Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the Vault. This time we'll be
Speaker 1: picking up with part two of last week's Vault episode,
Speaker 1: The Winter People. Part two. This originally aired December, and uh,
Speaker 1: here it is for you again in case he didn't
Speaker 1: catch you last time. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind from how stuff dot com. Hey you welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 1: of our discussion of the Winter People, the way in
Speaker 1: which animal existence and especially human existence is seasonally bifurcated,
Speaker 1: and the way the seasons really warp in command who
Speaker 1: and what we are now. Last time, we talked about
Speaker 1: traditional cultural beliefs and practices around wintertime. Uh so, we
Speaker 1: talked the amazing winter ceremonials of the Quakwa Kawak people
Speaker 1: of the Pacific Northwest and North America. But we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about some other cultural beliefs about wintertime changes
Speaker 1: to the human being. Yeah, we were kind of casting
Speaker 1: about for something that if it felt felt appropriate to
Speaker 1: to bring up because there are no shortage of winter traditions.
Speaker 1: But we we lead with such a fantastic example in
Speaker 1: the first episode, it felt intimidating to try and come
Speaker 1: up with something of of equal weight. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: you could bring up is, of course, the traditions like
Speaker 1: the huga. This became very popular, was it? Last year?
Speaker 1: The year before? There were suddenly all these articles on
Speaker 1: the internet about uh huga and all these related concepts,
Speaker 1: especially in you know, uh northern polar Uh, not always polar,
Speaker 1: but northern types of countries and cultures where they're they
Speaker 1: have special words for getting cozy when it's really cold
Speaker 1: and bad weather outside. Yeah, this is interesting because I
Speaker 1: mean obviously here in the States people do like to
Speaker 1: to snug up and they be binge, watched some Netflix
Speaker 1: or what have you. I have a little hot cocoa
Speaker 1: during the colder months or something fulfilling about that. I
Speaker 1: hear they eat pumpkin pie. Have you heard about this
Speaker 1: the Americans? Like? Okay, I mean I didn't know there
Speaker 1: are songs about it. I assume it's true. Which song?
Speaker 1: Which song is about eating pumpkin There's something about you
Speaker 1: throw a log on the fire and coffee and pumpkin pie.
Speaker 1: I'm vaguely connecting to something from another life, all right though.
Speaker 1: I just have a lot of questions for people who
Speaker 1: eat pumpkin pie outside of established holidays. Yeah, which you're
Speaker 1: the ones is Thanksgiving and when, Well, you can have
Speaker 1: it for Christmas, but I mean you kind of been
Speaker 1: in the rules, right, But then mostly it is a
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving pie. It's a delicious Thanksgiving pie, but it's I
Speaker 1: don't know, I wouldn't feel comfortable eating it. Fill the
Speaker 1: time of the year. Filling from a can, crust from
Speaker 1: a can, well, yeah, you have to use the filling
Speaker 1: from the can because it doesn't matter, because the because
Speaker 1: ultimately the pumpkin is just a vehicle for the of
Speaker 1: the nutmeg and the spice flavoring. Yeah, and the sugar. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But no, despite all the coziness traditions, some cultures apparently
Speaker 1: have this special word for the coziness seeking tradition, and
Speaker 1: other cultures don't really. I mean, English, as far as
Speaker 1: I know, doesn't have a word like hugo, and I
Speaker 1: think that's why it suddenly became so popular in the
Speaker 1: English speaking part of the Internet. Yeah, and of course
Speaker 1: it's important to realize that coziness during the winter months
Speaker 1: is is something of a luxury. Uh and uh. This
Speaker 1: led me to seek out a possible example in a
Speaker 1: wonderful book that I hadn't looked at in many years,
Speaker 1: And that's Barry Lopez's six book Arctic Dreams, Imagination and
Speaker 1: Desire in a Northern Landscape which is just which is
Speaker 1: just full of beautiful descriptions of life in the far North.
Speaker 1: For instance, he shares the following just about the flow
Speaker 1: of seasons in general. Quote in summer, in the sometimes
Speaker 1: extravagant light of a July day, one's thoughts are not
Speaker 1: of growth of heading wheat and yellowing peaches, but of suspension,
Speaker 1: as if life had escaped the bounds of earth in
Speaker 1: this country, which lacks the prolonged moderations between winter and
Speaker 1: summer that we anticipate as balmy April mornings and dry
Speaker 1: Indian summer afternoons. In this two season country, things grow
Speaker 1: and die, as they do everywhere, but they are more
Speaker 1: deeply than living things anywhere else, seasonal creatures. And he
Speaker 1: goes on later in the book to to bring up
Speaker 1: this concept of the polar Eskimo people that is called
Speaker 1: purlar or neck. He says, quote winter darkness brings on
Speaker 1: the extreme winter depression the polar Eskimo called parlor neck.
Speaker 1: According to the anthropologist Gene the Mallari, the word means
Speaker 1: to feel quote the weight of life, to look ahead
Speaker 1: to all that must be accomplished, and to retreat to
Speaker 1: the present, feeling defeated, weary, before starting a core of
Speaker 1: anger and miserable sadness. It is to be sick of life,
Speaker 1: a man named Amina told Millari. The victim tears fitfully
Speaker 1: at his clothes. A woman begins aimlessly slashing at things
Speaker 1: in the igloo with their knife. A person runs half
Speaker 1: naked into the bitter, freezing night, screaming out at the village,
Speaker 1: eating the poop of dogs. Eventually the person is calmed
Speaker 1: by others in the family with great compassion and helped
Speaker 1: to sleep. Pro Laura neck winter. And I have to
Speaker 1: say he did not say poop. He used a stronger
Speaker 1: curse word that we can't say on the show. But
Speaker 1: I felt compelled to self at it there So, as
Speaker 1: Lopez describes it, does it seem like the idea is
Speaker 1: that sort of the farther you go up north or
Speaker 1: I guess toward either of the poles, but especially because
Speaker 1: you know they're more people are more concentrated towards the
Speaker 1: North Pole than in like Antarctica, that sort of the
Speaker 1: weight of the seasons becomes more unbearable. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: seems to be the point he's he's making here, and
Speaker 1: it just has to do with the fact that you
Speaker 1: essentially have two seasons, one of life and one of death,
Speaker 1: one of one of hardship and one of well, I
Speaker 1: guess less hardship. Uh. It's it's certainly an impressive concept.
Speaker 1: And uh. It again brings to mind accounts of say
Speaker 1: that the alleged wind to go madness that you uh,
Speaker 1: you hear about in uh in northern native populations. However,
Speaker 1: we have to point out here that not everyone is
Speaker 1: on board with this being a true part of pre
Speaker 1: colonial traditions and beliefs among Native peoples of North America. Yeah.
Speaker 1: According to Canadian scholar who uh and scholar who specializes
Speaker 1: in the study of First Nations people, John Steckley, in
Speaker 1: his book White Lies about the Inuit, he says this
Speaker 1: idea of Arctic hysteria is backed up by case studies,
Speaker 1: but it was most frequently touted in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: through the eighties by anthropologists such as Jean Mallari and others,
Speaker 1: and he points out that historian Lyle Dick suspects, just
Speaker 1: as Stickley himself concurs, that it's quote more likely the
Speaker 1: creature of the white Inuit power imbalance embodied in specific
Speaker 1: contexts unquote, such as forced risky explorations during the winter,
Speaker 1: So forcing the native peoples to, among other things, take
Speaker 1: you out into hostile winter conditions when their their normal
Speaker 1: pattern of behaviors would have limited such risky measures. So
Speaker 1: that makes sense to me. And it has also been
Speaker 1: suggested that there's a possible physical explanations for this kind
Speaker 1: of Arctic madness. Can be found in hyper vitaminosis ah,
Speaker 1: such as when you consume a polar bear liver exactly,
Speaker 1: and you can and it's something you can also pick.
Speaker 1: It's most famous for the polar bear liver. We've talked
Speaker 1: about it before in the show as far as polar
Speaker 1: bear liver consumption is concerned, But you can also get
Speaker 1: it from consuming a number of different um uh hunted
Speaker 1: animals in these regions, So that's one possibility as well.
Speaker 1: So I think the take home here is that as
Speaker 1: fascinating as the concept is, and certainly as beautifully as
Speaker 1: Lopez wrote about it uh in an Arctic Dreams, it
Speaker 1: seems like it may be a situation that is, it
Speaker 1: is somewhat complicated by the impact of colonial Western society
Speaker 1: upon the traditions of the native people's. Well, it certainly
Speaker 1: illustrates the way in which our reactions to the seasons
Speaker 1: are both sort of endogenous and exogenous, like that they
Speaker 1: come from both inherent factors in in the climate and
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, physical constraints around us that arrive
Speaker 1: when the winter months set in, but they're also heavily
Speaker 1: tempered by what cultural pressures were having to deal with.
Speaker 1: So like a society of abundance is probably going to
Speaker 1: have very different cultural ways of dealing with winter than
Speaker 1: a society of scarcity would, and all kinds of cultural
Speaker 1: factors like that would play in. Certainly, of course, if
Speaker 1: you're you know, being colonized, that's definitely going to a
Speaker 1: act what a season of hardship means for you. Indeed,
Speaker 1: all right, well, we need to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and then when we come back we will talk more
Speaker 1: about winter changes in winter adaptations thank you. Thank Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. Okay, So, Robert, we have discussed how we
Speaker 1: are not constant beings but sort of like seasonal shape shifters.
Speaker 1: There are so many ways that culturally, that psychologically, that metabolically,
Speaker 1: our bodies respond to the changes in the seasons in
Speaker 1: a way that it might be hard to beat out
Speaker 1: of us, even though we've got all these nice climate
Speaker 1: controlled indoor places to dwell. Now our bodies are surfing
Speaker 1: the cycles of time. Now, there is one way in
Speaker 1: which the changes of the seasons affect us much more
Speaker 1: directly and immediately, and that's by being cold. Apart from,
Speaker 1: you know, the vitamin D deficiency you might get from
Speaker 1: shorter days, and the way it might affect the way
Speaker 1: you eat and affect your your metabolism and even affect
Speaker 1: your behavior and your dating and your desire for meaning
Speaker 1: and things like that, it also is just freezing outside. Now.
Speaker 1: It's no secret that exposure to cold can hurt or
Speaker 1: kill you. But did you ever wonder why they are? Like?
Speaker 1: Several ways you can answer this question. One is pretty
Speaker 1: straightforward and mechanical. It's that the body has mostly liquid content.
Speaker 1: I like to think of that this sometimes like whenever
Speaker 1: you're feeling a little bit down on yourself, you just
Speaker 1: think like, hey, I'm a bag of fluids doing okay
Speaker 1: for a bag of fluids. Yeah, and if you if
Speaker 1: you were to freeze me solid, then a single Jean
Speaker 1: Claude van Damn kick could shatter you. And well, in fact,
Speaker 1: if you were to freeze me solid, just the act
Speaker 1: of freezing me solid would sort of shatter me because
Speaker 1: when liquid freezes, it can form ice crystals, which cause
Speaker 1: damage to the body's tissues, to the cells, to the
Speaker 1: cell membranes. But here's another way to think about it.
Speaker 1: Animal life is characterized by two main physical characteristics. I'd
Speaker 1: say motion and chemical reactions, and cold slows down both
Speaker 1: of these things. So cooks out there. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you ever tried to, like mash up some spinach art
Speaker 1: to choke dip with a cold block of cream cheese, Robert,
Speaker 1: do you have any comparable experience? Uh? No, I do not.
Speaker 1: It's impossible. I means you're just like work in your arm,
Speaker 1: and you've gotta you've gotta be some kind of like
Speaker 1: hydraulic press type creature in order to achieve it. A
Speaker 1: similar thing would be if you're into baking, and you
Speaker 1: ever tried to like whip something with cold butter, it's
Speaker 1: just a bad idea. And likewise, if if you've ever
Speaker 1: tried to trigger a chemical reaction like lighting a fire
Speaker 1: when it's freezing cold outside, not so easy. The body
Speaker 1: needs to be warm, so it's mechanical motions are kind
Speaker 1: of lubricated and squishy, and it also needs to be warm,
Speaker 1: so it's chemical reactions have enough energy to take place.
Speaker 1: But not all bodies are like this. There are creatures
Speaker 1: in this world that can literally freeze almost entirely solid
Speaker 1: and thaw out and survive. So I want to mention
Speaker 1: one example, the wood frog Lithabades sylvaticus, found throughout the
Speaker 1: forests of Canada and the northern United States. So this
Speaker 1: is a frog that survives the harsh winter of northern
Speaker 1: Canadian forests. How would it do that? Well, what you'll
Speaker 1: notice it does is that when the cold north winds
Speaker 1: set in sometime around September, these frogs crawl down and
Speaker 1: nestle in some dead plant matter like some leaf litter,
Speaker 1: dead grass, and then they literally freeze almost entirely solid.
Speaker 1: About two thirds of their bodies water content turns into ice.
Speaker 1: And even temperatures as low as zero degrease fahrenheit won't
Speaker 1: kill them. And then when warm weather comes back, they
Speaker 1: thaw out, they hop away unharmed. Uh. Speaking to the
Speaker 1: l A Times, the herpetologist Don Larson said, quote, on
Speaker 1: an organismal level, they are essentially dead. The individual cells
Speaker 1: are still functioning, but they have no way to communicate
Speaker 1: with each other. So you might be ondering how do
Speaker 1: they do this? Well, the body essentially manufactures cryoprotectant chemicals.
Speaker 1: It looks like glycogen in the frog's liver gets converted
Speaker 1: into glucose, which keeps the frog's individual cells alive throughout
Speaker 1: the freeze. And then also uriah, which is the nitrogen
Speaker 1: based crystalline compound you excrete in your urine, might also
Speaker 1: play a role. Uria came up a little bit earlier
Speaker 1: when we were talking about cold protection. But Larson points
Speaker 1: out this thing that's not known, but it's an interesting possibility.
Speaker 1: He points out that freezing alive might not just be
Speaker 1: a survival mechanism, but that could actually be beneficial to
Speaker 1: an animal that wanted to rid itself of parasites. Oh
Speaker 1: this is so good. I mean, we we we see
Speaker 1: a similar cases. For instance, where if you have frozen fish,
Speaker 1: you know, you worry less about there being parasites in
Speaker 1: the fish. And also if you're worried about dust mites
Speaker 1: on one of your child's prize stuffed animals, you stick
Speaker 1: it in the freezer overnight and that takes care of
Speaker 1: the mite. So all the dust mights go to your
Speaker 1: frozen shrimp. Yeah. Well, you know what's the difference between
Speaker 1: a mite and a shrimp, really shrimp hugettical bugs. So yes,
Speaker 1: you've got the wood frog. But we've had another freezing champion,
Speaker 1: even more hardy that I want to mention, the red
Speaker 1: flat bark beetle, which is kuka just clavipies. Usually we
Speaker 1: would find them living under loose bark in North American
Speaker 1: deciduous trees. And I found a report from the University
Speaker 1: of Alaska, Fairbanks that biologists Todd's formo quote cooled the
Speaker 1: beetles in a lab to minus seventy degrees celsius, which
Speaker 1: is minus ninety four degrees fahrenheit, and they did not die.
Speaker 1: And then there was another experiment subsequently in California. They
Speaker 1: could they found they could lower the temperature of these
Speaker 1: beetles to minus a hundred and fifty degrees celsius, which
Speaker 1: is minus two hundred and thirty eight degrees fahrenheit, colder
Speaker 1: than any natural temperature on Earth. Without freezing the beetles.
Speaker 1: That's incredib Now, obviously our bodies are not like this.
Speaker 1: We do not have such strong crier protectant mechanisms, and
Speaker 1: freezing will definitely injure or kill us. Direct exposure of
Speaker 1: body parts to cold weather can lead to frostbite, which
Speaker 1: has a simple explanation and a more complex explanation. The
Speaker 1: simple version is just that frost bite is when body
Speaker 1: tissues freeze. The more complex one is a little bit chemical.
Speaker 1: It's when ice crystals form in the body tissues. It
Speaker 1: dehydrates cells, causes damage to sell membranes. Essentially, you don't
Speaker 1: want to let your outer body parts freeze because there's
Speaker 1: sort of the point of no return there. They don't
Speaker 1: come back. Yeah. I feel like most of us have
Speaker 1: probably read various accounts of explorers, adventurers or refugees and
Speaker 1: in really chilling environments and accounts of frostbite where you
Speaker 1: realize that is a it is a terrible thing to
Speaker 1: have to experience. Yeah, there's something especially disturbing about it
Speaker 1: because it's almost like, um, I don't know, just having
Speaker 1: like it's like necrosis. You know, it's like there's a
Speaker 1: part of the body that is dying or is dead,
Speaker 1: but it's still attached to you. It's not like it's
Speaker 1: been chopped off. It's just it's still there and it's
Speaker 1: not working for you. Yeah, it is in D and
Speaker 1: D terms to chronic damage. Yeah. Uh so, we obviously
Speaker 1: are not as hardy as bark beetles, but we do
Speaker 1: have adaptive mechanisms. And you'll see the first signs of
Speaker 1: the human body reacting to cold weather really just within
Speaker 1: a few seconds of exposure to sub thermo neutral temperatures.
Speaker 1: So our skin has these thermo receptors and the detect
Speaker 1: both absolute and relative temperature differences, and they let us
Speaker 1: know if the environment is too hot or too cold.
Speaker 1: So when the body detects cold, it begins to shunt
Speaker 1: blood away from the extremities. You you probably feel some
Speaker 1: sensation of this and kind of you know, the numbness
Speaker 1: and all that when the blood is being drawn away
Speaker 1: from the skin and away from the arms and legs
Speaker 1: to keep it closer to the vital organs like the
Speaker 1: heart and the lungs. This is essentially a choice to
Speaker 1: sacrifice the outer skin and use it as a layer
Speaker 1: of insulation. By keeping the blood away from the outside,
Speaker 1: the blood stays warmer. Another defense mechanism is runny nose.
Speaker 1: You ever wonder, like why your nose runs in the cold? Uh? So,
Speaker 1: cold air tends to be very dry and of course
Speaker 1: very cold, and since you're constantly pulling that dry air
Speaker 1: in through the nose, when you breathe, it dries out
Speaker 1: the exposed surfaces within the nasal cavity and the nasal cavity,
Speaker 1: one of the things it does when you breathe through
Speaker 1: it is it warms the air on the way down
Speaker 1: to your lungs. So, if you're drawing in this really dry,
Speaker 1: cold air that is not being appropriately warmed inside the
Speaker 1: nose by your warm, nice mucous layers in there and
Speaker 1: drying out the inside of the nose, the body tries
Speaker 1: to compensate, and so what it does is it moisturizes
Speaker 1: these passages by secreting mucous fluid, leading to cold induced
Speaker 1: rhine a rhea, the diarrhea of the nose. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: spent a few years in my childhood in Roddington, Newfoundland, Canada,
Speaker 1: so we had pretty intense winters up there. Uh so
Speaker 1: I have on one hand, I have these really pleasant
Speaker 1: memories of scaling giants snow banks and tunneling through them.
Speaker 1: But I also have these persistent memories of of wearing
Speaker 1: a full ski mask that is at once warming but
Speaker 1: also just soggy with with snot you know, just just
Speaker 1: partially frozen and partially warmed, snot just covering the whole
Speaker 1: front of the ski mask. You know. With exertion in
Speaker 1: cold weather, one of the risk factors you need to
Speaker 1: watch out for is that your clothes don't become sweat soaked.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because then though that sweat is going to
Speaker 1: cool and then you're you're essentially freezing in your own sweat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no good. So another thing we've all done it shivering.
Speaker 1: It's one of the body's main defense mechanisms against cold.
Speaker 1: The purpose seems to be to force your muscles to
Speaker 1: generate extra heat. Movement and friction tend to produce heat.
Speaker 1: If you doubt this, just rub your hands together for
Speaker 1: ten seconds. You'll feel them warm up. And so the
Speaker 1: shivering is the body's way of enlisting your muscle tissues
Speaker 1: is a kind of emergency internal space heater, forcing them
Speaker 1: to rapidly contract and rhythmic patterns all over the body
Speaker 1: and generate extra heat to keep your vital organs and
Speaker 1: blood warm. Another adaptation that seems to not really help
Speaker 1: very much anymore goose bumps. Yes, you ever wonder why, Like,
Speaker 1: what's the point? It almost feels like when you get
Speaker 1: goose bumps, the bumps are coming up on your skin,
Speaker 1: which would seem to increase the surface area of your skin,
Speaker 1: which would make you get cold even faster. Well, and
Speaker 1: then also it would seem to move body hair away
Speaker 1: from the body. Yeah, it was It's like, oh well,
Speaker 1: now this protective layer of you know, barely visible arm
Speaker 1: hair is not even touching my arm anymore. But no,
Speaker 1: goose bumps are believed to be a vestigial trait from
Speaker 1: our recent ancestors who had much more body hair than us,
Speaker 1: so when they got cold, they could raise the hairs
Speaker 1: on their skin to become extra fluffy and insulated. And
Speaker 1: it's true that actually lower density things are better insulated.
Speaker 1: 's right? You notice that, like when you put insulation
Speaker 1: in the walls in your house. It's not like some
Speaker 1: tightly packed metal or would kind of thing. It's this loose,
Speaker 1: fluffy stuff because it conducts heat less well, and so
Speaker 1: that's essentially what your body is trying to do. It
Speaker 1: remembers a time when you your ancestors had much more hair,
Speaker 1: and it's trying to fluff it up to become less
Speaker 1: conductive of heat and to insulate skin better from the cold. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we don't have much of that hair anymore,
Speaker 1: but we still have this reaction. So we get the bumps,
Speaker 1: but without the insulation. Here's the seasonal fact. I know
Speaker 1: you have heard what time of year do people commit
Speaker 1: suicide the most? It's winter, right, Yeah, well I believe
Speaker 1: that is the That is sort of the common idea
Speaker 1: that's out there. Yeah, I mean it sounds very truthy.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean we it's it's it kind of
Speaker 1: goes back to the idea of arctic madness. Right. It
Speaker 1: feels appropriate like it gets a little cold here in
Speaker 1: Atlanta and we start thinking, oh, this this weather is
Speaker 1: driving me crazy. It's it's so it's it's depressing me,
Speaker 1: or it's making me behave radically, it makes me want
Speaker 1: to just shut myself up in my home and not
Speaker 1: encounter the outside world. Again. Yeah, it makes your mind
Speaker 1: connect naturally to all kinds of anecdotes that you have within,
Speaker 1: you know, some part of your long term memory, stories
Speaker 1: about what it's like to be in the in the
Speaker 1: Antarctic research stations, or or these stories about parlernarek Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it turns out that this very truthy sounding
Speaker 1: fact that more people commit suicide in the winter is
Speaker 1: not in fact a fact. It is a myth and
Speaker 1: yearly suicide rates do not generally peak in the winter,
Speaker 1: but they do appear to have a seasonal peak, and
Speaker 1: it's not in the winter, it's in spring and early summer.
Speaker 1: So how much more suicide is there in the spring, Well,
Speaker 1: it varies a lot between societies. But according to Fotus Papadopoulos,
Speaker 1: a professor of psychiatry at Uppsala University in Sweden, quote,
Speaker 1: if we take winter as a baseline, there is a
Speaker 1: twenty to sixty higher suicide side rate during spring. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty big difference. I mean, that doesn't sound like noise.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a real effect. Yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 1: I'm hesitant to try and make too much sense out
Speaker 1: of it, you know, but it does lend itself to
Speaker 1: interpretations of Right, if the winter is about survival, then
Speaker 1: what happens when you get to the other side of
Speaker 1: that survival? It's like like managing to cross a rickety
Speaker 1: bridge and you relieve that you made it across that
Speaker 1: bridge without plummeting into the abyss. But here you are
Speaker 1: on the other side, and you have how many more
Speaker 1: leads to walk? You know? Um, it's I can imagine
Speaker 1: the other hardships of life kind of opening up again
Speaker 1: for you in a new and perhaps more profound way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that too. Now, there have been scientific
Speaker 1: attempts to look into what causes this spike in spring
Speaker 1: and early summer for suicide attempts. There was, for example,
Speaker 1: a massive literature review combining the findings of studies from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine until two thousand eleven that had to
Speaker 1: do with seasonal variations in suicide and that was by
Speaker 1: wu uh Kusaga and Postolache and in the International Journal
Speaker 1: of Environmental Research and Public Health in in the major
Speaker 1: findings uh were Here are a few of them. I
Speaker 1: guess many studies have replicated the finding of a spring
Speaker 1: suicide peak roughly in the April May June region of
Speaker 1: the calendar, and this peak does not exist equally in
Speaker 1: all populations, but shows up with varying intensity among many
Speaker 1: or most. There are also summer peaks for some populations.
Speaker 1: In most studies, winter months actually have the lowest rates
Speaker 1: of suicide of the entire year, so when it's the
Speaker 1: coldest is when suicide happens the least. Um However, despite
Speaker 1: massive amounts of research, the relationship between seasonal change and
Speaker 1: suicide behavior is still not very well understood, like what
Speaker 1: would cause these seasonal variations. So here are a few
Speaker 1: of the ideas that have been studied. One of them
Speaker 1: is changes in sunlight and temperature. Some studies seem to
Speaker 1: have demonstrated there's actually a positive correlation between suicide and
Speaker 1: exposure to sunlight. That seems kind of counterintuitive, but these
Speaker 1: findings are also disputed. However, a peak in late spring
Speaker 1: and early summer would correlate to the longest days of
Speaker 1: the year. Also, this could be informed by findings that
Speaker 1: suicide is more common among rural populations than urban ones,
Speaker 1: and more common in outdoor workers than indoor workers. It
Speaker 1: also varies a lot by geographical region, so spring peaks
Speaker 1: are found all over the place, but are a varying
Speaker 1: intensity in different countries. For example, there was a n
Speaker 1: study that found a very narrow seasonal fluctuation in Canada,
Speaker 1: so the ratio of average spring to winter suicide rates
Speaker 1: was one point zero eight, so barely more in spring.
Speaker 1: But in the same study in Portugal the ratio was
Speaker 1: one point seven, so you know, getting close to double
Speaker 1: as many in spring. Here's another really odd one. A
Speaker 1: series of findings seemed to link suicide rates to spring
Speaker 1: allergies and to people with allergies. For example, one of
Speaker 1: these studies was a two thousand four study that found
Speaker 1: a correlation between the times of year with peak suicide
Speaker 1: rates and the times of year with the greatest concentration
Speaker 1: of allergenic tree pollen in the air. And that study
Speaker 1: was called tree pollen peaks are associated with increased nonviolent
Speaker 1: suicide and women. Now, while these changes show up in
Speaker 1: a lot of countries, UH, there does seem to be
Speaker 1: a flattening effect in recent decades, Like while suicides are
Speaker 1: still frequent, recent studies in England, Wales, Hong Kong, Sweden,
Speaker 1: and Denmark shows seasonal variation on suicide rates. Uh. Really
Speaker 1: flattening coming down, so there's not as much variation from
Speaker 1: time of the year to another time of the year.
Speaker 1: But in other countries like Finland. In the United States,
Speaker 1: you have a much more persistent seasonal pattern still peaking
Speaker 1: in the spring. So that just makes me think about
Speaker 1: the rural and an urban distinction that you touched on earlier,
Speaker 1: you know, like, maybe these are these are maybe finling
Speaker 1: in the US. I mean, certainly there's a urbanization going
Speaker 1: on in in all major Western cultures, but maybe there's
Speaker 1: still enough of a rural base to to support like
Speaker 1: an uptick in rural environments. Yeah, a lot of times
Speaker 1: people don't think to think about suicide rates as like
Speaker 1: a public health question, something that really should be researched
Speaker 1: and understood, and if you can understand the underlying causes
Speaker 1: and why and when these things happen, that you could
Speaker 1: treat it like a disease that can be treated and prevented. Indeed,
Speaker 1: but to get back to the winter thing, the winter
Speaker 1: suicide myth, I'd say that is thoroughly busted. Not only
Speaker 1: is it not the peak for suicide in the year,
Speaker 1: it is generally the lowest time in the entire year
Speaker 1: for suicide. And I wonder why this myth is so persistent,
Speaker 1: because I think if you'd asked me before I looked
Speaker 1: into it, I would have thought, oh, yeah, yeah, winter time. Well,
Speaker 1: I think part of it, especially here in the United
Speaker 1: States and in other Western countries, there's the link with
Speaker 1: the holidays, with Christmas, with especially the modern westernized American Christmas,
Speaker 1: where it's all it's not as much about surviving the winter,
Speaker 1: and it's more about this just unrealistic level of happiness
Speaker 1: that you're supposed to feel every time somebody jingles a
Speaker 1: jingle bell uh and and it rarely matches up with
Speaker 1: our experience of life, much less wide life during during
Speaker 1: the winter. I think that's exactly right. I think that
Speaker 1: there there are two different levels on which this myth
Speaker 1: is sticky. One is the the sort of straightforward truthiness feeling,
Speaker 1: which is that in the winter, it's darker, it's colder,
Speaker 1: and we just associate these atmospheric feelings with low mood,
Speaker 1: and then we associate low mood with things like suicide.
Speaker 1: But then also there's the contrarian truthiness, where we think, oh,
Speaker 1: it's you know, the time when everybody's telling you to
Speaker 1: be happy, and actually that's just making everybody more miserable,
Speaker 1: and you're you're trying to get ready to for the holidays,
Speaker 1: and this is leading to all this commercialism and stress
Speaker 1: and having go to the shopping mall. And so there's
Speaker 1: a sort of like fulk level gut feeling that this
Speaker 1: is just driving everybody nuts and making people miserable and unhappy. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's also wrapped up in some of the culture
Speaker 1: of our Christmas as well. I mean, It's a Wonderful
Speaker 1: Life is one of our key American holiday films, and
Speaker 1: it is about a guy who is depressed and contemplating
Speaker 1: suicide at Christmas. Yeah, you forget that's a bridge jumping movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but on some level it's basically letting it telling everybody, Hey, like,
Speaker 1: suicide at Christmas is uh, it's it's part of Christmas.
Speaker 1: It's in It's in the Christmas movie that you're watching.
Speaker 1: So it's Christmas as a as an American holiday sent
Speaker 1: of some weirdly mixed messages. Yeah, though, of course we
Speaker 1: should say, no matter what time of year it is,
Speaker 1: if you are having suicidal feelings or ideation, you should
Speaker 1: reach out to somebody. You should talk to somebody, let
Speaker 1: them know that's right. And hey, if any in out
Speaker 1: there needs to make a call, you can contact the
Speaker 1: National Suicide Preventional Lifeline at two seven, three, eight to five.
Speaker 1: Now here's a cold weather question. Does true or false? Robert,
Speaker 1: going out in cold weather can cause you to catch cold?
Speaker 1: We hear this in all the time, right God, in
Speaker 1: that cold you'll catch your death. But you also here
Speaker 1: nowadays from you know, your skeptical say like that is
Speaker 1: a myth, not true. It's actually more complicated than true
Speaker 1: or false. It seems to be somewhere in between. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, we know that the cold itself will not
Speaker 1: make you sick. Winner is traditionally known as cold and
Speaker 1: flu season. But we do not live in the you know,
Speaker 1: the miasthma theory of disease age anymore, where people thought
Speaker 1: that disease was caused by bad air. We live in
Speaker 1: the age of the germ theory of disease. So the
Speaker 1: cold weather itself does not directly cause infection. But winter
Speaker 1: months do seem to put us at risk for these
Speaker 1: seasonal epidemics. And it's not an illusion. There are studies
Speaker 1: that show that that these these infection rates really do
Speaker 1: go up in the winter, and there are several reasons
Speaker 1: people have hypothesized why that might be. A commonly cited
Speaker 1: hypothesis is that people spend more time indoors huddling together
Speaker 1: in winter months due to the cold weather and physical
Speaker 1: proximity to other people and touching and stuff can increase
Speaker 1: your transmission rate of infectious diseases. Of course, you're generally
Speaker 1: more likely to catch something from somebody you're sharing a
Speaker 1: blanket and cuddling with, but there there are also other
Speaker 1: mechanisms that might be operative. For example, there was a
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen study from the Yale School of Medicine that
Speaker 1: found that some of the human bodies viral defense mechanisms
Speaker 1: are simply less effective at lower temperatures. But there's actually
Speaker 1: a much deeper way that your body adapts to the
Speaker 1: germ threats of winter months. The change in seasons is
Speaker 1: in your DNA. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and we come back. We will dive into this. Uh.
Speaker 1: This alarming notion that that that winter changes our genetic expression.
Speaker 1: Thank thank you, thank you. All right, we're back. So
Speaker 1: we tend to think of our d N A is
Speaker 1: being safe from the winter. I would think, you know,
Speaker 1: I had not really thought about this previously. I mean,
Speaker 1: you tend to think of your d n A as
Speaker 1: being safe from pretty much everything except you know that
Speaker 1: which would cause mutations or uh maybe maybe maybe you're
Speaker 1: not safe from cosmic rays. Maybe you're not safe from
Speaker 1: X ray bombardment, but you are at least safe from
Speaker 1: the seasons down in your very d n A. But no,
Speaker 1: it turns out o our d n A. While the
Speaker 1: basic genome does not tend to change the way it's expressed,
Speaker 1: does tend to change based on a lot of different factors.
Speaker 1: And I'll explain what that means in a minute. So
Speaker 1: a study in Nature Communications found that roughly twenty three
Speaker 1: of the genes found in human white blood cells and
Speaker 1: adipose tissue change their expression depending on the change in seasons. Now,
Speaker 1: if you if you've read about this before, you might
Speaker 1: have headlines like your DNA changes in the winter that
Speaker 1: maybe you know, if you're being generous, that could be
Speaker 1: thought of as correct, but it could also meeting misleadingly
Speaker 1: implied that the literal code of the genome is altered,
Speaker 1: and that's not the case. So we should explain the
Speaker 1: difference between the genome itself and gene expression. Your genes
Speaker 1: are sequences of DNA code found in the cells in
Speaker 1: your body, and the genes generally don't change unless there's
Speaker 1: a mutation. What changes is the expression of individual genes
Speaker 1: and gene expression. Whenever you hear gene expression, you can
Speaker 1: sort of think of that as genes doing something. Gene
Speaker 1: expression is when the code inside a gene is chemically
Speaker 1: translated into a product like a protein or a string
Speaker 1: of RNA, usually a protein that does something inside the body.
Speaker 1: And gene expression is how the genome makes things happen.
Speaker 1: So if there are changes in which genes get express
Speaker 1: st and when this leads to changes in the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I often think about this and about the you know,
Speaker 1: just epigenetic changes in general as being kind of like
Speaker 1: the settings in a video game, particularly in a simulation game.
Speaker 1: We have all these various realism toggles you can switch
Speaker 1: on and off, and they ultimately affect how the game
Speaker 1: manifests to the player. Yeah, or you can think about
Speaker 1: I mean to follow the video game analogy. Another way
Speaker 1: you can think of it is that the code of
Speaker 1: the video game does not change. That like the programming
Speaker 1: code that creates the game is set, but different parts
Speaker 1: of it are executing at different times, and so the
Speaker 1: expression is sort of like the execution of a line
Speaker 1: of code. So what's the chemical basis for gene expression. Well,
Speaker 1: genes are expressed when they get exposed to another chemical
Speaker 1: called messenger RNA or mRNA, and the mRNA reads the
Speaker 1: code and the genes and uses it to set off
Speaker 1: a process that creates proteins that lead to changes within
Speaker 1: and between cells. So the quest and then would be
Speaker 1: how come mr and A isn't constantly reading all of
Speaker 1: our genes at once all the time and setting off
Speaker 1: these these protein creating processes all the time. Well, here's
Speaker 1: one reason. There are tons of genes inside a cell
Speaker 1: nucleus of a eukaryotic organism, and the body fits them
Speaker 1: in there by coiling them tightly around alkaline proteins called
Speaker 1: his stones. Now, if you've seen a picture of this before,
Speaker 1: it's often compared to beads along a string. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what it looks like. The DNA associates very easily
Speaker 1: with the his stones because the DNA is negatively charged
Speaker 1: and the his stones are positively charged. And a gene
Speaker 1: from this coiled strand of DNA that coils around the
Speaker 1: his stones gets expressed when it picks up a methyl marker,
Speaker 1: which makes it loosen from the his stone core. And
Speaker 1: once it loosens and uncoils, the DNA can match up
Speaker 1: with mRNA and then undergo expression, which, as we said,
Speaker 1: generally means making proteins, which means something is happening. So
Speaker 1: all kinds of triggers lead to changes in gene expression,
Speaker 1: which genes are are sort of like being brought forth
Speaker 1: to manufacture their will on the world. One example, it's
Speaker 1: been shown in a lot of context that some gene
Speaker 1: expression changes occur over the natural day night cycle. In
Speaker 1: the morning, you're going to be expressing some genes and
Speaker 1: then at night you're going to be expressing others. Uh So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you're studying what genes are being expressed
Speaker 1: in a sample of tissue, it could actually matter what
Speaker 1: time of day you take the sample. So one of
Speaker 1: the authors of this sixteen study I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: Cambridge immuno geneticist Chris Wallace, told Wired Magazine in a
Speaker 1: good article about this quote, we knew that there's some
Speaker 1: genes that change their expression throughout the day. Then it
Speaker 1: hit us, lam, what is the effect on genes of
Speaker 1: the length of the day throughout the year, great piece
Speaker 1: of deductive reasoning. So of course it's leading to experiments.
Speaker 1: Wallace inter colleagues compare findings from several studies which tracked
Speaker 1: gene expression in populations from different times of the year
Speaker 1: in both the northern and southern hemispheres, in the countries
Speaker 1: where Germany, Australia, the US, the UK, Iceland, and the Gambia.
Speaker 1: And of course, as we we've said before, this matter
Speaker 1: is because in the northern and southern hemispheres, winter and
Speaker 1: summer are reversed, so in the summer hemisphere it's summer
Speaker 1: in January and winter in July. And this helps because
Speaker 1: it allows you to isolate that any differences really were
Speaker 1: caused by natural changes in the seasons and not probably
Speaker 1: by human cultural factors like the calendar or the month
Speaker 1: or something like that. So they found that in these
Speaker 1: white blood cells there were thousands of genes that showed
Speaker 1: seasonal changes in expression. Uh, there were two thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred eleven summer genes they identified and two thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six winter genes, and it looks like
Speaker 1: most of these changes had to do with immune system
Speaker 1: of function. Now, of course they were looking at white
Speaker 1: blood cells as if the immune system we're ramping up
Speaker 1: inflammation responses to deal with the germ threat of winter.
Speaker 1: And in the samples from tropical Gambia, the changes for
Speaker 1: immune system gene expression came not during winter, but during
Speaker 1: the rainy season when people are exposed to the greatest
Speaker 1: risk of malaria. So what we're seeing here is that
Speaker 1: the body does have some kind of seasonal changes in
Speaker 1: the way that it expresses your genome, different parts of
Speaker 1: the code that makes you you get activated depending on
Speaker 1: what time of the year it is, uh and on
Speaker 1: you know, not so much what time of the year
Speaker 1: it is, but the seasonal triggers around you in the environment.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that this is very tightly
Speaker 1: controlling is the inflammation response. Now, the inflammation response, as
Speaker 1: we know, it helps keep us from getting sick. It's
Speaker 1: very primitive, ancient type of immune response. It's not very pleasant,
Speaker 1: but it does help keep you know, germs and stuff
Speaker 1: from destroying your body. But as we also know, inflammation
Speaker 1: can lead to all kinds of other health problems. It
Speaker 1: can lead to metabolic problems, it can lead to arthritis.
Speaker 1: You know, it's implicated in wide ranging medical problems. So
Speaker 1: this sort of opens up a door into a whole
Speaker 1: arena of new research that could take place about how
Speaker 1: our genes are not just helping defend us from these
Speaker 1: seasonal epidemics, but also in how they put us at risk. Now.
Speaker 1: Earlier we mentioned the idea that there are certain like
Speaker 1: cardiovascular problems that people have increased risk of of of
Speaker 1: dying from in the winter, and this also seems to
Speaker 1: indicate that there are inflammation related problems that could really
Speaker 1: put us at risk in these months, and maybe studying
Speaker 1: the way our genes change over the seasons could help
Speaker 1: figure out ways help us figure out ways to protect us. Now,
Speaker 1: a question in the study, of course, is what exactly
Speaker 1: triggers the change in gene expression. Is it the temperature,
Speaker 1: is it the length of the days and how much
Speaker 1: the body has access to sunlight, or could it be
Speaker 1: something else? I mean, maybe it's not impossible. There could
Speaker 1: be some kind of cultural practices that that trigger this,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem likely because it's manifested across so
Speaker 1: many different countries and regions. Yeah, it would be different
Speaker 1: there if there's a group where they eat a particular
Speaker 1: pickled fish during the winter, and you could you could
Speaker 1: potentially blame it all on that one pickled fish totally.
Speaker 1: So the traditions that cast us as seasonal shape shifters
Speaker 1: are in many ways literally correct. There are ways in
Speaker 1: which our bodies are adapting to these seasonal changes to
Speaker 1: make us a different kind of animal when the winter
Speaker 1: sets in. Isn't that interesting? I mean, not only does
Speaker 1: it back up this idea that there there is a
Speaker 1: winter self in some ways, but it also just drives
Speaker 1: home the the ever changing nature of of of the
Speaker 1: human being. You know, not just not just in in
Speaker 1: our thoughts and our memories, but not just in the
Speaker 1: aging of the body and the acquiring and the healing
Speaker 1: of injuries or or illnesses, but that our our body
Speaker 1: is going through cyclical phases in order to keep up
Speaker 1: and thrive within the seasons of our environment, even if
Speaker 1: we don't actually hibernate. Now here's the question I really
Speaker 1: want to understand. What is the biological mechanism that forces
Speaker 1: humans to continually make new adaptations of Charles Dickens, a
Speaker 1: Christmas Carol starring the cast of pre existing franchises of cartoons,
Speaker 1: well you got flint Stones, You've got Mr Magoo, you
Speaker 1: got uh. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I bet there's
Speaker 1: like a Jetson's Christmas Carol. Was it really a flint
Speaker 1: Stone's Christmas Carrol? Yeah, there's a flint Stones. There's famously
Speaker 1: a Mickey Christmas Carol. Yeah, yeah for me and Muppets.
Speaker 1: Muppets for me. I really only have two that I get,
Speaker 1: really only one. It's got to be the musical Scrooge.
Speaker 1: One of the few musicals that I enjoy uh to
Speaker 1: this day is is the Albert Finney. Albert Finney is Scrooge,
Speaker 1: and that the film all has wonderful songs and also
Speaker 1: like one of the darker visions of the supernatural elements
Speaker 1: found in a Christmas Carol, like that the ghosts are
Speaker 1: all tremendously frightening. Um Alec Guinness plays Marley, and I
Speaker 1: believe that even muscular devil show up. There's a scene
Speaker 1: where Scrooge is in hell and having to deal with
Speaker 1: the chains of hell, and you have all these muscular
Speaker 1: red devils trooping around. That's awesome. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: the nineteen forty nine vincent Price Christmas Carol? What no
Speaker 1: I had no idea he ever played No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't get excited. He doesn't play Scrooge. He just
Speaker 1: shows up holding a book and it's like, well, Charles
Speaker 1: Dickens and sort of introduces it. It's it's worth a watch.
Speaker 1: It's on YouTube. It's hilarious. It's uh, probably the worst
Speaker 1: adaptation of a Christmas Carol I've ever seen. A list
Speaker 1: of issues include it spells Ebeneezer wrong in the opening credits,
Speaker 1: It gets the title of the book wrong. It is
Speaker 1: called the Christmas Carol. You can sometimes see like the
Speaker 1: Wrong Side have set walls, so there's just like beams
Speaker 1: holding up the walls of the set, and their Scrooge
Speaker 1: is this guy who's like krish Mesh, Hey, creish Mesh. Now,
Speaker 1: now here's the here's the question. You see so many
Speaker 1: different actors who have played Dracula, so many different actors
Speaker 1: have played Scrooge. But how many actors can you think
Speaker 1: I have played both? The only one that comes to
Speaker 1: my mind off hand is Jack Palince, WHOA that's good.
Speaker 1: Was Michael Caine ever Dracula? Oh No, I don't think
Speaker 1: he was. It seems like it seems like he could.
Speaker 1: He easily could have been Kane could have played Dracula.
Speaker 1: But I go through the others like um, has uh
Speaker 1: Albert Finney ever played Dracula? Knowledge has has Luis Jordan
Speaker 1: ever played Scrooge? No? I don't think there's ever been
Speaker 1: a French Scrooge. Likewise, like all the Draculas and all
Speaker 1: the Scrooges, there seems to be very little overlap between
Speaker 1: the two roles much, you know, much less the characters.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's ever made a Christmas Carol with
Speaker 1: Dracula in it was Gary Oldman? Ever Scrooge? I don't
Speaker 1: think he was, But again, there's no reason why he shouldn't.
Speaker 1: He's played Churchill, and I believe what Albert Finney's played Churchill.
Speaker 1: So it's there's there's every reason in the world that
Speaker 1: you would see more crossover between these two roles. Do
Speaker 1: you hear about the upcoming Christmas Carol with Christian Bale
Speaker 1: is Scrooge? Is that true? Is that real? No? I'm
Speaker 1: missing because Christian Pale they all ever played Dracula. I
Speaker 1: guess not. He's got to choose, right, there's some hidden,
Speaker 1: like hooded council that decides whether you get to play
Speaker 1: Scrooge or Dracula, and unless you're Jack Talents, you cannot
Speaker 1: choose both. We're just digging ourselves deeper and deeper. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: this week I feel like we've we've really had a
Speaker 1: fabricous exploration here of of how we think about our
Speaker 1: winter selves, how we culturally frame our winter selves in
Speaker 1: some cases, and then what our body is actually doing
Speaker 1: during the winter. What is it doing differently, how is
Speaker 1: it adapting, how is it behaving within different parameters, and
Speaker 1: what those two different things we have to do with
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah. So I would suggest for listeners out there,
Speaker 1: one thing you might want to try this winter is
Speaker 1: come up with the new winter name for yourself. Yes,
Speaker 1: I like this, either an adaptation of your existing name
Speaker 1: or just something altogether new but fitting for the winter you.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just your name but with a W as
Speaker 1: the first letter. Yeah, so Woe and Wobert. Yeah. Or
Speaker 1: it could be more like, really more of a title
Speaker 1: that defines what you do. Like he who binge watches
Speaker 1: Netflix and eats chili, that's sort of a thing. He
Speaker 1: who foolishly buys fresh tomatoes in the winter, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. But hey, we'd love to hear from all
Speaker 1: of you out there. What would your winter name be?
Speaker 1: And indeed, how is the winter you different from the
Speaker 1: summer you? Do you experience seasonal effective disorder? Uh? Do
Speaker 1: you think you have seasonal effective disorder? Either way, let
Speaker 1: us know we would love to hear from you. Oh
Speaker 1: and especially if we have any listeners with Quakua heritage,
Speaker 1: I would love to hear from you with your thoughts
Speaker 1: about these or ceremonial traditions. Indeed, in the meantime, you
Speaker 1: can always check out past episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind at stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com.
Speaker 1: You'll also find links out to our various social media
Speaker 1: accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. As always,
Speaker 1: big thanks to our audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with us directly,
Speaker 1: as always, you can email us at Blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at how staff works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com starts my b