Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey you welcome to stuff to below
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: do you like spring? Do you like the season spring?
Speaker 1: Of course I do. Yeah, How could you not like spring?
Speaker 1: It's true. It's even even though I've never been a
Speaker 1: summer person. Where I used to not be a summer person,
Speaker 1: I always did like springs because no matter how short
Speaker 1: your spring is depending on where you live, and it
Speaker 1: feels like we have very short springs at times here
Speaker 1: in the South. It's it's a time when things begin
Speaker 1: to come alive a little bit, but not everything I
Speaker 1: was alive yet, not all of the really annoying things
Speaker 1: have have have sprung up around you, such as the
Speaker 1: mosquitoes necessarily, or the poison ivy, all the things that
Speaker 1: drive you indoors um. But it's just nice enough to
Speaker 1: to exist outside, to not have to turn on the
Speaker 1: air conditioning or the heat. You can set around, you
Speaker 1: can read you're comfortable out there in nature, as perhaps
Speaker 1: got into um for me, it's just emerging from winter's
Speaker 1: dark shadow, right because you have been inside, you've been,
Speaker 1: you know, you've had cabin fever, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you can step outside and the sun is a
Speaker 1: shining and the festivals are are all over the place,
Speaker 1: especially in Atlanta. April is festival of Go Go Time.
Speaker 1: And for me, the best sign of spring in Atlanta
Speaker 1: is when you see people walking down the sidewalk with
Speaker 1: their pillows for International Pillow Fight Day. I did not
Speaker 1: know this existed April five. Huh yeah, because really, I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got that big blue sky. People are about to
Speaker 1: collabor each other with with soft weapons. Is this the thing?
Speaker 1: This sounds This is a little crazy like Shirley Jackson's
Speaker 1: The Lottery, you know, like it. It sounds like something
Speaker 1: you would encounter in some isolated town and then you
Speaker 1: would yeah, Freedom Parkway. Well actually I think this year
Speaker 1: it's going to be in Grant Park. But every year
Speaker 1: in Freedom Parkway people gathered with their pillows and you
Speaker 1: see feathers just to fly and wow, well that that
Speaker 1: is strange. But indeed to your point, though, spring is
Speaker 1: a time where you you come out of your your hibernation,
Speaker 1: you come out of the darkness and to get down
Speaker 1: to the very primal root. Stop it springtime means the
Speaker 1: winner didn't kill us, that that god or the gods
Speaker 1: did not abandon us to the darkness and the chill
Speaker 1: of night. Like springtime came and it saved our lives.
Speaker 1: Things are growing again, food is available again, and it's
Speaker 1: to be celebrated. And you see this in different cultures,
Speaker 1: you know, since time immemorial, right, because people are they're relieved,
Speaker 1: and they're going outside and they are celebrating this. You
Speaker 1: see that this in the festival of Holly, right. Um,
Speaker 1: this is a celebration of the colors of unity and brotherhood.
Speaker 1: You see this in India where people go around they
Speaker 1: pelt each other in the face of all these beautiful
Speaker 1: different colored um sands. And this is a way of saying,
Speaker 1: as you say, hey, guess what we all made it.
Speaker 1: All of us are brothers and sisters, and this whole
Speaker 1: human thing we survived in another winter. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: In the Christian tradition, of course, you have the the
Speaker 1: death and Resurrection of Jesus as well, which which fits
Speaker 1: right in there and plays upon on older uh Easter
Speaker 1: traditions as well. Now, now it also brings up the
Speaker 1: question why must we have tax season right in the
Speaker 1: spring like that seems to really just sour the whole equation.
Speaker 1: It's like, we finally come out, we're free, we're alive.
Speaker 1: Now you have to pay taxes. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: having to worry with your car tax when your birthday
Speaker 1: comes along. Oh, it's just like the I r s
Speaker 1: to be like ha ha ha spring. You think everything
Speaker 1: is renewing and emerging. Death to your money exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: because it comes back. What are the two things you
Speaker 1: can't dodge in life? Right, death and Texas? And there
Speaker 1: you go, and they are interlaced with each other, death
Speaker 1: and taxes at a very basic level. But that's a
Speaker 1: rant for another time. Yes, that is um. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about this idea of spring a little bit more
Speaker 1: in the context of how it might just not only
Speaker 1: symbolize this reemergence, but it may even change our behavior.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, we should probably talk
Speaker 1: about how much time we spend indoors. Yes, And it's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty disturbing because because most of us we go
Speaker 1: through our lives and we don't necessarily think of it
Speaker 1: in those terms, like we're not keeping a precise diary
Speaker 1: of how much time we spend outside dear Diary. I
Speaker 1: mean I feel a little more in touch with it
Speaker 1: these days, with the with the toddler, because taking the
Speaker 1: toddler outside the park is huge. And so when like
Speaker 1: suddenly not being able to go outside for a few
Speaker 1: days or a week is is very noticeable because it starts,
Speaker 1: you know, clawing at eufanity. Yeah. Well, according to the
Speaker 1: Environmental Protection Agency, Americans spent about eighty seven percent of
Speaker 1: their time indoors and another six percent in their vehicles.
Speaker 1: And as you say, you probably you don't really unless
Speaker 1: you are, you know, putting it down in your die,
Speaker 1: or you don't realize because you think, well, I went
Speaker 1: outside to go to the grocery store, I went outside
Speaker 1: to do the other errand and you feel like you've
Speaker 1: had outside experiences when in fact you have been inside
Speaker 1: sort of cloistered, especially if you work in an office, right,
Speaker 1: and and you see, you know, different surveys make that
Speaker 1: percentage a little higher to like I've seen seen nine
Speaker 1: for Americans on a two thousand nine e p A study.
Speaker 1: I've seen for people in industrialized countries on another study.
Speaker 1: So it's a talking percentage to to really think about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: social you take that plus that six percent. You get
Speaker 1: that really inside a location, right, that's sealed in, right,
Speaker 1: And that's key because we we did a whole episode
Speaker 1: talking about how artificial indoor environments, how those are really
Speaker 1: alien environments that we've we've created like not only just structurally,
Speaker 1: but also the uh, the the micro biology of those structures,
Speaker 1: the things that we're breathing in. We've created these strange
Speaker 1: realities that are separate from the natural environment with well
Speaker 1: we've evolved to thrive in. That's right. We did. We
Speaker 1: looked at that study with hospitals opening their windows to
Speaker 1: let fresh air and their fresh microbes, I guess you
Speaker 1: could say, and that being exceedingly beneficial to the patients. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: also consider that when you are inside, you are most
Speaker 1: likely sitting down or lying down in the ladder. Of
Speaker 1: course is necessary for sleep, but the former, as we know,
Speaker 1: is associated with a smartgese board of physical ailments, including
Speaker 1: an increased risk of type two diabetes. So all of
Speaker 1: this sedentary inside stuff not so great force, and of
Speaker 1: course it would play out in many different ways. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also want to point out that according to the
Speaker 1: e p A, indoor levels of pollutants maybe two to
Speaker 1: five times higher and occasionally more than a hundred times
Speaker 1: higher than outdoor levels, which is important to think about,
Speaker 1: especially here in Atlantic where occasionally we received these alert
Speaker 1: saying that if you're very young, are very old, please
Speaker 1: don't go outside today because the air might destroy you. Um.
Speaker 1: But then you have to start stop and think, well,
Speaker 1: what what kind of air am I fleeing to? You know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but let's let's get toned to the more like rainbows
Speaker 1: and kitten farts here thinking about it. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: but let's take out the sun and look at it,
Speaker 1: because she'll shine upon us and take away all of
Speaker 1: our ailments. The power of the sun is immense. When
Speaker 1: you step out into the sun, those rays or about
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty nine million kilometers away, and when
Speaker 1: they hit your skin, they unleash a chemical chain reaction
Speaker 1: that benefits us. For instance, vitamin D is produced yes,
Speaker 1: which most of us do not get enough of no,
Speaker 1: and that helps to absorb calcium and foods and which
Speaker 1: of course that helps to grow bone and and uh
Speaker 1: maintain bone health. And it also helps to bolster the
Speaker 1: immune system. So it makes sense that when you go
Speaker 1: out into the sun, wonderful thing has happened. You should
Speaker 1: wear some screen of course, yes, yeah, is that there's
Speaker 1: too much light makes the baby go blind, as they say.
Speaker 1: Now a more quantitative look at this is a two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight study published in the journal Psychological Science
Speaker 1: which looked at the cognitive benefits of spending some time
Speaker 1: interacting with old nature. University of Michigan psychologist Mac Berman
Speaker 1: took a sample group of thirty six people, broke them
Speaker 1: into two groups, and then put them through a series
Speaker 1: of rigorous cognitive test He then let each group take breaks,
Speaker 1: one group walking around the city street and the other
Speaker 1: through a secluded wooded park. Now, of course, who do
Speaker 1: you think performed better on the cognitive tests later on?
Speaker 1: And and of course memory being one of those things
Speaker 1: the nature group, Because the idea is that strolling in
Speaker 1: a city forces the brain to constantly remain vigilant as
Speaker 1: you navigate cars and people, and you sets out the
Speaker 1: relevant information from from irrelevant information. Um, so for instance, relevant,
Speaker 1: oh don't say up in that poop? Irrelevant there's a
Speaker 1: sale on bras right, Um. The end result is that
Speaker 1: those those city walkers are having a less restorative scenario
Speaker 1: for their brains. In your prefrontal cortex is very occupied,
Speaker 1: so your cognitive functioning in terms of learning is not
Speaker 1: going to be as great. So it kind of takes
Speaker 1: our sort of everyday myopic view of the world that
Speaker 1: the flashlight view, and maybe opens it up a little
Speaker 1: bit a little more lamp like where're actually absorbing sense
Speaker 1: data a little more openly. Yeah, because you're in a
Speaker 1: calm environment, Um, you don't have to worry about what's
Speaker 1: coming next so much. And of course it's fascinating too
Speaker 1: when you you start then asking the question, well, how
Speaker 1: much time do when you spend out of the day,
Speaker 1: I'm spending this enormous like like hovering near nine of
Speaker 1: my life is spent indoors, So how much of that
Speaker 1: do I have to give back? Like some impossible amount
Speaker 1: do I have to give back? Well, studies show that
Speaker 1: just five minutes a day can give you that boost
Speaker 1: in mental health. Just five minutes, Like that's that's not
Speaker 1: even that's not even all of your lunch break, you know,
Speaker 1: that's just that's just a leaving work five minutes early
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, that's from two thousand and ten research
Speaker 1: published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, and they
Speaker 1: looked at self esteem and nature. And they found that
Speaker 1: just that the five minutes of people who were engaged
Speaker 1: in exercise, cycling, walking, running, gardening, farming. Um, if you
Speaker 1: had that amount of time, then your self esteem and
Speaker 1: your mood would be elevated. And of course they measured
Speaker 1: this using standard psychological tests before and after the activities.
Speaker 1: Now smoke breaks don't count though, right, uh, I don't
Speaker 1: recall that being covered. We depend, I guess on the
Speaker 1: nature of your smoke break, but probably not so. Of course,
Speaker 1: the idea begins to emerge. We should frolic outdoors daily
Speaker 1: for at least five minutes more if possible. But is
Speaker 1: there something to spring itself? Are these day ease of
Speaker 1: sunshine really special in that sense of of re emergence?
Speaker 1: Is that well founded? Is that not just symbolic? Do
Speaker 1: you should we just take off spring some work. Well
Speaker 1: there's spring break, of course, which you know, to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, just one week. Yeah, but the whole season? Yes? Okay,
Speaker 1: well yeah, this gets into the whole question. Is there
Speaker 1: not only link between spring and mood, but is there
Speaker 1: a link between weather and mood, between climate and modd Like,
Speaker 1: how much of what's going on in the environment is
Speaker 1: affecting my mental state to begin with. Right, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna answer that very question. Alright, we're back, and
Speaker 1: we're discussing this question. Does the weather, does the climate?
Speaker 1: Does this everything going on outside the window? Does it
Speaker 1: affect affect our mood? And we often fall into the
Speaker 1: trap of thinking that it just universally does. We've all
Speaker 1: seen the cartoon image of the depressed person with their
Speaker 1: own personal rain cloud hovering over their head, right, uh,
Speaker 1: and so, and it's easy to fall into that trap
Speaker 1: of say thinking that, well, everyone in Seattle must be
Speaker 1: depressed because it's raining all the time. Or I really
Speaker 1: want to boost my mood. I want to move somewhere
Speaker 1: where the weather is nicer, and therefore my internal weather
Speaker 1: will be nicer as well. But when you actually analyze it,
Speaker 1: this doesn't really hold up. No. Matthew Keller, a lead
Speaker 1: researcher of the meta study at Warm Heart and a
Speaker 1: Clear Head the Contingent Effects of weather on mood and cognition, says, quote,
Speaker 1: everyone thinks weather effects mood, But the biggest test of
Speaker 1: this theory in two thousand. In the year two thousand
Speaker 1: found no relationships. So we went back and found that
Speaker 1: there are two important variables, how much time you spend
Speaker 1: outside and what the season is. If you go from
Speaker 1: winter to spring and spend enough time outside, there is
Speaker 1: a noticeable change. So it's this change that's key. This
Speaker 1: this emergence from the dark into the light, from the
Speaker 1: cold into the warm, and actually getting out there and
Speaker 1: experiencing it. That's what can actually make a difference on
Speaker 1: your cognitive state. Yeah, and it is a certain degree
Speaker 1: of temperature that will actually make the biggest impact on
Speaker 1: your state of mind. And we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about Keller's research, but I just wanted to mention
Speaker 1: that all of this has to do with spring, because
Speaker 1: a peak mood occurred at sixty seven point four degrees fahrenheiten.
Speaker 1: This is kind of the goldilocks of temperature and not
Speaker 1: too cold, not too hot that you see in spring.
Speaker 1: So when we talk about some of these different aspects
Speaker 1: of the research, to keep in mind that that's the
Speaker 1: perfect spring day weather right where you've got the blue
Speaker 1: skies and um, you know, you're just as comfortable as
Speaker 1: you can be. It's almost like the metaphor of being
Speaker 1: in the womb and floating around and in your you know,
Speaker 1: the edges of your body just melting into everything else
Speaker 1: around you. Maybe you don't have the exact feeling of
Speaker 1: that when you go out your front door in that weather,
Speaker 1: but there is a feeling of comfort. Well yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: but I think we often do have that that feeling. Again,
Speaker 1: it comes back to that whole realization, Hey, the weather
Speaker 1: is nice enough outside. I don't have to turn on
Speaker 1: the heat. I don't have to turn the air conditioning.
Speaker 1: I can open a window. Or you walk outside in
Speaker 1: the spring day and you say, hey, it's nicer outside
Speaker 1: than it is indoors, which is such an insane thing
Speaker 1: to say, but but but it's true. And then you
Speaker 1: feel the edges of your body melting around you, and
Speaker 1: you think, ah, I felt this before somewhere. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about these studies. There was one in which
Speaker 1: nineties seven people reported their mood and how much time
Speaker 1: they spent outside. Then they were asked to remember a
Speaker 1: series of numbers. They were also given a short favorable
Speaker 1: description of a fake employee, and then they were given
Speaker 1: additional unfavorable information about that same person and asked to
Speaker 1: assess the employee's competence in performance on the days with
Speaker 1: high pressure, that's the clear, sunny days when you have
Speaker 1: high barometric pressure. People who spent more than thirty minutes
Speaker 1: outside saw an increase in memory, mood, and flexible thinking styles.
Speaker 1: Those who spent the time indoors, though, they saw a decrease.
Speaker 1: So when they talk about flexible thinking styles, we're talking
Speaker 1: about a sense of openness. So they were regarding that
Speaker 1: employee and some of the more unsavory details about that
Speaker 1: person in a more open minded way and kind of
Speaker 1: giving them a pass on those days that there was
Speaker 1: beautiful weather and they were spending a good chunk of
Speaker 1: it outside. Interesting. Interesting, Now the second experiment that has
Speaker 1: a D twenty one people spend time outside, of course,
Speaker 1: or inside on a warm, clear, beautiful day. Have you
Speaker 1: ever had that experience where you you both have been
Speaker 1: outside just frolicking, or you've been inside chained to your
Speaker 1: computer looking longingly outside. Yeah, kind of think. I had
Speaker 1: one of those days last week where it was inside
Speaker 1: here the office all day doing stuff, and then I
Speaker 1: went outside at the end of the day to go
Speaker 1: home and realize it was beautiful, and I felt this
Speaker 1: this deep sadness because I knew that one of the
Speaker 1: few uh nice days that we have in the city
Speaker 1: was lost to me. Well, that is exactly what happened
Speaker 1: in this experiment. Of course, people who went outside their
Speaker 1: moves were lifted. Uh, they felt great, they had some
Speaker 1: pep in their step. But the people who were changed
Speaker 1: to their desks and made to stay inside were angry
Speaker 1: about it. Now, they weren't physically chained in the experiment,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting just just to be clear. No, there's
Speaker 1: a rope. There's a rope. Yeah, we don't want it
Speaker 1: to rub too much, exactly. Yeah. And then the third study,
Speaker 1: the researchers collected data through a website from three eight
Speaker 1: seven respondents who lived in various climates, because what they
Speaker 1: wanted to do here is to try to get out
Speaker 1: of the northern climates that they are already in and
Speaker 1: make sure that they had some other representations of climates
Speaker 1: throughout the world. And they correlated the submissions with the
Speaker 1: weather in each city for that day, and they found
Speaker 1: that participants who spent more time outside during the spring
Speaker 1: but not during any other season had better moods overall.
Speaker 1: So again, everyone is coming outside everythone is emerging. It's
Speaker 1: like that that the flower is opening to the warmth
Speaker 1: of a world, society is is coming alive again. Everyone's
Speaker 1: creeping outside of the cave. But it turns out there's
Speaker 1: a dark side to this as well, and to understand it,
Speaker 1: we have to first back up a little bit to
Speaker 1: Christmas time. Now. Now, Christmas, the holidays, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call them, whatever they are to you, they are
Speaker 1: essentially the around the darkest times of the winter, when
Speaker 1: things are at their at their their their blackest, things
Speaker 1: are at their coldest, And a lot of what's going
Speaker 1: on there at a deeper level, is about the hope
Speaker 1: that spring will come again, that if we do right
Speaker 1: by nature, by the God, by God's by ourselves, whatever,
Speaker 1: we can survive the rest of this night and emerge
Speaker 1: into springtime. And there's this myth that has just stayed
Speaker 1: with us, largely because it's repeated over and over again
Speaker 1: in the media that suicide rates are hired during the holidays.
Speaker 1: And it's an easy one to buy, because, yeah, people
Speaker 1: get down sometimes in the holidays. They can be a
Speaker 1: little sad. You know, suddenly you're having the holidays and
Speaker 1: someone that you've lost isn't there with you anymore, or
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're experiencing some degree of seasonal effective disorder.
Speaker 1: The world's dark, everything's colder. Maybe that's getting you down
Speaker 1: as well. But according to the Anneburg Public Policy Center,
Speaker 1: it's the idea that to suicide rates peaked during the
Speaker 1: holidays is complete, complete bunk, and the media should stop
Speaker 1: repeating it and driving home this falsehood. Yeah, Brian Palmer,
Speaker 1: writing for Sleep magazine, says it's a convenient narrative that
Speaker 1: would keep picking up lonely people becoming despondent around Christmas time. Um,
Speaker 1: the real information here is that suicide actually peaks in
Speaker 1: the spring and summer, and if you start to try
Speaker 1: to sess out all of the reasons why, it becomes
Speaker 1: very difficult. Now. Um, when Palmer was writing this article
Speaker 1: for Sleep magazine about suicide upticks in spring and summer,
Speaker 1: he went through some various theories about it. But I
Speaker 1: just wanted to say that there's no one like unified
Speaker 1: theory here, and a lot of it has to do
Speaker 1: with that person's particular circumstances, not just because this person
Speaker 1: happened to work in this kind of job in Uruguay
Speaker 1: at the time, but we should probably run through it
Speaker 1: because it is really interesting. The one that seems to
Speaker 1: during the most with the most truth for me is
Speaker 1: the is the sociodemographic factor. And this is the idea
Speaker 1: that during winter, what are you doing. You're surviving the winter.
Speaker 1: You're kind of hibernating in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're buckling down, You're you're you're just
Speaker 1: about get through the holidays, get through the new year.
Speaker 1: You know, throw in you know, weird work schedules and
Speaker 1: trips and more time with the family. You know, it's
Speaker 1: gonna very case to case, obviously, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: you can say that throughout this this winter you are
Speaker 1: you're keeping it close. You know, you're shutting off, you're
Speaker 1: not really dealing with as many people, uh in the
Speaker 1: outside world. But then when spring comes, everyone's getting out
Speaker 1: and about uh there, you know, suddenly everyone has new
Speaker 1: projects that you're launching at work. It's not about just
Speaker 1: let's get through all the weird works I all the holidays.
Speaker 1: It's suddenly like, let's have meetings and get things done.
Speaker 1: Let's start building things together. Oh and then oh and
Speaker 1: then taxes are here. We have to pay the taxes
Speaker 1: as well. Uh, Suddenly the socio demographics of the world
Speaker 1: around you are erupting and coming together, and things that
Speaker 1: say that, you know, problems in your life that you
Speaker 1: might have been able to to dodge by hiding from them,
Speaker 1: Suddenly you're not able to hide from them as well,
Speaker 1: you know, or plans that you had made, Uh suddenly
Speaker 1: have to come together in a different way. I mean
Speaker 1: it's you're suddenly exposed to more frustration, more conflict in
Speaker 1: your life, and if, if, and and that can spill
Speaker 1: over into self destruction. Yeah. A good example of this
Speaker 1: is the paper is Occupation Relevant and Suicide and this
Speaker 1: studied suicides in Finland during the years of nine and
Speaker 1: what it found is that the spring suicide peak is
Speaker 1: more pronounced among people employed on farms or in factories,
Speaker 1: who experience greater seasonal variation in the intense of work
Speaker 1: and social interactions. In addition, developing countries with a higher
Speaker 1: proportion of agriculture workers see more seasonal changes in the
Speaker 1: stuff in the suicide rate than you developed countries, and
Speaker 1: Palmer says that the magnitude of seasonal changes in suicide
Speaker 1: rate is more than ten times higher in Uruguay, for example,
Speaker 1: than in Belgium, because suddenly the pressure is on let's
Speaker 1: get it, let's grow things. We have to plant things.
Speaker 1: The cycle is is is heating up at the farm,
Speaker 1: and therefore the pressure is on you. There's more frustration
Speaker 1: and and that can spill over. Now there are just
Speaker 1: there's a raft of controversial studies linking something like allergens
Speaker 1: or even temperature spikes to suicide rates. But there's really
Speaker 1: no one weather pattern or one variable that you can
Speaker 1: point to when it comes to those studies. So I'm
Speaker 1: not going to spend much time other than to just
Speaker 1: mentioned that they are out there. Yeah, because you start
Speaker 1: breaking and they're like with a lot of things, especially
Speaker 1: things that involve human behavior and its interaction with other factors.
Speaker 1: You start looking for that unified theory and things start
Speaker 1: breaking down. Uh, there's no there's no single argument for
Speaker 1: why people are going to you know, be more suicide
Speaker 1: prone in the spring or summer that matches up with
Speaker 1: one particular variable, right, Because there's another subset of people
Speaker 1: who have committed suicide and they happen to be cubical workers,
Speaker 1: and this their uptick is in September, So you can't
Speaker 1: just say across the board it's spring and summer and
Speaker 1: it's just agriculture workers. There's all sorts of factors going
Speaker 1: on here. But I think the real point here is
Speaker 1: that the darkest days for humans is not you know,
Speaker 1: in December and the holidays. This it's just this myth
Speaker 1: that we perpetuate that this idea of moods and chemicals
Speaker 1: that create our moods are far more nuanced than just
Speaker 1: saying boom, this is what happens. Yeah. Spring is about
Speaker 1: the world coming to life again, the world that you
Speaker 1: live in, and that can be a really happy thing,
Speaker 1: that can also be a really depressing thing, are very
Speaker 1: RESTful thing. Yeah, So it depends on your individual circumstance
Speaker 1: really in a number of ways. So Robert, now that
Speaker 1: you know about the International Pillow Fight that we've got
Speaker 1: a couple of days to prepare here, will you be participating? No,
Speaker 1: because I'd probably have to bring my son there and
Speaker 1: I don't really want him to see a bunch of
Speaker 1: grown people hitting each other with pillows and sleeping. No.
Speaker 1: Pillows are for expressing your love and your angst. And um,
Speaker 1: the fact that he's as you said, that we we
Speaker 1: uh we survived it, We survived the wintertime. Let's get
Speaker 1: out there and just whack each other silly. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: maybe next year, maybe next year. All right, that's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. You're just saying that, we'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1: All right. Uh, we should do a little bit of mail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me call over the robot and let's see what
Speaker 1: we have, all right. This one comes to us from Adam.
Speaker 1: Adam says, Hi, Robert and Julie just found your podcast
Speaker 1: on my long road trip from Texas, Illinois, and heard
Speaker 1: your show a musical time machine for the brain, and
Speaker 1: wanted to share my driving music with you. Pretty much
Speaker 1: any track by the techno band The Prodigy, but namely Breathe. Also.
Speaker 1: Another favorite for adournaline pumping, fist fighting, body moving, head bopping,
Speaker 1: vampire sucking nights in a Cede, Russian nightclub would be
Speaker 1: the track Confusion by New World, featured in the Wesley
Speaker 1: Snipe vampire Hunter movie Blade. Thanks for asking, Adam of Texas.
Speaker 1: This one comes to us from Lena. Lena says, Dear
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie, I really enjoyed your podcast, The Illusion
Speaker 1: of Continuity because I'm in ap psychology and we just
Speaker 1: finished our unit on sensory and perception. It was incredibly interesting.
Speaker 1: I had never realized the extent to which my senses
Speaker 1: cannot be trusted. However, the brain is also extraordinary and
Speaker 1: its ability to fill in gaps, filter out on necessary stimuli,
Speaker 1: and make sense of complex images. It seems like the
Speaker 1: more science figures out the human brain, the more questions
Speaker 1: one could ask about it. The dance and Spider Man
Speaker 1: gift really cracked me up by the way. I played
Speaker 1: K pop and some other songs and it worked, although
Speaker 1: I could see some discontinuity, but maybe that was my
Speaker 1: years of music lessons kicking in. I love your podcast.
Speaker 1: Keep up the amazing work, Lena. All right, we've got
Speaker 1: one more here, and this is from Iona and in
Speaker 1: the subject line it says this one has a really
Speaker 1: cute cat gift. And indeed she did attach a gift
Speaker 1: of a cat on hind length hind legs a kittie.
Speaker 1: Was that a trick that she played on this to
Speaker 1: to try and make sure that we read this particular
Speaker 1: email and I didn't get lost. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it worked. If it was, it worked, um, says Hi.
Speaker 1: Robert and Julian needed to let you know that Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is my favorite podcast and makes
Speaker 1: my daily commute on the Northern Line, known to Londoners
Speaker 1: as the most oppressing of all the two blinds, bearable.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for all your hard work.
Speaker 1: Your podcast about the Night Janitor reminded me of the
Speaker 1: short story The Sweeper of Dreams by Neil Diamond, which
Speaker 1: runs with the same analogy. It's super short, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't take long to read, and you can see it
Speaker 1: here or there's a video of Diamond reading it. Allowed
Speaker 1: I managed to listen to your musical time Machine for
Speaker 1: the Brain podcast. On the same day I read this
Speaker 1: essay on why we love repetition and music by the
Speaker 1: director of the Music Cognition Lab at Arkansas University, and yes,
Speaker 1: my mind was blown. This one isn't a super short read,
Speaker 1: but it is really interesting and even has audio clips
Speaker 1: where you can see how looping words make them seem
Speaker 1: as if they are being sung. That's about it again,
Speaker 1: Please never stop. Thank you Iona. Awesome. It's always comforting
Speaker 1: to know that people are listening to us on the
Speaker 1: Tube Because I I have a thing for trains and
Speaker 1: underground trains especially so I fondly remember all the time
Speaker 1: I got to spend on the London too when I visited,
Speaker 1: so I I love the idea that we're reaching people
Speaker 1: in those underground spaces. I feel like you need to
Speaker 1: hook up with Robin Hitchcock someday. Yeah, the the the
Speaker 1: singer songwriter, because he has an obsession with trains and uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, he has an album called I Often Dream
Speaker 1: of Trains. I will have to check that out, yes,
Speaker 1: but I do love that she was reading that essay
Speaker 1: at the same time that she was checking out the
Speaker 1: podcast about music and how it works on the brain.
Speaker 1: Very cool. One final bed here, I do want to
Speaker 1: point out we uh we We did the episode on
Speaker 1: on the Verry Wide Effect and why Barry White's voice
Speaker 1: resonated with us so much, and we asked the question,
Speaker 1: who is the new Berry White? Are there any voices
Speaker 1: out there in the current world that are filling the
Speaker 1: same space you know, for us that are it's able
Speaker 1: to be you know, alluring but also safe. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: people pointed out Neil de grass Tyson, which is an
Speaker 1: interesting choice. I love Neil de grass Tyson. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes when he's an argumentative mode, which is awesome because
Speaker 1: there are things that Neil de grass and Tyson needs
Speaker 1: to argue about, and only he can argue about them.
Speaker 1: Especially only he can. Yeah, only he can. He has
Speaker 1: the probaged position of doing it and has all the
Speaker 1: tools to win the argument. But you know, maybe I
Speaker 1: think maybe he's a little less Verry White in that
Speaker 1: particular mode. Wow, I was just thinking the opposite. I
Speaker 1: was thinking in Cosmos he's a little too soft, he's
Speaker 1: a little too reassuring, and that when he's fired up,
Speaker 1: you get a little bit more of the kind of breathiness. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I guess it comes down to what
Speaker 1: do you want out of your Neil deGrasse. Tyson's kind
Speaker 1: of like two two flavors there. Other people mentioned Bennedict Cumberbatch, who,
Speaker 1: of course, uh this in addition to looking kind of
Speaker 1: like an honor, which we discussed in an upcoming video,
Speaker 1: also has a phenomenal voice that's nice and deep and
Speaker 1: British and uh, you can't help but to fall under
Speaker 1: its spell. So I think that's a decent suggestion as well,
Speaker 1: if you want to fall under our spell a little
Speaker 1: bit more. I'm kidding, I'm winking. I'm nudging. Uh, there
Speaker 1: are a couple of places you can do that. You
Speaker 1: can go to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the mothership. That's where you'll find all our videos,
Speaker 1: our podcast, all our blog links out to our social
Speaker 1: media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Google Plus, as well
Speaker 1: as our YouTube channel, which you'll find on YouTube as
Speaker 1: mind Stuff Show. UH be gonna keep an eye on that.
Speaker 1: We have some some cool video products coming out, including
Speaker 1: a series that uh that I just shot titled Monster
Speaker 1: Science that's going to have a nice sort of daytime
Speaker 1: horror monstery vibe while also remaining very steeped in real
Speaker 1: world biology. Indeed, and in the meantime, if you would
Speaker 1: like to send us a note, please do so, and
Speaker 1: you can do that that Blow the Mind at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Say isn't how stuff Works? Dot com