Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, are you welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind? My name is Robert lamp and I'm
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas, and we are republishing a couple of older
Speaker 1: episodes this week. Two episodes that work together and therefore
Speaker 1: had to be republished together, but two episodes that we
Speaker 1: definitely wanted to share with everyone again and share with
Speaker 1: many newer listeners for the first time. Yeah, because mazes
Speaker 1: and labyrinths, these this idea that these physical constructs are
Speaker 1: actually mental constructs. And in addition to this, we wanted
Speaker 1: to mention that pretty soon there's a movie called The
Speaker 1: Maze Runner, which will be released in movie theaters. It is,
Speaker 1: according to Bleeding Cool dot com, yet another post apocalyptic
Speaker 1: world populated by teenagers who are tasked to save the
Speaker 1: world somehow. Yeah, and I was actually just looking at
Speaker 1: it yet it starts the guy from teen Woolf the
Speaker 1: TV show, not not Jason Bateman or Michael not or
Speaker 1: not yea, not Michael j Fox, but the new Team Wolf,
Speaker 1: the one that's uh you see on the side of
Speaker 1: buses and stuff that yeah, he's in and it looks
Speaker 1: pretty cool. It's kind of reminds me a bit of
Speaker 1: the older movie Cube, you know, like a like a
Speaker 1: very uh, you know, dystopian and high tech kind of
Speaker 1: a maze environment. Yeah. I like the premise of it.
Speaker 1: Um in it. Their memories, these teenagers are memories are
Speaker 1: wiped out and they run through mazes like hamsters, later
Speaker 1: discovering in the various truth behind the question why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these are based, by the way, on a series
Speaker 1: of young adult novels by James Dashner. Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: hope that you guys enjoy this. It's a maze. Is
Speaker 1: is about, in a way elaborate confinement. It's about confusion,
Speaker 1: It's about being cut off. It's about not knowing which
Speaker 1: way you're going, and which way is the way out,
Speaker 1: and if there is even a way out, if there
Speaker 1: is a limit to the confusing layout that just flows
Speaker 1: out all around you. Now, one thing that's important to
Speaker 1: mention here, and we're gonna we're gonna mention this not
Speaker 1: only in this episode but the part two of this
Speaker 1: series to follow. But essentially, you have mazes and you
Speaker 1: have labyrinths, and very often these words are used interchangeably.
Speaker 1: One would be tempted to say, it's elegant variation, which
Speaker 1: is when you use uh, like when you're talking about
Speaker 1: a wolf, but you use the word dog to describe it.
Speaker 1: You just wanted to mix it up and use a
Speaker 1: different word, but you're actually using a word for a
Speaker 1: different thing. Well, mazes and labyrinth is and isn't quite
Speaker 1: that bad because the overlap between these two terms has
Speaker 1: been around for a while and has become pretty much
Speaker 1: the you know, pretty much a mainstay of the English language.
Speaker 1: So uh, you can't get two up in arms over it.
Speaker 1: But for the purposes of this podcast, and and also
Speaker 1: in scientific purposes, you have mazes, which are a place
Speaker 1: of confusion, a place of beatings on the walls, as
Speaker 1: we're hearing now, and then you have labyrinths and labyrinth
Speaker 1: says we'll discuss in the second podcast more in depth,
Speaker 1: are a place of serenity. That's right. It's really a
Speaker 1: yang and yang proposition here, because yes, maze tangle of
Speaker 1: options choices, right, profusion and the labyrinth neatly laid out
Speaker 1: a meandering path, but one that has a purpose in
Speaker 1: a direction to it. So right now we are going
Speaker 1: to tackle mazes, and as we say, we are podcasting
Speaker 1: today from a construction zone of our maze like office. Um.
Speaker 1: And we should probably get into more or other examples
Speaker 1: of mazes, because when you think of mazes, or at
Speaker 1: least when I do, I tend to think of the
Speaker 1: elaborate hedge mazes popular in the sixteen through the eighteenth centuries. Yes,
Speaker 1: you have basically you can divide mazes up into two
Speaker 1: or three categories. Well, first, there are two basic categories.
Speaker 1: There are mazes that exist in physical space and mazes
Speaker 1: that exist merely as saturn or as you know, is
Speaker 1: something drawn on a sheet of paper. Uh. For the
Speaker 1: most part, we're gonna be talking in this podcast though,
Speaker 1: about actual physical mazes that you traverse physically, and these
Speaker 1: you tend to see landscape mazes and architectural mazes, mazes
Speaker 1: that are made out of you could do dirt, but
Speaker 1: most of the time hedges. And then there are architectural
Speaker 1: mazes whereas it is an actual physical thing walls and
Speaker 1: closing you. Everyone will probably think back to the classic
Speaker 1: Jim Hinson David Bowie starring film Labyrinth, which, despite being
Speaker 1: called Labyrinth, everything in the movie is amaze. Everything is
Speaker 1: about confusing because Sarah has to get to the castle
Speaker 1: at the center so that she can free Toby from
Speaker 1: the Goblin King, but nobody wants her to actually get there.
Speaker 1: The Goblin King doesn't actually want women showing up and
Speaker 1: stealing has stolen babies from him, so and there's a
Speaker 1: neat little number like a Magic Song by David Bowie
Speaker 1: which he's tossing this baby around and by the way,
Speaker 1: he looks like Parker Posey to me in in a
Speaker 1: Tina Turner wig in this sick Yeah, And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of heavy pop synthesizers going on. It's it's pretty
Speaker 1: awesome stuff. It is an awesome movie. But pretty much
Speaker 1: everything you see in there is is a maze from
Speaker 1: the early Stone mazes that Sarah is going through where
Speaker 1: it's very much an architectural maze with walls all around her,
Speaker 1: until later she's going through a landscape maze of hedges.
Speaker 1: Elsewhere people may have encountered mazes in the form of
Speaker 1: corn mazes where someone cuts a maze through the maze
Speaker 1: and nice and you have around Halloween time, that's certainly
Speaker 1: and every year in the news there's always an account
Speaker 1: of a family getting lost in one of those mazes. Oh,
Speaker 1: I haven't I've never seen one of those, and I've
Speaker 1: worked in small papers for quite a while in the past,
Speaker 1: so it's strange that we never had that story. Well,
Speaker 1: and then they're never found again. Are you sure that
Speaker 1: you're just you didn't used to live near a particularly
Speaker 1: bad ads where they really went overboard and making it
Speaker 1: complex and an unescapable No. No, no. And then there's
Speaker 1: like these like sort of evilish children that are dressed
Speaker 1: in amish like clothing. Yes, the children are milling around. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've not heard about No, I guess this is this
Speaker 1: is one of your hometown. Yeah, it's pretty common elsewhere
Speaker 1: in uh. In fiction, mazes have factored into Harry Potter
Speaker 1: and the Goblet of Fire, the big climactic scene, and
Speaker 1: that takes place within a maze. Harry's running around completely disoriented,
Speaker 1: doesn't know where he's going, and trying, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to escape the maze or make
Speaker 1: it to the center. I believe it was. What I
Speaker 1: like about that maze too, is that the maze is alive,
Speaker 1: the root system is, you know, trying to tangle them
Speaker 1: and pull them in right. And likewise in Labyrinth, the
Speaker 1: maze that Sarah finds herself in is constantly changing their
Speaker 1: like little goblin dudes running around and like changing her
Speaker 1: markings and presumably changing the actual physical layout of the
Speaker 1: of the may behind her. Another fabulous maze uh in
Speaker 1: film is that in The Shining. Oh yeah, now it's
Speaker 1: different from in the book. There there's just some hedge
Speaker 1: animals that are creepy and move when you're not looking
Speaker 1: at them. But in Stanley Kubrick's phenomenal film vision of
Speaker 1: the novel, he incorporates this this maze, this giant hedge maze,
Speaker 1: and there's a model of the hedge maze, and and
Speaker 1: the maze comes to symbolize the house itself because the house,
Speaker 1: the Haunted Overlook Hotel, is also a sort of maze.
Speaker 1: And then, curiously enough, like another maze we're about to discuss,
Speaker 1: there is a deadly person at the deadly entity at
Speaker 1: the center of it. In The Shining, that's Jack Torrence,
Speaker 1: the writer who ends up becoming possessed by the evil
Speaker 1: of the place and then is hunting his family through
Speaker 1: both the maze that is the house and then in
Speaker 1: the actual hedge maze out there in the cold. What
Speaker 1: I really like about that maze too, is that it's
Speaker 1: got those um those feelings of selation, terror and then
Speaker 1: disorientation in that maze. And we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: in in Our Fear Response, our stress response to um
Speaker 1: as we go through majors. But to me, that captures
Speaker 1: that perfectly. There's also an excellent fictional maze in House
Speaker 1: of Leaves by Mark z Danielski. Basically, the book itself
Speaker 1: is a maze, and there are all these footnotes and
Speaker 1: footnotes upon footnotes, and there's a story within a story
Speaker 1: in a documentary film within a story, and the character himself,
Speaker 1: this guy Navidson, ends up trying to traverse, trying to
Speaker 1: explore this ever changing, featureless, black, otherworldly maze that branches
Speaker 1: out from this haunted house presumably haunted, but you never
Speaker 1: really know exactly what's going on with this place. The
Speaker 1: Name of the Rose by Umberto Echo is pretty great
Speaker 1: and that it features a library that is itself a maze.
Speaker 1: And this is based in large part on your hey
Speaker 1: Lewis Borhes the Library of Babble, where Borhe described an
Speaker 1: infinite library maze that contains not only all books, but
Speaker 1: all possible books, so it just spreads out forever and
Speaker 1: so in the name of the rose umberto Echo creates
Speaker 1: within this mediaval Abbey, this this maze library of forbidden
Speaker 1: and restricted books. In writing about it, he says that
Speaker 1: this is this library is what it's called a rhizome space,
Speaker 1: which means there's there's virtually no into it. You could
Speaker 1: wander this thing forever without finding an exit unless you
Speaker 1: knew how to escape the maze. But perhaps the most
Speaker 1: famous and and just the most iconic maze from from
Speaker 1: myth and fiction and legend is of course the Maze
Speaker 1: of Minos. Yes, and this is the tale of theseus, correct,
Speaker 1: the hero and the minotaur, who is at the center
Speaker 1: of what they call Again there's confusion between labyrinth and maze,
Speaker 1: but it is at the middle of this and is
Speaker 1: waiting for people to come through and devour them. Yes,
Speaker 1: and kind of wandering the halls and howling and the
Speaker 1: maze in this it was commanded to be built by
Speaker 1: King Minos, who has this monstrous son that is the minotaur,
Speaker 1: half man and half animal. Yes, yeah, monstrous flesh eating creature.
Speaker 1: So he has Daedalus, who of course silt the wings
Speaker 1: for his son Icarus. Just you know, the fantastic engineer
Speaker 1: of Hellenistic lore. He's commanded to build it, and in
Speaker 1: fact builds a maze so complicated that he himself has
Speaker 1: trouble escaping from it at one point. But this becomes
Speaker 1: just the sort of the defining idea of amaze, this complex,
Speaker 1: confusing place that you're trapped in, you're trying to escape,
Speaker 1: and then with the Minotaur, you have this added threat
Speaker 1: that you are not alone in this confusing space, this confusing,
Speaker 1: unreal world. There's also something that is searching for you,
Speaker 1: something that or even if it's not searching for you,
Speaker 1: you may run into it. And if you run into it,
Speaker 1: it's all over. Yeah, And we will talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the Minotaur as represented by our consciousness
Speaker 1: and a bit and how our mind is a bit
Speaker 1: like a maze. But I did want to mention that
Speaker 1: a a non fictional maze that is probably what you
Speaker 1: could call the mother of mazes UM is known as
Speaker 1: the Hampton Court Maze, and this is outside of London.
Speaker 1: It is really an iconic maze. UM. It is at
Speaker 1: the Hampton Court Palace and it's thought that it was
Speaker 1: designed around six nine, originally planted using horn beam and
Speaker 1: later we planted using you, and it covers a third
Speaker 1: of an acre. It's trapezoid in shape and it is
Speaker 1: the UK's oldest surviving hedge maze. In fact, I'm sure
Speaker 1: listeners some of our resisis and UK have actually experienced
Speaker 1: this firsthand. At the time. It was constructed to amuse
Speaker 1: the ladies and lords of the court, which I think
Speaker 1: is so I love this idea. It's so fascinating to
Speaker 1: me that people have so much time on their hands
Speaker 1: that it wasn't enough to have a palace and have
Speaker 1: all the extravagance of a palace and servants. Then you
Speaker 1: had to create a maze out on your lawn on
Speaker 1: in order to amuse the people within the palace, something
Speaker 1: that would actually um excite fear in your visitors to
Speaker 1: the maze, right, yeah, you were. You lined it yesterday
Speaker 1: when we were talking about it to h to like
Speaker 1: a horror movie in a in an age when you
Speaker 1: didn't have horror movie. Uh uh. And and certainly you
Speaker 1: can also liken it to a roller coaster. It is
Speaker 1: an artificial construction designed to create these feelings of fear
Speaker 1: and anxiety in the individuals who are traversing it. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me that the upper class just you know,
Speaker 1: on a social note, that you would be so free
Speaker 1: from concerns or troubles that you would have to create
Speaker 1: this this uh, three D representation of fear to put
Speaker 1: yourself through that experience. Um. And of course we do
Speaker 1: that today with with haunted houses. But what is cool
Speaker 1: about Hampton Court Maze is that this is the maze
Speaker 1: that really helped to inform science. And what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is there was a graduate student named Willard Small.
Speaker 1: He was the first to use a rodent maze to
Speaker 1: study learning, and he did this in nineteen o one,
Speaker 1: and he created a platform about six ft long by
Speaker 1: eight feet wide, covered it with sawdust and then divided
Speaker 1: it into galleries with walls of wire netting, and he
Speaker 1: modeled it on a diagram of the Hedge maze at
Speaker 1: Hampton Court. So this was such a famous maze in
Speaker 1: the minds of everybody, particularly during this ron of the century,
Speaker 1: that it really helped um this particular student to create
Speaker 1: this thing that really took off in science at least
Speaker 1: for a good sixty years. Yeah, because even after they
Speaker 1: stopped using the replica of the Hampton Court Maze, which
Speaker 1: which from above looks. It's it's weirdly shaped, like it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a hacked off pyramid, kind of like
Speaker 1: a a weird battle axe looking design. It's it's strange looking,
Speaker 1: kind of like a robot woman's hips. It's interesting to
Speaker 1: say battle ax because uh, labra is I means yeah,
Speaker 1: acts in and um in Greek, and so that's when
Speaker 1: you look at the root of labyrinth, it is acts.
Speaker 1: But anyway, but even after they stopped using the Hampton Maze,
Speaker 1: they use a simplified version of it called the Elevated
Speaker 1: Plus Maze, which basically look like a plus sign. In
Speaker 1: other words, it's two hallways that they cross over each other. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's like the simplest may as possible because it
Speaker 1: sends the mouse or whatever that's inside it. It's they
Speaker 1: come to a point where they have three choices. They
Speaker 1: can go left, they can go right, they can go
Speaker 1: forward or well, presumably they could go backwards as well.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a simplified version of the of
Speaker 1: the maze, the maze and brief you know, but what
Speaker 1: are they trying to to study with all of this? Right?
Speaker 1: It comes back to how a maze makes us feel
Speaker 1: when I've touched on this a little bit already. It's
Speaker 1: when you're inside of a maze, you feel, first of all,
Speaker 1: you feel confined. You're definitely in a strange place. You
Speaker 1: you don't know which way to go. Should I go
Speaker 1: this way, shouldn't go that way? If I go if
Speaker 1: I go this way, am I going to run into
Speaker 1: a dead end? Everyone hates running into a dead end?
Speaker 1: That just said, I mean you think of actual real
Speaker 1: world versions of this, like if you've ever been in
Speaker 1: a um, well, say the haunted like a haunted house.
Speaker 1: Now haunted house is not a complete maze because nobody
Speaker 1: wants to build a professional haunted attraction where people go
Speaker 1: in and have trouble getting out, because, if we discussed
Speaker 1: in our Science of Haunted Houses episode, you've got to
Speaker 1: move a certain amount of people through that haunted house
Speaker 1: to make money. You need people going in, you need
Speaker 1: people going out at a decent click. But at another
Speaker 1: world haunted house in Atlanta, they frequently do have this
Speaker 1: section that's kind of a mirror maze where you do
Speaker 1: at least momentarily become disoriented and not know and you
Speaker 1: don't know which way to go, and so that raises
Speaker 1: your anxiety. You you feel stressful because you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I thought, this is what how do I get out
Speaker 1: of here? Which way am I supposed to be going?
Speaker 1: You know? And I find in those environments too, not
Speaker 1: only another world, but also in like real world environments
Speaker 1: like a museum, there's also that that anxiety where you
Speaker 1: reach like a weird kind of a part of the
Speaker 1: museum where you wonder if this is off limits, like
Speaker 1: maybe they didn't they didn't make it clear enough, And
Speaker 1: I'm wandering into restricted territory or likewise, any new city
Speaker 1: that you're in, you're wandering around and you're wondering, am
Speaker 1: I wandering into a restricted space? Is someone gonna yell
Speaker 1: at me for being here? And I can start getting
Speaker 1: anxious about that because I hated, you know, when I'm
Speaker 1: in trouble somebody's yelling at me? And then second, am
Speaker 1: I wandering into a contested space, which, especially in big cities,
Speaker 1: you're like, am I wandering into a no man's land
Speaker 1: of post apocalyptic violences and face stabbings? You know? I
Speaker 1: I don't know, And that raises your instincts and your
Speaker 1: anxiety and you're just on edge of the whole time.
Speaker 1: Well because in in uh, in my world, I think
Speaker 1: of it as just a microcosm of the minotaur in
Speaker 1: your head already, right, So within our own minds, we
Speaker 1: can think of them as mazes. In particular, we can
Speaker 1: think about the default mode network. UM. This is three
Speaker 1: areas of the brain, the medial pre frontal cortex, the
Speaker 1: medial parietal cortex, and the meteoral temporal lobes. We've talked
Speaker 1: about these before being the default mode network. And this
Speaker 1: is the area of your brain that deals with the
Speaker 1: eye of ourselves, the chattering um sort of subconscious level
Speaker 1: where we sit there and we turn over things that
Speaker 1: concern ourselves and our ego. And this is really where
Speaker 1: you start to see that the mind is like amaze
Speaker 1: in this sense because you're going through these thought loops
Speaker 1: that you've probably gone through a million times in your
Speaker 1: life about certain subjects. They tend to come up in
Speaker 1: this area of the brain, right, these concerns that you
Speaker 1: have usually about yourself, And it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: hyperactive chat room for your brain, and it acts like
Speaker 1: an echo chamber in this sense. And we've talked about
Speaker 1: this before that when you have hyperactivity in this part
Speaker 1: of the brain. It can lead to clinical depression. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's why I say that this default mode net
Speaker 1: work is really something that's maze that we deal with
Speaker 1: every day. Yeah, we sort of we backtrack and we
Speaker 1: wander the confusing corridors of the past. We try and
Speaker 1: skip ahead a little bit and figure out where we're
Speaker 1: going in the future, and for many of us the
Speaker 1: whole time there well, for all of us, there are
Speaker 1: certain minotaurs out there in that maze as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course the big one is death. Uh. That beast
Speaker 1: is out there somewhere. Maybe he is around the corner,
Speaker 1: maybe he is on the other side of the maze
Speaker 1: entirely with many many walls between you and it, but
Speaker 1: you know it's there and you always hear it's howling.
Speaker 1: I love that you brought that up, because when I
Speaker 1: was thinking about mazes, and I was thinking about how
Speaker 1: a maze is really a concrete manifestation of our abstract
Speaker 1: mind me, I began to think about Sarah Winchester. We
Speaker 1: have an article that concerns her is the Mystery House. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she is the Winchester Rifle heiress who at the turn
Speaker 1: of the century believed herself to be haunted by the
Speaker 1: victims of the rifles that her husband's company for used,
Speaker 1: and now she had something traumatic events that happened in
Speaker 1: her life. She lost her child and her husband, and
Speaker 1: after that, for thirty eight years, her house was constantly
Speaker 1: under construction and she was changing the configuration of her
Speaker 1: house really to create a maze. And the reason that
Speaker 1: she did that is she wanted to confuse the spirits,
Speaker 1: the ghosts of the people that she thought were killed
Speaker 1: by those rifles. So if you've ever visited the house,
Speaker 1: this is in San Jose, California, you may have firsthand
Speaker 1: seen that there are false stairways to know where. There
Speaker 1: are something like forty seven chimneys in the house. Um.
Speaker 1: Some of them are built all the way up, some
Speaker 1: of them are not. Some of them actually aren't working chimneys, fireplaces, um.
Speaker 1: And at some point I believe there are five hundred
Speaker 1: rooms constructed that she would have them demolished and then rebuilt.
Speaker 1: So here you go, I mean, here's talking about the
Speaker 1: hyperactivity of this part of the brain that is concerned
Speaker 1: with um, you know, fear and uh, the self. This
Speaker 1: is someone who you can really see her own brain
Speaker 1: being manifested in the design of our house. Well, and
Speaker 1: it's in a way, it's uh, it's kind of just
Speaker 1: another take on the old idea that if you you
Speaker 1: have a criminal that needs to be executed, you hang
Speaker 1: them at a crossroads so that they'll have difficulty finding
Speaker 1: their way back to their hometown where they can haunt
Speaker 1: everybody and be a menace. So, but in what is
Speaker 1: a crossroads but a plus maze, like we discussed earlier,
Speaker 1: you placed the mouse at the center, the rat at
Speaker 1: the center of the plus mays the brat has no
Speaker 1: which no idea which way to go. So presumably the
Speaker 1: ghost of an executed murder is there at the crossroads,
Speaker 1: has no idea what to go. Maybe he locks down
Speaker 1: and doesn't go anywhere. Maybe he heads up in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. And and this is so cool because again
Speaker 1: this is this idea of disorientation. We're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but when we get back, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about anxiety disorientation in mazes. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: and I do want to mention that is we're getting
Speaker 1: into the way mazes affect our mind in our body.
Speaker 1: Text that we found particularly helpful in this was the
Speaker 1: science of healing places by Esther M. Steinberg. Just a
Speaker 1: fabulous book from beginning to end, and it deals with
Speaker 1: how spaces affect us, how the layout of a space
Speaker 1: or the particulars of an environment can have a beneficial
Speaker 1: effect on us or a detrimental effect on us. And
Speaker 1: in a large sense, the purest distillation of this idea
Speaker 1: is the idea of maze and labyrinth. And in this
Speaker 1: podcast were of course talking about the maze. Uh And
Speaker 1: as you mentioned earlier, it's just this, the mazes is amazing,
Speaker 1: and that it is this kind of perfect physical manifestation
Speaker 1: of an idea, are even more than an idea, just
Speaker 1: like a state of mind, a state of the world.
Speaker 1: Like in a way, the mazes this perfect manifestation of
Speaker 1: the of the human experience in its confusing sense. You know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I it makes me think of the
Speaker 1: obelisk from the Monolith rather from two thousand and one
Speaker 1: of Space Odyssey. You know, it's just that you can
Speaker 1: basically just thinking about it, you can sort of catch
Speaker 1: the hum Yeah. You know, we are talking about mazes
Speaker 1: in a very literal sense today, but if you took
Speaker 1: a bird's eye view of yourself right now, in this
Speaker 1: time and space you would see that you are in
Speaker 1: a maze somewhere. Right, even if you're just walking down
Speaker 1: the city block, you are within a maze. Um. But
Speaker 1: what is so interesting about mazes is this idea that
Speaker 1: in as you say that the purest sense is taking
Speaker 1: all of those different senses of the way that we
Speaker 1: perceive the world in creating this this construct that really
Speaker 1: amplifies all those feelings. And so when we talk about
Speaker 1: new experiences and uh, we talk about how we've received things,
Speaker 1: there's some anxiety that comes along with that. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: stress and anxiety. So stress is not a new idea.
Speaker 1: People have been stressed out for ages. For instance, the
Speaker 1: ancient Romans used a word string array, which means to squeeze, tight,
Speaker 1: to graze, to touch, or danger. But it wasn't until
Speaker 1: around the ninety six a Nature article by scientists Hans
Speaker 1: Zeely published this article where you talked about stress in
Speaker 1: the terms of a body's non specific response to an
Speaker 1: external demand. In in in ninety four, physiologist Walter B. Cannon
Speaker 1: for the first time show that animals produce adrenaline in
Speaker 1: response to stress. And this is the first proof that
Speaker 1: environments trigger bodily responses like this and so in the
Speaker 1: decades that follow we learn even more about how the
Speaker 1: brain responds to stress. For instance, that hormones and chemicals
Speaker 1: in the brain are released to deal with stress. Namely,
Speaker 1: we have a stress hormone called c r H that's
Speaker 1: corticotra pent releasing hormone UH, and this forces the pteritary
Speaker 1: gland to pump out more a c t H and
Speaker 1: this travels through the blood to the adrenal glance and
Speaker 1: this makes them pump out cortisol courts. Of course, being
Speaker 1: the stress hormone and all of this is really important.
Speaker 1: You want to be able to tap into this stress response, right,
Speaker 1: this fear response, because that's really what helps us to
Speaker 1: tune into the details in a novel place or situation
Speaker 1: in order to detect the way out to survive in
Speaker 1: some way. That's when we see the whites of our
Speaker 1: eyes getting even larger because we're trying to really pay
Speaker 1: attention to our environments. The problem, of course, comes when
Speaker 1: we're overloaded with the stress response, and when we're in
Speaker 1: this state of fear for longer than we need to be.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about this in a bit too. UH,
Speaker 1: when the situation doesn't necessarily call for the stress response
Speaker 1: that is elicited right right, because again when the when
Speaker 1: the stress hormones kick in, the nerve cells fired to
Speaker 1: release an adrenaline light nerve chemical called nora pinafine. And
Speaker 1: this is this is when the brain's fear center, the amigla,
Speaker 1: becomes active. And again adrenaline is important, and we'll discuss
Speaker 1: that a little more as we go here. But this
Speaker 1: is how you want to feel inside of a maze,
Speaker 1: because the maze triggers anxiety and stress because of essentially
Speaker 1: four things. According to S. C. Em Steinberg. First of all,
Speaker 1: you're in an architectural maze or even a hedge maze,
Speaker 1: what can you see? What? What are you seeing around you?
Speaker 1: With your site? This key sense of it really just
Speaker 1: whatever's on either side, right. So of course with blinders, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like blinder here, blinder there. You can see a
Speaker 1: little ways in front of you, turn around, you can
Speaker 1: see a little ways behind you. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: your sense of the world via site is really limited.
Speaker 1: And the next one is one that I never really
Speaker 1: thought about all that much. But you have no clear
Speaker 1: sound to guide you either, because if you're if you're
Speaker 1: in a hedge maze, there's gonna be a certain amount
Speaker 1: of sound buffering, and then if you're in an actual
Speaker 1: architectural maze, you can have sound buffering plus the potential
Speaker 1: for echoes as well, like, for instance, the sound of
Speaker 1: that minotaur is how echoing through the tunnels. So already
Speaker 1: our site, our ability to see the world is a
Speaker 1: significantly altered in. Our ability to to navigate the world
Speaker 1: via sound is significantly altered. Right. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if the listeners can detect this, but there was just
Speaker 1: a bunch of hammering going on, and I was just
Speaker 1: thinking that we're inside of our little maze right now
Speaker 1: inside the podcast. I have no idea what direction that's
Speaker 1: kind I don't either. I can feel it, actually can
Speaker 1: feel it on my feet, but I know it that's
Speaker 1: not under me. I know it's not probably on the
Speaker 1: other side of the wall. But again, here's this idea
Speaker 1: that you can't get your normal sound clues correct. Um,
Speaker 1: you have limited vision, you have a new alien environment. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: this is like a maze, like a straight up maze,
Speaker 1: like out of the shining. This is an unreal environment
Speaker 1: and it's like and it's purest sense, it's it maybe
Speaker 1: an analog for confusion in the mind and puzzles of
Speaker 1: the mind. It maybe an analog for potentially confusing environments
Speaker 1: in the natural world, and certainly in the unnatural world
Speaker 1: of cities. But this is its purest sense. It is
Speaker 1: alien in every sense of the word. And the worst
Speaker 1: part of it is you now have choices, and you
Speaker 1: have uncertainty along with that novelty. And think about your
Speaker 1: poor hippocampus. This is the part of your brain that
Speaker 1: is trying to navigate right spatially and is using usually
Speaker 1: using memory to do this. So it's a little bit
Speaker 1: like if you were dropped into a new city and
Speaker 1: you had to find your bearings. What happens, You feel
Speaker 1: stressed out, You feel a little bit more aware, because
Speaker 1: this is part of your brain that's saying I don't
Speaker 1: have a blueprint for this, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: is the right choice. Yeah, like for us, like I
Speaker 1: know when I go to New York City, I certainly
Speaker 1: don't go there enough where I know my way around.
Speaker 1: So when I emerged from a subway out into the street,
Speaker 1: I'll have no idea which way is north, which way
Speaker 1: of south? What does that street sign say out there?
Speaker 1: Which is that one say back there, did I take
Speaker 1: the wrong course? And I completely out of bounds here
Speaker 1: um in regards to where I'm trying to get to
Speaker 1: and and certainly even taking something like Atlanta's Marta every day,
Speaker 1: which is basically a plush plus mark. It's north, north
Speaker 1: and southeast and west, but but still espec fully at
Speaker 1: the at the very center of that the center of confusion,
Speaker 1: which is a place called the five um, you do
Speaker 1: see outsiders and tourists and people who normally don't take
Speaker 1: the train wandering around confused, and you can see they
Speaker 1: feel the anxiety and the stress of coming off them
Speaker 1: because they're like, where am I? Which way am I going?
Speaker 1: And what are all these minotaurs doing here? I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, it's so sad when you see them gobbled
Speaker 1: up in the corners of the station by the minotaurs.
Speaker 1: But this reminds me again of the rats, and back
Speaker 1: to the Hampton Court maze, because again this is the
Speaker 1: maze that inspired the elevated plus line maze. And the
Speaker 1: reason why rats were studied in this configuration is because
Speaker 1: it's really easy to study anxiety in this, as you
Speaker 1: have pointed out, Because you want to make an animal
Speaker 1: feel anxiety, it's just bamed. Put them in that space
Speaker 1: and the environment makes them feel it. And the reason
Speaker 1: why rats had such a run with these mazes, so
Speaker 1: to speak, is because you know, pharmacological studies began with
Speaker 1: us to see if they to use certain substances to
Speaker 1: reduce that anxiety, and so they had rats run these
Speaker 1: mazes again and again. In fact, rats became the gold
Speaker 1: standard of animals to use in psychology experiments. So again,
Speaker 1: what Esther Serberg is saying that when you have all
Speaker 1: of these different elements, you have a novelty, you have
Speaker 1: a restriction in sight and sound, and you have in
Speaker 1: the case of the elevated plus sign elevation to throw
Speaker 1: into that. Uh, the rat will actually freeze at these
Speaker 1: points that offer what she says, the most frightening combination
Speaker 1: of choices available. Yeah, and we're like freezing. We're talking
Speaker 1: increased defication, elevations of cortisol, the stress hormone in the blood.
Speaker 1: And it isn't vital to point out that it's important
Speaker 1: to have that stress hormone. Um, it helps us solve
Speaker 1: the maze if if balanced, It focuses our attention, it
Speaker 1: gives us energy, It raises our awareness of the surroundings
Speaker 1: so that we notice the small details and they lead
Speaker 1: to our escape. Do you think of any story where
Speaker 1: an individual is in h maze, what do they have
Speaker 1: to do? They have to their their own guard. They
Speaker 1: might have to face a minotaur for crying out loud,
Speaker 1: But then they also have to be super observant because
Speaker 1: especially if the maze is kind of featureless, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe they're marking stuff on the walls with chalk, or
Speaker 1: they're using string, whatever, but they you have to You
Speaker 1: can't just calmly walk through. This is a confusing, challenging environment. Again,
Speaker 1: it's the representation of all the confusion and risks in
Speaker 1: the real world and you're feeling at all legitimately in
Speaker 1: the maze. Yeah. And she talks about this dose effect
Speaker 1: and this beneficial stress response as opposed to something that
Speaker 1: becomes detrimental and uh. In the book, she talks about
Speaker 1: Gary Aston Jones. He's a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and what he did is he embedded electrodes into the
Speaker 1: brains of monkeys, specifically a place called the locusts Serulius.
Speaker 1: And this is the region that governs vigilance, focused attention,
Speaker 1: and the adrenaline component of the stress response. And what
Speaker 1: happened is that when the monkeys were relaxed, there was
Speaker 1: just a little bit of nerve cell firing in this
Speaker 1: part of the brain, But when they were focusing on
Speaker 1: something like pressing a lever to obtain a pellet of food,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of nerve cell firing in the
Speaker 1: locust surrelius. So this is a good thing, right. You
Speaker 1: see the monkey performing at optimal levels under stress to
Speaker 1: a certain degree, but when the researchers stressed them a
Speaker 1: lot all of the nerve cells began firing in this
Speaker 1: Sisternberg is what led to the monkey failing at the
Speaker 1: task that the researchers were putting them to. So again,
Speaker 1: it is this overloaded of circuitry in the stress response
Speaker 1: that makes us freeze at times. Yeah, Steinberg compares it
Speaker 1: to a U shaped curve. Think of it this way.
Speaker 1: You have a speech to give, kind of like our
Speaker 1: keynote that we gave in miny Hapolists. So if you
Speaker 1: want to go in there with a certain amount of
Speaker 1: of of energy, right, you're about to give a keynote.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be like I just woke up.
Speaker 1: You know, you gotta Yeah, you want to have a
Speaker 1: certain amount of energy. So this you shaped curve, it's
Speaker 1: like a little hill. Okay, So as our anxiety rises
Speaker 1: up towards the middle of this hill, at the very
Speaker 1: top of that hill, that is like prime keynote territory.
Speaker 1: You're you're the maximum amount of energy and anxiety and
Speaker 1: stress that will allow you to get in there and
Speaker 1: just kill you know, to just get in there and
Speaker 1: deliver on all the front you're alert and focus, right.
Speaker 1: But then is that if that anxiety builds past that point,
Speaker 1: then it begins to dip down. Uh, and at the
Speaker 1: bottom of that hill is freezing up, pooping yourself and
Speaker 1: falling off the stage like utter a complete so much
Speaker 1: stress over it that you cannot even function at a
Speaker 1: basic human level. And then everywhere between the peak of
Speaker 1: that hill and the bottom there you know, all the
Speaker 1: other things that can happen where all that speech didn't
Speaker 1: really go too well. My nerves were a little fraid,
Speaker 1: you know. So you shaped curve, and so the ideally
Speaker 1: if you're in the maze, you want to uh be
Speaker 1: somewhere near the top of that curve, at the top
Speaker 1: of that hill, because that is the mindset that you
Speaker 1: need to solve the maze, and it's the mindset that
Speaker 1: your body is going for, Like, that's where you're that's
Speaker 1: why you're having these responses because the body is like,
Speaker 1: this is confusing. Let's get in maze solving mode. Well,
Speaker 1: and here's the deal. If if just some practical advice here,
Speaker 1: if anybody is going to give a keynote address and
Speaker 1: they feel like they are about to go down the
Speaker 1: hill into self defecation, take that moment to actually stand
Speaker 1: in a powerful pose. We talked about this before, um
Speaker 1: because this pose, if if you stand in it for
Speaker 1: two minutes or more, we'll actually decrease your cortisol stress
Speaker 1: levels and increase your testosterone. Increase of the testosterone is
Speaker 1: important because that helps your confidence. The lowering of the
Speaker 1: cortisol stress means that you will not poop your pants.
Speaker 1: So just a little f y either. So what other
Speaker 1: methods are at our disposal for escaping a maze? Solving
Speaker 1: a maze? How are we going to get out of
Speaker 1: dis maze and somehow make it back to our our
Speaker 1: chairs and our desks and presumably our families and homes. Okay, well, um,
Speaker 1: here is what many people say is the best way
Speaker 1: to solve a maze, and it's called the right hand trick,
Speaker 1: but sometimes called the left hand trick because doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter which hand. You just keep a hand on one
Speaker 1: wall and it doesn't matter which one, just pick left
Speaker 1: or right when you enter, and then you follow the
Speaker 1: path and keep that hand as you are following that
Speaker 1: path this way, if you get to a dead end,
Speaker 1: you can negotiate it by just following the three walls
Speaker 1: and then moving back the way that you came out,
Speaker 1: and eventually you will find the exit. This is the idea,
Speaker 1: all right. Now, this usually works with most mazes, but
Speaker 1: if the maze has a central blank area occupied by
Speaker 1: second maze, then your toast, it's not gonna work. Well, certainly,
Speaker 1: you can follow theseus's advice and have some yarn with
Speaker 1: you or some string and throw that behind you and
Speaker 1: just hope that nothing is going to follow in your
Speaker 1: wake to disrupt the path you're setting for your self.
Speaker 1: In the Name of the Rose, the character of Brother
Speaker 1: William of Baskerville says to find the way out of
Speaker 1: a labyrinth, that there is only one means at every
Speaker 1: new junction, never seen before. The path we have taken
Speaker 1: will be marked with three signs. If because of previous
Speaker 1: signs on some of the paths of the junction, you
Speaker 1: see that the junction has already been visited, you will
Speaker 1: make only one mark on the path you have taken.
Speaker 1: If all the apertures have already been marked, then you
Speaker 1: must retrace your steps. And he continues a little bit
Speaker 1: on this line and then add so that the younger
Speaker 1: monk that he's he's taking with him on this journey, says,
Speaker 1: how do you know that? Are you an expert on labyrinth?
Speaker 1: And he says, no, I'm citing an ancient text I
Speaker 1: once read and and so asked. And by observing this rule,
Speaker 1: you get out. And he says, almost never as far
Speaker 1: as I know. But we will still try it all
Speaker 1: the same. So, so you're gonna have to be patient
Speaker 1: with the maze, I guess, And you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to remain calm, but alert, be very
Speaker 1: aware of your surroundings, and uh, and don't be afraid
Speaker 1: to make some marks and notations. Um, and whether thoughts
Speaker 1: of comfort here? One is that we have learned this before,
Speaker 1: We've talked about this, Uh, that a rat's brain during
Speaker 1: sleep sometimes mimics what happens during the day. So rats
Speaker 1: and a maze, you can actually see the specific patterns
Speaker 1: of neurons fired in the rats brains while running a
Speaker 1: lab maze that appeared that day what um and then
Speaker 1: during ram sleep for those rats. So in other words,
Speaker 1: rats can dream about the maze that they've been in
Speaker 1: and they can try to figure out a better way
Speaker 1: to approach it next time, so they can learn to
Speaker 1: navigate a maze given maze, they can actually, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: can be trained to do this some part of humans.
Speaker 1: Do any even who lives in a city, has learned
Speaker 1: to navigate amaze. Yeah, and part of this training, of course,
Speaker 1: has to do with rem sleep and going over this
Speaker 1: material again and again. So just that that to me
Speaker 1: is very comforting when I think about getting out of
Speaker 1: a maze. And if you are an amazing and you're
Speaker 1: feeling lots of inks, maybe you're in a city, a
Speaker 1: new city, or a true maze itself, or you're drawing
Speaker 1: amaze or trying to get out of one that's on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. Uh, here's what you should do.
Speaker 1: You should start to think about the bunny healthy music
Speaker 1: because this apparently is very helpful. I think it decreases anxiety.
Speaker 1: And I say this because I watched the clip of
Speaker 1: the Shining that was scored to the Benny Healthy music
Speaker 1: and it was far less frightening. And if you want
Speaker 1: to see that, check out the blog post that accompanies
Speaker 1: this this podcast episode. All right, well, I think I
Speaker 1: hear the minotaur calling, so we probably need to wrap
Speaker 1: this up. I do want to close out with a
Speaker 1: poem by your hey, Lewis Borees, who again was obsessed
Speaker 1: with mazes and labyrinths and mirrors and all matter of
Speaker 1: mentally complex arrangements. And this is his poem called the
Speaker 1: Labyrinth Budget. It really sums up the feeling of being
Speaker 1: an a maze. Zeus himself could not undo the web
Speaker 1: of stone closing around me. I've forgotten the men I
Speaker 1: was before. I follow the hated path of monotonous walls.
Speaker 1: That is my destiny, severe galleries which curve in secret
Speaker 1: circles to the end of the years, parapets cracked by
Speaker 1: the day's usury. In the pale dust, I have discerned
Speaker 1: earned signs that frightened me. In the concave evenings, the
Speaker 1: air has carried a roar toward me, or the echo
Speaker 1: of a desolate How I know there is another in
Speaker 1: the shadows whose fate it is to wear out the
Speaker 1: long solitudes, which weave and unweave this hades, and to
Speaker 1: long for my blood and devour my death. Each of
Speaker 1: us seeks the other. If only this were the final
Speaker 1: day of waiting. So that you have it, we have
Speaker 1: escaped from the maze, and in our next episode we
Speaker 1: will explore the labyrinth. That's right. They to the yang,
Speaker 1: and it is a very different beast here, so do
Speaker 1: check it out. In the meantime, you can always check
Speaker 1: us out in several different places. Yes, Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That is the mothership, that is
Speaker 1: where all the podcast episodes live, way back to the
Speaker 1: very beginning. You'll find our blog post. You'll find our videos.
Speaker 1: You'll find links out to our various social media accounts
Speaker 1: including Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Google Plus, uh Soundclouds. Also mind
Speaker 1: Stuff Show on YouTube. That's their YouTube account. Go check
Speaker 1: out our videos there, follow us to support the show
Speaker 1: and Julie. If people want to email us, how might
Speaker 1: they go about that? Oh, well, they can send it
Speaker 1: through the maze of fiber optics, and they can do
Speaker 1: it by sending an email to blow the mind at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it How Stuff Works dot com