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. And
Speaker 1: before we get into the podcast, uh, I just want
Speaker 1: to mention real quick we have a new sponsor, UM
Speaker 1: new sponsor Netflix, So pay attention. Uh tune back in
Speaker 1: later on in the podcast, We're gonna have a special
Speaker 1: offer related to Netflix. And now for the topic of today, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one stems from your recent journey to New York
Speaker 1: for the World Science Festival two thousand twelve. How was it?
Speaker 1: I like how you say journey like I was in
Speaker 1: a covered wagon. Well, it's kind of a you have
Speaker 1: to go to Atlanta's airport, so that is a journey
Speaker 1: in and of it so traumatic. It was wonderful. World
Speaker 1: Science Festival two thousand and twelve. UM got to see
Speaker 1: a lot of really cool panels and one of them
Speaker 1: was UM the Science of Narrative, and it had a
Speaker 1: bunch of people on it UM including Joyce Carol Oates,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite authors, I mean, uh so it
Speaker 1: was great to see her talk about the process of
Speaker 1: writing and UM. Dr Kevin Oatley was another person's psychologist
Speaker 1: who who talked about several others I don't have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jeffrey eugen needs uh like Eugene and I d e
Speaker 1: yes at the end if I'm saying that correctly. He's
Speaker 1: also the author of Virgin Suicide and he read and
Speaker 1: I think the marriage plotted this new one, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: but he read an incredible um excerpt from Virgin Suicides
Speaker 1: to talk about some of what we'll talk about today,
Speaker 1: which is how readers are engaged in this world and
Speaker 1: meant to feel as though they occupy it themselves so
Speaker 1: much so that they began to um to really feel
Speaker 1: a reality in the text. And it's and what's awesome
Speaker 1: about that too, is that sometimes the reality is you're
Speaker 1: immersed in or kind of Nightmark Joyce Carol Oates, for example.
Speaker 1: I recently read her book Zombie, which is kind of
Speaker 1: a fictionalized narrative based on the life of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker 1: So you have a very disturbed individual who is plotting
Speaker 1: and trying to carry out these murders so that he
Speaker 1: can create a zombie out of somebody and keep them
Speaker 1: in his seller as a it's like kind of a
Speaker 1: sex slave. So it's a very dark tale, but you're
Speaker 1: so immersed in the narrative you find yourself kind of
Speaker 1: rooting for the guy. I mean, you're feeling for him
Speaker 1: because she's a talented writer, and via the narrative experience,
Speaker 1: you kind of become this character and on some level
Speaker 1: you want him to succeed. And it's it can be
Speaker 1: a very weird feeling in some of these It really
Speaker 1: messes with your mind. And that's really what we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about today. We're gonna talk about this idea that
Speaker 1: that fiction we usually think of as separate from ourselves,
Speaker 1: but the idea is can fiction transform our reality? And
Speaker 1: we were discussing this earlier that you know, usually you think, okay,
Speaker 1: the truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes that truth
Speaker 1: is actually inspired by fiction. And um, what I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about and what we talked about is, uh, this incredibly
Speaker 1: bizarre spate of bath salts that have been in the news.
Speaker 1: And by the time this airs will probably have a
Speaker 1: lot more information about this. But uh, if you guys
Speaker 1: haven't heard about this, this is actually a designer drug
Speaker 1: that is running a monk. Yeah. Not, it's not actually
Speaker 1: bath salts, So you don't have to worry about. Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, my grandma has some of those. She's going
Speaker 1: to have, right, She's gonna go have a cawgullan moment
Speaker 1: and then turn into a zombie. No. Uh, what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here again as a designer drug and the
Speaker 1: key ingredients UM that go into it or something called
Speaker 1: m D p V and I won't go way into that.
Speaker 1: Just think of it as a sort of like a
Speaker 1: cross between meth and acid because the nervous him really
Speaker 1: kicks in to overdrive and then a hallucinogenic state takes hold. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, math is pretty bad, but but maybe the
Speaker 1: ideas here maybe if you had acid to it, if
Speaker 1: he experiences somehow better. So let's talk about what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. You mentioned the guy eating the other dudes face.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I mean basically, I think the scenario was
Speaker 1: you went out of town for a week and then
Speaker 1: it seemed like the zombie holocaust. Almost coincidence, I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: we did. We had the incident with in Miami with
Speaker 1: the individual who allegedly on bath salts. UH is running
Speaker 1: around naked under an overpass. UH strips the homeless man
Speaker 1: and eats most of his face. Off eighteen minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the police finally show up and uh, and
Speaker 1: he like turns around and snarls at them, and they
Speaker 1: end up shooting him down there in the street. And
Speaker 1: that alone was pretty crazy. And then you had all
Speaker 1: these other incidents that were showing up, incidents that involve
Speaker 1: someone confessing to acts of cannibalism, man Um disemboweling himself
Speaker 1: and throwing his guts at police officers when they came
Speaker 1: to attend to him, which incidentally reminds me of a
Speaker 1: great scene from the Hong Kong film Story of Ricky
Speaker 1: and which, oh, the Ballad of Rickie Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: which it's like a prison movie with the most over
Speaker 1: the top violence everyon. There's a scene where an individual
Speaker 1: um is he gets beat by Ricky because Ricky is
Speaker 1: like a superman and he has to fight these these
Speaker 1: other villains inside the prison, and the gore effects are
Speaker 1: super cheesy but but kind of awesome. Like there's so
Speaker 1: it's so cartoony, you don't really feel the violence at all.
Speaker 1: But there's a character that Um splits his stomach in
Speaker 1: an act of sepku and then reaches in and grabs
Speaker 1: his own intestines out and starts strangling Ricky with them,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's hilarious, slash gross and also kind of awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it's the kind of thing it's hilarious slash gross.
Speaker 1: When it's encountered in a cheesy Hong Kong martial arts,
Speaker 1: perfectly fine there, but when it happens on the evening news,
Speaker 1: it is troubling. Well, and you know that the thread
Speaker 1: through all of these is that is zombie like behavior,
Speaker 1: right right, Mindless, flat, cheating behavior, cannot be reasoned with,
Speaker 1: can only be apparently gunned down on the streets like
Speaker 1: a dog. It's troubling because it's one of those that
Speaker 1: we we've been laughing about zombies for years now. I
Speaker 1: mean it's become it's become to the point where we're
Speaker 1: almost a little sick of it. Well, and it is
Speaker 1: so much in the culture, right, I mean, The Walking
Speaker 1: Dead is a show that is enormously popular from the
Speaker 1: graphic novel. Yeah, the CDC had in sort of Jess
Speaker 1: had Zombie Survival Kit about a year ago. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they were raising i think we've mentioned in a past episode,
Speaker 1: they were raising legitimate concerns about um, about diseases and
Speaker 1: the spread of disease and how to limit them, and
Speaker 1: how to respond to a situation where there's been sort
Speaker 1: of an outbreak or pandemic. All important stuff to know,
Speaker 1: and they were just sort of using zombies as a
Speaker 1: cool launching point to discuss that topic, and so you
Speaker 1: can kind of understand why the spate of incidents happened.
Speaker 1: And then people start to kind of go, wow, really,
Speaker 1: is it, like the zombie theme is fiction like that
Speaker 1: so deeply ingrained that is being um acted out in
Speaker 1: these very particular cases. Yeah, like me, because at first,
Speaker 1: first people to comment and we're probably, hey, looks like
Speaker 1: the zombie apocalypse is is happening, And then they were like, oh, seriously,
Speaker 1: maybe it is, and they remind himself, no, that's impossible.
Speaker 1: But maybe something is going on in our minds where
Speaker 1: the idea of the zombie is so ingrained in us
Speaker 1: from our fiction that it ends up boiling to the
Speaker 1: surface of our reality. Well, CNN interviewed a former Bath
Speaker 1: Salts user. Granted this is just one person, but Freddy
Speaker 1: Sharp is his name, and he described his own experience
Speaker 1: with great Bath Salt user name Freddie Sharp. I know
Speaker 1: because it's got the Freddie from nightmare on Elm Street too, Um,
Speaker 1: Freddy Sharp anyway, it's got that sort of image. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Freddie described his experience when he was strapped into a
Speaker 1: gurney in restrained by a paramedic. He said that when
Speaker 1: he was hallucinating about being in he was hallucinating about
Speaker 1: being in a mental hospital and being possessed by Jason
Speaker 1: Vorheis of you know Friday thirteenth. Oh he I figured
Speaker 1: which one that is. There's a particular Friday thirteenth film
Speaker 1: where Jason Vorhees does possess people. It's generally not highly
Speaker 1: thought of in the in the saga, right, but he
Speaker 1: does have bases uh in cannon for that behavior. Just
Speaker 1: but it is it's very odd to see that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not on to know that we have this dark
Speaker 1: side of our psyches and that we have these themes,
Speaker 1: these horror themes that are couched there. I mean they
Speaker 1: could be the fairy tales that we read when we
Speaker 1: were little, or it could be you know Oedipus right,
Speaker 1: um gouging out his own eyes, or Friday thirteenth or zombies. Um.
Speaker 1: I think what's scary is just to see that, you know,
Speaker 1: some of it is being played out. But we what
Speaker 1: we really want to talk about is is why we
Speaker 1: have these bits of fiction, these bits of storytelling in
Speaker 1: our minds. Um, it's so deeply entrenched in our minds,
Speaker 1: yet how we are actually working in concert with the material. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's the there's one view on everything where you
Speaker 1: and this is the view that absolutely doesn't hold up
Speaker 1: to the research. But he's still encounter inmplity of people
Speaker 1: where fiction it's fairy tales, it is for kids, it's
Speaker 1: the it's like it's this bubble of fantasy or this
Speaker 1: bucket of fantasy that you stick your head into when
Speaker 1: you don't want to deal with everything else. Just pure escapism,
Speaker 1: no connection to real issues, reality or anything. I've spoken
Speaker 1: to at least one friend of mine about the topic
Speaker 1: where he has to actually defend reading fiction to his father,
Speaker 1: who's who's who's totally into the nonfiction and you know,
Speaker 1: philosophical historical work, so what have you, And he has
Speaker 1: to actually defend fiction is a worthwhile thing to read.
Speaker 1: And I imagine that that's that's the sort of mindset
Speaker 1: he's coming from. The father in this case, is that
Speaker 1: fantasy and fiction is something that exists outside of the
Speaker 1: norm and is completely detached. But as we'll see in
Speaker 1: this episode, and as we saw in our research chere,
Speaker 1: the the roots of fiction uh are totally interwoven with
Speaker 1: our reality. Yeah. I mean basically, your friend and other
Speaker 1: listeners who may need to defend their own fiction consumption
Speaker 1: habits or should emerge from this podcast with a list
Speaker 1: of bullet points about why you should read it. Um.
Speaker 1: And one of the things we want to talk about
Speaker 1: is how we lose ourselves in fiction and how that's
Speaker 1: so important to something called theory of mind. Yes, so
Speaker 1: the theory of mind, um, which I'm sure we've discussed
Speaker 1: this in the past, but uh, it entails the ability
Speaker 1: of one person to understand another's perspective, all right, to
Speaker 1: empathize with, communicate with, to deceive and uh, if you'll
Speaker 1: think back to Blade Runner, uh, the motion picture, they
Speaker 1: had an empathy test to tell if someone was replicant android,
Speaker 1: a fake human, or a real human and uh, and
Speaker 1: it was a rather elaborate test, but that we actually
Speaker 1: have a test that we can use, particularly on children,
Speaker 1: because the theory of mine only kicks in after a
Speaker 1: certain point. But this test is called the false belief test,
Speaker 1: and it goes like this, Child one and Child Too
Speaker 1: are playing with a marble in a room. When they're done,
Speaker 1: they put the marble in a box. Child one leaves
Speaker 1: and child Too takes the marble out and puts it
Speaker 1: in a bag. When Child one returns to the room,
Speaker 1: where will she look for the marble? The correct answer is,
Speaker 1: of course, the box where she left it last. But
Speaker 1: children under the age of four always picked the bag
Speaker 1: because they lack theory of mind. And so some researchers
Speaker 1: argue that this is because before that age they lack
Speaker 1: the necessary language fluency to actually deal with the reality. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a New Scientist article from two thousand nine
Speaker 1: called language Maybe the Key to Theory of mind um
Speaker 1: And in that article they take a look at a
Speaker 1: fascinating case from Nicaragua in which a community of deaf
Speaker 1: people created their own sign language. And then so they
Speaker 1: create it on sign language, and the next generation improved
Speaker 1: on that sign language, and when given the false belief test,
Speaker 1: the younger members with a more advanced sign language performed
Speaker 1: better on the test. And we see that too with
Speaker 1: kids who are who have a steady diet of fiction. Right,
Speaker 1: they get a more nuanced idea of how other people's
Speaker 1: minds work, because that is what theory of mind is
Speaker 1: really for. It's this idea that you could kind of
Speaker 1: map out someone else's intentions. So when you read fiction,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're able to exercise this ability.
Speaker 1: You identify with the character's longings and frustrations. You can
Speaker 1: guess that they're hidden motives, their agendas, um and the
Speaker 1: relationships in their lives. So this is a way of
Speaker 1: of your brain trying to occupy someone else. That's really
Speaker 1: and this is actually called experience taking. And when you
Speaker 1: are lost in fiction, it's a little bit different from
Speaker 1: perspective taking. Right, perspective taking you can just kind of say,
Speaker 1: I identify, I get what this person is going through.
Speaker 1: Experience taking is taking those experiences for your own. And
Speaker 1: researchers at Ohio State University observed what happened when study
Speaker 1: participants lost themselves in fiction. Uh. They took a bunch
Speaker 1: of students and they had them read an engaging story
Speaker 1: about a person who had overcome adversities in order to
Speaker 1: vote that day, and they gave several different scenarios um
Speaker 1: of this, uh, this piece of fiction, and one of
Speaker 1: the different scenarios was that the the protagonists went to
Speaker 1: the same school as the fiction readers, right, and you
Speaker 1: know another protagonist did not go to the same school.
Speaker 1: So what they found is that the people who um
Speaker 1: who read the story about the protagonist going to the
Speaker 1: same school as them, were something like sixty five per
Speaker 1: cent uh likely to actually vote themselves or did vote
Speaker 1: themselves um when they had to vote, you know, the
Speaker 1: next week or so an election, as compared to the
Speaker 1: readers who read about a protectonist from another school. So
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is that actually like clear line of
Speaker 1: action from this piece of fiction that they were absorbed
Speaker 1: in this person's trials and errors and trying to get
Speaker 1: to vote this this um you know, these obstacles in
Speaker 1: this protagonist way to try to vote, and they felt
Speaker 1: so in line with her that it actually influenced their behavior.
Speaker 1: It's um. I mean, it's crazy when you think about
Speaker 1: like the nature of story, because on one level of
Speaker 1: the story is how we remember things. That's how we
Speaker 1: process things that have happened to us. The discussing is
Speaker 1: this in the past, you you take a series of
Speaker 1: events that just happened, you form the story in your mind.
Speaker 1: In which you were the center character or if you're
Speaker 1: being if you're able to empathize and use that theory
Speaker 1: of mind, then you're you're creating that's a similar story
Speaker 1: around another person to enhance your understanding of them. But
Speaker 1: stories stories even really exist, are they? They're kind of
Speaker 1: this linguistic viral thing that we have created to make
Speaker 1: sense of the world and to to serve as the
Speaker 1: bedrock for a culture. You know, because it's you. You
Speaker 1: take it the most accurate nonfiction book, the most not
Speaker 1: actuate accurate nonfiction story available, and you can still probably
Speaker 1: poke holes in it. You can say, is this really
Speaker 1: what is? Is Is this really what happened? And you have
Speaker 1: to say, no, it is a structure of what happened.
Speaker 1: It is a structuring of events and characters and people
Speaker 1: and attitudes and emotions, um, that is presented in the
Speaker 1: form of story. Yeah. And I do think it is
Speaker 1: interesting that a lot of it has to do in
Speaker 1: the way that it is presented, right, um, to to
Speaker 1: motivate people. UM. And I mean I'm thinking about a
Speaker 1: different study. Um. It was it was Ohio State as well,
Speaker 1: and this one had to do with sexuality and it
Speaker 1: was administered to seventy heterosexual men. And so again they
Speaker 1: have this narrative of this young man in different scenarios.
Speaker 1: In one scenario he's pretty much outed at the beginning, um.
Speaker 1: And another scenario he's outed later in the story and um,
Speaker 1: and in the third he's heterosexual. Well, what happened is
Speaker 1: that they found that, um, the people's attitudes towards this
Speaker 1: character when he was late outed, they felt much more um,
Speaker 1: accepting of him as homosexual when they found out after
Speaker 1: after sort of identifying with him, after going through this
Speaker 1: journey with him in this story, as opposed to when
Speaker 1: he was at it at the very beginning. And so
Speaker 1: that's why I think it's so fascinating that a lot
Speaker 1: of it has to do in the in the way
Speaker 1: that um, we present the details, that we create these
Speaker 1: sort of realities, um, and that it would actually affect
Speaker 1: how we perceive people. Yeah, I mean it's and you
Speaker 1: can kind of look at it too in terms of
Speaker 1: a nonfiction book, especially a nonfiction book about say, political issues.
Speaker 1: It's one person saying, hey, this is how the world works,
Speaker 1: and this is how it works best versus how it
Speaker 1: is broken, Whereas a narrative puts you in the shoes
Speaker 1: of someone experiencing some uh some some level of those events,
Speaker 1: and be it something that is supporting the uh an
Speaker 1: idea or opposing it. You know, you're you're put in
Speaker 1: those shoes. Well, let's let's crack a bit a little
Speaker 1: bit of science here and talk about mirror neurons and
Speaker 1: why we react the way we do to narratives, whether
Speaker 1: it's a text for a piece of music or a movie.
Speaker 1: All right, So the phase mirror neurons or mirror neurons,
Speaker 1: if you want to say it together, refers to neurons
Speaker 1: in the frontal cortex that fire both when you do
Speaker 1: something and when you see something else being done when
Speaker 1: you see someone else doing it. Okay, Uh, The and
Speaker 1: and very important here a subset of these neurons fires
Speaker 1: during your own actions, um, but inhibit when you just
Speaker 1: observe actions. So, uh, that way, the mirror neuron systems
Speaker 1: signal whether the action in question is your own or
Speaker 1: somebody else's. Right, So that way, you're not acting on
Speaker 1: what you're seeing. Right. So if you know that you're
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be the passive observer, then you don't
Speaker 1: try to go out on the baseball field. He'll and
Speaker 1: you know, try to hick that ball. UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, actually that's that's a good example. When you
Speaker 1: perform an action like throwing a baseball for the first time,
Speaker 1: this behavior gets encoded in a clutch of brain cells.
Speaker 1: But um scientists discovered that these brain cells also fire,
Speaker 1: as you say, when you see someone else perform the
Speaker 1: same action. And it also ends up sucking in emotional
Speaker 1: entanglement as well. And that's where it really gets interesting.
Speaker 1: And if you want to see an example of this,
Speaker 1: I invite you to view any sporting event, because you're
Speaker 1: seeing your neurons. You your neurons. It's like the mirror neurons.
Speaker 1: These are mirror neurons in action. When you go to
Speaker 1: the sporting event and you see a rabid crowd who's
Speaker 1: totally into the action on the field. Clearly there is
Speaker 1: one small group of people who are playing a game
Speaker 1: and being paid for it, and h then there is
Speaker 1: there is another group of people, a larger group of
Speaker 1: people that have paid to see the game and are
Speaker 1: not actually directly involved in the action, but their enthusiasm
Speaker 1: for it at times seems to not only equal but
Speaker 1: surpass that of the individuals on the field. And it
Speaker 1: it comes down to mirror neurons. They're able to observe
Speaker 1: the actions of another UH compared to their own experience,
Speaker 1: and the emotional context becomes intertwined between the two. What
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting is what happens when someone
Speaker 1: reads a text right, like, how do you know how
Speaker 1: they're reacting to that? UM? And it turns out that
Speaker 1: you can actually map metaphor in the brain using m
Speaker 1: r I. Researchers from Emory University had subjects read a
Speaker 1: metaphor metaphor and meta far metaphor UH involving texture, and
Speaker 1: the sensory cortex lit up here, and that the sensory
Speaker 1: cortex is responsible for perceiving texture through tough right, that
Speaker 1: became active. So you had metaphors like the singer had
Speaker 1: a velvet voice and he had a leathery hand, and
Speaker 1: this roused the sensory cortex, while phrases that matched for meaning,
Speaker 1: like the singer had a pleasing voice and he had
Speaker 1: strong hands did not. And I think that is what's
Speaker 1: so interesting about why our mind does engage so fiercely
Speaker 1: with literature or you know, really any kind of fiction,
Speaker 1: because again, you're in that theory of mind and your
Speaker 1: brain is reacting um to these words. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that a leathery hand can can make your
Speaker 1: sensory cortex go nuts. Um. And then in a study
Speaker 1: led by the cognitive scientists Veronica of the Laboratory of
Speaker 1: Language Dynamics in France, UM, she had them scan um
Speaker 1: words like or rather sentences like John grass the object
Speaker 1: and Pablo kicked the ball, and the m rs revealed
Speaker 1: that there was of course activity in the motor cortex.
Speaker 1: So to me, what this says is that storytelling fiction
Speaker 1: is really I mean, if we've from more motor cortex,
Speaker 1: is is kind of lighting up here. All of this
Speaker 1: is really important into the way that we actually developed
Speaker 1: as human beings. That storytelling is intrinsic um to actually
Speaker 1: motivating us and motivating the different parts of our body. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not just you know, part of our language center
Speaker 1: that is passive. Yeah. I found it interesting that, you know,
Speaker 1: discussions of how mere and neurons allowed us to to
Speaker 1: survive in an early stage because we're able to put
Speaker 1: our mind inside the mind of say a predatory animal
Speaker 1: or an animal that is surviving a winner. We see
Speaker 1: all the bear is surviving, and we can put ourselves
Speaker 1: in its footsteps in a way that it just cannot do. Um.
Speaker 1: And and then I the idea too that near and
Speaker 1: neurons allow us to, uh, especially with metaphor, to essentially
Speaker 1: run a simulation based on that metaphor. Metaphor enters in
Speaker 1: and we, no matter how silly or tried, the metaphor,
Speaker 1: and some level we can't help but fulfill it. To
Speaker 1: take one of the most famous metaphors in the English language,
Speaker 1: coaches from William Shakespeare from As You Like It says,
Speaker 1: all the world's a stage, and all the men and
Speaker 1: women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances,
Speaker 1: so you can't help it on some level. Imagine then
Speaker 1: everyone in your life standing on this stage, following these lines,
Speaker 1: entering in and out, and then they're there. Are various
Speaker 1: ramifications of what that scenario means. Likewise, metaphors that don't
Speaker 1: really work kind of fall flat because of that. Take,
Speaker 1: for instance, UH, this famous line she's a brick house. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously in the same way that we're not actually all
Speaker 1: players on a stage, she whoever she is, is not
Speaker 1: actually a brick house. And when I try to imagine
Speaker 1: this mysterious her as a brick house. It never works
Speaker 1: for me. Maybe I'm missing something, but I just imagine
Speaker 1: a woman made out of ricks. Well, this is it's
Speaker 1: attached to the song now, so of course there are
Speaker 1: parts of my brain that are singing it. Yea, the
Speaker 1: song is the song is is great. So it manages
Speaker 1: to make it fooliss into thinking that this means something
Speaker 1: where I'm not convinced it actually means anything, or if
Speaker 1: it means anything, it means that someone made a woman
Speaker 1: out of bricks, which is kind of cool too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of go alem kind of way. I guess, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's a funky way, right, and then then get
Speaker 1: down way. Um, but I think it's just so cool too.
Speaker 1: About you know, seeing that these mirror neurons are firing
Speaker 1: in the motor cortex, is that it's not just the
Speaker 1: motor cortex. It's actually like corresponding with what you're seeing.
Speaker 1: So if you're seeing someone pitch baseball, then your motor
Speaker 1: cortex neurons are firing, and and um, what would be
Speaker 1: related to the area that moves your arm and uh,
Speaker 1: and then also if you see someone playing soccer and
Speaker 1: you see the lake movements, then it's the same thing
Speaker 1: that that they're specific to with part of your body.
Speaker 1: So it's not just like, hey, this is the part
Speaker 1: of the of my brain that makes me move my limbs.
Speaker 1: It's your specific limbs. So yeah, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: burto echo. In his ugly it was in his book
Speaker 1: of essays, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Um, he
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time discussing just the nature of fiction,
Speaker 1: and he discusses it on all levels. He's talking about
Speaker 1: literary stuff, he's talking about comic books, he's talking about
Speaker 1: b movies, and he's talking about pornography at times, all
Speaker 1: levels of storytelling. By the way, this perfectly, this whole
Speaker 1: conversation about mirror neurons explains pornography, right Like if anybody's
Speaker 1: ever wondered why exists, which I don't think anybody probably
Speaker 1: wonders that this is the reason right here right well indeed,
Speaker 1: and the Echo goes into this a lot in in
Speaker 1: that book. I recommend picking it up. But he discusses
Speaker 1: particularly the use of everyday activities in certain books and
Speaker 1: certain films. For instance, he specifically mentions the James Bond novels,
Speaker 1: which if you read, say, Doctor No, a lot of
Speaker 1: crazy stuff happening, and the Bond is picting shooting people.
Speaker 1: I believe in Dr No. In the book itself, he
Speaker 1: wrestles a giant squid. It's easier to forget when people
Speaker 1: get all up tied about about the purity of James
Speaker 1: Bond and fiction versus film. Just remember he did wrestle
Speaker 1: a giant squid. Ones But but then, a lot of
Speaker 1: time is devoted in these books to Bond having dinner,
Speaker 1: to Bond eating things um or Bond having coffee, Bond
Speaker 1: doing things that we can relate to. Most of us
Speaker 1: cannot relate to being shot in the shoulder or wrestling
Speaker 1: a giant squid. There's only we can only become so
Speaker 1: immersed in bad activity. But if the author immerses us
Speaker 1: in these other activities that we do have experience with.
Speaker 1: Although I will say this, I was watching True Blood
Speaker 1: and there's just one point in which, um, someone stabbed
Speaker 1: another person in the hand with a fork. Now that's
Speaker 1: not the first time I've watched that on film at
Speaker 1: least um, But I immediately pulled my hand up because
Speaker 1: you can relate to something like that far more than
Speaker 1: you can to uh. I mean horr movies are a
Speaker 1: great example of this, and and directors who understand horror
Speaker 1: and how a version works for the viewer get this.
Speaker 1: If someone loses an arm, if like Arnold Swartz narrogets
Speaker 1: his arm blown off in a film or something, um,
Speaker 1: we can't relate to that. Most of us cannot relate
Speaker 1: to that. What that could be would be like it's
Speaker 1: it's out of our experience. However, if you have a
Speaker 1: character hold up their hand against someone like strikes at
Speaker 1: him a machete and they get a cut across the
Speaker 1: palm or something like that, or even like a paper
Speaker 1: cut times ten or yeah, yeah, we can relate or
Speaker 1: just a paper cut. Have someone get paper cut in
Speaker 1: the film, you have an entire horror film based on
Speaker 1: paper cuts, you know. But but we can relate to that.
Speaker 1: It's a more of an everyday event. And uh in
Speaker 1: any way, Burtlecca goes into it a lot more doubt.
Speaker 1: He also gets into the use of every day I
Speaker 1: think it's car rides that he discusses in Like the
Speaker 1: way to tell if you're watching a regular film or
Speaker 1: pornographic film is how long a car ride last in
Speaker 1: the film. The longer at last more likely that you're
Speaker 1: watching a pornographic film. All right, Okay, there we go.
Speaker 1: It's a marker. Um. All right, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but when we get back, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about empathy and fiction. Can can you increase
Speaker 1: your own empathy through fiction? And is there a downside
Speaker 1: the fiction? Alright, we're back. So empathy and fiction, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned, are there via mirror neurons, via theory of mine.
Speaker 1: We're reading these stories and we cannot help but become
Speaker 1: immersed in that character, be it James Bond wrestling a squid,
Speaker 1: or um the character in Zombie trying to kidnap somebody
Speaker 1: and keep them in their basement. Alright, so of course
Speaker 1: I have to mentioned study okay by Washington and Lee
Speaker 1: psychologist Dan Johnson. He had people read a short story
Speaker 1: that was specifically written to induce compassion in the reader,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to see not only a fiction increased empathy,
Speaker 1: but whether it would lead to actually helping someone. So
Speaker 1: he found that the more absorbed subjects were in the story,
Speaker 1: the more empathy they felt, and the more empathy they felt,
Speaker 1: the more likely the subjects were to help. When the
Speaker 1: experiment er accidentally in quotation marks UH dropped a handful
Speaker 1: of pens. UH. The highly absorbed readers were twice as
Speaker 1: likely to help out, which I thought was interesting that presumably,
Speaker 1: UM the researcher does this while they're reading and they're
Speaker 1: absorbed in the text. I would think that that would
Speaker 1: be they would be so absorbed that they wouldn't even
Speaker 1: notice the pens dropping. But that's a that's one little
Speaker 1: test that has been carried out. And then there are
Speaker 1: studies published in two thousand and six and two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine by Dr Keith Oatley. This is the guy
Speaker 1: that was at the World Science Festival UH. He reports
Speaker 1: the individuals who frequently read fiction performed better on theory
Speaker 1: of mind tests regardless of gender. Because we've heard this
Speaker 1: before that women are are more compassionate or have more empathy,
Speaker 1: and UH is sometimes pointed to because of more mirror
Speaker 1: neurons that they possessed. UM. But one such theory of
Speaker 1: mind test is called the mind's eye test, which participants
Speaker 1: look at photos of nothing but people's eyes and then
Speaker 1: have to describe what the people are feeling. We took
Speaker 1: this on the Facebook, didn't we? We did you? It
Speaker 1: fits the stereo thoughts you actually perform better on it
Speaker 1: than I did. I get a thirty on it, which
Speaker 1: is something. Yeah, I think the normal range is like
Speaker 1: thirty and anything over thirty like your super empathizer or
Speaker 1: something like that. So what is bad under under two? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm good. Yeah, you're cleared it by a couple points there. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's this idea that you could actually increase your
Speaker 1: own empathy through reading fiction. Hi is just sort of interesting, right,
Speaker 1: because it's helpful if you decrede stuff like flat land
Speaker 1: like flatland and flatland fan fiction. W you're just reading
Speaker 1: about shades. Well, you know what. Here's the thing, though,
Speaker 1: is that you ascribe meaning to nearly anything. So there's
Speaker 1: this is a really cool um thing that they did
Speaker 1: at the panel about the narrative of um or the
Speaker 1: science of narrative. They actually showed a film of a circle,
Speaker 1: a square, and um a triangle and anyway, the shapes
Speaker 1: move around inside this box and they kind of do
Speaker 1: things to each other. And after they share the film,
Speaker 1: they say that, how how many of you saw a
Speaker 1: story in this? And nearly everyone except for like one guy,
Speaker 1: raise their hand and then they sort to say, well,
Speaker 1: who saw a female and then other people say, who
Speaker 1: saw a male who saw someone trying to trap this
Speaker 1: other person in a room, and it was amazing, Like,
Speaker 1: we can't help but to create these stories. So we
Speaker 1: talked story of five like mad gods. Um. But then
Speaker 1: there there comes a question could there be a possible
Speaker 1: downside to this? Well? Um, I mean the big thing
Speaker 1: here is that by engaging us uh in these stories
Speaker 1: that that often have have important social context to them,
Speaker 1: we can we can use fiction to change the world
Speaker 1: for the better. But if we can change and when
Speaker 1: we say change the world, obviously none of these stories
Speaker 1: they are altering physical reality, but they can adjust culture
Speaker 1: in the way we view the world, um, such as
Speaker 1: the way some sitcoms are able to change the way
Speaker 1: and or influence the way that we view various social issues.
Speaker 1: All Right, there have been a bunch of studies that
Speaker 1: say that when people identify with characters like such as um,
Speaker 1: the gay characters there, that people are that more accepting
Speaker 1: of them. Or even our current vice president said that
Speaker 1: when talking about the gay marriage issue. UM, he said
Speaker 1: that he was really one over from watching what was which,
Speaker 1: which everyone got to laugh out of that, but it
Speaker 1: it lines up exactly with what we know about the
Speaker 1: power of of fiction and particularly popular media to alter
Speaker 1: the way that we view the world. So that's the thing, right,
Speaker 1: because when you are involved in fiction or some sort
Speaker 1: of narrative that is fictitious, you lose your sense of skepticism.
Speaker 1: And the researchers have seen this over and over again.
Speaker 1: When you are reading something that you know that is nonfiction,
Speaker 1: then you're apt to be much more critical of it,
Speaker 1: analyze a lot more. But if you know you're in
Speaker 1: a story, or you're lulled into a story, I guess
Speaker 1: you could say, um, then you you do lose skepticism.
Speaker 1: So if one sitcom could could influence me and help
Speaker 1: me decide that, yes, this group of people deserve rights
Speaker 1: that they don't have, could another sitcompetentially make me say
Speaker 1: this group of people do not deserve certain rights? Well, um, yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's the fear. Here. There's Jonathan Gotshall
Speaker 1: who is also on the panel. He wrote something called
Speaker 1: The Story Storytelling Animal has said that we are suckers
Speaker 1: for story. Lab studies show that we are deeply absorbed
Speaker 1: in a story. We lose our skepticism and we can
Speaker 1: be made to feel and believe just about anything the
Speaker 1: storyteller wants. And he actually brought up on the panel
Speaker 1: that that's mainly good. But then you think about the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen film The Birth of a Nation, which inflamed
Speaker 1: racist sentiments. This is the one where the clickklux klansmen
Speaker 1: or are riding around like victorious nights, um and uh,
Speaker 1: and they're fighting the evil um black man. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's. It's a very interesting and important film
Speaker 1: in terms of film history. And and if you've ever
Speaker 1: taken a history of film class, you've probably seen it
Speaker 1: or seen parts of it. Um. But it is not
Speaker 1: enforcing um good moral ideas right right, and it has
Speaker 1: I mean the plotline obviously has been manipulated to in
Speaker 1: do certain feelings and that actually did um that that
Speaker 1: gave sort of new life to the KLi klux klan
Speaker 1: um when the film was shown. So you know, he
Speaker 1: says it can go both ways. Um. There's also the
Speaker 1: idea of over consumption of media. Now when I say that, well,
Speaker 1: I see this this is for an entirely different podcast, um,
Speaker 1: but I thought it was interesting to mention. And when
Speaker 1: I when I stayed media, I'm talking about games or gaming. UM.
Speaker 1: Computer scientists Stuart Staniford says that the room this is
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting. I mean it's a little bit
Speaker 1: out there. Said that as the robot population surpasses humans
Speaker 1: and takes most of our jobs, but the least disruptive
Speaker 1: approach to managing this is for the underclass to disappear
Speaker 1: into technology mediated secondary universes um and that he can't
Speaker 1: help but see video games imagined here is a widely
Speaker 1: used opiate. So this is the Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: idea of over consumption. Because you know, there's there's this
Speaker 1: um other idea that back in the day, if you
Speaker 1: wanted a good story, you hope that someone in your
Speaker 1: circle was a really great aural storyteller. Right yeah, you
Speaker 1: would have someone tell that story, that story, or that
Speaker 1: joke or that whatever, that narrative experience. Let's go and
Speaker 1: hear it. The storytellers come into town, you know, let's go,
Speaker 1: let's go hear what they have to say. But now that,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can have any type of story any
Speaker 1: which way you want it, um from myriad bits of media,
Speaker 1: right um. And so there's an idea that it's really
Speaker 1: similar to an obesity epidemic that we evolved in a
Speaker 1: world where food was scarce, so we're very comfortable right now.
Speaker 1: And and so that you have this idea of like
Speaker 1: there's too much on the plate for us to consume.
Speaker 1: Because back in the old days they were there were
Speaker 1: only so many stories that could think really, they passed around.
Speaker 1: You had you had the creation story, the end of
Speaker 1: the world story. Um, and it is important, I guess
Speaker 1: when I'm you know, half joking there. But but but
Speaker 1: certainly in the olden days you had all these stories
Speaker 1: that that had definite meanings, that were important culturally, that
Speaker 1: culturally that were the bedrock upon which civilization existed. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean you had stories in which positive values were
Speaker 1: tested and found to be held true, negative values are
Speaker 1: tested and found to be false. Where something simple has
Speaker 1: proven complex, where something complex has proven simple, where the
Speaker 1: other has proven normal than normal has proven other. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are all about maintaining a certain worldview. And today
Speaker 1: are our stories of We have more of them, and
Speaker 1: some of them are are less involved in maintaining the
Speaker 1: fabric of our reality, but they're all still uh engaging
Speaker 1: in that conversation on one level or another. Well, and
Speaker 1: to that point, I wanted to to to leave you
Speaker 1: with this um. This quote from Jonathan Gottshaw um about
Speaker 1: storytelling and no matter how much we consume or don't consume,
Speaker 1: he says, humans aren't really Earthlings. Above all, we are
Speaker 1: citizens of an omnidimensional virtual world called Storyland. Of course,
Speaker 1: our bodies are always fixed at a particular time and
Speaker 1: place on planet Earth. But our minds are always free
Speaker 1: to voyage in Storyland, and they you, They voyage through
Speaker 1: stories from most of the day and into the night.
Speaker 1: It's wrong to think of story as a mirror frill
Speaker 1: in human life. We live most of our lives in
Speaker 1: various kinds of story. Story, as much as upright posture,
Speaker 1: tool use, language, or intelligence, is what makes us human.
Speaker 1: So I thought was really interesting because we talked about
Speaker 1: even daydreaming, that that we uh, we daydream like half
Speaker 1: of our waking hours away. Right, I'm sorry, what are
Speaker 1: you saying? Nice? Nice? All right, Well, let's pull open
Speaker 1: the mail bag, bring it over here. I think it's funny.
Speaker 1: You calm robot, but I call him Arnie. We have
Speaker 1: a different relationship with robot. You have more empathy. You
Speaker 1: you're firing up more of those mirror neurons. Do you
Speaker 1: think he has a limp? It looks like he's not
Speaker 1: walking correctly. All right, So here's a little bit of
Speaker 1: listener mail from Ann and Wrightson says, sorry for the
Speaker 1: slow response. I've been meaning to write until you have tickled.
Speaker 1: I was to hear your honorary air response my email below,
Speaker 1: and her email was the one about uh where she
Speaker 1: said words and it was about how I used frank
Speaker 1: and beans to describe penis and yes, to do it
Speaker 1: again with kind okay, but anyway, she was responding to
Speaker 1: to that, and and and we we addressed it, you know,
Speaker 1: and and sort of we gave our perspective on on
Speaker 1: presenting material for various age groups and all. Anyway, she
Speaker 1: continues and says, it gave me an entirely new perspective
Speaker 1: on some of the pressures and issues you were dealing with.
Speaker 1: I stand by my opinion, but definitely understand your position
Speaker 1: better now see empathizing. I know we can't help ourselves. Um,
Speaker 1: She says. I also wanted to let you know how
Speaker 1: much I've been enjoying the Lucid Dreaming theme. I'm a
Speaker 1: world class dreamer. Last night was a multi generational saga
Speaker 1: set in the early nineteenth century night and often have
Speaker 1: quite bizarre dreams, dreams within dreams, whatever. But despite decades
Speaker 1: of interest in the topic, I've never managed a lucid dream.
Speaker 1: What I can't seem to do is make that first
Speaker 1: step in the process, knowing that you're dreaming and taking control.
Speaker 1: Oh well, it doesn't stop me from flying and sometimes
Speaker 1: even underwater swimming, which is pretty cool and I think
Speaker 1: much more unusual. Good flying all the best, man, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try that underwater flying. Yeah, well, I've I've definitely
Speaker 1: had underwater dreams before, like one where I was chasing
Speaker 1: a sorcerer across the ocean floor. He had a book
Speaker 1: or something. But the other night I just had one
Speaker 1: of those dreams where I thought I'd pee pee the beds.
Speaker 1: So those aren't very exciting, but happy ending I could
Speaker 1: not pee the bed. Oh my goodness, what have you
Speaker 1: had these dreams before? Yes, I'm sorry, there's so much.
Speaker 1: There's so many words there that I want to playoff of,
Speaker 1: but I won't out of interest of um keeping it
Speaker 1: clean folks. Okay, Well, I just find it in right
Speaker 1: because I was talking to a group of friends and
Speaker 1: out of four or five of us, only two of
Speaker 1: us claim to have had dreams in which they were
Speaker 1: peeing that they it and then we'll to find find
Speaker 1: that they had not. So oh well, you know, actually
Speaker 1: I do take that back now, and I'm focusing more.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, my body is mainly it is basically saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to get up and use the restroom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: flying is better. I'm not. I'm something everybody wanted to know.
Speaker 1: If there you go, let's keep to the flying all right. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to write into us and you want
Speaker 1: to let us know about your fiction versus reality, um idea,
Speaker 1: Where do you stand on this? How do you think
Speaker 1: fiction alters our perceptions of reality or does it, as
Speaker 1: with the works of say Suttercane, actually change physical reality.
Speaker 1: Let us know. You can find us on Facebook where
Speaker 1: we are Stuffed to Blow Your Mind, or you can
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter where we are Blow the Mind,
Speaker 1: and you can always drop us a line at Blew
Speaker 1: the Mind at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
Speaker 1: How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
Speaker 1: and flexing possibilities of tomorrow.