WEBVTT - Mazes 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:13.079 Works dot com. Hey, are you welcome to Stuff to 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:14.920 Blow your Mind? My name is Robert lamp and I'm 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.200 Julie Douglas, and we are republishing a couple of older 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:22.320 episodes this week. Two episodes that work together and therefore 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:24.959 had to be republished together, but two episodes that we 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:27.319 definitely wanted to share with everyone again and share with 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:31.160 many newer listeners for the first time. Yeah, because mazes 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:35.080 and labyrinths, these this idea that these physical constructs are 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:38.720 actually mental constructs. And in addition to this, we wanted 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:42.000 to mention that pretty soon there's a movie called The 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.920 Maze Runner, which will be released in movie theaters. It is, 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:49.680 according to Bleeding Cool dot com, yet another post apocalyptic 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.680 world populated by teenagers who are tasked to save the 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.720 world somehow. Yeah, and I was actually just looking at 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.440 it yet it starts the guy from teen Woolf the 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:03.640 TV show, not not Jason Bateman or Michael not or 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:05.680 not yea, not Michael j Fox, but the new Team Wolf, 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:07.560 the one that's uh you see on the side of 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:10.800 buses and stuff that yeah, he's in and it looks 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:13.280 pretty cool. It's kind of reminds me a bit of 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.920 the older movie Cube, you know, like a like a 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:19.120 very uh, you know, dystopian and high tech kind of 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:21.880 a maze environment. Yeah. I like the premise of it. 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.440 Um in it. Their memories, these teenagers are memories are 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:28.600 wiped out and they run through mazes like hamsters, later 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:33.440 discovering in the various truth behind the question why. Yeah, 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:35.440 and these are based, by the way, on a series 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:39.240 of young adult novels by James Dashner. Yeah, so we 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:46.319 hope that you guys enjoy this. It's a maze. Is 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:50.160 is about, in a way elaborate confinement. It's about confusion, 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:53.840 It's about being cut off. It's about not knowing which 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.000 way you're going, and which way is the way out, 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:58.880 and if there is even a way out, if there 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:02.960 is a limit to the confusing layout that just flows 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.280 out all around you. Now, one thing that's important to 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:07.960 mention here, and we're gonna we're gonna mention this not 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.639 only in this episode but the part two of this 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:15.360 series to follow. But essentially, you have mazes and you 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:20.800 have labyrinths, and very often these words are used interchangeably. 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:23.720 One would be tempted to say, it's elegant variation, which 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:26.280 is when you use uh, like when you're talking about 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:28.800 a wolf, but you use the word dog to describe it. 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:30.239 You just wanted to mix it up and use a 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:32.480 different word, but you're actually using a word for a 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:35.400 different thing. Well, mazes and labyrinth is and isn't quite 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:39.440 that bad because the overlap between these two terms has 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:41.919 been around for a while and has become pretty much 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:46.720 the you know, pretty much a mainstay of the English language. 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:49.680 So uh, you can't get two up in arms over it. 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.680 But for the purposes of this podcast, and and also 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:57.480 in scientific purposes, you have mazes, which are a place 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:00.240 of confusion, a place of beatings on the walls, as 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.360 we're hearing now, and then you have labyrinths and labyrinth 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.240 says we'll discuss in the second podcast more in depth, 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:09.400 are a place of serenity. That's right. It's really a 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:13.840 yang and yang proposition here, because yes, maze tangle of 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:18.720 options choices, right, profusion and the labyrinth neatly laid out 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:22.440 a meandering path, but one that has a purpose in 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.680 a direction to it. So right now we are going 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.559 to tackle mazes, and as we say, we are podcasting 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:33.359 today from a construction zone of our maze like office. Um. 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.520 And we should probably get into more or other examples 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:39.640 of mazes, because when you think of mazes, or at 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:41.640 least when I do, I tend to think of the 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:49.000 elaborate hedge mazes popular in the sixteen through the eighteenth centuries. Yes, 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:52.760 you have basically you can divide mazes up into two 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.240 or three categories. Well, first, there are two basic categories. 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:58.800 There are mazes that exist in physical space and mazes 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.040 that exist merely as saturn or as you know, is 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.760 something drawn on a sheet of paper. Uh. For the 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:07.080 most part, we're gonna be talking in this podcast though, 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:10.880 about actual physical mazes that you traverse physically, and these 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:14.600 you tend to see landscape mazes and architectural mazes, mazes 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:17.000 that are made out of you could do dirt, but 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:19.599 most of the time hedges. And then there are architectural 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:23.640 mazes whereas it is an actual physical thing walls and 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:27.200 closing you. Everyone will probably think back to the classic 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:32.520 Jim Hinson David Bowie starring film Labyrinth, which, despite being 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:36.840 called Labyrinth, everything in the movie is amaze. Everything is 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:41.520 about confusing because Sarah has to get to the castle 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:43.960 at the center so that she can free Toby from 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:48.200 the Goblin King, but nobody wants her to actually get there. 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.640 The Goblin King doesn't actually want women showing up and 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:54.640 stealing has stolen babies from him, so and there's a 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:58.120 neat little number like a Magic Song by David Bowie 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:01.279 which he's tossing this baby around and by the way, 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.080 he looks like Parker Posey to me in in a 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:08.800 Tina Turner wig in this sick Yeah, And there's a 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.679 lot of heavy pop synthesizers going on. It's it's pretty 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.200 awesome stuff. It is an awesome movie. But pretty much 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:17.320 everything you see in there is is a maze from 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:21.039 the early Stone mazes that Sarah is going through where 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:23.480 it's very much an architectural maze with walls all around her, 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.560 until later she's going through a landscape maze of hedges. 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:30.960 Elsewhere people may have encountered mazes in the form of 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:35.560 corn mazes where someone cuts a maze through the maze 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:41.560 and nice and you have around Halloween time, that's certainly 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:44.160 and every year in the news there's always an account 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.240 of a family getting lost in one of those mazes. Oh, 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:48.920 I haven't I've never seen one of those, and I've 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:52.239 worked in small papers for quite a while in the past, 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:54.920 so it's strange that we never had that story. Well, 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:56.880 and then they're never found again. Are you sure that 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:58.960 you're just you didn't used to live near a particularly 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.200 bad ads where they really went overboard and making it 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:06.240 complex and an unescapable No. No, no. And then there's 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.719 like these like sort of evilish children that are dressed 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:13.719 in amish like clothing. Yes, the children are milling around. Yeah, yeah, 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:16.800 you've not heard about No, I guess this is this 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:21.320 is one of your hometown. Yeah, it's pretty common elsewhere 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:25.120 in uh. In fiction, mazes have factored into Harry Potter 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:27.680 and the Goblet of Fire, the big climactic scene, and 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:32.360 that takes place within a maze. Harry's running around completely disoriented, 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:35.120 doesn't know where he's going, and trying, you know, trying 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:37.400 to figure out how to escape the maze or make 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:39.520 it to the center. I believe it was. What I 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:41.960 like about that maze too, is that the maze is alive, 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:45.000 the root system is, you know, trying to tangle them 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.560 and pull them in right. And likewise in Labyrinth, the 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:52.200 maze that Sarah finds herself in is constantly changing their 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.440 like little goblin dudes running around and like changing her 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:59.039 markings and presumably changing the actual physical layout of the 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.280 of the may behind her. Another fabulous maze uh in 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:08.000 film is that in The Shining. Oh yeah, now it's 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.640 different from in the book. There there's just some hedge 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:12.880 animals that are creepy and move when you're not looking 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.920 at them. But in Stanley Kubrick's phenomenal film vision of 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:20.960 the novel, he incorporates this this maze, this giant hedge maze, 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.360 and there's a model of the hedge maze, and and 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:28.520 the maze comes to symbolize the house itself because the house, 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:31.600 the Haunted Overlook Hotel, is also a sort of maze. 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.760 And then, curiously enough, like another maze we're about to discuss, 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:40.560 there is a deadly person at the deadly entity at 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.040 the center of it. In The Shining, that's Jack Torrence, 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:46.480 the writer who ends up becoming possessed by the evil 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:49.280 of the place and then is hunting his family through 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.520 both the maze that is the house and then in 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.600 the actual hedge maze out there in the cold. What 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:57.400 I really like about that maze too, is that it's 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:02.360 got those um those feelings of selation, terror and then 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:06.000 disorientation in that maze. And we'll talk more about that 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:10.000 in in Our Fear Response, our stress response to um 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:12.440 as we go through majors. But to me, that captures 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.320 that perfectly. There's also an excellent fictional maze in House 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:20.280 of Leaves by Mark z Danielski. Basically, the book itself 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:22.520 is a maze, and there are all these footnotes and 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.320 footnotes upon footnotes, and there's a story within a story 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:29.720 in a documentary film within a story, and the character himself, 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.520 this guy Navidson, ends up trying to traverse, trying to 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:39.920 explore this ever changing, featureless, black, otherworldly maze that branches 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:43.600 out from this haunted house presumably haunted, but you never 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.080 really know exactly what's going on with this place. The 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:50.200 Name of the Rose by Umberto Echo is pretty great 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:54.680 and that it features a library that is itself a maze. 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.560 And this is based in large part on your hey 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:00.880 Lewis Borhes the Library of Babble, where Borhe described an 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:03.920 infinite library maze that contains not only all books, but 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.240 all possible books, so it just spreads out forever and 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:09.760 so in the name of the rose umberto Echo creates 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:14.560 within this mediaval Abbey, this this maze library of forbidden 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:17.280 and restricted books. In writing about it, he says that 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:20.360 this is this library is what it's called a rhizome space, 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:24.160 which means there's there's virtually no into it. You could 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:27.959 wander this thing forever without finding an exit unless you 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:33.360 knew how to escape the maze. But perhaps the most 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:37.679 famous and and just the most iconic maze from from 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:40.120 myth and fiction and legend is of course the Maze 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:45.800 of Minos. Yes, and this is the tale of theseus, correct, 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:50.240 the hero and the minotaur, who is at the center 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:54.160 of what they call Again there's confusion between labyrinth and maze, 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:56.680 but it is at the middle of this and is 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.880 waiting for people to come through and devour them. Yes, 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:02.520 and kind of wandering the halls and howling and the 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:04.719 maze in this it was commanded to be built by 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:09.760 King Minos, who has this monstrous son that is the minotaur, 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:14.880 half man and half animal. Yes, yeah, monstrous flesh eating creature. 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:17.760 So he has Daedalus, who of course silt the wings 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:21.240 for his son Icarus. Just you know, the fantastic engineer 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:24.160 of Hellenistic lore. He's commanded to build it, and in 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:27.600 fact builds a maze so complicated that he himself has 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.280 trouble escaping from it at one point. But this becomes 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.600 just the sort of the defining idea of amaze, this complex, 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.240 confusing place that you're trapped in, you're trying to escape, 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.160 and then with the Minotaur, you have this added threat 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.679 that you are not alone in this confusing space, this confusing, 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:47.800 unreal world. There's also something that is searching for you, 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.720 something that or even if it's not searching for you, 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.520 you may run into it. And if you run into it, 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:55.640 it's all over. Yeah, And we will talk a little 0:10:55.640 --> 0:10:58.439 bit more about the Minotaur as represented by our consciousness 0:10:58.440 --> 0:10:59.880 and a bit and how our mind is a bit 0:10:59.880 --> 0:11:02.440 like a maze. But I did want to mention that 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:06.160 a a non fictional maze that is probably what you 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.319 could call the mother of mazes UM is known as 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.880 the Hampton Court Maze, and this is outside of London. 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:17.480 It is really an iconic maze. UM. It is at 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:20.120 the Hampton Court Palace and it's thought that it was 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:25.160 designed around six nine, originally planted using horn beam and 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:28.720 later we planted using you, and it covers a third 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:31.280 of an acre. It's trapezoid in shape and it is 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.560 the UK's oldest surviving hedge maze. In fact, I'm sure 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:37.600 listeners some of our resisis and UK have actually experienced 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:41.040 this firsthand. At the time. It was constructed to amuse 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:43.440 the ladies and lords of the court, which I think 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:47.080 is so I love this idea. It's so fascinating to 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:49.240 me that people have so much time on their hands 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:53.520 that it wasn't enough to have a palace and have 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:57.760 all the extravagance of a palace and servants. Then you 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.120 had to create a maze out on your lawn on 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:04.640 in order to amuse the people within the palace, something 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:09.600 that would actually um excite fear in your visitors to 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.800 the maze, right, yeah, you were. You lined it yesterday 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:15.880 when we were talking about it to h to like 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.160 a horror movie in a in an age when you 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:20.920 didn't have horror movie. Uh uh. And and certainly you 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:23.160 can also liken it to a roller coaster. It is 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:28.760 an artificial construction designed to create these feelings of fear 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.120 and anxiety in the individuals who are traversing it. So 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.760 it's interesting to me that the upper class just you know, 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.200 on a social note, that you would be so free 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.240 from concerns or troubles that you would have to create 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:46.600 this this uh, three D representation of fear to put 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:49.280 yourself through that experience. Um. And of course we do 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.600 that today with with haunted houses. But what is cool 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:55.800 about Hampton Court Maze is that this is the maze 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:58.960 that really helped to inform science. And what I mean 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:02.560 by that is there was a graduate student named Willard Small. 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:05.000 He was the first to use a rodent maze to 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.720 study learning, and he did this in nineteen o one, 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:10.360 and he created a platform about six ft long by 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.840 eight feet wide, covered it with sawdust and then divided 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.960 it into galleries with walls of wire netting, and he 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.520 modeled it on a diagram of the Hedge maze at 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:23.800 Hampton Court. So this was such a famous maze in 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:26.800 the minds of everybody, particularly during this ron of the century, 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:32.040 that it really helped um this particular student to create 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.400 this thing that really took off in science at least 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:39.160 for a good sixty years. Yeah, because even after they 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:41.880 stopped using the replica of the Hampton Court Maze, which 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:44.439 which from above looks. It's it's weirdly shaped, like it's 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:46.880 kind of like a hacked off pyramid, kind of like 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:51.679 a a weird battle axe looking design. It's it's strange looking, 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.160 kind of like a robot woman's hips. It's interesting to 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:59.559 say battle ax because uh, labra is I means yeah, 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:02.480 acts in and um in Greek, and so that's when 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:04.920 you look at the root of labyrinth, it is acts. 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.080 But anyway, but even after they stopped using the Hampton Maze, 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:10.720 they use a simplified version of it called the Elevated 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.520 Plus Maze, which basically look like a plus sign. In 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:18.440 other words, it's two hallways that they cross over each other. Uh. 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:20.600 And it's like the simplest may as possible because it 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:24.760 sends the mouse or whatever that's inside it. It's they 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.400 come to a point where they have three choices. They 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:29.800 can go left, they can go right, they can go 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.320 forward or well, presumably they could go backwards as well. 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:34.840 So it's a it's a simplified version of the of 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:37.680 the maze, the maze and brief you know, but what 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:41.000 are they trying to to study with all of this? Right? 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:44.400 It comes back to how a maze makes us feel 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:46.440 when I've touched on this a little bit already. It's 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:50.760 when you're inside of a maze, you feel, first of all, 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.920 you feel confined. You're definitely in a strange place. You 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:57.320 you don't know which way to go. Should I go 0:14:57.400 --> 0:14:59.680 this way, shouldn't go that way? If I go if 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:01.480 I go this way, am I going to run into 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:03.600 a dead end? Everyone hates running into a dead end? 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:06.320 That just said, I mean you think of actual real 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:08.720 world versions of this, like if you've ever been in 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:12.200 a um, well, say the haunted like a haunted house. 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.560 Now haunted house is not a complete maze because nobody 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:18.240 wants to build a professional haunted attraction where people go 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:20.480 in and have trouble getting out, because, if we discussed 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:22.880 in our Science of Haunted Houses episode, you've got to 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:24.920 move a certain amount of people through that haunted house 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:26.880 to make money. You need people going in, you need 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:29.960 people going out at a decent click. But at another 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:32.440 world haunted house in Atlanta, they frequently do have this 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:35.160 section that's kind of a mirror maze where you do 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:38.800 at least momentarily become disoriented and not know and you 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.000 don't know which way to go, and so that raises 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:44.920 your anxiety. You you feel stressful because you're like, well, 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:46.440 I thought, this is what how do I get out 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:48.200 of here? Which way am I supposed to be going? 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:50.960 You know? And I find in those environments too, not 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:53.400 only another world, but also in like real world environments 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.520 like a museum, there's also that that anxiety where you 0:15:56.560 --> 0:16:00.600 reach like a weird kind of a part of the 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:03.400 museum where you wonder if this is off limits, like 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:05.320 maybe they didn't they didn't make it clear enough, And 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:10.280 I'm wandering into restricted territory or likewise, any new city 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:12.760 that you're in, you're wandering around and you're wondering, am 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.400 I wandering into a restricted space? Is someone gonna yell 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:18.360 at me for being here? And I can start getting 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:21.080 anxious about that because I hated, you know, when I'm 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:23.640 in trouble somebody's yelling at me? And then second, am 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:28.080 I wandering into a contested space, which, especially in big cities, 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:30.240 you're like, am I wandering into a no man's land 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:34.560 of post apocalyptic violences and face stabbings? You know? I 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.400 I don't know, And that raises your instincts and your 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:40.120 anxiety and you're just on edge of the whole time. 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.280 Well because in in uh, in my world, I think 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:48.320 of it as just a microcosm of the minotaur in 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:52.600 your head already, right, So within our own minds, we 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:55.200 can think of them as mazes. In particular, we can 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:58.400 think about the default mode network. UM. This is three 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:00.960 areas of the brain, the medial pre frontal cortex, the 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:05.160 medial parietal cortex, and the meteoral temporal lobes. We've talked 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.399 about these before being the default mode network. And this 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:11.000 is the area of your brain that deals with the 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:16.399 eye of ourselves, the chattering um sort of subconscious level 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:18.479 where we sit there and we turn over things that 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:22.680 concern ourselves and our ego. And this is really where 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:26.520 you start to see that the mind is like amaze 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:30.439 in this sense because you're going through these thought loops 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:33.200 that you've probably gone through a million times in your 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:35.919 life about certain subjects. They tend to come up in 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:38.560 this area of the brain, right, these concerns that you 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:42.240 have usually about yourself, And it's kind of like a 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:46.280 hyperactive chat room for your brain, and it acts like 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:48.880 an echo chamber in this sense. And we've talked about 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:51.960 this before that when you have hyperactivity in this part 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:55.719 of the brain. It can lead to clinical depression. Right. 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:59.960 So that's why I say that this default mode net 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:02.760 work is really something that's maze that we deal with 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:05.520 every day. Yeah, we sort of we backtrack and we 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:09.640 wander the confusing corridors of the past. We try and 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:11.680 skip ahead a little bit and figure out where we're 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:14.399 going in the future, and for many of us the 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:16.560 whole time there well, for all of us, there are 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:18.840 certain minotaurs out there in that maze as well. I mean, 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:21.920 of course the big one is death. Uh. That beast 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:25.119 is out there somewhere. Maybe he is around the corner, 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:27.960 maybe he is on the other side of the maze 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.439 entirely with many many walls between you and it, but 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:33.760 you know it's there and you always hear it's howling. 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:35.760 I love that you brought that up, because when I 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:38.160 was thinking about mazes, and I was thinking about how 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:42.760 a maze is really a concrete manifestation of our abstract 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:47.720 mind me, I began to think about Sarah Winchester. We 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:51.400 have an article that concerns her is the Mystery House. Yeah, yeah, 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:54.600 she is the Winchester Rifle heiress who at the turn 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:57.000 of the century believed herself to be haunted by the 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:00.359 victims of the rifles that her husband's company for used, 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:04.000 and now she had something traumatic events that happened in 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.160 her life. She lost her child and her husband, and 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:11.159 after that, for thirty eight years, her house was constantly 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:15.400 under construction and she was changing the configuration of her 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:17.919 house really to create a maze. And the reason that 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:21.160 she did that is she wanted to confuse the spirits, 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:24.639 the ghosts of the people that she thought were killed 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:28.040 by those rifles. So if you've ever visited the house, 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.280 this is in San Jose, California, you may have firsthand 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:35.800 seen that there are false stairways to know where. There 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:40.120 are something like forty seven chimneys in the house. Um. 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:42.439 Some of them are built all the way up, some 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:47.440 of them are not. Some of them actually aren't working chimneys, fireplaces, um. 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:50.400 And at some point I believe there are five hundred 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:55.440 rooms constructed that she would have them demolished and then rebuilt. 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:58.800 So here you go, I mean, here's talking about the 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.800 hyperactivity of this part of the brain that is concerned 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:07.600 with um, you know, fear and uh, the self. This 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:11.240 is someone who you can really see her own brain 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:14.520 being manifested in the design of our house. Well, and 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:16.399 it's in a way, it's uh, it's kind of just 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:18.720 another take on the old idea that if you you 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:21.680 have a criminal that needs to be executed, you hang 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:25.080 them at a crossroads so that they'll have difficulty finding 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:27.800 their way back to their hometown where they can haunt 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:30.080 everybody and be a menace. So, but in what is 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:33.280 a crossroads but a plus maze, like we discussed earlier, 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:35.520 you placed the mouse at the center, the rat at 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:37.560 the center of the plus mays the brat has no 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.800 which no idea which way to go. So presumably the 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:45.000 ghost of an executed murder is there at the crossroads, 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:47.480 has no idea what to go. Maybe he locks down 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:49.800 and doesn't go anywhere. Maybe he heads up in the 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:53.040 wrong direction. And and this is so cool because again 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:56.480 this is this idea of disorientation. We're gonna take a 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:58.080 quick break, but when we get back, we're going to 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:13.120 talk about anxiety disorientation in mazes. All right, we're back, 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:15.200 and I do want to mention that is we're getting 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:18.280 into the way mazes affect our mind in our body. 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:20.879 Text that we found particularly helpful in this was the 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:25.119 science of healing places by Esther M. Steinberg. Just a 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:27.760 fabulous book from beginning to end, and it deals with 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:31.879 how spaces affect us, how the layout of a space 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:35.480 or the particulars of an environment can have a beneficial 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:38.280 effect on us or a detrimental effect on us. And 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:41.640 in a large sense, the purest distillation of this idea 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:44.560 is the idea of maze and labyrinth. And in this 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:47.160 podcast were of course talking about the maze. Uh And 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:51.359 as you mentioned earlier, it's just this, the mazes is amazing, 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:56.880 and that it is this kind of perfect physical manifestation 0:21:57.320 --> 0:21:59.800 of an idea, are even more than an idea, just 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:02.520 like a state of mind, a state of the world. 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:05.879 Like in a way, the mazes this perfect manifestation of 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:09.840 the of the human experience in its confusing sense. You know, 0:22:10.119 --> 0:22:11.960 like I said, I it makes me think of the 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:15.199 obelisk from the Monolith rather from two thousand and one 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:17.520