10 Things We Learnt In October, 2025

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Here at Gowing Life, we are keeping our fun record of everything we learn in 2025, be it longevity-related or something else entirely. Here is a selection of our newly acquired neural connections for the month of October!

1: Sabre wasp: A wasp that can pierce wood to parasitise the larvae of other wasps.

2: Tasmania is responsible for around 50% of the legal opioid supply of the entire planet. This is partly due to ideal growing conditions and partly because Tasmania was, for a time, the only Australian state in which opium poppies for legal pharmaceutical use were allowed to be cultivated. Entry to these poppy fields is strictly prohibited for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, wallabies can’t read and have been documented entering the fields, getting high from the poppies and hopping around creating crop circles.

3: The Martini effect: After diving around 30m below the water, every further 10m of depth has an effect on the diver approximately equivalent to 1 martini. This is due to nitrogen intoxication – increased pressure causes more nitrogen to dissolve in the blood and tissues, affecting nervous transmission. This is not usually dangerous in and of itself, but it impairs the diver’s decision-making and can cause sensations of tranquillity, mastery of the environment and overconfidence. This can lead to the diver venturing deeper and becoming even more intoxicated. Because of this, nitrogen intoxication is also sometimes known as ‘rapture of the deep’. To avoid it, professional divers will use gas mixtures in which some or all of the nitrogen is replaced with helium.

4: A recent study suggests that people living closer to a golf course are significantly more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease. The study found that, after controlling for confounding factors like socioeconomic status, people living within 1 mile of a golf course were over twice as likely to get Parkinson’s as those living over 6 miles away, possibly due to pesticide exposure.

5: Dreams about teeth: One of the many fascinating aspects of dreaming is the existence of ‘recurring dreams’. While our dreams often have some relationship with our recent experiences, there are certain types of dream that appear to be common to all people and cultures. Dreaming about your teeth falling out, breaking, or otherwise losing teeth is one such dream – and scientists don’t know why it is so widespread. One theory is that it could be the result of teeth grinding during sleep, as physical sensations during sleep are sometimes incorporated into dreams.

6: Silent film makeup: Actors in silent films looked strange because of the makeup. But why did they wear so much? The first cameras used to make silent films were orthochromatic, meaning they were sensitive to blue but would not capture red – red would appear as black. This meant that red tones on the face could appear muddy and distracting on camera, so it was essential to cover them up, usually with yellow grease paint. However, most silent film actors were used to applying their own makeup for theatre (where makeup was used partly to restore shadows lost to harsh stage lighting). It took some trial and error to figure out what looked right under different filming conditions, hence the… varying quality of the application.

7: Paper terrorism: The tactic of attacking an individual or organisation with large amounts of paperwork (such as by submitting frivolous lawsuits or complaints) with the intention of wasting time and resources.

8: The Sumerian Problem: One of ancient history’s greatest mysteries is the origin of the Sumerians, who formed one on the World’s oldest advanced civilizations. The language they spoke (Sumerian) is a linguistic isolate (it has no known linguistic relatives). The Sumerians described their culture, language, writing and technology as having been gifted to them by the gods.

9: Ending the Punic Wars: The Third Punic War between the Romans and the Carthaginians began in 149 BC. The Romans won and a peace treaty was signed… in 1985. Upon burning the city of Carthage, the Romans didn’t think a formal peace treaty was necessary. Realising it could be argued that Rome and Carthage (now a district of modern day Tunis) were still technically at war, the mayors of the two cities decided to sign a symbolic peace treaty.

10: No American Plagues: When Europeans arrived in the New World, they brought devastating diseases that killed anywhere between 50% and 90% of the indigenous population. But have you ever wondered why this didn’t also happen the other way around? It’s not that the New World didn’t also have diseases to which Europeans had no immunity, but rather that the Old World contained far more deadly diseases. Why? Deadly, fast-spreading infectious diseases (plagues) generally don’t survive for long, as they quickly kill all of their hosts while survivors become immune. Because of this, most such diseases originated from in animals in which they were not fatal. The absence of domesticable animals like sheep, horses, cows and pigs in the New World meant that there simply weren’t many opportunities for plagues to spread to humans. But in Europe, poorly sanitised, densely populated cities provided an ideal environment for plagues to not only spread, but to sustain themselves. Even though death rates from plagues in cities exceeded birth rates, enough people were moving into cities from rural areas during this time period that these diseases never ran out of hosts. So the Old World wasn’t spared from American plagues because the Europeans had better immune systems – they were simply extremely fortunate that the conditions in the New World were not suitable for plagues to emerge and survive.