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 Douglas. What
Speaker 1: disgust you do? What? What? What do you regularly encounter
Speaker 1: in the world around you that SUTs off the disgust
Speaker 1: center of your brain. I was thinking about this, and
Speaker 1: for me, it's um. I mean, I do have some
Speaker 1: visual disgust, Like, for instance, if I watch Clockwork Orange
Speaker 1: and they see the scene where they're peeling back his
Speaker 1: eyes and they've got the little hooks right on his
Speaker 1: the lids of his eyes, that just disgust me. It
Speaker 1: makes my stomach turn. Um somehow, something about eyes really
Speaker 1: and and poking at eyes disgusting to me. But more
Speaker 1: than anything, I think smells, because it could be just
Speaker 1: something as you know, normal, as hey, there's some stinky
Speaker 1: garbage or cigarette butts that kind of makes me real
Speaker 1: coil yourself. Well, I mean, certainly a bad odor will
Speaker 1: get to me, but I guess things that seem like
Speaker 1: unhygienic things often give me the all over. It's like
Speaker 1: if I'm if there's somebody on on on the train
Speaker 1: and they're coughing without covering their mouth. Or the time
Speaker 1: I saw the chicken lady on the train. Have I
Speaker 1: mentioned this before? I do believe I've heard of it.
Speaker 1: And she was eating an entire rope. Well, she had
Speaker 1: a rotisserie chicken that had been that she had been
Speaker 1: eating on and it was down to just like the
Speaker 1: little sort of gray slivers, and she was picking the
Speaker 1: meat off of it on the train, and then she
Speaker 1: would touch the pole on the train, and then she
Speaker 1: would go back to eating her chicken, which just totally
Speaker 1: freaking me out. I basically had to had to switch
Speaker 1: cars at that point, you know, things things of that
Speaker 1: nature where I'm like, this is kind of gross, and
Speaker 1: that part of my brain is dis wanting me to
Speaker 1: flee for for fear of all the diseases rolling off
Speaker 1: the situation right right, It's like you're having this this
Speaker 1: really powerful feeling for a reason, right. Your body, your mind,
Speaker 1: everything is telling you like back away right now, um,
Speaker 1: And there's a reason for this, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about that. Um. I asked Jonathan Strickland of Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff what disgusted him, and he gave me a very
Speaker 1: specific answer that it was maggots emerging from carcasses, because
Speaker 1: you might mistake the movement under the skin for something
Speaker 1: else than they emerge, and uh, chaos and sues. Ah, well,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a great example of that in the
Speaker 1: book The Wasp Factory. It actually ends up driving a
Speaker 1: character in saying that's a Banks book. The guy did
Speaker 1: the culture series. Look it up if you want to
Speaker 1: be disgusted. But why are we disgusted? Right? Why? Why
Speaker 1: does this happen? And where does it occur in nature? Um?
Speaker 1: Where does it occur in the brain? Why why is
Speaker 1: it such a part of who we are? Well? Joshua
Speaker 1: Tiber the universe, the U University excuse me in Amsterdam
Speaker 1: proposed three domains of discussed three separate psychological programs. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and they all make sense, right, deseese what you talked about, right,
Speaker 1: people coughing on the train. Yeah, with putting on their
Speaker 1: their chicken juice on the poles. Uh, that just sounded wrong. Mate,
Speaker 1: choice and moral judgment. Okay, we'll see, like all three
Speaker 1: of those are rolled up in the Chicken Lady because
Speaker 1: because I'm like, that's gross and potentially going to strepad
Speaker 1: a disease. I really don't want to mate with you.
Speaker 1: And uh, morally I think it's also yeah, morally, it's
Speaker 1: against the rules to eat on the train. What the
Speaker 1: heck are you doing? Um? Yeah, yeah, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit reprehensible to sit there and basically, you know, essentially
Speaker 1: like lick your hands and the chicken and then just
Speaker 1: put it all over everything for other people who come
Speaker 1: upon and transfer to themselves. Yeah. Though, if you touch
Speaker 1: one of those poles with your bare skin, I mean
Speaker 1: you're really asking for it. You are always looking arm yeah,
Speaker 1: or wearing or just pull your sleep down, yeah, or
Speaker 1: just or just fall. Better to fall on the floor
Speaker 1: than to touch that pole. Yeah, roll around on that
Speaker 1: floor is probably a lot that are Um. Apparently there
Speaker 1: is a look of disgust that is universal. So when
Speaker 1: we feel disgusted, this look crosses over our faces. Um,
Speaker 1: and what it is and this is according to Paul
Speaker 1: Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco, the
Speaker 1: look is screwing up of our noses and pulling down
Speaker 1: at the corners of our mouths. You're doing it right now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you look a little disgusted. And every culture all over
Speaker 1: the world, this is the look of disgusting. Yeah look, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean you know you're in another country you're
Speaker 1: disgusted by something. Just keep that in mind that if
Speaker 1: you happen to be over at someone's home in another
Speaker 1: country and they're cooking you something and it's maybe not
Speaker 1: something that you would try at your own home, trying
Speaker 1: not to screw your nose, because there's something universal. It's
Speaker 1: not like go in this country. It thumbs up is
Speaker 1: good in this country. It's fighting word, you know, or
Speaker 1: like or turn you know, the whole thing. Like if
Speaker 1: you turn your glass upside down in Australia, it means
Speaker 1: you're you're challenging everyone in the bar to a fight.
Speaker 1: But I can't back that at That's one thing I've
Speaker 1: heard our Australian listeners will sort of thought on that up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or the soles of your shoes in Egypt, right that
Speaker 1: I think I believe that's I put down, or or
Speaker 1: like in Thailand, like setting so that your shoes pointing
Speaker 1: at somebody, that's that's bad, you know, But here nobody cares.
Speaker 1: Now they don't point your shoes all you want. Uh.
Speaker 1: But Charles Darwin actually tackled this subject before and the
Speaker 1: paper the expression of the emotions in man and animals,
Speaker 1: and he described the face of disgust as if we're
Speaker 1: expelling some horrible tasting substance from the mouth. So there
Speaker 1: has been, you know, historical interest in disgust, but as
Speaker 1: of late it's actually getting some some legs, as you
Speaker 1: would say, in terms of being studied in earnest. Dr
Speaker 1: Valerie Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Speaker 1: Medicine is a disgust bologist in fact, and she says,
Speaker 1: disgust is in our everyday life. It determines our hygiene behaviors.
Speaker 1: It determines how close we get to people, determines who
Speaker 1: were going to kiss, who we're going to meet with,
Speaker 1: who we're going to sit next to. It determines the
Speaker 1: people that we shunned, and that is something that we
Speaker 1: do a lot of. Yeah, and you look at the
Speaker 1: list of things that are typically associated with the disgust
Speaker 1: um and certainly it's one of the ones we already
Speaker 1: mentioned are on there. I mean, you know, the basically
Speaker 1: bodily secretion issues, feces, vomit, sweats, bit blood plus sexual fluids,
Speaker 1: body parts, wounds, corpses, tonail, clippings, decaying food, certain living
Speaker 1: creatures like the maggots, like lice, like worms, rats, some people,
Speaker 1: dogs and cats, which to each their own. And then uh,
Speaker 1: and then individuals who are ill the diseased right again,
Speaker 1: then there's that visual of that person is someone I
Speaker 1: need to back away from. Um. But yeah, and the
Speaker 1: body parts uh universals list that you're talking about, toneail
Speaker 1: clippings came up. Yeah, and I thought that was really
Speaker 1: interesting because I thought I feel the same way. And no, Um,
Speaker 1: I always attributed it to being some sort of weird
Speaker 1: idea that I had that someone might take my tonail
Speaker 1: clippings and that's just spell against me exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the old magic of be careful with your hair.
Speaker 1: Stuff into the side of you. Don't don't let anybody
Speaker 1: get all of your brush or they could keeps cast
Speaker 1: magical spells against you. Right. Yeah, there's irrational fears that
Speaker 1: we have. Yeah, and it's actually interesting. You know, in
Speaker 1: the past we've discussed sympathetic magic and our attitudes towards
Speaker 1: discussed or somewhat wrapped up in sympathetic magic, like the
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that say, something that has come
Speaker 1: into contact with something gross is therefore gross, which is
Speaker 1: a which, as a basic physical rule, tends to apply.
Speaker 1: You know, if the fork has been in the toilet,
Speaker 1: you're not going to eat with the fork, even if
Speaker 1: you clean it. Sometimes, you know, to have this association
Speaker 1: of the fork of the toilet trying to spear something right,
Speaker 1: But then are you know, humans have the ability to
Speaker 1: really get out and take things and extrapolate them to
Speaker 1: ridiculous levels. So you end up with a situation where
Speaker 1: you I mean, that's where we end up with things
Speaker 1: like the idea that certain individuals are n'touchable because they
Speaker 1: have a particular job in society that that puts them
Speaker 1: in contact with foul things or foul ideas even you
Speaker 1: know it, it ends up becoming a part of this
Speaker 1: sympathetic magic and the idea that something can be not
Speaker 1: only befouled but besmirched, you know. Yeah, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that a little bit more too later about the
Speaker 1: cultural aspect of it and what you're talking about um
Speaker 1: in sympathetic magic, because that's really it's such an interesting
Speaker 1: psychological component to this. Yeah, but back to the physiological
Speaker 1: I found an interesting um uh description of this in
Speaker 1: the book Clean A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity
Speaker 1: by Virginia Smith, which I think I've mentioned for it
Speaker 1: is just a great book on the history of of
Speaker 1: hygiene and how hygiene ends up becoming interwoven with these
Speaker 1: ideas of purity. But she refers to the nervous reflex
Speaker 1: of disgust and repulsion as a physiological safety net, which
Speaker 1: I think that you know, ties in nicely with the
Speaker 1: with the with the disease and uh uh and and
Speaker 1: mating aspect of this trifecta of repulsion. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: I can see that. All right. So diving into the brain,
Speaker 1: where is this tech in place? When I when I
Speaker 1: see the chicken lady on the on the train, like, like,
Speaker 1: what's lighting up? If someone would strapped me into you know,
Speaker 1: an fm R I or something. Yeah, if we could
Speaker 1: see a scan your brain, we would see a lot
Speaker 1: of activity in insula and the amygdala as well as
Speaker 1: other especially this frontal insula. It's an area the brain
Speaker 1: that in addition to the deep seated discuss you have,
Speaker 1: you also have things such as addiction is sometimes tied
Speaker 1: up there as well. So it's not it's not like
Speaker 1: just the repulsion center of the brain. Um, there have
Speaker 1: been studies that have shown that people would damage to
Speaker 1: this portion of the brain were actually able to give
Speaker 1: up cigarettes instantly. So so there's a lot going on there.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that is it is definitely
Speaker 1: going on there is repulsion. Yeah, and mygdala, of course
Speaker 1: is processing emotions. That that makes sense that you're seeing
Speaker 1: the chicken lady on Marta the train system and uh,
Speaker 1: you're you're starting to form all of those opinions and
Speaker 1: having a very big gut reaction to it. It's also
Speaker 1: the like if you were to receive a centual touch
Speaker 1: from one significant other that also ends up resonating in
Speaker 1: the insula. So there's a lot of physical stimuli and
Speaker 1: central simuli in the world around you. You wind up
Speaker 1: figuring out what you're supposed to do with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting that you actually just brought up um,
Speaker 1: someone that you know um touching you because in a
Speaker 1: lot of these studies, and this is going to sound
Speaker 1: like a no dumb moment, but of course we find
Speaker 1: the people that we know less disgusting than the people
Speaker 1: that we don't know. And a lot of that is
Speaker 1: because you know, there's a familiarity there, even if that
Speaker 1: person is truly disgusting. Um, but there's less and opportunity
Speaker 1: to objectify that person, and maybe on some level you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: well they're not maybe the cleanest of people, but there
Speaker 1: are no threat to me. I know this, I know
Speaker 1: my immune system knows that this no threat. Well here's
Speaker 1: the This one actually came up among some friends. Where
Speaker 1: do you stand on using a spouse's toothbrush? Um, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: in a situation where it's the only choice, then I'm
Speaker 1: fine with it. But when I've accidentally done it, or
Speaker 1: my daughter grabbed my toothbrush actually this morning, and I
Speaker 1: was like no, no, which was kind of ridiculous because um, certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, I eat some of her sandwiches, she eat
Speaker 1: some of mine, and we are all exchanging sandwiches sandwiches
Speaker 1: and that makes you sound a little like birds, but
Speaker 1: yeah we are. We have a little giant nest um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and you know kissing and everything, so yeah,
Speaker 1: all the germs are being passed between one another. Well,
Speaker 1: I found just in a few people have talked like
Speaker 1: they tend to range. There's some people that are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like we're you know, you're on a trip and you
Speaker 1: only have one toothbrush in the bag, It's no big deal.
Speaker 1: And then other people were like, you know, absolutely not
Speaker 1: one person gets to brush their teeth on that trip. Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like my germs, just my germs, Okay,
Speaker 1: no one else's germs. Um, which is just silly and funny. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess what we just feel really like we've got
Speaker 1: quite a connection with all of the bacteria on our body,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about. It's like, you know, there's tenfold
Speaker 1: of foreign bacteria to our to our own cells. So okay,
Speaker 1: I guess we start to feel a little bit fuzzy
Speaker 1: and lovy for our own bacteria. Um. But anyway, let's
Speaker 1: talk about discussed from an evolutionary standpoint. Yeah, like, what
Speaker 1: sense does it make, um, evolving? I mean, obviously, the
Speaker 1: big pick I'm here is to is avoiding disease. For
Speaker 1: for an organism to be successful and doesn't need it
Speaker 1: needs to not get taken down by by predators, but
Speaker 1: it also has to avoid the ailments that will weaken
Speaker 1: it either unto death or into the hands of these predators. Right, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's makes sense that we would
Speaker 1: have these sort of uh signals for us to visual accues,
Speaker 1: smell cues that would make us stop in our tracks
Speaker 1: and reassess or reevaluate, because this is how we have
Speaker 1: been so successful as a species, right, this ability to
Speaker 1: step back and evaluate and say this might be something
Speaker 1: that would be harmful to me. Right. We talked about
Speaker 1: some of this in the Science of Stink, where we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about how like a like you, you get
Speaker 1: hit with a bad smell, and the bad smell will
Speaker 1: hit you square in the face, and it's your brain's
Speaker 1: way of saying something is wrong here. This is potentially
Speaker 1: poisonous or disease written in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: So you need to at least think about it before
Speaker 1: you touch it. You have not just completely avoid it entirely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, the New York Times has an article called
Speaker 1: the ick Factor, and in it they talk about how
Speaker 1: smell is causes such a powerful response in the brain
Speaker 1: that the U. S. Army has been trying to develop
Speaker 1: a stink bomb with an odor foul enough to be
Speaker 1: used for riot control, and that police are very interested.
Speaker 1: And so it makes sense. I mean, that's the kind
Speaker 1: of reaction you would have, right, that it could disperse
Speaker 1: crowds because if something that your body is yelling, this
Speaker 1: is bad for me, right without necessarily the more adverse
Speaker 1: reactions ones and one encounters with like tear gas and
Speaker 1: the like rubber bullets, and yeah, and I was actually
Speaker 1: thinking about this too. It's just in terms of my
Speaker 1: own personal experiences, uh, with getting ill. And this doesn't
Speaker 1: happen every single time, but it's more likely than not
Speaker 1: that a couple of days before I get ill, I
Speaker 1: will have a dream actually, and in the dream, I
Speaker 1: have to use the bathroom. But the only bathroom that's
Speaker 1: available to me is one that's a public restroom. And
Speaker 1: as soon as I walk in it, I realized that
Speaker 1: is the most disgusting public restroom I've ever been in.
Speaker 1: It's feces encrusted everywhere, like every you could not touch
Speaker 1: something that's clean if you tried. And in the dream,
Speaker 1: I always looked down and I'm barefoot, and there's a
Speaker 1: stream of urine and flam and everything that you could
Speaker 1: possibly Yeah, it's the Seriously, if you've ever seen Trainspotting,
Speaker 1: it makes that that bathroom and Trainspotting look really spick
Speaker 1: and span um. But this is and I always have
Speaker 1: this stream, and I always like God, I got oh,
Speaker 1: and I have had it so much that it's obvious
Speaker 1: to me now that I'm about to get sick and
Speaker 1: it's my body trying to tell me something. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't until we were doing this research that I realized
Speaker 1: that just what a big signal my mind and body
Speaker 1: were trying to transmit to me. Wow. Have you tried
Speaker 1: hitting that scenario with any lucid dreaming ever? Well, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I mean, I can lucid dream most of
Speaker 1: the time, but it's always happens if you ever decided
Speaker 1: like I'm going to clean this bathroom in turn, like
Speaker 1: cleaning Superwoman, and you just stiff it all because my
Speaker 1: because of what happens is the way to unfold is
Speaker 1: that I am I look down in my feet and
Speaker 1: are now you know, in the muck, and so I
Speaker 1: have no I can't even I can't turn back. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. I'm exposed as the point of the dream.
Speaker 1: So because yeah, because sometimes I thought, oh, really seriously,
Speaker 1: can I just go to another restroom? But it's too late,
Speaker 1: But there you go. So, I mean, these these are
Speaker 1: all things, you know, feces, um, whatever else is hiding
Speaker 1: away in that public restroom that pretend potential disease and illness. Right,
Speaker 1: those are the things that we look at we have
Speaker 1: such a strong reaction to. And even in the animal world,
Speaker 1: I mean anyone who's had a pet. I mean, granted,
Speaker 1: if you have a dog, it does seem at times
Speaker 1: like the like a dog is disgusted by nothing. But
Speaker 1: but even even dogs occasionally encounter something where they're like
Speaker 1: they're visibly not wanting any of it. They may not
Speaker 1: actually smirk their face up, but they will move away
Speaker 1: from it. They will kind of see it in their ears, right, right,
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, certainly in my cat, I've seen
Speaker 1: him do that, back off on things. Um especially like
Speaker 1: if it's chemical too. He seems to have a problem
Speaker 1: with that, which is pretty good. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will get into uh, alright, we're back obsessive compulsion disorder. Right,
Speaker 1: how does that time with a whole disgust scenario. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: just so everybody knows, this is something that affects about
Speaker 1: three point three million people between the ages of eighteen
Speaker 1: and fifty four in the United States alone. And the
Speaker 1: classic example this off and turned around. They like somebody
Speaker 1: who compulsively washed their hands, like their hands cannot I
Speaker 1: mean they're basically lading with Beth because their hands never
Speaker 1: feel completely clean exactly. So um. In the context of disgust,
Speaker 1: researchers were interested to see how people with how CD
Speaker 1: dealt with things that we're disgusting for those people, and
Speaker 1: in a study by the University of Florida's Evelyn F.
Speaker 1: And William L. McKnight Brain Institute, researchers compared the reactions
Speaker 1: of eight people with contamination preoccupation O c D. Okay,
Speaker 1: so a lot of handwashing with a group of healthy
Speaker 1: adults to a set of thirty pictures that had been
Speaker 1: rated in terms of emotional impact. So um, the pictures
Speaker 1: that we're talking about had a series of threatening, disgusting,
Speaker 1: our neutral images like snakes bearing their fangs, Carrie uh,
Speaker 1: flies on pumpkin pie. Yeah, that's what you just swatted away. Okay,
Speaker 1: See we have different disgustometers, right, I didn't do not
Speaker 1: like flies landing on my food. I figured, like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of one of those things you dropped the
Speaker 1: food and or three second roll the same thing with
Speaker 1: a fly. I mean, I'm gonna probably still need it, okay, um,
Speaker 1: all right, And the other picture they had was a
Speaker 1: picture of a sunset lovely right uh, And then they
Speaker 1: had Mr I skiing scans of their brains and researchers
Speaker 1: found that pictures that induced fear discussed prompted reactions in
Speaker 1: different parts of the brain and both groups of participants,
Speaker 1: But the level of stimulation in certain areas of the
Speaker 1: brain prompted by the disgusting images was greater with people
Speaker 1: with O C D are greater for people with O
Speaker 1: C D UM and this is really interesting too. The
Speaker 1: areas of the brain most affected by these images included
Speaker 1: those that process unpleasant taste and smells. So the difference
Speaker 1: suggests that obsessive people driven to behaviors like constant handwashing
Speaker 1: may be motivated by their extreme sensitivity to discuss, and not,
Speaker 1: as commonly thought, by their fear of some sort of
Speaker 1: awful outcome. Um, if they were to stop washing their hands. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's not just it's not like a conscious thing
Speaker 1: like I have to wash my hands or I'm going
Speaker 1: to catch the leg. It's it's it's tied up on
Speaker 1: a much more primal level, right, yeah, exactly. I mean
Speaker 1: that and I found that absolutely um fascinating because you
Speaker 1: think about O c D and you think about hand washing,
Speaker 1: and you think about it as some sort of crazy
Speaker 1: prevention method, but in fact, it is that they're they're
Speaker 1: having this reaction that's so heartfelt that you know, they're
Speaker 1: overreacting to the stimuli in front of them, right, which
Speaker 1: is why I mean, it's like you're not going to
Speaker 1: talk somebody out of O c D. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to reason, and not because it's not coming
Speaker 1: from a seed of reason. Uh, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to say, like, well, logically you're washing
Speaker 1: your hands too much and you're actually doing more damage
Speaker 1: to your skin. Blah blah blah. It's not gonna well,
Speaker 1: especially if you're Amingdala two is having such an overreaction.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is these are things that are going
Speaker 1: on undercover that you don't even know. So it's not
Speaker 1: like you could I mean, I guess unless you're some
Speaker 1: sort of end master, maybe you could step back and
Speaker 1: you know, dial down your your brain waves there um,
Speaker 1: but most likely you know, this is something that you
Speaker 1: can't necessarily control all right now, when one thinks of
Speaker 1: like discuss reactions, especially to smell instantly think of pregnant women. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean that's uh, I mean that that's just
Speaker 1: one of those things. It's like like if anyone who
Speaker 1: has who has been pregnant as a pregnant friend, there's
Speaker 1: the whole thing about like suddenly like it'll be like
Speaker 1: something like garlic. We'll totally set some people off and
Speaker 1: they're like they can't even be in the same room
Speaker 1: with somebody who just had breadsticks. It's true. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get very sensitive to it very quickly. Did you find
Speaker 1: this to do the case? I did. Yeah, not the
Speaker 1: entire time, but certain times where I was just like,
Speaker 1: oh man, and my husband would be like, what what
Speaker 1: are you smelling and be like, I don't know, Like
Speaker 1: thirty yards away, someone just had some bob choy with
Speaker 1: them with some ginger and curry, and the courage just
Speaker 1: really very pungent. I thought, you can get the bob
Speaker 1: choy is the culprit because botchoy didn't know smell like anything. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, after it's cooked, that's quite buttery, and it
Speaker 1: kind of smells pottery. It does have a butteryodor. But
Speaker 1: even things that really weren't offensive, I was just picking
Speaker 1: up on them, and sometimes things that weren't offensive became inoffensive. Um.
Speaker 1: But this is because what they found is that pregnant
Speaker 1: women have elevated levels of progesteron. Yeah. Now, this is
Speaker 1: a steroid hormone involved in the female minstrel cycle, pregnancy
Speaker 1: and embryogenesis of humans and other species, so that's why
Speaker 1: the levels are up obviously during pregnancy, yeah, and particularly
Speaker 1: in the first trimester when derailing fetal development is is
Speaker 1: UM usually could occur most often during the first trimester,
Speaker 1: so that's when UM, a woman's censors would be sort
Speaker 1: of ferreting out what might be dangerous for her to consume,
Speaker 1: like the idea. An easy example this is of course
Speaker 1: the cat box. Like anyone, like everyone knows, like pregnant
Speaker 1: ladies don't mess with cat boxes because of the whole
Speaker 1: um taxo plasmas. Yeah, um, and of course taxo plasmas.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting topic and to itself, which we may
Speaker 1: have to get into another time. But but obviously pregnan
Speaker 1: lady should have avoid the cat box, so it would
Speaker 1: make sense, but with the body would would on some
Speaker 1: of the use the logic of well, she shouldn't go
Speaker 1: near the cat box. So let's make the cat box
Speaker 1: extra stinky just to hinge the bat, you know, just
Speaker 1: to just to make sure. Yeah, and didn't you tell
Speaker 1: And I know this is definitely something for another time.
Speaker 1: It's told me an interesting little fact about taxo plasmosis
Speaker 1: that the little critters what they do with the cat's
Speaker 1: mind and the urine. Wasn't it something sort of Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of fast. I did some research on
Speaker 1: it a year or two back for an Animal Planet
Speaker 1: tie in, and there's there's all sorts of crazy research
Speaker 1: on how it alters the behavior of animals, but also
Speaker 1: people like making making rats and mice crave the smell
Speaker 1: of cat urine so they'll basically steer the cat, I
Speaker 1: mean steer the mouse towards the belly of a cat
Speaker 1: so it can can complete its life cycle and can
Speaker 1: potentially generate or stir up risk taking behavior even in
Speaker 1: human males. It's fast, So I mean, I just that
Speaker 1: brings me back to the podcast that we did about
Speaker 1: Guts Gut Floor and how a lot of our behavior
Speaker 1: is dependent on the materia that we have in there.
Speaker 1: But but it's an example just in the whole idea
Speaker 1: of like catpe. There's an example of on one hand,
Speaker 1: the body making a tinkering with our disgust reactions to
Speaker 1: steer one away from the cat urine. And then on
Speaker 1: the other level, you have a parasite hijacking rats natural
Speaker 1: repulsion by that smell and making it move towards it
Speaker 1: because the parasite needs the animal to be eaten by
Speaker 1: a cat. It's just amazing that it could that smell
Speaker 1: could just you know, walked off and say, come to me,
Speaker 1: consume me rat. But let's talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about disgust from a cultural perspective. Yes, so obviously humans
Speaker 1: have a way of taking things that are sort of natural,
Speaker 1: you know, that are just a natural process of our bodies.
Speaker 1: We we add a couple of layers of reasoning and
Speaker 1: faulty reasoning and cultural norms on top of that, and
Speaker 1: things quickly get out of control. So we end up
Speaker 1: attaching disgust to things that aren't really discussed, um, I mean,
Speaker 1: ends up getting tied up in our politics, even certainly
Speaker 1: in our moral views of the world. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: really interesting. Curtis, the disgust bologist, was talking about a
Speaker 1: survey that she did in different countries to find out
Speaker 1: what people found disgusting in those countries, and she uncovered
Speaker 1: some interesting cultural pec peculiarities. For example, food cooked by
Speaker 1: a menstruating woman was a frequent cause of disgust in
Speaker 1: India against the pathetic magic here, right, Like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that it was assumed that if they ate this
Speaker 1: food that was cooked by a menstruating woman, that maybe
Speaker 1: they would their masculinity would be downgraded. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: or there's maybe just such disgust in that culture with
Speaker 1: that particular um part of the body. I say not
Speaker 1: being in that culture, right, I mean because on one level, yes,
Speaker 1: you would not want someone who is physically ill cooking
Speaker 1: your food for for obvious reasons. So if you if
Speaker 1: end up creating the stallacy that the menstruating woman is unclean,
Speaker 1: and then and then then it makes a twisted kind
Speaker 1: of sense that you would not want them cooking for you.
Speaker 1: But again, a twisted kind of sense that emerges from
Speaker 1: our our our human complication of all. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But it's funny because even if someone went to use
Speaker 1: the bathroom and then cooked your food, right, You're still
Speaker 1: there's still this idea that you could bring some sort
Speaker 1: of contaminant from that atmosphere, So you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: it's I could see how maybe some of this is
Speaker 1: this idea that menstreating women are unclean, but so are
Speaker 1: people who just used the bathroom. Yeah, with the same
Speaker 1: logic there um. But also Curtis uncovered that apparently the
Speaker 1: Dutch thinks that fat people are disgusting too, so it
Speaker 1: just kind of differs in each culture. Well, here's something
Speaker 1: I do find disgusting that kind of falls into this
Speaker 1: weird territory, and that is people talking on the phone
Speaker 1: in the bathroom that I think it's just bad form.
Speaker 1: And if I will say that if someone is doing that,
Speaker 1: I will belch it's loudly as I can, because I
Speaker 1: feel like this is some sort of place that a
Speaker 1: retreat that I could actually go and use the bathroom
Speaker 1: and not feel bad about it because it's a path room.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I'm not going to name any names,
Speaker 1: but there was an individual, uh it works for this
Speaker 1: company that was talking on the phone while very audibly
Speaker 1: going number two in the men's room, and it was weird,
Speaker 1: like who, like, who are you? Do you either A
Speaker 1: are you just sold? Are you a? So confident that
Speaker 1: the other person on the other line is not going
Speaker 1: to hear any of these sounds or be do you
Speaker 1: just not care? Like is it not that important of
Speaker 1: a contact. I don't know how I feel about that,
Speaker 1: Like do I admire that? Or am I kind of
Speaker 1: slightly disgusted? I mean that is that's got a lot
Speaker 1: of hutzpah, you know, to to sit down and do that.
Speaker 1: And then I mean, how would how do would you
Speaker 1: react if you heard somebody? I mean I think David
Speaker 1: Sedaris had a bit about this, like talking to his
Speaker 1: sister and finding out that she had that she had
Speaker 1: been talking while going to the bath room, and that
Speaker 1: if anyone what she would do is just pretend that
Speaker 1: she was opening a jar. If you had the audibly strange,
Speaker 1: she would just be like, oh, just a second, I've
Speaker 1: gotta get this jar, um, And that would he be
Speaker 1: her way of explaining away from it. But but then
Speaker 1: then it also reminds me to keep the comedy uh
Speaker 1: train going here. I remember Kids in the Hall skit
Speaker 1: where um you came out that like there was a
Speaker 1: you know, all male board meeting and they're going over
Speaker 1: some uh some sort of product reviews or something. And
Speaker 1: they're reading one of these, uh these reviews, and then
Speaker 1: one of the one of the individual's notices the like
Speaker 1: a weird smile on the guy who wrote its face,
Speaker 1: and he realizes, oh, did you write this naked? And
Speaker 1: then everyone just feels kind of dirty for it, which
Speaker 1: I think is you know, it's a it's a ridiculous
Speaker 1: extreme comedy example, but it it does illustrate a lot
Speaker 1: of the complexity of our repulsion uh two things, you know,
Speaker 1: because the idea that somebody wrote something naked that's so
Speaker 1: far removed from anything that could potentially I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's not it doesn't tie into the mating discussed, the
Speaker 1: the moral discussed really well, and certainly not the disease discussed.
Speaker 1: But you could see, like it makes it it makes
Speaker 1: enough sense where you could imagine somebody finding it repulsive. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly there are some Victorian ideas about nudity,
Speaker 1: right that could you know, make someone think about it
Speaker 1: would be repulsive by nudity. I mean, certainly Freud had
Speaker 1: ideas about sex and the repulsion behind it. Um And
Speaker 1: you know, again there's this idea of illness and disease
Speaker 1: that could be transmitted through sex, so sympathetic magic right,
Speaker 1: your naked all of a sudden you write something and
Speaker 1: and and that's going to transfer, uh the clap. I
Speaker 1: will say that in the last year, How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: has relaxed its teleworking program somewhere, so you have more
Speaker 1: people working from home, more people writing from home, and
Speaker 1: invariably more people writing naked. So uh, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: probably more articles and How Stuff Works than ever before
Speaker 1: written by naked people. And it's uh it Fortunately, like
Speaker 1: I said, now that will actually come. I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: about everybody on their smartphones right now who are looking
Speaker 1: up related articles and now feeling maybe a little bit dirty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder how many of our listeners are naked right now.
Speaker 1: You don't have to tell you, but but I mean
Speaker 1: some of them are going to sleep. Some people sleep naked.
Speaker 1: It's just how good it's true they do. Um Okay,
Speaker 1: so so yeah, we kind of got off fisodic there.
Speaker 1: It is cultural though, um. And although some people say
Speaker 1: that we have this encoded hardwired in us right to
Speaker 1: ferret out disgusted and it's to our advantage to do so.
Speaker 1: But Paul Rosen, he's a psychologist, um, who's at the
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania, and he's considered a pioneer of modern
Speaker 1: disgusted research. Carried out his own survey on things people
Speaker 1: found disgusting and discovered that causes of death rated the
Speaker 1: highest amongst his North American subjects. Really, like, even things
Speaker 1: like a sword would be disgusting because the sword is
Speaker 1: like the least disgusting thing. Yeah, well, I mean it
Speaker 1: can be. I mean, could have little bits of brain
Speaker 1: hanging off of it. Well, even that's more awesome than disgusting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, But I think he means that they're probably
Speaker 1: instances of disgust that could lead to death, right as
Speaker 1: opposed to just being like, you know, stepping back and
Speaker 1: being for a moment out of joint about it. And
Speaker 1: he says that anything that reminds us we are animals
Speaker 1: elicits disgusted discussed functions like a defense mechanism to keep
Speaker 1: human animal nous out of awareness. Okay, so things like
Speaker 1: versus the cloak about that we know and love. Yes, Like,
Speaker 1: the thing that makes that art installation brilliant is that
Speaker 1: it does kind of force you to think about your
Speaker 1: own biological functions and what that means. Yeah, and just
Speaker 1: to refresh everybody's memory. This is the clerk about that. Um,
Speaker 1: I can't remember them, yeah maybe yeah, something along this line. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is the artist, and he had the cloak
Speaker 1: about and he had during the installation a chef feed
Speaker 1: the bot three times a day and then he would add, um,
Speaker 1: certain little chemicals that would mimic togestion. It would like
Speaker 1: travel through like I think six different tanks and then
Speaker 1: come out the other end onto a little conveyor belt
Speaker 1: and it would be stone cole pooh. Yeah. So again
Speaker 1: you're talking about the disgusted element there. And one of
Speaker 1: the articles we read said that the little girls seeing
Speaker 1: this contraption and this really sterile environment, started crying. So um,
Speaker 1: you know we again, we all have different reactions to this.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's call over our sterile, totally non
Speaker 1: disgusting robot to bring us some hygienic mail to Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do not feed that robot three times a day
Speaker 1: and then give it chemicals to pretend like it's going
Speaker 1: to do it's thing. Just for the record, well, here's
Speaker 1: when I here's when we heard. I heard from a
Speaker 1: listener by the name of Stephen. Stephen writes in and
Speaker 1: you know. I'm not even sure which podcast keeps responding
Speaker 1: to because it was kind of a tangent I think,
Speaker 1: but it says that I was actually in your my
Speaker 1: computers right up when I finally cut up with some
Speaker 1: older back episodes, I didn't have time to listen to
Speaker 1: Thai Red Bull is terrifying. I did a study abroad
Speaker 1: in chang Mine two thousand one, and after a couple
Speaker 1: of guys got back from Christmas vacation in the Islands,
Speaker 1: they introduced us to a truly horrific cocktail in a
Speaker 1: picture of ice at one bottle of Makong whiskey, uh,
Speaker 1: two cans of coke, and two bottles of Thai Red Bull.
Speaker 1: I usually stuck to beer, but it was a recipe
Speaker 1: for disaster for my compatriots. Tons of energy and way
Speaker 1: too few inhibitions. Not to mention the rumors that Makong
Speaker 1: whiskey is not fit for sale in the US for
Speaker 1: human consumption due to a number of questionable added its. Huh,
Speaker 1: I did not know that I had some Makeong whiskey
Speaker 1: when you did. If you're not drinking beer in Thailand
Speaker 1: like the other big drink, it's like a coke, Uh.
Speaker 1: Like a like a whiskey and coke kind of a thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: and like some of the like I remember reading, um,
Speaker 1: like in some bars, you you go to the bar
Speaker 1: with your whiskey bottle and they serve you coke and
Speaker 1: ice and a little Seltzer water in it, and but
Speaker 1: you could use your own whiskey. I guess there's like
Speaker 1: a quorking. I can't remember the detail on that. Um.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes if you don't drink at all, they
Speaker 1: will keep it for you and you come back that
Speaker 1: they'll put your name on you come back and you
Speaker 1: get it the next night. So so it's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not a beer drinker, and that's like it was a
Speaker 1: real tie drink. So I was like, I should probably
Speaker 1: have that one over there. I didn't know that it
Speaker 1: might have had questionable added it is that could be
Speaker 1: doing who knows what. Anyway, Stephen continues, you can occasionally
Speaker 1: find those little glass bottles of rocket fuel in Southeast
Speaker 1: Asian grocery stores. I've had the the red Bull cans
Speaker 1: in China, and I can honestly say I'm not sure
Speaker 1: which is worse. Um, there's enough caffeine to completely shut
Speaker 1: off a migraine. But I wouldn't be surprised if it
Speaker 1: also causes heart problems. Anyway, great job, always always on
Speaker 1: the podcast, and I think, um, I should be all
Speaker 1: caught up after this very slow kay at work. So
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, I believe I put out a call
Speaker 1: like as anyone else had an experience with tie red bull,
Speaker 1: because when I had one in Thailand, it was it
Speaker 1: was like crazy stimulated. We've heard from a few people
Speaker 1: in the um. Consensus seems to be that it's diabolical.
Speaker 1: And then we have another quick one here. This is
Speaker 1: from a listener by the name of Stevie. Stevie right,
Speaker 1: Tennis says, Hey, guys, it just I was just listening
Speaker 1: to your neo evolution podcast where the INU made reference
Speaker 1: to the nine nine nine Candles podcast, and it got
Speaker 1: me thinking, if we did genetically mutate ourselves or have
Speaker 1: the ability to replace parts over the years so we
Speaker 1: could live this long, do you think women would have
Speaker 1: the reproductive capability so last longer than fifty years until
Speaker 1: they reached menopads. Just a thought on all of this.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we replaced our reproductive organs over the years,
Speaker 1: not for those eggs would end up being our own,
Speaker 1: maybe a genetically engineered version. But how would this affect
Speaker 1: the offspring we have with them in the future. I
Speaker 1: thought this was something good to chew on. Keep on
Speaker 1: casting your pods have the show cool. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: interesting proposition, and certainly I would think that on the
Speaker 1: horizon would be something like a uterine replicator. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like, uh from the a pretty gray, the bearded one,
Speaker 1: the beard one, like the point out, it's like a car,
Speaker 1: the human body of all these parts they wear down,
Speaker 1: either due to use or abuse, and the idea is
Speaker 1: to better maintain the vehicle, which at times might need
Speaker 1: replacing thoughts, right, And it also may mean that procreation
Speaker 1: gets moved to the lab in some instances. So, um,
Speaker 1: that's wed for a thought for another podcast, I believe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, maybe when we're gonna record next we kind
Speaker 1: of touch on it, I think, and the one next
Speaker 1: Um well, hey, anyway, Stevie, thanks for the thoughts. I
Speaker 1: love it when people take topics we bring up in
Speaker 1: one podcast and combine them with another and start mixing
Speaker 1: it together. I mean, that's what the whole podcast is
Speaker 1: really about about, you know, stirring up the old mind.
Speaker 1: Juices and h seeing what pops at the surface, taking
Speaker 1: them in your head because otherwise the juices we'll keep
Speaker 1: express them, express them through the mighty pen. Yeah, okay, board.
Speaker 1: So hey, if you want to share something with us,
Speaker 1: where can you find us? Well, you can find us
Speaker 1: on Facebook. We're Stuff to Blow the Mind on there,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we have a wall. We put
Speaker 1: photos on the wall, we put videos, we put links
Speaker 1: to what we're doing, streams of the podcast, all sorts
Speaker 1: of good stuff. And then we also have a Twitter
Speaker 1: account which is below the mind. And hey, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you via email, and particularly we
Speaker 1: would love to find out what your pet discussed is.
Speaker 1: So send us a letter let us know the uh
Speaker 1: blow the mind. At Discovery dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.