WEBVTT - So Cute I Could Eat You Up 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.840 Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:16.760 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie, 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:22.520 do you have any old memories, childhood memories, even infant 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.319 memories lost in the in the in the haze of 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:30.320 forgetfulness emerging in which you you're looking out out of 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:34.280 a bassinet and there's a grandma or an aunt coming 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:39.040 at you teeth ready. They're kind They're gonna bite you. Yeah, 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:41.960 they're gonna eat you up. Yeah there, I'm so cute 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:44.280 as a baby. They're gonna eat me up and we'll 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:48.400 just go fasting cheeks. Yeah, I know, I do have 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:52.400 this one of my earliest memories. And I have now 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:57.000 come to know these people as the cheek pinching Mafia. 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:00.000 Yeah yeah, so well. I mean, you have a daughter yourself. 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:04.080 Have you observed family members or even strangers going in 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:06.440 for a pinch, going in for a nibble, telling you 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.080 about legs, like the fat on the baby legs. I 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:10.920 remember when my daughter there was a certain period of 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:13.120 times she got super chunky, and people just like I 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:17.200 don't want to eat, and it was just concerning I'm 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.720 not gonna lie, so you yourself have never felt the 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:26.440 temptation to go after a little thy meat. No, And 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:29.679 we should explain these people don't actually want to eat 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:32.600 the baby or do harm to it. They're just they're 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:39.039 experiencing an unparalleled level of joy and they can't help themselves. 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:41.160 And that's what we're talking about today. Yeah, it's important 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.280 to note. Yeah, first, first off, let's just say that 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.240 this has nothing to do with any kind of malicious biting. 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:51.520 That's an entirely different, different area of study. Um, and 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.320 it's also something that not everyone is going to relate to. 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:56.360 We ran into this a bet when we we did 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:58.880 a video on this topic, more specially about a recent 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:01.080 study that came out out this that we'll get into 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:03.720 in a bit. And uh, and I think we we 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:05.400 went with the we went with the title to talked 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.919 about eating baby feed or biting baby feed, or eating babies, etcetera. 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.000 And uh, a number of people we're up in all 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:14.800 they were just like, oh, that's the that's disgusting. You 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:17.840 people are monsters. How why would anyone want to buy 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:20.720 a baby's foot? Babies are precious, or why would anyone 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:23.800 want to get a baby near their mouth. Babies are disgusting, 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:25.440 like they were all of these like a number of 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:26.919 people got it and we're like, oh yeah, I just 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.720 want to eat this kid's you know, feed up. But 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:32.280 a number of people were just like could not connect 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:34.600 with it on any level. And having to do a 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:36.720 blog post where I was like trying to lay it 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:38.880 out a little more and be like, look, nobody's saying 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:41.519 eat babies, I know, And then like once again someone 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.240 was like, you guys are satan us. You know, we 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:48.880 really aren't really, but as a group, those guys are 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.440 very interesting. As a slide note stans Yeah, I mean 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:57.120 m Anton LaVey, very fascinating individual. Um, yeah, I'd love 0:02:57.120 --> 0:02:59.760 to do something on Satanist sometime. Yeah. That means said 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:03.120 we were, We don't self identify a satanis. Now. What 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:05.440 we're talking about is this kind of joy that is 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.960 so intense that it's overwhelming. And I wanted to bring 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:12.640 up Zad Smith's essay on joy. Jadie Smith as a 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:15.959 writer and she's she's an essays and a fiction writer, 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:19.200 and in her essay on joy, she says it might 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:23.120 be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy, But maybe 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.919 everybody does this very easily all the time, and only 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:28.520 I am confused. A lot of people seem to feel 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:31.480 that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:34.280 arrived at by the same road. You simply have to 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.200 go a little further down the track. That has not 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:39.520 been my experience. And if you asked me if I 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.320 wanted more joyful experiences in my life, I wouldn't be 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:46.520 at all sure I did exactly because it proves such 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:49.840 a difficult emotion to manage. And she goes on to 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:52.560 say that food gives her pleasure on a daily basis, 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:56.160 but she's really only known pure joy about six or 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.520 seven times in her life, and some of those times 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:03.720 involved for romantic love. And so it's very interesting essay 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:07.320 about this um and I want to just read a 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.360 couple of other little bits here. She says, we certainly 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:13.920 don't need to be neuroscientists to know that wild romantic crushes, 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:17.360 especially if they are fraught with danger, do something ecstatic 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.840 to our brains. Though, like the pills that share the 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:25.640 same name, horror and disappointment are usually not far behind ecstasy. 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:28.600 Right when my wild crush came, we wandered around a 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:32.599 museum for so long it closed without us noticing. Stuck 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:34.840 in the grounds, we climbed a high wall, and, finding 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:38.279 it higher on its other side, considered our options, broken 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.240 ankles or a long night sleeping on our stone. Lion 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.560 and the end of passersby helped us down, and things 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:47.360 turned prosaic, And after a few months it fizzled out. 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:49.720 What looked like love had just been tamed spirit. But 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:51.800 what a wonderful thing to sit on the high wall, 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:55.240 dizzy with joy and think nothing of breaking your ankles. 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.000 And I love this because this is her example of 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.039 something is joy woyful, it's it's a hard experience. Um, 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:07.119 it's not pleasure. And she goes on to say that 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:12.640 occasionally her child is a pleasure, though mostly her child 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:16.159 is a joy, And she says that means that, in fact, 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.640 she gives us not much pleasure at all, but rather 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:24.520 that strange admixture of terror, pain and delight that I've 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.640 come to recognize as joy and now must find some 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:30.279 way to live with daily. Now that this is great, 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:33.400 because this is exactly what is happening when we are 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:39.520 talking about babies, in this desire, this this voiced expression 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:43.159 of wanting to eat them because they're so cute. Yeah, 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:45.440 I think you you may have brought this, uh that 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:47.799 that second quote up to me before. I can't remember 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:52.039 was on the podcast or just outside the podcast after 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:56.400 after I became apparent, because I certainly when you have 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.960 a child in your life like this, it uh, it's 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.480 a storm of different emotions, and certainly it's certainly not 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:05.919 something you can just say, oh, it's a pleasurable experience. 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:08.240 You can say it's a joyous experience. But under that 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.360 umbrella of joy, there are times when it's you know, 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:16.200 tremendously pleasurable and times when it's tremendously miserable, depending on 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:19.720 the circumstances. Yeah, So it kind of makes sense that, 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.320 especially through that lens, that people would have that sort 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:25.920 of reactions to children. And it's not just children too, 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.280 it can be puppies, I mean really, anything that requires 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:32.560 care anything, Yeah, childlike or or locked in into that 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:36.120 childlike zone that's uh in the case of a cat 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:40.880 especially or a dog that's hijacking our our child awareness. Yeah. Now, 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:44.320 there's actually a name for this. It's called a dimorphous expression. 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.479 And you've probably heard this before, like tears of joy. Yeah, 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:52.839 I'm so happy, I cried. They just so overjoy that 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:56.159 you're just weeping as if somebody had died. Yeah, I 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:59.600 mean basically two different expressions that have the same origin. 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:03.600 So that's where our cheek pinching ants and uncles come in. 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:08.200 And um, when people highly charge positive emotional situations respond 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.760 with tears of joys or threats of eating a baby 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:16.200 foot or something. Um, they're just really modulating their emotions. Yeah. 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:18.640 You can imagine somebody up there in the old brain 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:22.360 machine manning the switches like its power plant and uh, 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:24.400 you know there's too much steam in the machine. You 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:25.880 need to hit the release foul and let some of 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:29.400 it out. In a similar way, Uh, the little guy's 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:31.720 man in the switches and says, all right, aunt uh 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:34.800 aunt Filma here is really about to blow up with 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:37.680 with positive emotion over this baby. What can we do? 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:40.280 Throw in a few images into her brain of her 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.440 nibbling the toes off the baby, or nipple nipple and 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:45.840 a little thigh meat, and that'll bring things down to 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:49.840 a manageable level. Uh, not that you're rationally thinking any 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:51.680 of that, but the idea is that this is this 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:55.000 is all going on under the surface indeed. All right, 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:56.720 we're gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, 0:07:56.720 --> 0:07:58.680 we're going to talk about the actual studies on them. 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:08.200 All right, we're back, and you know, I do want 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:11.720 to say that I can relate to the wanting to 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:18.120 bite the baby. Yeah, well, not not a baby biter 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:20.800 per se, But there have been times when I've been 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.720 hanging out with with my son and he's particularly well 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.440 behaved and adorable, I have thought I could just nibble 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:29.560 his ear. Like there was one time where I was like, 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:30.840 I can nibble as ear. And then I was like, 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:33.840 whoa is that dangerous that I just thought that was 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:35.880 I like actually close to nibbling his ear. And then 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:38.040 of course they ran across this research and everything was fine. 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:40.520 But then also like some of the things the various 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:42.680 games you may play with the toddler where you you 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:44.400 go in for a little next sugar where you're not 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:46.240 actually biting the childer thing, but you know you're just 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:49.040 kind of like, um, you know, making a raspberry noise 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:53.120 against their fat little necks, or you're you're just tickling them. 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.960 Even like there's a certain amount of of of threat 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.679 and attack with with cute embrace swear it just all 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:02.559 gets meshed up, and you don't know which side is 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:04.280 up and which side is down anymore. You know. I 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:06.640 think about the tickling thing a lot, because there is 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.240 actually there's nothing more joyful to me than to see 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:12.280 my daughter just shriek, you know, a tear of like 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:14.760 laughing and also kind of like you know, the sort 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:17.680 of crying laughing face is the cutest thing in the world. 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.320 Oh yeah, my son would go, we would tickle him, 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:23.160 and he'll go, He'll go, no tackle me, no tackle me. 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:24.920 And then he has a chance to catch his breath 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:29.000 and he goes more. Yeah, there's a there's a sort 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:33.160 of symbiotic thing going on there. Um. Now, psychological scientists 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:37.480 and lead researcher Orienta Aragon of Yale University decided to 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:41.880 check out this so called cute aggression after seeing the 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:47.600 actress Leslie Bib on Conan and um coming in, did 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:50.120 I just do that Conan Conan? Yeah, I kind of 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.360 remember the scene in Conan the Barbarian where there was 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.440 a baby. There may have been. I've been coming up 0:09:55.440 --> 0:10:00.040 with all sorts of alternates pronunciations today anyway, on and 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:03.480 in Bib but not only expressed her desire to punch 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.640 up baby because it was so cute, and kick a dog. 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:10.520 But then she admitted that when she met a fellow actress, 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:14.600 Angelica Houston, that she told her quote, You're just so beautiful. 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:18.840 I want to cut your face. And so this researcher, 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:21.920 Orion Oriano Aragon was like, I gotta check this out 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.960 a little bit further because in this interview bib was 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:32.520 obviously like very excited and expressive about her emotions. It's 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:35.160 like you can really see it overpowering her. And then 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:37.440 they have to go to the release valve, except maybe 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:41.200 an even more extreme version in her case, like she's 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.120 the face is too beautiful, make her imagine her slicing 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:47.480 it off. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little frightening, alright. So 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.400 so so Aragon, who you know, devotes a lot of 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:54.120 her work to human emotional connections. This is just her 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.880 only things, just a corner of her research. Two thousand 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.560 fourteen study, she and her team presented participants with images 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:04.520 of babies, some more infantile than others, um you know, 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:09.679 some cuter than others. Then they charted their emotional responses 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:12.880 to each image, as well as due to the duration 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:16.280 of the emotional charge, that they felt. They found that 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:20.400 test subjects who showed more bity pinchy aggression when looking 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:23.280 at a cute baby also showed a larger drop off 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:28.080 in positive emotion five minutes later. Yeah, and this is 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:32.960 important because this is really showing that they're they're modulating 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.360 their emotions. In other words, if they hadn't had some 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:41.320 sort of cute aggression to temper their overwhelming feeling of joy, 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:43.600 I mean, what would happen. I don't know. Would your 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:45.719 aunt or uncle like strip off their clothes and run 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:50.120 naked through this shrieking? You know, this is important. You 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:52.800 have to think about that the next time someone is 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:55.760 cute aggressive toward a dog or a baby like this 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.559 person needs to bring it down. Yeah. I mean, you're 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:01.760 you're really dealing with cute over Look, you're risking qute 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:04.679 overload at this point, and luckily there is a response 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.400 system in place. Um so yeah. Aragon suggests that that 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:11.840 this is all a matter of dimorphous expression, rebalancing the 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:15.000 scales normalizing after an intense dose of the cute and 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:17.960 that five minute drop and that does observed in the 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:21.959 experiment seems to demonstrate how the negative emotions allow us 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:26.160 to moderate those intense positive emotions and restore the balance. 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:30.000 So yeah, and Arragon did a couple of different online 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:33.360 surveys here, so it wasn't just one study. Um. I 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:35.439 think she started with the baseline of a hundred forty 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:39.640 three participants asking if people cried when they saw loved 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:42.720 ones reunited, or you know, if they are watching certain movies, 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:44.600 just to sort of test out whether or not these 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:47.880 people were perhaps I don't want to say uh, over 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:50.800 expressing their emotions, but we're maybe a little bit more 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:54.160 sensitive to these sorts of situations. Um. And then yeah, 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:58.160 she had a couple of other uh surveys. One online 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:02.280 study had six d seventy nine participants who confirmed again 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.679 these sort of findings over and over again. Of yeah, 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:11.520 if the person would respond much more aggressively when they 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:15.000 were looking at pictures of babies or you know, cute 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:20.080 things like puppies. Now the question is is it universal. Well, 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:23.800 we don't know if it's wholesale universal, but Aragon consulted 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:28.280 language professors in different cultures and yes, indeed, cute aggression 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:32.920 popped up elsewhere in the world. And Tagalog and which 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:36.760 is an Austronesian language with about fifty seven million speakers 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:41.040 in the Philippines and Manila. In some other places, giggle 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.600 refers to gritting of teeth and the urge to pinch 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:48.560 or squeeze, and then in Farsi, it's not uncommon to 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.120 hear an adult to tell a cute baby, I want 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:55.840 to eat your livery just play very hannibal, right, it's 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:58.320 the giggle. Is is interesting too because we actually one 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:01.120 of the viewers of the video amid the people who 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:03.800 are saying that we were monsters in satanists, one person said, oh, yeah, 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.400 we totally have a word for that uh in my 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:09.920 native tongue. So yeah, just just because just because you 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.160 don't have a word for it in English and cannot 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:16.000 directly relate to it, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. See, 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:18.520 we're not crazy, you know. That was another thing that 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:20.600 came up in uh in some of the responses to 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:22.840 the video we did. And by the way, I'll link 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:25.960 to this video on the landing page for for this 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:27.800 episode at stuff to bow your Mind dot com in 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:29.800 case you want to go check that out and actually 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.720 explore a YouTube comment threat um. It can be a 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:36.480 life changing experience. But there were people who were saying, oh, well, babies, 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:39.120 Babies are gross baby stink. Why would you want that 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:41.960 anywhere near your mouth? And it's true babies do poop 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:45.760 themselves and urinate on themselves and then bomb it on 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:50.720 themselves profusely. But uh, if they're cleaned and maintained, they 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.840 have a nice film. Well I kind of think it's 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.720 not the fault of the ants and uncle sometimes because 0:14:56.720 --> 0:15:00.720 they are emitting certain pheromones that make them mell lovely. 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.920 And um, I had read about this before. I believe 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.760 it's that the idea behind it is that it's sort 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:10.160 of a bonding thing. Well, yeah, I mean there's a 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:14.120 lot going on in the biological level between parent and child. Uh, 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:16.480 and their loads of studies on this. We've discussed some 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:18.880 of them in the past here where it's it's about 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:21.840 the you've got to form that bond that the child 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:24.400 has to have a bond to survive. And then in 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:26.840 some cases there is a resistance to the bond on 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:29.240 the part of the parents because they may need to 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:32.080 survive without the child. There's, like I say, tons of 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:35.760 fascinating Uh. Like I said that, there are tons of 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:37.800 fascinating studies on this. Yeah, And I mean we we're 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.360 talking about is communication through scent, and that's not so odd. 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:42.440 We've talked about that a lot before. There's a study 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:47.440 titled Mother's Recognition of their Newborn by Olfactory ques and 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:50.400 in that study, it was found that women could identify 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:55.360 their newborn by smell alone after just an hour with 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.680 their newborn. So again that I think that speaks to 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.120 how important smell is. Um, how is that not a 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:04.640 parlor game? That would be great? You know, pass the 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:07.520 baby around, pass the baby blindfolded and you have to 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:09.360 smell which one is yours? That would be great? Would 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.000 it would be great? I think that's going to be 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:16.520 a new sort of postpartum game. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Now, 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:20.200 in September two thousand and thirteen, in the issue of 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.360 Frontiers and Psychology, researchers looked a little bit more into 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:28.360 smell and its effect on people. They used brand brain 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.440 scanners to scan the brains of fifteen women, half of 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.480 whom had just recently given birth something like six weeks earlier, 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:38.760 and half of them had never given birth. And while 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:42.200 they scanned their brains, they had them sniff the pajamas 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:46.520 of two day old infants, and these smells were shown 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:51.360 It to uh, to activate the the subjects reward circuits 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:54.840 in their brain. Yeah, and now all of the women 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:58.440 had activation in their reward circuits. But it turned out 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:01.280 that the women who had just recently given birth to 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:05.280 their own babies were experiencing it perhaps a little bit 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.359 more intensely. And when we say intense, we're talking about 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:13.360 like the feeling one gets after having obtained food, like 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:17.200 the baby, just the smell of the baby, and by extension, 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.639 the presence of the baby is is a meal in 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:23.000 and of itself. Yeah, that's what I thought was interesting too. 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:25.320 You're right. It's it's the kind of stuff that that 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.920 makes our brains like just say, hey, you got to 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:32.480 seek this out again and again. That food insects and 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.440 the baby would would elicit the same sort of responses. 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:40.600 I think shows how important this is. Making the caring 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.560 for the baby is on par with obtaining food. So 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:48.560 organism and continue to eat food. These are all good 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:50.760 things in a part of your genetic mission. Go to it. Yeah, 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:54.000 so it makes sense that this sense of joy that 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:57.520 you feel when you look at this cute baby could 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:01.760 be so overwhelming for some people and they would have 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:08.560 to bring out this modulating expressions of cute aggression because 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:10.960 it's really I mean, this is it's umpire, as you say, 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:13.879 with life or death. And when you look at it 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:16.679 that way, you're like, Okay, I can understand that. The 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:20.640 grandmother's response, my response, or you know, or uncle's response 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.360 to this being yeah, it's tied into some of our 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:27.919 most primal, important wiring. So it makes sense to me. Alright. 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:30.040 I wanted to go ahead and close this out with 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:32.560 a little bit more of Z. D. Smith, And she 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:38.000 says in her essay Joy, the writer Julian Barnes, considering morning, 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:41.479 once said it hurts just as much as it's worth. 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:43.760 In fact, it was a friend of his who wrote 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:46.880 the line in a letter of condolence, and Julian told 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:49.480 it to my husband, who told it to me. For 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:52.840 months afterward. These words stuck with both of us, so 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:56.400 clear and so brutal. It hurts just as much as 0:18:56.400 --> 0:19:00.840 it's worth. What an arrangement? Why would anyone accept such 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.919 a crazy deal? Surely, if we were sane and reasonable, 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:09.040 we would every time choose a pleasure over a joy, 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:13.200 as animals themselves sensibly do, the end of a pleasure 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.680 brings no great harm to anyone, after all, And can 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:21.479 always be replaced with another of more or less equal worth. 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:24.880 All right. Well, on that note, let's call over the 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:30.240 robot and do a couple of listener mail. All right, 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.320 This one comes to us from Hannah, and Hannah writes 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:37.800 in from Northern California, says Hi, Julian Robert. I'm sure 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:40.880 you've got emails last year when the slug Love podcast 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.879 originally aired, but I wanted to toss in my two cents. 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:47.760 My sister is a U SEE Santa Cruz graduate, and 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:50.840 as a lifelong resident of Northern California myself, I know 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:54.560 a thing or two about banana slugs. Hell head into 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:57.640 the Santa Cruz Mountains, you'll quickly find yourself knee deep 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:01.280 in these slimy yellow guys hash gals, because of course 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:09.920 they're amaphrodites. Uh. First off, UCSC does have competitive sports. Tennis, soccer, basketball, swimming, diving, golf, 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:13.240 cross country, and volleyball are all represented intercollegiically by the 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:17.040 Banana Slugs. The mascot is named Sammy. Second, the banana 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:19.879 slug was chosen as the at the insistence of the 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.000 students in the nineteen eighties, when they apparently found the 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.840 sea lion proposed by the chancellor to improperly represent the 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:30.479 forest located campus. Sea lions rarely get very far inland, 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:33.720 but banana slugs are freaking everywhere. Finally, there is a 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.679 tradition in Santa Cruz, especially among university students who have 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:39.639 not all grown up around the gastropods, to kiss the 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:42.000 first banana slug you see in a year. This will 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:44.640 cause your lips to tingle due to one of the 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.640 defensive chemicals present in the slug slime, and it will 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:50.440 give you a little bit of street cred on campus. 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:56.080 Go banana slugs, Hannah and norcaw go banana slugs. And 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:59.800 I like that this college is uh traditions and writes 0:20:59.880 --> 0:21:04.960 the passages involve actual intimate contact with gastropods. I think 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:10.600 that's that's lovely with its mascot. Yeah, talking that though, 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:16.640 if you're like mascot is alligator, calligator or a wizard? 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:18.880 Where you're gonna get a wizard? Oh, you can get 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:23.160 wizards all right. Here's a bit of listener mail comes 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:26.159 to us from Cameron Camera writes in on the subject 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:28.800 of genetic memory. Hi, Julian Robert, I've been catching up 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:31.760 on your podcast episodes and listen to the tripophobia episode. 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:34.240 You were discussing the study of mice trained to fear 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:36.680 the smell of cherry blossom and how that fear was 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:39.359 passed on to the following generations when I was reminded 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.560 of a similar study, if I remember correctly, I was 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:44.679 watching a science news program called Daily Planet a few 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:47.560 years back, and they were representing and they were presenting 0:21:47.560 --> 0:21:49.760 a study that was done to figure out why we 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:53.320 hate or cringe at certain sounds, such as fingernails screeching 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:56.560 on chalkboards. The researchers concluded that it was a defensive 0:21:56.600 --> 0:21:59.960 mechanism going back to prehistoric man. These sounds we hate 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:03.960 resemble the sounds made by some prehistoric predators, and that 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:07.359 defensive trigger has been passed down genetically, just like this 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:10.160 cherry blossom smell did on the mice. Sorry, I haven't 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:12.320 had the time to find the actual study for you yet, 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:14.200 but I thought you'd find it interesting as it goes 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:17.520 along quite well with your phobia episode. Thanks for the show, 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:21.160 enjoyable and informative. PS. Is there such a thing as 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:23.679 fear of podcast? And what would it be called? Ha? Ha? 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:27.880 And that was such a great email from Cam, because 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:30.960 not only did it help to spin off a video 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:35.119