Transcript
Speaker: Stretch. Here we go. Back in the third room. In the big room. In the huge room. The room. Size. Not in the green room. We're in the green room before. We're in the in the black proper live where things happen room now.
Speaker: Yep. And we're going to be talking about ADHD and the cosmos. The cosmos. So let's crack on. Those who've not, maybe this is the first episode you've ever listened to of our podcast. You think, oh what?
Speaker: Cosmos and ADHD? Are you guys crazy? We'll explain it. We'll explain it after the intro. Let's get into it. It's all explainable. Let's go to the place where the distractions, the landmarks, and the detours are on the main roads. Welcome to ADHDville.
Speaker: Yay. Yay.
Speaker: meet the gang cause the boys are here boys to entertain boys to entertain boys to entertain boys to entertain boys to entertain boys to entertain you yes we are
Speaker: Nice. Boys. ADHD. Okay. Yes. um Hello, I'm Paul Thompson. Yes, I am. And I was diagnosed with the combined ADHD and the D crawling towards a couple of yonks ago.
Speaker: And I'm Marty West and I was diagnosed with a combined ADHD poo-poo platter 12 cycles of the sun ago. oh right. Let's see. Look. See what did they? We're already into it. Is that is that what they call a kind of, what's it called?
Speaker: A year? In radio talk. No, when you connect subjects. Oh. Oh, yeah. A thing. That leads one thing into another. segue.
Speaker: It's a segue. It's a segue. Downward professional. Into our subject. Yeah, ADHD and the cosmos, right? So you could be thinking, guys, what are you doing? are you doing? Talking about ADHD and the cosmos. How are you supposed to be talking about...
Speaker: other stuff that all the other podcasts talk about. Well, we're not like other podcasts. We're not even a podcast. No, exactly.
Speaker: That's how much of a... There is a link, actually, because being neurodiverse gives us sometimes, not always, there's no, as ever, there's no...
Speaker: um
Speaker: 100% there's no like ah this is this and this is black and this is white but neurodiverse people are particularly well adapted to contemplate subjects like the cosmos big things infant infinite um um mystery yeah well alright well I think um let us jump into our tractor yes And we are going to... Where are we going today, Paulio? We are going, Martin. I'm just looking at the sheet. We're going to the library, Martin. The library.
Speaker: Right. co as I suppose the Cosmos section of the library. The Cosmos section of the la library. um Let's jump in and we'll um we'll put on our space helmets and
Speaker: our spacesuits.
Speaker: And let's take off to the library. library.
Speaker: where all the books are, obviously. Yes. We have to be bit quiet, though. And where interesting people hang out. Sometimes, yes. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker: um Okay. Well, where do you want to start? Because and you and I, you and I, right you and i don't yeah and We don't conflab about what we're going do.
Speaker: don't. Other than the title, you have no idea. I've got no idea where you're going to approach this big subject from. so um I'm going to approach it from well we're just things that blow my mind, Martin, blow my mind.
Speaker: Like the especially the thing that most blows my mind and the things that the most mysterious part and also – i The really most difficult part intellectually is the infinite aspect of the universe.
Speaker: It's big. It's infinite. We're just our Milky Way where we are, with the one that we're traveling along with.
Speaker: Yes. It's just like one of potentially billions of other universes. Oh, universes? No, not universes. One of other um systems.
Speaker: All right. i We're just one, like, going through. By the way, this is what blows my mind. Speed, right? Let's do a thing on speed. We are currently traveling as we speak, right?
Speaker: Right. Rotating. and the world The world is rotating. The planet Earth is rotating at 1,670 kilometers per hour. Okay. Or for American and English people, just over 1,000 miles an hour.
Speaker: Rotating, right? Yeah. Okay. Then... We are rotating around the sun, orbiting around the sun at 107, sorry, miles per hour. Okay. Okay. Then at 828,000 kilometers, 514 miles an Then...
Speaker: orbits surround the milky way at eight hundred and twenty eight thousand kilometers five hundred and forty miles now then All of that combined travels through the universe at 1.3 million miles an hour.
Speaker: Blimey. I mean, that's staggering. Yeah. and like So but in my stupid mind, i i thought, okay, so how long would it take if I was to walk back to the same place I was 24 hours ago, okay, in the universe, right?
Speaker: And I worked it out. Oh, you did? Yeah. You did math. Yeah. what you you did math I did maths. If I was to walk back to the same point as I was 24 hours ago in the universe at a speed of about five ah kilometres per hour walking. All right. right A fairly consistent, you know brisk walk.
Speaker: A good pace. A good pace. It take me 59 years. Oh, OK. All right. Blimey. Yeah. that's That's almost like my entire life.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. A lifetime to get back where you were 24 hours ago. yep anyone who's Anyone who is good at math, ah feel feel free to check Paul's sums.
Speaker: But yeah, that's okay. was actually thinking, actually, you know what? was going to ask the question, which is, what is your favorite thing? ask the the question which which which is what is your ah you've thing In the universe-verse-verse. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it's not... My thing is not of the universe. It's not a thing in the universe. It's of the universe. It's that thing that just talking about.
Speaker: There's just things I can't wrap my head around. The size and the scale of it. The...
Speaker: the just There are very few people that I've come across that are ah good at ah um expressing the enormity of it.
Speaker: you know and ah for me, it's the best one is Professor Brian Cox. He's brilliant. I like talking about about it in a really entertaining way. you know And in a way that normal people like me and Duke can grasp.
Speaker: Yes. But even then it's like, what? And one question opens up another all the time. And that's that's the thing. So that's the thing that I like most about the universe.
Speaker: What about you, Mr. West? What what floats your boat? but Before we get on to me, I did ask this question from um ah from Alexandra out of the ADHDville town mayor. Official town crier. Crier. Sorry, not mayor.
Speaker: um And she said time and space. time and space was a favorite thing about the whole thing. So time and space is obviously very interesting. It's all aspects of the same thing. As we know, time and space are like two sides of the same yeah same thing. So that's fascinating. I mean, that's also interesting. like People now say, well, because it is time, it's just um an artificial way of measuring our existence, right?
Speaker: Right. But it's meaningless at the same time. I mean, happens. yeah it's just It's just we... we ah Our time to...
Speaker: is very local time to Yeah. Us. Yeah. and But I suppose we have to have these things, don't we? Because we can think most people... Yeah.
Speaker: And it's not... Well, think saying is that it's not standard. Like, time is not standard, actually. It's pretty fluid. It just happens to be that we think about time as being standard. But...
Speaker: Yeah. It's only standard for us. think we need something as humans. We have an instinct. We need, most of us need something we could grasp hold of, you know, that you can hang your hat on. It's like, oh.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think even things like, you know, stay with me here. It's just my theory. Oh, blimey. think that this where religion comes in because people need... something to believe in that isn't like ah we're just a tiny speck within a speck within a speck. We're kind of like, you know, ah people look for something like, really?
Speaker: i think ah I think there should be a meaning to life that I have a, I have, I'm on this planet, on this earth for a reason. No. Do you know what um well yeah There's an instinct to be rooted somehow, but it's, I think it's fake. I think it's nonsense.
Speaker: but what There's no rooting. There's no meaning to life. Oh, all right. Yeah. ah I see what do you mean. But yes, us as says early humans would be sitting there and around staring up into the cosmos and looking at the little white dots going, what the hell is that? And and what what is going on and how can i does that have any relationship to me and my world yeah then you then you start with stories which is actually which i will come on to stories in a minute but okay um my uh my my my favorite thing would be has to be black holes still yes because they're just so weird and so fundamental and
Speaker: If we crack those, and we then we basically crack the entire universe. we They are weird. And theories about black holes, they change constantly, don't they? and Right. To the point where they think that Stephen Hawking's theory about black holes have already been, um they're already out of date.
Speaker: Probably. He was just the first theory, right? Right. which is already amazing to contemplate and have that imagination. right I think i Einstein was the first to, well, they came out of Black holes came out of ein Einstein's theory of relativity.
Speaker: um so So he gets to kind of claim them first, I guess. um so my So my angle on this, because it's a big subject, was like, well, how how do I get this into ADHD? How do I...
Speaker: ah Make this an ADHD thing rather than just like, you know, I like pulsars. Do it, mate. I'll hold your jacket. You just do your thing. Right.
Speaker: Which is around the cosmos. And I think of stories and I think of ADHD stories. and And what we are good at is um is is noticing patterns. yeah um You can look at the sky and you can see all the stars. at And yeah we are quite creative people. So we could, an ADHDer, we could link stars up to together and form shapes and people and gods. And yeah and so, and then, and then, ah you know, if we're autistic as, you know, ah we could want to kind of like look for order in this kind of chaos. so so yeah yeah yeah
Speaker: you So you can imagine and and and autistic mind would then, watch the stars and see how they change over the, over and over an entire year and the sun yeah and the moon and the phases. And you could almost like build a calendar out of it.
Speaker: So I kind of think, yeah you know, that kind of neurodivergent thinking seems to fit with that kind of like trying to make sense out of yeah what we see above us.
Speaker: And then you kind of get to this stories thing, which is like, as ADHD is, we we we like stories and we can be very good at stories. We are very entertaining people, right? So we we like to entertain.
Speaker: So the idea of like seeing shapes in the in the stars and then telling stories about what they are and um know, so you've got like a fluid, flu fluid, fluid kind of thinking, isn't it?
Speaker: I suppose. Right. So you so so you can have a bunch so you can have and an ADHD, for example, telling stories around a fire. about what's going on up there. And if if you do have ADHD and you're very entertaining, it means that that story will stick in someone's mind and then they'll tell the story to their kids and then their kids will tell the story.
Speaker: And so it goes down and down and down through generations. So I kind of feel like as an ADHD or as an autistic person, those people would have had in my head would have had a big role in kind of in looking at that without any science, but just the kind of mean, there are plenty of scientists out there, but I think the point the difference, I mean, I'm just, it's just my idea, my take on it.
Speaker: The difference between Stephen Hawking and other scientists is it um imagination. you know, they're able to do, okay, they said that's the science, but what if, you know, or even taking the ego out and and thinking, okay, I might be wrong, right?
Speaker: And that's a great way to start from with ice school from that finding new with new thinking. I could be wrong, right? Yeah, I mean, that's that's what science starts out as.
Speaker: It's like it it's not trying to, um
Speaker: it tries to take the the ego out as much as you can, right? Because science is testable. yeah Yeah, totally. totally ah think but there are I think within the scientist community, and they are famous, they like historians, like they bicker and fight like crazy about their theories.
Speaker: But the I think probably, like I kind of even referred to before, ah People like Stephen Hawkins would like rise above it you know' like and just go, look, you could talk about it or you could fight about it as much as you like, but um I'm just going to like carry on coming up with new theories. you know There's a lot of egos around you know in that in that world. you know They want to come up with the best new idea.
Speaker: Yeah. It is fascinating. Do you ever think on a personal level, do you ever, um could you ever contemplate yourself going into, ah if you start he could start your study, studying and your career adieu, okay.
Speaker: Could you envisage yourself, see yourself getting into some kind of scientific area? No. No, not at all. i I took loads of science at school.
Speaker: I took biology, human biology. I took physics. I did some chemistry. um and yeah and And I like to do geology especially.
Speaker: Okay. um So I could have, if there was any other science I would have gone down, it would have been like the earth sciences. ah Not that there's much of a career there but if you and unless you work for the oil companies.
Speaker: yeah Right. But, no. What about you? I could happily get into um psychology in some way.
Speaker: um all right. I've always been utterly gripped and fascinated ah by it. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I could get into that. But maybe specialists, maybe like criminal psychology, or something like that. I could. I ah love that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy.
Speaker: Crazy. i remember you once, a slightly different um subject. I remember once we had a discussion, you and I, many many years ago, um i had tried to start, I tried to read the book by Stephen Hawkins. All right.
Speaker: A Matter of Time. is it is it? somebody Something like that. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah, it was his big best-selling book. It's like a tiny little book, you know, where he explains, you know, complex things.
Speaker: And I never understood it, but you said you had read it and you did understand it So you and I have slightly different brains on that kind of thing.
Speaker: but you know what? It's it's funny because you know if you've got a neurodivergent mind, you know like the cosmos and quantum mechanics and black hole and time and space, they're all like...
Speaker: fascinating subjects to kind of just go down and and try and wrap your head around um especially especially quantum mechanics it's just so weird and counter counterintuitive that yeah it's uh yeah we love that kind of thing i I'm fascinated by it but i I get to a certain point and i'm I find it really difficult at a certain point of
Speaker: um when it gets to a certain level of complexity. Yeah. So the book was called A Brief History of Time. ah there we go. By Stephen Hawkins. Yeah. That's the one. Yeah.
Speaker: That's the one. Yeah. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. um Well, this was, what I'm talking about the Paul of like 30 years ago. So that maybe if I tried to read it now, I'd be less self judgment, be less self judgment.
Speaker: And I could read it and understand it more, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Be interesting to try. With all all of that, it's is is it's like you'll read it and you'll hit a blank hit a thing. You go, I don't understand this.
Speaker: And then you'll kind of go, well I don't understand this whole book. And then you'll just kind of like yeah put it aside and you'll stop. Whereas actually sometimes I'll just skip. I'll just read it and know that I don't understand it and carry on. And then as I read the book,
Speaker: I go, oh, okay. i I get the thing that I didn't understand 100 pages back. I've got it now. So, um yeah, it's always worth but kick kicking out, yeah going back back to.
Speaker: Now, I had an interesting chat with Alexandra. official ADHD town. Yes. About the word, about the word cosmos, because it's Greek, right?
Speaker: And she's Greek. So, so she's the expert on all these things as far as we're concerned. And she says that it actually means a lot of things. um You know, it, it, it, it can also mean order as opposed to chaos. Um, um,
Speaker: And she says that it's it's also used for a group of people. as well. as as well So says, ah if we want to ask if there were many people in ah in in in a place, we ask, did it have did it have a cosmos? I.e., like, was there this kind of structure, this kind of unit, this grouping? Which goes back to that human instinct again, is to like, the instinct to like,
Speaker: tie it down and find its define its confines you know it's bit like in a simplistic way you say oh how big is your guard how big is I don't know Buckingham Palace oh it's the size of four football pitches know well You know, as if that matters, you know. Right.
Speaker: As if you can then go, oh, okay, it's the size of four football pitches. Okay. But the universe, it it like laughs in your face at all of those kind of attempts at measurement, you know.
Speaker: Yeah. confining it. I always think it must be a great thing to be Greek because you could always like if you're contemplating the origins of things, especially language and culture and, you know, even the culture of politics and sport and stuff, the Greeks, they can pull out their Greek cards and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker: That was us. know. That was us. I mean, they say all roads lead to Rome, but actually they just go to Rome and then they go to Greece. Exactly.
Speaker: i was listening to a podcast yesterday. Actually, Rome, the Roman Empire, were deeply jealous and envious of the Greek ah culture, and they tried to ah replicate it and and copy it.
Speaker: But in the end, a lot of their... iconography and um ritual um beliefs, ritual um habits come from the Greeks. Right.
Speaker: I remember sitting in art college, maybe you were in the same group, I don't know, um and the lecturer said, um he he he said, ah Rome captured Greece, but Greece captured Rome.
Speaker: Yes. Absolutely, yeah. yeah they they The Roman Empire, they they admired enormously they actually resent for it, bordered on resentment towards the Greeks. so like They couldn't come up with anything as good as the Greeks did.
Speaker: um By the way, a great book talking it about storytelling. um Stephen Fry has written some amazing books about Greek mythology. He's so good at like the storytelling of Greek mythology and making it you know really yeah really engaging and entertaining. Just to try and bring us back onto fucking subject, ah a lot of our ah lot of our stars, you know the ah stars are all ah rule
Speaker: greek Gods, right? So there's Greek gods up there. There's Roman gods are up there.
Speaker: Have you heard it said that there's as many stars in the cosmos as there are grains of sand on planet Earth? Something like that.
Speaker: It's just something unbelievable numbers. All right. All right. So have we got anything else that you want to shove in? think I have. Hang on a second.
Speaker: Oh, have I lost my tab? Oh, blimey.
Speaker: I think I lost my tab.
Speaker: I lost my tab. just dis disaster Hang on, hang on in there. There was something, a very brief thing. Oh, yes, remember what is. i don't need to I don't need to get that document up.
Speaker: um I've always been fascinated by, okay, infinity, right? So you think of a funnel and you think of infinity, it just like goes wherever it goes. But there's actually infinity in the opposite end of that scale. If you could you can always split an atom, okay, you can always split it.
Speaker: So there's actually, ah ah I find really fascinating, is you could there's infinity in the opposite end, right? And so um they've stopped, they've actually stopped trying to, in the 1970s, we quite obsessed with, oh, let's split the atom, okay?
Speaker: And they gave it a name, they called called it a quark. After that, after the 70s, they stopped actually doing that because you can't, there's a strange phenomenon with it that's got a name. And they can't actually see it anymore for some reason when you do split it beyond a quark.
Speaker: Now they just work on what actually, how they behave. how they behave would you when they play with splitting and splitting and splitting the atoms and the energy that that creates.
Speaker: All right. of Splitting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So I found out, blimey, that's Would it surprise you, Mr. Thompson, that some infinities are bigger than other infinities?
Speaker: ah Explain. Not all infinities are the same. There isn't one infinity. Yes. There are many infinities and some mathematically, ah do not understand it because ah don't have that brain, but some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
Speaker: Right. There we go. I'll just leave that with you. Okay. I'll leave that with in your head to kind of go, what the hell? How did Terry Pratchett um trying, he imagined the planet as if it was a a tiny speck of dust on the leg of a dining room chair or so it was something like that.
Speaker: ah I don't know. i mean, his thing is the the that the world is flat and we are on the back of a giant turtle.
Speaker: yeah Oh, no, no, we we we are on a giant disc that stands on four elephants that stands on the back of a large turtle. Yes. All right. Chat about Pratchett there.
Speaker: Okay. All right. I think that's all I've got pretty much. Have you got anything else, Mr. West? No, I think I've talked ah enough about that. So now we get to the ratings yes where Paul and i rate ah the Cosmos as far as ADHD goes. All right. So let's go to the ratings.
Speaker: Yes. Is it a dopamine hit or is it a burn? There we go. Thank you so much, Martin. I'm going to take that. going to take that as my birthday present because it's my birthday on my on Monday.
Speaker: Is it? I'm taking that as a birthday present. Thank you. Happy birthday. Happy banjo. Banjo always lifts me up. It makes me feel good. love a banjo. Okay. So we're going to rate it with either eight eight to eight a ta a t but i mean a dopamine hit score,
Speaker: zero to ten and and a and a burnout score
Speaker: So um should we start with… You go first, Martin. I will. I will. yeah i think the I think I get a lot of dopamine out of like reading science-y space and time and shit. So I would rate that… it it it It isn't a huge high, but it's pretty good.
Speaker: So I would give it like an 8 out of 10. Right. by Yeah. On that. Okay. I'm the same. I'd give it about an eight out ten because i it's it's it's up there, but it's I'm lacking that that kind of like finishing it off kind of dopamine hit.
Speaker: It like leaves everything open, you know, and you're like, right oh, you know, that finishing part of the exploration. There are too many unanswered questions for you. Exactly.
Speaker: Too many ifs. all right and but And then on the on the burnout score, I'm i am thinking when you like reading books, right, from, you know, yeah it's quite, it can be quite taxing on the brain.
Speaker: But not a huge amount. So it doesn't like, it's not, I mean, it's still fun thing.
Speaker: taxing of the brain you know i mean so i would give it quite quite ah a a low burnout score i would say it's like i don't know maybe two out of ten Yeah, I'd go along with that. I think but two or three.
Speaker: think when I was younger, I would have given it much more burnout because I used to, if if I couldn't understand stuff, I used to like, I used to like feel like an idiot, you know. Now it's just like, you know, I care a lot less about so that and I'm a bit more open-minded to like, okay, I just think differently.
Speaker: So yeah, two two or three. All right. So there we go. It is much more ADHD friendly and fun. We gave you the score ah rating.
Speaker: Yeah. All right. So I think this needs to go to the post office, Martin. Let's go to the post office. Post haste.
Speaker: Post haste. in the In the tractor. We're going we're taking the tractor. Yeah. Let's jump in. Let's go. Let's crank her
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: Ah, that's suspension. Jesus. That's suspension. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Plays havoc on my hemorrhoids. Anyway, not for that. Your feedback, whether it's about my hemorrhoids or not, is vital to us.
Speaker: We read all of your comments. Yes, we do. And we might read out yours on a future podcast, like this one, Martin, from Alexandra in Greece. All right.
Speaker: She says, and so we were talking about, ah what were we talking about last week? Anyway. um so Vacations. All right. Yeah. And kind of got onto the subject of ADHD and web and web, well,
Speaker: ADHD and were weddings could be a nice topic, she's she suggests. So I'm thinking next week. It's also summer-based, isn't it, seasonal? It is. it's very It's very timely.
Speaker: So I think next week we will do ADHD and weddings. So um if you've got the any comments, dear listener, if you've got any thoughts about whether you like weddings, whether you hate them, whether you like being a guest, or whether you actually like being the bride or groom,
Speaker: um yeah but but All the best man. All the challenges and the fun and the horror that are wedding. Or the DJ. Oh, my God.
Speaker: The DJ. Yeah, yeah. Okay. um So, yeah. Okay. So, yeah. ah And she also says, as we've changed the format slightly, um because we're going to do themes, like so it's going to be ADHD and Cosmos, ADHD and weddings, blah, blah, blah. She said, I enjoy way too much these themes, guys. Excellent idea. So she's on board. Chest bumps all around.
Speaker: fist bumps so we shall carry on with this theme um all right so that's also yes because i don't like high fives i don't like high fives chest bumps better high fives are a decade high fives are a difficult thing um yeah i know right anyway ADHDville is delivered fresh every Tuesday to all providers of fine podcasts.
Speaker: Please subscribe to the pod and rate us most cosmic and feel free to correspond at will in the comments. But wait, there's more. If you want to see more of our beautiful, beautiful faces, then Sally forth to the YouTubes and the TikToks.
Speaker: And you can also pick up a quill and email us at ADHDville at gmail.com. But in the meantime, be fucking kind to yourself. And I beseech you fellow A.J.' 's dears, fare thee well with gladness of heart.
Speaker: Ah, where's the thing that says? There, says the mayor. Look at that. That's that.
Speaker: Come on.
