Is That Bulls*it: Does The Body Keep the Score - in Your Hips

Summary

The Gist – “Is That Bulls*it: Does The Body Keep the Score – in Your Hips”

Date: March 19, 2026
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Sadie Dingfelder
Theme: Debunking the popular notion that trauma is physically stored in the hips—or anywhere outside the brain—through a skeptical, science-informed discussion.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Mike Pesca welcomes science writer Sadie Dingfelder for an “Is That Bullshit?” segment. The topic: Does the body “keep the score” of trauma—and more specifically, does it reside in your hips as yoga lore and wellness culture increasingly claim? The conversation dissects the scientific basis (or lack thereof) for this widespread belief, traces its origins to Bessel van der Kolk’s influential work, and separates wishful mysticism from evidence-based neurology.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of “The Body Keeps the Score”

[11:00]

• The phrase and concept come from Bessel van der Kolk’s 2014 book, which proposes that trauma is not just psychological but also physiological.
• Van der Kolk’s book has dominated bestseller lists and popular thinking about trauma ever since.
• He broadened trauma's definition from single, acute events (classic PTSD) to encompass repeated or developmental trauma.
  • Sadie Dingfelder: “He made trauma much broader and introduced this idea of... instead of it being a discrete experience... it also happened as a result of repeated events, like a child abuse kind of situation.” [12:05]
• Van der Kolk tried to contribute a new diagnosis, "developmental trauma disorder," to the DSM, paralleling "complex PTSD," which remains controversial and is not officially recognized.

2. How Trauma in the Body Became “Hip”

[13:54]

• Pesca recalls “ubiquitous” yoga class anecdotes claiming trauma is stored in the hips, especially the psoas muscle.
• The belief: deep stretches can release stored emotional pain, sparking tears or strong feelings.
  • Sadie Dingfelder: “And so as people believe that if you're stretching and all of a sudden you feel a welling up of emotion, it's because you actually had some sort of trauma memory captured in your hip muscles.” [13:54]
• Pesca jokes about “Hips Don’t Lie” being medical fact, attributed to “Dr. Shakira.” [14:44]

3. Exploring the (Lack of) Scientific Basis

[16:01]

• Those seeking scientific legitimacy often cite “cellular memory” research.
• Sadie discusses her correspondence with Nikolay Kukushkin, an actual cell memory researcher.
  • “The generic definition of memory is... a lasting change... that affects what you can do later. So if you're a muscle cell... you might produce some extra mitochondria.” [16:11]
• But muscle memory is not the same as episodic, autobiographical memory. Muscle cells can only change in limited, mechanical ways, unlike neurons which have vastly greater capacity for storing experience (“a speaker with three knobs” vs “a mixing board”).
  • “The brain is so expensive, it just sucks so much energy... if other parts of your body could do memory, then evolution would have outsourced it.” [17:52]

4. Why the Hips? Why Not Anywhere?

• The idea of the hips as a trauma repository is culturally persistent, especially in circles that embrace energy work, Reiki, or crystals, but lacks evidence.
  • “It's been floating around in the culture for so long among ... people who believe in things like Reiki and crystals.” [17:37]
• There is no known “hip-specific” receptor or mechanism for storing traumatic memory in muscles or joints.

5. How Does Trauma Actually Manifest?

• The brain—especially the hippocampus—is where trauma-related memories are stored. Intense physical sensations can trigger flashbacks, but it’s the brain making the association, not the hip muscle holding the memory.
  • “So if you have a sensation and it... your hip reports to your brain, I'm having a really intense sensation, that can cause your hippocampus to trigger... sensations... distributed across your whole brain and sort of make you relive that experience.” [21:09]
• Classic PTSD flashbacks are brain-based, not body-based.
  • Sadie Dingfelder: “All of that information is stored in your brain. If you cut off your head, you do not have any problems with... your body has no score to keep. Basically, like, your brain keeps the score. Your body is the scoreboard at best.” [22:21]

6. Myths & Cultural Drift

• The concept of “repressed and fully recovered memory” is increasingly accepted, though it doesn't fit established memory science.
  • “Something like 92% of people today believe in that you can have a repressed and recovered, fully recovered memory. And that's up from like 80%, like 10 years ago and 70% 20 years ago.” [24:28]
• Yoga’s American posture-focused form dates only to the 1920s, debunking claims of ancient tradition for these myths.
  • Sadie Dingfelder: “What we call yoga, like a series of postures, is only... dates back to, like around the 1920s and it was invented by an Indian immigrant and some Hollywood people.” [26:15]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Van der Kolk’s Impact:
  “He made trauma much broader... introduced this idea... instead of it being a discrete experience, like with classic PTSD, it also happened as a result of repeated events.” – Sadie Dingfelder [12:05]

• On Yoga and Hip Trauma:
  “She believed... that if you're stretching and all of a sudden you feel a welling up of emotion, it's because you actually had some sort of trauma memory captured in your hip muscles.” – Sadie Dingfelder [13:54]

  “Is this where the other, I think equally scientifically, valid idea of ‘hips don’t lie’ came from?” – Mike Pesca [14:44]

• On Memory Storage Reality:
  “The brain is so expensive, it just sucks so much energy... if other parts of your body could do memory, then evolution would have outsourced it. So there’s something special about neurons...” – Sadie Dingfelder [17:52]

• Debunking the Myth:
  “If you cut off your head, you do not have any problems with... your body has no score to keep. Basically, like, your brain keeps the score. Your body is the scoreboard at best.” – Sadie Dingfelder [22:21]

• Final Verdict:
  “It is definitely bullshit. Your brain keeps the score. Your body can be a scoreboard.” – Sadie Dingfelder [26:57]

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Section Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |----------------------------------------------|-------------| | Dynamic pricing/market intro | 00:48–09:43 | | "Is That Bullshit?" Segment Start | 09:56 | | Van der Kolk & Body Keeps the Score Origins | 11:00–13:24 | | Yoga Class Anecdotes & Hip Myth | 13:24–16:01 | | Cellular & Muscle Memory Explained | 16:01–19:32 | | How Trauma Actually Surfaces (Brain’s Role) | 19:32–22:42 | | The Hips, Chronic Trauma, & Memory Myths | 22:42–25:14 | | Yoga’s Modern Origins | 26:12–26:39 | | Bullshit Verdict and Wrap-Up | 26:57–27:29 |

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Conclusion

Main Verdict:
The claim that “the body keeps the score”—physically storing trauma, especially in the hips—is not supported by scientific evidence. The brain encodes, recalls, and triggers trauma-based responses; the body may manifest physiological consequences of stress and trauma, but it doesn’t “store” specific emotional memories outside the brain. Popular beliefs in hip-stored trauma, toxins being squeezed from the spine, or yoga as ancient science are an amalgam of misunderstood science, cultural myth, and modern wellness marketing.

Sadie Dingfelder’s Unambiguous Verdict:

“It is definitely bullshit. Your brain keeps the score. Your body can be a scoreboard.” [26:57]

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Listen-worthy for:

• Anyone curious about trauma science, debunking wellness woo, memory, and the intersection of culture and pseudo-science.
• Fans of witty, skeptical, and clear science communication.

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For further reading: “Do I Know You? A Face Blind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination” by Sadie Dingfelder.

Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

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[Mike Pesca]

It's Thursday, March 19, 2026. From peach fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Press release from the New York office of the Attorney General. Attorney General James calls for passage of legislation to protect New Yorkers from predatory pricing schemes. Well, that's good. Who wants to be predated upon? Here's another headline from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Today you could be paying more for groceries than your neighbor. Here's what New Jersey lawmakers are going to do about it. Governor Mikey Sherrill and New Jersey legislators are trying to ban surveillance pricing from grocery stores. But some South Jersey lawmakers want to go further. Yes, executions of grocers drawn and quartered. How do you think they get the rotisserie chicken in that shape? Actually, going further means not just grocery stores or supermarkets, but all stores. No predatory pricing, sometimes called surveillance pricing. What is it? Well, it's apparently charging your neighbors more than you pay, which sounds like, well, slight injustice if they're the ones who take it on the chin. But charging you more than your neighbors pay? Well, let's get the government involved. So from predatory pricing to surveillance pricing, we now go to Supermarket News. Supermarket News. Exchanging glances, which cites data from the retail analytics firm Dakota Dakota. Already fanning the flames a little bit. Dakota Fanning retailers using what they call dynamic pricing, analyze more than a million Data points across 120 major E commerce Commerce retailers. The data showed more price declines than increases. Amazon, by the way, led by a wide margin. 116000 price adjustments and an average price drop of 35%. And by the way, Wednesday being the best day for discounts. Sorry. You knew that, right? Because if you went and took advantage, you'd be involved in surveillance or predatory pricing. This is all covered, by the way, on the Gist list. Go to Mike pesca.substack.com I found this one article from Philadelphia. I said surveillance pricing. Isn't that also called? And then I found the more pejorative term, predatory. And then I found the more neutral and probably more accurate term dynamic. As if everyone who is affected by dynamic pricing only ever gets screwed. No one is ever dynamically priced to the positive. Every time I read anything about this subject, it's always framed as if you are getting charged more. But for everyone who's charged more, there is always someone who is charged less than that person. I mean, every time I take a coupon to the store and my neighbor who's behind me did not, it's some sort of differential or dynamic pricing scheme. And it's not a great injustice, is there? I mean, this is the thing with all, all of these pricing schemes. Depending on what you call them, they seem worse or they seem ok. But it's also true that two neighbors paying different prices is not inherently an injustice. It could be a good thing for the one paying lower prices. It makes it seem like there is a base level price that anyone could always pay, always. And then there is jacking it up from that price. But that is not the case. The grocers know that different customers are willing to pay different prices. And the more they know about their customers customers, the more they know what they're willing to pay. So in fact, the listed price on a site like Amazon, think of it like the buy now price on ebay. It's what they'll let anyone pay. But if you're reluctant and the retailers know what their profit margin is, if you're reluctant, if you're not the kind of person who would normally be induced at a price point, they'll lower it for you. This is what pricing is. This is the theory of prices. It is the strike price by which the person who owns the good is willing to surrender it to the person who has the money, who is willing to surrender that amount of money. Different people are much more varied in the price they're willing to surrender their money. But a retailer, especially a giant retailer, knows at what price he can make a profit. So in general, dynamic pricing is a neutral thing. In fact, it might be a good thing if it helps retailers bottom lines. I know no one ever cares, Amazon's bottom lines. But grocery stores and supermarkets run on a 1 or 2% profit margin. And they're really helpful to the community. And most people more or less like their grocers. I mean, I was watching Pluribus and the one thing that she wanted was her beloved local supermarket to get restocked. And I think a lot of people have that relationship with their supermarket. I know, I go up and down the aisles of my supermarket, it's in New York City. So, you know, I squeeze by people on their way up and down the Gristeedis aisles, aisles that John Cassima Titus, who owns Gristeedis, can't even Travers. So there's not that much good feeling. And I know I look at the prices and I say the prices are high. But I don't say something like, I hate Grassidis. And whenever I go to a well lit supermarket in a normal place in America, I kind of love it. And I say something like, if only I lived here, I could traverse the aisles really well. I wouldn't have to worry about John Katz Matitis, and I wouldn't have to worry about dynamic pricing because I'm not worried about dynamic pricing. When you really think about it, it's just much ado about phrasing. And I will tell you this. Dollars to doughnut, 75 cents to scones. The politicians who found out about dynamic pricing did not say, oh no, how dare they. They said, this is great for me, I can intervene. And said to be the hero who does something. And the only ones taking it on the chin are the bad, bad grocers. And also maybe your neighbor whose gallon of milk just rose by 30 cents. But to set things straight, you know, you don't, you don't necessarily have to lower your milk by 30 cents. You could just raise his milk by 30 cents as well and thus driving a stake in the heart of dynamic surveillance predatory pricing. By the way, heart stakes now 30% off on Wednesdays on the show. Today, I shall spiel about a couple of tidbits from congressional hearings. But first, Sadie Dingfelder is back with an Is that bullshit? Segment. And the question is, does the body keep the score? And if so, is it in the hips? So this could be a mixed result, right? It could be, yes, body keeps the scores, but no, it's in elbows, maybe the shoulders or could be the score is kept, but not by the body, by some unbiased outside entity possibly affiliated with the Olympic Committee. So what I'm saying is Sadie Dingfeld are up next. 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[Mike Pesca]

So one thing I've been hearing more and more of, or maybe it's I've been reading the same book cover over and over again or listening to the same podcast, is, you know, you know, Mike, they say with a little bit of pity in their voice because they think I don't know it. You know, Mike, the body keeps the score. And I always wonder about that. Is the good news that now we know the body keeps the score Is the bad news that for my body it's 23 to nothing in the fourth quarter. I wonder what the score is. I wonder what scoring system they use. I wonder if they use the Wimbledon scoring system where you have to win by two when it goes to extra sets. I you know, these are all great questions, questions I can't answer. But you know, who can. The author of Do I Know you? A Face Blind Reporter's Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory and Imagination. She's Sadie Dingfelder. She comes by, we play. Is that bullshit? And this is a really good one because as I say, Sadie, this is ubiquitous.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

Where does it come from?

[Mike Pesca]

Where does the notion come from? I can't quite place it. Is it vessel? That guy, Bessel Van der Kolk, he

[Sadie Dingfelder]

definitely is the big inflection point.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

His book came out in 2014, the body keeps the Score. It has been on the bestseller list basically ever since. And I just read a rumor that.

[Mike Pesca]

You read a rumor?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yeah, well, he. We know that he got a recent publishing deal and the rumor is it's like at least $10 million.

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, my God. So, yeah, to do the follow up. His account Keeps the Score.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

He was on the show and struck me as. I was like, oh, genius, genius out there. We were talking about, I think, instantiating ideas as related to Gaza, something like that. And there was a whole bunch of stuff about negotiation, hearing the other side. And then there was a few opinions that I was like, I don't think that's tethered in gravity in the world that we know. But anyway, what about. So he's very. I know from interviewing him. Give me a little bit about his background. He has real credentials and he's talking about trauma. He introduced the idea of trauma in a way that we as a society hadn't been thinking of it. Right.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yeah. He made trauma much broader and introduced this idea of instead of it being a discrete experience, like with classic ptsd, it also happened as a result of repeated events, like a child abuse kind of situation. And he tried to get a new diagnosis put in the DSM called developmental trauma disorder, I believe.

[Mike Pesca]

So is that a cousin of the complex PTSD movement? Yeah.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yeah. Which is also not in the dsm, the complex ptsd, but they're. They're related for sure.

[Mike Pesca]

Though I have talked to many esteemed psychologists and the ones I've talked to say there's a lot to it, and so maybe it can be. I thought it was one of these just category creep type things, but. Or cavity creep things. But like I said, the esteemed people I've talked to credit it to some degree. So when he says the body keeps the score, I think that there is a definition or an interpretation that might be appealing. Like, yeah, if you have a lot of stress, it'll show up on your eyes or in your hair color or even if you had a lot of trauma, this manifests big ways into something physical. Or it can. Is there. Is that part of it? And is there more to the idea

[Sadie Dingfelder]

than that that's basically what van der Kolk says. And that's not controversial. I mean, we all know that stress affects your body. But what has happened is he was very vague in that book. He never specifically says your body keeps the score without help from the brain, but that's what people have taken it to mean.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, so tell me about that part. What do you mean? So why should we think about with help from the brain or without help from the brain?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

So I want to tell you about a yoga class I was in.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

So I was in this yoga class, and we were doing pigeon pose, which is a hip stretch, and we're folded over, and this woman starts sobbing, and our teacher sort of like, comforts her, and the woman leaves. And then she says, this happens all the time because trauma lives in your hips and specifically in your psoas muscle. And so she believed. And so as people believe that if you're stretching and all of a sudden you feel a welling up of emotion, it's because you actually had some sort of trauma memory captured in your hip muscles.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay. Like trauma that was first inflicted in your hips, or like you saw something very disturbing. You were there when the Hindenburg went down, and boom, it hits. It hits the hips.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

They think that it got stored in your hips somehow.

[Mike Pesca]

And is this where the other, I think equally scientifically, Val idea of hips don't lie came from?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yes. That was Dr. Shakira.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, old doc. Old doc, she wolf. And can it just be that, like, when you stretch, you get pain sometimes? Especially, like, joints like, you know, hips, knees, head, shoulders, knees and toes.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yeah. And then on top of that, we have this cultural script that. That people, I sort of expect to get, like, big emotions when they stretch their hips. Now. So is that true?

[Mike Pesca]

Is like at yoga class, they'll say, hip stretch, you know what means? And people will know.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yeah, everyone knows this.

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, my God. This is another great advertisement for me not to do yoga. I do like the stretching, but I just can't stand the mysticism. Anyway, yeah, this is my idea, by the way. I want to start a no bullshit yoga class or an empirical yoga. It'll have three adherents, and they'll. They'll decline to give their credit card for recurring payments. Okay, so how does either your yoga teacher or someone who takes it one step beyond the Myst try to explain how what the physiological explanation for this might be that the trauma keeping the score somewhere in the body.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

For the people who are looking for a scientific backing for this, they often look and find Papers that are about something called cellular memory.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

And I actually emailed a person who studies cellular memory. His name is Nikolay Kokoschkin, and he wrote a book called One Hand Clapping. That's awesome. And he said that basically what cellular memory is, I mean, the generic definition of memory is it's anything that is a lasting change that is caused by experience that affects what you can do later. So if you're a muscle cell, if you're a muscle fiber and you get worked out, you might produce some extra mitochondria, so you do not, next time fatigue as quickly.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay. Mitochondria, of course, being the powerhouse of the cell, the one about mitochondria. And that might not be true, but.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

No, that's it. That's true.

[Mike Pesca]

Cool, cool, cool. So, right, you're getting more energetic cells for the future. But how's it. Then how's it connect to body, keeping the score and hips?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Well, it is memory, right? But muscle cells are super limited in what they can learn, so they can only change in a small handful of ways. So if. If they can also broadcast information to other cells, which is an important part of memory in your brain, but they can only. They cannot speak, pick specific targets. They can only broadcast signals sort of into your bloodstream, and anyone with the receptor can pick it up.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, so not hip specific receptors. I mean, would that be the theory that. That's the other part of it? Like, why specifically the hips? Why does it go to the hips

[Sadie Dingfelder]

that has been floating around in the culture for so long among the people who believe in things like Reiki and crystals and things like that. So I don't know. I mean, I bet Freud would have some thoughts.

[Mike Pesca]

Did Kukushkin know about the body keeping the score?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yes, he gets this question all the time from people. And what we talked about is the fact that, you know, the brain is so. The brain is so expensive, it just sucks so much energy. It's 2% of your body weight, 20% of your energy budget. The if other parts of your body could do memory, then evolution would have outsourced it. So there's something special about neurons that causes them to suck up a lot of energy and also allows them to record information about your life in a way that no other cells can. And specifically, what that is, is that they have. So a muscle cell can change in a few ways, right? So it's kind of like a speaker with, like three knobs, whereas a neuron has 100 individually. I mean, 100, 1,000 on average, individually addressable Synapses, they can all be adjusted independently of each other. And so it's more like a mixing board. And that's what you need to be the basic unit of what we usually mean for memory, like either autobiographical memory or episodic memory, which is semantic memory or episodic memory. Both of those require these very complicated cells that suck energy.

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, okay, so when you're saying memory, there's a couple uses of memory. One is the yoga teacher. One is. Kukushkin is talking about cells having memory. And I want to ask you about that. But that last thing you said about synapses. You mean literally the memory that we think of as recalling events? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or that's the episodic one, which you don't have, right?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

I don't have episodic memory.

[Mike Pesca]

You have, like, none of it. You don't.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

I mean, it's. They think that I must have something because it's hard to know how information can get to semantic without going through episodic first. But it hasn't been proven, so.

[Mike Pesca]

So how far Sidetrack. How far back can't you remember?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

I can't remember today.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay. Do you know we went out for dinner on Friday?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

I do know that we did.

[Mike Pesca]

Do you know I paid?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

Here's the thing. I didn't pay. I just made her think she paid.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

I'm so suggestible.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Okay, so that's memory. And this is what I want to ask you. Now, when Kukushkin says the. Your cells. Your non brain cells have memory, does he mean something like memory or what's he exactly mean?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

He just means that they can be affected by experience.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

And that will change how they act in the future. So something happens that's very mechanical in the cell, and it changes how they respond and what they do afterwards.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, so that part is true, that your cells. Something that happened in the past to your cells plays out in some way to the body. Body.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

But there's so much from that, so much space from that to body keeps the score theory. Like, we can't even examine all of it. But one is that it will be specifically triggered by a kind of similar event that will remind you of a trauma. And is there anything to that? That even if your cells can retain information, that this information comes up again at specific times.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

So the. There is a. I mean, that is basically how episodic memory works. You have to. But you have to loop in the brain to make it work, because the brain is where the trace of that memory is. Held. So if you have a sensation and it. And so your hip reports to your brain. I'm having a really intense sensation that can cause your hippocampus to trigger a bunch of other, like, sensations that it's. Are distributed across your whole brain and sort of make you relive that. That experience.

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, okay. Like, maybe that works. At least I understand the theory now. Like, ooh, this hurts big sensei. Or maybe not even hurt. Brain starts firing, and then you have this, I don't know, something close to like a recovered memory or reminder of another big thing that hurt. And it might not have been physical. Physical pain, though it might have been.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Well, you know, in general, it would. They're pretty specific. So this is like a classic PTSD flashback where a lot of time and a lot of times, like, people will hear fireworks and it'll remind them of gunfire and, you know, and they'll have. All of a sudden, it's like time and space collapse and they're back in the war zone.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, right.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

That definitely happens. And we understand how it happens, like, on a molecular level, but nothing. But. But all of that information is stored in your brain. If you cut off your head, you do not have any problems with. Your body has no score to keep. Basically, like, your brain keeps the score. Your body is the scoreboard at best.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. That is a do over. That is a reset right there. That's the scoreboard going dark in the Astrodome. Cutting off one's head. Yeah. And then there are all the other questions of, like, why the hips? And if you get hurt in the knee, it shows up in, like, let's say your abuser smashes your knee, does it show up in the hips? I don't know. I don't know what that would say.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Unclear. But. But again, like, if you. If you had, let's say, like someone like a bully, like, pulled your hand back, and then later you're in Pilates class and you overextend your hand, that could trigger this, like, traumatic memory of the bully.

[Mike Pesca]

Right, right.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

With classic. I mean, with chronic or chronic ptsd, the theory is that it's more like your body's set points got changed. So it's like a gain knob kind of. Your, Your panic response, your. Your. Your will be, like, on a hair trigger, for instance, or you. You're just always braced for something terrible to happen. And that definitely can happen. I mean, that's. That's real. Yeah, but.

[Mike Pesca]

And that also, you know, weathers you or increases your allostatic load. If you believe in that we could talk about that sometime. But yes, that could be in a way, the body keeping the score. Right.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Well, but it's not the body. It's still your brain. Because your brain stem is what regulates things like muscle tone, right?

[Mike Pesca]

No, but what I mean is if the brain is so stressed, it shows up in the body.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Right, Exactly. But that's still the brain keeping the score.

[Mike Pesca]

Now, are there others who've taken Venn, Bessel, Van der Kolk, Vander Kolk's theories in strange directions that he might not even embrace?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yes. I think that the biggest. The thing that memory researchers are panicking about today.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Is that something like 92% of people today believe in that you can have a repressed and recovered. Fully recovered memory. And that's up from like 80%, like 10 years ago and 70% 20 years ago.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. That's pretty bad.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

It's pretty.

[Mike Pesca]

Because it just. Is it that it's just not true or there's just no evidence for it?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

I think it's that it doesn't fit with how we understand how memory works.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

And it's a very popular way to sort of backfill your unhappiness. So if you're. If your life seems basically fine, but you're really unhappy, people want to find a culprit when it. It probably is the accumulation of many things over a long period of time.

[Mike Pesca]

So I want to ask you about one thing because I don't think we could get out of here with a word that I'm going to need help pronouncing. Piriformis.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Oh, piriformis.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. What is that? And how does that play in.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

That's just another part of your hip. It's. It's a lumber.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, cool. It's hip related.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yeah. It's still part of your hip. And you know, it's funny, there's just so much like anatomical fan fiction in yoga class. Like, they also tell you if you, you do this, like, twist in your body, you are literally squeezing toxins out of your spine. And I don't know, since there's another

[Mike Pesca]

one, like, what are these toxins? Define these toxins. Name them. What's the chemical composition? They're always just toxins, right?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Yeah. And I'm pretty sure that's not true, but I didn't look that one up. I can't fact check everything they say in Right. Yoga class.

[Mike Pesca]

Can't that, can't they just stretch and like stretching. Then again, I know it's associated with Hinduism and so you know, that's maybe. I know a lot of people down south call it witchcraft.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

You know what, though?

[Mike Pesca]

What?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

What we call yoga, like a series of postures, is only. Only dates back to, like around the 1920s and it was invented by an Indian immigrant and some Hollywood people.

[Mike Pesca]

Really?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Absolutely. If you go back and look like at the ancient text that people will read, say yoga was in. Yoga means meditation. It doesn't mean specific postures.

[Mike Pesca]

Wow. I thought we'd maybe blow the roof off of the body keeping the score, but it's all of yoga. You like yoga. I'm sensing you like less the idea that the body keeps the score. So now we render our verdict. The body keeps the score. Now that we know what it means, do we know if it's bullshit?

[Sadie Dingfelder]

It is definitely bullshit. Your brain keeps the score. Your body can be a scoreboard.

[Mike Pesca]

All right, I score this one. I don't know. Forty. Love the. Love being your yoga teacher who insists that the pigeon pose is the gateway to that bad thing that happened to you when you were 8. The name of the book is Do I Know you? A Face Blind Reporter's Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory and Imagination. The author of the book she plays is that Bullshit with us, Sadie? Dick Felder. Thank you so much, Sadie.

[Sadie Dingfelder]

Thank you.

[Mike Pesca]

The gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers

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[Megan McCardell]

Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCardell and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a new show from Washington Post Opinion called Reasonably Optimistic. And it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. Every Wednesday, I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward.

[Jim Himes]

It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together, to solve problems where they are.

[Mike Pesca]

You know, I am a believer in America and it's worth fighting for.

[Megan McCardell]

Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mike Pesca]

And now the spiel. Today, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard and Cash Patel testified before the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Radcliffe, the director of the CIA, was spared most of the tough questions, though he was asked about the idea of eminence as it relates to the war in Iran. So was Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who was also asked about her role in personally accompanying the FBI on a raid to Georgia into the 2020 election. Nothing today matched the grilling conducted by Georgia Senator John ossoff yesterday.

[Questioner (likely Senator or Committee Member)]

On February 2nd, you sent a letter to Senator Warner regarding your presence at the raid. Was that letter accurate?

[Tulsi Gabbard]

I don't recall the exact date, but if I sent a letter that had my signature, it was accurate.

[Questioner (likely Senator or Committee Member)]

You stated in the letter that your presence at the raid was, quote, requested by the President, correct?

[Tulsi Gabbard]

Yes.

[Questioner (likely Senator or Committee Member)]

When did the President request your presence at the raid?

[Tulsi Gabbard]

The day of the raid. The Warren execution commencing the day of the raid? Yes.

[Questioner (likely Senator or Committee Member)]

He called you on the phone.

[Tulsi Gabbard]

I'm not going to disclose how the message was delivered, but it was a request from the President and his administration to go and help oversee this warrant being executed along with the Deputy Director of the FBI. Is it your role to oversee agents who were conducting.

[Questioner (likely Senator or Committee Member)]

Is it your role to oversee the execution of criminal warrants?

[Tulsi Gabbard]

It is my role, based on statute that Congress has passed, to have oversight over election security to include counterintelligence.

[Questioner (likely Senator or Committee Member)]

But you said you oversaw the raid, correct? You just testified you oversaw the raid.

[Tulsi Gabbard]

Portions of it.

[Questioner (likely Senator or Committee Member)]

Okay. Did you handle any ballots or election related materials?

[Tulsi Gabbard]

No.

[Questioner (likely Senator or Committee Member)]

You were inside an FBI evidence truck, correct? You were photographed inside an FBI.

[Tulsi Gabbard]

It was an empty truck.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes, it was an empty truck. But she did go there to collect evidence. Highly unusual for a person in her position. Meaning not a Trump factotum. That is exactly what comes with the job when you sign up to work for Donald Trump. A healthy dollop of election denialism. But, I mean, Director of National Intelligence. It's weird for her to be involved in looking at a Georgia election from six years ago. Now, as Gabbard said, part of her job is keeping US Elections free from foreign interference. But if there were foreign interference, I would want it monitored. I tell you, this is something bad that's going on. I would even say even though all the people prattling on about this are people who have hurt their credibility in the past, it's worth it to look at this and take it seriously. And I have, and there really was no election interference by foreigners or domestic actors. The best evidence, in fact, more than the best evidence, says that nothing went on. There is no credible evidence suggesting any level of election interference in the 20, 20 years that she was collecting evidence for. Maybe that's why the truck was empty. Now, today in the House, the domestic part of this puzzle was put together. Here's an extended excerpt of Jim Himes, D. Connecticut Grilling Cash Patel, FBI Director, Garden City about possible election fraud within this country. Remember, this is a huge issue for Donald Trump and he's forcing the Senate to debate an ambitious, aggressive bill that would fight the scourge of election interference. And how big is that scourge? Let's try to put a number on it.

[Jim Himes]

Director Patel, how many active investigations does the FBI have into foreign individuals voting in US Elections?

[Cash Patel]

We have a number of investigations, generally speaking, ongoing, about individuals across the country.

[Jim Himes]

I'm asking for that number.

[Cash Patel]

I don't have that number with me, but I have a number of them.

[Jim Himes]

You have a number of investigations. Okay. Is that number 10,000? Is it closer to 10,000 or closer to 10?

[Cash Patel]

It's probably somewhere in between.

[Jim Himes]

Okay, Will you please provide the committee with that number?

[Cash Patel]

Yes, sir.

[Jim Himes]

Okay. Director Patel, would it. Since you don't have the numbers, would it surprise you to know that the Heritage foundation, which is not exactly the Columbia University faculty Lounge, found only 77 instances of non citizen voting in the 24 years between 1999 and 2023, each of which faced investigation by the appropriate authorities? So Heritage has a number of 77 examples in 24 years. Does that number surprise you?

[Cash Patel]

No, because it's low.

[Jim Himes]

I don't understand your answer.

[Cash Patel]

You asked me if I was.

[Jim Himes]

Are you disputing. Are you disputing that the number is in the range of 77 examples of non US citizens voting in US elections in a 24 year period?

[Cash Patel]

I just said that number is low.

[Mike Pesca]

Does it surprise you? Yes, because it's low. Yeah. Okay. It is low. Oh, I see. What Trump was saying is 77. Yeah, that's too low. And it's true. If he says it's higher than 10 a year and this was 24 years, 77 doesn't cut. It has to be at least 241 cases of election interference. But it wasn't even that. The shot on goal goes wide. But notice there pick up there on Cash's comportment. Tulsi treats the questions with unsmiling concision. Pam Bondi yells out stock prices. Cash's demeanor is best described as. Yeah, what EVs? 77. 244. Yeah, whatever. Listen, I got hockey celebrations to go to. I got girlfriends to fly around. You say 77 screwy ballots, I say it's at least 11 a year. Let's call the whole thing off. And by whole thing, I mean let's call off the business of the Senate to debate four days a non issue. That also will never lead to a real law, it won't even lead to strong headlines because to get strong headlines, there has to be some scintilla of, if not evidence, facts, events to misconstrue, to conflate, to point to, to say smoke, smoke, smoke. So maybe fire, but there is no smoke, a dearth of smoke. There are no herrings of hue from red to blue. And everything in there are no McGuffins, not even an Egg McGuffin. It's a big goose egg of a non issue. There is no there, there, sort of like the back of an empty evidence truck. And that's it for today's show. Cory Warra produces the gist. Kathleen Sykes does the Gist list with me. Jeff Craig edits our video and a whole lot more. Ben Estelle is our booking coordinator and producer and Michelle Pesca oversees the whole thing. A big full truck of evidence on her plate. And thanks for listening.