The Art of Manliness - #534： How Navigation Makes Us Human

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. If you're

00:00:11.420 like most people these days, you probably rely on turn-by-turn directions given by

00:00:15.420 a smartphone app to navigate to where you want to go. While Google Maps certainly made

00:00:19.140 getting around a lot more convenient, my guest today makes the case that by relying on GPS

00:00:23.440 to navigate, we're turning our backs on a skill that makes us uniquely human. Her name

00:00:27.420 is Mara O'Connor. She's a science journalist and the author of Wayfinding, the science and

00:00:31.580 mystery of how humans navigate. We begin our conversation discussing what goes on in our

00:00:35.400 brain when we navigate and how we use the same part of the brain that we use for memory when

00:00:39.480 we're getting around town. We then discuss how human navigation differs from animal navigation

00:00:43.540 and the cultural tools that humans have developed over millennia to help them find their way,

00:00:47.560 including storytelling and songs. Mara then shares research that suggests our language influences

00:00:52.520 our sense of location in space and how our ancient ancestors sowed the seeds of the scientific

00:00:56.680 method when they're tracking animals while hunting. We also discuss recent research that

00:01:00.780 suggests relying too heavily on GPS may increase your risk for dementia and be linked to other

00:01:05.780 mental health problems. And we end our conversation by musing on how it is that using GPS can shrink

00:01:10.100 our sense of autonomy while navigating on our own feels existentially empowering. After the show's

00:01:14.860 over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash wayfinding. Mara joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:01:26.680 Mara O'Connor, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks so much, Brett. I appreciate it.

00:01:34.720 So you got a book out called Wayfinding. It's all about human navigation and the history of

00:01:41.020 navigation and how navigation makes us human. I'm curious, was there something that's behind

00:01:45.980 this book? Like you had a personal experience that you're like, I need to start researching and

00:01:50.840 writing about human navigation. Yeah, I definitely didn't think much about this topic until I was

00:01:58.880 kind of using my smartphone and my GPS for a long time. I had a first generation iPhone and I was

00:02:05.720 using it as a journalist to get around New York and track down interviews and chase stories as a

00:02:12.320 newspaper reporter. And I really trusted my smartphone. I mean, it is an incredibly powerful

00:02:17.740 tool. But then I was on a trip in rural New Mexico, very different from Brooklyn or Manhattan

00:02:24.960 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

00:02:32.620 of this place into my smartphone. And we followed these directions down these increasingly shrinking

00:02:39.340 dirt roads. And finally, the phone took us to the edge of the Rio Grande River in this 100-foot

00:02:46.340 cliff that just went straight down to the water. And I guess this hot spring was somewhere at the

00:02:53.780 bottom of that cliff, but obviously we had no way of getting there. And since then, I kind of collected

00:02:59.940 these stories about the crazy lengths that people will go just because they put so much faith into their

00:03:08.120 GPS. And I also started realizing I just didn't really know what we are doing when we navigate,

00:03:17.240 you know, what's happening in the brain when we try to get from A to B. And as a science journalist,

00:03:22.480 I just felt that this was a topic that offered a lot. It offered me a way to think about the impact of a

00:03:29.740 technology on our lives, but also to think about neuroscience and culture and, you know, what might

00:03:36.880 be lost when we outsource this skill to a device. So let's talk about the neuroscience here. Let's

00:03:44.380 begin there. Like, what do we know? Like, what do scientists know about what goes on in our brain

00:03:49.380 when we navigate? Like, are there specific parts that we use?

00:03:52.460 Yeah, there's a really fascinating part of the brain called the hippocampus that we use when we

00:03:59.540 are orienting ourselves in space and getting from A to B. So we have these multiple sensory systems

00:04:06.320 that include vision and touch and even smell that seem to converge upstream, so to speak,

00:04:12.680 of this part of the brain, the hippocampus. And all of that information is passed on to what are called

00:04:18.380 place cells. And these are cells that were discovered by a neuroscientist by the name of

00:04:23.020 John O'Keefe, and he won the Nobel Prize for this research in 2011. And so most of what neuroscientists

00:04:31.400 know about place cells are from rat studies. So, you know, there's this kind of classic study where you

00:04:36.960 put a rat in a maze, and what these neuroscientists are able to do is attach single electrodes to these

00:04:42.480 place cells and see that they fire in correspondence with where that rat is in physical space.

00:04:50.560 And then there's other cells in this part of the brain. There's cells called head direction cells

00:04:54.580 and grid cells. But the most interesting thing about the hippocampus to me is that it's not just

00:05:00.560 where this knowledge of space where we build spatial representations is kept. It's also where we have

00:05:07.360 what's called episodic memory, which is our recall of all the events of the past that we remember.

00:05:14.000 It's kind of the locus of our autobiography. And we don't really know which came first, memory or

00:05:20.640 these so-called cognitive maps in the brain. So there's a connection. We're going to talk about

00:05:25.880 this throughout this discussion. There's a connection between memory and navigation. If we

00:05:30.460 can't remember things, we wouldn't be able to navigate. And maybe if we can't navigate, we can't

00:05:34.140 remember things. Exactly. And like I said, we're not sure which came first, but it's a fascinating

00:05:39.200 question. Did humans have better memories because we had this hippocampus and then we started using

00:05:46.720 memory as a strategy for navigation? Or was it that in our long, long distant evolutionary past,

00:05:55.140 we had to navigate a lot in search of food, shelter, other people. And then we sort of adapted and

00:06:03.480 started using our hippocampus to start keeping memories of the past.

00:06:08.400 Well, and throughout the book, you go and visit what we'd call traditional cultures, right? Where

00:06:12.200 Inuit Indians, the Aborigines in Australia, where they are still using traditional methods of

00:06:17.560 navigation. And you start off with Inuit and how they navigate traditionally. And there's insights

00:06:24.320 there about how we use our memory to navigate.

00:06:27.140 Yeah, I went to Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. And, you know, I'll say that there are hunters in

00:06:36.040 Nunavut who are using very, very modern tools and technologies to get around. So they're driving

00:06:43.380 snowmobiles, you know, they're using guns, not harpoons. But then there are some who are increasingly,

00:06:49.380 you know, cognizant of the idea that navigation is also integral to aspects of culture that they don't

00:06:57.140 want to let go of. So traditional navigation is increasingly being taught to a younger generation,

00:07:04.080 not just because it helps them survive on the land, but because it's a point of cultural pride.

00:07:10.260 It has to do with history, language, land stewardship. And one of the first people that I spoke to

00:07:16.660 in Nunavut was a hunter and community leader by the name of Solomon Awa. And I asked him,

00:07:23.700 you know, one of my first questions was, you know, what makes the Inuit so superior when it comes to

00:07:29.660 navigating in this Arctic landscape, which to people from the South, which is anybody who's,

00:07:35.280 you know, kind of below the Arctic circle, makes it so difficult. It just looks kind of blank. It's

00:07:40.560 snow and it's ice. And he right away, without hesitation, said, you know, we have bigger memories.

00:07:46.660 And he attached that to the fact that traditionally Inuit culture is an oral culture. So from the time

00:07:55.020 that you're young, you are memorizing stories, you're memorizing routes, there's more need for

00:08:01.560 you to have a bigger memory than in perhaps other places in the world.

00:08:06.060 And also another thing about the Inuit, it's like they notice things that like we wouldn't notice,

00:08:12.660 right? Like we would go to the Arctic circle, like, man, this looks, everything looks the same.

00:08:16.960 They would actually say, no, there's like a difference here. And they are able to pay attention

00:08:21.680 to that difference.

00:08:23.020 Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say that the Arctic landscape is totally homogenous, but there are

00:08:28.960 places there where you don't have, you know, huge kind of mountainous landscapes. It can be incredibly

00:08:36.460 flat. It can, if you're traveling on sea ice, there may not be very many landmarks whatsoever to

00:08:43.140 distinguish, you know, one part of the ice from another. And so what you see are these, you know,

00:08:49.560 amazing strategies where Inuit hunters are using things like the patterns on the snow that are 0.99

00:08:57.880 created by wind. And if you know the direction of the dominant wind, you can read these like a compass

00:09:05.000 in the ground, or you might use a rock, you know, here in Manhattan, I can look at the Empire State

00:09:12.580 Building. I can say, okay, I know that's north of me, you know, but in the Arctic, there are no Empire

00:09:17.420 State Buildings, but you could use a rock instead. And their capacity for attending to detail is really

00:09:25.500 incredible. So they might not just use the shape of a rock, but also the pattern of lichen and moss

00:09:32.740 to remember, oh, I came this way. And now I know that I'm on the right track.

00:09:39.260 So a memory, so the Inuit, basically from the time they're little kids, they're learning

00:09:42.940 these stories that tell them how to navigate that landscape. But, and this is happening in our hippocampus,

00:09:49.240 which is connected to navigation and memory. But as you highlight in the book, there's two ways to

00:09:53.760 navigate. Like there's two strategies our brain uses to navigate. What are those two strategies?

00:09:59.860 Yeah, neuroscientists call them different circuits. And so the most important is sort of what I was

00:10:05.380 describing with the hippocampus and place cells. And that's the spatial learning strategy.

00:10:10.620 We learn to navigate using the relationships between landmarks and that information. And

00:10:16.040 those spatial representations are held in the hippocampus. And when we return to a place we've

00:10:22.340 already been, those same place cells are firing in the same pattern. Those are, that's what is in a

00:10:28.100 sense formulating our cognitive map. And once we have that map, it allows us to create novel routes

00:10:35.140 to any destination from any starting position in the environment. So it's a little confusing,

00:10:41.960 but that's what's called an allocentric perspective. It's the kind of bird's eye view

00:10:46.540 of the environment and the ability to infer relationships from different landmarks and create

00:10:52.440 new routes. Then there's this other circuit, which is very different. And it's really about habits and

00:10:58.860 it's called the caudate nucleus. And it's how we get around to really familiar places. It's kind of

00:11:03.580 like being on autopilot. So it sort of signals to us to turn right and left in response to a cue

00:11:09.860 without us really having to think about it or having to use our memory to figure it out.

00:11:16.140 And you can see why evolutionarily that might've been really useful. You know, it allows us to sort of

00:11:22.120 get to the supermarket in our neighborhood without having to retrieve our memories. And it kind of

00:11:29.440 allows our mind to wander and attend to other things. What's really, I think, interesting is

00:11:34.920 that we use one strategy over the other, but we never use them at the same time. So the more we use

00:11:40.840 one, the less we use the other. And as we age, we seem to use these hippocampal spatial strategies

00:11:47.340 less and less. And that corresponds in many cases to sort of decreased volume in this part of the brain.

00:11:55.620 And the concern is whether or not, you know, we are in fact impacting our memory capacities,

00:12:04.280 the vigor of our memory, if we're not really exercising the hippocampus and its spatial strategies

00:12:10.760 enough. Well, like that second strategy, and we'll talk more about this later in detail,

00:12:15.860 but that second strategy of the cue, that's basically Google Maps, right? It's like you got your phone on,

00:12:21.080 it says turn right here, turn left there, and you just follow it. You have no bird's eye view of where

00:12:26.100 you're at. Yeah, I think what I think the important difference to think of is that when we're using

00:12:31.300 the turn by turn function of our, you know, Google Maps, our smartphone, we are not having to create

00:12:38.940 or utilize our own spatial representations of the landscape around us. And so we are essentially just

00:12:46.940 following the directions, you know, that are supplied to us turn right, turn left. It's not

00:12:53.240 a one-to-one analogy with that second strategy. It's a little more complex than that, but I think

00:13:00.480 it's a really good, yeah, parallel to draw and distinction to make. When we are using our turn-by-turn

00:13:07.480 directions on our GPS device, we really aren't using that hippocampal spatial strategy. And so,

00:13:14.200 you know, yeah, that's the question. What's the impact of that? And there aren't a lot of long-term

00:13:20.000 studies to tell us yet, but the sort of initial studies that have been done are fascinating. And

00:13:26.700 the short answer is, you know, it could have sort of nefarious effects on our memory and other skills.

00:13:36.100 Well, this idea, this connection of spatial navigation to memory, you suggest, can in the book explain,

00:13:43.500 partly explain, childhood amnesia, right? Which is the idea that at a certain point in our childhood,

00:13:48.420 like we don't remember anything, right? You can maybe go four, maybe three, and then after that,

00:13:55.120 you can't remember anything. How could navigation possibly explain that?

00:14:00.600 Yeah, I mean, I know some people scoff when I bring this up and they say that they can remember

00:14:05.900 things from when they're one or two. And that may be the case. You know, I certainly can't. And I had

00:14:13.920 this experience in my own childhood where I don't have a lot of memories from before I was about five

00:14:20.380 or six. And then it's like, I can remember everything. I have these very vivid memories that

00:14:27.140 often take the shape of maps almost of where I can recall, you know, the rocks or the trees that I used

00:14:36.700 to climb on. And I can remember, you know, where I got the bus to go to school. And I was, you know,

00:14:43.900 really interested in why this was. So I was talking to neuroscientists and they're the ones who sort of

00:14:48.660 said, yeah, there's this phenomenon called infant or childhood amnesia. So the idea is like one theory

00:14:56.620 that one reason we don't have these very vivid memories from our childhood is that our hippocampus

00:15:02.340 isn't fully developed. And it's as children are exploring space and sort of creating spatial

00:15:09.300 representations in the brain that they're kind of training the hippocampus and its ability to retain

00:15:15.340 memories so that by the time they're six or seven, their memories are actually, you know, fully

00:15:20.400 functioning. They're not perfect. But so there's this kind of idea that through childhood, there's

00:15:26.740 a process of cognitive development. And it raises the question of, you know, how important is the idea

00:15:33.460 of exploration, independent play, and self-locomotion, you know, them walking, not being carried even,

00:15:41.240 and how that might be an essential part of cognitive development and maturation. And I think

00:15:48.080 that's really important right now because we know that, you know, we are increasingly a risk-adverse

00:15:54.940 society, not just in the United States, but there's been studies done in Japan, Australia, Europe,

00:16:00.380 in many parts of the world where children are really limited in their independence. And it's such a

00:16:07.600 drastic change from just even two or three generations ago.

00:16:11.720 So yeah, there could be, I mean, it's all tenuous theories. By not allowing kids to explore,

00:16:18.180 we might be stunting hippocampal development, which could affect memory.

00:16:23.160 Perhaps. I mean, we don't know what the offshoots are of limiting independent play and autonomy and the

00:16:32.960 time that children are allowed to just sort of freely play outdoors. You know, I think even if

00:16:39.440 there's no studies pointing to directly, you know, cognitive problems as a result of that,

00:16:45.780 I think, you know, it's important to ask, you know, should children know that Google isn't the only way

00:16:52.520 to find information and that GPS isn't the only way to get somewhere? You know, what's the importance

00:17:00.180 of self-reliance and autonomy and not needing to be dependent on these devices in their lives and being

00:17:08.640 able to figure it out? And yeah, I think spatial knowledge is important for even intelligence. It's

00:17:16.200 problem solving, it's grit, you know, it's all these things that we want children to have in order to succeed

00:17:23.320 and be fulfilled human beings. And it does seem like, in some ways, these devices could compromise

00:17:31.200 that.

00:17:32.780 Let's talk about how other animals navigate, because I think I can give us some insight on how

00:17:37.220 humans navigate. You see the difference? Because we've all heard those stories of animals that travel

00:17:41.540 thousands of miles. And like the salmon, they were born thousands of miles away from their homeland,

00:17:47.240 but they're able to swim back to the same place where they respond.

00:17:50.340 How do animals navigate? And how is that different from what humans do?

00:17:55.420 Yeah. I mean, I have a whole chapter in wayfinding about animals because I was shocked to discover that

00:18:03.460 scientists don't actually know the answers to a lot of these questions of how animals do just

00:18:10.400 unbelievable feats of navigation. And yeah, like you bring up salmon and the examples are almost

00:18:17.920 countless. Like you can look at almost any species of animal, butterflies, yeah, butterflies,

00:18:24.860 you know, even like aphids have navigational capacities that we don't fully have explanations

00:18:31.240 for. So, I mean, one thing is, is that if, if animals were prone to getting lost, it's likely

00:18:38.420 that their species wouldn't have survived. So it seems through natural selection, different species of

00:18:44.980 animals have created these really sophisticated tools in some cases for, for finding their way.

00:18:51.140 And in some cases over, you know, many thousands of miles. So one of the best examples I think is

00:18:58.440 these bar-tailed godwits, this type of bird that travel 6,000 miles over open ocean from Alaska to New

00:19:05.660 Zealand. And if they made a directional error of just even a few degrees, it would mean that they

00:19:11.360 were hundreds of miles off course in the middle of the ocean and they would die. And then there's

00:19:16.160 Arctic turns that travel, you know, 40,000 miles each year from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back

00:19:21.800 again. And how they do this has been explained in different ways. And I think is still, like I said,

00:19:26.960 a bit of an unanswered question, but there's, you know, I think the most compelling explanation is

00:19:32.000 this magnetic compass idea that they're able to read the earth's magnetic field. But what that

00:19:37.980 biological mechanism is that allows them to do that has been so far undiscovered and there's

00:19:43.820 different theories out there. I think what's fascinating is like, if you compare the capacity

00:19:50.640 of a person to an Arctic turn, we are just the worst. You know, if you put a blindfold on a person

00:19:57.560 and just say, okay, walk in a straight line, they're going to start walking in a circle that's

00:20:03.640 measuring about 66 feet in diameter, but like, they'll tell you that they're walking in a straight

00:20:09.280 line. So we just don't have whatever biological mechanism it is that animals have that allows us

00:20:16.320 to dead reckon. But what we do have is memory. And we've created these cultural traditions that

00:20:24.340 connect us to places. And so knowledge and the building of knowledge and the passage of knowledge

00:20:30.820 from one generation to the next, then these cultural skills and practices seem to be how

00:20:36.060 we have kind of made up for whatever deficiencies, you know, we have compared to like leatherback 1.00

00:20:43.240 turtles.

00:20:44.780 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors. And now back to the show.

00:20:50.020 Right. Well, and one of those cultural traditions that we've developed is storytelling. Humans are

00:20:55.280 storytelling animals. Like what is a storytelling's connection to navigation?

00:20:59.280 Yeah, I think, you know, the hippocampus is this place that, as I said, allows us to have a

00:21:06.240 recollection of events and it allows us to orient in space now in the present moment. And it's also

00:21:13.020 amazingly the place that allows us to envision the future. So people who don't have a hippocampus,

00:21:19.800 whether because they suffered some kind of trauma to it, or there's cases of people having had it removed

00:21:25.700 as a treatment for epilepsy, they have a difficult time envisioning even tomorrow, you know, what

00:21:33.060 they're going to do tomorrow. So I became interested in this idea that we have this narrative capacity

00:21:40.960 of thinking about the past, the present and the future, beginning, a middle and an end because of

00:21:47.220 the hippocampus. And I came across the work of this artificial intelligence pioneer at MIT, Patrick

00:21:53.640 Winston, who he sadly passed away last month. But he was interested in a lot of the similar issues, like

00:22:00.880 what is the source of human intelligence? And he thought that it was storytelling and that if we

00:22:06.820 can create supercomputers that can understand stories, then we are on our way to creating real

00:22:12.380 artificial intelligence. And so there's just this, I think, really compelling relationship between,

00:22:18.800 you know, who we are as a species and, and how we survive and, and what is part of our rich cultural

00:22:28.280 heritage and storytelling seems to be at the heart of all of that. And I was sort of, you know,

00:22:34.300 delighted and surprised to find someone working in a completely different field, like artificial

00:22:38.780 intelligence who had from a different direction, come to some of the same ideas.

00:22:44.380 And as you highlight in the book, a lot of these traditional cultures that still use traditional

00:22:47.860 navigation methods, like the way they pass that along is through stories, like the Aborigines in

00:22:52.860 Australia, they, they tell stories about like the dream, the dream world, right?

00:22:57.700 Right.

00:22:58.220 And that's how they navigate.

00:23:00.000 Yeah. It's like, you can think of it in the sense that navigation could have helped us to develop

00:23:06.120 this narrative storytelling capacity, but then likewise, humans seem to use stories as a mnemonic

00:23:13.760 device to find our way. And the best example of that is like you said, I think song lines, which,

00:23:19.680 you know, Aboriginal Australians believe that all of the rocks, the trees, the gorges and rivers

00:23:25.280 of the landscape were created by their ancestors who traveled through the world in the dream time.

00:23:32.640 And those journeys are recorded in songs and stories that people learn and memorize. They're,

00:23:38.500 you know, handed down from one person to the next. And I, I think I didn't find a lot that was

00:23:45.620 written on this topic, but, um, there's some really compelling, you know, evidence out there that

00:23:51.540 the song lines are, you know, connected to music and, and law and land stewardship and Aboriginal

00:23:59.260 culture, but they're also in a simple way, a mnemonic device for finding your way across the

00:24:04.820 landscape, because you are literally have these stories that are describing the routes taken by

00:24:11.000 their own ancestors, you know, so there'll be from this rock, you'll see these trees. And from those

00:24:16.820 trees, you'll see this gorge. And I just found this to be such a beautiful example of how, you know,

00:24:22.200 culture and navigation have intertwined and, and are, it's so rich.

00:24:28.460 And also you see this connection between navigation and narrative as a device to help

00:24:33.720 you remember things like the ancient Greeks had this, like, that's how they remember,

00:24:37.180 memorize giant speeches. They would actually create like physical maps in their head of like a building.

00:24:43.180 And they'd say, well, now I'm in this room and in this room, I see this thing. And because I'm in

00:24:47.580 this thing, I'm going to talk about this thing and I'm going to move over here. And it's the same sort

00:24:51.340 of thing that they're, they're creating a narrative, but also navigating through an imaginary space.

00:24:56.860 Yeah. And the ancient Greeks seem to have kind of understood this spatial proclivity of the brain,

00:25:05.020 that it's easier to remember things when it's associated with a place. And, and the difference,

00:25:11.200 I would say, between what the ancient Greeks were doing with these memory palaces and what

00:25:16.280 Aboriginal Australians are doing when they use the song line as navigating is that, you know, 1.00

00:25:21.580 the Greeks are creating imaginary spaces in the brain, but the Aboriginal Australians are using the 1.00

00:25:28.560 actual landscape as a memory palace. So maybe that's a little confusing, but I think they're both doing

00:25:34.880 the same thing, as you said, and it's because the brain has this proclivity for an ability to retain

00:25:42.400 spatial knowledge and memory, perhaps easier than just abstracted information.

00:25:50.540 So when we travel, we're not only navigating through space, but we're also navigating through time.

00:25:55.880 Is there a connection between space and time when we navigate like in our brain?

00:26:02.060 Yeah. I think that I start to, throughout the research for this book and writing it,

00:26:08.060 I started to think of time as a kind of human construct and as a measure of how far we have

00:26:15.200 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,

00:27:36.060 it's a place, not just a time.

00:27:38.120 I just watched that movie the other day with my five-year-old.

00:27:41.160 Oh, you are a great mother.

00:27:43.280 I thought it was pretty cool.

00:27:44.720 You're passing on important culture here.

00:27:47.320 I think, yeah.

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, 0.99

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 0.98

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

00:33:32.320 to build knowledge.

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.

00:35:09.280 Right.

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

00:35:22.100 that spatial navigation?

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.

00:37:51.820 Right.

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.

00:38:10.840 Right.

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 0.72

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 GPS. Check it out, artofmanliness.com. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the Art of Manliness

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00:49:21.460 Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you not only to listen to the AOM podcast,

00:49:25.180 but put what you've heard into action.

00:49:27.760 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - August 14, 2019

#534： How Navigation Makes Us Human

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