WEBVTT - Fiction: Reality's Secret Master 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:14.040 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:16.800 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:18.919 before we get into the podcast, uh, I just want 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:21.320 to mention real quick we have a new sponsor, UM 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:25.279 new sponsor Netflix, So pay attention. Uh tune back in 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:27.120 later on in the podcast, We're gonna have a special 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:32.120 offer related to Netflix. And now for the topic of today, Yeah, 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.560 this one stems from your recent journey to New York 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:38.720 for the World Science Festival two thousand twelve. How was it? 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:40.960 I like how you say journey like I was in 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:43.640 a covered wagon. Well, it's kind of a you have 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.839 to go to Atlanta's airport, so that is a journey 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:49.320 in and of it so traumatic. It was wonderful. World 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:53.000 Science Festival two thousand and twelve. UM got to see 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.600 a lot of really cool panels and one of them 0:00:55.720 --> 0:01:01.240 was UM the Science of Narrative, and it had a 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:06.120 bunch of people on it UM including Joyce Carol Oates, 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:11.679 one of my favorite authors, I mean, uh so it 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:13.560 was great to see her talk about the process of 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:18.800 writing and UM. Dr Kevin Oatley was another person's psychologist 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:23.280 who who talked about several others I don't have. Yeah, 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:26.399 Jeffrey eugen needs uh like Eugene and I d e 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:28.520 yes at the end if I'm saying that correctly. He's 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.760 also the author of Virgin Suicide and he read and 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.479 I think the marriage plotted this new one, right, Yes, 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:39.200 but he read an incredible um excerpt from Virgin Suicides 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:41.640 to talk about some of what we'll talk about today, 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:46.520 which is how readers are engaged in this world and 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:50.040 meant to feel as though they occupy it themselves so 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:54.400 much so that they began to um to really feel 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:58.120 a reality in the text. And it's and what's awesome 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:00.160 about that too, is that sometimes the reality is you're 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:04.280 immersed in or kind of Nightmark Joyce Carol Oates, for example. 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:06.720 I recently read her book Zombie, which is kind of 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:11.600 a fictionalized narrative based on the life of Jeffrey Dahmer. 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:15.040 So you have a very disturbed individual who is plotting 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:18.080 and trying to carry out these murders so that he 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:21.120 can create a zombie out of somebody and keep them 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.200 in his seller as a it's like kind of a 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.240 sex slave. So it's a very dark tale, but you're 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:30.680 so immersed in the narrative you find yourself kind of 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:33.120 rooting for the guy. I mean, you're feeling for him 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:37.480 because she's a talented writer, and via the narrative experience, 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:41.880 you kind of become this character and on some level 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:44.639 you want him to succeed. And it's it can be 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:47.240 a very weird feeling in some of these It really 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:48.919 messes with your mind. And that's really what we're gonna 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:51.280 talk about today. We're gonna talk about this idea that 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:54.680 that fiction we usually think of as separate from ourselves, 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:59.720 but the idea is can fiction transform our reality? And 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.880 we were discussing this earlier that you know, usually you think, okay, 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:08.000 the truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes that truth 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:12.000 is actually inspired by fiction. And um, what I'm thinking 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:16.040 about and what we talked about is, uh, this incredibly 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:21.799 bizarre spate of bath salts that have been in the news. 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:23.560 And by the time this airs will probably have a 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:26.880 lot more information about this. But uh, if you guys 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:30.920 haven't heard about this, this is actually a designer drug 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:33.280 that is running a monk. Yeah. Not, it's not actually 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:35.120 bath salts, So you don't have to worry about. Oh 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:38.160 my goodness, my grandma has some of those. She's going 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:41.600 to have, right, She's gonna go have a cawgullan moment 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.200 and then turn into a zombie. No. Uh, what we're 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:46.720 talking about here again as a designer drug and the 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:50.080 key ingredients UM that go into it or something called 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.920 m D p V and I won't go way into that. 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:55.960 Just think of it as a sort of like a 0:03:55.960 --> 0:04:00.400 cross between meth and acid because the nervous him really 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:05.080 kicks in to overdrive and then a hallucinogenic state takes hold. Well, 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:07.480 you know, math is pretty bad, but but maybe the 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:09.840 ideas here maybe if you had acid to it, if 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:12.760 he experiences somehow better. So let's talk about what we're 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.560 talking about. You mentioned the guy eating the other dudes face. 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:18.760 Oh well, I mean basically, I think the scenario was 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:20.839 you went out of town for a week and then 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:25.760 it seemed like the zombie holocaust. Almost coincidence, I don't know. Well, 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:27.320 we did. We had the incident with in Miami with 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:30.880 the individual who allegedly on bath salts. UH is running 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:34.240 around naked under an overpass. UH strips the homeless man 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:37.960 and eats most of his face. Off eighteen minutes. Yeah, 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:40.360 and then the police finally show up and uh, and 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:42.200 he like turns around and snarls at them, and they 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:44.840 end up shooting him down there in the street. And 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:46.720 that alone was pretty crazy. And then you had all 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.200 these other incidents that were showing up, incidents that involve 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:54.119 someone confessing to acts of cannibalism, man Um disemboweling himself 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:56.279 and throwing his guts at police officers when they came 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:59.480 to attend to him, which incidentally reminds me of a 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:03.479 great scene from the Hong Kong film Story of Ricky 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.800 and which, oh, the Ballad of Rickie Yeah, yeah, and 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:11.039 which it's like a prison movie with the most over 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:13.240 the top violence everyon. There's a scene where an individual 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:15.680 um is he gets beat by Ricky because Ricky is 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:18.240 like a superman and he has to fight these these 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:22.640 other villains inside the prison, and the gore effects are 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:25.159 super cheesy but but kind of awesome. Like there's so 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:28.560 it's so cartoony, you don't really feel the violence at all. 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:32.000 But there's a character that Um splits his stomach in 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.359 an act of sepku and then reaches in and grabs 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:37.599 his own intestines out and starts strangling Ricky with them, 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:42.200 and uh, it's hilarious, slash gross and also kind of awesome. Yeah, 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.200 but but it's the kind of thing it's hilarious slash gross. 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.120 When it's encountered in a cheesy Hong Kong martial arts, 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:52.080 perfectly fine there, but when it happens on the evening news, 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:55.520 it is troubling. Well, and you know that the thread 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:58.000 through all of these is that is zombie like behavior, 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:02.720 right right, Mindless, flat, cheating behavior, cannot be reasoned with, 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.360 can only be apparently gunned down on the streets like 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:09.440 a dog. It's troubling because it's one of those that 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:11.800 we we've been laughing about zombies for years now. I 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.320 mean it's become it's become to the point where we're 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:16.920 almost a little sick of it. Well, and it is 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:19.520 so much in the culture, right, I mean, The Walking 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:24.080 Dead is a show that is enormously popular from the 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:28.200 graphic novel. Yeah, the CDC had in sort of Jess 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.480 had Zombie Survival Kit about a year ago. Yeah, because 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:35.080 they were raising i think we've mentioned in a past episode, 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:40.120 they were raising legitimate concerns about um, about diseases and 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:41.960 the spread of disease and how to limit them, and 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.680 how to respond to a situation where there's been sort 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.479 of an outbreak or pandemic. All important stuff to know, 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:49.200 and they were just sort of using zombies as a 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:53.080 cool launching point to discuss that topic, and so you 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:56.480 can kind of understand why the spate of incidents happened. 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:58.800 And then people start to kind of go, wow, really, 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:01.760 is it, like the zombie theme is fiction like that 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:06.719 so deeply ingrained that is being um acted out in 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:10.000 these very particular cases. Yeah, like me, because at first, 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:12.840 first people to comment and we're probably, hey, looks like 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:17.000 the zombie apocalypse is is happening, And then they were like, oh, seriously, 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:19.280 maybe it is, and they remind himself, no, that's impossible. 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:22.560 But maybe something is going on in our minds where 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.120 the idea of the zombie is so ingrained in us 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:27.800 from our fiction that it ends up boiling to the 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:31.560 surface of our reality. Well, CNN interviewed a former Bath 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:34.680 Salts user. Granted this is just one person, but Freddy 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:37.400 Sharp is his name, and he described his own experience 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:40.360 with great Bath Salt user name Freddie Sharp. I know 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:46.400 because it's got the Freddie from nightmare on Elm Street too, Um, 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:50.160 Freddy Sharp anyway, it's got that sort of image. But anyway, 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:53.200 Freddie described his experience when he was strapped into a 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:55.480 gurney in restrained by a paramedic. He said that when 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:59.160 he was hallucinating about being in he was hallucinating about 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:02.120 being in a mental hospital and being possessed by Jason 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:06.720 Vorheis of you know Friday thirteenth. Oh he I figured 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:10.200 which one that is. There's a particular Friday thirteenth film 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.960 where Jason Vorhees does possess people. It's generally not highly 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:17.760 thought of in the in the saga, right, but he 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:21.360 does have bases uh in cannon for that behavior. Just 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.920 but it is it's very odd to see that. I mean, 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:28.840 it's not on to know that we have this dark 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:31.800 side of our psyches and that we have these themes, 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:35.480 these horror themes that are couched there. I mean they 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:37.199 could be the fairy tales that we read when we 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.319 were little, or it could be you know Oedipus right, 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:44.720 um gouging out his own eyes, or Friday thirteenth or zombies. Um. 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:47.040 I think what's scary is just to see that, you know, 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:49.480 some of it is being played out. But we what 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.320 we really want to talk about is is why we 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:56.000 have these bits of fiction, these bits of storytelling in 0:08:56.679 --> 0:09:01.360 our minds. Um, it's so deeply entrenched in our minds, 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:05.160 yet how we are actually working in concert with the material. Yeah, 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:07.640 because there's the there's one view on everything where you 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:10.000 and this is the view that absolutely doesn't hold up 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.240 to the research. But he's still encounter inmplity of people 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:16.000 where fiction it's fairy tales, it is for kids, it's 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:18.800 the it's like it's this bubble of fantasy or this 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:22.200 bucket of fantasy that you stick your head into when 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:25.880 you don't want to deal with everything else. Just pure escapism, 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.120 no connection to real issues, reality or anything. I've spoken 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:31.920 to at least one friend of mine about the topic 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:35.600 where he has to actually defend reading fiction to his father, 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:38.800 who's who's who's totally into the nonfiction and you know, 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:42.640 philosophical historical work, so what have you, And he has 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.360 to actually defend fiction is a worthwhile thing to read. 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:48.880 And I imagine that that's that's the sort of mindset 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:50.960 he's coming from. The father in this case, is that 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.600 fantasy and fiction is something that exists outside of the 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:58.200 norm and is completely detached. But as we'll see in 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:00.280 this episode, and as we saw in our research chere, 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:07.040 the the roots of fiction uh are totally interwoven with 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:09.360 our reality. Yeah. I mean basically, your friend and other 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.120 listeners who may need to defend their own fiction consumption 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:14.800 habits or should emerge from this podcast with a list 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.520 of bullet points about why you should read it. Um. 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:19.840 And one of the things we want to talk about 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:23.280 is how we lose ourselves in fiction and how that's 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:27.640 so important to something called theory of mind. Yes, so 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.760 the theory of mind, um, which I'm sure we've discussed 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:33.559 this in the past, but uh, it entails the ability 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.959 of one person to understand another's perspective, all right, to 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:42.960 empathize with, communicate with, to deceive and uh, if you'll 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:47.240 think back to Blade Runner, uh, the motion picture, they 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:52.000 had an empathy test to tell if someone was replicant android, 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.200 a fake human, or a real human and uh, and 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:58.160 it was a rather elaborate test, but that we actually 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:01.319 have a test that we can use, particularly on children, 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:05.520 because the theory of mine only kicks in after a 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.600 certain point. But this test is called the false belief test, 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:11.040 and it goes like this, Child one and Child Too 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.760 are playing with a marble in a room. When they're done, 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:18.120 they put the marble in a box. Child one leaves 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:20.960 and child Too takes the marble out and puts it 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:24.400 in a bag. When Child one returns to the room, 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:27.320 where will she look for the marble? The correct answer is, 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.040 of course, the box where she left it last. But 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.480 children under the age of four always picked the bag 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.920 because they lack theory of mind. And so some researchers 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:39.360 argue that this is because before that age they lack 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:44.840 the necessary language fluency to actually deal with the reality. Um. 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:47.680 There was a New Scientist article from two thousand nine 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:50.679 called language Maybe the Key to Theory of mind um 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:53.559 And in that article they take a look at a 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:56.480 fascinating case from Nicaragua in which a community of deaf 0:11:56.520 --> 0:12:01.280 people created their own sign language. And then so they 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:03.880 create it on sign language, and the next generation improved 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:07.199 on that sign language, and when given the false belief test, 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:11.160 the younger members with a more advanced sign language performed 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:14.440 better on the test. And we see that too with 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.719 kids who are who have a steady diet of fiction. Right, 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:20.880 they get a more nuanced idea of how other people's 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:23.240 minds work, because that is what theory of mind is 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:25.960 really for. It's this idea that you could kind of 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.720 map out someone else's intentions. So when you read fiction, 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:32.600 all of a sudden, you're able to exercise this ability. 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:36.199 You identify with the character's longings and frustrations. You can 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.880 guess that they're hidden motives, their agendas, um and the 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.760 relationships in their lives. So this is a way of 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.960 of your brain trying to occupy someone else. That's really 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:52.440 and this is actually called experience taking. And when you 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:54.720 are lost in fiction, it's a little bit different from 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.400 perspective taking. Right, perspective taking you can just kind of say, 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.320 I identify, I get what this person is going through. 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:05.040 Experience taking is taking those experiences for your own. And 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:08.960 researchers at Ohio State University observed what happened when study 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:12.040 participants lost themselves in fiction. Uh. They took a bunch 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:15.480 of students and they had them read an engaging story 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:18.240 about a person who had overcome adversities in order to 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:23.080 vote that day, and they gave several different scenarios um 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.560 of this, uh, this piece of fiction, and one of 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:30.160 the different scenarios was that the the protagonists went to 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:34.840 the same school as the fiction readers, right, and you 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.440 know another protagonist did not go to the same school. 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:42.199 So what they found is that the people who um 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:44.920 who read the story about the protagonist going to the 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:48.720 same school as them, were something like sixty five per 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:53.360 cent uh likely to actually vote themselves or did vote 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.440 themselves um when they had to vote, you know, the 0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:01.319 next week or so an election, as compared to the 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:04.959 readers who read about a protectonist from another school. So 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:07.440 what you're seeing is that actually like clear line of 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:11.880 action from this piece of fiction that they were absorbed 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:16.880 in this person's trials and errors and trying to get 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:19.840 to vote this this um you know, these obstacles in 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:22.480 this protagonist way to try to vote, and they felt 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.440 so in line with her that it actually influenced their behavior. 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:29.000 It's um. I mean, it's crazy when you think about 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:31.800 like the nature of story, because on one level of 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:34.160 the story is how we remember things. That's how we 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:36.960 process things that have happened to us. The discussing is 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.320 this in the past, you you take a series of 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.240 events that just happened, you form the story in your mind. 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:44.840 In which you were the center character or if you're 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.480 being if you're able to empathize and use that theory 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.480 of mind, then you're you're creating that's a similar story 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:54.360 around another person to enhance your understanding of them. But 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:58.000 stories stories even really exist, are they? They're kind of 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:02.960 this linguistic viral thing that we have created to make 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.720 sense of the world and to to serve as the 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:10.000 bedrock for a culture. You know, because it's you. You 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:12.800 take it the most accurate nonfiction book, the most not 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:17.360 actuate accurate nonfiction story available, and you can still probably 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:19.600 poke holes in it. You can say, is this really 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:22.280 what is? Is Is this really what happened? And you have 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:24.720 to say, no, it is a structure of what happened. 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:27.720 It is a structuring of events and characters and people 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:32.160 and attitudes and emotions, um, that is presented in the 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.000 form of story. Yeah. And I do think it is 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:37.600 interesting that a lot of it has to do in 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:40.480 the way that it is presented, right, um, to to 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.800 motivate people. UM. And I mean I'm thinking about a 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:47.280 different study. Um. It was it was Ohio State as well, 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:51.200 and this one had to do with sexuality and it 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:55.560 was administered to seventy heterosexual men. And so again they 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:59.640 have this narrative of this young man in different scenarios. 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:04.840 In one scenario he's pretty much outed at the beginning, um. 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:10.960 And another scenario he's outed later in the story and um, 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:14.160 and in the third he's heterosexual. Well, what happened is 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:19.000 that they found that, um, the people's attitudes towards this 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:25.520 character when he was late outed, they felt much more um, 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:30.200 accepting of him as homosexual when they found out after 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:32.680 after sort of identifying with him, after going through this 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:36.480 journey with him in this story, as opposed to when 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:39.200 he was at it at the very beginning. And so 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:42.120 that's why I think it's so fascinating that a lot 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:43.640 of it has to do in the in the way 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.520 that um, we present the details, that we create these 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.920 sort of realities, um, and that it would actually affect 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:53.560 how we perceive people. Yeah, I mean it's and you 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:55.120 can kind of look at it too in terms of 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:59.680 a nonfiction book, especially a nonfiction book about say, political issues. 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:02.600 It's one person saying, hey, this is how the world works, 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:04.840 and this is how it works best versus how it 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:08.399 is broken, Whereas a narrative puts you in the shoes 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:13.240 of someone experiencing some uh some some level of those events, 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.600 and be it something that is supporting the uh an 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:21.320 idea or opposing it. You know, you're you're put in 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:23.880 those shoes. Well, let's let's crack a bit a little 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:27.520 bit of science here and talk about mirror neurons and 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:30.720 why we react the way we do to narratives, whether 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:33.040 it's a text for a piece of music or a movie. 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.960 All right, So the phase mirror neurons or mirror neurons, 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.200 if you want to say it together, refers to neurons 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:42.879 in the frontal cortex that fire both when you do 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:46.240 something and when you see something else being done when 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.840 you see someone else doing it. Okay, Uh, The and 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:52.600 and very important here a subset of these neurons fires 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.239 during your own actions, um, but inhibit when you just 0:17:56.280 --> 0:18:00.000 observe actions. So, uh, that way, the mirror neuron systems 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:02.879 signal whether the action in question is your own or 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:06.080 somebody else's. Right, So that way, you're not acting on 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:08.960 what you're seeing. Right. So if you know that you're 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:12.160 you're supposed to be the passive observer, then you don't 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:14.359 try to go out on the baseball field. He'll and 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:18.120 you know, try to hick that ball. UM. So yeah, 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:19.960 I mean, actually that's that's a good example. When you 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.440 perform an action like throwing a baseball for the first time, 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:26.399 this behavior gets encoded in a clutch of brain cells. 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:29.520 But um scientists discovered that these brain cells also fire, 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:31.439 as you say, when you see someone else perform the 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:35.280 same action. And it also ends up sucking in emotional 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:38.720 entanglement as well. And that's where it really gets interesting. 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:40.720 And if you want to see an example of this, 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.200 I invite you to view any sporting event, because you're 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:50.520 seeing your neurons. You your neurons. It's like the mirror neurons. 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:53.720 These are mirror neurons in action. When you go to 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.359 the sporting event and you see a rabid crowd who's 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:59.679 totally into the action on the field. Clearly there is 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.520 one small group of people who are playing a game 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:05.439 and being paid for it, and h then there is 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:07.760 there is another group of people, a larger group of 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:10.440 people that have paid to see the game and are 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.880 not actually directly involved in the action, but their enthusiasm 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.320 for it at times seems to not only equal but 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.160 surpass that of the individuals on the field. And it 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:23.359 it comes down to mirror neurons. They're able to observe 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:26.200 the actions of another UH compared to their own experience, 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:30.199 and the emotional context becomes intertwined between the two. What 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:33.159 I think is really interesting is what happens when someone 0:19:33.240 --> 0:19:35.680 reads a text right, like, how do you know how 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:37.760 they're reacting to that? UM? And it turns out that 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:41.080 you can actually map metaphor in the brain using m 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:47.119 r I. Researchers from Emory University had subjects read a 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:53.560 metaphor metaphor and meta far metaphor UH involving texture, and 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:57.159 the sensory cortex lit up here, and that the sensory 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:01.120 cortex is responsible for perceiving texture through tough right, that 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:05.040 became active. So you had metaphors like the singer had 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:09.199 a velvet voice and he had a leathery hand, and 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:13.560 this roused the sensory cortex, while phrases that matched for meaning, 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.160 like the singer had a pleasing voice and he had 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:20.359 strong hands did not. And I think that is what's 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:25.080 so interesting about why our mind does engage so fiercely 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:28.800 with literature or you know, really any kind of fiction, 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.480 because again, you're in that theory of mind and your 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:36.399 brain is reacting um to these words. I love that. 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:39.800 I love that a leathery hand can can make your 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:43.399 sensory cortex go nuts. Um. And then in a study 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:48.040 led by the cognitive scientists Veronica of the Laboratory of 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:54.240 Language Dynamics in France, UM, she had them scan um 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:57.960 words like or rather sentences like John grass the object 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.359 and Pablo kicked the ball, and the m rs revealed 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:04.920 that there was of course activity in the motor cortex. 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:09.199 So to me, what this says is that storytelling fiction 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:12.640 is really I mean, if we've from more motor cortex, 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:15.600 is is kind of lighting up here. All of this 0:21:15.720 --> 0:21:18.080 is really important into the way that we actually developed 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:23.160 as human beings. That storytelling is intrinsic um to actually 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:26.920 motivating us and motivating the different parts of our body. Um, 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.280 it's not just you know, part of our language center 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:34.840 that is passive. Yeah. I found it interesting that, you know, 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:37.679 discussions of how mere and neurons allowed us to to 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:40.760 survive in an early stage because we're able to put 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:45.719 our mind inside the mind of say a predatory animal 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:47.760 or an animal that is surviving a winner. We see 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:49.720 all the bear is surviving, and we can put ourselves 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:55.800 in its footsteps in a way that it just cannot do. Um. 0:21:55.880 --> 0:21:58.159 And and then I the idea too that near and 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:01.719 neurons allow us to, uh, especially with metaphor, to essentially 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:04.960 run a simulation based on that metaphor. Metaphor enters in 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:07.520 and we, no matter how silly or tried, the metaphor, 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:09.720 and some level we can't help but fulfill it. To 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:13.160 take one of the most famous metaphors in the English language, 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:16.200 coaches from William Shakespeare from As You Like It says, 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:18.159 all the world's a stage, and all the men and 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:21.360 women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, 0:22:22.200 --> 0:22:24.480 so you can't help it on some level. Imagine then 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:27.639 everyone in your life standing on this stage, following these lines, 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:30.160 entering in and out, and then they're there. Are various 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:35.280 ramifications of what that scenario means. Likewise, metaphors that don't 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.560