#534： How Navigation Makes Us Human
Episode Stats
Summary
Mara O'Connor is a science journalist and the author of The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate: The Story of How We Find Our Way. In this episode, we discuss what goes on in our brains when we navigate and how we use the same part of the brain that we use for memory when we're getting around town. We then discuss how human navigation differs from animal navigation and the cultural tools that humans have developed over millennia to help them find their way, including storytelling and songs. And we end our conversation by musing on how using GPS can shrink our sense of autonomy while navigating on our own feels existentially empowering.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. If you're
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like most people these days, you probably rely on turn-by-turn directions given by
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a smartphone app to navigate to where you want to go. While Google Maps certainly made
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getting around a lot more convenient, my guest today makes the case that by relying on GPS
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to navigate, we're turning our backs on a skill that makes us uniquely human. Her name
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is Mara O'Connor. She's a science journalist and the author of Wayfinding, the science and
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mystery of how humans navigate. We begin our conversation discussing what goes on in our
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brain when we navigate and how we use the same part of the brain that we use for memory when
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we're getting around town. We then discuss how human navigation differs from animal navigation
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and the cultural tools that humans have developed over millennia to help them find their way,
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including storytelling and songs. Mara then shares research that suggests our language influences
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our sense of location in space and how our ancient ancestors sowed the seeds of the scientific
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method when they're tracking animals while hunting. We also discuss recent research that
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suggests relying too heavily on GPS may increase your risk for dementia and be linked to other
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mental health problems. And we end our conversation by musing on how it is that using GPS can shrink
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our sense of autonomy while navigating on our own feels existentially empowering. After the show's
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over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash wayfinding. Mara joins me now via clearcast.io.
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Mara O'Connor, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks so much, Brett. I appreciate it.
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So you got a book out called Wayfinding. It's all about human navigation and the history of
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navigation and how navigation makes us human. I'm curious, was there something that's behind
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this book? Like you had a personal experience that you're like, I need to start researching and
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writing about human navigation. Yeah, I definitely didn't think much about this topic until I was
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kind of using my smartphone and my GPS for a long time. I had a first generation iPhone and I was
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using it as a journalist to get around New York and track down interviews and chase stories as a
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newspaper reporter. And I really trusted my smartphone. I mean, it is an incredibly powerful
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tool. But then I was on a trip in rural New Mexico, very different from Brooklyn or Manhattan
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where I live. And I wanted to go to a hot spring. And so I was with my partner and I put in the name
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of this place into my smartphone. And we followed these directions down these increasingly shrinking
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dirt roads. And finally, the phone took us to the edge of the Rio Grande River in this 100-foot
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cliff that just went straight down to the water. And I guess this hot spring was somewhere at the
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bottom of that cliff, but obviously we had no way of getting there. And since then, I kind of collected
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these stories about the crazy lengths that people will go just because they put so much faith into their
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GPS. And I also started realizing I just didn't really know what we are doing when we navigate,
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you know, what's happening in the brain when we try to get from A to B. And as a science journalist,
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I just felt that this was a topic that offered a lot. It offered me a way to think about the impact of a
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technology on our lives, but also to think about neuroscience and culture and, you know, what might
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be lost when we outsource this skill to a device. So let's talk about the neuroscience here. Let's
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begin there. Like, what do we know? Like, what do scientists know about what goes on in our brain
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when we navigate? Like, are there specific parts that we use?
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Yeah, there's a really fascinating part of the brain called the hippocampus that we use when we
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are orienting ourselves in space and getting from A to B. So we have these multiple sensory systems
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that include vision and touch and even smell that seem to converge upstream, so to speak,
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of this part of the brain, the hippocampus. And all of that information is passed on to what are called
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place cells. And these are cells that were discovered by a neuroscientist by the name of
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John O'Keefe, and he won the Nobel Prize for this research in 2011. And so most of what neuroscientists
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know about place cells are from rat studies. So, you know, there's this kind of classic study where you
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put a rat in a maze, and what these neuroscientists are able to do is attach single electrodes to these
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place cells and see that they fire in correspondence with where that rat is in physical space.
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And then there's other cells in this part of the brain. There's cells called head direction cells
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and grid cells. But the most interesting thing about the hippocampus to me is that it's not just
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where this knowledge of space where we build spatial representations is kept. It's also where we have
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what's called episodic memory, which is our recall of all the events of the past that we remember.
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It's kind of the locus of our autobiography. And we don't really know which came first, memory or
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these so-called cognitive maps in the brain. So there's a connection. We're going to talk about
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this throughout this discussion. There's a connection between memory and navigation. If we
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can't remember things, we wouldn't be able to navigate. And maybe if we can't navigate, we can't
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remember things. Exactly. And like I said, we're not sure which came first, but it's a fascinating
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question. Did humans have better memories because we had this hippocampus and then we started using
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memory as a strategy for navigation? Or was it that in our long, long distant evolutionary past,
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we had to navigate a lot in search of food, shelter, other people. And then we sort of adapted and
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started using our hippocampus to start keeping memories of the past.
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Well, and throughout the book, you go and visit what we'd call traditional cultures, right? Where
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Inuit Indians, the Aborigines in Australia, where they are still using traditional methods of
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navigation. And you start off with Inuit and how they navigate traditionally. And there's insights
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Yeah, I went to Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. And, you know, I'll say that there are hunters in
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Nunavut who are using very, very modern tools and technologies to get around. So they're driving
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snowmobiles, you know, they're using guns, not harpoons. But then there are some who are increasingly,
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you know, cognizant of the idea that navigation is also integral to aspects of culture that they don't
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want to let go of. So traditional navigation is increasingly being taught to a younger generation,
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not just because it helps them survive on the land, but because it's a point of cultural pride.
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It has to do with history, language, land stewardship. And one of the first people that I spoke to
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in Nunavut was a hunter and community leader by the name of Solomon Awa. And I asked him,
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you know, one of my first questions was, you know, what makes the Inuit so superior when it comes to
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navigating in this Arctic landscape, which to people from the South, which is anybody who's,
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you know, kind of below the Arctic circle, makes it so difficult. It just looks kind of blank. It's
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snow and it's ice. And he right away, without hesitation, said, you know, we have bigger memories.
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And he attached that to the fact that traditionally Inuit culture is an oral culture. So from the time
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that you're young, you are memorizing stories, you're memorizing routes, there's more need for
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you to have a bigger memory than in perhaps other places in the world.
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And also another thing about the Inuit, it's like they notice things that like we wouldn't notice,
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right? Like we would go to the Arctic circle, like, man, this looks, everything looks the same.
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They would actually say, no, there's like a difference here. And they are able to pay attention
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Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say that the Arctic landscape is totally homogenous, but there are
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places there where you don't have, you know, huge kind of mountainous landscapes. It can be incredibly
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flat. It can, if you're traveling on sea ice, there may not be very many landmarks whatsoever to
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distinguish, you know, one part of the ice from another. And so what you see are these, you know,
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amazing strategies where Inuit hunters are using things like the patterns on the snow that are
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created by wind. And if you know the direction of the dominant wind, you can read these like a compass
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in the ground, or you might use a rock, you know, here in Manhattan, I can look at the Empire State
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Building. I can say, okay, I know that's north of me, you know, but in the Arctic, there are no Empire
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State Buildings, but you could use a rock instead. And their capacity for attending to detail is really
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incredible. So they might not just use the shape of a rock, but also the pattern of lichen and moss
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to remember, oh, I came this way. And now I know that I'm on the right track.
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So a memory, so the Inuit, basically from the time they're little kids, they're learning
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these stories that tell them how to navigate that landscape. But, and this is happening in our hippocampus,
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which is connected to navigation and memory. But as you highlight in the book, there's two ways to
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navigate. Like there's two strategies our brain uses to navigate. What are those two strategies?
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Yeah, neuroscientists call them different circuits. And so the most important is sort of what I was
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describing with the hippocampus and place cells. And that's the spatial learning strategy.
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We learn to navigate using the relationships between landmarks and that information. And
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those spatial representations are held in the hippocampus. And when we return to a place we've
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already been, those same place cells are firing in the same pattern. Those are, that's what is in a
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sense formulating our cognitive map. And once we have that map, it allows us to create novel routes
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to any destination from any starting position in the environment. So it's a little confusing,
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but that's what's called an allocentric perspective. It's the kind of bird's eye view
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of the environment and the ability to infer relationships from different landmarks and create
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new routes. Then there's this other circuit, which is very different. And it's really about habits and
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it's called the caudate nucleus. And it's how we get around to really familiar places. It's kind of
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like being on autopilot. So it sort of signals to us to turn right and left in response to a cue
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without us really having to think about it or having to use our memory to figure it out.
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And you can see why evolutionarily that might've been really useful. You know, it allows us to sort of
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get to the supermarket in our neighborhood without having to retrieve our memories. And it kind of
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allows our mind to wander and attend to other things. What's really, I think, interesting is
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that we use one strategy over the other, but we never use them at the same time. So the more we use
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one, the less we use the other. And as we age, we seem to use these hippocampal spatial strategies
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less and less. And that corresponds in many cases to sort of decreased volume in this part of the brain.
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And the concern is whether or not, you know, we are in fact impacting our memory capacities,
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the vigor of our memory, if we're not really exercising the hippocampus and its spatial strategies
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enough. Well, like that second strategy, and we'll talk more about this later in detail,
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but that second strategy of the cue, that's basically Google Maps, right? It's like you got your phone on,
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it says turn right here, turn left there, and you just follow it. You have no bird's eye view of where
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you're at. Yeah, I think what I think the important difference to think of is that when we're using
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the turn by turn function of our, you know, Google Maps, our smartphone, we are not having to create
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or utilize our own spatial representations of the landscape around us. And so we are essentially just
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following the directions, you know, that are supplied to us turn right, turn left. It's not
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a one-to-one analogy with that second strategy. It's a little more complex than that, but I think
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it's a really good, yeah, parallel to draw and distinction to make. When we are using our turn-by-turn
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directions on our GPS device, we really aren't using that hippocampal spatial strategy. And so,
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you know, yeah, that's the question. What's the impact of that? And there aren't a lot of long-term
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studies to tell us yet, but the sort of initial studies that have been done are fascinating. And
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the short answer is, you know, it could have sort of nefarious effects on our memory and other skills.
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Well, this idea, this connection of spatial navigation to memory, you suggest, can in the book explain,
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partly explain, childhood amnesia, right? Which is the idea that at a certain point in our childhood,
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like we don't remember anything, right? You can maybe go four, maybe three, and then after that,
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you can't remember anything. How could navigation possibly explain that?
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Yeah, I mean, I know some people scoff when I bring this up and they say that they can remember
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things from when they're one or two. And that may be the case. You know, I certainly can't. And I had
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this experience in my own childhood where I don't have a lot of memories from before I was about five
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or six. And then it's like, I can remember everything. I have these very vivid memories that
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often take the shape of maps almost of where I can recall, you know, the rocks or the trees that I used
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to climb on. And I can remember, you know, where I got the bus to go to school. And I was, you know,
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really interested in why this was. So I was talking to neuroscientists and they're the ones who sort of
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said, yeah, there's this phenomenon called infant or childhood amnesia. So the idea is like one theory
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that one reason we don't have these very vivid memories from our childhood is that our hippocampus
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isn't fully developed. And it's as children are exploring space and sort of creating spatial
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representations in the brain that they're kind of training the hippocampus and its ability to retain
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memories so that by the time they're six or seven, their memories are actually, you know, fully
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functioning. They're not perfect. But so there's this kind of idea that through childhood, there's
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a process of cognitive development. And it raises the question of, you know, how important is the idea
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of exploration, independent play, and self-locomotion, you know, them walking, not being carried even,
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and how that might be an essential part of cognitive development and maturation. And I think
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that's really important right now because we know that, you know, we are increasingly a risk-adverse
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society, not just in the United States, but there's been studies done in Japan, Australia, Europe,
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in many parts of the world where children are really limited in their independence. And it's such a
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drastic change from just even two or three generations ago.
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So yeah, there could be, I mean, it's all tenuous theories. By not allowing kids to explore,
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we might be stunting hippocampal development, which could affect memory.
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Perhaps. I mean, we don't know what the offshoots are of limiting independent play and autonomy and the
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time that children are allowed to just sort of freely play outdoors. You know, I think even if
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there's no studies pointing to directly, you know, cognitive problems as a result of that,
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I think, you know, it's important to ask, you know, should children know that Google isn't the only way
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to find information and that GPS isn't the only way to get somewhere? You know, what's the importance
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of self-reliance and autonomy and not needing to be dependent on these devices in their lives and being
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able to figure it out? And yeah, I think spatial knowledge is important for even intelligence. It's
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problem solving, it's grit, you know, it's all these things that we want children to have in order to succeed
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and be fulfilled human beings. And it does seem like, in some ways, these devices could compromise
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Let's talk about how other animals navigate, because I think I can give us some insight on how
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humans navigate. You see the difference? Because we've all heard those stories of animals that travel
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thousands of miles. And like the salmon, they were born thousands of miles away from their homeland,
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but they're able to swim back to the same place where they respond.
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How do animals navigate? And how is that different from what humans do?
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Yeah. I mean, I have a whole chapter in wayfinding about animals because I was shocked to discover that
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scientists don't actually know the answers to a lot of these questions of how animals do just
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unbelievable feats of navigation. And yeah, like you bring up salmon and the examples are almost
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countless. Like you can look at almost any species of animal, butterflies, yeah, butterflies,
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you know, even like aphids have navigational capacities that we don't fully have explanations
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for. So, I mean, one thing is, is that if, if animals were prone to getting lost, it's likely
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that their species wouldn't have survived. So it seems through natural selection, different species of
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animals have created these really sophisticated tools in some cases for, for finding their way.
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And in some cases over, you know, many thousands of miles. So one of the best examples I think is
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these bar-tailed godwits, this type of bird that travel 6,000 miles over open ocean from Alaska to New
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Zealand. And if they made a directional error of just even a few degrees, it would mean that they
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were hundreds of miles off course in the middle of the ocean and they would die. And then there's
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Arctic turns that travel, you know, 40,000 miles each year from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back
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again. And how they do this has been explained in different ways. And I think is still, like I said,
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a bit of an unanswered question, but there's, you know, I think the most compelling explanation is
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this magnetic compass idea that they're able to read the earth's magnetic field. But what that
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biological mechanism is that allows them to do that has been so far undiscovered and there's
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different theories out there. I think what's fascinating is like, if you compare the capacity
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of a person to an Arctic turn, we are just the worst. You know, if you put a blindfold on a person
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and just say, okay, walk in a straight line, they're going to start walking in a circle that's
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measuring about 66 feet in diameter, but like, they'll tell you that they're walking in a straight
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line. So we just don't have whatever biological mechanism it is that animals have that allows us
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to dead reckon. But what we do have is memory. And we've created these cultural traditions that
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connect us to places. And so knowledge and the building of knowledge and the passage of knowledge
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from one generation to the next, then these cultural skills and practices seem to be how
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we have kind of made up for whatever deficiencies, you know, we have compared to like leatherback
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors. And now back to the show.
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Right. Well, and one of those cultural traditions that we've developed is storytelling. Humans are
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storytelling animals. Like what is a storytelling's connection to navigation?
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Yeah, I think, you know, the hippocampus is this place that, as I said, allows us to have a
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recollection of events and it allows us to orient in space now in the present moment. And it's also
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amazingly the place that allows us to envision the future. So people who don't have a hippocampus,
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whether because they suffered some kind of trauma to it, or there's cases of people having had it removed
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as a treatment for epilepsy, they have a difficult time envisioning even tomorrow, you know, what
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they're going to do tomorrow. So I became interested in this idea that we have this narrative capacity
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of thinking about the past, the present and the future, beginning, a middle and an end because of
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the hippocampus. And I came across the work of this artificial intelligence pioneer at MIT, Patrick
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Winston, who he sadly passed away last month. But he was interested in a lot of the similar issues, like
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what is the source of human intelligence? And he thought that it was storytelling and that if we
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can create supercomputers that can understand stories, then we are on our way to creating real
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artificial intelligence. And so there's just this, I think, really compelling relationship between,
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you know, who we are as a species and, and how we survive and, and what is part of our rich cultural
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heritage and storytelling seems to be at the heart of all of that. And I was sort of, you know,
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delighted and surprised to find someone working in a completely different field, like artificial
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intelligence who had from a different direction, come to some of the same ideas.
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And as you highlight in the book, a lot of these traditional cultures that still use traditional
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navigation methods, like the way they pass that along is through stories, like the Aborigines in
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Australia, they, they tell stories about like the dream, the dream world, right?
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Yeah. It's like, you can think of it in the sense that navigation could have helped us to develop
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this narrative storytelling capacity, but then likewise, humans seem to use stories as a mnemonic
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device to find our way. And the best example of that is like you said, I think song lines, which,
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you know, Aboriginal Australians believe that all of the rocks, the trees, the gorges and rivers
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of the landscape were created by their ancestors who traveled through the world in the dream time.
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And those journeys are recorded in songs and stories that people learn and memorize. They're,
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you know, handed down from one person to the next. And I, I think I didn't find a lot that was
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written on this topic, but, um, there's some really compelling, you know, evidence out there that
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the song lines are, you know, connected to music and, and law and land stewardship and Aboriginal
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culture, but they're also in a simple way, a mnemonic device for finding your way across the
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landscape, because you are literally have these stories that are describing the routes taken by
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their own ancestors, you know, so there'll be from this rock, you'll see these trees. And from those
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trees, you'll see this gorge. And I just found this to be such a beautiful example of how, you know,
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culture and navigation have intertwined and, and are, it's so rich.
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And also you see this connection between navigation and narrative as a device to help
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you remember things like the ancient Greeks had this, like, that's how they remember,
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memorize giant speeches. They would actually create like physical maps in their head of like a building.
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And they'd say, well, now I'm in this room and in this room, I see this thing. And because I'm in
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this thing, I'm going to talk about this thing and I'm going to move over here. And it's the same sort
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of thing that they're, they're creating a narrative, but also navigating through an imaginary space.
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Yeah. And the ancient Greeks seem to have kind of understood this spatial proclivity of the brain,
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that it's easier to remember things when it's associated with a place. And, and the difference,
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I would say, between what the ancient Greeks were doing with these memory palaces and what
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Aboriginal Australians are doing when they use the song line as navigating is that, you know,
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the Greeks are creating imaginary spaces in the brain, but the Aboriginal Australians are using the
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actual landscape as a memory palace. So maybe that's a little confusing, but I think they're both doing
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the same thing, as you said, and it's because the brain has this proclivity for an ability to retain
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spatial knowledge and memory, perhaps easier than just abstracted information.
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So when we travel, we're not only navigating through space, but we're also navigating through time.
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Is there a connection between space and time when we navigate like in our brain?
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Yeah. I think that I start to, throughout the research for this book and writing it,
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I started to think of time as a kind of human construct and as a measure of how far we have
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traveled. And, and one way that, one reason why I started thinking like that is because of how much
00:26:21.120
we use the vocabulary of space to talk about time. So, you know, we say it, it was a long time,
00:26:29.280
long, you know, it was a short time, a short time. And there are some neuroscientists who
00:26:35.080
think that the cells in the hippocampus aren't just mapping space, that they may also be mapping time.
00:26:42.220
There's a neuroscientist, Howard Eichenbaum, who actually called them time cells. And so there is
00:26:47.980
this fascinating connection. I think the scientific, neuroscientific research in that subject is still
00:26:54.640
growing, but I can't wait to see where it goes in the next 10 years, because it may be that our
00:26:59.740
understanding of what the hippocampus is doing has kind of been limited by this focus on rat studies.
00:27:06.340
You know, rats may be really interested in space and humans may also be able to harness the hippocampus
00:27:12.560
to map space, so to speak, but we may also be mapping many other dimensions of our experience. So time
00:27:19.980
being one of them, but maybe also social hierarchies or relationship, or even maybe music.
00:27:26.880
Yeah, that Back to the Future captures that idea that time is place, right? It's like,
00:27:31.860
they're not traveling back, they're traveling to the 1950s, like a place, right? It's like,
00:27:38.120
I just watched that movie the other day with my five-year-old.
00:27:48.960
Okay, so yeah, when we navigate time, we're actually probably navigating space in a weird way.
00:27:54.760
Okay, let's talk about language and navigation. How does language influence the way we navigate,
00:28:02.380
or how does navigation influence the way we talk or language?
00:28:07.040
Yeah, I think when I started researching the book, it was hard for me to imagine that there
00:28:13.420
was a way of navigating that didn't rely on maps. Maps are so important to Western culture,
00:28:21.880
and the idea that you could somehow find your way, especially in a very challenging landscape,
00:28:27.400
like say, the Arctic or the desert without a map seemed kind of like beyond my, the scope of my
00:28:35.060
own imagination. But what I started talking to different anthropologists about is just how many,
00:28:41.500
you know, the astonishing range of human navigation systems that rely on observation,
00:28:47.360
memory, perception, and environmental cues. So some cultures orient by wind, others by sand,
00:28:55.320
waves, and then some rely on trails, roads, or signage, or maps like we do. And then I started
00:29:02.220
to realize that even beyond, you know, differences in strategies and environmental cues, there's even
00:29:08.280
differences in the language and the words that we use from culture to culture to describe space.
00:29:15.520
So, you know, most likely, if I were to give you directions from my office to my home,
00:29:22.360
I would say, you're going to take a left out of the front door, go down to the stop sign,
00:29:27.720
take a right, and so on. But in other cultures, they wouldn't even have the words right or left
00:29:34.380
to describe space. So they would have to say, you're going to turn south, go to the stop sign,
00:29:39.420
and then you're going to turn east. And so the question is, does using a language that requires
00:29:45.960
you to know your orientation in space all the time in order to speak, in order to communicate,
00:29:52.480
make you better at navigating? And all the evidence points to yes. And so there's these incredible
00:30:00.520
studies in the 1970s with this doctor and explorer, David Lewis, where he was going into the Western
00:30:06.800
desert in Australia and going out with community leaders and hunters and trackers. And he would
00:30:13.940
bring individuals to a place and then ask them to point to an unseen landmark, often like a dreaming
00:30:22.060
site that was part of a song line, and say, okay, you know, point. And then he would see how accurate
00:30:30.700
they were, and they're incredibly accurate. You know, they were sort of able to do it almost
00:30:37.600
flawlessly. And so then, you know, 20 or so years later, Stephen Levinson, a psycholinguist who was
00:30:44.120
studying these differences in language, was doing the same studies. And many of his students went around
00:30:49.800
the world and found examples of many other cultures who also use these geocentric terms like east, west,
00:30:57.320
north, and south, instead of the more egocentric terms of left or right. So there really is this
00:31:04.080
picture emerging of just the incredible cognitive diversity and language diversity in human culture.
00:31:11.500
So, so far, we've sort of weaving this tapestry. As you said, like this book is like a tapestry,
00:31:15.420
because you're connecting all these different things. Navigation is connected with memory. Memory
00:31:19.340
is connected to storytelling. Navigation is also connected to storytelling. Language is connected to
00:31:24.880
navigation. You also make this, this case that navigation is partly responsible for science,
00:31:32.480
like what we call a scientific theory today. How so? Well, I think the first person who exposed me to
00:31:39.100
this idea was John Huth, who's an astrophysicist at Harvard, but he also teaches this course to
00:31:45.640
Harvard undergrads about navigation. And I just got so interested in why somebody would be teaching,
00:31:53.440
you know, a Harvard seminar on like, how to tell, you know, which direction the wind is going from the
00:32:02.180
clouds. It would seem like pretty basic, basic knowledge. And, you know, John was talking a lot
00:32:09.320
about how he feels empiricism, this ability to derive knowledge directly from our sensory experience and
00:32:16.220
from our own perception has kind of fallen away in modern education. And so he became really interested
00:32:23.960
in teaching his students these basic skills so that they could develop their own capacity for
00:32:30.200
gathering empirical knowledge and using that as the foundation for then the rest of their scientific
00:32:37.200
knowledge. And he's actually not the first one who's kind of drawn this connection between science and
00:32:44.020
navigation. There's a small body of literature out there that talks about how when you're tracking
00:32:50.700
an animal, you are creating hypotheses, you know, from our observations of the world, you're sort of
00:32:57.040
imagining yourself in the place and time of how that animal was traveling through space. And then you're
00:33:03.840
testing that hypotheses against reality. Am I going to find that animal and be able to kill it,
00:33:09.800
to eat it, to eat it, and so on. And so, you know, Huth, John Huth and other people who talk about this
00:33:18.260
use that as an example, an early example of the scientific process of creating hypotheses and
00:33:25.060
testing them against reality, of using our empirical ability, our perception and our sensory experience
00:33:34.260
So if you want to become a better scientist, it sounds like you need to go to a tracking school.
00:33:37.740
Maybe. I think John believes in many of the students that I talked to and I sat in on his
00:33:46.160
classroom feel that this course not only gave them a sense of confidence that they didn't have before,
00:33:54.700
but was also almost like philosophically affecting for them. Like they started thinking not just in
00:34:01.800
terms of how can I, you know, find my own way in the world. Like that became an existential question
00:34:08.600
for them too. And so that was really interesting for me. And I think the book often does veer into
00:34:15.820
that more philosophical existential territory because of that. You know, we use the metaphors of
00:34:22.960
navigation to talk about our own lives all the time. You know, are we on the right path in life?
00:34:28.840
Have we deviated? You know, have we reached our, you know, our destination? I mean, there's these ways
00:34:34.920
in which the language of navigation helps us to understand the bigger journey of how we move
00:34:42.320
through life, not just how we, you know, get from A to B.
00:34:47.040
Well, let's talk about that. So we talked about like this, the sort of existential threat possibly
00:34:51.960
of our decreasing ability to navigate without GPS. I think most of us, I think you cited a number,
00:34:58.080
81% of people in America are using some sort of GPS device to get around. And that's a big increase.
00:35:04.720
I think in 2008, it was something like 10% or 8%. I mean, it was really small.
00:35:09.980
Understanding that navigation is connected to memory, memory to navigation.
00:35:14.720
What are the implications of relying, of us relying so heavily on GPS to get around instead of using
00:35:25.480
Well, I think, so I'll start with the more sort of philosophical, you know, argument. And I think
00:35:31.820
if we're always trying to avoid getting lost, if that's our main concern, that basically means we
00:35:38.180
always have to know where we are going before we set out somewhere. And so in some ways,
00:35:44.300
GPS doesn't really leave room for exploration for the unexpected, for discovery, you know, for this
00:35:51.840
idea of forging our own path of traveling the less or going on the less traveled road of this capacity
00:36:00.800
to set off into the unknown and then find out as we go. And that's why I think the term wayfinding is
00:36:06.860
such an interesting term. It really, it indicates that this isn't just a sort of rational calculation of
00:36:13.820
how to get from one place to the other in the fastest, most efficient way possible, but that
00:36:19.680
it's a process in which as we go, we accumulate knowledge, we, we know as we go. And I'm definitely
00:36:27.000
not advising people to get lost, like, especially in a wilderness situation. You know, I think even,
00:36:34.500
you know, Solomon, all our hunters in the, in the Arctic would just like scoff at that notion.
00:36:38.940
But what I am kind of suggesting is that people maybe think about and turn their attention to how
00:36:45.220
they are finding their way and even developing those navigation skills, rather than just almost
00:36:51.080
mindlessly relying on a device that may be shutting off opportunities rather than allowing them. And
00:37:00.360
I don't want to dismiss how useful GPS can be in some situations. Some people may feel very
00:37:08.300
uncomfortable, you know, going someplace they've never been before without having a device to help
00:37:14.900
them get there. And I don't think that's a bad thing. But what I'm talking about could be as simple
00:37:19.620
as deciding to go out and create a new cognitive map of a place that they're less familiar with. And
00:37:25.600
that's different from getting lost. It's more about kind of intentional exploration.
00:37:31.540
No, I, so I thought one thing I've noticed in my own life about this idea that, you know,
00:37:36.620
getting lost is an important part of actually figuring out where you are in life. Like I've
00:37:42.460
lived in Tulsa, I moved to Tulsa in like 2006. And so this is when like Google Maps was on the scene.
00:37:48.680
So like when I moved here, like I use Google Maps to get around.
00:37:52.900
10 years later, like I still don't know, like I'm not very good at navigating Tulsa without
00:37:56.840
Google Maps. Like I've gotten a little bit better, but like I couldn't do that thing. Like,
00:38:01.340
well, if I'm here, you can just take this road to get to this part of town. But if I go back to my
00:38:06.680
hometown where I grew up as a kid, like I can get around anywhere.
00:38:11.260
I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't need GPS. Like I know how to get anywhere, anywhere. And it's because
00:38:14.920
like I spent my part of my life just developing that mental map in my head of that place.
00:38:21.160
Exactly. Yeah. And I, I had the same exact experience in the end of the book. It's basically
00:38:26.220
me going back to the town, more like a village actually is really rural that I lived in from
00:38:33.040
when I was six to about 10 and not using a GPS, not using a map. And I could find my way around as
00:38:40.220
though I had just left yesterday. And similar to your experience, I had a friend, you know,
00:38:45.220
described to me how he lives in LA now and he cannot get across town without using his phone.
00:38:52.800
And he's like, why is it that I can remember every bike route that I ever took when I was 10 years old,
00:38:57.520
growing up in England. And I can't find my way to this coffee shop that I've gone to,
00:39:01.880
you know, a couple of times a week for the last like three years or something.
00:39:06.460
And I think that's, that shows how this kind of nefarious quality of using the device,
00:39:13.380
which is that the more we use it, the more we almost depend on it. And so it's a bit of a vicious
00:39:19.100
circle where we actually don't develop the confidence and, and literally the memories of
00:39:25.620
places in order to be able to put the device down. And I think so much of it stems from this sense of
00:39:32.360
anxiety. Like we don't have a lot of tolerance for the idea of wasting time anymore. You know,
00:39:39.320
we really, and, and that makes sense. You know, I don't want to get lost on my way to the airport
00:39:44.960
just to like prove a point about wayfinding. But if our whole lives and our whole days are being
00:39:52.200
organized around that principle of, you know, putting convenience above other types of experience
00:39:59.500
or putting efficiency and saving time above other types of experience, that's when I start thinking,
00:40:06.100
wait a second, like it's important to maybe step back and think about the value of these other ways
00:40:12.260
of finding, finding our way through space. So another sort of possible downside of relying
00:40:18.980
on navigation, as we rely on that more Q response navigations, which is parallel to what we do when
00:40:25.900
we use GPS, we're using our hippocampus less. We know that the brain is plastic. So if you use one
00:40:31.460
part of your brain less, it shrinks. What are the possible implications of us like using our hippocampus
00:40:38.960
less to navigate? Yeah. So there's been some, some studies that show brain activity differences
00:40:47.460
between people who are using say a paper map and people who are using turn by turn directions given to
00:40:53.320
them by their GPS device. So there was one in 2017 recently where they gave people, you know,
00:41:01.440
navigating the Soho neighborhood in London, these two different strategies. And what happens when
00:41:08.100
people are using those turn by turn directions in the hippocampus is that that part of the brain just
00:41:13.060
kind of seemed to lose interest in the environment. So it was just kind of lost interest even when they
00:41:18.980
encountered a new street, a new piece of information or a new part of their potential cognitive map,
00:41:25.440
they just weren't really interested. And so it seems that that part of our brain's cognitive mapping
00:41:30.420
system isn't really engaged. And then there's other studies showing that people who rely on sat-nav
00:41:37.540
devices or GPS devices in their cars, you know, afterwards, they can't draw the route with a lot of detail
00:41:45.660
as those who didn't use one can. So we actually seem to be paying more attention to the screen
00:41:52.020
than the environment when we're using these devices in our cars, or even when we're walking.
00:41:57.060
And so whether or not that has a direct effect on say the vigor of our memory is an open-ended
00:42:03.980
question. But there's simultaneously a very, very large body of research in say Alzheimer's disease that
00:42:11.740
shows almost universally for people who have Alzheimer's, they show atrophy in the hippocampus.
00:42:18.640
The same with depression, PTSD, dementia, memory impairments. And so it used to be that neuroscientists
00:42:27.700
thought this was the product of these diseases, the atrophy in the hippocampus. But now they're
00:42:34.500
wondering if the sort of reverse is true. Could this sort of be a predilection for these diseases?
00:42:41.160
And so increasing hippocampal health, you know, in any way that we can seems to be something really
00:42:47.940
positive we can do, especially as we're aging and we tend to rely on habit more and more rather than
00:42:54.520
utilizing these spatial strategies. And I think you, one neuroscientist you talked to said she like
00:43:00.200
doesn't, she tries to use GPS as little as possible because of this possible connection to Alzheimer's.
00:43:06.140
Yeah. I mean, she, Veronique Bobat is in Montreal and she's done, you know, amazing studies looking at
00:43:14.860
the differences between the hippocampus and the caudate nucleus, this other habit strategy of,
00:43:21.480
of navigating. And, and yeah, she has said, and I was speaking with her a few months ago and she's
00:43:27.900
still not using a GPS. You know, I think that a GPS can be useful and I will use it. I need to use it when
00:43:36.300
I go to New Jersey. I find it really hard to get around New Jersey without a GPS. There's like so many
00:43:41.280
highways. It's very confusing. So I'm not kind of a purist about this, but I try to pay a lot of attention.
00:43:50.040
So what I'll do is I'll, perhaps I'll look at the map on my phone before I go somewhere in the same
00:43:56.440
way that you would look at a paper map. And then I will, you know, in my mind, remember the sequence
00:44:04.140
of directions that I need to take to get where I want to go. And then I will put it away. And so I
00:44:09.180
think that's one way of sort of, you know, using some of the benefits of GPS, which can tell you exactly
00:44:14.220
where you are, you know, but also being aware of the fact that, you know, exercising the hippocampus
00:44:22.500
in a very conscious way is I think quite healthy. And Veronique Bobat has created almost a whole
00:44:28.460
curriculum for how people can, can do that. And it has to do with it, with eating well, it has to do
00:44:34.960
with exercise and it has to do with, you know, consciously creating and exercising our cognitive maps.
00:44:41.640
And some people think, well, relying on a map or a mental map, like that's going to make
00:44:45.380
navigation harder. I've actually noticed in some situations, it's easier to navigate without GPS
00:44:50.640
or the turn-by-turn because there's, yeah, you have that instance where, you know, you end up
00:44:54.900
almost running off a cliff in New Mexico. Like that's an extreme case when you rely on GPS,
00:45:00.020
but there's also, it's like the annoying thing about it is you only, they only give you directions
00:45:04.740
for like so far, right? So like you might be like, what I've encountered is I'll be like in the wrong
00:45:09.900
lane, right? And I need to be on the, I'm on the left side of the lane. I need to be on the right
00:45:13.340
side of the lane. But it doesn't tell you into the last minute. You're like, ah, crap, I can't get
00:45:17.020
over there now. So I have to like go a mile down and make my, so if I just would have known in my
00:45:22.140
head, I need to get off of this exit way in the head, like it would have made navigation or getting
00:45:26.460
to that place a lot faster. Right. Yeah. No, I think that's totally true. I think I can't count the
00:45:32.800
number of times where I, or someone, you know, that I know has used a GPS and then inadvertently
00:45:40.520
like created more confusion and it's taken twice as long or even more to get where you wanted to go.
00:45:48.280
I had a friend of a, my mom's telling me this story about leaving her house to pick up her friend at
00:45:54.480
the airport, which is an hour away. And then on the way back, it took them four hours to get home
00:46:01.020
and she could not figure out why there were times where she was literally driving next to the
00:46:07.580
highway, but she was on like a smaller road that was adjacent to it. And then she got home and
00:46:13.160
realized that her GPS had been set on walk rather than drive. And so, but there's this way in which
00:46:19.900
GPS, because it's so powerful, we suspend our sort of disbelief or our own confidence in our
00:46:28.320
perception and, you know, ability to rationally think through these things. And we just are like,
00:46:34.160
if the GPS is saying it, it must be true. And the best example of that I think is in the office where
00:46:40.600
Michael and Dwight are like driving in their car and Michael starts driving into a lake
00:46:45.300
and Dwight's saying, stop. And Michael's like, I can't because the GPS is telling him to do it.
00:46:51.540
And that's like laughable, but there are countless examples of this. I had someone
00:46:57.700
send me an entire Facebook page that he had created because he teaches truck drivers a safety course.
00:47:04.840
And he created this Facebook page just to document like the number of news stories about
00:47:10.800
truck drivers following their GPS into just ridiculous, insanely unsafe, you know, conditions
00:47:18.520
because they just think if it's saying that it must be true. Yeah. The examples just go on and on.
00:47:25.080
All right. So don't, so maybe use your GPS less. It'll help you get to the place where you want to go
00:47:29.060
faster, but it can also help you become more human. Yes. So Mara, where can people go to learn more
00:47:36.640
about the book and your work? Well, I regularly contribute to the New Yorkers element section, which is
00:47:42.300
their science and, uh, and tech, uh, section. And I write about all kinds of stuff, snow leopards,
00:47:49.620
autonomous vehicles. And I also have another book called resurrection science, which looks at some of
00:47:55.200
the philosophical questions raised by technology, but in a totally different context, which is that of
00:48:01.100
conservation and biology. So yeah, encourage people to look at in those two places or also buy a copy of
00:48:09.120
Wayfinding. Fantastic. Well, Mara O'Connor, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:48:12.560
Yeah. Thank you so much. This was really fun. My guest today was Mara O'Connor. She's the author
00:48:16.660
of the book Wayfinding. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more
00:48:20.880
information about our work at our website, mroconnor.info. Also check out our show notes
00:48:25.500
at aom.is slash wayfinding, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:48:30.380
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:48:41.140
artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles we've
00:48:45.320
written over the years about, got an article about why you should use a paper map on there instead of
00:48:49.200
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Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you not only to listen to the AOM podcast,