WEBVTT - How Boredom Works 0:00:01.500 --> 0:00:05.020 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.180 --> 0:00:13.500 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. And I'm Josh, and 0:00:13.540 --> 0:00:16.360 there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And we are going 0:00:16.380 --> 0:00:20.259 to do the opposite of making you bored with this 0:00:20.420 --> 0:00:22.140 episode on boredom. 0:00:23.140 --> 0:00:25.939 That's right. Before we get going, though, we want to 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:31.180 recommend a podcast to our listeners from our always friend. 0:00:31.580 --> 0:00:32.400 And former colleague. 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:33.640 Forever friend. 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:37.760 Forever. Yeah, he's our FF. But former colleague. We used 0:00:37.780 --> 0:00:43.699 to work with Mangesh Hadakadur at HowStuffWorks. And I'm not 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:47.400 lying when I think we'll all agree, because Jerry's listening too, 0:00:47.460 --> 0:00:53.140 that Mangesh is one of the sweetest, sweethearts, kindest, most intelligent, 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.300 nicest dudes of all time. And that's reason enough to 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:57.520 listen to anything that he does. 0:00:58.380 --> 0:00:59.690 He's a high quality person. 0:01:00.210 --> 0:01:02.250 He's the best man gets just great. So he has 0:01:02.310 --> 0:01:04.729 a show out called how to live forever, which is 0:01:04.780 --> 0:01:06.800 not like, here's how you live forever. It's more like 0:01:07.060 --> 0:01:10.340 trying to understand this sort of movement that's going around 0:01:10.380 --> 0:01:13.220 of people that want to try and like extend life 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:16.760 into like, you know, hundreds of years or forever, which 0:01:16.819 --> 0:01:19.880 is super stuff. You should know listeners alley, I think. 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:21.140 Yeah. 0:01:21.220 --> 0:01:23.479 And it's a great show. He wants to recommend in particular, 0:01:24.270 --> 0:01:25.569 if you want to just give it a shot, he 0:01:25.610 --> 0:01:28.190 said the third and the fifth episodes are really standouts. Yeah. 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:32.339 And I listened to episode five because it sounded super interesting. 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:37.340 And it is, buddy, because in episode five, Mangesh kind 0:01:37.390 --> 0:01:43.750 of goes investigator to track down this startup that's trying 0:01:43.770 --> 0:01:48.730 to create brain dead clones for billionaires so that when 0:01:48.770 --> 0:01:51.030 you get to be like, you know, 90 years old, 0:01:51.060 --> 0:01:54.020 you can do a body replacement and transfer like this 0:01:54.060 --> 0:01:57.140 is real Futurama kind of stuff. 0:01:57.420 --> 0:01:57.660 Right. 0:01:58.180 --> 0:02:01.600 To transfer the head of a billionaire to a younger body. 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:05.440 And this is actually happening. Peter Thiel is a funder 0:02:05.460 --> 0:02:08.750 of this thing. So is ARPA-H, and it's just kind 0:02:08.770 --> 0:02:12.790 of crazy stuff. So that's episode five. But the podcast 0:02:12.830 --> 0:02:14.190 is How to Live Forever, and it's awesome. 0:02:14.690 --> 0:02:17.870 Yeah, and Mengesh is super interesting and entertaining. And if 0:02:17.889 --> 0:02:21.490 you're not quite convinced of this Mengesh guy, put this 0:02:21.510 --> 0:02:24.060 in your pipe and smoke it. He, along with another 0:02:24.100 --> 0:02:28.310 colleague of ours, Will Pearson, Co-founded Mental Floss back in 0:02:28.330 --> 0:02:29.550 the day when he was in college. 0:02:29.690 --> 0:02:30.250 Yeah, man. 0:02:30.810 --> 0:02:31.010 Yep. 0:02:31.430 --> 0:02:33.030 That's all you need to know. Yeah, Man Gush is 0:02:33.050 --> 0:02:35.970 the best, so check out How to Live Forever. I'm 0:02:35.990 --> 0:02:37.730 going to get all corporate here and say wherever you 0:02:37.750 --> 0:02:38.489 get your podcasts. 0:02:38.870 --> 0:02:40.750 Ooh, is it guaranteed human? 0:02:41.470 --> 0:02:41.910 I think so. 0:02:42.389 --> 0:02:47.300 Okay, great. Okay, Chuck, so we're talking about boredom. I 0:02:47.340 --> 0:02:51.460 found it exceedingly hard to concentrate while I was studying this. 0:02:51.500 --> 0:02:51.840 Did you? 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:54.859 Yeah. I hated to say it, but it was kind 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:55.240 of boring. 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:59.740 I actually liked it. Oh, really? Yes, I did. At 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:01.500 first I was like, this is kind of boring. It's 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:05.200 very dry. But if you put it all together, it 0:03:05.260 --> 0:03:07.820 actually boredom did become a little more interesting to me 0:03:07.860 --> 0:03:10.280 than it had been before. Let me just say it 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:11.200 like that. How about that? 0:03:11.500 --> 0:03:11.980 Well, that's good. 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:16.280 But it's like when we researched sushi or yawning or whatever, 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:18.400 I wanted sushi. I couldn't stop yawning. 0:03:18.460 --> 0:03:18.959 Right, right. 0:03:20.150 --> 0:03:23.850 Like reading about boredom actually makes you like it's hard 0:03:23.870 --> 0:03:26.450 to concentrate, which is one of the traits of boredom. 0:03:26.669 --> 0:03:29.570 I just thought that was very interesting. For sure. 0:03:30.330 --> 0:03:32.840 If you want to talk about just how boredom is 0:03:32.850 --> 0:03:37.480 sort of defined, it is the experience of wanting to 0:03:37.540 --> 0:03:41.180 engage in something that is like satisfying to you, but 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:44.640 not being able to and being left in a state. 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:47.160 In this case, it's called an adaptive state. 0:03:47.540 --> 0:03:47.690 Yeah. 0:03:48.990 --> 0:03:54.920 Where, you know, you don't have an optimal energy level. 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:59.560 There may be some discomfort. This is a big part 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:02.480 of boredom is it urges new action because, as we'll see, 0:04:03.220 --> 0:04:07.200 just being bored can lead to you doing really dumb 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:09.150 things just so something is happening. 0:04:10.650 --> 0:04:13.150 If you put all that together, man, it really just 0:04:13.190 --> 0:04:14.890 sounds like you need a Snickers. 0:04:15.330 --> 0:04:16.750 Right. 0:04:16.770 --> 0:04:17.010 You know? 0:04:18.850 --> 0:04:21.750 Yeah, maybe so, because boredom, you know, it's boredom definitely 0:04:21.870 --> 0:04:24.950 urges you to pursue something different than what's going on. 0:04:25.130 --> 0:04:26.690 That's sort of the whole point behind it. 0:04:26.990 --> 0:04:31.160 Yes. Now, whether what you pursue is up to you 0:04:31.260 --> 0:04:33.600 and it can be negative, it can be positive, it 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:37.500 can be really bad for you. It can actually be great. 0:04:38.020 --> 0:04:42.040 And this is like this is like it's really well studied. 0:04:42.060 --> 0:04:43.890 I think one of the things I appreciated about it 0:04:44.050 --> 0:04:48.390 is the philosophers starting in the 19th century with Schopenhauer. 0:04:49.029 --> 0:04:53.150 And then Nietzsche, like they really thought a lot about 0:04:53.210 --> 0:04:56.279 boredom and what boredom was. And they created a great 0:04:56.380 --> 0:04:59.560 basis for it that science then took over. And science 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.279 has done a really good job of investigating it and 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:05.240 explaining it, too. And I love topics like that because 0:05:05.260 --> 0:05:07.479 we cover so much stuff. Like I like it when 0:05:07.500 --> 0:05:09.860 it's like no one understands this and here's this theory 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:12.420 and here's that theory. Right. Topics like that. But I 0:05:12.460 --> 0:05:14.979 also like topics where it's all like, oh, all the 0:05:15.020 --> 0:05:17.200 components are here and we can put them together. Now 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:18.020 I understand it. 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:22.260 Yeah, for sure. I agree, too. If there's boredom happening, 0:05:22.300 --> 0:05:25.719 that means there's obviously nothing new or stimulating happening. There 0:05:25.740 --> 0:05:27.900 may be a time distortion, like things are really dragging 0:05:28.110 --> 0:05:32.310 on and it might feel meaningless. And you mentioned Schopenhauer. 0:05:32.450 --> 0:05:35.670 He put forth that boredom and pain are like the 0:05:35.710 --> 0:05:37.690 twin poles of life. And you just kind of swing 0:05:37.770 --> 0:05:38.350 between those. 0:05:39.110 --> 0:05:39.350 Yeah. 0:05:40.190 --> 0:05:40.410 Yeah. 0:05:41.150 --> 0:05:44.390 Nietzsche came along and he was like, I agree. He said, yes, and. 0:05:45.230 --> 0:05:48.150 I think boredom can actually lead to creativity. I don't 0:05:48.190 --> 0:05:51.700 think it's all bad. And he went on to say, 0:05:51.740 --> 0:05:54.779 which I think is going a little far, that God 0:05:54.880 --> 0:06:00.820 created humans because God was bored. OK. It's a little 0:06:01.580 --> 0:06:03.140 it's like, how are you going to prove that? And 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:04.700 he said, I'm a philosopher. I don't have to prove 0:06:04.740 --> 0:06:05.620 a thing. 0:06:08.510 --> 0:06:11.409 Emily has always and I've since gotten on board when, 0:06:11.430 --> 0:06:13.330 you know, when you have a kid. you know, I'm bored, 0:06:13.350 --> 0:06:15.870 I'm bored. You hear that a lot. And she, from 0:06:15.910 --> 0:06:18.310 the very beginning with Ruby was like, well, you know, 0:06:18.330 --> 0:06:20.729 what's on the other side of boredom, creativity. And, you know, 0:06:20.750 --> 0:06:23.390 Ruby's tired of hearing that, but that's a good way 0:06:23.430 --> 0:06:27.410 to handle it with kids is, and they say to like, 0:06:27.950 --> 0:06:31.050 you know, don't hand them something to do. Like you're bored. Oh, here, 0:06:31.070 --> 0:06:32.530 do this and do this and like try and solve 0:06:32.570 --> 0:06:35.510 their problem. You're like, solve it yourself, go find something 0:06:35.550 --> 0:06:39.390 to do. And if all goes well, and generally it does, 0:06:39.450 --> 0:06:41.740 at least with my daughter, all of a sudden she's, 0:06:41.830 --> 0:06:44.159 you know, drawing something or writing something. 0:06:44.540 --> 0:06:47.300 That's neat. Yeah. Or you're like, where did she get 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:50.640 that pony? Right. All of a sudden. 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:52.380 I know. How creative. 0:06:53.500 --> 0:06:56.420 So one thing that the philosophers did have in common, Chuck, 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.710 was that they considered boredom important. And I think today 0:06:59.810 --> 0:07:03.430 most people, including me, I did not think of boredom 0:07:03.470 --> 0:07:06.290 as particularly important. But if you look at it a 0:07:06.310 --> 0:07:11.580 certain way, say like have science nowadays, It's extremely important 0:07:11.620 --> 0:07:14.780 in that if you think about us never getting bored, 0:07:15.420 --> 0:07:18.310 we would just sit around either blissed out all day 0:07:18.430 --> 0:07:23.450 or sitting around doing nothing. Right. Like boredom actually prompts 0:07:23.490 --> 0:07:27.950 you to action. And they believe now that essentially it's 0:07:28.030 --> 0:07:33.640 because your brain is constantly seeking new novel stimuli. Yeah. 0:07:34.230 --> 0:07:37.570 That when it's not granted that, when it doesn't have 0:07:37.610 --> 0:07:40.050 the opportunity to do that anymore, and we'll see in 0:07:40.070 --> 0:07:43.330 a second there's different reasons why that can happen, it 0:07:43.410 --> 0:07:49.050 just basically shuts down to a certain extent. And that's 0:07:49.130 --> 0:07:50.810 not just it. If it just kind of shut down, 0:07:50.870 --> 0:07:55.690 you would just be daydreaming. There's also a negative arousal 0:07:55.730 --> 0:07:59.770 state to where you just feel restless, agitated. You can't concentrate. 0:07:59.790 --> 0:08:00.110 Yeah. 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:04.940 And those two things combined make boredom kind of unpleasant 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:07.870 and spur you to action, to go do something that 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:10.870 will give your brain the novel stimuli it gets to 0:08:10.930 --> 0:08:13.510 search for. It likes to search for signal among noise 0:08:13.850 --> 0:08:16.210 and then engage with the signal, is how I saw 0:08:16.270 --> 0:08:19.130 it put. And that when it can't do that, that's 0:08:19.150 --> 0:08:20.010 where boredom comes. 0:08:20.610 --> 0:08:23.690 Yeah, I thought that was really interesting because I was 0:08:23.750 --> 0:08:27.850 today years old when I found out that the brain 0:08:27.870 --> 0:08:30.820 is constantly predicting sensory inputs. 0:08:31.260 --> 0:08:31.480 Right. 0:08:31.860 --> 0:08:33.829 I always just kind of thought the brain was processing 0:08:33.870 --> 0:08:36.750 information as it receives it, but the brain is, is 0:08:36.870 --> 0:08:41.790 predicting like, like actively predicting sensory inputs and the brain 0:08:41.910 --> 0:08:45.349 loves it when those predictions are validated. But what it 0:08:45.510 --> 0:08:50.080 really loves is when it, uh, it's in an environment 0:08:50.100 --> 0:08:55.270 where it makes a prediction that is, um, slightly different 0:08:55.330 --> 0:08:57.050 than what it predicted in reality. 0:08:57.490 --> 0:09:00.030 Yeah, we would call that learning in other words, right? 0:09:00.050 --> 0:09:02.089 And that's where the brain gets a little dose of 0:09:02.150 --> 0:09:05.970 dopamine because we've talked about dopamine before. It's a reinforcing 0:09:07.030 --> 0:09:10.410 reward chemical, right? It's not like, oh, I ate the 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.500 Snickers and there's dopamine. That's a misstatement of what dopamine is. 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.020 Dopamine is what our brain gets when we get it. 0:09:16.300 --> 0:09:19.060 Our brain gets it slightly wrong. So that it learns, 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:22.400 it says, this is important. Here's what the correct answer was. 0:09:22.500 --> 0:09:24.439 And now your brain just learned. And that's what it 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:26.000 seems to like the most, like you said. 0:09:26.460 --> 0:09:29.599 Yeah, for sure. And boredom could also or at least 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:34.790 what it could represent is a faulty prediction where the 0:09:34.809 --> 0:09:39.110 brain has an unrealistic award or reward that they think 0:09:39.170 --> 0:09:43.630 is coming. So in that case, it varies from like 0:09:43.690 --> 0:09:46.750 the prediction, but not in a good way. So like 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:49.850 there's a hypothesis that if you're prone to boredom, that 0:09:49.890 --> 0:09:52.670 your brain isn't predicting well. It's like bad at predicting 0:09:52.730 --> 0:09:53.250 what's happening. 0:09:53.670 --> 0:09:57.719 Right. There's other situations that they've identified where you can 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:01.880 get bored or where boredom sets in. One is obviously 0:10:01.940 --> 0:10:06.450 where you're just not getting enough stimulation. Like an example 0:10:06.490 --> 0:10:09.890 I thought of is, let's say your quality control for 0:10:09.950 --> 0:10:13.290 the Schatz brewery production line and your job is to 0:10:13.309 --> 0:10:15.939 look for a glove on a bottle. And that's only 0:10:15.980 --> 0:10:18.920 happened one time and it's never happened since. And you're 0:10:18.980 --> 0:10:22.160 really getting bored by this point because you know that 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.099 nothing new is coming along. So your brain is like, 0:10:25.260 --> 0:10:26.350 I'm bored, right? 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:26.890 Yeah. 0:10:26.990 --> 0:10:29.349 Which as we'll see is a terrible state for you 0:10:29.390 --> 0:10:31.550 to be in as a worker for years and years 0:10:31.650 --> 0:10:34.230 on end. And then the other one is the opposite. 0:10:34.370 --> 0:10:37.449 Like you're getting so much information that you don't understand 0:10:37.950 --> 0:10:41.770 that you get bored because your brain can't find signal 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:43.740 in the noise. And a good example I saw of 0:10:43.780 --> 0:10:46.929 that is like a really dense lecture on a topic 0:10:46.970 --> 0:10:48.930 that you are totally unfamiliar with. 0:10:50.110 --> 0:10:50.450 Oh, yeah. 0:10:51.410 --> 0:10:51.670 You know? 0:10:52.090 --> 0:10:55.320 Yeah, for sure. I fall into that trap a lot, 0:10:55.460 --> 0:10:55.880 I feel like. 0:10:56.340 --> 0:10:57.540 Yeah, I think most people do. 0:10:57.940 --> 0:11:01.020 Yeah. And you can become really restless if you're trying 0:11:01.059 --> 0:11:04.320 to become mentally engaged. And then if you fail to, 0:11:04.380 --> 0:11:08.650 that a real listlessness can follow. I mentioned the time thing. 0:11:08.690 --> 0:11:11.400 It can really feel like time has slowed down. And 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:13.830 that there's no value in what's going on and your 0:11:13.850 --> 0:11:17.910 concentration is off. We did talk about, like, you don't 0:11:17.950 --> 0:11:20.570 necessarily yawn when you're bored, but you can yawn when 0:11:20.590 --> 0:11:23.270 you're bored. Like, you can change your, like, physical state. 0:11:23.330 --> 0:11:27.270 You could slouch a lot more. It's, you know, sometimes 0:11:27.290 --> 0:11:30.160 this may be a signal to other people that we're 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:34.740 with of, like, you know, this party's lame. Let's get 0:11:34.780 --> 0:11:35.580 out of here. Yeah. 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:39.950 Right. Yeah, because I remember in our yawning episode that 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:42.610 they said, One of the theories was that it was 0:11:42.670 --> 0:11:45.850 a signal to others that danger was nearby when we 0:11:45.910 --> 0:11:46.730 were anxious. 0:11:47.190 --> 0:11:48.089 Oh, yeah, that's right. Danger. 0:11:48.710 --> 0:11:51.290 So there's been studies about what it's like to be bored. 0:11:51.590 --> 0:11:53.770 All of us know what boredom is like. But I 0:11:53.809 --> 0:11:56.630 think if you just took me aside and, you know, 0:11:57.570 --> 0:12:00.689 five days ago said like, OK, what is boredom? Like, 0:12:01.170 --> 0:12:02.380 explain it, describe it. 0:12:02.610 --> 0:12:05.070 You'd say this. 0:12:05.730 --> 0:12:08.190 I probably wouldn't have been able to. So people have 0:12:08.309 --> 0:12:10.970 studied boredom. to try to figure out subjectively what boredom 0:12:10.990 --> 0:12:13.050 is like. He ticked off a lot of it, but 0:12:13.090 --> 0:12:15.830 it seems like the studies that really kind of got 0:12:15.870 --> 0:12:18.910 to the root of it went to the furthest extreme 0:12:19.570 --> 0:12:24.230 and induced the deepest possible boredom that you can through 0:12:24.309 --> 0:12:27.730 sensory deprivation. And what they found is that the brain 0:12:27.790 --> 0:12:32.250 just goes haywire when it's bored to those extreme levels. 0:12:32.690 --> 0:12:35.469 Yeah, they did. You know, they've done studies like this, 0:12:35.710 --> 0:12:37.250 you know, for decades. But there was one in the 0:12:37.750 --> 0:12:42.640 50s at McGill University in Montreal. Shout out Montreal, where 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:44.459 they paid people 20 bucks a day to stay in 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:47.260 these little rooms. You had to wear like sensory deprivation 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:51.340 goggles and headphones and gloves and cardboard tubes on the arms. 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:53.520 I didn't quite get that. I guess they just wanted 0:12:53.540 --> 0:12:56.000 you to be fully sort of, I don't know, locked down. 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:57.660 No sense of touch, maybe. 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:01.860 Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. And I think it was 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:03.920 over the period of a few days. They never went 0:13:03.940 --> 0:13:07.420 longer than a week. Right. But it was not good. 0:13:07.470 --> 0:13:10.150 You know, people couldn't think of like fix on anything, 0:13:10.350 --> 0:13:12.829 like any thought for any length of time at all. 0:13:13.470 --> 0:13:16.670 And their word pattern recognition got all over the place. 0:13:16.730 --> 0:13:21.920 Their arithmetic skills were terrible. They started like hallucinating and 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:24.540 they became more susceptible to supernatural beliefs. 0:13:24.980 --> 0:13:25.680 Yep. 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:29.160 So obviously something like solitary confinement in prison, which I 0:13:29.179 --> 0:13:31.230 think we Did we do a whole episode in solitary 0:13:31.250 --> 0:13:31.470 or just? 0:13:31.870 --> 0:13:36.050 Yes, we did. And we concluded it's not only inhumane, 0:13:36.090 --> 0:13:36.869 it's inhuman. 0:13:37.370 --> 0:13:41.949 Yeah, completely. Because it physically alters the brain, like it 0:13:42.070 --> 0:13:45.310 shrinks your hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that, 0:13:45.429 --> 0:13:46.839 you know, we talk about a lot, but it's involved 0:13:46.910 --> 0:13:50.500 in emotion control, spatial orientation, memory, that kind of thing. 0:13:50.540 --> 0:13:53.980 So you're basically just you're shrinking that part of your 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:55.760 brain when you throw someone in solitary. 0:13:56.140 --> 0:13:58.780 Right. You want to take a break and come back 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:00.680 and talk about how boredom can be useful? 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:22.050 Yeah, let's do it. No stuff you should know, stuff 0:14:22.110 --> 0:14:23.130 you should know. 0:14:27.090 --> 0:14:30.020 All right, Chuck. So we've basically talked about how boredom 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:35.060 is not pleasant. And that kind of prompted a lot 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:36.960 of researchers to be like, well, then why are we 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:40.420 experiencing boredom? If we experience boredom, and it seems like 0:14:40.460 --> 0:14:43.240 a lot of different animals experience boredom too, as we'll see, 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:48.430 there has to be some sort of evolutionary benefit from 0:14:48.490 --> 0:14:51.650 it for it sticking around for clearly tens or hundreds 0:14:51.690 --> 0:14:55.040 of millions of years, right? And what they've What they 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:57.690 finally landed on was the same thing that Schopenhauer and 0:14:57.730 --> 0:15:00.810 Nietzsche and Henry David Thoreau and a bunch of other 0:15:00.830 --> 0:15:04.570 philosophers pointed to, which was it prompts you to go 0:15:04.690 --> 0:15:08.760 out and do other stuff. And it doesn't necessarily prompt 0:15:08.780 --> 0:15:11.210 you to go out and do the safest thing. It 0:15:11.350 --> 0:15:14.229 turns out that it prompts you to go do anything else, 0:15:14.470 --> 0:15:17.250 even stuff that is outside of your comfort zone. If 0:15:17.350 --> 0:15:20.650 it's an alternative to whatever you're doing now and you're bored, 0:15:22.310 --> 0:15:25.030 you're much likelier to go try it than when you're 0:15:25.070 --> 0:15:27.430 not bored. And that's what a bunch of research has 0:15:27.530 --> 0:15:29.480 turned up. Yeah. 0:15:29.580 --> 0:15:32.180 I mean, that's, you know, you think about the scenario 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:34.660 of a bunch of kids bored in the summertime. They're like, hey, 0:15:34.700 --> 0:15:37.260 let's go jump off the roof of the house right 0:15:37.300 --> 0:15:38.180 now and see what happens. 0:15:38.420 --> 0:15:38.620 Yeah. 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.790 You know, that kind of thing. There was a study 0:15:41.870 --> 0:15:47.510 in the, I guess it's a scientific paper, Emotion, or 0:15:47.530 --> 0:15:47.970 a magazine. 0:15:48.730 --> 0:15:49.890 A journal, yeah. Journal. 0:15:50.710 --> 0:15:51.790 Quarterly, maybe. I don't know. 0:15:53.390 --> 0:15:53.860 A rag. 0:15:54.150 --> 0:15:57.740 A white paper. By doctors Heather Lynch and Shane Bench, 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:02.140 Lynch and Bench. Yeah. Where they subjected the participants to 0:16:02.220 --> 0:16:07.720 stimuli that would make them bored. Either neutral bored, positive bored, 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:13.900 or negative bored. And across all the studies, people reporting 0:16:13.980 --> 0:16:17.800 high boredom were more likely to choose something unfamiliar, which 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:23.210 included negative experiences. And people bored by positive conditions sought 0:16:23.330 --> 0:16:27.250 out negative experiences. And if you were bored by negative content, 0:16:27.290 --> 0:16:30.790 you sought out positive experiences. So almost like you're seeking 0:16:30.850 --> 0:16:33.790 out the opposite of whatever you're experiencing in your boredom. 0:16:34.390 --> 0:16:37.220 Exactly. Yeah. They kept showing them like picture after picture 0:16:37.260 --> 0:16:39.770 after picture. And even if it was positive, They're like, 0:16:39.790 --> 0:16:41.750 do you want to switch to the negative pictures? It's 0:16:41.850 --> 0:16:44.989 like cockroaches and stacks of dirty dishes. And the people 0:16:45.010 --> 0:16:49.320 were like, yes, please hurry up. So, yeah, that's pretty 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:52.980 good study pointing out that, you know, it will leave 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:56.280 our comfort zone. At least we'll go look at pictures 0:16:56.320 --> 0:16:59.900 of dirty dishes if we're bored. Right. And then other 0:16:59.950 --> 0:17:01.730 studies have kind of followed this up. There was one 0:17:01.770 --> 0:17:06.870 in 2014 that attached something that could deliver an electric 0:17:06.970 --> 0:17:10.590 shock around participants ankles. And then just left them to 0:17:10.630 --> 0:17:13.929 be bored in a room alone for 15 minutes and 0:17:14.030 --> 0:17:17.190 see if anybody would press the button that gave themselves 0:17:17.250 --> 0:17:20.010 a shock. Knowing that if they press this button, that's 0:17:20.050 --> 0:17:22.250 what was going to happen. It wasn't like a surprise. 0:17:23.170 --> 0:17:25.040 And people did. A lot of people did. As a 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:27.060 matter of fact, they got so bored. They're like, I 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:29.060 guess I'll just give myself electric shocks. 0:17:29.940 --> 0:17:31.919 I could see myself totally doing that, by the way. 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:34.399 I think it depends on the shock. I would at 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:36.320 least try it once probably eventually. 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:38.320 Yeah, my deal. I would try it once and be like, well, 0:17:38.380 --> 0:17:40.000 I got to see what the button does. There's like 0:17:40.020 --> 0:17:41.660 no way I'm just going to sit here and not know. 0:17:41.940 --> 0:17:42.160 Right. 0:17:42.540 --> 0:17:43.480 Yeah. 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:46.939 The one guy apparently pressed the button 190 times in 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:48.679 that study. 0:17:49.030 --> 0:17:51.159 Yeah, I think they should do some follow-up studies with 0:17:51.180 --> 0:17:51.530 that guy. 0:17:51.900 --> 0:17:53.389 And just that guy. 0:17:53.430 --> 0:17:54.370 Something's going on there. 0:17:54.970 --> 0:17:59.170 Exactly. So circling it back around to evolution, what they 0:17:59.210 --> 0:18:02.290 basically put all this together is that You know, just 0:18:02.369 --> 0:18:06.630 sitting around like a campfire or something. If we got 0:18:06.710 --> 0:18:11.180 bored or Tuk-Tuk got bored, that might prompt him to 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:12.859 be like, I'm going to go see what's over here. 0:18:12.940 --> 0:18:16.660 I'm going to go, you know, see what's down this river. 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:20.179 And then maybe Tuk-Tuk encountered a new animal that Tuk-Tuk 0:18:20.220 --> 0:18:23.600 had never seen before. And Tuk-Tuk was kind of forced 0:18:23.660 --> 0:18:26.780 to create a new weapon to hunt that animal or 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:31.180 even better, even better. Tuk-Tuk made friends with that animal. 0:18:31.660 --> 0:18:33.740 And all of a sudden, both of their brains just 0:18:33.820 --> 0:18:36.830 enlarged because of the empathy and love that developed between 0:18:36.850 --> 0:18:37.240 the two. 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.270 Yeah, I mean, that could go either way. You know, 0:18:40.290 --> 0:18:43.750 I've talked a bit about watching the survival TV show alone. 0:18:44.590 --> 0:18:47.630 And a common theme among all participants on that show 0:18:47.690 --> 0:18:49.990 is like, you're out here by yourself and like it 0:18:50.050 --> 0:18:53.710 gets boring. And sometimes that has led to them making 0:18:53.770 --> 0:18:56.840 decisions that leads to like the end of their stay there. 0:18:57.390 --> 0:18:59.330 Because they did what Tuk Tuk did. They're like, hey, 0:18:59.390 --> 0:19:02.649 I'm bored. I want to go cross that stream that 0:19:02.690 --> 0:19:04.590 I thought it was probably a really bad idea to cross. 0:19:05.020 --> 0:19:07.680 And it turns out that was correct. And all of 0:19:07.700 --> 0:19:09.040 a sudden they're getting helicoptered out. 0:19:09.619 --> 0:19:12.660 Yes. But it can also work out, too, in that 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:14.500 you go make a friend with an animal on the 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:15.020 other side. 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:17.250 Of that stream. Yeah. Or kill it and eat it. 0:19:19.609 --> 0:19:22.690 So I think also one of the more prevalent interpretations 0:19:22.730 --> 0:19:26.540 among lay people like us is meaning people who like 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:31.460 to just lay around, is that dumb people are more 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:34.740 prone to be bored. And apparently this is the idea 0:19:34.780 --> 0:19:37.530 of Henry David Thoreau. He was like, if you're smart, 0:19:37.590 --> 0:19:40.370 you can always find something to occupy yourself. And everyone's like, 0:19:40.430 --> 0:19:43.909 shut up, Thoreau. We know that you're so smart and cool. 0:19:44.030 --> 0:19:46.830 We get it. You don't have to put everybody else down. 0:19:47.690 --> 0:19:51.040 Studies have not borne out Thoreau's idea. It finds that 0:19:52.220 --> 0:19:56.200 intelligent people and people of lower intelligence are not, neither 0:19:56.260 --> 0:20:00.680 one's more likely to become bored more easily. But there 0:20:00.859 --> 0:20:05.740 are personality traits that create like trait boredom. There's trait 0:20:05.850 --> 0:20:08.750 and there's state, just like optimism. There's trait boredom and 0:20:08.790 --> 0:20:12.070 there's state boredom. And trait boredom seems to be kind 0:20:12.109 --> 0:20:14.170 of identified with two different types of people. 0:20:14.830 --> 0:20:17.690 Yeah, there's a psychologist named John Eastwood that said if 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:22.140 you're an impulsive person and if you're always like looking 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.699 for that new thrill and that, you know, generally kind 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:28.940 of understimulated by the world around you, then that totally 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:31.919 makes sense that you would be prone to boredom. This one, 0:20:32.900 --> 0:20:34.460