Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, what can't the stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: Julie Way. Is being on a plane the absolute worst?
Speaker 1: Like setting there on the on the plane waiting to
Speaker 1: take off, it seems like every possible annoying thing in
Speaker 1: the world is inevitably trapped in there with you. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean your personal space is being invaded, right, there's
Speaker 1: elbow wars going on. It's true. They're stinky air being circulated.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, no, really, I mean think about it, Like,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, five minutes into it, you've got,
Speaker 1: you know, a hundred people crammed in this space. Stinky
Speaker 1: air is happening. It's true. They're they're they're rooting around
Speaker 1: for stuff. Some of them have brought on outside food. Yeah, person,
Speaker 1: next you may have a pizza that they're pulling out
Speaker 1: of a satchel to to chomp down on. And then
Speaker 1: a lot of it's all out of your control too.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's a huge thing too. You step
Speaker 1: on the plane and it's definite plane rules, step out
Speaker 1: of line. Somebody's going to escort you away and like
Speaker 1: shackle you to a seat somewhere and they will by
Speaker 1: the way, Yeah, just so you now, did that happen? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: But there are other elements going on, right, I mean
Speaker 1: that really the five senses are engaged here and and
Speaker 1: most notably the h your your ears, because there's just
Speaker 1: that they're being assaulted, right, Because inevitably when you get
Speaker 1: on that plane, there is going to be a baby
Speaker 1: crying or a toddler whining. This is just the law
Speaker 1: of airplane travel. Ye. Generally the dogs are going to
Speaker 1: be tranked, so you don't really have to worry about those. No. No,
Speaker 1: I've heard I've heard of people flying though where they're
Speaker 1: encountering cats, uh, cats and little boxes on the seat
Speaker 1: next to them, cats catterwalling, Yeah, I guess. I mean
Speaker 1: that's what they're going to do for the duration of
Speaker 1: a flight. If they do it for an entire drive
Speaker 1: across the town to to the vet, uh, I think
Speaker 1: it's guaranteed um transoceanic flight. Well, unless they get a
Speaker 1: mother's little helper, you know what I'm saying. But but
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, so sound is a big deal on
Speaker 1: the plane. Now, obviously, Eventually there's going to be an
Speaker 1: airplane engine and some nice sort of white noise to
Speaker 1: sort of help. Eventually you're going to be able to
Speaker 1: turn on your iPod or other listening to music device
Speaker 1: without being yelled at and hopefully drown out some of
Speaker 1: the sound. But there's there's gonna be some time there
Speaker 1: where you're gonna have to deal with the crying baby,
Speaker 1: the dude that is coughing and sniffling, um, the person
Speaker 1: who's like shuffling papers, the person who won't stop fidgeting
Speaker 1: with their seatbelt. Oh, and the cell phone talker. Well,
Speaker 1: luckily that'll well I don't know, can you talk on
Speaker 1: a cell phone on UM? I think some transatlantic ones
Speaker 1: you can. I can't recall remember seeing a news item
Speaker 1: about it and sort of cringing inwardly. But certainly everybody
Speaker 1: tries to finish up their conversations before the before they
Speaker 1: take off, before the in the right after they get
Speaker 1: that that weird call where you're getting arranging. Generally, it's
Speaker 1: just like a ranging pickup, like I'm here, this plane
Speaker 1: is awful, Um, I'll be out in ten minutes. But
Speaker 1: but when you first got on the plane, there's no
Speaker 1: telling what it's going to be some snippet of some
Speaker 1: some conversation that is just amazingly irritating or way too personal,
Speaker 1: and you're like, what, I can't believe they're having this discussion, uh,
Speaker 1: because some people just have blinders on when they're when
Speaker 1: they're having these these discussions with with somebody, and you're like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: that is way too much detail to just be shoveling
Speaker 1: out into the island on the airplane. And it's the
Speaker 1: worst because you know you're only hearing half of it,
Speaker 1: and the half of it that you are hearing sometimes
Speaker 1: is so like you say, horrendous. You're like, really, you
Speaker 1: don't need to be airing your dirty laundry. And I
Speaker 1: only knew half of what you're talking about. So obviously
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today is sort of the science
Speaker 1: of pet peeves. Why we react the way that we do, yes,
Speaker 1: because inevitably some scientists, researcher, neuroscientist has been on a plane,
Speaker 1: put up with this stuff, and then they've decided that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm going back. I'm getting funding, I'm gonna research this,
Speaker 1: gonna get a test group together, I'm gonna figure this out.
Speaker 1: My next flight is going to be far less annoying, right,
Speaker 1: we hope right, or at least we've we've uncovered the
Speaker 1: reasons why we're annoyed. According to an article on Wired
Speaker 1: by Alex Vincent, there is one sound more annoying than
Speaker 1: nails on a blackboard or even sirens, and that is
Speaker 1: the whining child. Yes, the whining child. Not just the
Speaker 1: crying child, but the whining specifically the whining child. And
Speaker 1: and that sort of catterwauling actually peaks between the ages
Speaker 1: of two and four. In case you're wondering this, This
Speaker 1: this frequency that toddlers seemed to cultivate and and just
Speaker 1: resonate their out in the universe, the moment I that
Speaker 1: kind of yeah, yeah, you got it. Um, Yeah that um.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter if you're a parent or not.
Speaker 1: It affects everybody equally, bothers everyone. Um. In a study
Speaker 1: published in the journal Social Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology, participants
Speaker 1: were asked to do subtraction problems while listening to an
Speaker 1: infinct crying, also a regular speech silence, whining in a
Speaker 1: high pitched table saw and mother ease, mother ease? Now
Speaker 1: can you give up as a mother? Can you give
Speaker 1: an example of mother ease. I can't give you I
Speaker 1: know right that just that just made me feel dirty. Um.
Speaker 1: This is that sort of exaggerated baby talk, and it's universal.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what language you speak, and there's there's
Speaker 1: mother ease, and we do it when we talk to babies,
Speaker 1: and we do it when we talk to our pets,
Speaker 1: sometimes to our significant other. I generally don't use that
Speaker 1: voice um when talking to my significant either or my cat,
Speaker 1: but occasionally somebody else will be introduced to the cat
Speaker 1: and they'll like break out some mother ease on him.
Speaker 1: I'm always kind of like, oh, wait, don't talk to
Speaker 1: my cat that way. She's not she's not accustomed to this.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. You're like, don't expose my cat to to
Speaker 1: mother ease. She's going to expect this or is that
Speaker 1: what you're thinking. I don't know it just then it
Speaker 1: might warp her somehow. You know, it's gonna irritating sound.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, don't inflict that on me. You
Speaker 1: don't inflict that on the cat either. Well. The worst though,
Speaker 1: I think, is when people flirt in mother EA's and
Speaker 1: it reminds me of that Seinfeld episode in which Jerry
Speaker 1: and his girlfriends started calling each other schmoopy, you're schmoopy,
Speaker 1: your schmoopy? Well, and this I guess this also kind
Speaker 1: of ties into the whole the whole sexy baby voice,
Speaker 1: which I just don't get. Yeah, but but it seems
Speaker 1: to be some more levels of annoying. Maybe it quite
Speaker 1: as as bad I mean, And I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's been empirically studied, like the mother ease. Oh what
Speaker 1: the sexy baby voice. Yeah, I don't hear of you
Speaker 1: study of the sexy baby boy. I don't think that
Speaker 1: there's any sort of brain development that is going on
Speaker 1: with the baby sexy voice. But you know, at least
Speaker 1: with mother ease and with babies, we can see an
Speaker 1: actual tie there between you know, cooing to a baby
Speaker 1: and talking in mother e's and the child actually understanding
Speaker 1: that this voice is specifically for him or her and
Speaker 1: to pay attention, and that these words like dindon and
Speaker 1: now I know how to completely annoy this is awesome,
Speaker 1: um for dinner that is short for dinner, and so
Speaker 1: they sort of understand, uh, you know, phonologically from mother ease.
Speaker 1: But that being said, Mother's as annoying as it is,
Speaker 1: is still less annoying than the baby whinings because because
Speaker 1: when those people were doing uh, the math, the subtractions,
Speaker 1: they found that they made more mistakes per math problems
Speaker 1: completed when listening to the wines and any other speech
Speaker 1: patterns or noises. And just to be clear to when
Speaker 1: they used the language samples the speech patterns, what they
Speaker 1: did is they scrambled it so that or excuse me,
Speaker 1: didn't scramble. They had it in another language. And the
Speaker 1: reason they did that is because they didn't want people
Speaker 1: to be distracted by what was actually being said. They
Speaker 1: just wanted to hear someone talking. Huh. I wonder if
Speaker 1: anyone has ever used this to try and get something
Speaker 1: a break on their taxes or excuse some sort of
Speaker 1: clerical error in bookkeeping where they're like, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: work at a priest. Cool look at the study. I was.
Speaker 1: I was doing really good to get any of this right.
Speaker 1: I was on an airplane trying to complete the report.
Speaker 1: There was a baby whining. What was I to do?
Speaker 1: It's true, but it is but this is tied to
Speaker 1: an evolutionary thing because because the idea is I mean,
Speaker 1: we've discussed before, like the big evolutionary push is reproduced,
Speaker 1: make another little person and push that person out, continue
Speaker 1: the gene, continue the species. And so therefore we have
Speaker 1: it built in that it's like whoa, one of the
Speaker 1: larval humans requires sustenance. Stop what you're doing, tend to that,
Speaker 1: and then you can get by with whatever the other
Speaker 1: thing is, because this is the thing that is genetically
Speaker 1: most important. Yes, the larval humans are trying to get
Speaker 1: the parents attention. And that's what co author Rosemary so
Speaker 1: called Chang seems to think. She's the she ran the study.
Speaker 1: So yes, there it's something. It's the sort of pitch
Speaker 1: that could drill through any distraction to get your parents attention.
Speaker 1: The larva require candy, the larva require toys. Whatever it is,
Speaker 1: it's more important than checking out pool. Sorry, I will
Speaker 1: really stop doing that. Um So that explains. That explains
Speaker 1: whining that the child catterwauling. What explains the annoyance that
Speaker 1: we feel when we hear only half of a conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really interesting, and we touched on it earlier.
Speaker 1: Half of a conversation. We're even dropping on half of something,
Speaker 1: and so that our brains cannot help but follow along
Speaker 1: and try and make sense of what we're hearing. I mean,
Speaker 1: our senses have evolved to make sense of the world
Speaker 1: around us and help us navigate this world. And uh,
Speaker 1: and therefore you've got this half of a conversation going on,
Speaker 1: even if you don't want to, even if you know
Speaker 1: it's the dumbest conversation on the planet, or it's something
Speaker 1: just completely offensive, and you know that you are growing
Speaker 1: stupider every second that you listen to it. Your your
Speaker 1: brain cannot shut it off. Um. There was an interesting
Speaker 1: uh study into this by graduate student Cornell University. UM.
Speaker 1: He subjected people to having to listen to these half conversations,
Speaker 1: and then he had another group of people that he
Speaker 1: had listened to the same conversation, but but with the
Speaker 1: words garbled. So you were hearing not the not the words,
Speaker 1: but just the sound just kind of you know, kind
Speaker 1: of you weren't you weren't hearing a pattern or a
Speaker 1: story or half of a story being told. You're just
Speaker 1: hearing gobbledy cook, just hearing gobbledy cook the whole um,
Speaker 1: you know, the mother on peanuts kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: Because the idea, Yeah, because the idea was, Um, are
Speaker 1: we annoyed by the sound? Is it just the sound
Speaker 1: of somebody else yabbering when we're trying to do something,
Speaker 1: or is it tied to the words? Is it tied
Speaker 1: to our brains trying to figure out the meaning of
Speaker 1: this conversation, And it's tied to the meaning. That was
Speaker 1: what he found there. The person was far more distracted
Speaker 1: um our, Our our thought process and our problem solving
Speaker 1: bodies were far more impacted by the actual worded conversation
Speaker 1: as opposed to the gobblty cook. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was interesting because a lot of times you and I
Speaker 1: have talked about how the brain is just one of
Speaker 1: his primary functions is predictive modeling. It's always trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what the next step is, what's going on, what,
Speaker 1: what is the pattern in front of the unfolding So
Speaker 1: it drives the brain crazy when it only has half
Speaker 1: of the information. Yeah, Lewis Black, I mean, comedians love
Speaker 1: talking about things that annoy them. It's like, like, I
Speaker 1: guess eight to nine percent of anybody's stick. But Louis
Speaker 1: Black has this bit where he's talking about overhearing part
Speaker 1: of a conversation I believe about um. It was something
Speaker 1: to the effect of a woman saying and then if
Speaker 1: I didn't have that horse, I wouldn't have gotten into college. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I forget it involved college and a horse. And that's
Speaker 1: the only piece he heard. Yeah, that's the only piece
Speaker 1: he heard. And so he does this long bit about
Speaker 1: where he's just flying into a rage about his inability
Speaker 1: to understand what the context could possibly be for such
Speaker 1: a ludicrous statement. And it's a great example of how
Speaker 1: I think any of us feel on some level when
Speaker 1: we're hearing this conversation, like what was that person talking about?
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember being in an airport and overhearing
Speaker 1: just just one snippet. It wasn't enough to be annoying,
Speaker 1: but I heard some guys say, yeah, I'm about to
Speaker 1: have to break through some membranes, and and that was
Speaker 1: that was it. And then so for for a while
Speaker 1: it's like what membranes was he gonna breakthrough? Like is
Speaker 1: this metaphorical or yeah, I'm picturing him like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's like shrinking down fantastic void style and like, you know,
Speaker 1: journeying through some cellular tissue or something. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it just made or is it some slang that I'm
Speaker 1: just not hip to. I don't know. I love that, like,
Speaker 1: is he turning into a blood nanobot um. The Science
Speaker 1: of What Bugs Us by Joe Palca and Florida Lickman
Speaker 1: is a book that actually covers a lot of this material,
Speaker 1: and co author Joe Palca actually says that you can
Speaker 1: you can actually change the circumstances um when you are
Speaker 1: being annoyed by by something like this, and he calls
Speaker 1: it cognitive restructuring. Uh. He says that when you're faced
Speaker 1: with the situation in which you're annoyed a cell phone call,
Speaker 1: a seemingly endless line that you're standing in, or mosquito
Speaker 1: buzzing around you, you can practice cognitive restructuring. So his
Speaker 1: his example is, you can tell yourself that the mosquito
Speaker 1: is just a part of the life flow in the world,
Speaker 1: and I shouldn't be mad. It's just trying to do
Speaker 1: what it is genetically programmed to do, and that that
Speaker 1: sort of cognitive restructuring will alleviate your your symptoms of annoyance.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try it, Okay, Well, I found that
Speaker 1: I'm One thing I try and do is just tell myself,
Speaker 1: don't be a jerk, don't be an idiot, that that
Speaker 1: tends to to help. Like if I I'll find like
Speaker 1: it'll be a situation where, um, and I think this
Speaker 1: is something a lot of people do, especially in this
Speaker 1: day and age. Something annoys you, and you have to vent,
Speaker 1: you have to say something about it. So in our
Speaker 1: social media age, there's this huge temptation to do a
Speaker 1: tweet about it, right and and and I find it
Speaker 1: will be a situation where like, somebody has like a
Speaker 1: really annoying aftershave or deodorant on, and I'll just really
Speaker 1: want to do a tweet about how it smells like
Speaker 1: a stick of right Guard exploded in the office. But
Speaker 1: but I hold off because I'm like, that's that's just
Speaker 1: doing nobody need good. It will be like a moment
Speaker 1: of relief, and then people would be like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is a great Twitter feed. He always does his gripe
Speaker 1: about the smells in the office. Right and so instead,
Speaker 1: are you now going to start saying to yourself right
Speaker 1: guard It exists in the world, Yes, exactly, it exists.
Speaker 1: It helps them to not stink. Exactly. Well, maybe you
Speaker 1: know right guard is better than the alternative, I guess, right, right,
Speaker 1: But it is worth noting that things like right Guard
Speaker 1: or fake lavender. Yeah, and we'll fake lavender is such
Speaker 1: a weird thing because actual lavender smells so good, it's wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but fake lavendar is like the death of my nose follicles. Yes,
Speaker 1: like being gas and U and I mean that is
Speaker 1: is specifically tied to our genetic structure. There's a gene
Speaker 1: called trip a one that's trp A one, and in mammals,
Speaker 1: it's primarily receptor for chemical irritants. I mean, because it
Speaker 1: basically breaks down. You can't feel your DNA getting mutated,
Speaker 1: so so our bodies need another alarm system. Um. And
Speaker 1: they've they've done these experiments where they found that if
Speaker 1: they removed this from a fruit fly, it will lap
Speaker 1: up cinnamon water like it was just normal water. Um.
Speaker 1: They've removed it from mice and the mice will just
Speaker 1: eat a whole bunch of a sabi and not care.
Speaker 1: It's used to help us pick up on harmful chemicals,
Speaker 1: but it's also it can also be uh be set
Speaker 1: up by by extremes of colder heat. It's uh basically
Speaker 1: this kicks in any time our bodies meet the outside world,
Speaker 1: so any number of like chemical or physical irritants that's
Speaker 1: what's happening. And it's really interesting why you would be
Speaker 1: annoyed by those smells because on a cellular level, it's
Speaker 1: saying like this is danger or could potential changer, and
Speaker 1: we don't know. Yeah, yeah, potentially, And certainly there has
Speaker 1: been you know, I'm not sure about current products, but
Speaker 1: they're hit. In the past, there has have been some
Speaker 1: concerns about various air fresheners. I mean, I'm sure they're
Speaker 1: so are for a lot of the products out there,
Speaker 1: about some of the chemicals that are involved in That's
Speaker 1: why people end up going for these these more natural
Speaker 1: products in any cases, because it's this whole question mark
Speaker 1: of what am I actually pumping into the air. So
Speaker 1: our bodies, Yeah, their bodies actually get in on the
Speaker 1: conversation too, and they're like, whoa, I think this might
Speaker 1: be harmful. Let's get away from this particular odor or funk.
Speaker 1: The funk coming in. It's the cloud of fake lavenger, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: rushing toward us. And actually that brings up another point
Speaker 1: when we're talking about actual funk in terms of like
Speaker 1: hygiene or also another huge thing, uh on airplanes coughing
Speaker 1: and sneezing. Another stand up comedian as He's and Sorry,
Speaker 1: has a bit where he's he's talking about somebody like
Speaker 1: flying into a rage at him about him having the sniffles,
Speaker 1: and he and the person's just like, you can have
Speaker 1: the sniffles for you know, however many hours and he
Speaker 1: was like, whoa, that was, you know, really an appropriate
Speaker 1: amount of anger over someone having the sniffles. But it
Speaker 1: can be annoying on one level. It is like this
Speaker 1: unpredictable sound, like when's it gonna stop, when's it gonna
Speaker 1: happen again? You know? And then if you add into
Speaker 1: that someone not covering their mouth when they cough, like
Speaker 1: that's the worst. And I think I think the reasons
Speaker 1: here pretty obvious, and that is that this is somebody's
Speaker 1: else's hygiene issue going on. They've got some sort of
Speaker 1: a bunk that we don't want to catch. So it's
Speaker 1: it's natural that we would want to avoid it at
Speaker 1: all costs. Okay, So that's why you see people on
Speaker 1: the airplane sometimes like constantly spring their hands and cleaning,
Speaker 1: or just George's bringing on like a tub of it
Speaker 1: and just you can't do that anymore, but you still
Speaker 1: bring on a tub of hand sanitizer and just and
Speaker 1: just glob it on specifically, what right you'd want a
Speaker 1: barrier of glob hand sanitizer? So glad they don't do that,
Speaker 1: let you do that anymore. Yeah. Well, even on taking
Speaker 1: the train to work, you know, somebody will cough and
Speaker 1: instantly all I can think about are those images where
Speaker 1: they show how far a cough travels, you know, where
Speaker 1: they show this like giant red cloud that stems out
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, like even when somebody's covering their mouth,
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of cringe. And then if they don't,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh, disease vector, throw that person from
Speaker 1: the tree. That's it. I mean that's because you're you
Speaker 1: are witnessing all of that. So yeah, we're trying to
Speaker 1: detect disease um and even decay right because certain smells
Speaker 1: and we're like whoa, uh, it's all very interesting how
Speaker 1: we are doing this on an unconscious level. Oh here's
Speaker 1: another one for our I think our last little bit
Speaker 1: on this one. I was once on the train and
Speaker 1: it was it was pretty crowded and uh, and somebody
Speaker 1: gets on and they're having a loud, annoying and appropriate
Speaker 1: conversation where it's like really mad, they're really irritated on
Speaker 1: this phone call. And then they add and this train
Speaker 1: is really crowded, and you know, that's one of my
Speaker 1: pet peeves. And I'm thinking, that's that can't really be
Speaker 1: your pet peeve. Don't act like you're the like one
Speaker 1: of the few people on earth who doesn't dig a
Speaker 1: crowded train. Like unless you were a, um, you know,
Speaker 1: like a groper on a like a Japanese subway, or
Speaker 1: you're a pickpocket, you're you're probably not going to be
Speaker 1: really wild about the idea of a really uber crowded train.
Speaker 1: But it's also a regular condition of at least in
Speaker 1: our city at peak times, you know, so you you
Speaker 1: come to expect this, but we still we never get
Speaker 1: quite used to it. You know, like there's nothing there's
Speaker 1: nothing sweeter than an empty train pulling up at the
Speaker 1: track to take you to work. I will say that
Speaker 1: at the peak of summer, when you're in the train
Speaker 1: and it's just like it's a hundred ten outside and
Speaker 1: drew inside the train. Um, it does kind of start
Speaker 1: to smell like the reptile house at the it does.
Speaker 1: There's a certain funk. But all of us being said,
Speaker 1: we still have not answered the question about why nails
Speaker 1: on a blackboard are so crowd thing. Yeah, go back,
Speaker 1: we'll get we'll get the crowds, but let's let's go
Speaker 1: to the nailboard thing. Well, before you get the nail
Speaker 1: board the I'm gonna we need to take a break.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we do. I know it's annoying, but we'll
Speaker 1: gree high back after this. This podcast is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel.
Speaker 1: At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation.
Speaker 1: Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers
Speaker 1: to life's questions. And we're back. So, yeah, we have
Speaker 1: crowds to discuss, and we also have nails in a chalkboard.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the big one. So let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and discuss nails on a chalkboard. It is the iconic
Speaker 1: annoying sound. And I think everyone responds the same to this.
Speaker 1: And this again, this is a universal thing. The jury
Speaker 1: is still out on exactly wine nails on chalkboards send
Speaker 1: shivers down our spine and make us clench our teeth.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen eighties, six study by doctors Lynn Helper
Speaker 1: and Randolph Blake and James Hildebrand, subjected volunteers like the
Speaker 1: fantasy artists who did all the token illustrations. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: what I mean. The name caught my eye. Um volunteers.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put volunteers and quotation marks, I think, uh
Speaker 1: to sixteen different sounds and found that the sound made
Speaker 1: from dragging a three pronged garden fork dragged across a
Speaker 1: piece of slate was the worst, which is kind of
Speaker 1: like mona of course, nodah. It was like that the
Speaker 1: high frequencies were actually the culprit. But they found that
Speaker 1: when they removed the high frequencies from the sound recording
Speaker 1: that that had no difference. Oh so it was the
Speaker 1: it was a combination of the high and the low.
Speaker 1: It was actually the middle frequencies that were driving everybody nuts.
Speaker 1: But still no solid reason for the response though. The
Speaker 1: study hazard a hazard a guess in which they positive
Speaker 1: that the frequency is really similar to the warning cries
Speaker 1: of certain monkeys and apes. Okay, so on a very
Speaker 1: like ancient level, we're back to this primordial form in
Speaker 1: the forest, and typically in in forest settings or or
Speaker 1: even on the savannahs. You'll have multiple animals that are present,
Speaker 1: but but but one prey animal, say giraffe or or
Speaker 1: or one monkey species will put out the call. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a predator in the area, and everything will spine right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we see this in a various nature documentaries, and one
Speaker 1: of the co authors, Random Blake, said, you know, he
Speaker 1: he feels like this is actually a good theory in
Speaker 1: that primate warning cries are some of the recordings that
Speaker 1: he has of them. He says, if I didn't tell
Speaker 1: you what you are listening to, you could easily think
Speaker 1: you were listening to fingernails on a chalkboard. But the
Speaker 1: studies other co author, James Hildebrand or hill in Brand,
Speaker 1: I should say, he disagrees. He says that the nails
Speaker 1: on chalkboard zone is just a very particular sound and
Speaker 1: a very particular reaction, and it's not the kind of
Speaker 1: reaction that you would have if you are encountered a
Speaker 1: dangerous animal. Well, yeah, I have to say, like when
Speaker 1: I when I've heard that sound in the past, I
Speaker 1: don't feel like I'm having that Oh my goodness, there's
Speaker 1: a saber tooth tiger in the area. Response Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: more of like, oh stop that. Yeah, and he says
Speaker 1: that the response has to do more with like friction
Speaker 1: and memory and it's not sound per se, but it's
Speaker 1: the image that's conjured up during that scraping, which I
Speaker 1: thought was really interesting because there is, uh, there is
Speaker 1: something very uh tactile even happening. Even though it's a
Speaker 1: sound that you're hearing, it's something that you can almost
Speaker 1: feel as if you were doing it yourself. Well, it
Speaker 1: also I don't know, you just can't help but think
Speaker 1: of claw us. You know, it's like claws and like
Speaker 1: Freddy Krueger or something, or or some sort of like
Speaker 1: sharp implement. It's just and it's also the person like
Speaker 1: it's in it's in many case. I mean you certainly
Speaker 1: you have situations where a teacher will do it accidentally,
Speaker 1: but so so often it was it's done by some
Speaker 1: jerk who's going, we're trying to get a rise out
Speaker 1: of somebody, So you end up associating, not associating the
Speaker 1: sound with the type of person who does annoying things
Speaker 1: just to watch people react. M it's a very bartsome
Speaker 1: some move. Yeah, that definitely definitely a bart move. Crowds. Crowds, Yes,
Speaker 1: so yeah, this this one lady on the train's pet
Speaker 1: peeve of large crowds. Why is this annoying? Like why
Speaker 1: don't we just want to get in there and just
Speaker 1: go elbow to elbow and just dig off the body
Speaker 1: heat like penguins. Well again, I think it's that predictive modeling, right,
Speaker 1: because if you have a crowd swelling around you, you
Speaker 1: you no longer have these visual markers. You're kind of
Speaker 1: getting lost in the crowd. You don't you're getting disoriented,
Speaker 1: and that could have you know, have these feelings of
Speaker 1: panic or specifically annoyance because hey where am I? You're
Speaker 1: you're in my way, and all of a sudden, um,
Speaker 1: this becomes sort of like a threat to you, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there have been the there have been various computer
Speaker 1: models have been together about how crowds behave, and I
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting that they pointed out the larger
Speaker 1: crowd becomes, the more they people in the crowd be
Speaker 1: can behaving like molecules and a fluid bouncing off one
Speaker 1: one of another at random, and eventually you reach the
Speaker 1: point where it becomes so jam packed that there's there's
Speaker 1: no control, like no, no individuals in control of the crowd.
Speaker 1: It's like the airplane situation of who's in control. I'm
Speaker 1: not in control what's going on, except on a much
Speaker 1: more real scale. I mean, that's why you have various
Speaker 1: large gatherings where things could out of hand and people
Speaker 1: end up getting trampled or pushed up against the fence. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the soccer riot, even on stuff like the
Speaker 1: the the hajj and and Mecca. I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: whole reason that when when you have large groups of
Speaker 1: people gathering, police like to to have a heads up
Speaker 1: on it, on it occurring. Um. One of the reasons,
Speaker 1: like it or not, that social media departments of various
Speaker 1: police departments are increasingly focusing on flash mobs because if
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot of people gathering in a place,
Speaker 1: even if it's something sort of simple like oh, you
Speaker 1: know a thousand people wearing party hats, well that's great,
Speaker 1: but it's still gonna be a thousand people suddenly appearing
Speaker 1: in a tight space, and that brings up various wild
Speaker 1: cards of human behavior and just sort of groupthink, or
Speaker 1: in this case, it's not even group think, it's just
Speaker 1: bodies behaving like molecules in a space. It's interesting too.
Speaker 1: I think in some of those studies protect to people
Speaker 1: who study um like egrass flows for public transportation, they
Speaker 1: noticed that when it starts to get somewhat crowded, that
Speaker 1: people actually do move in patterns like V formations, and
Speaker 1: it's weird that they naturally do this. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like the emergence that we've talked about before, how people
Speaker 1: just like there's sort of like one brain that takes
Speaker 1: over and and that actually those sort of formations aren't
Speaker 1: really helpful because they block, you know, the ways that
Speaker 1: you can sort of navigate the crowd. But then there
Speaker 1: is a tipping point where the crowd becomes there's so
Speaker 1: many people in the crowd that, like you said, them,
Speaker 1: it's like they behave erratically and it's like molecules bouncing
Speaker 1: off one another. But it's really fascinating, right, And then you,
Speaker 1: like you said, you get into big enough crowd and
Speaker 1: you're gonna lose your bearings. You're not gonna where you are,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna that excites and frighten us. Frightens us
Speaker 1: on a on a very primitive level, because um, I mean,
Speaker 1: just rewind back to ancient times and imagine yourself in
Speaker 1: some sort of a setting where there's the potential for
Speaker 1: that saber tooth tiger to be around the corner, and
Speaker 1: you don't know where you are, You don't know where
Speaker 1: you are in relation to your home base to cover,
Speaker 1: to where you just came from, and to where you're
Speaker 1: going your very life maybe at steak right, and if
Speaker 1: you don't have that blueprint, that predictive modeling, then everything
Speaker 1: is a threat, right because you're taking all that stimuli in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I do applaud Atlanta's Marta public transportation force the
Speaker 1: significantly cutting down on the number of saber tooth tiger
Speaker 1: attacks that occur every year. Well, I think it's all there,
Speaker 1: the posters that they've put up. It's just it's a
Speaker 1: there's a lot more awareness. Yeah, Yeah, don't don't feed them.
Speaker 1: It just encourages more saber tooth tigers to run around
Speaker 1: on the tracks. And definitely don't approach them and try
Speaker 1: to pet them. Yeah, even if they're wearing a top
Speaker 1: hat exactly, so pet peeves. There you go. We covered
Speaker 1: some of them, not all of them, but some of
Speaker 1: the big ones anyway, and the ones that have been studied,
Speaker 1: though I imagine everybody has some variation uh on these
Speaker 1: that they find it extra annoying. Well yeah, and some
Speaker 1: of it depends on the environment in which you grew
Speaker 1: up in, right, That's that's definitely going to call your perception.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. This podcast, though, it also serves as a
Speaker 1: nice sort of part two to the previous podcast we
Speaker 1: did about like why is the sound of gum chewing annoying? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we actually received a few different listener males about that.
Speaker 1: One we heard from listener An who writes in about
Speaker 1: miss aphonia. She says, Wow, I may have this, but
Speaker 1: I think it's also connected to my a d h D.
Speaker 1: I have a worker who pops her gum and makes
Speaker 1: your stuff nasally sounds, and it drives me nuts. I
Speaker 1: can't concentrate on conversations if there's quiet music or talking
Speaker 1: going on in the background. My absolutely worst trigger is
Speaker 1: the sound of something dragging on a cheap carpeting. An
Speaker 1: example of the kind you find in offices are dorms,
Speaker 1: especially socks on furniture or furniture dragging on it. Socks
Speaker 1: alone bother me and I hate wearing them to the
Speaker 1: sounds they make when being put on or taken off.
Speaker 1: Even thinking about it makes me feel icked out, so
Speaker 1: that that there's some inside there into a very particular annoyance.
Speaker 1: In this case, socks. I wouldn't have guessed socks. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't and I may have been kind of snickering a little,
Speaker 1: because I mean, for snee, socks are absolutely good. I
Speaker 1: think I like putting none pair of socks. That's because
Speaker 1: they're soft. They're soft. It's good time. But again, masophonia
Speaker 1: is it's those subtle sounds that drive people crazy. I
Speaker 1: recently read where someone was driven nuts by the sound
Speaker 1: of balloons being blown up and then ties that, yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody was ranting about yes specifically like you you go
Speaker 1: to an event and there's somebody making balloon animals, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like magicians clowns. I kind of go medieval on
Speaker 1: because it drives me nuts. Yeah, well there you go. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can definitely understand how socks could be annoying to somebody.
Speaker 1: Has you know, this subtle sound in the background that
Speaker 1: eventually leads to madness. We also heard from We Have
Speaker 1: by the Name of By the Name of ian Ian Wright.
Speaker 1: Soon it says I'm a big fan of the podcast
Speaker 1: started listening during the summer, and now I've listened to
Speaker 1: almost all of them. I just finished the Missophonia podcast,
Speaker 1: which totally blew my mind nonintended. I wondered why the
Speaker 1: sound of eating eating bothers me the way it does,
Speaker 1: except when I do it. It's not fun having this.
Speaker 1: I really like food and the people I'm with, but
Speaker 1: it's incredibly hard to concentrate and keep cool when all
Speaker 1: you hear is chewing, not to mention, you feel awful
Speaker 1: because something people need to do and generally enjoy, and
Speaker 1: it creates a layers of unwanted emotions. So I found
Speaker 1: that interesting here from somebody who who seems to experience
Speaker 1: something at least closer to miss aphonia than than than
Speaker 1: a lot of us, actually screed well in and I
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting about that is when we were
Speaker 1: looking into it, people who ignored their feelings tended to
Speaker 1: to actually experience them even more. And so I can't
Speaker 1: imagine how difficult that must because you're trying to manage
Speaker 1: the situation, right and you're with your loved ones, your friends,
Speaker 1: your family, trying to just eat a dinner and and
Speaker 1: to to feel that sort of anxiety just must be unbearable.
Speaker 1: So I know that there are some things that you
Speaker 1: can do some um coming into behavior therapy for that.
Speaker 1: So so although there's no cure, there are some some
Speaker 1: avenues you can take. Yeah, definitely and uh not related
Speaker 1: to the mesophonia. We also heard from a listener by
Speaker 1: the name of Annie, who also happens to edit this
Speaker 1: show for us. Yeah, Annie writes in and says, um
Speaker 1: at the end of your Nightmare podcast. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: this is a little late. You called for accounts from
Speaker 1: people who have died in their dreams. For eight years now.
Speaker 1: I've had dreams with a continuing storyline that takes place
Speaker 1: in a futuristic, war torn world of genetic modification. Did
Speaker 1: dreams don't come at frequent intervals, Um. Sometimes I have
Speaker 1: to wait weeks to find out what happened after I
Speaker 1: woke up from the last one. Each new one picks
Speaker 1: up where the previous one left off. The characters have
Speaker 1: undergone the passage of time. There are flashbacks to other dreams,
Speaker 1: and I can never predict what's going to happen. I've
Speaker 1: woken up stunned at the outcome of these dreams before
Speaker 1: and will consciously trut I every night to return to
Speaker 1: the story, usually to no avail. The funny thing about
Speaker 1: it to me is that the character and I say
Speaker 1: character because it was me, but much more awesome in
Speaker 1: every way. Uh, that was based off me, and the
Speaker 1: dream died after only about a year, so I'm not
Speaker 1: even in them anymore. I see it from the point
Speaker 1: of view of one of the other characters. The p
Speaker 1: o V switched over to the new character after the
Speaker 1: death of my own, which can sometimes be strange and
Speaker 1: unsettling to feel uh something so strongly while dreaming and
Speaker 1: then wake up and have your own very different take
Speaker 1: on the whole thing. Anyway, just thought you might find
Speaker 1: it interesting. Love the podcast je put the awesomeness, Well,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty awesome dream on several levels. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: I was so excited to hear about that because I've
Speaker 1: had something similar like that, but not to the degree
Speaker 1: that she has. And I really think that we should
Speaker 1: just all encourage her to write those dreams stands. I
Speaker 1: really feel like there are like three novels here or
Speaker 1: word time napping. I'm going to talk to Roxanne about
Speaker 1: getting that. Yeah, Annie, Annie needs to go into the
Speaker 1: slate chamber. And create some dreams. Yeah, because I've mentioned
Speaker 1: before how I returned to this setting. It's like some
Speaker 1: sort of unreal public transport underground train kind of situation.
Speaker 1: But there's not like an overarching story or character. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of a place that I seem to wind
Speaker 1: up and it seems very much a product of my
Speaker 1: daily commuting. But this, this is a whole another thing.
Speaker 1: And I mean to be killed off in your own
Speaker 1: dream after a year, we're written out of your dream.
Speaker 1: That's but I love that it continued. It was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that character came to an end, We're still going forward
Speaker 1: with this storyline here. Maybe it's not a dream, or
Speaker 1: maybe this is the dream? Are you going in parallel?
Speaker 1: Universal could be so so Annie, when you listen to this,
Speaker 1: just consider the fact that maybe this is the dream
Speaker 1: and the real world is the one where um, you're dead.
Speaker 1: I guess um. Okay, no, no, no, no, that is no.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to us, Annie, write down the dreams
Speaker 1: if you want to read the story. So, if you
Speaker 1: have something you want to share with us, be at
Speaker 1: a pet peeve um, a sound that annoys you, or
Speaker 1: some strange other world that you go to in your
Speaker 1: dreams um that involve the future of humanity. Let us know.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We are
Speaker 1: blow the Mind on both of those and we regularly
Speaker 1: update those feeds with all sorts of links to stuff
Speaker 1: where researching stuff, we're writing, stuff we're thinking about podcasting about,
Speaker 1: and we're always ready to hear from you there, yep,
Speaker 1: and you can always drop us a line at blew
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.