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 my name is Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, guys, we have to have sponsors,
Speaker 1: and this episode is sponsored in part by the numbers seven.
Speaker 1: Big sponsors were really happy to have landed, uh, this
Speaker 1: particular number as a sponsor because it's, uh, it's pretty magical.
Speaker 1: It's a magical, mystical number that we see in nature,
Speaker 1: we see in culture, it's everywhere. Um. In fact, you
Speaker 1: could say that the number seven is just one of
Speaker 1: the underpinnings that we use to piece together reality for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's easy to think of numbers as completely arbitrary, especially
Speaker 1: as we take in the world around us and apply
Speaker 1: these different values to things. But in this episode, we're
Speaker 1: going to stop for a second and think, huh, maybe
Speaker 1: there maybe there is something to off this seven. Uh magic.
Speaker 1: It's true because when you start to consider the number
Speaker 1: seven and it's relevance in society and again the way
Speaker 1: that we organized life, you begin to see a pattern.
Speaker 1: And so the question becomes it's just just our brain's
Speaker 1: pattern recognition sinery or is seven somehow just branded into
Speaker 1: our brains, and so we're gonna try to tease that
Speaker 1: out a little bit without starting any sort of seven
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. No. Yeah, we're not going to get into
Speaker 1: into numerology, and particularly in this sub podcast, or at
Speaker 1: least I'm not going to advocate it, but we will
Speaker 1: discuss a number of the things that do occur in
Speaker 1: sevens in nature, in culture, in history, and pop culture.
Speaker 1: Um where it's not gonna be a comprehensive list by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination, but um, I think we're
Speaker 1: gonna fit a lot of stuff on there. Yeah, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's begin with nature. We've got those seven seas,
Speaker 1: the seven continents, the seven colors in a rainbow, that's right,
Speaker 1: Roy g. BIV. Seven colors. Most mammals have next with
Speaker 1: seven bones in them. If you look at the periodic table,
Speaker 1: what do you find? Number of rows is seven? True?
Speaker 1: The neutral pH value that lies between acidity and alkalinity
Speaker 1: is seven. And should we bet on seven? Seven? Seven?
Speaker 1: A good gambling number? It is? Yes, it turns out,
Speaker 1: you know it's a nine right to die? Nine, you know,
Speaker 1: a bit too high, five, a bit too low. But
Speaker 1: seven just right, So it's kind of like the Goldilocks
Speaker 1: of numbers. Yes, you often here too, that by age seven,
Speaker 1: the blueprint for adulthood is in place, that a child
Speaker 1: personality is set in stone. In fact, there's a whole
Speaker 1: documentary series based on this idea, and the first episode
Speaker 1: in the series is called Seven Up. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've seen this before, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: series in the UK that follows these children at age
Speaker 1: seven and then every seven years. Yeah I think, I
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not quite sure what age they go up to,
Speaker 1: but um, well into to the middle ages of these kids,
Speaker 1: and it's fascinating to see really how very little these
Speaker 1: kids have changed that truly by age seven there's something
Speaker 1: that is set with a personality. Not to be confused though,
Speaker 1: with the Seven Ups, the Roy Schneider follow up to
Speaker 1: the French Connection, different film entirely, or the Drink or
Speaker 1: the Drink. Yes, um. Now, of course, when we start
Speaker 1: getting into culture, this is where the list really gets
Speaker 1: pretty expansive. So um, you'll have to stop me once
Speaker 1: I get going on this, but just to go back
Speaker 1: and forth a little bit there, of course, seven Holy
Speaker 1: Virtues and seven Deadly Sins. We talked about both of
Speaker 1: those in our Seven Deadly Sins, a series that we
Speaker 1: did on the science behind each one. And of course
Speaker 1: there are seven virtues, and of course if you look
Speaker 1: back at religious texts, you will see that seven shows
Speaker 1: up quite a bit. It's a it's quite a fortuitous number.
Speaker 1: And if you look at of course the Bible, there
Speaker 1: is that God created the earth in seven days, right um.
Speaker 1: And then of course that has to do with their
Speaker 1: the way we arrange our week seven days a week, right,
Speaker 1: seven chakras, the yoga, which we also did a podcast
Speaker 1: about a couple of podcasts. Actually, in the Islamic tradition
Speaker 1: there are seven heavens and seven earths, and the number
Speaker 1: of fires in Hell, and the numbers of doors to
Speaker 1: both the heaven and the hell is also seven. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Various uh maps of hell include seven levels, some a
Speaker 1: little more, some a little less. Um. Among the Babylonians,
Speaker 1: Egyptians and other ancient people's there were thought to be
Speaker 1: seven planets. The Hebrew verb for swear means literally to
Speaker 1: come under the influence of seven or beersheba um. Again,
Speaker 1: you said there's seven days in creation. Likewise, there are
Speaker 1: seven divisions of the Lord's prayer. The seventh son of
Speaker 1: a seventh son will often turn out to be what
Speaker 1: magical or Catholic or your boss? Right right? Is our
Speaker 1: boss the seventh son of a seventh son. I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking about the spare words, and now I'm
Speaker 1: beginning to think about George Carlin and his seven sware
Speaker 1: words that you cannot say on TV. There were seven
Speaker 1: meals for Sister Sarah. If you want to go into uh,
Speaker 1: into movies, um, seven notes in the musical scale. In
Speaker 1: the Apocalypse, the Christian Apocalypse alone, we have seven chronicles
Speaker 1: of Asia, seven candlesticks, seven stars, seven trumpets, seven spirits
Speaker 1: before the throne of God's seven horns, seven vials, seven plagues,
Speaker 1: a seven headed nonster, a lamb was seven eyes because
Speaker 1: the Book of Revelation is is essentially one big death
Speaker 1: metal album cover. UM. In the Spanish myth and fable,
Speaker 1: you have the island of seven Cities. So where seven
Speaker 1: bishops fled the moors in Spain to found these seven
Speaker 1: cities that supposedly existed, I mean not really, it's smith uh.
Speaker 1: Seven gifts of the spirit. In Japanese folklore, there are
Speaker 1: seven gods of luck uh, seven Hills of Rome, seven
Speaker 1: Joys of Mary, seven sacraments uh. Seven senses is interesting
Speaker 1: an ancient notion that the soul of man is comprised
Speaker 1: of seven properties under the influence of again those seven
Speaker 1: planets that we mentioned, and likewise, the dark lord Voldemort
Speaker 1: divided his soul into seven hore cruxes. You might remember
Speaker 1: that part um. There are seven Abdal, the Sumerian guardian
Speaker 1: water spirits who were kind of like Merman. Seven Naga
Speaker 1: are often seen behind Buddha or the same with Shisha. Uh.
Speaker 1: Do you see this in very like Hindu and time
Speaker 1: is the serpent like creature? Yeah, especially entire They're crazy
Speaker 1: cool because it's like a serpent, and then it's kind
Speaker 1: of a serpent coming out of its head and out
Speaker 1: of its head, really beautiful, often golden in appearance. Seven
Speaker 1: dwarves uh. Seven Samurai, seven brides for seven brothers. There
Speaker 1: was a seven year itch. There are seven Narnia books
Speaker 1: House of the Seven Gables. Uh. There were a seven
Speaker 1: headed demonic giant in Armenian folklore. Um. Oh what else
Speaker 1: do I have on this list? I think there was? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: I had to eventually just stop because it just it
Speaker 1: just kept kept going and going. Yeah, but that's all
Speaker 1: all I'm gonna get into right now. Well, of course,
Speaker 1: and that makes me think about why we put so
Speaker 1: much importance on the number seven, because it pops up
Speaker 1: everywhere and you begin to ascribe luck to it, fortitude
Speaker 1: to it, and uh. In fact, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: when you're in Las Vegas, or really any casino for
Speaker 1: that matter, the winning number, of course is seven, triple seven.
Speaker 1: That is what is going to make the coins ring
Speaker 1: into your po But here's the thing. Before you start
Speaker 1: brushing your teeth seven times, are stirring your coffee seven
Speaker 1: times in a ritual way to to invoke the gods
Speaker 1: of luck, just consider that this is cultural and it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean in every culture that it is a
Speaker 1: good sign of things to come. Yeah, A lot of
Speaker 1: it comes down to how we are this with these
Speaker 1: natural number crunchers. We're always trying to define meaning in
Speaker 1: the world around and when we've talked about this a
Speaker 1: lot in the past and about how this can bleed
Speaker 1: over into various supernatural beliefs and supernatural understandings of the
Speaker 1: world as we try to use our pattern recognizing minds
Speaker 1: just chew up all the data, and so we have
Speaker 1: all of the sense data around us, and then we
Speaker 1: we put all this culture over everything. We apply various
Speaker 1: numbers to everything, and so it follows that we're going
Speaker 1: to end up attaching varying degrees of meaning to different
Speaker 1: things that occur in different numbers. Well in seven too.
Speaker 1: It's just something that I think shows up UM in
Speaker 1: different types of media too, because linguistically, it is the
Speaker 1: only single digit with two syllables, right, so it just
Speaker 1: kind of falls off the tongue more smoothly. So you
Speaker 1: have uh snow white, and the seven dwarves snow white,
Speaker 1: and the five dwarves snow in the six doors it
Speaker 1: doesn't work as well, or the five samurai, the eight samurai,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really well. The seven summari. There's a pleasure
Speaker 1: in saying it's You get into that a lot too.
Speaker 1: With we're talking about this yesterday, particularly in China, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of influence um. Particularly in China. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of emphasis on what a number sounds like. So
Speaker 1: like the number four, its like the word for death,
Speaker 1: and uh and therefore is to be avoided. Right, So
Speaker 1: there is a good measure of magical thinking going on
Speaker 1: here when we talk about in number, and maybe in
Speaker 1: the English language, seven sounds like the word happened heaven.
Speaker 1: There was even a show about the seventh Heaven, which
Speaker 1: was I think, just all about numerology. All right, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we are going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but when we get back, we're going to see if
Speaker 1: this whole idea of the number seven is being this mystical,
Speaker 1: magical number is somehow a lot into our brains. There's
Speaker 1: some sort of secret there about why we heard it
Speaker 1: so much. So we're back, we're talking about the number seven,
Speaker 1: what it means to us, and we've mostly just rattled
Speaker 1: through various um cultural, historical, geographic, a little science, a
Speaker 1: little what have you there, all the different things that
Speaker 1: we attached seven to and why we think it's a
Speaker 1: pretty cool number. But is there more to that? Is
Speaker 1: there something? Is there something going on inside the human
Speaker 1: mind that's deeper than that. Well, so there's this idea
Speaker 1: that when it comes to remembering numbers rattling them back
Speaker 1: out again, we basically have a seven limit on that,
Speaker 1: give or take it to and certainly there are individuals
Speaker 1: without standing limits to that who can rattle off, you know,
Speaker 1: pie to the ode of the ridiculous degree um sixty
Speaker 1: seven thousand, nine digit if you're chow Lou, who holds
Speaker 1: again as world record for a citing pie. But for
Speaker 1: the most part we're hitting significantly lower than that um.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you think of anything like your
Speaker 1: social Security number or your phone number, it is worth
Speaker 1: noting that you will remember you maybe remembering a digit,
Speaker 1: a number longer than seven, but you're remembering it generally
Speaker 1: like three different numbers. Yeah. I was gonna point out
Speaker 1: a little interesting anecdote here, and uh, this is our
Speaker 1: video producer and editor Tyler Or was telling me that
Speaker 1: when he memorized pie in school, that he did it
Speaker 1: in chunks of seven. Interesting. So again it places this
Speaker 1: idea of anything you you can memorize, but these chunks
Speaker 1: of seven sort of like when we talked about um
Speaker 1: the rooms, the memory recall rooms that we create in
Speaker 1: our mind. It's that same sort of idea where if
Speaker 1: you can just make this definitive chunk, then you can
Speaker 1: recall it a lot better. And this is an idea
Speaker 1: that George Miller had. Yes, he wrote this excellent, at
Speaker 1: times very confusing paper. I find it's not it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily you know, it's not like straight up something you know,
Speaker 1: something you would find on a Twitter feed and go
Speaker 1: and just you know, consume it over lunch. And he
Speaker 1: gets a little heady and a little mathematical. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's awesome, but it's a you can get lost in
Speaker 1: it a bit or I can. Uh. The title of
Speaker 1: the article is the magical number seven plus or minus
Speaker 1: two colon some limits on our capacity for processing information.
Speaker 1: And in this uh, he starts off by pointing out
Speaker 1: that there is a clear and definite limit to the
Speaker 1: accuracy with which we can identify absolutely the magnitude of
Speaker 1: you need dimensional stimulus variable. Uh. There's a span of
Speaker 1: absolute judgment. And part of that is that there is
Speaker 1: a uh, that there is a finite s fan of
Speaker 1: immediate memory, and that for a lot of different kinds
Speaker 1: of test materials, this span is about seven items in length.
Speaker 1: All right, so we've already hit this seven items I
Speaker 1: can remember. I mean I have trouble remembering like three
Speaker 1: things if I need to pick them up at the
Speaker 1: grocery store, but ideally I should be able to remember seven. Right,
Speaker 1: if you had to really sit there and concentrate. You
Speaker 1: could do it, and we'll get into why you can
Speaker 1: concentrate for such a limited amount of time. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, I just wanted to mention that if
Speaker 1: you look at memory as this kind of house of memory,
Speaker 1: you see that on one side you have, you know,
Speaker 1: long term memory, which is like a library, which a
Speaker 1: bunch of with a bunch of books of your memories
Speaker 1: that you can recall whenever you want, right, just slip
Speaker 1: them off, Michelle, look up what you want, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: change them and then put them back right. Long term memory,
Speaker 1: but a short term memory is more like a white
Speaker 1: board where you kind of have a cheat sheet to
Speaker 1: keep up with the conversation or to remember directions, and
Speaker 1: so it's just kind of there to help you create
Speaker 1: some sort of association with what the present topic is. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you look at someone like Mikhail Rabinovich and
Speaker 1: his uh research into neural pathways, you begin to see
Speaker 1: this idea that seven bears out just in the way
Speaker 1: that we have um our neural pathways paved for us
Speaker 1: and the limits really of our processing when we're working
Speaker 1: with that white board, that working memory. Yes, he was
Speaker 1: one of the others on this paper that presented a
Speaker 1: mathematical picture of how neurons fire when we recall a
Speaker 1: sequence of steps, and one of the examples used here
Speaker 1: is is that it's like running across a tight rope
Speaker 1: walker not even a walker, because a walker can take
Speaker 1: his time and go back and forth between the World
Speaker 1: Trade Center buildings. But but this is the idea that
Speaker 1: that you you do not have that ability, you don't
Speaker 1: have the big poll. What can you do? You just
Speaker 1: have to sort of speed up and go with it.
Speaker 1: How long can you go across that trip wire without
Speaker 1: falling off? Yeah? And that trip wire is that neural pathway, right,
Speaker 1: And what Rabinovitch discovered is that when a person recites
Speaker 1: a sentence or a list, you can actually see an
Speaker 1: excited cluster of neurons fire for each word. And then
Speaker 1: these excited clusters create a pathway okay, that that tight
Speaker 1: rope pathway, and at the same time they tamp down
Speaker 1: any other competing neurons. Okay, So the competing neurons are
Speaker 1: really like any other memories or any other thoughts that
Speaker 1: you might be having at the same time. Okay, which
Speaker 1: is really important. When I was saying earlier that you
Speaker 1: could really do it if you're concentrated, you can recall
Speaker 1: a certain things. That's what we're talking about. This, these
Speaker 1: excited clusters telling everybody to step off, right. So the
Speaker 1: longer the sentence or the string of numbers you try
Speaker 1: to recall, the harder it is for those excited cluster
Speaker 1: of neurons to suppress the others from firing. And then
Speaker 1: the weaker the pathway, and then the lousier your your memory.
Speaker 1: So really, what you're seeing here again as a mathematical model,
Speaker 1: as you say, a picture of the seven idea at
Speaker 1: play in your brain. Yeah, this is really interesting and
Speaker 1: it ties right back into what I was talking about,
Speaker 1: remembering three things to pick up at the grocery versions
Speaker 1: remembering seven and uh. As they point out in this article,
Speaker 1: recalling seven items requires about fifteen times the suppression needed
Speaker 1: to recall three. And suppression again, like you say, forcing
Speaker 1: all the other thoughts and competing thoughts out of your
Speaker 1: head so that you can remember things. Ten more items
Speaker 1: requires fifty times to strength, and twenty or more items
Speaker 1: requires uh, hundreds of times to strength. So even in
Speaker 1: the jump from three items to seven items, you see
Speaker 1: this this pretty big jump in the the the amount
Speaker 1: of memory. You're gonna have to throw it at the
Speaker 1: amount there the cognitive load and the cognitive ramifications of
Speaker 1: trying to remember things well, and it's interesting to put
Speaker 1: a number on that cognitive load. We've talked about that
Speaker 1: a lot of times when we're talking about free will
Speaker 1: or well. One of the studies we looked at actually
Speaker 1: involved individuals having to remember a number and then they
Speaker 1: were introduced to the temptation of chocolate cake. And the
Speaker 1: individuals who had to hold the longer number in their
Speaker 1: in their head, which as I recall, was somewhere in
Speaker 1: the in the neighborhood of seven or eight digits, they
Speaker 1: had a harder time remembering it if they were introduced
Speaker 1: with this to this cake temptation. What I think it's
Speaker 1: so interesting is I wonder if those neurons that are
Speaker 1: firing those competing ones are like chocolate cake, chocolate cake,
Speaker 1: chocolate cake, like the literally thing that to the excited
Speaker 1: cluster that's trying to recall the actual string of numbers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every time this is probably horrible, But every time I
Speaker 1: think about this about like our limits on remembering numbers,
Speaker 1: I think of the movie Running Man, because there was
Speaker 1: the you know, the old Arnold source because there was
Speaker 1: a scene in that where the good guys had to
Speaker 1: remember some sort of code and then input it, and
Speaker 1: it was a pretty long code. But they had one
Speaker 1: character that's supposed to be a math whiz or something
Speaker 1: I guess, and it was able to hold all these
Speaker 1: numbers in his head. But I always found that that
Speaker 1: part kind of terrifying because I'm like, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: numbers so long, how can anybody remember it? Now, if
Speaker 1: certain certain types of autism will actually allow for people
Speaker 1: to have stronger pathways and recall a greater number of numbers,
Speaker 1: and then just some people in general can can sort
Speaker 1: of break that seven rule. Yeah, And certainly if you
Speaker 1: if you bust out the memory palace on it, then
Speaker 1: then you can really go far with it. Right Again,
Speaker 1: there's that idea of storing seven, you know, having a
Speaker 1: chunk of seven and storing maybe five chunks of seven
Speaker 1: so that you can really roll out an impressive amount
Speaker 1: of items. UM. Now, I wanted to also mention this
Speaker 1: really cool study about neurons and dendrites UM. And I
Speaker 1: do want to say that it doesn't mean that you know,
Speaker 1: the brain is um. The brain especially loves the number seven.
Speaker 1: But it it does kind of give you pause for thought,
Speaker 1: because researchers Miliori, Novora and Togola published a two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight study on neuros and the hippocampus that, of course,
Speaker 1: this is the memory input unit of the brain. The
Speaker 1: study showed that neurons produced the best information when they're dendrites,
Speaker 1: the branches of a neuron that receives stimulation, when those
Speaker 1: branches numbered seven. So again, here's this idea that this
Speaker 1: uh sort of recall fitness has a limit, has a
Speaker 1: limit within the neuron structure itself, within the pathway that
Speaker 1: these neurons create, and then within our own ability to
Speaker 1: recall information. And of course that brings up this crazy
Speaker 1: idea of well, if we keep ordering the world in sevens,
Speaker 1: you know, is it the tail wagging the dog? Is
Speaker 1: that because that's the way our brains are constructed? Do
Speaker 1: we end up falling into the trap of seven rather
Speaker 1: than actually applying it logically? Yeah? Is it more to
Speaker 1: it than just you know, a linguistic lovely sound of seven? Ye,
Speaker 1: let's say, Oh, it's because our brains have a constraint
Speaker 1: on them. You know, I can't help but think that
Speaker 1: seven also appeals to us in numbering things because seven,
Speaker 1: being an odd number, you have that you have that
Speaker 1: room for one of the digits to be a leader,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess you know. You have it in
Speaker 1: five as well, you have it in nine, but it
Speaker 1: seems most clear in seven because you have I can
Speaker 1: easily picture seven dudes. You have the one dude in
Speaker 1: the middle, and he's flanked by three on each side,
Speaker 1: but you have one that stands out. Or if it's
Speaker 1: a body of seven voting on something, then you have
Speaker 1: room for there to be a clear majority pretty easily. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a certain kind of natural symmetry to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very symmetrical number. You can just picture it
Speaker 1: there on a movie poster. And esthetically too, it's it's
Speaker 1: better to have seven objects displayed than yeah, six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and then the numeral is pretty, uh, pretty sexy too.
Speaker 1: You know. It looks kind of like a like a weapon,
Speaker 1: like we're like a hockey stick, you know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I feel a little bit weird about saying yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got a long neck. I mean, like, now I'm
Speaker 1: getting into some weird territory here. Probably, So I like
Speaker 1: it because I can seven is an odd number, but
Speaker 1: eventually if I do another seven to it's even number.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody has this sort of particular
Speaker 1: numbers obsession. Wait wait, so break this down for us again,
Speaker 1: your number of obsession. How it works? Well I did.
Speaker 1: I like even numbers, and I like getting to even numbers.
Speaker 1: So you know, I could be sitting there in a
Speaker 1: conversation counting letters, or in a sentence, or if there's
Speaker 1: a sign nearby, and if it ends in an odd number,
Speaker 1: it's uh disconcerting to me. Well, I'd say you have
Speaker 1: to keep counting. I'm not a big fan of one
Speaker 1: because one is the loneliest number to um, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm okay. To two is a good number. I guess three,
Speaker 1: three is three is nice because three is like a
Speaker 1: three is that? You know, you're a nice odd number.
Speaker 1: It's a trinity. Uh. Four, you got the four Horsemen
Speaker 1: of the Apocalypse, So that's pretty good. I like that, yeah,
Speaker 1: for in in Chinese death right, Yeah, so that's kind
Speaker 1: of it's got, you know, some sort of death metal
Speaker 1: vibe to it, which is nice. Uh. Five, you know
Speaker 1: the five Wounds of Christ. So I kind of like that.
Speaker 1: It's nice and grizzly, exactly what I thought of. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Six unholy numbers, so you gotta love that. Um. Seven,
Speaker 1: as we've been discussing here, lots of great things going
Speaker 1: for that. Eight you turn it on its side, it's infinity,
Speaker 1: so nice like that. Nine we have the nine Rings
Speaker 1: of Power from Lord of the Rings, the Nine Ring Ray.
Speaker 1: It's it's off the jokes store because it can flip
Speaker 1: upside down and be a six. That's right, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's also a trinity of trinities, so it's got
Speaker 1: that going for it. And ten, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: kind of lose interest at ten. Well, you know, now
Speaker 1: you've gone into double digits. Yeah. Um, I would really
Speaker 1: love to hear from from you guys out there. Do
Speaker 1: you have a certain sort of number that you really liked?
Speaker 1: You have some number obsession going on? And seven? Do
Speaker 1: you if you have a particular feeling for it. Do
Speaker 1: you think there's something to this the way that our
Speaker 1: minds were constructed, in the way that we paint reality
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, I think about it and think about
Speaker 1: it the next time you're walking, uh walking through your
Speaker 1: video store. If you still go to those and you
Speaker 1: should because they won't be around for long. You should
Speaker 1: appreciate him while you have them. Check out the titles.
Speaker 1: Notice the ones that have seven in the number in
Speaker 1: the title. Those the ones that have six that have three? Like,
Speaker 1: how does it? How does it affect you? Like? What
Speaker 1: is the like instant cognitive impact of that title? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know? Likewise look at I think the same thing
Speaker 1: at a bookstore or library while those exist. Indeed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we'd love to hear from you on that. Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's call over the robot and do it just
Speaker 1: a quick bit of listener mail, because I think he
Speaker 1: may have something that relates to this. All right, here's
Speaker 1: one that comes to us from Aaron Erin, writs In
Speaker 1: and says, Hi, Julian Robert, I'm a bit behind at times.
Speaker 1: I am commenting on episodes you did a year ago,
Speaker 1: but you'll have to forgive me. I've spent the last
Speaker 1: year as a Peace Corps volunteer in a rural village
Speaker 1: in West Africa. I recently finished listening to your episodes
Speaker 1: on the seven Deadly Since and was especially intrigued by
Speaker 1: the episode on Gluttony. My fellow volunteers and I live
Speaker 1: mostly in in small rural villages without access to markets
Speaker 1: or food other than what has grown on the desert
Speaker 1: like village land or brought in from a large town.
Speaker 1: Each week, we eat with our host families out of
Speaker 1: out of communal bowls, and while we usually get just
Speaker 1: enough calories consumed, it's not the food that we are
Speaker 1: used to in the United States, and it's not high
Speaker 1: nutritional value. I think lots of porridge, white rice in oil.
Speaker 1: So when I go into the cities and meet up
Speaker 1: with my friends, we binge as a recovering health nut.
Speaker 1: My sister calls my diet reindeer food. I never out
Speaker 1: I was capable of that kind of eating. For example,
Speaker 1: I had an entire jar of nutella in one setting,
Speaker 1: remarkably easy to do um, something I wouldn't even touch
Speaker 1: a year ago. My father recently referred to me as
Speaker 1: as a sumo wrestler during one of my of the
Speaker 1: many buffets we enjoyed. On implication, I began to call
Speaker 1: us opportunistic bingers. Here's a nice way of avoiding the
Speaker 1: word glutton us. Our circumstances that have definitely turned on
Speaker 1: some evolutionary need may be triggered by being denied what
Speaker 1: we are used to eating. I think this is true
Speaker 1: not only of gluttony, but other sins as well. Lust, wrath, sloth,
Speaker 1: and pride have emerged in our lives far more than
Speaker 1: ever before because of living in a completely different culture
Speaker 1: or and living in a completely different lifestyle. This sounds blasphemous,
Speaker 1: and I mean no disrespect to any religion or to
Speaker 1: me uh and other volunteers. But maybe we feel a
Speaker 1: need to be more gluttonous, lustful, wrathful, slothful, and prideful
Speaker 1: if we are going to maintain our sense of identity
Speaker 1: in this new and challenging place. Or maybe we're simply
Speaker 1: more aware of those tendencies here. Sometimes it feels like
Speaker 1: we haven't changed, We're just using more of the potential
Speaker 1: of our personalities, both for the worse and for the better.
Speaker 1: So back to glightening. While most of us are not dieting,
Speaker 1: our minds and bodies are rebelling, subconsciously demanding the food
Speaker 1: we are not providing. Meanwhile, my host family and my
Speaker 1: village is not very interested in the foods I make,
Speaker 1: and they are perfectly satisfied and happy with the food
Speaker 1: they're used to. It makes me wonder if it was
Speaker 1: better to have loved than lost the variety and plethora
Speaker 1: of food in the US than to never have loved
Speaker 1: it at all. Does the loss of what we once
Speaker 1: had make us more sinful in trying to fill the void?
Speaker 1: Two very big hips in a hurrah for opportunistic eaters everywhere.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the awesome science and stories you keep me
Speaker 1: entertained and sane during long, hot days in a foreign land.
Speaker 1: I make connections between the lives of people here in
Speaker 1: my village and the science you unveil every day, and
Speaker 1: I feel more informed and at peace because of it.
Speaker 1: You help me understand this crazy world within the world
Speaker 1: erin Wow. So that's really interesting. I keep thinking about
Speaker 1: to one of the studies that talked about when you
Speaker 1: lose something like of your weight, that you really your
Speaker 1: body sort of rewires itself to crave fatty foods, to
Speaker 1: want to regain that weight because it thinks that there's
Speaker 1: something wrong, and it makes it incredibly hard to maintain
Speaker 1: that weight. In fact, for someone who is a similar
Speaker 1: weight but has not lost it, um you have to
Speaker 1: expand many more calories exercising to maintain than that other
Speaker 1: person such as your your body trying to make up
Speaker 1: for this loss. Yeah, indeed, Yeah, I thought that was
Speaker 1: a great email. I really enjoyed a particularly by the way,
Speaker 1: you know, Aaron was sort of extrapolating this to the
Speaker 1: other um sins that that we discussed as well. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a very interesting perspective to take. I
Speaker 1: can't help the of course, thinking about how your body
Speaker 1: is sort of gaining the gaming, the gluttony part of it, yea. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot to think about two in terms
Speaker 1: of maintaining identity. Yeah. Yeah, So Aaron, Uh, first of all,
Speaker 1: thanks for the great work you're doing out there, and
Speaker 1: thanks for writing in and sharing your thoughts with us.
Speaker 1: The rest of you can do the same. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are numerous ways to get in touch with us, uh
Speaker 1: and find out what we're up to. The big one,
Speaker 1: of course, is go to Stuff to Blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's the mothership. That's where all of our
Speaker 1: stuff winds up in some form or another and links
Speaker 1: to everything else we're in. It's the center of the
Speaker 1: spider's web, and uh, I guess that makes us spiders,
Speaker 1: but you cannot. You can also find us on elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the web. On Facebook, we are Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. You can find us on Twitter where we
Speaker 1: are blow the Mind. We have a tumbler account we
Speaker 1: are stuff to Blow your Mind on that as well,
Speaker 1: and if you head on over to YouTube you will
Speaker 1: find our account at mind stuff Show. That's right, you'll
Speaker 1: see puppets of us talking in video about science. Really now,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be nice. I just got excited. Maybe soon
Speaker 1: we can that's that's on the table. We could do that.
Speaker 1: If you think we should do that, let us know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to see puppets of us interacting and
Speaker 1: us doing some freaky voices? Can build those puppets also,
Speaker 1: that would be also, I would also be heppy. Please
Speaker 1: do drop us a line there and let us know
Speaker 1: about your thoughts on the number seven about puppets and
Speaker 1: everything else that you can think of. Um, you can
Speaker 1: do so at blow the Mind at discovery dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com