Holy mackerel, people. What a crazy week it’s been here at the SYSK HQ. I can’t get into everything here, but let’s just say it’s been an exciting and terrifying time here for team SYSK. Don’t worry, nothing bad is going down, but there’s been a flurry of activity on all fronts. I love these weeks – it sure beats being bored!

One of the things going on is the new launch of our Facebook and Twitter pages. I assume most of you visiting us here have signed up there, but if not please do. We’re having a good time interacting with everyone. Like we always say, the SYSK Army is the finest collection of people who have never met. Search Stuff You Should Know on Facebook and become a fan. You can follow our crazy Twitter feed @SYSKPodcast.

Moving on… This week on the Stuff You Should Know Podcast Program Mr. Clark and I covered pain as a duo of shows. Tuesday was about CIPA, condition in which a person is not able to feel pain. This may sound like a blessing, but it’s far from it. In fact, people with CIPA rarely make it past 25 years of age, which is really sad. We covered how you might know if your child has CIPA and what you can do to get it diagnosed properly. We also hit on some tips on dealing with it in the day-to-day. Thankfully, this is a really rare condition, so we’re hoping nobody actually has any first hand experience with it.

Yesterday we released part II of the pain suite — feeling others pain. In this case, we’re not talking empathy, but synesthesia. There are several different kinds of it and they can be mixed and matched depending on your level of the condition. Sometimes people see numbers and letters as colors. Some people see musical notes as colors. Others see time as a spatial construct. Mirror touch synesthesia involves literally feeling the pain of someone else. I think you folks could probably tell how excited we were about all of this. When we started in on mirror neurons I thought my head was about to explode. Really fascinating stuff, I tell you.

OK, so that’s it for this week. Let’s hear from you synesthetes. And if anyone has some personal history with CIPA, please let us know. Have a great weekend and be safe!