Bioelectricity & Health: Sally Adee on the Forgotten Science of the Body’s Electric Code | Ep. 15

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Michael Levin, a pioneering researcher at the intersection of bioelectricity and regeneration. It was featured prominently in Sally Edie's book We Are Electric. Our discussion left me fascinated and eager to dive deeper into the incredible potential of bioelectricity. For those unfamiliar, bioelectricity refers to the electrical signals generated and utilized by cells and tissues within living organisms. These signals are fundamental to processes like nerve conduction, muscle contraction, and even cellular communication. But as Sally's book reveals, bioelectricity is much more than a mechanism for isolated biological functions. It's an idea that challenges the silos of modern biology and invites us to imagine a unifying framework or a standard model that can connect the ohms of biology, like genomics and proteomics, while opening up entirely new frontiers in medicine, agriculture, and even theories of consciousness. In her book, Sally explores the 200-year quest to understand bioelectricity. From the early experiments of Galvani and Volta, to modern breakthroughs that show how manipulating electrical signals can regenerate tissue, heel wounds, and even combat diseases like cancer. Her personal journey includes a fascinating experience with DARPA's Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Program, which profoundly shaped her understanding of the brain's electrical potential and ultimately led her to writing We Are Electric. Today, we'll delve into these topics and more, exploring not just the science, but also the ethical societal questions that arise when we begin to unlock the bioelectric code. From the history of the under-appreciated field to its implications for the future of medicine and biology, Sally gives us a masterclass on the current state of bioelectric research. Join me, In vivo, with Sally Adi, on the bioelectric century. So, Sally, one of the ongoing challenges in biology is really sort of the absence of a unifying framework or sort of a standard model, which is sort of aching to what we see physicists looking for in the physics space, string theory, M through theory, trying to unify everything we know about physics. And while we've made incredible strides in biology understanding the genome, the proteome, transcriptome, all the ohms, it sometimes scenes as though these advancements are often like isolated pieces of a larger puzzle. Now, in your book, which is We Are Electric, which I have to say is one of the best non-fiction biology books I've read in a long time. I highly recommend it. It has to be standard reading for any young biologist, absolutely. You sort of present bioelectricity as a potential key to connecting these disparate ohms in a cohesive understanding of the underlying principles. It's sort of the attempt to get to that standard model. Now, I recently had the pleasure of talking to Mike Levin, Dr. Mike Levin, who's prominently featured in your book. And he's at the forefront of bioelectricity and how it pertains to regeneration and even consciousness, which is wild. But today, I wanted to look beyond the technical nitty-gritty and dive into the broader implications of bioelectricity on health, society, ethical questions, and sort of that greater unifying theory. So, why don't we start with a little bit of history, because I believe that in order to understand the present in the future, you have to look back a little bit. So, how do we get here with our understanding of bioelectricity going all the way back to Galvanian Volta? What can you tell us about those two gentlemen? So, essentially, they both were working at a time when all of science was still getting to grips with what electricity even was at this point, around 1780s, 90s. People were still sort of rubbing glass tubes with silk cloths and marveling at the fact that then everything would become quite static and doing these sort of parlor experiments with, you know, this one with the levitating boy who would be tied up in silk and then, you know, activated with static electricity. And then you would see, you know, little bits of fluff and little bits of a lint come sort of attracted to him as if he were magnetic. And so, people were still, I mean, I guess by the 1780s and 90s, people had gotten a bit wiser about it, but it wasn't that far in the past that it was a huge mystery. What any of this could possibly mean. And I think putting yourself in the shoes of people who were absolutely confounded, it had none of our, you know, sort of contemporary understanding of how, you know, the rules work and the laws kind of gives you a good insight into what happened when Luigi Galvani, who was an anatomist from Bologna, first started to consider that maybe this substance that they were still, you know, sort of using as an experimental approach to zapping frogs and zapping all these animals and seeing what happened to them and what, which particular way they kicked their legs. Why he started to think maybe electricity wasn't just contained in materials like amber or lightened jars or a lightning. He started to think maybe there was a unifying principle by which the the juice that made that took our intention and propelled it into action. That was its own form of electricity. And so he really felt almost, I think, called by God. He was very religious to bring this understanding into the scientific realm. And he was just a very different creature than Alessandro Volta, who was very much sort of what we would consider an early physicist, like an experimental physicist. At the time also what makes it sort of difficult to stand in their shoes is that science hadn't yet bifurcated or not bifurcated, like, infinity-furcated into all the different disciplines that we now understand. You know, neuroscientists, biologists, people were still calling themselves natural philosophers. So you could study this massive panoply of things across different silos and put together knowledge from these different things to create, to generate greater insight, which I think is something that's been, that's something that we've traded in for much greater understanding of specifics within scientific silos, but getting ahead of myself. So Volta was very much of the experimental physicist mindset. His burgeoning area of science, they called themselves electricians, which had a very different connotation back then. Well, that's interesting. Yeah, so that was something very, that was, it was sort of the 1700s equivalent of calling yourself a rocket scientist. So he, and he had, he was really ambitious. He had, you know, he wanted to make a name for himself. And when he first saw Galvanis manuscript, he was incredibly excited by it. And then within a few months he had changed his mind because it was, he had an alternate theory of why frogs, you know, sort of, twitch their legs when you touch them with the proceeds of a lieding jar, which was at the time, like a big capacitor that people used to store electricity, so that they could use it for experimental reasons. Right. And they had, so this goes into copious detail in the book, but they had basically this just absolute war that at one point enlisted basically every scientist in Europe. And when you read like the way that, you know, the, the way that they talked to and about each other, it feels very contemporary, you know, they're really like going after each other. Yeah, I wonder what it would have been like if they had something like X. Oh, yeah, slightly less flour, maybe no, probably not less flour, to be honest, but yeah, it did feel like a Twitter war when I was reading the stuff, you know, the letters. I thought, well, God, things, you know, don't change. People get all hopped up on their outrage. And then they, you know, choose sides. And then sometimes they flip sides when it seems more politically exigent. Anyway, so the reason that I wrote about this fight in so much detail in the book is that when I was looking into initially this, the, the, the, the initial sort of bifurcation of electricity and biology, which I think most of us can agree are just these wildly separate tracks in science now. One of them is this sort of, you know, engineering thing that's for power lines. And the other one is not related to electricity. And you're, and sorry to interrupt, but you're often as a child taught as, you know, as a biological creature, don't, don't mess with electricity. Exactly. Yeah, because it's almost like it's the opposite of biology. I must say, I just do not, do not cross the street. Anyway, but when I was looking into why that was, like, why do we treat them so differently when, you know, things seem like they aren't so separate? That's what I came to, this early schism between Galvani saying electricity is relevant in biology and Volta saying, you're absolutely wrong. And I didn't get into this too much in the book because it does, like, there's a big philosophical aspect of this concerning and religious considering vitalism, which was this idea that, you know, life is special. It's imbued with the breath of God. And, you know, so people like Volta were, like, desperately trying to separate themselves from this. They were saying, you know, this is physics. This is engineering. This is something we can use. This is practical. Let's get all the woo out of it, right? So they were just scraping everything. And so people like Galvani got caught up in this unfairly. And that was sort of the thing that I got really obsessed with writing about the book, writing the book was, you know, there are a lot of examples of BS in bioelectricity. I mean, you can't, you can't throw us down without hitting one, but there's legitimate research that gets thrown out with the bathwater all the time. So how, I guess the project for my book was, get the good stuff, you know, separate it out of the garbage, and then, you know, put it all in one place, do you know what I mean? Right, sort of the state of the art of where we actually stand with this sort of thing. Exactly. Yeah. And what I find really interesting, it occurred to me, because you brought up the idea of vitalism and sort of the idea of the spark of life. And what we see oftentimes in, when you start pushing the envelope of science, it ends up in science fiction. And what do we, what do we see in the early 1800s is Frankenstein, and you have bio or electricity coming into effect and animating a corpse, right? So that occurred to me. And it's interesting how quickly it made it into common, I guess popular literature at the time. Yeah, sorry to interrupt one more thing. I think Volta is Volta is credited for inventing the battery. Among there are other people who make that claim, but just so people are aware. I mean, he's a big part of what we know in regards to industrial or technical electricity. Absolutely. And one of the interesting aspects of that is that it was because of his fight with Galvani that he had the idea for the battery because it was both of them looking at electric eels and their electric sites that gave Galvani that gave Volta the idea that if you stacked electrical different different electric materials and separated them with salt water, then you would get a slow of electricity, which you would never gotten before. This was a, this is as hard to overstate how consequential the battery was. I mean, I think everybody knows that, but I mean, at the time it was just it opened up this, nobody ever had a tool that dispensed a sort of steady amount of electricity for scientific research before that it was like, you know, these like clumsy laden jars that basically just left the heck out of you when you opened it. There was one guy he tried to cram his laden jar so full of electricity that I think he ended up in the hospital and one of the guys he worked with died anyway. So it was it was quite the unpredictable work to work with electricity. And then you get this battery. And then in no time at all, now you've got people separating elements, discovering elements, you know, just being able to do really good scientific research. And then you get the telegraph wires, then you get electricity. And that's it just takes off from there. Now that that schism that you that you mentioned that battle in regards to bio electricity, it lasted after their death, right? It wasn't until essentially from what I understand the 70s when we have the invention of the patch clamp that really sort of put a final nail in the coffin, right? Tell us a little bit about that. Well, so Galvani was sort of the only torchbearer for his idea. He was really like he had he was grabbing from really this huge sort of all you can eat buffet of different disciplines to anatomy and electricity, et cetera, bone density studies in birds. But he just had this real polymathic approach. And there was nobody really left to carry his torch after he died. That's also a really tragic story I get into in the book, just like he. His ideas were rejected. He died penniless and brokenhearted. And so Volta, then his career takes off. There is one guy who tried to try to carry the torch for Galvani, which is his nephew, Giovanni Aldini. And he is probably the reason that Mary Shelley heard about these electrical experiments to inform her writing Frankenstein because he did the most gruesome experiments trying to keep this idea alive. But instead of keeping it in legitimate discourse, he essentially turned it into like the daily mail of the 1800s. It was a disaster. I mean, he did things like he he electrified prisoners. These were basically like stunts. These were like tick-tock stunts to go back to our social media metaphor. He got one guy who had just been freshly hanged and he stuck electrodes in his years, I think, and one into his anus, possibly I hate to say. And then it was just sort of let's see what happens when we do this. And he raised his hand sort of as pure to point at some of the people. And so he would have these audiences of sort of rich dilatants who were looking for entertainment. And they would sort of crowd around while he did them. And so it's just gruesome stuff, you know, things that in desecrating bodies and they didn't care because they were prisoners. And then doing terrible things to animals, he was part of a collective that tried to make a battery out of brain tissue, muscle and hat material. So, and then that underpinned this huge rise in electric quackery in the mid 1800s, early mid 1800s where, you know, you just had all the chances coming out, you know, it's almost like the crypto scams of the 1800s. Yes, yes, yes. Electric belts to, you know, Zappu, which would help you either with infertility or with too much fertility. And it just, it, it, it, it went so far that then there was a huge backlash against all of this. And then from there on, it was, it became embarrassing to talk about it, except in the context of neuroscience, because one particular researcher saved the study of bioatricity by confining it into like a really tight scientific silo of neuroscience. And that was email to Warrimon. And he almost blinded himself, trying to figure out how to make these, you know, frogs, particular nerves jump in a particular way, because, you know, he was getting very close to them. Actually, he was so obsessed, he was chewing their muscles apart, so that he wouldn't risk adding extra electricity from a metal. He was obsessed. But his obsession paid off because he then essentially guided bioelectricity into a legitimate form of, you know, studying it in neurobiology. And so people did it observationally, but to your question, the reason that the invention of the patch clamp in the 1970s was so crucial, is that before Nair and Sackman invented it, we had only observational studies. All we could do was like, you know, expose nerve here, zap it here, measure some stuff, hope for the best. And so as a consequence of that, we didn't have sort of direct evidence that the stuff was actually electric, right? We all, some, there were still wars in like the 20s and 30s and 40s. There was this whole thing called the soups versus the sparks, which sounds like the worst version of the West Side story, but they were sort of, you know, the people who were like, no, everything in the nerve impulses electric versus know everything in the nerve impulses chemical. And they were still having these arguments until in the 1970s two researchers invented a method of essentially observing the electric signatures of ions moving in and out of cellular membranes, which finally put to rest the question of how an electric impulse passes down a nerve cell. And then eventually not just a nerve cell looking at every type of cell. Yes, but that took a little bit longer. Yes, that took a little bit longer. But and just so people appreciate, I mean, there is a long standing sort of, I don't know if you call it a problem, I suppose, where, you know, you touch an oven, you move your hand away and in such an incredible speed, that sort of thing could not be explained by chemistry alone. There has to be a sort of quicker way to communicate the information, which ultimately ends up being electrical impulses coming down a nerve and through muscles and that sort of thing. Right, right. So that's the those are the those are the ways that the exchange of types of ions in cells occasions a sort of very powerful voltage switch in a nerve cell, which is how the impulse gets passed so quickly from your hand, you know, up the nervous system into your brain. So then occasionally really swift reaction as well. So that that does account for the fat for the speed of the nervous impulse. So so we get to a point with the patch clamp. Sorry, but I just want to make sure. Sorry, I just want to make sure it's it's both like that's the thing it's both electrical and chemical. I just want to make sure I'm not yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, we get to the point with the with the patch clamp where we now really sort of understand it and and put that debate that's given to rest. And now and this is a very interesting concept that you have you layout in your book is the idea of electrical identity of cells, right. This is something that most people I I would venture to guess even scientists who like myself doing research sitting in front of tissue culture. You know, you're you're you're in your silo. You're thinking about maybe genetics or thinking about the cell cycle. You're thinking about everything but electricity. And you're looking at these cells and you realize after reading your book, I realize that, you know, every type of cell has a sort of different electrical identity. You have mature cells. You have cells that have not proliferated yet or are proliferating. And then you have cancer cells. And there is a big disparity between the sort of electrical currents that run in and out of these cells. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I think it goes it sort of sets the stage for this idea of a unifying theory. Yes, which I find most fascinating coming out of your book. So if you can tell us a little bit about that, that would be great. Well, right. So the well, we'll start with we'll start with a tiny little backstory on ion channels because I think that's important. So back to the nerve cell. Now a nerve cell, it's sort of a resting potential, which I like to think of as like a happy place where it doesn't need to it doesn't need to change anything. It's just that's where it lives. It's at minus 70 millivolts approximately give it take with respect to the extracellular electrical identity of the fluid out there. The reason that this happens is because ion channel, the sort of nerve cells like all cells, they are encased in a membrane. And the membranes are studied with tens of thousands of these little pores called ion channels. And these are like little bouncers at a club. They're smart. They know who they who's on the list and who isn't. And normally so normally they like potassium and they don't like sodium. And so the sodium ions, they sort of keep out much more than they keep out the potassium ions. And then that their selectivity creates a specific type of co-mingling of ions inside the cell that creates a voltage at the membrane, a voltage difference of that minus 70. And that's a nerve cell. And the action potential is when everything, all the exit doors open or the emergency door is open and it flips to zero and sodium goes in and potassium floods out and then they try to renormalize. Quiescent cells that are not actively zapping also have membranes and they also have ion channels. They're not excitable, not quiescent. They're non excitable cells. They also have ion channels, but they have different preferences for different kinds of ions. And as a consequence, they tend to have slightly different potentials. I don't have my sheet here, but I know that the rubric is. We'll put it up on the screen. We'll put a figure up on the screen. Okay, great. Yeah, I'll send that to you. So the rough rubric is the rule of thumb is that cells that proliferate have a much higher absolute value of voltage potential. So you've got bone cells being about I think minus. No, sorry, muscular skeletal tissue is about minus 90. Then you've got things like skin cells, also a little bit around the sort of 65. You've got nerve cells minus 70. And then as you get into. And these are all sort of they've established their careers in the society of cells. That is your body. You know, nerves aren't going to turn into something else. Then you get a little bit lower, you get your fat cells, which are a little bit hovering a bit more close to like minus 50. Liver cells are about minus 35 minus 40, which is super interesting because liver cells are much more regenerative than nerve cells. And then all the way at the bottom of the scale, you get proliferating cells like stem cells and newly fertilized embryos, embryonic cells and eggs, I think, just sort of egg cells. So you get things that are very. things that have a lot of more potential are they do not have a high resting potential weirdly enough. Right, right, right. And so which is very sort of it just puts me in mind of a lot of the things that we tell our kids, like you have so much potential, you know, and then as they sort of achieve these little, you know, what they do in the society of cells, their identity is crystallized electrically. But then the weird thing that happens is that when those cells, whatever it is that happens to them to turn them cancerous, they shake off their electrical identity along with what they're doing in your body. And then they're like, screw this, I'm going back to like a unicellular type of state where all I do is eat and, you know, multiply and I don't care about what happens to the rest of the body, all I. I'm just in it for myself. And they drop immediately down to this infantile, like zero-ish, well, much closer to zero resting potential. And so this was something that they didn't really pursue in an organized way when they first got the patch clamp because it was so far outside the narrative that existed, that bioelectricity was only relevant in the nervous system, which had saved to the study of bioelectricity in the 1850s, but then sort of doomed it to this very narrow, sort of this very narrow expression in science in the 1900s. And also at the time of the patch clamp, in the early time of the patch clamp, I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong, they had any sort of means to manipulate these ion channels at will the way we do now. No, definitely not. So it would have been difficult to study it thoroughly the way we can study it now. No, absolutely. And a great example of that, you're talking about cancer cells flipping is Brook Shernet in her a study of him, I'm sorry, of course, being able to revert cancer cells by manipulating intad pulls their electrics. Yeah. And so I know it's still a big area of study and a little bit controversial, but it definitely the data and I'll put the paper up on screen is a fascinating read. Especially for somebody like myself, I was working in a cancer lab working with tissue culture and manipulating genetics. But as Dr. Levin, you know, brought to my attention reading his stuff, a lot of this stuff, most of the stuff happens outside of genetics without any alterations of the genetic code. So you're not altering the genes, but it is all connected, right? Because I mean, there are, there are again, sorry, I don't have this committed to memory. I was just talking about sort of some of the genes that change when the electrical identities of cells change. This is some work that was done by Min Zhao. I can probably give you that papers from 2006. It was like the big first one when it was and it came to bioelectricity and wound healing to be like, here's what happens when the, you know, the body's endogenous, um, electrics get involved in healing a wound. Here's, here's the gene changes that you see. And that was a big breakthrough because, you know, there you suddenly saw how it was connected because obviously having the genes and what happens to them is what that that was a excuse me. That was a huge part of legitimizing bioelectricity research because before that, it was really easy to sort of lump it always, always it got lumped with those people with their sort of electric penis belt zappers or whatever. And so after, you know, people, you know, the sort of slightly unsung heroes there who sort of worked despite people always disbelieving them and always being skeptical and sometimes quite rude about their work. They sort of persisted just regardless of all of this. And, you know, they found the the genetic mechanisms that were being enlisted. And so that suddenly then started tipping people into being like, oh, there's really something going on here. Right, right. Let me just correct myself when I said no, no changes on the genetic level. Yes, expression of genes go up and down, but there's no, uh, there's no writing of new genetic code. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. When we start dealing with really, um, mind blowing stuff like being able to have a two-headed plimmerian worm. Yeah. Right. This is happening outside of the genetic code. Right. And something that you mentioned as well as wound healing. I mean, um, and you lay this out very nicely in your in your TED Talk when you have a wound to cut in your arm, uh, there is a large change in the in the electric potential at that area, which sort of signals the immune system to bring in those the cells that are required for, um, for healing. So just a little bit about that if you don't mind. Sure. Um, well, uh, so, um, you know, the, when you cut yourself, so the skin cells, just like nerve cells, they have the same sort of, you know, delicate, happy place balance of, uh, ions and their little minus 60 something, uh, um, membrane potential. And there also, as you know, like epithelium is like locked really tightly cells are locked very tightly together by way of, uh, these little guys called gap junctions. So I like to think, obviously, this is the barrier against the world. This is our memory. Um, and, um, when you cut that, you basically are making a short circuit because all of these cells, you know, all the ions leak out along with everything else. And so this creates a current of injury. And, um, this is, um, this creates a voltage. And the electric field generated is something like, uh, around, it can be anything from, like 40 to 200 millivolts per, uh, millimeter. But this thing, it's like this, uh, initially, this, so this was, um, I think this was, this was all put together by a scientist called Richard Nutzatelli. He, um, invented this thing called a derma quarter, which was something that could actually measure this, not in, not as previous probes had done, which they needed, they needed to be like sort of stuck in a cell. This was, he was able to do this on the sort of dry skin, like just, you know, in a normal environment. Yeah. So what he found is that this initial field, this electric field, it's cathode is right at the center of your wound. Um, and it's calling all of these, like, cells, like, uh, keratinocytes, uh, to help rebuild and, like, the macrophages that help mop up the mess. They, they, they call them all in. And when you first get this wound, initially, uh, the, the field is the strongest that it's going to be. But as your wound heals, the electric field gets, um, smaller and smaller and smaller. And until when you're all the way scarred over, uh, it's all gone. And, um, the other thing he found, which I found really, um, intriguing, is that in people over the age of 65, that initial electric field will be about half the strengths of what it will be in people under 25, which I thought, I think that's so interesting because I can get correlates with a lot of people's experience as they get older, their wound scale more slowly. More slowly. And so a lot of people are looking at this for trying to figure out why some wounds don't heal, like non-healing diabetic ulcers. There's people who are looking at trying to figure out, like, what goes wrong in this process? And can we sort of electrically juice it a little bit? And there've been, you know, it's, it's still early days. There've been some studies that look really good, some studies that look like, uh, they, they, we're still trying to figure out how to engage it. And to your point, um, hopefully most people haven't experienced this, but up until about the age of 11, if you cut the tip of your finger off, that'll regenerate. And then you lose that ability to do that. Yes. Right. And so that may have something to do with, with biodectricity. Yeah, I think it's all part of the continuum because yeah, we do start as these, like, perfect regenerators when you're first developing, you know, when you're just like, you know, two cells, if somebody cut you in half, you become twins, right? It's like a veterinarian, you know, these masterfully regenerative creatures. So you kind of map a human, according to, um, their analogs and the animal kingdom, some of which regenerate really well, like starfish and some of which don't at all, like dogs. Right. But you can basically, we're patchwork regenerators across time and space. We start out being like planaria and we end up later in life being just, you know, the only thing that really regenerates is our intestines are liver and our fingernails face the quick. Right. And you mentioned body shape or, or sort of development. This is another, sort of application of this idea, this unifying theory is we know that DNA does not contain the spatial information to sort of tell developing embryos that I should be here, gut should be here, that information is not coded there. It's coded somewhere else and it might very well be bioelectricity, which, which now you start to develop the idea of the bioelectrome. Can we sort of, for development, for regeneration, for wound healing, can we sort of map this whole constellation of networks to be able to ultimately read and write it the sort of way we can read and write software, which is I think the end game, the end goal for this whole idea. I think, you know, many people are working on their own small, or not small, but their own, in, niche of this. But I think for Mike Leven, I think that's his sort of case pursuing this idea of being able to read and write what he calls the bioelectric code and the bioelectric code being, you know, what, because it's, you know, I focus heavily on the electrical identity of cells, but cells aren't the only thing that have electrical identities, you know, your organs also do. Like that skin battery that I was just talking about, you know, that's the organ of the skin that uses that to repair itself. The heart uses its electrical sort of identity as a collective to pump, you know, blood to synchronize itself. So that's, you know, liver, every organ has its own sort of electrical identity in the ways that it presses bioelectricity into service. But then there's also, you know, we've started seeing it, you know, outside of, I mean, humans, in fact, sorry, this research actually predates a lot of the research on the human electron, because for a while, plants were the thing to study when you looked at bioelectricity, even like in the 1920s and 10s, like Jagadish Shandra Bose was studying the plants. There was a big constellation of big names studying the electrical signatures of things like onions and trees and flowers and algae. And now, you know, I think this new crop now of this new guard of bioelectricity researchers is trying to put together an umbrella to understand how all these things are connected, like how is, you know, cellular electricity in humans connected to, you know, the way that bacteria use electric signals to coordinate themselves into biofilms and multicellular collectives. And there's actually been some really interesting research out of the University of Bergen, looking at how these little aquatic dude, as they're, I forgot their name, it's something, flatulence, but they're considered the closest relatives to human, to mammals. They use also bioelectricity as a kind of choreographer to take them from single cells to collectives. And I mean, that's always the big question, how did single cells decide to team up into these, you know, societies where everybody has their own job. And it works really well. And, you know, how does it, how does it work if all, if they all have the same DNA, how do they all have different jobs and phenotypes? So, no, I want to get into that a little bit more specifically your article in the IEEE spectrum on bioelectric fences. But before we do, I'd be, I'd be remiss if I didn't have you tell us about your experience with DARPA. It's sort of a different branch of this whole bioelectricity, an application which, at first, defense, it's hard to imagine. But for anybody who doesn't know, DARPA is the defense advanced research projects agency. And you had an opportunity to experience their transgranular direct stimulation systems. Could you tell us about what you experience there? Because most, most people are not, you know, don't have access to that inner sort of echelon of DARPA. Well, tell us about that. Right. So, I used to work for a magazine called IEEE spectrum, which focuses on engineering. And, yeah, I was, I was covering the DARPA tech, which used to be this conference that the defense advanced research projects agency had every year to have journalists, defense contractors, and all kinds of researchers sort of mingling. And I spoke to this woman who was running this program called accelerated learning, where Amy Cruz is her name. And she, she was, she was looking into this idea, which I had never heard of at the time. I think this had been germinating a little bit at the time. This idea that by delivering a certain amount of current to the brain at the surface, just through surface electrodes, you could under certain circumstances accelerate the speed from which, at which someone went through novice to expert at certain tasks. And this included mathematical tasks. I think it was language acquisition and marksmanship. And I, this blew my mind. I had not heard of this. And I thought it was just absolutely nuts. I mean, this was not too long after the movie The Matrix had come out. So I had these visions of sitting there like Jack Dunne and being like, I know kung fu. But then it took me a really long time to get out, to, to figure out how to convince them to let me do this because I wanted to talk to some of the soldiers who had had this, who had been involved in these trials. But DARPA, to their credit, I think, like doesn't throw soldiers to reporters like John. They are super protective of their, I think, private lives. And so finally, I said, look, let me do it. So, because I thought, you know, what's the worst that could happen? It's very dumb and young at the time. So, I convinced them to let me do it. And so I went out to California where they had two of their contractors working on this in two different ways. And I get into this in the book and great depth. But it was, it's like transformative for me. I thought of it a lot since then because basically I just found out so many strange things. It was not at all like The Matrix. It was more like accelerated meditation where it's basically like you get everything. You get all the noise out of your head and you're right there. And yeah, this sort of, this sort of started a long journey for me to try to figure out why it was like it was in my head and why electricity could possibly have had anything to do with breaking that. But it turns out, I think it's a really interesting story about science because I'm pretty sure that when it comes to TDCS, I'm, I got lucky. I'm a super responder. And you see this all the time in early stage research. You know, you get these like little clinical trials of like six or 12 people and they mean nothing. And then this is going to be like one guy. Maybe you get lucky. And all of a sudden, there's this one guy, super responder. You know, this, and with recently there's been a, you know, Vegas nerve stimulation for rheumatoid arthritis. Where they zap your Vegas nerve and in order to turn off the immune response that's overactive. For a long time, you had article after article after article about super responders. And so the reason that it's really important not to, you know, base your entire idea about a treatment on these super responders is that their outliers probably like, you know, it's very unusual to, you know, base up your p values. Yes, exactly. And so, you know, this is, I think, I think after a long sort of investigation into like why this worked for me, but, um, we, you know, why, you know, it doesn't work. Sorry, some trials show that it works really well. Some trials show that it doesn't work any better than placebo, which I've been following with great interest because, you know, there's, I think like all drug and device trials, they're still trying to figure out like the subset of people for whom it works the best. And, uh, but I, you know, I think it was, uh, for me personally, um, it was amazing, but I don't like talking about it for the reason that, you know, people will hear that story and they'll be like, oh, I just need to strap a TDCS right on my head. Yeah. Build a DIY kit, but, but just so, just so listeners understand what that involved is, is placing, uh, basically a helmet on your head, applying a current. It wasn't a helmet. So this is also a really important detail is that, um, these were basically custom fabricated electrodes that the, uh, researcher who was working on this had created himself. He had 3D printed them. He, it was his bespoke salient solution. That was a very goofy, um, but then, and his, oh, and he had basically, you know, sort of like a military grade kit that he put on me like with these very many twittles of bottles. So, um, when you look at what's available commercially, it's totally different story. And I don't know, I think it would take, you know, a DARPA purse to recreate this thing yourself, you know, on the, sort of reddit DIY forms. And it would take interviewing that guy and saying, what exactly did you do? I think that, um, it's really important to, um, not, uh, sort of overstate the relevance of that particular experiment. Because I, I, you know, I felt, I felt guilty when that went so viral, because I thought it made a lot of people think that this was, um, like a commercial off the shelf solution that could help them. And, uh, I don't know, I just, I still feel, I still feel, I still feel guilty for if I gave people this idea that, um, it was just, uh, easy, uh, thing to get when we are very much at the beginning of this science. Well, just to put a bow on, on the hypothesis is that you apply this current and you can basically learn in an accelerated fashion. And what you experienced was the marksmanship. You were able to go through a, um, training protocol where you were firing, uh, basically a, a, how would you describe it? It was a modified, um, like CO2 cartridge on a, I think an M4. So I was, I was, I was doing like proper marksmanship. Uh, I was in this sort of, uh, you know, immersive, um, game that they, yeah, exactly. It was basically a simulation. And so I had been, when I first got there, I had been, um, I had been, uh, they told me that I would have a little bit of training. And then I would go through it without having any stimulation. And then they wouldn't tell me when they turned it on. So that I wouldn't, I mean, it was obviously it's a trial of one, you know, some random journalist. It's no scientific value, but, you know, just to make it a little bit less obvious, they weren't going to tell me when they turned it on. So I felt like, I must have spent like an hour or two learning, uh, marksmanship. And then they put me into this, uh, you know, with like, um, you know, tin targets and things like that. And then they put me into this simulation, where, um, I was, uh, being sort of attacked at a, you know, military checkpoint. And there were lots of people like running at me. It was sort of standard video game fare, like first, you know, first person shooter fare. So I was trying to pick everybody off. And, um, I got blown up every single time. I never made it out of there ever, ever. And I was getting really frustrated. I was tired. I had come from London to California. And I was just like, all right, this is a bust. Like, let me just go home. And then he turned on the electricity. And like, it was actually, uh, it was a really strange experience because, uh, all of a sudden, all the sort of hectoring and shouting in my head, where I was just like, oh, like, I need to, like mental time travel that you do when you're uncomfortable. And then like the sort of self recrimination, when you're like, oh, this is going to be a really bad story. And then all of that just went like away. And it was completely silent. And I hadn't really done meditation before. So I didn't recognize it as being this sort of, you know, uh, I just didn't recognize it for what it was. It was just this like feeling of unbelievable relief. And then, I was just able to suddenly prioritize in a way that I hadn't at all been able to. And, uh, I finished the game very quickly. And I was waiting for like a second level or something like that. I was like, oh, I killed the level. And, uh, and very quickly. And then, uh, the lady came in and she turned on the lights and I said, well, it's something wrong because I thought, well, like three minutes have passed. And, uh, she said, no, you're done. And I was like, well, why did you end it early? And she's just like, uh, and I said, it's been like three minutes. And she said, no, it's been 20 minutes. So, uh, and I looked at the clock because I'd been believe her. And then I thought somebody had messed with the clock. That's how much it messed with my sense of time. And then I thought, um, yeah, it was just so strange. And then the feeling actually stayed with me. That sort of profound calm for the next three days. Like, it sort of glided out very smoothly. And then, uh, you know, it just really, I spent, I spent a couple of years trying to figure out like, how can I get back into that guy's weird. Yeah. And then I thought, can I get, uh, you know, headset from, you know, Amazon and does the will it do the same thing did not, right? Yeah, right. But I can tell it had it had a profound effect on you. Yeah, it was, it was really extraordinary. But anyway, this is, um, this is what started me on the book because then I was like, right, there's so much stuff going in on a Neurotek. And then I started looking at all this Neurotek. stuff. And then I started to realize like, wait a second. That's when I started looking at Mike Leven's work. And I was like, how come all we talk about is the Neurotek. And then I started to be, really interested in the stuff that people hadn't been writing about in a sort of consolidated fashion. You had a lot of like early articles about the planaria, you know, like messing with their electrical signals. But, you know, I was like, what's the, what's the overarching umbrella of this? Why does it, what, what connects it all? And why are we so focused on, why do we have such a coherent narrative about neuroscience? And we, and the other stuff is all over the place. So that's why I got really obsessed with it. Do you know if they've continued that research or what the state of the art is right now? Are they actually deploying it, uh, uh, uh, uh, using it to their advantage? And the next question would be how many countries around the world or defense agencies are actually pursuing this as well? Well, if it really works, then we don't know. I said, you don't know, uh, they can come, certainly, dark one has become a little more, uh, you know, holding their cards a little closer to their chest. Um, because I think there was a lot of like, uh, the, the, the sort of late 2000s, early 2010s was a big heyday of reporting on them. And they were very, they had a very close sort of relationship with the media. And that's all changed quite a bit. But, uh, more to the point, I think that, uh, as with many TDCS studies, this was early days. This was, um, small numbers of, um, people. And if it's not working for depression, which is like the big one that they're really pursuing this for. And it's not not working. It's just still, you know, it's expensive to run big trials. There's not that much funding for stuff that isn't drugs, you know, devices are, uh, uh, you know, that you've got deep brain stimulation for depression, like a super invasive one that's getting funding. But I don't know, it's like, uh, this is sort of in this like little, what is it? Why do they call it in Silicon Valley? Like the Valley of death, you know, the sort of, uh, where many factors converge, not to fund your thing. And it's where ideas go to die. Yeah. So TDCS is like, uh, people, people keep publishing small studies, but, you know, nobody's yet figured out the exact, um, the exact, you know, who it works on. And there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of variability. There's a lot of, um, there's a lot of factors that go into whether you respond, which includes even things like skull thickness, which I think lends itself to a good joke. And, and, and, sorry. And just, just to put this all in context, I think from what I understand, uh, with TDC, uh, the trans, the cranial stimulation, we're talking about a very low amount of power, like one into amps of current draw, which is about enough to light up one little tiny LED that's blinking on my camera right now. That's, that's sort of the amount of power that we're working with. So just to put that in context. Yeah. And some really funny studies have emerged from that. There was a guy, uh, there was a researcher who thought, um, TDCS was absolutely baloney. And he said, um, so if what they did is they actually, um, did a brain zap on a cadaver, just to show that like, most of the stuff that they're putting on your head sort of dissipates through skin, through bones, through all the conductive elements and never even hits the brain. But then, you know, it's, it's this, sorry, this is like, nerding out a little too much. I think this is getting a little niche, but like, there's a really fascinating, and I get into it a little bit in the book, what I find fascinating, little culture of letters that sort of, um, replicates, uh, Volta and Galvani in the sense where you have TDCS researchers defending their work and people being like, no, this is garbage. And then, you know, they have these like increasingly burrow sort of papers and, you know, arguments. Um, so there is, it's still very much alive. It's just that they don't have like a 200 patient 41 multi-centre trial, you know, that's going to answer particular questions because they're still trying to figure out what hypothesis they are strong enough to put into one of those, you know, who are the super responders? Who are the people that it's really going to work for? There's a researcher called Camilla Nord. She's amazing. She had told me ages ago that she had had success with TDCS on depression because she had realized that there is a particular type of depression because, you know, there's like a real, like there's a renaissance also in depression research that there's not, it's not just one thing. There's like many flavors of depression you can get, but there was one that was like characterized by really vicious self-talk and, um, just like a real like aggressive undercurrent. And the placement that I had had, um, during the defense department study, um, when she did that particular kind of placement, she found that the people who had that particular kind of depression really found their symptoms alleviated. So it's interesting. Yeah, it's, it's really interesting. They're really, they're working science is hard. Yeah, that's for sure. Now, what I, what I, what I find very interesting about this whole umbrella, um, branch of science being bioelectricity is and you touched on it is its application is so wide and broad. We started off by talking about different types of cells, cancer cells development. Now we're talking about cranial stimulation. And then in your IEEE spectrum article that you published recently, the collective of how it affects microorganism. So you tell us a little bit about this idea of bioelectric. So moving away from sort of humans and now applying it to agriculture of all things. So what do we see there? Well, so this is super interesting. The same ion channels, not the same exact ones because obviously like, for example, plants, they don't like sodium, uh, so they don't have, but they all of them have cells. All of those cells have their own ion channels and all of the cells have voltages of their own and they conscript them to different uses. So for example, plants also do action potentials, even though they don't have nervous systems, they have these, there's got a huge variety of ways that one part of the plant signals to another part of the plant and it's electric. Again, probably electrochemical, but you know, the electrical component of it looks so much like our nervous system that there was this whole cuffle about people who are starting to look at something called plant neurobiology, which also engenders its own volt versus galvanic. But you know, they've got things called variation potentials, action potentials, surface potentials. And so people are starting to try to decode basically this, what the signals are. So for example, if a plant is getting eaten on the tippy tip of its leaf by a little caterpillar, the signal that it sends to the rest of itself is different than if like some big chunky something is eating and starting to get to vital plant parts. And the response therefore is different. It will release this jasminate defense hormone system that in the case of the tiny caterpillar, like this is how kind of impressively fine-tuned it is, the response will be that it creates a situation where it poisons its leaves or removes somehow the nutritional content just enough so that that little caterpillar is going to be a bit, it's going to suffer from malnutrition. It's not going to get very big. It doesn't mind if a little caterpillar hangs out on its leaf and munches away. It doesn't want it to get much bigger. So it's able to do this really smart stuff. Yeah, and so how do you do that without a nervous system? Where's the brain? There's this company called The Event. It has these little brain electrodes for plants, they're called phytocines. And so what they're doing is they're listening in on the electric signals that the plant sends zapping around, zapping around. As it responds to all sorts of all sorts of environmental stimuli, is there mildew? Is it cold? Is it too cold? Is there water? Is there not enough water? And so they're looking at, they're using, I think, like a lot of machine learning to sort through all the data that they're getting, but they've started finding some really interesting stuff. They're looking at mildew infestations. So with plants, a lot of times by the time humans are able to spot the first sign, you've already got to just torch your whole crop. And so what we do in response is we just drench them with anti-fungals, which is not great, which is very bad, actually. So we just do this preemptive dowsync. And you can imagine why that's bad for many reasons. And so by listening to these signals, they're trying to get the earliest signal because the plant will know, before our sort of dump sensors pick it up. And so they're trying to find really early electrical signatures where the plant is going, oh crap, there's like a mildew spore. And for that, then you can sort of target your anti-fungals. And so it's all of this. It's how do we not overfeed them with fertilizer? How do we make sure that this is just a better way of pest control? You know, there are ways of understanding how plants respond to pests before we even see them. So all of this is in the service of, sorry, making everything a little bit more environmentally friendly. Right. So learning learning the sort of the bioelectron within these plants and these pests and being able to manipulate it to essentially being able to avoid having to avoid chemical pesticides. Yeah, I mean, electrical currents. Exactly. And so that's, but that's happening across the, across the phyla, because then also in, in bacteria, you know, there's electrical signals that cause them to create biofilm communities, which is the thing that's really antibiotic resistant. Right. And then how they keep themselves alive, there's a lot of electrical signaling that coordinates it and being able to interrupt it by messing with their potassium, that could be like people are working on ways to augment antibiotics, because that that once you, once you mess with their ability to send these signals, antibiotics are much more effective, like existing ones. So that's crazy. Then there's the fungal electric sort of neural code. All of the, none of these things have nervous systems, but they all have these neural, neuron like electrical signals that coordinate them. And so these sort of non-neural codes are being investigated across, like really far from species. And that is, I think, one of the most interesting things that's going on right now is trying to figure out, like, why do we all share this electrical signaling? And what does it say about our lives, you know, all of us? So we're coming up on time here. If you don't mind, just one or two more questions. What, what do you hope readers will take away from your book? We are electric sort of, how do you want them to change their perspective or on science and humanity? What doesn't, what do you hope that they take away? Well, I guess for me, I think the thing that made me, I think the thing I got from the book is this real sense of profound optimism about sort of life and biology. I mean, that sounds really goofy, but I think before I started looking into this, I thought, and I don't know if I, if this, if people, if lots of other people, I don't know if you feel like this, maybe you can tell me. So do you feel like biology is sort of, you're just like a collection of parts that is as a scientist or as a biological entity. Well, actually, yeah, I want to know both, especially if they're different. Well, as a scientist, yes, and I think you outlined that, and we talked about it right, right, the onset is that they are very disparate. These, these areas of research are not connected oftentimes. And they even remain in their silos with no crosstalk. And so you, you get these advances that are very sometimes niche or not shared. And if only they could be shared, wouldn't, wouldn't feel that way. And I think we'd have greater advancement for sure. But I mean, what about as a person like, or just as a biological entity? Do you feel like you have been sort of labeled as a collection of parts from yourself? Yeah, I, that's something that I've thought about and struggled with. Yes, like one of the biggest questions that I always ran through my mind as I sat there in a tissue culture hood looking at a single type of tissue, five or less, for example, your composed of so many different types of uni set, like we are multicellular, but we're composed of billions, if not, I mean, I don't know what the number is, trillions of uni cellular organisms that work as a collective somehow. And there must be something that that animates that the spark of life back to Mary Shelley, back to the original conversation that we have. And so yes, I oftentimes do think that way. But then, you know, you get very philosophical, where is the consciousness? Where is the mind? Where is, where is, is there a soul? What animates this? Obviously, amazing creature that's far more, I mean, I mean, people might disagree in debate, which organisms are more amazing. But to me, obviously, humans are number one. And why is that? Where does that come from? Maybe it's bioelectricity. It certainly has a big, a big role to play in that. So yes, I've thought about that a lot. Yeah. And I mean, so we, and we had this idea that sort of everything is controlled by the brain. And, you know, there's, we're just a collection of parts that sort of on this puppet string that's managed by the brain. And this book just turned it all completely upside down for me because all we are is, is a collective that thinks it has a boss. And I thought that was, I thought that was so cool, because of, I mean, it has like implications for how you view yourself, like how, how much you really feel like you have to be in control of things versus whether you can just, like, let go and sort of let things sort of fall into place where they may, hopefully. But also, yeah, it really changed my thinking in that way. But I think most importantly, in a more concrete way, in a sort of slightly less, like, fruity way, I think I became really interested in the narratives around science that happen to be the water you swim in. And how to break out of those not to disprove them, but just to be like, how, why are we here? And then also the metaphors that we use to talk to ourselves about what things are that I was, if your readers want to read another book, I mean, obviously, I have to plug mine, but the idea of the brain by Matthew Cobb just blew my mind on this because he talks about all of this, this whole history of like, you know, how we conceive of the brain as whatever the most fancy thing that we've built ourselves. And that's always the thing, you know, so in the 1800s, the nervous system was the telegraph. So fancy, so interesting switches. And then it becomes like, oh, the brain is a computer. And now we're going to start going into some quantum nonsense. But it's whatever we've built that were most impressed with. We then suddenly decide that the body and where the brain is that thing. And so just being wary of that and being aware of it, I think helps scientists and non-scientists. Have you heard of a scientist named Dr. Martin Picard? Yeah, what is his deal? Sorry, I've heard the name. I can't remember what to do. So since we're on the topic of bioelectricity, and his idea is that a big part of consciousness stems from mitochondria. Oh, yes. So we're talking about outside of the brain mitochondria. It's something I need to delve into more. And I hope to get him on. But fascinating hypothesis. Do you know? I thank you so much for talking to me that on the reason that I, the reason I know his name is because I had this huge note. It's fiery. Research from Picard. And then it got lost under the December highlights. So thank you. Yeah, no. And one more thing that you said is sort of a renewed optimism in science because, and I think it's more pervasive in physics, what we're talking to physicists is that there are long stretches of time when things just don't seem to improve. And I don't know if that's a byproduct of technology. I mean, with physics, we're talking about an immense amount of power than to be generated to do these huge studies. But it sort of ebbs and flows. And it sort of is calm for a long time. In biology, it's much more concentrated, those ebbs and flows. And I think we're in a moment right now, especially with bioelectricity. For me, at least, after reading your book and now talking to Mike Levin, and I want to talk to Martin Picard, I am, I have a renewed sense of interest and optimism in biology because there's this new thing on the horizon. Yeah. And I think that's a wonderful thing. Yeah, same. I, yeah, I mean, it's, it's really interesting. When you get like a real sort of influx of people working on good tools, all of a sudden new insights come out and we are massively at that point. I mean, I hate to sort of bring it all back to the tools, but the tools are super important because that's how you get the new insights. That's how you get the new information that gives you the new insights that let make, let's you make the connections that lets you then build better tools and all that. And obviously, something I'm going to pursue more as well is AI in biology, right? The application of that. We're at a point where I think even physics, but a lot of these sciences are, are starting to develop new tools and that's going to open up a lot of doors. That's just we live in a, maybe live in fascinating times and I know every, every, every era or generation believes they live in the most fascinating time. I think we truly do. Now, last question if you don't mind. What are you working on? Any interesting projects? What's coming up next? Well, I'm trying to get my proposal finished for my second book, which is about sort of taking this electron beyond the human, which you know, this book was quite tightly focused on human and mammalian and, you know, amphibian biology. But it's basically looking at why, you know, why everything has these, this electrical infrastructure. Like, why is that? And it goes, I am once again very busy separating the garbage from the could be so. Yes, good luck. I'm sure you do fine. And it's absolutely one last question. I like to ask everybody, what is your advice for young scientists, especially biologists that are coming up in this fascinating time? Whether they're working in cancer labs or developmental labs, whatever type of lab, what is your advice as it pertains to bioelectricity and keeping that on their radar? Oh, I think I'm trying to learn things from disciplines that you don't think are relevant to you. I think that, you know, to remember now, there's some really good quote from Richard Feynman that I'm going to butcher rather not say it, but basically just learn indiscriminately and just try to, because I think a lot of the reason that bioelectricity is in this moment right now comes down to, I don't, I hesitate to do this whole great man theory replicate that. But like, Mike Leven is a little bit like the Paul Erdos of bioelectricity. Like he's at the center of this incredible network that he's built. And it's, you know, he's not just in developmental biologists or in with engineers. He's like with cancer biologists and, you know, bacterial bioelectricity guys and wound healing guys. And, you know, we do, I think, for young scientists, this is just a really a time to be alive, because you can just go hop on social media and see these people's, you know, graphs and figure out how things pertain. I think I, I'm not a scientist, so it's probably easier to say this than do it. And I don't want to come across as stepping massively outside of my lane and like talking about something that I don't understand. But I think that, I think that, I think that stepping outside of your particular silo might be useful right now, even though I think unfortunately, the infrastructure is sort of stacked against people who try to do that because I think there's a lot of reward in staying in one particular place and just drilling down further and further. I think that's how you, that's how like all the rewards are apportioned that way. Like, you know, that's how you, that's what you have to do to write papers. There's only so much time in a day to research, you know, some guys, you know, research that has nothing to do with your research. But I think if, if it's possible at all, if somebody's interested in biorelectricity, try to get into these networks so that you can see your work replicated in some utterly unexpected place, because I think that's where, you know, these little Eureka moments come from. Very well said. And I think the, the access to these scientists, Dr. Levin, for example, most of them are, are super generous with the time. Happy to talk to you. It's, it's amazing. It is amazing. Sally, this was a wonderful talk. Thank you so much. I encourage everybody to check out. We are electric and your future projects. I'd love to talk to you again when that comes out. Thank you. And I'd love to one day talk to you about your, your writing process, how that works, because obviously you did a lot of research, especially the historical aspect, which I really appreciate as a fan of history. Well done. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on. I appreciate talking to you. This was good. Thank you very much. And I will link your book in the show notes and all your, your, is there any particular place that people can find out more about you and your work? I have a website that's quite crap. Sorry. I have a sub stack that's also just very random, but yeah, I'm not, I'm, I don't have that, I don't have a, I don't have a coordinated internet presence. I've put it that way. That's okay. That might, that might be for the better. Yeah, I think so. All right. Okay. Thanks again. I look forward to it. Thank you.