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