a modern replica this is a modern recreation of the different regions in the area and who controlled what so it shows the different principalities and the dachis and the sultanates as they existed at this time and you probably can't read it but this little white part here just says assassins there's no clue, if you're trying to take over some space in this area just don't go there maybe you won't go well for it the Hashashin collected taxes which is kind of weird but that gave the imprimatur of being official, Saladin had said that they're okay, that means they're okay it's also pretty clear that there was a kind of reciprocal agreement of help that came most famously to the fore when Khan al-Matharat one of the crusaders was elected the Christian king of Jerusalem on April 26, 1192 literally 48 hours later, he not paid a visit he was on the throne for less than 2 whole days before the Hashashin the Hashashin had enjoyed maybe 70 to 80 years of still fighting and still conflicts but for the most part they were doing okay the first roughly 75 years of operation the kind of official assassinations the best that we can estimate them right now came to the mid-60s I went 68 as an estimate of the total number of people who were kind of specifically targeted 68 people is about what you would expect in a prolonged border skirmish and in a full-out war 68 is a rounding error so that's not bad the reason they got stuck in legends is because they weren't killing the people who we sort of officially designated as these are the people who killed if you're angry they were killing the people at the top of the pyramid which is what makes you well-known and infamous so now back to al-Matharat which was more officially the seat it's now 1250 the Hashashin have been doing really well basically for 150 straight years and then the Mongolians showed up and you can tell the Mongolians it's dangerous because they've been drawn by a competent artist and not me and the Hashashin were able to hold out against the seeds for a while but the Mongolians made it clear that they weren't going anywhere and we really can't just occupy this whole valley for two years until you literally all starve to death and then we'll just log in so the guy who was at that point the old man in the mountain basically negotiated the aid to those people he said listen we'll give you the fortress and the Mongolian centerite through you wackos will make an exception normally we kill everybody but we'll let you adore a little bit of those guys so the Hashashin did in fact manage to get their people out alive and then the Mongolians did what the Mongolians do which is that they clacked into a plane and then they went off to the next target I'd like to and that's we're getting very close to the end I'd like to leave you with the idea if there's a lesson that we can learn from this it is in fact that if you're really upset about things sometimes fully accountable the people at the top of the decision period is the right way to go I will just personally urge you not to do anything that lands in jail not many of us are here thank you very much thank you for that if your sentence is the answer is Hassan and Sabah had incorporated Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism and to some extent the idea of personal enlightenment that you as an individual can have the kind of direct encounter with the divine which and there were other things that went into that but it was in a way that did not die with the Islamic Orthodoxy at the time there's other weird issues relating to who the appropriate heir of the prophet was which is a schism that had started going on right but it had been the Shia Sunni split and then within the Shia within the Sunni sect there was a sub sect that had decided on a separate branch then there was another sub sect that had decided on a separate branch and then the Hashashin were down there so they concluded that there was somebody who was the heir of the prophet who had nothing to do with any of the other major versions which by itself would get you a little air sure how did it take to become an assassin where there were specific techniques the answer to the first question is I have no idea and I'm not sure that we do know one of the things that happened and burned every book which is why a lot of the things that we know as legends stuck as truth for a really long time and it's only been relatively moderately that we've been able to piece together that there was this one scholar from this one region who said the Hashashin were heretics but they have a very glad variety we've been able to kind of call it together with the truth yes, it was almost always the same whether you are coming out of all of it or you're just kind of embedded in a little bit of culture you dress like a normal person there's nothing fancy you use a dagger a long dagger which requires that you be face to face you announce that you're Hashashin and then you spam them that's the technique which basically guarantees that the guards don't kill you on the spot you go to jail and then they're going to kill you that's kind of how it goes two more questions two more questions oh personal thought of arms there's a side question so there's a separate group an ongoing lecture series called Otsunon that happens twice a month in the city I'm a very active member of that group and this is Harvey and he's our spokesman yeah and then a topic rolling question where does the word Hashashin come from or Hashashin come from or assassin come from but it's not Hashish there's a word and I'm going to mispronounce it terribly but it's something like Hashishun which means foundation of faith or core of faith and modern modern scholars on the subject generally agree that Hashashun is the actual word that was used to describe those people at that time but there were a lot of people who hated them who said that they're all drug addicts that Hashish things sucked for a while where there are other groups who took on the tactic of going to the top of the period and who were they the short answer is yes lots of different groups and we now use the word assassination to refer to going after the head of any political or religious group I don't know of any sort of hereditary groups that ended themselves in that way but even at the time there were a lot of groups or individuals who would stage an assassination but they would do it in the way where you dress like an old person and you say Hashashin and then you kill the guy as a way of shuffling the blame off onto the Hashashin like copycat killings of convenience so that you don't have to take the blame for it um which is why that 68 number is very rough but there it is that's my two questions and I'll be around down here if you guys have more great questions we'll leave you right up at the foot of the stage for the next 10 minutes we're going to take a quick break you can replenish your drink you can go talk to the Oakland Public Library you can have a brand new table because it's kind of smooth coming up so you can turn books into art you can also get a reading list of ratings in the talks here and sign up to give a talk or find out what else the library has for you we'll be back in 10 minutes the first thing I think we're going to do is we're going to bring out overnight detention leader and regents up to the stage and she'll try to figure out who won and who it's in life we'll pull that one and check it out the next talk is about the first amendment constitutional amendments are kind of a funny thing we have 27 of them yet how many have been proposed 10 members that are immediately high enough and this is only through the congress amendments there's actually 6 6 amendments that the congress voted for that the states have not ratified for which technically still can be ratified if anyone wants to do this yes the equal rights in them in prisons has 35 38 states so women think about I'm sorry but 25 of the 50 states don't think they should be treating them but strange stuff happens it was 202 years from the time that amendment 27 was voted for by the congress that it became ratified by the states so it can take a while this by the way the 27th amendment anyone know what that did so essentially it made it so that congress people couldn't actually give themselves raises any congressional salary increase so yes took 2 centuries for people to think that was a good idea it took 128 years for Tennessee to ratify the 15th amendment that was to give equal voting across the races and in fact Tennessee again hate to think on Tennessee but come on they did not ratify the amendment to abolish slavery until 1995 it became an end so I showed you the great number of amendments that since been proposed as you may expect many of them are on sort of mundane issues or sort of I don't know if I can say mundane certainly I'm gratified that the no same sex marriage thing has a steady decrease from congress to congress so I'm really like gratified that people seem to want a balanced budget now with campaign finance reform but I was also astounded at all of the ridiculous amendment proposals that have been made for example did you know that we had an amendment proposal that said that we should not have one president but I roamed triumvirate of presidents it happened in 1878 because of the contested Hayes till the election there were also different amendments that would have eliminated the presidency and the senate all together this is because both of those offices are not direct elected by the people rather they're elected by electoral voters another good amendment that was proposed salary caps all of that money would go to painting down the national debt it was done in 1933 by Wesley Lloyd of Washington to look at the congressional record of people who proposed these zany ideas Wesley actually stayed in congress until he died the person presenting this amendment did not he essentially was a one-term representative Lucas Miller of Wisconsin in 1893 in his only term of congress when it was obvious that he wasn't going anywhere suggested that we not be called the United States of America but be called the United States of Europe now let's talk to you about something that actually did get right in front of the states the first amendment kind of important is Jim Wheaton at the graduate schools of journalism at both Cal and Stanford a kind of small region I first want to ask you I have never done a power point before and so I I don't have two figures and they're not going to move because I kind of believe with the general about power point it makes us alright so the interesting academic question why is the first amendment first I did as all of the scholars do we I'm looking enough and what I found is that there were five group the rationale for why the first amendment is first around five different rationales they are in no particular order one that protection for free speech was part of our thinking from America's inception the very beginning of the idea of the United States number two it was a central principle for this new form of government that they were creating a public operating under a constitution it was a central principle three it's first for a reason because it's the foundation of all other Nigerians who were over and over and over again there's something sensibly first then there's the founders especially Madison the father of the constitution said he was essential to protect free speech to protect the people and that's why the first amendment is first this is Jill Abramson the executive editor of the New York Times arguing the best job in Germany in the United States in rational five the founders wanted to protect dissent because they themselves had been dissenters and they realized how important was to protect that as you keep the government house alright let's examine each of those five to do that we're going to take a little trip to history so come with me in the way back machine and we're going to go back to 1776 everybody knows what was happening on July 4, 1776 yes the most famous press release in history was it that's all this is it's a press release but they declared independence unanimously all 13 states they realized they had to fight for it so they appointed this guy to be in charge of the army for basically three reasons one, he was the tallest guy in the room two, he never said anything never spoke in Congress and three he wore his uniform to every meeting of the Congress so they sent him up to Boston it's the right time army together he creates an army and he proceeds to run away from every single battle well, no, he did fight a train but by the way he just made the French chase him all over the continent so eventually the French blew it and they got their backs up in New York town and the British Navy didn't show up the French Navy did so Cornwall says fuck it, I'm out of here these this is now Saturday he watched it was five years of fighting he takes two years to negotiate a treaty over in Paris through New Paris negotiations were Adams who spent a lot of time talking to the British negotiated Jefferson, who spent a lot of time talking to the French because he liked French and Franklin, who spent a lot of time doing something else all together we get a treaty it's 1783 do we then have a country? we need to talk about how you organize a continent that has been settled by the usurpers and the illegal immigrants this is one way to do it what you get here three big countries, coastal coasts that occupy the entire thing there's another way to do it though South America 12 or 13 other countries occupying it in Europe well, guess what we could have ended up as this 15 separate countries and that is in fact the way we were heading at the time because in 1783 when the United States of America legally comes into existence with the Treaty of Paris written hands over all the property we take their laws slur to the colonies up and down the coast some of them are the grand admissions that you can see look at Georgia what they all want it was access to Mississippi there was 13 separate states operating under a confederation it was a common of Congress that each got to send an equal number of people to Congress to try to work out cooperation and it did work they fought bitterly they didn't have the power to they didn't have the power to tax all they could do was reposition from the states if it asked really nicely please send us the money so we can run the government and the states responded pretty uniform no thanks there was no Navy and in those days you had Navy what's going to happen Britain was starting to nibble from the north out of Canada Spain was coming up from New Orleans nibbling at bits and parts of it there was no way to protect yourself no way to collect any money and they taxed the shit out of each other at each floor every time we went to move between them so it was a cabal led by Hamilton Madison I know it's a musical name now Hamilton Madison he was the richest guy in Philadelphia and they were going to be called by Howard for a new cabal and they simply declared in 1786 that other government they're golfing along for about 3 years that there's going to be a convention in Philadelphia in May of 1787 to be able to strike the troubles of a confederation and perhaps propose some amendments to fix it they had no authority whatsoever to make this declaration they simply said there was going to be the big state thought it was a good idea Virginia immediately their members were going to go to the convention their nominees and top of the list is which was really hard except he didn't want to go Washington said no I'm retired I promised that once I won the war I would not seek power I would go back and grow things so Hamilton went to he said little buddy he said don't tell anybody you're not going to go just be our little secret so when they publicly announced that Washington was going to go he said no well I don't get that so what do I want the states to begin to nominate appoint representatives they could appoint as many as they liked there was no rule New York appoint three Virginia said it's your delegation and then you have to be closer to those who may Washington said I'm alone and how to you gotta go because this is really really important we're actually going to fix this thing because we're not going to propose amendments for the confederation we're going to make a national government and you will need to be there because everybody will listen to you not say anything again they tricked everybody by saying Washington was going to be there and then once nobody was coming they went back along and said gotta go now George so he agrees to go he goes to the villa mentioned 1787 authority meet Madison smartest political mind in the room he goes over a week early meets with the Virginia delegation some of the people in Maryland will not be fixed no confederation in history has ever survived we need a single national government he sat down with them and he worked out 15 resolutions 15 actual you'll be resolved that boom and all of a sudden there's a single national government there's a president a congress by camera nature a judiciary all of that is in those 15 revolutions so as soon as they got seven states in the room they had a quarrel Madison Randall said here Randall stands up and says Your Honor, Your Excellency I have some resolutions for discussion in our deliberations today Washington goes open immediately vote political lesson one you can go on meeting whether it's a rival agenda you need a person who shows up with a written agenda even if people don't want to talk about it they'll end up talking about it they always will and so what you had right there was a constitutional coup d'etat because the instructions from the legislatures were to solely consider amendments to the confederation that was the first thing we threw out we said no, we were a whole constitution and then Washington not to use people on time he would only say if that's what was talked about that is what they talked about through that whole long hot sun and I'm not going to go to the constitution it's fascinating, there's a great book about it back in the library shelf there they worked, they cajole, they healed they healed in all things I had to do this was not an open session when the first thing they did was impose a vow of secrecy on everybody because they didn't want anyone to know what they were up to and it was so important that they actually nailed all of the shutters shut on the book, so nobody put it over here what they were doing they worked quite hard, they did it all whoop, they did great painting on it Washington's there, and Franklin's down here we've got a constitution that's it, right now all they've got is a proposal for a new constitution somebody's got to approve it huh, do you send it back to the Congress for approval? no, because that's not what they want you sure as hell won't send it to the legislatures or the states because you're not quite put about a business but you're going to put it in their place and so what they did, after adopting the constitution, they adopted a resolution that said this constitution will take effect once the states through conventions chosen by the people have approved it in nine of the states they went way around the legislatures whose instructions they had ignored in the first place so now we have the replication fight we've got a constitution and they did another clever thing as I say one, they went around the legislatures and somebody else, so they could go out and choose the people who would be in the conventions to approve it they liked this new constitution second, they made clear it was we the people not we the states and we're not about being debate the people who didn't know what was going on, the ones who really loved the states the people who actually ended the revolution it's a way to make it a place, a president who could serve her life with power already running direct taxation without the states involvement in fact, if you're looking at the constitution there's something called the Supremacy Clause that says the national government's supreme over the state you just looked everything outside out a lot of opposition by general legislature to the power of tax standing armies they didn't like the term democracy they had to be in a senate six years before you elected they messaged you and made it like people six years a lot of things to find out none of those though made sure that they didn't need talking points the sort of talking points that they came up with led by of course Sam Adams up in Boston who was a colonial hothead what makes great beer was there's no bill on rights well I tell people I think what but in fact it was introduced near the end by mason of virginia that there should be a bill of rights up handed to this constitution just like all the states had in their constitutions and it was voted down by the convention unanimously so mitten in the one that it was part of united states constitution from the inception there they voted against it but they also said in the conventions that it was a yes or no vote they did not want 13 separate little conventions all being to edit what was done sitting on it that's going to be a friggin mess you can't have that it's a yes or no vote that's all you can have tough position it worked Pennsylvania ratified the whole level first that's why it says the first state Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey it was going pretty well and then it got to Massachusetts so the thing was going to fall apart that's the best part they had the hot heads they had a lot of opposition we think that's where all the hot heads were revolution were so how were we going to get the message and they realized saying it's yes or no the nose are starting to get they pulled back they pulled Adams they pulled the exam Adams and they said you said um how about if we did a yes but you ratified both ratified and tell us what amendments you'd like to see and then when the new Congress meets we'll pass those Adams says that sounds okay for me so they went to Hamilton excuse me, Hancock he had a huge signature he's the governor of Massachusetts at the time and he just stayed away from the convention although he was chairing them because he's waiting to call policies he's waiting for the parade to form so they go to Hamilton and say look you're the governor you can put this through and by the way if you do this and we ratify and Washington says he's it worked the Massachusetts vote to ratify do that nine votes and every single state after that was given the opportunity to say yes but the other two critical states they had to have New York and Virginia those were the votes to ratify the Constitution yeah if two people had switched to New York we would not have a government because you can't have the United States and New York's not in it because you can't get around so make number two that the First Amendment was an important principle from the beginning busted no, the First Amendment the whole Bill of Rights was just a factory political deal to get votes in the Massachusetts convention and to use it to ride Hancock until they became president they got the ratification they had a long time discussing it I'll be pushing you down this slide it was a lot of discussion about the Bill of Rights Jefferson thought it was an awesome idea but he saw it in Paris so he didn't participate but this is a letter that he wrote to Madison talking about what became the First Amendment what's really interesting about this letter it's encrypted how is that your topical today huh you all heard about it the FBI was through the request to Apple encryption has been more important than the First Amendment itself it's been around longer so Madison, true to her words okay, we will put up Bill of Rights first Congress meets they elect the president and the history president Congress meets Madison in the very first session and says okay, I'll do this now Madison, on to the Constitution he prepares all the proposal and all of the states for like 150 of them he throws up almost all of them because he didn't really want to do it but he understands his need for a Bill of Rights so he sits down and puts together a Bill of Rights and then he stands up to the Congress he was about made now we're in 1789 these are his notes from this speech I know it's a little hard to read so let's focus in Bill of Rights, are you right there still hard to read so this is what James Madison father of the Constitution had to say about the importance of the Bill of Rights useful potential but yeah, I mean I'll let you have the fun of your Bill of Rights I mean, Madison the previous law pre-specialist essential to democracy must have it was just a way to imply it the unrest out there just give them what they want but he writes it he puts it together there's the Bill the Bill to create the Bill of Rights there they're all listed but that's a little hard to read so let's focus in still a little hard to read let's find the first amendment okay, here's articles in addition to an amendment to the Constitution okay, article the first after the first enumeration part of the first article in the Constitution there shall be one representative what the fuck is that that's how we get elected okay, let me see okay, no law varying the compensation for the services that's how they get raised that's the one Rick mentioned by the way that was ratified two hundred and two years later there it is, article the third Congress shall make no law respect use of supervision, blah blah blah there it is oh, but it's not first what happened was these first two didn't get ratified one never got ratified and the other got ratified two hundred years later so the first amendment is first as a historical accident it's first for a reason right, it's the foundation of all the other rights must have been a total historical accident if they come out if they already did it, I would be running the third amendment project it just doesn't come off the tone you know alright, but it gets ratified it was out on all 12 states but Rhode Island didn't participate by the way they were late for party it all up to ratified, becomes part of the constitution and now we know that this is a critical part of their understanding of what it is that was 1790 1791 if I think it's ratified becomes part of the constitution now you can even know a little bit about electoral politics back then Washington serves two terms, your tires in fact they're not burning Adam says hey, I'm the Vice President and the next, Jeff says whoa, not so fast there they didn't like each other so they run against each other back in the day the electoral college each person got two votes voted for two people and the one that the most voted became president the second that the most voted became the vice president so, there you go Adam becomes president and his rival becomes the vice president remember the Bush Gore administration well, no did you ever think Obama became administration well, what do you think would happen Adam refused to let Jefferson do anything he wouldn't even give him a desk so what does Jefferson do he pops and pops for a while and goes back to Monticello every model so that's a third time because that's what he did so he's back there in Monticello something else was going on but now the election was in 1796 it's often 1797 what's happening in 1798 over in Europe they're cutting off the king's heads they're cutting off the heads of the heads of state Jefferson he says in fact we should have a revolution every 20 years and guess what it's 1797 to 1798 it's been 20 years since the last revolution Adam being the head of state we're like two kids these things, this is a terrible thing therefore he brought Capitol Hill, he was buddies up there so we need to pass a law stop this kind of talk right now and they passed something called the Sedition Act the Sedition Act excerpt said that to criticize the government of the United States or the president or the congress is a criminal act so 1797 1798 it's been exactly 7 years since we put the first amendment into the constitution which says Congress shall make no law of bridging freedom of speech or the press it passed a law making me a crime to criticize the president and Adam's wasting no time in using his new powers that's when you do it 25 people arrested 14 trials, 10 convictions including fines and caricatures politics is rough now every single one of these was an editor of a newspaper who supported Jefferson now so there's our fifth method the founders are very free speechers they have the right to dissent and eat the government of us but they hated free speech especially from their enemies now you may actually ask why doesn't President Obama use that against like Russian people because Mrs. Adams didn't raise a fool the submission act by its own terms expired on March 3rd, 1801 why is that being important Jefferson was inaugurated as the next president on March 4th, 1801 so Adams made sure that this thing was not lying around or something like that alright so there it is there's our first amendment predict speech, religion freedom of thought freedom to assemble the right to ask the government to do something for it and not be punished for it it's a very fucking amazing amendment but just remember it's important not because of where it is or how it got there we have this whole age now to worry about the first amendment just take away from this they didn't want to do it originally it was very important it's only there because of a political deal that they come and blossom and as soon as it was passed they violated it within 7 years but it is important because of what it is this amendment has been used more than any other to protect individuals from government to strike down laws that interfere with people's freedoms and it's so important that this the first constitution ever written the first amendment or some variation of it has found its way into every constitution since it has become a universal principle so it's not important because it's the first only ratified it's important because of what it has actually done thank you I disagree with you but I'll defend your right to say what you're saying does that actually happen and how does it fit into this whole discussion any more questions the question was what did we learn that Ben Franklin once said while sir I disagree with you I will equally be able to defend your right to say it and I'm not sure if I think it's my projection that was to take I believe in a letter Volker also did thank you other questions what's the future of freedom what's going on I'm going to be one of our major parties I have three answers first back in Franklin a woman asked Ben Franklin as they were adjourning what sir have you done what has this Congress done and he said madam we've given you a republic if you can keep it second one of the geniuses of what they did in Philadelphia is they didn't make it very rigid and the constitution was written so it didn't have to always be run and administered by Madison's and Adams and Washington's and Lincoln's we've had Fillmore's and we've had Taft's and we've had Boogers and we've had Nixon's and the republic survives and third what I would say if people like you don't stay here and fight we see the ground today other questions I would be down here the constitution is little and it's short and we can have it in a limited time we can talk about addiction to love okay so as Rebecca said Alice will be talking about the love and ambition and kind of a similar and difference let's get right into this I don't have any big message about like civics I'm not going to appeal to those kinds of emotions sorry guys if that's disappointing I'm going to appeal to some much more big emotions tonight so in case you've never seen one before which I will have is a human brain what are you talking about tonight hold on I'm working for just a second if you can so we can get into some deep science and I just know not because we can talk about some more fun stuff after that I don't know if you guys haven't had this guy he has a tree horn yeah if you're not it's a whole variety of things that's something I also kind of to point out this famous line who moved the other than that one is about the brain the largest around you zone some people are certainly on me okay so here we're going to go into the the basics of neuroscience just to like really get things really get things out of their way real quick so what we got right here is a synapse I'm sorry the technical way up front but after that we can do some more fun stuff so right up here we've got a pretty synaptic cell actually do you guys know anything about neuroscience when you hear what is like right out there definitely already okay so bare basics yeah nerve cells in our brain that communicate to each other with signals usually chemicals sometimes electrical sometimes a combination of the two and here is the way that they communicate between each other most of the time this is a synapse we've got two neurons one sending a signal to another one and I'm sure you've all heard of neurotransmitters and most of the chemicals that we use to communicate between each other some very famous ones are serotonin and I'm sure you guys have heard of those on like those cheesy commercials for whatever for instance it's super hip this week so we've got these little bubbles full of chemicals and they are going to bind to this membrane and pop out a bunch of chemicals those are going to come to the post-synaptic cell the second cell and you're going to send a message to the second cell basically that the second cell should be a fire or not fire it should send a message or to not send a message so we've got a message from the down this cell being passed on to this cell these neurotransmitters they'll hang around in this synapse in the space between the two cells for a while but they get taken back up over here by the neurotransmitter we have to take chemicals or they get broken down by enzymes that kind of make them inactive that will come up later we'll revisit it if that's not making sense right now for a second so once the second cell gets a signal all these signals that will go down what I call the dendrites they're the like signal-collecting parts of the cell and they're going to all add up at the cell bond so some of those signals are like an up signal some of them are a down signal and if they add up to a large enough up signal the cell will fire and it will send a message down it's called the axon and that is a signal to all the other cells that that cell signals to so it sends this message to all the other cells that it's connected to and saying you should fire so that's how neurotransmitters work in a very very short summary is anyone totally lost? okay I'm not here at any names at this point so let's move right along so this is Helen Fisher Helen Fisher is a famous psychologist sorry psychologist I've never worked with a difference between the two anyway she's really into psychology of love neuro-science of love and she has a theory that's actually become very popular about there being three different forces kind of like biological neurological forces the first is the sex drive basically telling you to make babies the second is attraction the purpose of attraction is to kind of narrow your focus onto mates that are actually going to be good mates and have good babies with you because you can't just go around having sex with everyone all the time and it doesn't really work especially in an evolutionary sense like you can't have that many babies and you just die I'm sure some people have tried and the third stage is attachment so attachment is really important for a lot of species like ourselves where we have only a few babies some babies some species like fish they just spread out all over the place and they're like good luck fuckers and see when you're 18 if you survive we're not that way or at least most of us are not even maybe a few other thought players that are but most of us take arounds and the purpose of that is it's really important that we devote the resources to making sure that they grow to adulthood because that's how our genes get passed on to the next generation okay so let's get right into some of the different pathways that are involved in the brain during attraction and attachment I'm not really going to talk about this extra because while it's endless and fascinating it's really not my third view it's much more the ground of hormones it's seriously super complicated and I didn't want to do like three days of research we're going to start right on dopamine and serotonin so like I said before these are probably the two most famous neurotransmitters probably because of their role in depression and a lot of other common psychiatric disorders that we get in commercials on TV all the time for dopamine and serotonin are part of what's called the reward pathway so serotonin release of serotonin in the brain evokes a feeling of like calm satisfaction it's like you know it's nice feel good but not like static it's just like a happy state and it's definitely involved in attraction in attachments but it's really at this point not entirely clear how there are a lot of different effects that it has on the brain some of them are like pro-attraction pro-forming of attraction to a certain extent some of them are anti it's a very very complicated system but a lot of people that are on antidepressants that have serotonin pathway do report like pretty severe sexual side effects there's definitely a lot of effects and another interesting thing is that a lot of people who are obsessive-compulsive take medications that upregulate the level of serotonin in the brain so it's like a boost of serotonin which if you think about it the calm satisfaction is exactly what's lacking in an obsessive-compulsive brain it's like oh I can't be satisfied with anything else in life I can't go away 10 times or I wash my hands 7 times the serotonin once I can't sing will not be satisfied with the role of the way of being and so during the initial stage of attraction what they have found is that there are definitely lowered levels of serotonin in the human brain so you're kind of in this obsessive state of needing something but not being satisfied if that makes sense dopamine is kind of the flip side of the coin with serotonin dopamine is really like a seeking drug sorry a seeking neurotransmitter dopamine is released in response to I don't know good stimuli I don't know if you guys like doing certain things like eating or drinking or having sex all those things are good for the human body at least evolutionarily speaking and so in response to all those things dopamine is released in our brain and in case you were kind of like a brush it's like a feeling of ecstasy and that's we'll get to back to some housing drugs that I made you feel about way later but I'm sure all of you have felt this feeling of kind of like a brush and that's the dopamine sensation what dopamine also does is when that neurotransmitter is released in your brain forming a memory that whatever caused your brain to release that dopamine is good and you should get more you should do that as much as you can so when that thing comes up it's kind of this attention forming thing like you're hungry there's some after you're done it's like next time you're hungry you should do that again so serotonin is kind of once you've done something it's like hey I'm satisfied well it's also released by your gut when you're done eating serotonin is also related to how hungry you are how satisfied you are by what you eat sounds like a satisfaction thing dopamine is like you'll get that it's awesome so next we're going to move on to the questions I'm sure you guys have all or many of you remember this story about how much more it's needed a few years ago this picture came out of this video that's what I want and he was still in the government's office at this time so there was a minor scandal and this was his quote about it my drug was homemade iron trust me and for all of his many foibles I actually do believe Arnold about this one and the reason is because of endorphins I'm sure many of you have heard of endorphins they're not very famous endorphins is actually a portmanteau with two words which together endogenous morphine so morphine is a painkiller endogenous means it's found in your body so endorphins are hormones or are not transversed actually like neurotransmitters are not hormones they are in your body this is the same feelings as a morphine pain killers that make you feel good and they're released in response to many things one of them being stress like a long period of exercise so you know some people like Arnold they really like exercising it makes them feel really good the rotatine essentially your body is in terrible pain and to make you not feel the terrible pain it releases these endorphins so you don't just lay down and let the line is chasing you so they do make you feel good and they also release after sex or directly after orgasm and they just feel really good it's kind of a nice feeling they also stimulate the release of some of the next hormones we're going to talk about so these two are actually hormones that are found in the brain and these are the last two you guys may also have heard of these but they're not quite as famous these are oxytocin and vasopressin oxytocin is famous as in the brain it's super important for forming attachments it's released in response to orgasm it's response during birth so it's not just a bond between you know mates or lovers it's also a bond between mother and child and actually the release of oxytocin in the mother's brain during birth stimulates the the milk ducts and the lactation that allows the baby to pee after it's born and it's also actually the release of the baby's brain and they think it might be a pain killer because of like your hands going through you know it's like it's kind of pushing you through it can be pleasant for the baby but at least they get a nice little oxytocin on it so the interesting thing about oxytocin vasopressin is they've learned a lot of this stuff about oxytocin vasopressin by studying this species of rodents called bulls actually you guys can probably see bulls I've seen them a couple of times in a lot of Catcanny Park in migration in that area they're like made mice but the really interesting thing about bulls is that there's two different types of bulls that they study and one is prairie bulls and one is montane bulls prairie bulls are unique on bulls in that they form long term attachments when they breathe they kind of they probably know of each other they definitely like each other a little bit whereas they form a stable long term pair so whereas montane bulls and a lot of other types of bulls they don't really like just all of their plays they just have sex with whoever they want they don't stick around and raise the babies they kind of just like sell their lives so they started studying these two prairie bulls next to each other and trying to figure out what was the difference and they found that the prairie bulls have receptors for oxytocin and vasopressin that the other montane bulls just don't so there's obviously some connection with oxytocin and vasopressin to look and this was done back in the 70s and 80s and since then they found a lot of actually really interesting stuff about it vasopressin is much the lungs of vasopressin are much higher in males and vasopressin when it's released it kind of stimulates feelings of like protectiveness and aggression whereas oxytocin makes it feel kind of calm and protected and content oxytocin releases higher females and vasopressin releases higher males most of the time actually one of the cool things is after birth vasopressin not almost go up and the idea is that women after giving birth might want to be a little bit more aggressive not really to protect their baby but like they don't want any new students coming around so because they've got ways of baby they have so vasopressin is kind of what I'm telling you tell those of us to fuck off at least a couple of years so my favorite thing about oxytocin I almost forgot was an experiment they ran with a bunch of men who were in committed relationships and they got these men to have a conversation with like a beautiful woman and the control group they just put in a room and let them talk out and the experimental group they gave them a shot of oxytocin and on average they found that the men stood 15 centimeters further away from the woman when they ended up on the shot of oxytocin so they just did it and it was kind of the evil news feelings of like oh yeah I do have a girlfriend slash wife slash whatever and maybe I shouldn't be hitting on this lady okay so now we're going to talk a little bit about addiction so addiction has two separate very related parts there's physical addiction and there's psychic or emotional dependence and you know physical addiction is what we're most familiar with people who are smokers you know I'm sure you felt the sensation of like I need to smoke right now you know people who are alcoholics when they don't drink for a while they get jitters with physical addiction is their bodies getting so used to the physical effects of the drug that it no longer uses its own systems to get those effects and so when you go off the drug then you have kind of the negative effects of the drug you have the opposite effects of what happens when you take the drug emotional dependence though is a very different animal where essentially it's a you know it's all over your head as the middle word suggests and you know basically it's if you only feel satisfaction or happiness or an absence of pain in response to taking a certain drug then you're you know you're taking that drug all the time that's what emotional dependence is that really doesn't have much to do with this slide right now I just wanted to do a quick definition of what addiction is before we go into any of the drugs we're going to talk about so I'm sure you guys recognize all of these slides if you watch TV ever in the last 10 years these are all antidepressants and they're all specifically SSRI antidepressants SSRI stands for selective pseudo-tonic re-uptake computer so I remember if we go back to this slide this is where it comes into play we've got these re-uptake channels that have none of the cameras like so we've got those re-uptake channels that take the neurotransmitter out of the synapse and that's really important because if you don't take neurotransmitters out of the synapse and it's just there forever it's just like sitting around signaling the other cell and it should keep pioneering and obviously your brain can't have that otherwise there's no meaning to the fight what SSRIs do as it says it's a serotonin re-uptake inhibitor it's blocking those channels a little bit so that the serotonin stays in the synapse for longer what that's doing is it's making the serotonin your brain releases more effective in your brain and as I talked about earlier it's has a compulsion and also depression can be treated by up regulating the effect of serotonin in your brain one of the symptoms of depression is you just don't feel the satisfaction that you're used to from doing the things you enjoy or really from anything and so increasing serotonin in your brain allows you to start feeling satisfaction in them obviously it's not about everybody otherwise why would there be any other antidepressants let's talk about the next one this is Mrs. Newell's from all fiction and her drug of choice as you guys can remember was cocaine we're not talking about cocaine we're talking about the drug that she opiates on which is heroin heroin is a chemical analog of morphine it's actually derived from morphine and it's basically a form of morphine that gets into the brain more easily so it's actually more important more potent than morphine so this drug is the kind of drug that would stimulate the same receptors in your brain as endorphins but it's also a painkiller and like many painkillers it's got a very high potential for abuse because people who are in physical pain or in emotional pain all the time finds a lot of relief in heroin so that's why heroin is extremely prone to addiction it's very very potent and it kills pain those are two combinations that is very likely to lead to addiction if you guys remember the scene where she actually overdoses and takes her to the guy's house to give her a shot they give her a shot in the mood they say there actually is a drug that they look into someone who is overdosing on heroin it's called the loxone and basically it just blocks the effect of heroin in the body it also blocks the effect of endorphins because they're working in the same receptor so what the loxone does is it just blocks that receptor and remember earlier I was talking about endorphins endorphin release during this orgasm actually causes the release of autism they know that because I really don't want to know how they did this experiment but they basically gave people injections of the loxone during sex and then they leveled the loxotose right after orgasm I can't imagine it was easy to perform under those circumstances somehow they found a way to do it and they measured the levels of loxotose and they were almost zero they were very much lower so that's how they figured out that the loxone release was causing the loxotose closer in the brain now we're going to talk about cocaine and cocaine is another drug that is very prone to addiction but for a very different reason the heroin is going into the endorphin pathway the endorphin pathway does feed back into the little more pathway of the dopamine no chance there dopamine is what makes it feel really good and it's like telling you you should get more of that so the only thing that's causing dopamine release in your brain is telling you you should get more of that so heroin doesn't kind of interact with it cocaine has like a cheap color in your brain and it just hacks directly into the dopamine reward circuit what it does is it actually blocks those reuptake channels the dopamine reuptake channels and it doesn't allow dopamine to go back into the cell instead it just hangs out in that synapse and it keeps signaling the cell so it makes you feel really good for a while because that dopamine is not going anywhere okay because it's kind of like a hack to directly into the reward pathway in the brain one of the main side effects of cocaine is to make you want more cocaine and you wonder if it's every time cocaine will probably tell you the same thing and while you're in the middle of it you're like hey we should get some more coke this party's awesome so that's how it's doing it it's telling your brain directly that this is great and then we've got amphetamine or just amphetamines in general you guys might remember or recognize the panel on the left that's Adderall maybe no one ever told you this but Adderall is amphetamine we give it to people weekly it's expensive for some people it's increasing your attention on things when you stick it in your body your brain's like hey this thing is cool I should pay attention to this even if when you're paying attention to is school which I personally think is cool but I'm sure you guys actually all agree but there's some people that don't necessarily so amphetamines and amphetamines in general the reason it's so addictive is because it basically acts the same way as cocaine does so where as cocaine is kind of blocking the amphetamine channel methamphetamine and other amphetamines are not only preventing the dopamine from going back into the cell they're kind of like opening the door up wider so that dopamine can flood into the synapse without being actually released so it's like you take methamphetamine or any other kind of amphetamine that floods dopamine into your brain amphetamines are very addictive I'm sure you guys have seen billboards all over the place especially if you've been to middle America in the last 15 years and finally we're going to talk about some other ways that dopamine can be released in your brain so this video is of a psychiatric tool called a spinner box and you can see this wrap he's pulling on a little lever and sometimes when he pulls the lever the light on the bottom the light up and he gets a little treat so what's going on in this is whether the light lights up and the treat comes out it's entirely random there is no it's not like every other time there's no pattern to it and what they found to run this experiment was that if light comes on every other time or if the light comes on every third time eventually the wrap figures out the pattern and loses interest in it but if there is no pattern the wrap goes nuts and it cannot leave it alone our brains are kind of built to find patterns of the brain because you're kind of taking environmental data and trying to figure out how to maximize the food and sex and the shit you get and minimize the time to get eaten so we're essentially just our brains are pattern finding mechanisms when there is no pattern your brain goes kind of crazy and it just loves going back for more I can't get it out of it so these are some kinds of things that are kind of skinner boxes for people gambling is the most obvious one there's no pattern to letting your brain lose and if the reward is money it's like what do people like more than money money is kind of the ultimate reward for many people what about warcraft or a lot of games like warcraft with randomly generated rewards you know I can say personally I've spent many many hours how games like warcraft try to get that randomly dropped and actually social media is an interesting one too where the reward is social recognition or social feedback likes that's why every social platform we'll go on has Facebook has likes Twitter has retweets Reddit has karma that's essentially a way for the social media platform to hook you to get your brain into the system and be like oh I need to get some more of that sweet sweet social recognition from my peers anyone here who's ever been addicted to one of those social media sites will tell you the first thing you do when you walk onto the site is see how many likes you've got or see if you have any retweets or whatever and don't do that by accident I'm sure they're very smart people so those are kinds of things that could get addicted to so we kind of talked about a few different things that are addictive in this discussion I'm sure you guys might know someone some of you might know someone who you could describe as addicted to love it's kind of interesting because when you are in an early stage of infatuation you do have very high dopamine levels in adult studies and during infatuation your dopamine levels are way up which makes sense because it kind of explains the excessive nature those there are tonal levels are not satisfied high dopamine levels are seeking so you're not satisfied but you're constantly wanting to feed on this person because when you're around them you feel really good and it's really awesome this is kind of a pop size inclusion this is a cool warning but if you break off a traction in the middle of the very early stages and when you're in some kind of intense romantic playing it breaks off a little bit sometimes you can actually idealize that and then that becomes this dragging that you're chasing where you just really want to feel that feeling again infatuation and the reward that comes from that so that you know there's some people that might be thinking about preventing the kind of addiction to love fortunately the act of specifically the physical act of love is kind of its own 12 step program for love addiction as I was saying earlier oxytocin is released in response to orgasm so once you consummate your passion with your your loved one get on your brain is kind of telling you this person is cool and you should stick around with them for a while especially if you're a baby so if you have a lot of trouble settling down with someone maybe just give it time and let your brain tell you what to do and as a final final treat we've got a catalytic isla and we've got some various this is actually nothing has ever made you more or less than this chart so this is relative dopamine levels in a sponsored various stimuli obviously food is a good thing that your body wants so when you eat you get a little 50% bump of dopamine 50% higher than your normal baseline models and just walking around and existing and during sex or after sex it kind of doubles through a much higher level okay that's a 350% so that's quite a boost and then that is 1200% so I guess if you really really need to feel good I guess that's your answer but I really really shouldn't recommend it because that kind of dopamine release in your brain is just a signal to your brain like oh we should get some more of this so I guess the two messages I have walking over here from here are if you're addicted to love, give it some time and don't do math people sorry I'm asking that for questions I need a question yes the question is is it a neuron along the cell? yes a neuron is a single cell there are a lot of support cells in the brain called the glial cells that right now they're discovering a pulse of signal like neurons but most of them are kind of in a supporting role to help the neuron come on this function neurons are some of the biggest cells in the body for instance if you've got a neuron in your spine signaling to the muscles in the tips of your fingers the bottom of the cell is in your spine the axon that's sending the signal is going all the way out to the tips of your fingers so that's a very very long cell yeah any other questions? I guess sex is your closest approximation I know some people equate the two they're certainly not the same thing but they're the same ballpark at least there have been studies of dopamine levels you know just being around the person that you are imagining with but obviously dopamine levels differ greatly based on the stage of your relationship so for only on dopamine levels go way up when you're around the person you're attracted to over time it becomes questo and that's actually kind of a classic problem like how do you keep them very trash making some roleplay pretend it's a new person I don't know one last question yes the question was serotonins release after stress is that likely to become homophilicated actually it's endorphins that are released after stress yeah and these are all like what I presented here is this very simplified view of the brain but yeah after stress when the stresses can release condorphins in your body they make you feel good and this one's definitely a stress though so some people just feel like shit when they're stressed out they get tired all the time but some people they're like work on all accidents they get to be told from the rush well they didn't get it totally much they just have that reward getting that project done getting the praise from their boss getting that sale or whatever people can become pretty much anything that is associated with your brain so maybe for you it's getting home ok best of all thank you Alice let's thank all of our speakers Arthur, Jim and Alex with all of our standovers Anne Marie we did a great attention open public library DBA systems and of course our food we always conclude with first events that are on our radar over the next month please take a picture because I'm just going to highlight two things first of all Darwin and Malibu is going to be a reading look for these people later on in the year they'll do a performance Ingers net puts on scientific plays they're a patient in Berkeley it's fantastic and also apparently there's a ciphery in Oakland and I've probably been a regroup and they give a talk but you could also just go there and drink a ton of hard cipher one two three and cell phones down ok but our next event in April is going to be awesome we're going to have a talk on how Audubon of the Audubon Guides essentially made up big fish so that's pretty awesome we're going to have a talk from someone from UC Berkeley on perception hacking how to make yourself a cyborg and we're also going to have a type that has a sunny title of we're all fucked it's about global warming but I'm told it's actually entertaining so that's next month hit this address next week you save $2 if you hit it the week after you save $1 otherwise it's $8 in advance 10 dollars at the door


A rather odd looking fellow appears in several videos taken in New York City. Perhaps this a part of marketing campaign or perhaps something else. Seen in these two videos, is a man who seemingly has been in an accident or is something else entirely. His face is disfigured quite severely. It appears as if he has no mouth during the moments while these videos were taken. Is this man some kind of alien hybrid or perhaps something else? Clearly he was upset about being recorded by whoever was filming him. Both videos were uploaded back in 2012 on YouTube in the month of March, on two separate channels. The first video mentions that the person was traveling through the United States and was visiting New York City. While there he was recording with his camera. Heard in the background were police sirens and fire trucks making lots of noise. Was busy this evening around the corner of East Village where this person was staying. Suddenly they noticed this man wandered down the street at a brisk pace. They mentioned that this encounter took place by the Orthodox Church on 7th Street. All of the noise and confusion triggered them to start recording. They never imagined they would capture this unusual man on camera. The second video shows the same disfigured man again. If this is the same person who filmed the other video, they said this guy has some issues. Obviously angered or upset about being filmed. From the police and fire trucks not far away, they assumed this man might have been in some kind of accident. He could have been in shock and this was the reason he kept walking at such a fast pace. The person filming, said that they got scared, took out their phone and the disfigured faceless man came right at them. We them rushed away before he could film anything else. It all happened so fast it seems. Something such as this would certainly freak anyone out at first. One person made the following comments. When I was in high school, I had a friend in class with a similar face. When he was 11 he was hit by a car and dragged for several meters. Meanwhile his face got damaged pretty badly. This resulted in him having no nose, broken cheekbones and his eye sockets exposed.  He couldn't stand any questions about it, this was for certain. We had no cell phones in those days. So I can imagine his response, when he would feel someone filming him on camera, it would make him outraged during this phase in his life. He still needed to accept his new face.  So my guess is, no viral video for promotional use, but a youngster living the same drama as my old classmates did. Further questions remain unanswered, such as who this person really is. Are these videos a part of something much greater? Regardless, these videos are quite strange to watch.