Conversations With Joe

What do you "see" in your mind's eye? Is it as real as looking at a photo? Or do you not see any images at all? It turns out there are 3-5% of the population who don't have the ability to form images in their heads. It's a condition called "Imagination blindness" or Aphantasia, and it was only recently discovered.

Along with Aphantasia is the opposite end of the spectrum, Hyperphantasia, where the mind's eye is so vivid, it's hard to distinguish between what's real and what's imagination.

It opens up a lot of questions about how we see and perceive our world.

Here are links to the tests to determine where you fall on the spectrum:

SUIS:

https://psyarxiv.com/j2h8k/download

OSIQ:

https://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/mkozhevnlab/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/object_spatial2006.pdf

VVIQ:

https://aphantasia.com/vviq/

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The aluminum-air battery has made headlines on the promise of giving a car up to 1500 miles of range, which would be amazing. But there's one big catch - you can't recharge it.

Today we talk about the pros and cons of the aluminum-air battery, how it works, what "mechanical charging" is, and whether there's a real case to be made for their widespread use.

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Here we go again. I recently covered the Victorian Era but today I want to point out the incredibly weird health and beauty practices that Victorians were into back in the day.

As I say in the video, Victorian medicine was a mix of terrible old ideas and terrible new ideas, from people drinking radioactive water to eating ground-up mummies our transition to the modern medical system we see today hit some interesting bumps in the road.

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We all know you need oxygen to live. But why? What happens to oxygen in our bodies? Why does it keep us alive? And maybe most importantly, why does it slowly kill us? In today's video, I explore the process of respiration, how it's weirdly similar to fire, and why we rely on one of the most corrosive elements in the universe to survive. It gets weirdly existential.

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Blue Origin has stated their long-term goal is to move all heavy, polluting industry to space. But what would that look like? How could we get there? And maybe the biggest question... why?

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With the Inspiration4 mission in the books, hot on the heels of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic launching their first crewed missions, we've seen a bit of a backlash against this new space race. So today I just wanted to share my opinion on why space travel is important and the framing we've seen around these flights and these companies is misguided.

All opinions are mine (as of this recording anyway). Disagreements welcome.

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Ancient history is as much myth as it is history. So it's sometimes hard to know who from our history was real or just a mythical character in stories. Here's a few that are worth taking a look at.

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The Victorian Era was an age of new discoveries and technologies that changed everything about the way we live. It basically created the modern world as we know it. But that time of transition also led to some very, very weird ideas and dangers that seem baffling today.

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War has been a part of the human experience since the beginning of civilization. But new technologies are changing the face of warfare in ways that we never really expected. From cyberwarfare to autonomous AI-piloted drones to space warfare, the future of war is weird. And terrifying.

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NEOM is Saudi Arabia's tentpole project in their Vision 2030 initiative to help move the Kingdom away from an oil-based economy and rely more on technology and tourism. It has some ambitious goals, like being 100% sustainable, moving all transport underground, and even glowing beaches. But the most noticeable thing about the project is the fact that the city will lie on a 100-mile line serviced by a hyperloop-style high speed train system.

But is it all it's cracked up to be? Let's take a look.

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