Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Once again,
Speaker 1: we are waiting through the tournaments of Hell. Here, yes
Speaker 1: we are. We are what six into our seven Sin
Speaker 1: tour we are, and this time we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about something called wrath. Oh yeah, you know it. Ye
Speaker 1: maybe you all have already felt it today. Were for
Speaker 1: the most part, we're pretty wrathful people. I mean, not
Speaker 1: just us. I've been talking about in general, we're wrathing
Speaker 1: in general. Um, well, we're just talking about this is
Speaker 1: why we we were both d Yogata lamp it down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: humans are pretty rap. I mean the thing about all
Speaker 1: these senses that they are pretty intense in everybody. I
Speaker 1: mean there, That's why there's seven Deadly Sins, because they're
Speaker 1: part of who we are, and from a religious perspective
Speaker 1: that there are things that we want to suppress us
Speaker 1: From just an every day point of view, they're the
Speaker 1: kind of things we want to limit in our daily
Speaker 1: lives because when they get out of whack, they can
Speaker 1: really wreck things up. But then also there's there with
Speaker 1: all of them. There's the question of worth of what
Speaker 1: extent is this actually a virtuous is actually a good
Speaker 1: thing and a necessary part of who we are? Right?
Speaker 1: Is there an upside to anger? Really? Right? But um,
Speaker 1: I suspect that Dante would looked at Wrath with a
Speaker 1: very unkind eye because I was thinking about all these sins.
Speaker 1: This is one that you can, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: can be really destructive. Yes, And is one is moving
Speaker 1: through Dante's Inferno. And then again this is the medieval
Speaker 1: classic Italian a um writer Dante. And in the tale,
Speaker 1: he's guided by his hero Virgil, who is a spirit
Speaker 1: at this point because Virgil died long before in the
Speaker 1: Divine Comedy, in the Divine Comedy, leading him through hell
Speaker 1: because he has to travel through hell to understand it,
Speaker 1: and then he has to travel through purgatory, and then
Speaker 1: he has to and then he's going to experience heaven.
Speaker 1: But this all starts coming together for Wrath in circle
Speaker 1: five of the Inferno. Interestingly, this is right outside the
Speaker 1: gates of dis okay, the gates of disc Like if
Speaker 1: you think of Dante's Inferno, it's like a big pit.
Speaker 1: At the bottom of the pit is the devil and
Speaker 1: then scaling up the sides of this pit are all
Speaker 1: these various circles, and it's like dis like to somebody.
Speaker 1: And the walls of discs are imagine a circular wall
Speaker 1: that is about you know, maybe not quite halfway but
Speaker 1: maybe a third of the way down into this pit
Speaker 1: that in theory would I guess keep everything else from
Speaker 1: coming back up. This is like the bureaucracy of Hell,
Speaker 1: and it separates the upper hell from the lower hells.
Speaker 1: Know that there's bureaucracy in Hell. Yeah, you know what's
Speaker 1: telling those is that Dante positions wrath just outside those gates.
Speaker 1: You go in the gates, you're gonna start getting into
Speaker 1: what was in Dante's mind and in many medieval commentator's
Speaker 1: minds more grievous sins such as such as violence. That's
Speaker 1: worth noting, and violence may stem from from wrath in
Speaker 1: many cases, but violence is dealt with in the lower hells,
Speaker 1: as are the more terrible things such as treachery, heresy.
Speaker 1: So wrath is on the cusp of you know, abstraction
Speaker 1: and then actual action. Right. And what's interesting too about
Speaker 1: the way that Dante deals with wrath is in this
Speaker 1: circle he includes both wrath and sullenness. Okay, okay, so
Speaker 1: you might imagine, just stereotypically, you might have drunken jocks
Speaker 1: picking fights and bars like those guys are here, as
Speaker 1: are the sullen goths who just felt sorry for themselves. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, um, he views it as to these is
Speaker 1: two forms of the same sin. Okay, just the great
Speaker 1: unifier to apparently, right, Like, it all comes down to anger,
Speaker 1: and in wrath, anger is expressed. It's like I'm feeling angry,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna punch something, right, I'm feeling angry, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: yell at something and feel like angry, I'm gonna smoke
Speaker 1: a cliff cigarette. Yes, well, well that's that's the other side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that is the sullenness. That's where anger is repressed. Um.
Speaker 1: Some scholars argue that that that really Dante is dealing
Speaker 1: with sloth to a certain extent in the sullenness. But overall,
Speaker 1: this is a circle in which the passions of sorrow
Speaker 1: and grief end up ruling the soul. All right, So
Speaker 1: what does it look like when we visit this particular circle.
Speaker 1: We find ourselves encountering a muddy swamp Okay, this is
Speaker 1: the river sticks, and there's stick fog rolling across the surface,
Speaker 1: and Dante and and Virgil are road across this by flegus,
Speaker 1: not to be confused with Charon or to your own,
Speaker 1: who rode them across the acorn on the very outskirts
Speaker 1: of help. Okay, so there's a different dude. So they're
Speaker 1: only rolling across this mucky, slimy, awful swamp like I
Speaker 1: can't help it, think the bogga maternal stink from from labyrinth,
Speaker 1: you know. And as you look down into the swamp,
Speaker 1: first of all, you see bubbles rising up. And the
Speaker 1: bubbles are rising from the sullen. They are sunken down
Speaker 1: all the way to the bottom of the They're just
Speaker 1: buried in the slime at the bottom of the river,
Speaker 1: the bottom of the swamp. They're chanting their sticks of
Speaker 1: singing mock hymns down there. So that's where the sullen are.
Speaker 1: Like that sulfuric bubbles are like bubbling up from from
Speaker 1: all of their pouting right right there. They're drowning down there,
Speaker 1: Bubbles rising up for the slight in life. They refuse
Speaker 1: to welcome the light of God, the light of sun.
Speaker 1: Spiritual awakenness into their life. So in death they're buried forever,
Speaker 1: gargling and endless hymn. So that's the sulent more of
Speaker 1: interest to us, and are the purely wrathful and they
Speaker 1: they'll you'll find them at the surface of the water
Speaker 1: wrestling with each other. So just imagine these naked forms
Speaker 1: driving in the slime like pigs and filth. They're punching
Speaker 1: each other, they're gouging, their clawing, they're biting, and not
Speaker 1: just each other, but some of them are biting themselves.
Speaker 1: They're carrying at their own flesh like a really dark
Speaker 1: Abercrombie and Fitch commercial. Yeah, I guess, I guess. Imagine
Speaker 1: their shirtless. Yeah, they tend to be naked in the
Speaker 1: artistic interpretations, then this is This is also interesting because
Speaker 1: Dante ends up seeing somebody he knows, this guy named
Speaker 1: Felippo Argentie, and Dante ends up encountering various people that
Speaker 1: he knew in life. That's what a recurring theme and inferno,
Speaker 1: and it's also a means by which he typical pay
Speaker 1: either show some sympathy for the center or some understanding
Speaker 1: of the scent, and also identifies it in himself. There
Speaker 1: are various debates on who Argentie actually was. There's one
Speaker 1: account that it because Dante was banned from Florence at
Speaker 1: one point, lost his property, and spent the rest of
Speaker 1: his life wishing he could return to Florence. And so
Speaker 1: one idea is that Argentie was somebody who ended up
Speaker 1: purchasing land that had belonged to Dante's family after he
Speaker 1: was driven out, So he, you know, he may have
Speaker 1: had a personal acts to grind here with this individual,
Speaker 1: because Dante sees him, He's like, yeah, I hate that dude.
Speaker 1: I really would like to see him dunked under these
Speaker 1: waters before we're done here, in verticals like yeah, just wait,
Speaker 1: it will happen. And and then the guy like he
Speaker 1: sort of crawls up onto the boat and talks to
Speaker 1: Dante a little bit, but then the other people in
Speaker 1: the swamp end up tearing him apart to this Argentine character.
Speaker 1: So do you not cross Dante's what I'm hearing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but see, but Dante was feeling wrath himself, and so
Speaker 1: this is how he he summons the emotion inside himself.
Speaker 1: He's even as he's seeing in this in the torments
Speaker 1: around him. So, so that's pretty much the inferno version
Speaker 1: of wrath. In purgatory, the souls purge themselves of wrath
Speaker 1: and in a slightly different manner. And again purgatory, this
Speaker 1: is the amount of purgatory that rises from Earth to heaven,
Speaker 1: that connects Earth to heaven, and it's when Dante eventually
Speaker 1: emerges from Hell. He has to climb this mountain up
Speaker 1: to the terrestrial paradise and then into Heaven. So if
Speaker 1: you find yourself on the terrace where wrath is dealt with,
Speaker 1: you'll find that these individuals walking through bick smoke that's
Speaker 1: darker than the night, and they can't see the outside world.
Speaker 1: They're experiencing hallucinatory visions in which they see examples of meekness,
Speaker 1: which is the virtue that is opposite wrath. So you
Speaker 1: see this idea of in purgatory working through wrath. Is
Speaker 1: wrath is this thing that clouds our judgment and clouds
Speaker 1: our views of the world. And I think that's such
Speaker 1: an apt description because when you lose yourself to anger,
Speaker 1: that is exactly what it feels like, right. You cannot
Speaker 1: think clearly. All of a sudden you have trapped yourself
Speaker 1: into a corner in the situation and you're trying to
Speaker 1: get out of it. Yeah, it's especially obvious after the
Speaker 1: fact with with you know, the little things that inspire
Speaker 1: our rat you know, we're like, oh, well, this totally
Speaker 1: messed with my schedule today, and now I'm mad, you know.
Speaker 1: And then and then you feel afterwards, you're you know, hopefully,
Speaker 1: if you have any amount of self consciousness about what
Speaker 1: you're doing and how your mind works, you look back
Speaker 1: and you're like, wow, that was that was ridiculous? Why
Speaker 1: was that upset? But of course in the worst cases,
Speaker 1: you know, it just completely. I mean, we end up
Speaker 1: polking out right, we end up harming things in the
Speaker 1: world around us, exactly. Let me hit Buddhism real quick
Speaker 1: before we move into the science though. I mentioned before
Speaker 1: how you have the wheel of stam Sara. This is
Speaker 1: the wheel of life though that you see especially in
Speaker 1: too Betan Buddhism, which shows all the various realms of
Speaker 1: existence in which a life may be born, which you
Speaker 1: can think of in terms of one life to the next,
Speaker 1: like I was bad in this life, so in my
Speaker 1: next life, I'm occupying a harsher existence, or oh I
Speaker 1: was good in this life next life is going to
Speaker 1: be better, or you can think of it in terms
Speaker 1: of my emotional state right now is this, and based
Speaker 1: on this emotional state, my next emotional state will be
Speaker 1: something else, you know. So it's like one state and
Speaker 1: form and the other are to were consciousness evolves. But
Speaker 1: at the very center of this wheel you find these
Speaker 1: three poisons which I touched on before. You have a snake,
Speaker 1: a pig, and a cock. The snake represents hate wrath,
Speaker 1: the other the pig is like delusion and ignorance, and
Speaker 1: the cock is greed that sometimes less, but the snake
Speaker 1: is hate. And that's where we find the center of
Speaker 1: wrath that's moving the whole wheel. That's just full of suffering.
Speaker 1: As far as the realms into which one may be reincarnated,
Speaker 1: and these are also in the realms that are in
Speaker 1: touch with the way humans feel in the state of
Speaker 1: our own souls. You have the Nakara realm, and this
Speaker 1: is the hell realm, the realm that's more typical of
Speaker 1: something you would see in Dante, full of hatred and
Speaker 1: torment and demons. The hell being was ripping people apart,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and that's in the lower realms
Speaker 1: but then in the higher realms you see the Ashera realm,
Speaker 1: and this is the room of the Demi gods, powerful beings,
Speaker 1: but despite their power, despite their freedom, they're not in
Speaker 1: the chains of Nakara. They're living it up. They're just
Speaker 1: one step below the gods. But they're defined by anger,
Speaker 1: They're defined by jealousy and war, and they end up
Speaker 1: wasting all this freedom and opportunity being on the pursuit
Speaker 1: of power. So when they ultimately die, they live long lives,
Speaker 1: but they eventually do die. Then they're born down into
Speaker 1: the lower realms. So you see this interesting extaposition of
Speaker 1: the two states of being. And then of course there's
Speaker 1: the human realm in there, which is a balance of
Speaker 1: all these various realms, so you've also have plenty of
Speaker 1: wrath there as well. Yeah. I think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: the snake is the symbol of that because it is
Speaker 1: sort of you know that you think about the snake
Speaker 1: swallowing itself. I think actually there's a medieval name for this.
Speaker 1: It has various names. I can't remember the one you're
Speaker 1: thinking of off hand, where the snake is biting its
Speaker 1: own tail, consuming his own tail. Yeah, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: get into you know, ideas of the world serpent, the
Speaker 1: exactly the organmender. But you know, there's this idea that
Speaker 1: you're inflicting hurt upon yourself, right, and so I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting now to take that knowledge and turn it
Speaker 1: over to what's happening in your brain. Yes, when you're
Speaker 1: suffering about of anger, I guess you could say, oddly enough,
Speaker 1: I want to point out that eld dope does not
Speaker 1: show up on the scene here. Yeah, it's been with
Speaker 1: us for so long that I thought for sure that
Speaker 1: it would be prominent in this, but it is not.
Speaker 1: It is really a story about the amygdala. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's probably it's there in the cocktail somewhere,
Speaker 1: but it's not playing. No, you're right, you're right. It's
Speaker 1: just it's a it's a base note, or maybe I
Speaker 1: should say it's a top note. It's a fruity top
Speaker 1: note for some people. And we'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit. But yeah, it's a story about the amygdala,
Speaker 1: which helps us to process emotion. We've talked about this
Speaker 1: quite a bit before, and in the case of anger,
Speaker 1: it works in tandem with a number of biological responses,
Speaker 1: including the release of adrenaline. So it kind of makes
Speaker 1: sense for it because whenever you've experienced anger wrath, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that you've had a moment where you just felt
Speaker 1: a surge of energy. Is that tension energy? That's because
Speaker 1: when we get angry within a quarter of a second,
Speaker 1: and magdala can serve up an action inspired by wrath
Speaker 1: if if it weren't for the frontal lobe, because this
Speaker 1: is sort of our seat of reason in this area
Speaker 1: of our brain also experiences a flow of blood and
Speaker 1: attempt to sit there and kind of way the situation
Speaker 1: and the response and altogether this process can take just
Speaker 1: two seconds, right, So if there's a trigger that makes
Speaker 1: you angry, just within two seconds, you could be serving
Speaker 1: up a punch or you could be trying to restrain yourself.
Speaker 1: And this is really why people often say, you know,
Speaker 1: count to ten if you're angry, Yeah, because it gives
Speaker 1: you a chance to kind of pull your adrenaline addled
Speaker 1: self together. Yeah. Or if you're one thing that I've
Speaker 1: practiced in the past and also told other people, it's like,
Speaker 1: if you if you have that angry email you really
Speaker 1: want to send a go ahead and write the the email.
Speaker 1: Don't put the two in the field though, Yeah, don't
Speaker 1: put the two in the field. Maybe just write it
Speaker 1: in the text document, then shut it down and let
Speaker 1: it sit for a while. Industry, Like the next day
Speaker 1: you could go back to that and be like, oh man,
Speaker 1: that was just a fool's errand right there. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: what was I What was I doing with that? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't help but think of it in terms of
Speaker 1: like the amigdala in the frontal lobe is like that.
Speaker 1: The amigoala is kind of like the you know, you
Speaker 1: know the classic image of the devil on one shoulder
Speaker 1: and the angel on the other. Instead, they'll imagine like
Speaker 1: a pro wrestler on one shoulder and a and like
Speaker 1: a Buddhist monk on the other, and the pro wrestler
Speaker 1: is the end of the emotional amigdola, and it's it's like,
Speaker 1: go out there, do it, do it, get angry, don't
Speaker 1: take this stuff off anybody, punch right, angry emails, stop around,
Speaker 1: huff and puff. And then on the other side you
Speaker 1: you have the Buddhist monk, and the Bodhist monk is like,
Speaker 1: let's chill it out, Let's think a lot ofically. Let's
Speaker 1: think calmly about this. But you have to depend on
Speaker 1: that monk having enough energy to put up with the enigdolla,
Speaker 1: because sometimes the enigola is going to be all right,
Speaker 1: let's do it, let's crack some heads, and then the
Speaker 1: monks like, you know, I'm done, I'm gonna beat here. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, And there's a there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things that could actually weaken your inner monk response. By
Speaker 1: the way, I really like this idea of both of them,
Speaker 1: that the monk of the wrestlers are both wearing robes
Speaker 1: in my version that I see on your on your
Speaker 1: shoulders right now. But a couple of circumstances. One is
Speaker 1: you could have sustained damage to your frontal lobe, like
Speaker 1: our poor friend Phineas Gauge. Right, this is a guy
Speaker 1: who in nineteen was working on the railroad and when
Speaker 1: he was excavating rock, and he was tamping gunpowder down
Speaker 1: in its drill hole, and there was an ax a
Speaker 1: little explosion which caused the tamping iron he was using
Speaker 1: to thrust itself through his left cheek and out his skull, yeah,
Speaker 1: like out his like completely through his head and then
Speaker 1: in the air on the other side they basically gave
Speaker 1: him the frontal of botomy. Yeah. Yeah, and he survived it.
Speaker 1: But what happens he became childlike and became bullying, and
Speaker 1: he started to use profanity. Again. This is so this
Speaker 1: guy went from mild manner to like crazy town and
Speaker 1: in a very short amount of time. And they didn't
Speaker 1: understand enough about the brain at the time to really
Speaker 1: attribute that to his accident. Yeah. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if you want to hear more about gauge and and
Speaker 1: other things of this nature, we did a podcast to
Speaker 1: Change your Mind the Hard Way where we dealt with
Speaker 1: some of some of these things. Another circumstance is sarotonin.
Speaker 1: You serotonin levels. There was a study conducted by the
Speaker 1: University of Cambridge and this was actually reported in a
Speaker 1: Science Daily article. They talked about healthy volunteers and what
Speaker 1: they did is they took these healthy volunteers and altered
Speaker 1: their serotonin levels by manip pulating their diet. Because we
Speaker 1: know that your diet can affect the serotonin levels in
Speaker 1: your brain and make you, you know, really sort of
Speaker 1: regulate your mood. Yeah, there's certain foods are gonna behind serotonin.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever been to a health food store
Speaker 1: and look around it supplements. There obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: serotonin supplements that are aimed at helping you out with
Speaker 1: your serotonin level. And you know, we've talked about this
Speaker 1: in the past two especially with our podcast on decision fatigue.
Speaker 1: Just make sure that you're good enough to eat, you know,
Speaker 1: throughout the day, because that really does affect your ability
Speaker 1: to regulate your moods. You are what you eat video,
Speaker 1: so are what you think. So the two come together.
Speaker 1: That's right, mind to think. That's on my bumper sticker
Speaker 1: on my car. So okay. What they did they manipulate
Speaker 1: their diets. On the serotonin depletion day, the volunteers were
Speaker 1: given a mixture of amino acids that lacked tripped a fin,
Speaker 1: the building block for serotonin, and on the placebo day,
Speaker 1: they were given the same mixture but with a normal
Speaker 1: amount of tripped de fan okay okay. And then the
Speaker 1: researchers scan the volunteers brains using fmr I and as
Speaker 1: the volunteers viewed faces with angry, sad, and neutral expressions,
Speaker 1: and then they were able to measure how different regions
Speaker 1: reacted and communicated with one another. When the volunteers viewed
Speaker 1: the angry faces as supposed to the sad or neutral faces.
Speaker 1: So the research revealed that low brain serotonin and make
Speaker 1: communications between specific brain regions. We're talking again about the
Speaker 1: magdala and frontal lobe much weaker. And the finding exactly
Speaker 1: suggest that when our serotonin levels are low and maybe
Speaker 1: really much more difficult for the prefrontal cortex to control
Speaker 1: emotional responses to anger. I mean, this is this is
Speaker 1: a this kind of a dumb moment. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, it's like, yeah, you know what, when I
Speaker 1: was angry, I was really hungry, and I was tired,
Speaker 1: and I was hungry. Uh, so it makes sense that
Speaker 1: the serotonal levels could affect our mood like that. So
Speaker 1: to put it back in terms of the pro wrestler
Speaker 1: and the monk on your shoulders, in the case of
Speaker 1: Phineas Gauge, the monk was just completely taken out, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: by by a rod. In the case of the serotonin issue,
Speaker 1: the individual hasn't had enough to eat or for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the serotonin level has dropped and so has the communication
Speaker 1: between the two. So the pro wrestlers on one shoulder
Speaker 1: saying let's do it, let's go out there and let's
Speaker 1: kick some butt. I'm not gonna take this anymore. How
Speaker 1: dare they do this to me? And the monk is
Speaker 1: is like yelling across a chasm here um and saying saying, hey,
Speaker 1: calm down, calm down, and the pross was like, what
Speaker 1: what's he talking about? And then launches back and well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing too. Let's say that you are a
Speaker 1: person who has two pro wrestlers on your shoulder. In
Speaker 1: other awards, you are prone to be more aggressive and
Speaker 1: therefore more prone to anger. Your communications between your MICHAELA
Speaker 1: in your preferntial cortex are going to be weekend regardless.
Speaker 1: So when you have the depletion, it's much more pronounced.
Speaker 1: What's interesting about this and I was reading this experiment
Speaker 1: as well, where they then they referred to them as
Speaker 1: short fusers and the Brewders. So the short fusers, that's
Speaker 1: the guy was like, Oh, you took me off. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna punch somebody in the face. Yeah, And then you
Speaker 1: have the brooders who are like, oh, that person really
Speaker 1: made me mad. I'm gonna pretty much be musable the
Speaker 1: rest of the day, which brings me back to thinking
Speaker 1: about Dante with the sullen and the wrathful. So I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could, if you could look at the
Speaker 1: short fusers are the ones tearing each other up and
Speaker 1: punching everyone in the face on the surface of sticks
Speaker 1: the river sticks, And then the brooders are the sullen
Speaker 1: buried in the muck at the bottom, gargling their hymns
Speaker 1: into the flying Yeah, the powders just need to meditate,
Speaker 1: and the short fusers just need a sandwich because really there, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but really, if you are a short fused person, you
Speaker 1: really are much more sensitive to your serotonin levels, is
Speaker 1: what this is spelling out. So it is very important
Speaker 1: to try to get that sandwich in your belly. Really again,
Speaker 1: to simplify it. In fact, they've been experiments where if
Speaker 1: you actually look at the brain and you you scan
Speaker 1: it and and you see what's lighting up during these moments
Speaker 1: of wrath or when there's some sort of stimuli that
Speaker 1: provokes wrath, you can see that the difference between short
Speaker 1: fusers and brooders and seconds. The medial prefrontal cortex associated
Speaker 1: with self awareness and emotional regulation quickly lights up with
Speaker 1: the broods, and so does the hippocampus involved in memory.
Speaker 1: So as they fume, people repeatedly relive the events in
Speaker 1: their minds. It's like they're chewing over that thing that
Speaker 1: made them mad. They're continually tweaking that story in their
Speaker 1: head about that thing that happened to them that was
Speaker 1: sucky and now they're mad. So anger can be so fleeting, right,
Speaker 1: it can be such a flash, like how long is
Speaker 1: this taking? This whole process, this just taking seconds. They
Speaker 1: found in this experience that the degree of hippocampal activation
Speaker 1: predicted how much people tended to ruminate. So you can
Speaker 1: actually see, depending on what the hippocampus is doing, you
Speaker 1: can tell how much they're brooding on the anger. I'm
Speaker 1: imagining a little sign on the fMRI I that shows
Speaker 1: need sandwich, and it's just like flashing over the prefrontal cortex. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk about whether or not
Speaker 1: you could be attracted to anger. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: so wrap to what extent is it? Is it attractive?
Speaker 1: I mean it's I mean not so much. Usually people
Speaker 1: go out of their way to avoid people who are angry, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it's often referred to as as showing ones.
Speaker 1: But you know, more or less they're like, I really
Speaker 1: showed his butt on that one, right, but they did
Speaker 1: not have to say Bobby, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's generally like they let wrath take control of them
Speaker 1: and they really kind of look like a fool for it.
Speaker 1: You know, no their emotional address, you knew where they live. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then you think of wrath, and you think of
Speaker 1: so many there's so many things in our culture where
Speaker 1: wrath is celebrated. It generally it involves creating a fictional
Speaker 1: or just creating even real world circumstances that allow the
Speaker 1: wrath to manifest in a way that is either acceptable
Speaker 1: or relatable. Um for instance, Incredible Hulk. You know, this
Speaker 1: is an example where a mild manner, Bruce Banner, he's
Speaker 1: getting kicked around and then the rage gets ahold of him, right,
Speaker 1: and he turns into Holk and starts kicking. But or
Speaker 1: just any masculine testosterone fueled action flick where the baddies
Speaker 1: are bad and so our hero is even badder and
Speaker 1: starts just wailing on people, you know, Bruce Lee type stuff.
Speaker 1: We do get something out of that. There's something appealing
Speaker 1: about that I'm on various levels. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: break it down to the viewer of some of some
Speaker 1: sort of film like this. They have issues in their
Speaker 1: life that they would on some level like to be
Speaker 1: able to deal with in a direct manner. And so
Speaker 1: I'm going to watch something or play a game in
Speaker 1: which somebody deals with their problems with direct violence. Well, right,
Speaker 1: And there are some people who do bait other people
Speaker 1: in order to raise their hackles, right and get a
Speaker 1: little charge of anger, because they're interested in provocation, right
Speaker 1: and getting into a fight. Yeah, And I feel like
Speaker 1: this is interesting because I think we've all done this,
Speaker 1: or maybe not all, but most of us. I feel
Speaker 1: like I've felt this at one point or another where
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily like a complete bully or anything like that,
Speaker 1: like nothing like really heinous, But were you just sort
Speaker 1: of poking at somebody just to get like, you know,
Speaker 1: the little things that might annoy your significant other, and
Speaker 1: if the mood is right, you might just prime a
Speaker 1: little to see of it. Okay. So could it be
Speaker 1: that on that day you war, testosterone levels were higher
Speaker 1: than they usually were, right, This is for both men
Speaker 1: and women. University of Michigan Psychology study found that some
Speaker 1: people find angry expressions rewarding well, and they they actually
Speaker 1: interpreted as rewarding. Tesascer and levels were actually measured in
Speaker 1: a group via saliva samples. And then this group was
Speaker 1: asked to work on a learning task that involved a
Speaker 1: flash of images, some with angry faces, some with neutral faces,
Speaker 1: and some images containing absolutely no faces, and the images
Speaker 1: flashed by so quickly that the participants weren't really able
Speaker 1: to detect a pattern. In fact, though this task if
Speaker 1: they were working on, was really to gauge whether or
Speaker 1: not they could subliminally work out a pattern, and it
Speaker 1: was found that men and women with high testosterone levels
Speaker 1: learned the sequence of keypresses better when the sequence was
Speaker 1: followed by an angry face. And the conclusion is that
Speaker 1: the anger expressions were rewarding to the brain and that's
Speaker 1: why they had a better memory of this. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: That finds me of this article we're looking at from
Speaker 1: Wired that was talking about the Steve Jobs. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like the mobile meat portions of the original the
Speaker 1: first iPhone came out. iPhone comes out, everyone loves it,
Speaker 1: but mobile meat doesn't work. I mean, they's supposed to
Speaker 1: be you know, on par with blackberries applications, and you
Speaker 1: know it's supposed to actually fill that need. It was
Speaker 1: an important part of the product. And Jobs was notoriously perfectionist.
Speaker 1: He had a certain vision. He wanted to see that
Speaker 1: that vision brought to life. And he was known for
Speaker 1: having steam coming out of all the time. Right, and
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, he practiced Buddhism. I know, I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about that too. Yeah, but I mean he probably
Speaker 1: realized that, hey, I need to I mean he I
Speaker 1: understand he did realize, and maybe his anger needs to
Speaker 1: be be treated in some parts of my life, but
Speaker 1: maybe not when it came to mobile meat not working,
Speaker 1: because he got he lined everybody up, got him into
Speaker 1: the theater there and just continued to like lay into
Speaker 1: him for I think for like a solid hour, just
Speaker 1: thrashed them, I mean not physically, but just let him
Speaker 1: have it. Told them that they should all hate each
Speaker 1: other for for what had happened and they had brought
Speaker 1: dishonor to the brand, like basically telling them that they
Speaker 1: are the beings and the river sticks and the should
Speaker 1: just tear each other apart because they well and they
Speaker 1: should commit you know, mental Harry carry you know, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean here's a good example of I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the ultimately, it's the kind of like negative feedback that
Speaker 1: we all rail against whenever we encounter even like a
Speaker 1: little bit of it, you know, I mean, nobody likes
Speaker 1: to be in trouble. Nobody likes a working environment where
Speaker 1: somebody's on your case for something. It makes you angry,
Speaker 1: It makes you, you know, it makes you so, it
Speaker 1: makes you kind of hate your job. But some of
Speaker 1: the evidence lines up to support the idea that it
Speaker 1: also inspires you on some level. But it did it
Speaker 1: Actually you're angry, sure, but then you're you're committed to
Speaker 1: to getting it done. Okay. So to that end, I
Speaker 1: have to read this quote from the co author of
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan Angry Faces study because I think
Speaker 1: of Steve Jobs now. He says, quote, it's kind of
Speaker 1: striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as
Speaker 1: a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a
Speaker 1: nonconscious level and be like a tasty morsel that some
Speaker 1: people will vigorously work for. So I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: there were people on jobs as team who actually responded
Speaker 1: to that well, I mean, the thing could be he
Speaker 1: knew his team, well yeah, and he knew that these
Speaker 1: are guys that will respond and got yeah, well I'm
Speaker 1: am using guys in the gender news. These are guys
Speaker 1: who who realized, see, now you're irritated about that. I saw.
Speaker 1: I'm not irritated. I'm I'm actually amused. Okay, But maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: he realized that this is a crowd that is stimulated
Speaker 1: by that, and a wired writer or somebody commenting on
Speaker 1: the outside or they're not a part of that group,
Speaker 1: and maybe they're more of a positive reinforcement environment. Like like,
Speaker 1: it's easy for us to comment on that because because
Speaker 1: I feel like you're at house. Stuff works. Aside from
Speaker 1: the days where Jerry comes to the halls with a
Speaker 1: bull like physically with a bullphip and and hits everybody.
Speaker 1: Aside from those days, Matt just gives us the occasional
Speaker 1: dressing down just for fun. Aside from that, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty prett pretty positive place to work. It's more about
Speaker 1: positively enforcement brainstorming that kind of thing. Brainstorming, of course,
Speaker 1: well in our mother environment where they're no wrong answers,
Speaker 1: there are no bad ideas in brainstorming. Though I have
Speaker 1: heard a few. Yeah, and in our mother company, Discovery,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's all about you know, everybody wearing
Speaker 1: the lovey dovey pants. Yeah, it's pretty nice. I mean
Speaker 1: to get some more love pants because I I split
Speaker 1: them the other day. Yeah. In fact, didn't we got
Speaker 1: something about a flash momb here occurrence happening because anyway,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure if that was actually happening or that
Speaker 1: was an example. I think that's an example of things
Speaker 1: that can happen during a brainstorm. Um So anyway, that
Speaker 1: is another story for another time. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: when you are in a chronic state of anger. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're in jobs as team and let's just assume
Speaker 1: that all the time it's all anger, because it's not
Speaker 1: going to be, of course, but you do encounter people
Speaker 1: like this. We're like, man, they are angry all the time.
Speaker 1: They're just constantly fuming over every little or big thing
Speaker 1: in their life. Yeah, well, there's the state of response
Speaker 1: can start to take a toll and you obviously, chronically
Speaker 1: angry people may not produce enough actal col hopefully I've
Speaker 1: said that right, a hormone which tempers the more severe
Speaker 1: effects of adrenaline. And their nervous system is constantly working
Speaker 1: and can eventually become over taxed, leading to a weakened
Speaker 1: heart and stiffer arteries. Yeah. This incidentally was the first
Speaker 1: neurotransmitter discovered, isolated one by a German biologists Atto Loewie,
Speaker 1: who would later win the Nobel Prize for his work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's really important because there's all sorts of potential
Speaker 1: for damage not just the heart, but the liver and
Speaker 1: the kidney as well as having high cholesterol. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: responsible for much of the stimulation of muscles, including muscles
Speaker 1: in the gas from intestinal set system. And it's also
Speaker 1: found in sensory neurons and in the autonomic nervous system.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a part of scheduling even rim sleep.
Speaker 1: So okay. Yeah, and if you think we're kidding about this,
Speaker 1: just pull out one more stat um. And the two
Speaker 1: thousand and one study of thirteen thousand subjects, people with
Speaker 1: the highest levels of anger had twice the risk of
Speaker 1: coronary artery disease and three times the risk of heart
Speaker 1: attack as compared to the subjects with the lowest levels
Speaker 1: of anger. See this makes it even harder for me
Speaker 1: to watch Lewis Black these days, you know. Really the
Speaker 1: whole stick is like I'm so angry at these things
Speaker 1: in the world that you're not right. It's a great bit.
Speaker 1: He's a great talented comedian, but as he gets older
Speaker 1: for me to watch him on the Daily Show, because
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is not good for your health, Lewis,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta chill out, Like I mean, maybe too.
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot about Louis Black, so so
Speaker 1: maybe to a large extent, is an act. I mean,
Speaker 1: he said he's a professional, but I feel like he
Speaker 1: is summoning some real anger when performing, and I would
Speaker 1: just I don't want to watch him keel over. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: assuming he's not in that state all the time, he's
Speaker 1: just kind of doing it as part of his stick,
Speaker 1: it actually could be an upside for him, Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So and actually for all of us there could be
Speaker 1: an upside for anger. Again, assuming that this is not
Speaker 1: something that we're playing into and playing into the destructive
Speaker 1: violent forces. I mean, there's a way to actually be
Speaker 1: constructively angry. Yes, yeah, what they found some folks who
Speaker 1: like to poke around and studies actually researchers, mathish bos
Speaker 1: Carsten did Drew, and Bernard nishtad Uh. They publish the
Speaker 1: results in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that
Speaker 1: participants who are made to feel angry and then we're
Speaker 1: asked to brainstorm exhibited key hallmarks of creative brainstorming, including
Speaker 1: unstructured thinking, and in a comparison to their counterparts identified
Speaker 1: as sad or neutral people, the very angry participants came
Speaker 1: up with more ideas as well as more original ideas.
Speaker 1: And now this was a short lived window, right liked
Speaker 1: they couldn't sustain this. Obviously, they couldn't sustain their anger
Speaker 1: as well, which was a good thing. But right after
Speaker 1: they were made to feel a bit of wrath, their
Speaker 1: brain was basically kind of unfettered and not thinking systematically.
Speaker 1: And this is where people think that anger could be
Speaker 1: really helpful, because you are getting that surge of adrenaline
Speaker 1: and you do become laser focused in the way that
Speaker 1: you want to remove an obstacle, or you're sitting there
Speaker 1: saying how could this be? How can I make this better?
Speaker 1: And if you actually point that anger the solution rather
Speaker 1: than say the person or the thing, you could make
Speaker 1: some headway and be really productive I believe the same
Speaker 1: study or maybe this is a different one that was
Speaker 1: talking about how sadness sullenness if you will, can also
Speaker 1: have you know, it's bad in the short term, but
Speaker 1: in the long term it can also it also leads
Speaker 1: to increased creativity, increased drive in your work. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: some of this too that people who may be depressed,
Speaker 1: although um, and we've talked about this, it can hamper
Speaker 1: creativity at points, but there's some of this is tied
Speaker 1: to self actualization or being able to see yourself in
Speaker 1: a realistic light and then be able to deal with
Speaker 1: obstacles in a long term way because you're not at
Speaker 1: that that very moment sort of fooling yourself into like
Speaker 1: I can do this, right, I don't know. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit of depressing way to put it, but well,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of most guys anyway, really love the
Speaker 1: first one or two Batman movies, right, the films not
Speaker 1: based some of the ladies, some of the ladies, my
Speaker 1: wife doesn't like them. But but these are very much
Speaker 1: a product of a time during which in the United
Speaker 1: States have the Bush administration, which, being a conservative administration,
Speaker 1: was generally by and large and not as popular with
Speaker 1: the with liberal artistic types. Um. And then you have
Speaker 1: you have war, you have economic downturn. Well that economic
Speaker 1: downturn really comes after the Bush administration. But but the
Speaker 1: same area, you have a lot of negative things going on.
Speaker 1: But if you see the art that rises up out
Speaker 1: of these these issues, out of this paint, I guess
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a nice Well, it sucks that
Speaker 1: there was a big war, it sucks that it lasted forever,
Speaker 1: but but hey, we got some cool art about out
Speaker 1: of it. Right Well, I think what you're saying is
Speaker 1: that anger. Anger is mobilizing forces to get out there,
Speaker 1: think creatively and say something. Well, and I was thinking
Speaker 1: about that in terms of protests too. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a point where protests are really productive, right, and then
Speaker 1: there's a point where they can become very destructive for
Speaker 1: you know, devolve. So you're saying you don't have high
Speaker 1: hopes for the third Batman movie from Christopher Nolan. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that, done well,
Speaker 1: anger can be really helpful, right Well, but again you
Speaker 1: have to bring a bit of mental energy to it
Speaker 1: to say, how am I reacting to this at this
Speaker 1: very moment. And that's where that ten second cooling off
Speaker 1: period is really important, because if you just let that
Speaker 1: two seconds rule you, you you know, you can get a
Speaker 1: hammer to the head. Yeah, I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: back and just think about it evolutionary, you can imagine
Speaker 1: this primitive human out on the prehistoric planes. He's killed
Speaker 1: a deer or something, right, and then there's this other
Speaker 1: dude coming along. It's gonna try and eat his deer.
Speaker 1: That raises his hackles. He's like, who's this guy think?
Speaker 1: He is trying to steal my dear flank out from underneath.
Speaker 1: And then that anger can be used to mobilize him
Speaker 1: to fight for and keep what he's his and what
Speaker 1: his survival depends on. And although he's not quite that
Speaker 1: sophisticated yet, one day he will use that wonderful neo
Speaker 1: cortex and he'll work out his problems via communication words
Speaker 1: um in a way that he can say, let's not
Speaker 1: fight about this, let's let's come to the logical conclusion
Speaker 1: about whose flesh this is? Okay? Right? That person will
Speaker 1: redirect his anger into a productive way. You know, you
Speaker 1: look like you're not buying No, No, I'm buying it.
Speaker 1: I'm buying it completely. I mean, I think the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about Rath, like all of these sins, really is
Speaker 1: that there is a level where it makes sense and
Speaker 1: in the motivating force in life, and then there's that
Speaker 1: tipping point where it becomes something horrible and to be avoided.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it maybe it seems like with
Speaker 1: Wrath that the tipping point occurs a little sooner. Yes
Speaker 1: it does. Yeah, I mean there are levels of Vancor
Speaker 1: right now. So there you have it. Again. This is
Speaker 1: just one episode in a series, so as you're listening
Speaker 1: to this, feel free to go back and explore our
Speaker 1: previous five episodes. And there's also a good chance that
Speaker 1: you're listening to this in the future. Well you're obviously
Speaker 1: listening to it in the future, so the final episode
Speaker 1: on Sloth may also be out as well by the
Speaker 1: time you hear this. All right, let's call the robot
Speaker 1: over and read a quick listener mail. What have you
Speaker 1: got for us? All right? This one comes to us
Speaker 1: from Michael. Michael writes in in response to our episode
Speaker 1: Stindall Syndrome kicked in the brain by Art, He says,
Speaker 1: I had no idea this was a thing. A few
Speaker 1: years ago. When I was in college studying design, my
Speaker 1: art history class went to the TUT exhibit. I was
Speaker 1: walking through, rousing at the pieces, disappointed that Tut wasn't
Speaker 1: even there, when suddenly I felt the stamp that is
Speaker 1: gonna be And then suddenly I felt a hand shoulder
Speaker 1: h When suddenly I felt the need to stop and
Speaker 1: look up. I saw the crook and flail on display.
Speaker 1: I lost my breath. The room's fun and all of
Speaker 1: the commotion disappeared. It felt like I was hallucinating. I
Speaker 1: swear that I was looking up at the at a
Speaker 1: pharaoh holding them uh and these, of course those two instruments.
Speaker 1: At a pharaoh mummified, they hold the crossocrounds their chest.
Speaker 1: I was completely paralyzed for what seemed to be hours,
Speaker 1: until someone bumped into me. It was really crowded. It
Speaker 1: was then that I realized how old and beautiful the
Speaker 1: crook and flail were that I was looking at. It
Speaker 1: was so very overwhelming. I had forgotten about my childhood
Speaker 1: love of all things Egyptian. I didn't want to leave
Speaker 1: the room. I wanted to get closer, but there were
Speaker 1: too many people. I nearly cried at the side of it.
Speaker 1: And I am not the overly emotive type wild stuff.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the great episode I listened to each and everyone. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's an awesome description of what Stenhell syndrome is, right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we discussed that podcast how they are a number of
Speaker 1: different things informing. It's not something where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's something broken in my brain and makes art pound
Speaker 1: me whenever I look at it, but like, here's a
Speaker 1: great example of someone who came into the exhibit with
Speaker 1: certain expectations, certain expectations, but also this hast, this emotional,
Speaker 1: emotional past with the subject matter, and then they're standing
Speaker 1: in front of it. This thing that maybe existed only
Speaker 1: in their mind before is manifest before them and it's
Speaker 1: ancient and it's beautiful, and it just overwhelms them. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I was just thinking that this reminds me
Speaker 1: of an article that was recently published in New York
Speaker 1: Times called The Thin Places, or I think that's an
Speaker 1: approximation of the title, but it talks about how when
Speaker 1: we go on vacations, we go it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be a vacation, be a park, it could be a
Speaker 1: special place, but it's perspective changing and they call it
Speaker 1: the thin place because it occupies a place between earth
Speaker 1: and heaven. So it's like the places where reality grows
Speaker 1: at them and yes, pushes in on yes, and it
Speaker 1: takes you outside of yourself. Yeah uh so, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's just one of the things that a museum can
Speaker 1: do to your brain, right, Yeah, Well, it reminds me
Speaker 1: in our Scott Baker's fantasy. It looks there are these
Speaker 1: places that are basically the thin places. But the other
Speaker 1: thing about that is that madness can set them from
Speaker 1: the outside. So well it seems to fall right in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we encount of these thin places where art can effect
Speaker 1: us and can maybe drive us a little temporarily. Matt, Well,
Speaker 1: it's like Jill Bolt Taylor who had the stroke and
Speaker 1: she started to see her own molecules melding with with
Speaker 1: her environment. You know, I mean not it's not fed extreme,
Speaker 1: but that's sort of a metaphor for what's happening. But anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, but that's awesome. Thanks for sharing that
Speaker 1: with a Sydney. Maybe it was the emails from Michael,
Speaker 1: but it's signs Sydney, So Michael Slash Sydney, thanks for sharing,
Speaker 1: and we loved here from anyone else who's had an
Speaker 1: experience like that, with something with art, with history, et
Speaker 1: cetera that they've encountered, and likewise, let us know what
Speaker 1: you're experienced with wrath is, how do you deal with
Speaker 1: it in your daily lives, how do you experience it
Speaker 1: in other people? And how do you mitigate it? To
Speaker 1: what extent does wrath actually inspire you to great things?
Speaker 1: And to what extent does it seem to hold you back?
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