Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Joe McCormick. This week we have a holiday,
Speaker 1: so for today we are bringing you a Vault episode.
Speaker 1: This one originally aired May twenty fifth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: It's the episode that Rob and I did about fountains,
Speaker 1: fountains as an architectural feature, and more broadly, about the
Speaker 1: idea of urban blue space. So we hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 3: name is Robert.
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: So the title for this episode comes from a poem
Speaker 3: by English poet Elizabeth Jennings With nineteen twenty six through
Speaker 3: two thousand and one. This poem contains the lines observe
Speaker 3: it there the fountain, too fast for shadows, too wild
Speaker 3: for the lights which illuminate it, to hold even a
Speaker 3: moment an ounce of water back. The poem in full
Speaker 3: details how we might observe a fountain in an urban
Speaker 3: center and makes a comparison to more ancient traditions. Joe,
Speaker 3: were you familiar with this poem or this poet prior
Speaker 3: to this episode. She was a new one for me.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the name is familiar, but I need
Speaker 1: to look up more of her stuff to see if
Speaker 1: there's anything I recognize.
Speaker 3: Well. This poem fountain, Like I say, it also connects
Speaker 3: back to some of these more ancient traditions that are
Speaker 3: reflected in our tradition of spending times with fountains and
Speaker 3: other water features. Just to read another bit from it,
Speaker 3: quote see in that stress and image of utter calm,
Speaker 3: a stillness. There it is how we must have felt
Speaker 3: once at the edge of some perpetual stream, fearful of touching,
Speaker 3: bringing no thirst at all, panicked by no perception of ourselves,
Speaker 3: but drawing the water down to the deepest wonder well.
Speaker 1: That phrasing gives a much profounder spin to the kind
Speaker 1: of awe that I recall feeling when looking at fountains
Speaker 1: as a child. Particularly, what I remember is a fountain
Speaker 1: in the mall in my hometown when I was a
Speaker 1: kid that had a kind of kind of a tile
Speaker 1: mosaic bottom that was always covered in pennies. I guess
Speaker 1: the idea was that people would throw pennies into the
Speaker 1: fountain and make a wish at least that's what I
Speaker 1: was always told you did, and I really liked to
Speaker 1: do this, and I think firmly believed in the magic
Speaker 1: of the wish granting powers of the fountain.
Speaker 3: I didn't even think about fountains and water features and malls.
Speaker 3: But oh man, shopping malls had some great ones, as
Speaker 3: far as I remember, and of course smaller at the time,
Speaker 3: so they seemed more gigantic, you know, some sort of
Speaker 3: a fountain there in the atrium of the mall, beautifull
Speaker 3: to behold.
Speaker 1: I do remember thinking when I saw all of the
Speaker 1: pennies on the bottom. I also thought, at some point
Speaker 1: they they must clean all those up, because it's not
Speaker 1: like overflowing with pennies. They've got to go in and
Speaker 1: get them.
Speaker 3: And then my.
Speaker 1: Thought as a child was who gets to keep all
Speaker 1: that money? That's so much money when you collect all
Speaker 1: of them, you know, that's got to be tens of dollars.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is why that one scene in the
Speaker 3: Goonies I think was so impactful, the extrapolation of our
Speaker 3: dreams of harvesting the coins of a fountain.
Speaker 1: You know, oh, is that is that in the Goonies.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that they had the same thought I did.
Speaker 3: Well, No, they in the goonies, if memory serves, it's
Speaker 3: been a long time since I've seen it. There's that
Speaker 3: there's like these caverns beneath the wishing well and that's
Speaker 3: where all the coins are, and one of the kids
Speaker 3: goes to steal a bunch of them, and they're like, no, no,
Speaker 3: those are peaceful people's wishes. You're not supposed to take them,
Speaker 3: and the children, you know, abstain, and ultimately they have
Speaker 3: pirates gold on the radar.
Speaker 1: So this well, I didn't make the connection. I did
Speaker 1: believe in the wish granting powers, and I did greedily
Speaker 1: lust after all of the penny money, but I didn't
Speaker 1: think that would be stealing people's wishes. It's already granted
Speaker 1: right once the pennies there. Now it's just free money.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know how that. It depends on superstitious
Speaker 3: share I guess how it works. But at any rate,
Speaker 3: I yeah, I always am curious to see if a
Speaker 3: fountain has coins, and even though I don't nowadays, I'm
Speaker 3: not thinking about harvesting them. I'm still just one of
Speaker 3: the things I kind of like am checking off the
Speaker 3: mental checklist when I check out a fountain, are there
Speaker 3: coins in it? What's the filtration system look like? You know,
Speaker 3: where's the water coming out of? Like, if there's a
Speaker 3: fountain somewhere, I need to get closer to it so
Speaker 3: I can take it all in. Beyond that, I don't
Speaker 3: think I'd ever really thought about, you know, any universal
Speaker 3: truths about the calming nature of fountains. I've always just
Speaker 3: kind of in the back of my mind thought, well,
Speaker 3: they're nice. Sometimes they have interesting statues incorporated into their design.
Speaker 3: They can be cooling on a hot day, that sort
Speaker 3: of thing, and they're often like at the center of everything,
Speaker 3: you know. I think of like the fountain in Washington Square,
Speaker 3: you know, I think about the indeed, the fountains in
Speaker 3: the atrium at a mall, at a shopping mall, which
Speaker 3: was like a center of community in some respects.
Speaker 1: Well, and yet another way that the fountain was sacred
Speaker 1: to my child's brain. But taking some of the profound
Speaker 1: varnish off of it, I do associate the idea of
Speaker 1: a fountain with the smell of the mall food court,
Speaker 1: you know. It's that's where the saborrow mingles with the
Speaker 1: with the Kariaki place Yeah, the mall.
Speaker 3: Food court of our childhoods. This is a place where
Speaker 3: you also had freedom, like suddenly you could often often
Speaker 3: the case, you could choose what you were going to eat,
Speaker 3: and it made you feel powerful. But coming back to
Speaker 3: water features and fountains specifically, of course, we have to
Speaker 3: think larger than that. We have to think of two
Speaker 3: about just like running water, bodies of water in general.
Speaker 3: And you know, personally, and I think this applies somewhat universally.
Speaker 3: I've always found waters to be calming to be around.
Speaker 3: They're often great places to do some thinking or to
Speaker 3: do less thinking in a good way, you know, to
Speaker 3: sort of unshackle from your normal thought process. And I
Speaker 3: think I've mentioned before on the show that there's a
Speaker 3: very useful stress reduction exercise that makes use of this connection.
Speaker 3: It's called leaves on a stream. It's a cognitive diffusion
Speaker 3: technique that allows you to distance yourself from the thoughts
Speaker 3: that you're having. So the way it goes, and you
Speaker 3: can look this up online. There are plenty of online
Speaker 3: resources that spell it out in more detail. But you
Speaker 3: imagine yourself seated beside a running stream. You imagine taking
Speaker 3: a given thought, essentially taking it out of yourself, placing
Speaker 3: it upon a floating leaf and allowing the stream to
Speaker 3: carry that leaf and the thought away from you. And
Speaker 3: you know, everyone's mile wage may vary, but I find
Speaker 3: it very constructive. But I was thinking about it again here,
Speaker 3: thinking about fountains, thinking about natural bodies of water, and
Speaker 3: they're calming powers.
Speaker 1: It does seem like an especially nice image for concretizing
Speaker 1: your emotions and your thoughts because it's passive, like the
Speaker 1: water does the carrying away for you, So it doesn't
Speaker 1: even involve you having to imagine, like forcing or shoving
Speaker 1: the idea away. It is just carried away by nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Now we've talked a bit on the show
Speaker 3: previously about the history and importance of public water works.
Speaker 3: We're not going to reach at all of that here,
Speaker 3: but I wanted to at least touch on some of
Speaker 3: it in this case via a twenty fifteen article titled
Speaker 3: Short Global History of Fountains by Juty at All, published
Speaker 3: in the journal Water. That's pointed out that the word
Speaker 3: fountain stems from the Latin fawns, which can refer to
Speaker 3: both artificial and natural water features. Not like the fawns
Speaker 3: on happy Days, but fots. I've also read that the
Speaker 3: source is fontana, which informs the medieval fount or source,
Speaker 3: and so fountain becomes a symbol of a providing source
Speaker 3: as well. Like this idea of a fountain as being
Speaker 3: this thing from which something else beneficial arises becomes pretty
Speaker 3: crucial to a lot of a lot of our language. Now.
Speaker 3: The construction of fountains properly dates back to ancient times,
Speaker 3: and the authors of this paper point out that regional
Speaker 3: water availability played a role in what form fountains took
Speaker 3: and how they were fed. For instance, they mentioned that
Speaker 3: for the ancient Egyptians bringing water out for the people
Speaker 3: or for personal use, it was a matter of pulling
Speaker 3: water from the Mighty Nile. Meanwhile, the Minoans and the
Speaker 3: Greeks brought water down from the mountains via aqueducts. So
Speaker 3: this is something to keep in mind. There's the sort of,
Speaker 3: especially when you go back into the origins of fountains,
Speaker 3: a lot more practical purposes in mind for having that
Speaker 3: water there, And then how do you get the water there?
Speaker 3: You're not just piping it in from the local modern
Speaker 3: water system, you know, there are other means that have
Speaker 3: to be in place. One of the primary purposes for
Speaker 3: ancient fountains was of course to bring water to the
Speaker 3: people for drinking, as well as for other uses such
Speaker 3: as bathing. We've talked about that on the show before.
Speaker 3: Another big one that I hadn't thought as much about.
Speaker 3: And I guess part of this is because we haven't
Speaker 3: We've touched on firefighting, but we haven't done a lot
Speaker 3: on firefighting. But this was another reason to have a
Speaker 3: source of water available in a center of the population.
Speaker 1: I think we actually did a pretty extensive look at
Speaker 1: firefighting in our Invention episode on the fire extinguisher.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we got into like fire extinguisher grenades and
Speaker 3: so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But going into ancient history, how the fire fighting
Speaker 1: in ancient Rome and how it had a very different
Speaker 1: character because if I remember correctly, the early version in
Speaker 1: maybe like the first century BCE or so, there was
Speaker 1: like a rich guy who instituted fire brigades who would
Speaker 1: come to your house if it was on fire, not
Speaker 1: to like as a public service, put it out for you,
Speaker 1: but to say, hey, I will buy your house for
Speaker 1: the following price, take it or leave it. And if
Speaker 1: you know, if you agreed to let this guy buy
Speaker 1: your house, then his dudes would put out the fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think there's a scene in one of Stevens
Speaker 3: Sailor's Gordiana's books that take place in ancient Rome where
Speaker 3: this exact situation takes place with like the building burning
Speaker 3: down and this guy shows up and he's like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, it looks like your property is really plummeting
Speaker 3: in value. Now would be a great time to sell
Speaker 3: to me, as opposed to five minutes from now.
Speaker 1: Wicked in an especially hilarious way. But of course, you know,
Speaker 1: later on the idea of firefighting as a public service
Speaker 1: that benefits everyone does develop, and yeah, of course there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different ways to fight fires, and
Speaker 1: not all of them involve water. Of course, some involve
Speaker 1: like you know, pulling down structures to create barriers to
Speaker 1: fire spreading and things like that. But yeah, water of
Speaker 1: course is quite often one of the most important tools
Speaker 1: in fighting fires.
Speaker 3: Now. One of the things about bringing water into a city,
Speaker 3: one of the problems here are potential potential problems, is well,
Speaker 3: you're gonna have to deal with drainage, removal, fouled water,
Speaker 3: and various public health challenges that can emerge from public
Speaker 3: water works and that can get into things like you know,
Speaker 3: I have to worry about water borne ill illnesses, potentially mosquitoes,
Speaker 3: things of that nature. So systems to bring water into
Speaker 3: a city these were extremely important for human civilizations, and
Speaker 3: we see them in all the major civilizations of the
Speaker 3: ancient world as well as the various ancient civilizations of
Speaker 3: the New World. The earliest carved water based and apparently
Speaker 3: dates back to three thousand BC in the Mesopotamian site
Speaker 3: of Tello, and a stone fountain figure in another Mesopotamian site,
Speaker 3: Mari dates back to two thousand BCE. This would basically
Speaker 3: be in line with the common fountain trope that we've
Speaker 3: seen again and again of a goddess holding a base
Speaker 3: of some sort that releases piped in water, just sort
Speaker 3: of an irresistible image. And I guess part of this
Speaker 3: comes down to, like what a fountain does that like
Speaker 3: recasts the idea of water being gifted to people.
Speaker 1: As if from a morton Joe, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The Romans were, of course masters of hydraulics, which
Speaker 3: they adopted from the Etruscan civilization, and the Roman tradition
Speaker 3: greatly influenced the medieval fountain tradition to follow Now. One
Speaker 3: thing in this paper that I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 3: They point out that in China, wells and streams were
Speaker 3: along the primary source of water, so wells tend to
Speaker 3: play the role we see public fountains play in other
Speaker 3: parts of the world. In some of these Mesopotamian accounts,
Speaker 3: these public wells were crucial as well to city planning.
Speaker 3: These would be the things that you plan the structure
Speaker 3: of the city around. They also note that quote spring
Speaker 3: and structures have also assumed characteristics of fountains in China,
Speaker 3: so what we might think of as proper fountains were
Speaker 3: also introduced and built in urban and palace settings later
Speaker 3: over the course of centuries. But sometimes you might have
Speaker 3: something just constructed where a spring emerges or where a
Speaker 3: spring has come to, and this will sort of take
Speaker 3: on the building and appearance of a western fountain. Now.
Speaker 3: The authors even include discussion of modern and industrial age
Speaker 3: water kiosks in the paper, which serve the purpose of
Speaker 3: distributing clean water to the people, though without most of
Speaker 3: the more esthetically pleasing ass that you associate with a
Speaker 3: public fountain. Nowadays, you can look up images of various
Speaker 3: water kiosks that I believe They're especially common in subs
Speaker 3: of how in Africa a place where people can go
Speaker 3: and get water, and it often takes on a more
Speaker 3: I guess, sort of commercial appearance. I mean it looks
Speaker 3: like a little a little shop in many cases. Sometimes
Speaker 3: they even you see something that looks more like a
Speaker 3: vending machine. And you can also make comparisons like water
Speaker 3: kiosk and say public ice dispensary, you know those, you
Speaker 3: see these especially, we see these a lot in the
Speaker 3: United States. I know, when you go into rural areas
Speaker 3: and there's like the standalone machine that you can pull
Speaker 3: up to, you pay the machine and you get some ice.
Speaker 3: You know you are buying water, albeit in a frozen form,
Speaker 3: from that machine. Right now, that Beings said, I guess
Speaker 3: water kiosks could still be considered like a social center,
Speaker 3: a place where people are going for water. And while
Speaker 3: most of the examp I was looking at seem largely
Speaker 3: transactional and functional, I suppose it doesn't have to be
Speaker 3: the case. Though. When I looked around for like more
Speaker 3: pleasing designs and water kiosks, the only thing that was
Speaker 3: coming up for me were various design competitions that were
Speaker 3: more situated in say London and were essentially coming up
Speaker 3: with water fountain designs that you know, looked crazy things
Speaker 3: that weren't necessarily I think, actually brought to life in
Speaker 3: urban settings. But I don't know. Maybe there have been
Speaker 3: efforts to sort of evolve water kiosk sites throughout the
Speaker 3: rest of the world as well. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Well, this idea sort of highlights the two different faces
Speaker 1: of the civic water dispensing area. So you can have
Speaker 1: on one hand, something that is functional that is there.
Speaker 1: It's a place for people to get water that they
Speaker 1: need for you know, everything in life basically that you
Speaker 1: need in order to drink, to cook, to clean and
Speaker 1: so forth. And then the other idea is water based
Speaker 1: infrastructure that is there to be enjoyed, maybe the same
Speaker 1: way that a park would be there to be enjoyed.
Speaker 3: I think in the popular imagination, something that brings all
Speaker 3: these together is of course, the chocolate factory of Willy Wonka,
Speaker 3: where we see the chocolate mixed by waterfall. It is
Speaker 3: a pleasing water fall to behold. You're not supposed to
Speaker 3: swim in it, of course, but still, you know, some
Speaker 3: uses of the chocolate are available via fountain. And then
Speaker 3: of course we do have chocolate chocolate fountains at events
Speaker 3: and all. So it is weird how we get into
Speaker 3: this use of fountains, both in the imagination and in reality,
Speaker 3: for liquids that are not drinking water.
Speaker 1: Why do the culinary fountains always go in the sweet direction.
Speaker 1: I want to see more savory ones, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's the nacho cheese fountain, the gravy fountain. I don't
Speaker 1: know what. Maybe cheese fondue fountain. I guess that's pretty
Speaker 1: similar to nacho cheese.
Speaker 3: Well that that surely exists, right, some sort of a
Speaker 3: cheese fountain, I suppose, I would guess. Anyway, Coming back
Speaker 3: to this Water Journal paper, the authors here, they stressed
Speaker 3: that fountains also often stood as symbols of power and wealth.
Speaker 3: Somebody builds them, someone provides them for the people. But
Speaker 3: there's still this calming element to the urban fountain, offering
Speaker 3: sites and sounds conducive to relaxation that are frequently cited
Speaker 3: in histories and literature. As many of the practical reasons
Speaker 3: for public fountains declined in modern times, the esthetic elements
Speaker 3: remained in play, including the soothing sites and sounds of
Speaker 3: the running water. Another interesting point. This is something I
Speaker 3: read in Fountains as Reservoirs of myth and memory from
Speaker 3: Myths on the Map the Storied Landscapes of Ancient Greece
Speaker 3: from twenty seventeen by Betsy A. Robinson, or this section
Speaker 3: about fountains is by Robinson, and in this they point
Speaker 3: out that public fountains, specifically those in Greek traditions, were
Speaker 3: also a means of quote, connecting past and present and
Speaker 3: establishing authority by the manipulation of architectural form and the
Speaker 3: selective retelling of stories. So I found that fascinating to
Speaker 3: think about and be reminded of, because the public fountain
Speaker 3: here is both a means of bringing water to the
Speaker 3: people but also conceptualizing the deliverer of that water by
Speaker 3: means of myth and legends reflected in the carvings, the
Speaker 3: statues and so forth then make up a given fountain.
Speaker 3: For instance, who is the goddess that is pouring forth
Speaker 3: the water, and what is that goddess's relationship to the
Speaker 3: people in power at the moment, etc.
Speaker 1: Yes, flowing water almost kind of naturally tells the story,
Speaker 1: or it easily can be narrativized in some way by
Speaker 1: filling in the infrastructure around it with images and representations.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Can you imagine if our primary sources of water
Speaker 3: today are faucets, What if by law they were required
Speaker 3: to resemble entities or beings or specific people in power
Speaker 3: as they're bringing forth your precious drinking or dishwashing water.
Speaker 1: Yes, the faucet is like your local water commissioner's face
Speaker 1: and the water is coming out of their mouth or
Speaker 1: something like vomiting the water to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, the main idea we're exploring this episode, though,
Speaker 3: is the idea that there is something soothing, calming, and
Speaker 3: mentally restoring about public fountains, something that may, you know,
Speaker 3: subjectively seem to be the case with many of us,
Speaker 3: but you know, is there something more objective there as well.
Speaker 3: There's actually been a fair amount of, certainly recent scholarship
Speaker 3: on the topic that we're going to touch on in
Speaker 3: this We we're going to get into this idea of
Speaker 3: blue spaces.
Speaker 1: So in the.
Speaker 3: World of urban land use planning, there's green space obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, we think of gardens, trees, whole parks, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And then there's a subset of green space known as
Speaker 3: blue space, and the blue of course, refers to water,
Speaker 3: you know, as water is often blue on the map,
Speaker 3: if not in actual visual appearance, and it entails all
Speaker 3: manner of naturally occurring and artificial water features, including fountains. Now,
Speaker 3: once again it's important to stress that proximity to natural
Speaker 3: and or artificial blue spaces has always come with certain
Speaker 3: additional risks and potential dangers. We talked about those already,
Speaker 3: but there's also this compelling idea that blue spaces are
Speaker 3: an overall mental and or physical health benefit to those
Speaker 3: with access to the feature. And on one hand, this
Speaker 3: basic idea would seem to line up with the late EO.
Speaker 3: Wilson's biophilia hypothesis, something we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is kind of interesting. So we've done multiple
Speaker 1: episodes exploring and critiquing the biophilia HIH hypothesis at length
Speaker 1: in the past, so we're not going to go into
Speaker 1: a great depth on that again here, but briefly, in
Speaker 1: Wilson's words, this would have been what he believed was
Speaker 1: quote the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.
Speaker 1: So the argument goes that there is something in our
Speaker 1: brains that calls us to be fascinated by and attracted
Speaker 1: to other forms of life beyond just the obvious and
Speaker 1: direct benefits to our survival that we would get from them.
Speaker 1: So it's obvious why you would be attracted to, say
Speaker 1: an animal or a plant that you might eat for food,
Speaker 1: but that our fascination by an attraction to life forms
Speaker 1: goes way beyond this, goes to you things that you
Speaker 1: can't eat, things that you can't necessarily get any tangible,
Speaker 1: quantifiable benefit from. We still these other life forms, We
Speaker 1: still want to see and touch and spend time around them,
Speaker 1: and when they're not present in our lives, we feel
Speaker 1: a kind of we feel that loss as a kind
Speaker 1: of malaise or unhappiness. And so a funny thing here
Speaker 1: about water is that, of course moving water is very
Speaker 1: often associated with the suite of esthetic and environmental preferences
Speaker 1: suggested by the biophilia hypothesis. Yet of course water is
Speaker 1: itself not alive. It, like rocks and air, is part
Speaker 1: of the inorganic environment. And yet of course the presence
Speaker 1: of water is greatly associated with the presence of life. Basically,
Speaker 1: all life on Earth needs water to survive, and it's
Speaker 1: not an accident that when you know you're walking through
Speaker 1: the desert and you come to an oasis, it is
Speaker 1: suddenly surrounded by forms of life that were not found
Speaker 1: in the surrounding landscape.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And you know, you can make the argument,
Speaker 3: you know, we're hardwired to appreciate something like a nice
Speaker 3: flowing stream as opposed to another body of water. How
Speaker 3: would Donald Pleasants put it, Joe.
Speaker 1: Oh, the spirit of dark and lonely waters.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the dark and lonly water.
Speaker 1: That's it, ready to trap the unware, the show off,
Speaker 1: the fool.
Speaker 3: In this, we're of course referring to something we discussed
Speaker 3: in an older Halloween episode What Jenny Green Teeth? But
Speaker 3: it was what a British public service advertisement or video
Speaker 3: message warning you against stagnant ponds and the danger to
Speaker 3: young children posed there.
Speaker 1: Right, warning children not to play in the in the
Speaker 1: pools of black liquid that gather in abandoned buildings.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So yeah, thinking about biophilia hypothesis and in light
Speaker 3: of all this is interesting and I was I was
Speaker 3: looking around in in the book that Wilson co wrote
Speaker 3: on it, and at one point mentioned he mentions that
Speaker 3: while uphill or spraying aspects of artificial fountains rarely occur
Speaker 3: in nature. He points that, you know, obviously the geysers,
Speaker 3: but uh, but but still, even if a fountain is
Speaker 3: pumping water straight up in the air, you know, it's
Speaker 3: still something we connect with, even if this is not
Speaker 3: the normal way that water behaves in just the average environment.
Speaker 3: He writes, quote, yet the motion of water in fountains
Speaker 3: seems to have the same hypnotic attraction as water flowing
Speaker 3: downhill in a waterfall. He also writes that it would
Speaker 3: be interesting to see a study of people observing quote
Speaker 3: quiet and repetitive motions of predators, sharks in an aquarium,
Speaker 3: circling birds of prey, or other stalking movements of wolves
Speaker 3: or large felines, which combine Heraclitian movement with potential danger.
Speaker 3: Not just to note there, Heraclitianism is a philosophy concerning
Speaker 3: everything except the logos remaining in flux, with the four
Speaker 3: elements eternally cycling into each other and so forth. There's
Speaker 3: a lot to it, but the philosopher of its namesake
Speaker 3: Heraclitis circle of five hundred BCE. His ideas can be
Speaker 3: basically condensed down to the idea that everything flows, that
Speaker 3: everything is becoming but never being. And that does feel
Speaker 3: like it lines up with a lot of the essence
Speaker 3: of moving water observations and the various metaphors we form
Speaker 3: about it. But at any rate, yeah, I like how
Speaker 3: this flows into the idea of the attractive nature of
Speaker 3: streams and fountains. But coming back to what you know,
Speaker 3: Wilson ponders here, and I looked up. I looked it up.
Speaker 3: I wasn't able to find any studies that actually took
Speaker 3: the challenge here, but I was wondering, Okay, aquariums are
Speaker 3: especially relaxing, I find, or at least the parts that
Speaker 3: involve fish and water. Sometimes the you know, the crowds
Speaker 3: can be a bit much, but in terms of like
Speaker 3: staring in through the aquarium glass at an aquarium enclosure
Speaker 3: can be very relaxing. Sometimes there are sharks there. Our
Speaker 3: local aquarium has sharks, and I was trying to I
Speaker 3: was looking back on my experiences of viewing those sharks,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, is this relaxing? And I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously for me anyway. I mean, if I'm
Speaker 3: looking at a shark in a shark tank, I know
Speaker 3: that I'm not in danger. It's not gonna, you know,
Speaker 3: pop out of the glass at me. I'm distant from it.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, observing large predators and zoo environments
Speaker 3: sometimes can feel a little uncanny in my experience. You know,
Speaker 3: like if the lion's looking right at you that sort
Speaker 3: of thing, or you know, another large predator is eyeing
Speaker 3: your toddler, your infant like that. That gets a little
Speaker 3: that starts, you know, turning on some lights that are
Speaker 3: kind of buried in your psyche. But in terms of
Speaker 3: the sharks in the aquarium, I'm not sure. I asked
Speaker 3: my wife about this and she was like, like, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's it's absolutely relaxing. There's nothing, there's nothing stressful about
Speaker 3: observing these predators. For her. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: have any thoughts in this show.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like I may have missed something.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: Was Wilson suggesting that the predators would be relaxing. I
Speaker 1: interpreted him to mean that the idea of a slowly
Speaker 1: circling predator with Heraclidean movement would be like an arresting image.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the what I took to be the
Speaker 3: idea is like which which energy is going to win? Out,
Speaker 3: like the movement is relaxing, but it's a predator engaging
Speaker 3: in the movement. In these we see traditional movements have
Speaker 3: said predators like, what is going to be the end result?
Speaker 3: I see?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, Well, I'm not sure what I would say
Speaker 1: about sharks in particular. I mean, I certainly find aquariums
Speaker 1: incredibly relaxing, but like you also, that is, they're strongly
Speaker 1: counteracted by the presence of loud crowds around them. But
Speaker 1: like an viewing an aquarium in a quiet space is
Speaker 1: I think one of the most relaxing things I can imagine.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure that a shark
Speaker 1: being in there would really change anything about it. Seeing
Speaker 1: the sharks swimming around, I mean that assuming I'm not
Speaker 1: in the water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or in the in the captivity of a bond
Speaker 3: villain that's right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's probably still just as relaxing as
Speaker 1: any other side of an aquarium.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, we've drifted off course a little bit.
Speaker 3: Let's get back to just the basic idea that spending
Speaker 3: time near a body of water would have some sort
Speaker 3: of beneficial effect on you.
Speaker 1: Right, So, at this point, there have been a lot
Speaker 1: of different studies investigating the impact of green and blue
Speaker 1: spaces on human well being, and specifically, the question with
Speaker 1: blue spaces would be does living near or spending time
Speaker 1: near a body of water improve your mental and physical health?
Speaker 1: And if so, how does it create those improvements? And fortunately,
Speaker 1: just a couple of years ago, there was a meta
Speaker 1: analysis that rounded up all of the existing research and
Speaker 1: synthesized what we know so far with a special focus
Speaker 1: on the mechanism of action the question of how blue
Speaker 1: space works on us. The paper is called Mechanisms of
Speaker 1: Impact of Blue Spaces on Human Health a Systematic Literature
Speaker 1: View and meta analysis by Mikhail Georgiu at All published
Speaker 1: in the journal the International Journal of Environmental Research and
Speaker 1: Public Health in twenty twenty one, and this study begins
Speaker 1: with the general survey of the research on the health
Speaker 1: effects of exposure to natural environments. The authors note that
Speaker 1: most of the research in this area has actually been
Speaker 1: focused on something slightly different, on green spaces rather than
Speaker 1: blue spaces, and this is also something we've looked at
Speaker 1: in multiple episodes in the past. But short summary, there
Speaker 1: is pretty strong evidence that living near or spending time
Speaker 1: in areas where surfaces are covered in plant life, basically
Speaker 1: where you'd be exposed to grass, trees, vegetation of various
Speaker 1: sorts is correlated with a wide range of benefits in
Speaker 1: all kinds of domains and everything from markers of physical health,
Speaker 1: cardiovascular health, and so forth, to mental and emotional well being,
Speaker 1: lower rates of anxiety and things like that, and even
Speaker 1: greater cognitive performance in school children. So, in short, I
Speaker 1: think we can say with pretty high confidence that it
Speaker 1: is good for you to spend time in a park
Speaker 1: or a forest compared to spending the same amount of
Speaker 1: time in a landscape fully paved with metal and concrete
Speaker 1: and plastic. Something about living near and spending time in
Speaker 1: those kinds of environments has a wide range of benefits
Speaker 1: for your body and mind. Now, the authors of this
Speaker 1: study note that a lot of the research, unfortunately does
Speaker 1: not disentangle the variables of exposure to blue spaces, meaning
Speaker 1: bodies of water, including lakes, rivers, coastlines, canals, and in
Speaker 1: some cases even smaller features like fountains and things, from
Speaker 1: exposure to green spaces. Sometimes the presence of water is
Speaker 1: treated as part of the definition of green spaces, sometimes not,
Speaker 1: So that's unfortunate, and it would be good to separate
Speaker 1: these variables out to see if they have effects independent
Speaker 1: of one another, and fortunately some studies have done that.
Speaker 1: They've separated them out and looked at blue spaces independently.
Speaker 1: Now the first half of the question, do blue spaces
Speaker 1: have positive effects on our well being? The answer seems
Speaker 1: to be a pretty firm yes. The author's right. Recent
Speaker 1: epidemiological studies have shown that blue spaces have a positive
Speaker 1: effect on public health, including the reduction of mortality rate
Speaker 1: with the greatest rate of decline seen in areas closest
Speaker 1: to blue space, better physical health, and better mental health,
Speaker 1: and their copious citations and support of these general statements.
Speaker 1: So this brings us to the main question explored here,
Speaker 1: which is why why is exposure to water or living
Speaker 1: near water good for you? Why would it be good
Speaker 1: for say, lowering your mortality or giving you better physical
Speaker 1: health or mental health. And the authors of the study
Speaker 1: explore four main hypothetical mechanisms, all of which are on
Speaker 1: their own known to have significant positive effects on mortality,
Speaker 1: physical health, and mental health. And these mechanisms are social interaction,
Speaker 1: physical activity, environmental factors, and restoration. So physical activity, this
Speaker 1: is pretty straightforward maybe blue spaces encourage people to get
Speaker 1: more exercise. Getting more exercise is strongly correlated with decreased
Speaker 1: mortality and improvements in mental and physical health. And maybe
Speaker 1: something about living near water or having water in your
Speaker 1: geographical area makes you more likely to exercise.
Speaker 3: Okay, that seems to track. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Second mechanism, maybe it's social interaction. Maybe blue spaces encourage
Speaker 1: people to spend more time interacting with others rather than alone,
Speaker 1: which again has well known, well established benefits. Third thing
Speaker 1: is environmental factors. This refers to the effects of bodies
Speaker 1: of water on other local environmental variables that have their
Speaker 1: own effects on human well being. The author's write quote
Speaker 1: blue spaces may contribute to a healthier environment and reduce
Speaker 1: air pollution, heat island effect, risk of flooding, etc. And
Speaker 1: then fourth restoration, exposure to blue spaces might improve restoration,
Speaker 1: which they define by saying that they use the definition
Speaker 1: from another paper. So I had to look up what
Speaker 1: that paper was to get the definition, and basically it
Speaker 1: seems to be quote recovery from depleted attentional capacity or stress.
Speaker 1: This is also something we've explored on the show before.
Speaker 1: But basically the question here would be whether exposure to
Speaker 1: water sources helps people relax and recharge, to recover from
Speaker 1: depleted attention spans from having you know, people spend a
Speaker 1: lot of their attentional energy on certain types of tasks,
Speaker 1: or not even tasks, maybe even just you know, like
Speaker 1: scrolling their phones or something all day. This creates a
Speaker 1: lot of stress. And then there are other types of
Speaker 1: experiences people can have that tend to restore depleted the
Speaker 1: tensional resources and relax you and sort of remove those
Speaker 1: biomarkers of stress that people would notice, like you know,
Speaker 1: elevated levels of cortisol and blood or in the saliva.
Speaker 3: Interesting. So it's kind of a satisfying exercise to take
Speaker 3: these different factors and apply them to different sort of
Speaker 3: activities and environments, like for instance, you think of say
Speaker 3: a fishing pond. A number of these you can easily
Speaker 3: check off, I don't know, physical activity. I guess you
Speaker 3: could have a discussion there regarding fishing, and I guess
Speaker 3: it depends on how you're going about fishing. And then likewise,
Speaker 3: if you apply it to say a fountain in the
Speaker 3: middle of a public square, that sort of thing. Some
Speaker 3: of these more easily or checked off the list here.
Speaker 3: But even like physical activity, I mean you think of
Speaker 3: environments that have a fountain. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 3: about the rest of you. I think of like children
Speaker 3: playing inside fountain, whether they're supposed to or not. I
Speaker 3: think of people doing things around the fountain. So even
Speaker 3: if you're not, say, attempting to swim laps in the
Speaker 3: fountain or do boating in the fountain, there still may
Speaker 3: be physical action that is encouraged around it.
Speaker 1: Right, So we'll get to in a second what the
Speaker 1: evidence for these factors or not is. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: can't always know exactly how it works, but you can
Speaker 1: imagine tons of possibilities, like maybe having a canal or
Speaker 1: a river or something nearby just makes people want to
Speaker 1: get out and go on a walk more often that
Speaker 1: it could be. Yeah, But finally I wanted to finish
Speaker 1: up my note about what the mechanism with restoration would
Speaker 1: be if blue spaces do encourage restoration that leads to
Speaker 1: the better effects on mental and physical health, because the
Speaker 1: authors say, quote, stress, anxiety, depressed mood, and psychological well
Speaker 1: being have been linked with the risk of cardiovascular diseases
Speaker 1: and mental health issues. So that link is also firmly established.
Speaker 1: So the authors did their review and analyzed all the
Speaker 1: studies that had any results illuminating these possible mechanisms, whether
Speaker 1: they hold true or not, and there were fifty studies total.
Speaker 1: In their review they said twenty seven. Ultimately, they concluded
Speaker 1: had data relevant to the meta analysis on this question,
Speaker 1: and what they found was quote three of the four
Speaker 1: hypothesized pathways physical activity, restoration, and environmental factors are supported
Speaker 1: by empirical evidence, while findings on social interaction are inconclusive. Now.
Speaker 1: As for physical activity, they say, people's physical activity seem
Speaker 1: to increase with both their proximity two blue space and
Speaker 1: with the total amount of blue space in their geographical
Speaker 1: area where they lived, So it seems that both of
Speaker 1: these factors are correlated with people getting more exercise. It
Speaker 1: seems people get out and get more physical activity if
Speaker 1: there is water somewhere in their neighborhood, and also more
Speaker 1: if their home is physically closer to water. So this
Speaker 1: seems like a pretty strong candidate explanation. Second one is restoration.
Speaker 1: They found that blue space was correlated with increased restoration.
Speaker 1: The authors write, intriguingly, the increase of amount of blue
Speaker 1: space within a geographical area was found to be the
Speaker 1: highest among all mediating pathways and exposures. This evidence, therefore
Speaker 1: suggests that developing more blue spaces within neighborhoods could primarily
Speaker 1: benefit the restorative character of an area. So having some
Speaker 1: kind of blue space in your general geographic area definitely
Speaker 1: that helps with alleviating stress. However, the interesting and kind
Speaker 1: of surprising thing to me was that they did not
Speaker 1: find evidence that your individual proximity to blue space had
Speaker 1: an effect on restoration, and they write, quote, while urbanicity
Speaker 1: is found to increase mental disorders through stress, we propose
Speaker 1: that creating more blue spaces and promoting contact with them
Speaker 1: can be used to reverse this effect and ameliorate urban living.
Speaker 1: So it looks like another fairly strong candidate to me here,
Speaker 1: Having more water and waterways in the general area where
Speaker 1: you live seems to have a relaxation and restoration effect
Speaker 1: on people, counteracting stress and thus achieving improvements in health.
Speaker 1: Of course, again, chronic stress is bad for you. Now,
Speaker 1: the other two mechanisms were more complicated or a different story.
Speaker 1: As for environmental factors, they say, there is evidence for
Speaker 1: a couple of things, but it's kind of complicated. So
Speaker 1: the authors did find some evidence that blue spaces correlate
Speaker 1: with lowering heat stress and with improving air quality, but
Speaker 1: they said that the evidence base for those was kind
Speaker 1: of small and messy, and other environmental factors they looked at,
Speaker 1: such as effects on noise pollution and biodiversity, there was
Speaker 1: not enough evidence to reach a conclusion. And then they
Speaker 1: also say when it comes to environmental factors, there are
Speaker 1: some that could be operating in the opposite direction, like,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier, there could be some negative environmental
Speaker 1: effects of having water nearby, such as say, being a
Speaker 1: vector for efect xious disease or something like that. So
Speaker 1: this one seems to be sort of a question mark.
Speaker 1: The evidence for the effects that are there is kind
Speaker 1: of weak, and effects appear to be going in both directions.
Speaker 1: And then finally, for social interaction, they said that the
Speaker 1: evidence again is kind of weak. Previous findings were mixed,
Speaker 1: but the meta analysis did not find a significant effect
Speaker 1: of blue spaces on social interaction. But it does look
Speaker 1: like the evidence for two of the four categories is
Speaker 1: pretty strong. Having more blue space in the neighborhood and
Speaker 1: living closer to blue space appears to increase people's amount
Speaker 1: of physical exercise. Which has strong benefits for health, and
Speaker 1: living in an area with more blue space in the
Speaker 1: general geographical region has restorative effects. It helps people relax
Speaker 1: and recharge to counteract the stress of life. Now, I
Speaker 1: do want to mention that this study was focused on
Speaker 1: blue spaces in general, and the majority of effects documented,
Speaker 1: from what I could tell, were probably coming more from
Speaker 1: larger nature and artificial waterways like lakes and rivers and
Speaker 1: canals and so forth. So I don't know how much
Speaker 1: you could map the total effects of blue space onto
Speaker 1: specific things like smaller water features installations like fountains and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 3: Right, So don't take this podcast episode or these various
Speaker 3: studies here is just like clear evidence that it's time
Speaker 3: to install that water feature in your yard, because it
Speaker 3: might not have ultimately have that big a difference, but
Speaker 3: who knows. Maybe it'll be delightful, maybe it will be calming.
Speaker 3: Maybe all you need is that the sound of trickling water.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the more specific and detail oriented
Speaker 1: questions out of the way, it does seem just generally
Speaker 1: true that, yes, green space is good for mental and
Speaker 1: physical health, and blue space also seems to be pretty
Speaker 1: good for mental and physical health.
Speaker 3: Absolutely Now I was looking at a study out of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two titled a population based Retrospective Study on
Speaker 3: the Modifying effect of urban blue Space on the impact
Speaker 3: of socioeconomic deprivation on Mental Health twenty nine through twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen by Giorgio at All, published in Scientific Reports.
Speaker 1: I think this is the same first author as the
Speaker 1: meta analysis I just looked at.
Speaker 3: So this particular study quote aimed to investigate whether living
Speaker 3: near blue space longitudinally modifies the effect of socioeconomic deprivation
Speaker 3: on mental health the author's right quote. Hence, we study
Speaker 3: longitudinally the impact of a large scale regeneration of the
Speaker 3: Glasgow branch of the Fourth and Clyde Canal, an urban
Speaker 3: blue space, on mental health, using routinely collected clinical data.
Speaker 3: Now I had to look up some images of what
Speaker 3: this area looked like. I included one here for you, Joe.
Speaker 3: It looks nice. You basically a canal space with a
Speaker 3: lot of vegetation grown up on one side of it,
Speaker 3: you know, And then I mean a little bit on
Speaker 3: the surface of the water. You have a well it
Speaker 3: looks like a walking and or bicycle path, and then
Speaker 3: some more green space and some walls and some trees
Speaker 3: and whatnot, and it looks pleasant, looks like a place
Speaker 3: if you lived in this area you might go to
Speaker 3: for a bike ride or a walk, et cetera. So
Speaker 3: a number of factors went into this localized study, including
Speaker 3: distance one resides from the blue space, psychotropic medication prescriptions,
Speaker 3: socioeconomic deprivation in the area, comorbidities, and demographics. So what
Speaker 3: did they determined in this analysis? Will they identified a
Speaker 3: protective modifying effect of living near the blue spaces in
Speaker 3: relation to the impact of socioeconomic deprivation and mental health disorders.
Speaker 3: So the idea here is that the blue space doesn't
Speaker 3: completely cancel out all of the negative effects on mental health,
Speaker 3: but it provides what they describe as a quote unquote
Speaker 3: protective moat, which is also clever because you know it's
Speaker 3: a water feature. But they also write that their findings
Speaker 3: suggests that increased exposure to blue spaces rolled out in
Speaker 3: urban spaces could reduce medication intake and reduce mental health
Speaker 3: inequalities in urban areas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's important to note that while like
Speaker 1: the positive effects of things like blue spaces does appear
Speaker 1: to be pretty good, also the effects are fairly modest,
Speaker 1: So they're not going to be like a fix all
Speaker 1: for all of everyone's problems, but they seem to be
Speaker 1: part of a suite of solutions to generally make life
Speaker 1: and make urban environments more friendly and those kind of things.
Speaker 1: While no one of them is going to be life changing,
Speaker 1: probably they can add.
Speaker 3: Up, yeah, yeah, they can all add up to an
Speaker 3: increase in quality of life, staving off some of these
Speaker 3: additional mental and health issues. So something that should certainly
Speaker 3: should be factored into urban planning, to urban restoration projects
Speaker 3: and so forth. And you know, just on an individual level,
Speaker 3: you know, you can feel a little better about taking
Speaker 3: time out of your day to be near water, be
Speaker 3: it in the form of you know, some sort of
Speaker 3: an artificial pond, fountain, et cetera, or you know, local
Speaker 3: bodies of water and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, there's something I wonder about that I haven't
Speaker 1: seen this sited in any papers we were looking at
Speaker 1: or anything. This is just kind of an amusing but
Speaker 1: I wonder if there is some psychological benefit or quality
Speaker 1: of life benefit to just having something near you that
Speaker 1: is an excuse for you to go do something you
Speaker 1: don't have to do, you know, and it can be anything.
Speaker 1: It can be. You could be a park, or it
Speaker 1: could be a pathway near your house or something just
Speaker 1: an excuse to like an excuse to go do something
Speaker 1: that is not work and is not like a screen.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, And that you know, ultimately occupies your mind
Speaker 3: in a way that that may force out other thoughts
Speaker 3: and other preoccupations. You know that that taps into, you know,
Speaker 3: our basic primal wiring to see what's going on over
Speaker 3: there by the water? Are there ducks? What are the
Speaker 3: ducks doing are they are they mining their own business
Speaker 3: or are they looking at me suspiciously? Are there coins
Speaker 3: in the fountain? Et cetera. And again, if you're on
Speaker 3: the fence about building that coy pond, you know, don't
Speaker 3: don't build it just because you listen to this episode.
Speaker 3: But also maybe don't not build it.
Speaker 1: We're not saying it's going to be a cure all
Speaker 1: but also, hey, you know, water's nice, why not go
Speaker 1: for it?
Speaker 3: It might be nice.
Speaker 1: Now, the one thing I would hesitate on is throwing
Speaker 1: pennies in the pond with the fish.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's a bad idea, but I
Speaker 1: have a hunch.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, based on all the signs I see
Speaker 3: places I go, they say, don't throw the coins in
Speaker 3: because they're not good for the fish or the turtles
Speaker 3: or what have you. So unless it is a designated
Speaker 3: wishing fountain, don't cast your wishes because it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's not gonna work. All right, we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 3: close this episode out, but we'd love to hear from
Speaker 3: everyone out there. What are your thoughts on green spaces
Speaker 3: and blue spaces, on naturally occurring bodies of water and fountains.
Speaker 3: Do you have a favorite that you have observed or
Speaker 3: hang out around frequently? Let us know. We don't love
Speaker 3: to hear from you. Also, thanks to my wife who
Speaker 3: suggested this episode. We were kind of casting around and
Speaker 3: I would I said, hey, what what would you like
Speaker 3: to hear an episode about? And she said, oh, I've
Speaker 3: heard heard some about some studies regarding blue spaces, and
Speaker 3: so we looked into it and here we are. If
Speaker 3: you would like to catch up on past episodes of
Speaker 3: the show, well you can find them in the Stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We have core episodes
Speaker 3: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have episodes of Listener Mail
Speaker 3: on Monday's short form Artifact or Monster Fact episodes on Wednesdays.
Speaker 3: On Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 3: talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. And
Speaker 3: in terms of that fire Extinguisher episode of Invention that
Speaker 3: we mentioned offhand, I cannot remember if we have republished
Speaker 3: that one in the Stuff to Blow Your podcast feed,
Speaker 3: I assume that we have, but there is also a
Speaker 3: separate abandoned podcast feed for Invention, which is a show
Speaker 3: we did for a period based on inventions, so you
Speaker 3: can also find it there if you wish.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.