Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass, and
Speaker 1: we are continuing our journey through the seven Deadly Sins,
Speaker 1: through the sort of the psychology of each sin, the
Speaker 1: science of each sin, and uh, we find ourselves, interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: only standing in the second circle of Hell. If we're
Speaker 1: using Dante's Inferno, is the map of human inequity. That's right,
Speaker 1: Today's subject. What you've all been waiting for lust because
Speaker 1: I guess why we ended up situating it a little
Speaker 1: farther along in the roll call of sense, because because
Speaker 1: like I said, Dante listed rather early, you're walking into
Speaker 1: into hell, the realm of eternal punishment in Dante's epic
Speaker 1: for a Fit of Mine comedy, and the first circle
Speaker 1: you encounter are are basically the noble individuals who just
Speaker 1: happened to live before the age of redemption. So you
Speaker 1: have all these philosophers. They are richly adored not only
Speaker 1: by Dante but by Western culture of the time. In
Speaker 1: the religious Due to technicality, they're not permitted to rise
Speaker 1: above hell, so they just kind of live on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Hell, but they have their nice little circle. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a nice area, like if you had to
Speaker 1: live in Hell, like this is the place to be,
Speaker 1: even better than working there, because some of the guys
Speaker 1: that work there pretty bad off. But it's like the
Speaker 1: white collar circle right, white collar color crime circle, yes,
Speaker 1: or the academia section of Hell. Right, it's a reasonably
Speaker 1: pleasant place, even though they two were removed from God,
Speaker 1: so they're kind of sad. But the second circles where
Speaker 1: we actually start getting a little hellish and then just
Speaker 1: a little because Dante seems to discount, not discount lust,
Speaker 1: but but lust is very much seen as a more
Speaker 1: of a minor and relatable infraction. It's one that that
Speaker 1: Dante has a lot of sympathy for. So first you
Speaker 1: have to stroll past this monster that goes by the
Speaker 1: name of Minos, that has this long tail, and he'll
Speaker 1: wrap this tail around you, and the number of times
Speaker 1: this tail can loop around your body that informs circle
Speaker 1: of Hell you're bound for. Okay, I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: how the science of that works, but that's very dramatic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just like ha, go over there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you can meet all these sort of sad
Speaker 1: but otherwise noble intellectuals, and then the next thing you know,
Speaker 1: there's a monster wrapping up in its tail and then
Speaker 1: flinging you off to some circle of torment. Well, the
Speaker 1: second circle of hell is all about the lust. You
Speaker 1: see all these individuals caught in this maelstrom, it's just
Speaker 1: wind everywhere blowing them around. The translation that I'm reading here,
Speaker 1: this is from Robert im Durling's translation to Divine Comedy,
Speaker 1: which I highly recommend if you end up wanting to
Speaker 1: dive into the Divine Comedy. The description goes, the infernal whirlwind,
Speaker 1: which never rests, drives the spirits before it's violence, turning
Speaker 1: and striking. It tortures them when they come before the landslide.
Speaker 1: There the shrieks, the wailing, the lamenting. There they curse
Speaker 1: God's power. I understand that to this torment were damned
Speaker 1: the carnal sinners who subject their reason to their lust.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of this kind of Dante's whole take
Speaker 1: on it is that it's about reason becoming usurped by desire.
Speaker 1: The desire is expressed as as one's weight or dominant inclination.
Speaker 1: So this is we see the wind in this circle.
Speaker 1: It's the wind that drives the soul. It's the force
Speaker 1: of the desire. You see such famous lusty individuals in
Speaker 1: this circle as Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Dido, Paris, Tristan Achilles,
Speaker 1: and he's by and large pretty sympathetic towards these people.
Speaker 1: And then if you if you end up going on
Speaker 1: up to Purgatory, which again is the mountain in the
Speaker 1: divine comedy that connects the earth to the earthly paradise
Speaker 1: and then onto Heaven, the middle ground between hell and Heaven,
Speaker 1: you see all these terraces that want has to climb
Speaker 1: this mountain and purge themselves of a sin. For each level, well,
Speaker 1: you have to travel all the way up to a
Speaker 1: terrace seven in Purgatory, which makes sense because this is
Speaker 1: the terrace closest to the terrestrial heaven. So this is
Speaker 1: the last sin you have to get knocked off. They
Speaker 1: get some of the big ones first. So in this terrace,
Speaker 1: the individuals are purging themselves of lust, are walking around
Speaker 1: just immersed in like a world to fire, and it's
Speaker 1: sort of burning the lust off of them. You find
Speaker 1: various turning the lust off, Yeah, burning themselves clean of it.
Speaker 1: We've all done and that at some point. I like
Speaker 1: this idea of the Maelstrom and the winds because I
Speaker 1: do think of lust like this. It's like the ultimate diversion.
Speaker 1: It's this thing that sort of takes over your mind
Speaker 1: and completely scrambles your your cognitive abilities to some degree,
Speaker 1: and you can really go wild with I mean, it's
Speaker 1: easy to look at lust and think of it purely
Speaker 1: in terms of one's desire for the flesh, one sexual
Speaker 1: desires becoming the dominant force. You see lust ascribed to
Speaker 1: any number of things. So, for instance, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite books, The Name of the Rose, is very much
Speaker 1: a book about all the different types of lust they
Speaker 1: can afflict a person. There's the lust for forbidden loves,
Speaker 1: the lust for flesh, the lust for knowledge, the luss
Speaker 1: for new things, uh, the lust for truth, the luss
Speaker 1: for adoration, the less for humility, the luss for pain,
Speaker 1: which ties in with our podcast about the martyrs and torture.
Speaker 1: And then in Buddhism we mentioned the wheel of Stamsara
Speaker 1: and our one of our our previous episodes about sin
Speaker 1: about how uh there are these three forces at the
Speaker 1: center of this wheel of suffering. They're summarized by these
Speaker 1: three animals, and one of them is the cock, which
Speaker 1: represents greed. But also tied up in this animal are
Speaker 1: the forces of lust. So if lust is a force
Speaker 1: of desire, clearly that's the way Dante sees it, that's
Speaker 1: the way any number of commentators see it. Then it's
Speaker 1: obviously serves as a hindrance to the Buddhist soul. So
Speaker 1: it's also tied in with some of the higher realms
Speaker 1: of reincarnation, such as the ashra of the Deva, and
Speaker 1: of course the human realms, where people become wrapped up
Speaker 1: in these emotions that are becoming the dominant force in
Speaker 1: their lives and end up delivering them again into suffering
Speaker 1: and disappointment. Well, and speaking of the cock animals, right,
Speaker 1: the statyer, which is you know something that's a half human,
Speaker 1: half goat, like you think of pan, right, this is
Speaker 1: another really good symbol of lust and ancient Greeks. Ancient Greeks,
Speaker 1: in fact, there's a I don't know if I should
Speaker 1: actually describe this, but I'm sure everybody is familiar with this.
Speaker 1: She is a really juvenile term, like think how would
Speaker 1: a kindergartener describe? Okay, so not that one should. All right,
Speaker 1: So you've seen the Greek pots, right that usually have
Speaker 1: depict certain seams, and we all know that they're kind
Speaker 1: of racy, Okay, using a juvenile term. There is a
Speaker 1: picture of a satyr who has his frank and beans exposed,
Speaker 1: and his frank is h is actually balancing a wine cup,
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of like the ultimate expression
Speaker 1: of not just animal sexuality, but lust and desire, because
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, throw a little wine in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just total buccanal and nuttery. Yeah, exactly, because what fuels
Speaker 1: less more than than the one of the guts? Right,
Speaker 1: the simple search to make you think about, like what
Speaker 1: exactly is lust? You know, it is a state of nature.
Speaker 1: It's a state of mind, and perhaps that's why it
Speaker 1: doesn't get too bad a rap in terms of the
Speaker 1: circle of hell it's placed in. Right. The Stater is
Speaker 1: interesting because on one hand, like clearly the Greek's love
Speaker 1: the sator, like the statter is this almost kind of
Speaker 1: a messcot at times, you know, and the way he's
Speaker 1: depicted and even looking at it now, you're like you
Speaker 1: kind of want to be the Stater, like the Staters
Speaker 1: having the time of the wine and music, wine, good food,
Speaker 1: love making, um, just totally living in the moment, and
Speaker 1: it's just you know, it's it's the hedonism bot of
Speaker 1: of of ancient increase. But then on this at the
Speaker 1: same time, he's monstrous, he has be steel aspects to
Speaker 1: his body. And then I think it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: the monster comes from a monetary. The word dates back
Speaker 1: to the idea that it's demonstrating something to illustrate a point.
Speaker 1: In every monster, there's something telling about the society that
Speaker 1: creates it, which is why we spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time in each of these sin podcasts talking about the
Speaker 1: imagined monsters of hell because they inevitent illustrate how we
Speaker 1: view a particular sin, and the the Sater is a
Speaker 1: great example of it. Yeah, it is the grotesque ory
Speaker 1: of human nature. And we talked about this a bit
Speaker 1: and the Discuss podcast when we were talking about how
Speaker 1: part of what fuels our sense of discust can sometimes
Speaker 1: relate back to the fact that we don't necessarily want
Speaker 1: to embrace our animal selves. We try to divorce ourselves
Speaker 1: from that, at least most of us doing most of
Speaker 1: the time, and so when you think about the Stater,
Speaker 1: are yeah, fun time, but also you know, so so animalistic.
Speaker 1: Couldn't be me, right, But you know when you talk
Speaker 1: about Less, you talk about the Stater, you wonder if
Speaker 1: it's really a sin, if it's essential to our nature,
Speaker 1: because it is part of the evolutionary machinery in terms
Speaker 1: of coupling right most of the time. But the way
Speaker 1: it works, right is that you have to have something
Speaker 1: fueling you to decide to couple with someone, to perhaps
Speaker 1: mate with them for life, and lust is sort of
Speaker 1: the glue of that arrangement. Yeah, I mean, it's very
Speaker 1: much a part of the genetic mission. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that makes Less so resting because it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to combat. Like lust is this thing that
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint and from an
Speaker 1: animalistic standpoint, but then as animals we end up reaching
Speaker 1: this point where we create this culture around ourselves that
Speaker 1: lust doesn't necessarily jive with. We cannot be the Stater
Speaker 1: in everyday life because we would we would. I mean
Speaker 1: there are people who try God bless them, I guess
Speaker 1: bocus maybe bless them, but it tends to be kind
Speaker 1: of destructive if you just let lust totally dictate every
Speaker 1: choice in your life. And do you know why, because
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily wine that is being balanced by those
Speaker 1: by the francopins that's in that cup. It's really a
Speaker 1: cup of dopamine. Our friend dopamine showed up on the
Speaker 1: scene and every single one of these sins um but
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this a little bit later, but dopamine
Speaker 1: here is seriously, I guess you could say, manipulating our
Speaker 1: thought processes when it comes to lust. And I kind
Speaker 1: of call this the Yasa effect because it's not just dopamine,
Speaker 1: but you also have nora epinephrine released. And what happens
Speaker 1: is when you begin to lust, you see something that
Speaker 1: excites you as you have all sorts of craziness going
Speaker 1: on with your vital signs. Your heart rate increases, your
Speaker 1: reward system is going ding ding in your brain, you're
Speaker 1: sweating a little, your limbic system is going, yeah, I
Speaker 1: give need more of that. And in fact, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty much a full brain event. Plus they didn't have
Speaker 1: some experiments where of course they booked people's brains up
Speaker 1: to monitoring imaging equipment and then they displayed some shall
Speaker 1: we say, erotic material for the individuals whose brains were
Speaker 1: being scanned, and they set back and watched what lit up,
Speaker 1: and they saw regions of light up there associated with reward,
Speaker 1: sensory and interpretation, visual processing. So it's lighting up the amigala,
Speaker 1: the hippothalamus, which deals with emotional information. It's stimulating reward
Speaker 1: processing uh ventful stratum, probably due to the satisfying nature
Speaker 1: of the stimuli. It's just really setting everything ablaze, particularly
Speaker 1: with a with a mail you can look at their
Speaker 1: brain scan and tell at an m r I brain
Speaker 1: scan and tell if they are aroused. It is a
Speaker 1: much stronger response in men than women. Lust and this
Speaker 1: reaction to images. Yes, And what I thought was really
Speaker 1: interesting about that is that the dopamine is being released.
Speaker 1: You can see this happening in the brain when someone
Speaker 1: sees of image that excites them. And not only that,
Speaker 1: you can you see what's happening in the brain and
Speaker 1: can say it's the all event thing going on. But
Speaker 1: you know, you've got parts of your brain that's saying
Speaker 1: let's act on this, let's go, And then milliseconds later,
Speaker 1: your frontal cortex, which has to mediate all of this
Speaker 1: and bring reason into it. Has just a very small
Speaker 1: window to actually say, you know what, maybe this isn't
Speaker 1: the best idea. Last time we did this, we got
Speaker 1: into a lot of trouble and we acted on this
Speaker 1: lust or whatnot. So that's what I think is fascinating
Speaker 1: about the fMRI I images that you see with men
Speaker 1: considering just these really split second photos, which by the way,
Speaker 1: are interspersed with with control photos like here's a picture
Speaker 1: of a woman's breast in a black lace bra, right,
Speaker 1: it's not too crazy, and a dog eating a birthday
Speaker 1: cake or something, right, yes, and hopefully that's not something
Speaker 1: that is exciting to them, but snow covered trees or
Speaker 1: something like all these lines because there's the control there,
Speaker 1: so we can really see the brain in action. But
Speaker 1: again it comes down to these split second decisions that
Speaker 1: we make. Um And of course this isn't necessarily indicative
Speaker 1: of a real world scenario because we're not stuck in
Speaker 1: fm r I. Usually when we see images or think
Speaker 1: thoughts that really excite us, but still it gives us
Speaker 1: a clue. Another thing that's fascinating about this is that, again,
Speaker 1: we we build this culture up around ourselves and these, uh,
Speaker 1: these various social systems, and our lust doesn't really jive
Speaker 1: with it. So we have to find ways to defeat lust,
Speaker 1: because otherwise we would be like tongue hanging out the
Speaker 1: cartoon Kyote more wolf rather with the eyes and the tongue,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a cartoon version of the stat
Speaker 1: or to a certain extent. So we have to find
Speaker 1: ways to shut it down. Right. You can think of
Speaker 1: it as thinking about baseball, just saying up, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna think about this, We're gonna think about this. And
Speaker 1: they've actually studied this as well to see what's happening
Speaker 1: in the brain when someone is shutting down lust, and
Speaker 1: they're shutting it out as with a number of other
Speaker 1: powerful impulses in the brain, we attempt to shut it
Speaker 1: down by calling upon the right superior frontal gyrus and
Speaker 1: right anterior cigulate gyrus. And this is according to research
Speaker 1: by Mario you Regard at the University of Montreal. He
Speaker 1: and others proposed these brain areas form a conscious self
Speaker 1: regulatory system. It's a network that provides us with the evolutionary,
Speaker 1: the unprecedented ability to control our own neural processing, which
Speaker 1: is pretty impressive. Another species right, you don't necessarily see
Speaker 1: this in other animals. This is very particular to humans.
Speaker 1: And again, this ability to to take that split second
Speaker 1: and way whether or not you should act on it,
Speaker 1: and what the implications are. And we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: like our brain is really constructed to try to see
Speaker 1: into the future and see ourselves into the future. So
Speaker 1: that's not aha moment, but still it's pretty impressive that
Speaker 1: we can do this, And I think it's interesting to
Speaker 1: to sort of take that out outside of the context
Speaker 1: of lust. Two. Um, Like we've talked before about just
Speaker 1: sort of the quagmire of of thinking about your thing
Speaker 1: thinking you know, or or just letting your thoughts run
Speaker 1: wild taking it outside of lust, because you can get
Speaker 1: into some sort of weird, puritanical territory if you're thinking
Speaker 1: about like, oh, I'm going to shut down dirty thoughts
Speaker 1: in my brain. But I think it is a useful
Speaker 1: exercise to be able to shut down thinking in your brain,
Speaker 1: especially when it's sort of harmful. Let me drag out
Speaker 1: the sad toys in my past kind of thinking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it was Art who pointed out that if
Speaker 1: you think yourself, I wonder what my next thought will
Speaker 1: be to concentrate on that thought like that that has
Speaker 1: an easy and significant ability to sort of clear out
Speaker 1: all the processes. And that's going on whether you're thinking
Speaker 1: about something depressing that happened in your past, or something
Speaker 1: intimidating in the future, or something lustful breathing through your brain. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean this is particularly important if you're a sex addic, right,
Speaker 1: you have to be able to shut down that thought
Speaker 1: process because that to me seems to be like a
Speaker 1: heightened state of desire, which is, you know, no longer productive,
Speaker 1: right from just seeking out is always thinking to come
Speaker 1: out in one and where conceivably like the picture of
Speaker 1: the trees could excite you because you're you're reading something
Speaker 1: sexual into everything exactly, like I've seen that tendency in
Speaker 1: some people. Well, um, what I do want to mention too,
Speaker 1: and this is from Discovery Channels, The Science of Lust.
Speaker 1: Apparently women are much better at dialing down the lust factor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because Dante and well you know, I mean women women
Speaker 1: just they're as lusty as men. But this is interesting differently, Okay,
Speaker 1: they control the process in a different way. According to this, Right,
Speaker 1: there was this really interesting study in which women were
Speaker 1: asked to wear the sensors to monitor their heart rates,
Speaker 1: their blood pressure and I'm not going to get into
Speaker 1: how this happened, but their blood flow to their genitalium. Okay.
Speaker 1: In addition, the subject has a lever that she controls
Speaker 1: with her hand to indicate when she's aroused by what
Speaker 1: she sees on the screen. Okay, So she's got this
Speaker 1: little device that she just kind of pushes up or
Speaker 1: down when she is aroused. So she's shown a nineties
Speaker 1: era promotional video for Russia and apparently this is like
Speaker 1: the most like neutral, non sexual footage that they could get,
Speaker 1: you know, no no offense, Russia, but apparently like your
Speaker 1: landscapes aren't all that sexually exciting. And then they show porn. Okay,
Speaker 1: so while watching the porn, the woman's vital signs are
Speaker 1: clearly like going nuts. Her body is actually responding to this.
Speaker 1: But what is really interesting is that she is pulling
Speaker 1: the lever down to indicate that she is not at
Speaker 1: all aroused. In fact, she's like the negative of aroused.
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, they also do this with men, and they
Speaker 1: see the male subject also watching the same videos, and
Speaker 1: then they also have the same response to the videos.
Speaker 1: In terms of their vital signs and the flow of
Speaker 1: blood to their genitalia. The difference is that men report
Speaker 1: that they are mentally aroused. Okay, so they take that
Speaker 1: lever and they push it up like full speed. And
Speaker 1: so the idea is that again women can control this.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the disconnect and some of this could be cultural too, right,
Speaker 1: because that really does have a bearing on how you
Speaker 1: perceive things, So you know, there's that aspect to it.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that from an evolutionary point of view,
Speaker 1: women had have to be much more selective because they
Speaker 1: if they were to get into a situation where they
Speaker 1: become pregnant, than they are you know, of course bound
Speaker 1: to raise that child and that's a lot of resources.
Speaker 1: So this idea is that women are much more selective
Speaker 1: and able to take that part of their brain that
Speaker 1: the reasoning, the frontal cortex and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm not really invested in what I'm seeing. I might
Speaker 1: be around, but I'm not going to act on it.
Speaker 1: And again, this is pretty much pointing back to what
Speaker 1: you were talking about with Mario Beauregard of the University
Speaker 1: of Montreal, who was saying that we have this self
Speaker 1: regulatory system. The idea again isn't women have more? So, um,
Speaker 1: it would be really interesting to see more studies on
Speaker 1: this and also to take in the cultural context of
Speaker 1: it before saying, oh, women they're just they're awesome at this,
Speaker 1: you know, because I think there's a little bit more
Speaker 1: to that than just this black and white situation, this
Speaker 1: one experiment in a room. All right, Well, we should
Speaker 1: probably take a break at this point. Yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: when we get back, we're going to talk about whether
Speaker 1: some people are just born lusted. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: and before we jump right back into the science, I
Speaker 1: thought of point out an interesting point that we're going
Speaker 1: across from a few different critics who pointed out that
Speaker 1: that since left is so ingrained in human nature, when
Speaker 1: organized religion condemns it, it's kind of like a spiritual
Speaker 1: speed trap, you know, like a small town generally in
Speaker 1: the United States, you only think of it like a
Speaker 1: small southern town where the speed limit ends up suddenly
Speaker 1: dropping to such a low level that a large number
Speaker 1: of people are going to legally be speeding and therefore
Speaker 1: they caught and then they're you know, brought into the
Speaker 1: system to to pay into the system for their their
Speaker 1: traffic ticket. So that if you if you have a
Speaker 1: religious system that calls you out on something that you
Speaker 1: basically cannot help, it's guaranteed to bring you in. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're saying that you begin to to think more
Speaker 1: about it, to actually subscribe to a little bit more
Speaker 1: on on on the psychological level. Well, it's kind of like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you have a problem with less, Well, we've got
Speaker 1: the religion for you. Well, everybody has a problem with
Speaker 1: lust of you define it in these terms, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just an interesting, interesting way to interesting to me
Speaker 1: anyway way to look at it. You know, like, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of it very much in terms of the speech trap,
Speaker 1: whereas like murder isn't as much of a speeed trap.
Speaker 1: Now I'm seeing signs like lust ahead, yeah, next thirty
Speaker 1: miles less monitored by less detecting devices, some microdrones, lust
Speaker 1: less planes, a hood. So okay, I'm thinking about I'd
Speaker 1: always like to think about the opposite of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, right in terms of the seven deadly since
Speaker 1: so what would be the opposite of lustiness? Unlustiness? Yes,
Speaker 1: thinking specifically in humans? A sexuality? Okay, Okay, So the
Speaker 1: reason I'm bringing this up is because in again this
Speaker 1: was from disc Every Channels Science of Lust Um. They
Speaker 1: were saying that one percent of the population will report
Speaker 1: a lifelong lack of sexual attraction for either sex again
Speaker 1: known as their sexuality, and that this seems to be
Speaker 1: something that is hardwired in individuals. So I think it's
Speaker 1: so much done in a day. You know, it's possible
Speaker 1: that the people of the interviewed they seem to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't have a problem with this
Speaker 1: one way or the other. It's just not something that
Speaker 1: is present in me. And the researchers were saying there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong. I think they just actually even used the
Speaker 1: term plumbing. There's nothing wrong with their plumbing. In other words,
Speaker 1: they are completely healthy individuals to just have a lack
Speaker 1: of lust in kind of life. It's like John McHale
Speaker 1: and Community talking about Paul Rudd as a comedian. He said,
Speaker 1: I see the appeal. It's just not for me. That's
Speaker 1: right for them. It's all Paul Rudd all the time,
Speaker 1: no offense, Paul red because you know he's he's a
Speaker 1: cute guy. Um. God, this is going somewhere else. Um anyway,
Speaker 1: So the point of this. The reason why that we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about his sexuality is because if it is
Speaker 1: hardwired in individuals, you then take the opposite attack to say,
Speaker 1: could others be born overly lusty? Could they be hardwired
Speaker 1: for lust, super luster super lusters like supertasters. I don't know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dean Hammer, a geneticist, discovered that there are certain genes
Speaker 1: involved in the libido, and when he was trying to
Speaker 1: find correlations to DNA and personality, he gave people all
Speaker 1: sorts of personality tests and what he found is that
Speaker 1: people who reported a higher interest in engaging in risky
Speaker 1: sexual behavior have a mutation on a gene related to
Speaker 1: dopamine dopamine. Again, if you have this mutation, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to respond to the dopamine released by new and
Speaker 1: different sexual experiences, and this leads to sexual thrill seeking.
Speaker 1: So I was actually thinking about that in terms of
Speaker 1: neophilia exactly. Again, neophilia the people that have these actual
Speaker 1: genes that in which they are hardwired to seek out
Speaker 1: new experiences. Also, there's a mutation connected to the brain
Speaker 1: chemical sarah tone in and that's sometimes known uh to
Speaker 1: cause high anxiety at a different levels and is also
Speaker 1: known to be strongly correlated to a high sex drive,
Speaker 1: So there are different factors going on. Biological factors clearly
Speaker 1: that could dictate some someone's response to sexually charged images.
Speaker 1: Which isn't to say that you're not responsible for your
Speaker 1: own behavior, but if your tongue is always hanging out
Speaker 1: on the floor, maybe you should look into this. I
Speaker 1: don't know well, and you can. You can easily imagine
Speaker 1: then where you you have the biological causes and then
Speaker 1: if you depending on what the specific culture one is
Speaker 1: born into or finds themselves living in, I mean that
Speaker 1: that has a drastic effect on human happiness, your ability
Speaker 1: to to have any kind of like satisfying sexual and
Speaker 1: or emotional life. And speaking of cultural too, that reminds
Speaker 1: me to mention that we should probably take a look
Speaker 1: at the environment that we're living in today, right, And
Speaker 1: that reminds me of the article of the Internet is
Speaker 1: for porn. Let's start talking about it. It's a great
Speaker 1: article that talks about the fact that we live and
Speaker 1: it will just be a economists something. I don't believe
Speaker 1: it was Forbes. Forbes. Yeah, I know he was somewhere
Speaker 1: he didn't quite expect you. Yeah, yeah, that it's another Jewelie,
Speaker 1: but I can't remember her last name, but not mine,
Speaker 1: but she says this was a quote from it. In
Speaker 1: the largest case of t mine recent history, computational neuroscientists
Speaker 1: O Giojas and PSI Gotham looked at a billion web searches,
Speaker 1: a million individual search histories, a million erotic stories, a
Speaker 1: half million erotic videos. That's a lot a million websites,
Speaker 1: and millions of online personal ads to conclude that literally
Speaker 1: everyone is a sex freak. That's what that's what it
Speaker 1: would appear. Well, and I should point out that some
Speaker 1: of those searches were us researching this episode. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say when I was working in the
Speaker 1: coffee shop yesterday, I had a couple of red facing moments.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding, because I mean some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that comes up when you were searching this title, like
Speaker 1: little children walking up and saying, Mommy, what is that
Speaker 1: goat man doing? Is that a cup of dopamine? And
Speaker 1: then yeah, I mean think about it in these terms. Again,
Speaker 1: this is from the article. Fewer than ninety porn magazines
Speaker 1: published in the US today, more than two point five
Speaker 1: million porn sites. That's a lot of fuel for the
Speaker 1: fires have blessed. Now you've probably seen there's like a
Speaker 1: book series out there called Porn for Women and it's
Speaker 1: and it's pictures of men chores and doing things that
Speaker 1: supposedly women find sexy animal emotional level. What are your
Speaker 1: thoughts on that based on the research? Uh, what are
Speaker 1: my thoughts on the book series and women in porn
Speaker 1: and for real women I porn? Do you think that
Speaker 1: this is very much this is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that they would push the level to that in that
Speaker 1: experiment where they had a little level that they adjusted
Speaker 1: depending on their no. I think that's a funny commentary
Speaker 1: on on you know, how women get excited by things
Speaker 1: like getting help in in the house, which is kind
Speaker 1: of sad actually right on one level like that that
Speaker 1: would become porn for women. But I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot of research actually to be done, um for porn
Speaker 1: for me, because that is an audience that is actually
Speaker 1: expanding quite a bit. This is some of the research
Speaker 1: that came on is the saying that you know, they're
Speaker 1: trying to crack the nut in terms of women and
Speaker 1: what they want. And there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who say the sort of porn that's out there for consumption,
Speaker 1: isn't what women are really attracted to because women don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to see pictures of themselves being subjucated or
Speaker 1: some of the very let's say, the darker images that
Speaker 1: are out there. And yet here's this, you know, let's
Speaker 1: go back to the to that experiment with the woman
Speaker 1: who's watching porn as opposed to the Russian promo video,
Speaker 1: and she is seeing the act and she is still
Speaker 1: aroused by it. So again, this to me, that boils
Speaker 1: down to more of a cultural aspect of it. So
Speaker 1: obviously there's a huge business opportunity for someone who really
Speaker 1: figures out what women want in terms of erotic stimuli
Speaker 1: visual stimuli. Uh yeah, And I was actually just thinking
Speaker 1: too that on thirty Rock there was a really good
Speaker 1: episode in which Jack was trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: women wanted in terms of like what turned them on,
Speaker 1: and very similar to the Porn for Women series, Uh
Speaker 1: those books. They actually came up with a program in which, yeah,
Speaker 1: Liz Lemon would turn on the TV and I think
Speaker 1: there was a shirtless man saying how are you doing today?
Speaker 1: How are you feeling? Tell me about your day, which
Speaker 1: was kind of funny. So if anyone does figure this
Speaker 1: out and nails it, um, Yeah, so to speak, there'd
Speaker 1: be a lot of financial gain. It would fit in
Speaker 1: well with the overall lust economy. Yes, and in fact,
Speaker 1: this is a little teaser. The next podcast topic that
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about speaking of lust economy
Speaker 1: is the future of virtual of sex. Yes, so put
Speaker 1: that in your pipe and smoke it. Yeah, a topic
Speaker 1: that I recently wrote a little on. I did a
Speaker 1: Stuff in the Future video about it. But we're covering
Speaker 1: all sorts of new stuff in this one, so it's
Speaker 1: it's gonna be amazing. Keep an ear out for that.
Speaker 1: But yes, the lust economy basically is that lust, the
Speaker 1: ideas that lust drives our economy on virtually every level,
Speaker 1: like even the levels where you don't think about it,
Speaker 1: where it's uh when we talked about this before and
Speaker 1: I think our advertising episode right, yeah, eat more popcorn.
Speaker 1: There have been experiments actually focusing on men and what
Speaker 1: they choose to buy based on the environment that they're in. There.
Speaker 1: There was one again the Discovery Science of Lust episode
Speaker 1: that talked about the street vendor with sunglasses. The one
Speaker 1: pair was like an Elvis flashy sun glass pair and
Speaker 1: the other was their most popular seller, so two to
Speaker 1: choose from, and when they had a neutral background, men
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly would buy the most popular option that you know,
Speaker 1: one of two. But when it was placed in front
Speaker 1: of an erotic an erotica store where there was tons
Speaker 1: of stuff that was sort of fueling their imagination, they
Speaker 1: went from the flashier Elvis ones because the ideas that
Speaker 1: they're trying to peacock and stand out so overwhelmingly peacocking.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, peacocking. Yes, Uh, they were trying to
Speaker 1: This is the idea at least that that they're extopolation,
Speaker 1: not mine. Is that where men were trying to be
Speaker 1: more unique so that they could perhaps get a meet
Speaker 1: the whole lust economy thing. I keep thinking of it
Speaker 1: when I listened to various j nix podcasts because generally
Speaker 1: the podcast that I've subscribed to, like each week or something,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of times we will have a different DJ,
Speaker 1: and some of the podcasts as album mark for the
Speaker 1: mix will have a picture of said DJ. With the males.
Speaker 1: It's generally find two types of DJs. There's kind of
Speaker 1: like ghastly looking or nerdy looking guys who generally these
Speaker 1: are the guys who want to listen to because they're
Speaker 1: so into the music that they really don't care what
Speaker 1: their head shot looks like. And then they're the guys
Speaker 1: that have like a really fancy or attempting to be
Speaker 1: cool headshot, and those can be pretty bad because clearly
Speaker 1: they're really invested in the physical appearance. But then there
Speaker 1: will be the occasional female DJ, and I'll find myself
Speaker 1: sort of having the inner conflict of of seeing the
Speaker 1: thumbnail for the mix and thinking, oh, well, she's pretty
Speaker 1: hot off to listen to this, And then I have
Speaker 1: to tell myself that has nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: with the music at all, like even less so than
Speaker 1: you know, like someone like Madonna obviously, like the whole
Speaker 1: package is about the presentation of of how she looks
Speaker 1: this persona in addition to or sometimes above and beyond
Speaker 1: the music. But with a DJ, it's like it's it
Speaker 1: should all be about the sound. So I'm constantly seeing
Speaker 1: these mixes, listening to these mixes by some very talented
Speaker 1: female DJs and uh and and feeling weird about the
Speaker 1: whole like how do I how am I supposed to
Speaker 1: compartmentalize the fact that someone like like a Maya, Jane
Speaker 1: Cole or an Eva be like these are they're attractive women?
Speaker 1: You know, well, I mean you have an added problem
Speaker 1: of you know, mucking the waters here that for women
Speaker 1: it's largely gender performance. Right, So there are some people
Speaker 1: that say that everybody is performing drag on some level,
Speaker 1: males and females, because if we didn't manipulate our our
Speaker 1: appearance at all, we'd be kind of hard to distinguish
Speaker 1: from other than obvious body parts, right, ok, bruss for
Speaker 1: women right, Otherwise everybody would be fairly hairy, you know,
Speaker 1: long hair, right, if you never cut your hair, if
Speaker 1: you never shaved, if you never plucked your eyebrow as
Speaker 1: a woman to try to accentuate your eyes, or applied
Speaker 1: rouge or put you know, any sort of adornment on.
Speaker 1: So wow, there you go. Well you just blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I never really thought about that. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: we're all participating and dragged to some to some point,
Speaker 1: we're all attempting to fit under various classifications of what
Speaker 1: it is to be male or what it is to
Speaker 1: be female in various spaces in between. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: performers are just like the uber gender performers, right, because
Speaker 1: that's that's you have to project that image. So I
Speaker 1: think that's maybe some of the appeal of Lady Gaga
Speaker 1: on some level, although I feel like we we haven't
Speaker 1: had a Lady Gaga discussion lately. Yeah, she used to
Speaker 1: come up all the time. You all right, Well I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna close it out. I have one last
Speaker 1: just to bring us back around to Dante, the way
Speaker 1: he presented less not only as you know, definitely a
Speaker 1: sin and a stumbling block to human happiness and spiritual happiness,
Speaker 1: but also as something that was very romantic and very
Speaker 1: very very beautiful and and ultimately not nearly as as
Speaker 1: bad as these other sins. This is from a novel
Speaker 1: by Louise Erdrich titled The Last Report on the Miracles
Speaker 1: at Little No Horse, which is excellent. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: There's this wonderful brief love story between two priests. One
Speaker 1: is a male priest and the other is a female
Speaker 1: living her life as a male priest, and they end
Speaker 1: up discovering who they really are. They end up having
Speaker 1: this physical and emotional relationship, and so there's there's just
Speaker 1: a few lines. Gregory kissed her forehead and cupped his
Speaker 1: broad hand around her face. The way the curve of
Speaker 1: her face fit into his hand took away his breath
Speaker 1: for a moment, and then he took a painful gulp
Speaker 1: of air and laughed. I hope Dante was right about hell,
Speaker 1: he said, I don't think I would mind so much
Speaker 1: whirling in the d in that dark wind with you
Speaker 1: forever cut off from God, she says, and then he
Speaker 1: adds if we are cut off from God by sinning,
Speaker 1: he said, low, why do I feel so close to
Speaker 1: God when I touch you in this darkness, in this cloud?
Speaker 1: See you again? That is why it's very hard to
Speaker 1: judge less in that way, and when it contributes to
Speaker 1: the formation of love, which some would say is next
Speaker 1: to godliness, right right. And the things that keep these
Speaker 1: two characters apart, and you read the book by all
Speaker 1: means to find out more about this, but I mean
Speaker 1: the things that keep them apart of very much this
Speaker 1: this culture that's built up around them, you know. Anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: let's call the robot over here and get some listener mail.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we have a couple here related to
Speaker 1: our sin episodes. Karen writes then about envy and she says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm a communication major with an emphasis in media. So
Speaker 1: after listening to the episode on envy, I started thinking
Speaker 1: about how technology plays into envy. With the ever expanding
Speaker 1: social networking sites that are now, there are now infinite
Speaker 1: ways to become envious of others. Facebook, for example, and
Speaker 1: now seems to be less about keeping in contact with
Speaker 1: others and more about displaying your life. People become envious
Speaker 1: of others who are seeing all the good parts of
Speaker 1: someone's f life. On the flip side of that is
Speaker 1: the humanizing of people as well. For instance, if a
Speaker 1: person you think has their life together, it gets tagged
Speaker 1: in an unflattering situation. Um, or just you're generally unflattering
Speaker 1: photos right um. As she continues, I have also recently
Speaker 1: joined Pinterest and found the same sort of envy producing
Speaker 1: so fill networking people were either pinning their own pictures
Speaker 1: or adding pictures of a lifestyle they wish to have.
Speaker 1: I think I think it may be unhealthy to envy
Speaker 1: others so much, but what can I say? It is
Speaker 1: addicting at the same time. Love the show, Thanks Karen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the picturest thing is really interesting because it does seem
Speaker 1: to be some sort of like uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: guess they call like dream borge or whatever, like things
Speaker 1: that you want in the future, that you create for yourself.
Speaker 1: At the same time, it seems to be like the
Speaker 1: sort of meta expression of want, meaning that I don't
Speaker 1: see it as a serious like yearning for something, but
Speaker 1: more like, let's talk about these visual aspects of what
Speaker 1: makes this really cool or exciting to me? Yeah, sort
Speaker 1: of a celebration really of art to a certain degree.
Speaker 1: I don't know if some people would say that, you know,
Speaker 1: braided hairstyles qualify as art, but there's certainly a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting things that would, um that would arrest your
Speaker 1: eyes in some of those photos, right. I remember, like
Speaker 1: back in college, just to bring that back around to
Speaker 1: lest I remember, everybody's out on their own for the
Speaker 1: first time for the part, and they'll have computers, and
Speaker 1: so everybody's putting you know, they're putting up posters. Sometimes
Speaker 1: for the guys, they'll be slightly sexual. But I remember
Speaker 1: there would be some guys who would as their desktop wallpaper,
Speaker 1: would have like really racy, if not pornographic material as
Speaker 1: their desktop wallpaper. Yeah, And I remember, like he you know,
Speaker 1: even then, thinking wow, really like that's gonna be that's
Speaker 1: your Pinterest board, basically, is this lady? Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: we live in a in an age where sexuality and
Speaker 1: self expression are of changing quite a bit. And I
Speaker 1: was just actually thinking about my cousin who showed me
Speaker 1: a picture of his girlfriend on his iPhone and she
Speaker 1: was in her lace underwear and prov and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, maybe that's just that's okay, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're twenty two and that's that's acceptable. Maybe she
Speaker 1: did not necessarily want him to do that, but it
Speaker 1: seems to me just a different level of sharing. It's
Speaker 1: one thing to keep in mind their generations and in
Speaker 1: and now that are adults and becoming adults. They do
Speaker 1: not know an age before total Internet. It's it's a
Speaker 1: different frame of mind altogether. Uh. Here's another bit of
Speaker 1: listener male related just sends, this time on the Gluttony
Speaker 1: episode or note on absolutely discussed of gluttony. So I
Speaker 1: guess she's kind of she's tying together a couple of
Speaker 1: different things we've talked about. This is from Cam Camera
Speaker 1: and Senus is Hi, Julian Robert. I'm Cama, a recent
Speaker 1: listener to your podcast from Manila, the Philippines. Though I've
Speaker 1: been listening for a while now, it was only getting
Speaker 1: your podcast on gluttony that I got the urge and
Speaker 1: the courage to drop you a note. As I was
Speaker 1: listening to your discussion on l Wingador's training regime, I
Speaker 1: found myself thinking back to your episode on Absolutely Discussed
Speaker 1: and realized that in my case, gluttony of that sort
Speaker 1: demonstrated by l Wingadore and Kobe Ashi triggered disgusting me.
Speaker 1: For some odd reason, the idea of eating my own
Speaker 1: weight and food makes me queasy. Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I love a good meal as much as the next person,
Speaker 1: but the sheer volume of food food consumed by competitive
Speaker 1: eaters is off putting. On the other hand, chili eating
Speaker 1: and nettle eating contest aren't his off putting, and I
Speaker 1: find those highly amusing. I guess in those contests it's
Speaker 1: not about how much a contestant can consume so much
Speaker 1: as it's about how much pain I can tolerate before
Speaker 1: they dissolve into a quivering wreck, which, as I said,
Speaker 1: I find exceedingly amusing. This is not I believe say
Speaker 1: anything flattering about me, but I promise I'm a very
Speaker 1: nice person most of the time. Anyway, I just like
Speaker 1: to say thank you for the awesome job you do
Speaker 1: on the podcast, and I'll definitely be looking forward to
Speaker 1: your next mind blowing episode. So she's she's like, okay
Speaker 1: with the gluttony, as long as it's like transcending some
Speaker 1: sort of other challenge obstacle like pain. Now, what is
Speaker 1: a nettle? A nettle? I thought was an herb nettles
Speaker 1: to look up a nettal eating, I mean, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: it must be not well. I think it's something that's
Speaker 1: very easy to to either digest or to chew, which
Speaker 1: you mean she said chili. She must she meant like
Speaker 1: hot show. Yeah, because when I first read it, I
Speaker 1: was thinking bowls of chili, and she was like, and
Speaker 1: so I thought her point was eating hot bogs. That's
Speaker 1: growth contests about eating pops of chili. Bring it on. No,
Speaker 1: I think she's just talking about the digger you have spiciness. Okay.
Speaker 1: I would agree with that, that that while it's it's
Speaker 1: maybe a type of gluttony to just eat as many
Speaker 1: hot peppers as you can possibly stand, it's not it's
Speaker 1: a different type of test, like how much pain can
Speaker 1: you know how much mace can you eat for breakfast? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an endurance thing. Yeah. Jonathan Strickling would probably go
Speaker 1: for that of tech stuff he seems to call he's
Speaker 1: a he's kind of a spice glutton. Yes, he's got
Speaker 1: like all sorts of bottles surrounding him at all times
Speaker 1: on his test. That's a lie. Yeah. Yes, that that
Speaker 1: mask that he wears that has the sharaca bottles in
Speaker 1: it where he somehow breathes a liquid sharaca. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: coated the saracha biosphere. Actually, I said it wrong. I
Speaker 1: a would say it wrong. I would say sharaca, but
Speaker 1: I don't. I guess there's not even an ancient there. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I might be saying it wrong. One
Speaker 1: last point, I'm gluttoning I brought up in the podcast. Hey,
Speaker 1: I wonder if vegans have eating contests, and it turns
Speaker 1: out there are vegan hot dog eating contests. A couple
Speaker 1: of different listeners throught that up, and unsurprisingly, one of
Speaker 1: them was in Austin, Texas, which a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: Becky Streepy, pointed out, like, that's the perfect place for
Speaker 1: it because Austin is kind of a convergence of like
Speaker 1: like sort of hippie do good y and um, you know,
Speaker 1: big text and indulgence right, plus the what's their logo?
Speaker 1: Keep custom weird, Yeah, keep Austin weird. Yeah, nicely. So
Speaker 1: there you have it. We'd really love to hear from
Speaker 1: you about lust. I mean, make sure it's something. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to share something with us that we
Speaker 1: can't read on the air, you know, that's fine, let
Speaker 1: us know. Maybe it'll just be for our amusement. But
Speaker 1: the certainly things we can we can share with other
Speaker 1: listeners that are nice. What are you What are your
Speaker 1: thoughts on, say, the lust economy? Now it informs everything
Speaker 1: we do. What are your thoughts on our ability to
Speaker 1: use our our brains to defeat lusty or or otherwise
Speaker 1: inconvenient thoughts? You know, any of us fair games? So
Speaker 1: let us know. You can find us on Facebook. We
Speaker 1: are stuff to blow your mind on that little website,
Speaker 1: and if you look us up on Twitter, we go
Speaker 1: by the handle blow the Mind and you can also
Speaker 1: drop us a line at Blow the Mind at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcasts,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future, Join how stufwork staff, as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.