Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Tuglas,
Speaker 1: Julie Weird, long overdude for How Stuff Works. Like podcast
Speaker 1: teams retreat, you know, like a like motivator where we
Speaker 1: all go out and like living in the woods for
Speaker 1: a weekend and we trust fall and oh trust Fall
Speaker 1: is the best man. Yeah, roll around like earthworms getting
Speaker 1: into each other's personal space. Yes, yeah. And then and
Speaker 1: then of course, when the when the sun goes down,
Speaker 1: we're gonna spread out the hot coals, right, little fire walking, right,
Speaker 1: we are going to face the the beast within. And
Speaker 1: we're gonna do a barefoot too, that's the thing, not
Speaker 1: with shoes on. But we're gonna we're gonna lay out
Speaker 1: the hot coals and we're gonna just march down that
Speaker 1: that that that road of hot embers. And then on
Speaker 1: the other end, we're gonna emerge victorious and full of
Speaker 1: energy and life four third degree burns whatever comes first, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I will never fear the xerox machine again
Speaker 1: or running out of coffee. I'll come out on the
Speaker 1: other end, a better person. All of this will Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the plan, so that you know. Of course, we
Speaker 1: were inspired today to talk about firewalking because of this retreat. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the retreat that it hasn't actually been planned yet, but
Speaker 1: I think we should. We should, we should. Yeah, nobody's
Speaker 1: actually ever uttered a word about it. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna have to think it happened yet. Um, I
Speaker 1: could probably talk a little about about firewalking to prepare
Speaker 1: us and also to prepare our listeners for when we
Speaker 1: return from it. And you're either harribly burned and or motivated. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's lay it up. Okay, So firewalking. Chances are you've
Speaker 1: you've seen this somewhere. You've you either have friends who
Speaker 1: have done it, either as part of their new age
Speaker 1: hippie lifestyle or they're they're deeply rooted religious beliefs, or
Speaker 1: just as part of you know, a weekend retreat, or
Speaker 1: maybe they just saw it in the office. There is
Speaker 1: an episode of the Office where the dunder Mifflin employees
Speaker 1: all go on one of these and and of course
Speaker 1: somebody getting burned. But but maybe for you, it's just
Speaker 1: a Monday, right Monday. Maybe that's how you kick. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's you're coffee in the morning, a little firewalking. It
Speaker 1: takes a bit to to set it up. But but
Speaker 1: people have been doing this for for ages. It's it's
Speaker 1: really an old practice and it's and it's it's really
Speaker 1: fascinating to think of it, not just in terms of
Speaker 1: how we're doing it now. And certainly we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into the science of firewalking, don't worry about but but
Speaker 1: first we want to really sort of take you through
Speaker 1: some of the historic h and cultural examples of firewalking
Speaker 1: how and and sort of the mindset that these various
Speaker 1: people from various cultures have when they first throw off
Speaker 1: the flip flops and start off across the cold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also wanted to mention that the earliest known reference
Speaker 1: to it is in an Indian text from about So again,
Speaker 1: this has been practiced for a long time, and we
Speaker 1: have seen it in different religions like Hinduism as well
Speaker 1: as Buddhist and Native American communities and Christian communities and
Speaker 1: New Age communities and completely as as well explore to
Speaker 1: uh non religious more deals as well. Yeah, because it
Speaker 1: turns out to be an incredible metaphor that we can
Speaker 1: really delve into on the spiritual side. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: at the heart of it, the basic idea is I
Speaker 1: am a human, I'm made out of flesh. My flesh
Speaker 1: is susceptible to pain. Here is fire and like one
Speaker 1: of the earliest lessons humans learned was fire bad, right
Speaker 1: or fire really good? But fireplus bare feet probably bad. Um.
Speaker 1: But we do have a very primal relationship to fire, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fires the power we can make food edible, we can
Speaker 1: we can create light against the terrors of the darkness
Speaker 1: and uh and and shadow puppets. Yeah, there's there's literally
Speaker 1: there's there's almost no end to what we can do
Speaker 1: with fire. Uh. So early on, you know, we get
Speaker 1: this idea of a fire as a test. Can we
Speaker 1: withstand fire? And if we can, then it says something
Speaker 1: about our bodies, it says something about our spirit. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's you know there you look in the Bible, the
Speaker 1: Old Testament, there's the you know, the story of of
Speaker 1: the three the three brothers who are thrown into the
Speaker 1: fiery furnace Shadrack mishak in a bindigo uh, Daniel three uh.
Speaker 1: And then in recent times you have the story of
Speaker 1: g Gordon Lydia on trial and holding the cigarette lighter
Speaker 1: underneath his palm. Um. You know, the fire as a
Speaker 1: test for the flesh and for the spirit. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty pretty simple but a but
Speaker 1: a very resonant idea. So Hinduism, like you said, this
Speaker 1: is where we see the oldest examples of it and
Speaker 1: uh and to this day in Southern India as well
Speaker 1: as places like um, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, any countries
Speaker 1: with a large South Indian population. Uh, there is a
Speaker 1: festival every year called the Smithy Festival. And this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is is pretty neat the roots of this uh
Speaker 1: lie in the the Mahabarata, the Hindu epic, which we've
Speaker 1: occasionally has come up on this this podcast. UM refresher
Speaker 1: on that story. You have the five Pandava brothers uh.
Speaker 1: And they are all married to the same woman. Uh.
Speaker 1: And her name is Drayo Patti and Um they end
Speaker 1: up losing her in a game of chance to their cousins,
Speaker 1: the Kava brothers okay and p versus the Kara. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're there are five Pandava and there are like one
Speaker 1: hundred of the Carava brothers. And and this is the
Speaker 1: big war of the Mahabarata. These uh, these two opposing
Speaker 1: forces their kin and they have to do battle with
Speaker 1: one another, and all all sorts of various adventures and
Speaker 1: and skirmishes are a part of the tale. But in
Speaker 1: this one a particular event. Uh, like you say, the
Speaker 1: five the five brothers, they have this this one wife
Speaker 1: and her name is draw your Potty and uh. And
Speaker 1: after draw your Potty has has been m kidnapped or
Speaker 1: or obtained for her by the way. Yeah, Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, they decide they're gonna embarrass her by making
Speaker 1: her strip before the court and uh. And and so
Speaker 1: they go to poor clothes off and she prays to Krishna,
Speaker 1: and Krishna gives her limitless clothes. So she's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a scarf out of out of a magician's pocket. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and then she but then she gets really serious.
Speaker 1: She plugged. First, she pledges to prove her chastity by
Speaker 1: walking across burning coals, and she does that and she
Speaker 1: emerges unscathed. And then she also swears that she won't
Speaker 1: like redo her hair until she is washed it in
Speaker 1: the blood of her enemies. So it's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that too in the Mahabara, like, especially with the
Speaker 1: female characters making like really uh passionate proclamations about revenge.
Speaker 1: Nobody says that anymore. Yeah, I am I gonna do
Speaker 1: my hair anymore until I've washed it in the blood
Speaker 1: of my enemies. You just don't hear that in salons
Speaker 1: that much. Yeah. For for English speaking audiences, which of
Speaker 1: course is our audience that we have Indian listeners and
Speaker 1: as well, but if you're English speaker, highly recommend Peter
Speaker 1: Brooks Mahabar to To To. It's a it's a stage adaptation,
Speaker 1: British stage adaptation that they also did a film version
Speaker 1: of evidence. Really long and really cool. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: digress um. So they have this festival every year and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a celebration uh and and kind of
Speaker 1: a reenactment of this particular moment uh and Uh what
Speaker 1: you do as you you walk barefoot across this length
Speaker 1: of coals and then you step through a second pit
Speaker 1: that's filled with milk and if you emerge unscathed, and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a you're proving your spiritual and physical purity, okay,
Speaker 1: and the milk is there to soothe any burns. Right,
Speaker 1: this is what milk is good for. Yeah, and then uh,
Speaker 1: there are various other uh firewalking festivals that reach back
Speaker 1: through time. This is not quite firewalking, but it does
Speaker 1: tie in. Um. If you go back to and look
Speaker 1: at ancient Anglo Saxon and Teutonic practices of ordeals, you
Speaker 1: see some of this now, the ordeals. Um, this was
Speaker 1: kind of this is kind of a barbaric um way
Speaker 1: of of of dealing with disputes and uh and charges
Speaker 1: uh of of wrongdoing in a society. The idea was,
Speaker 1: all right, you may or may not have murdered this guy,
Speaker 1: You may or may not be a witch. You know,
Speaker 1: whatever the dispute is. We all the ideas. We all
Speaker 1: believe in a very a powerful and very personally invested God.
Speaker 1: So let's let him decide, let's let him weigh in.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have anything better to do. So so where
Speaker 1: was the test? Well, there there were various ordeals that
Speaker 1: the most famous, of course, would be the trial, the
Speaker 1: ordeal of combat. And this would be like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: you two guys fight, and surely God will make sure
Speaker 1: that the right one of you wins and the other
Speaker 1: guy dies Uh, there were There was an ordeal of water,
Speaker 1: which which would throw a witch into some cold water
Speaker 1: and see what happened. You know, if she if she floats,
Speaker 1: she's good. If she sinks, no, it's the other way around.
Speaker 1: If she if she floats, then then she's a witch.
Speaker 1: If she thinks she's good to go right. Um. Then
Speaker 1: there were number of other ones who were that were
Speaker 1: even stranger, Like there's the ordeal of the of the Buyer,
Speaker 1: in which a suspected murder was made to touch the
Speaker 1: corpse and if blood flowed out of the corpse, he's guilty.
Speaker 1: There's there were a couple of choking ordeals, which sounds
Speaker 1: kind of cruel when I say it that way, but
Speaker 1: it would come down to, here's a piece of of
Speaker 1: blessed um bread. Here's the holy communion wafer. Uh take this,
Speaker 1: eat it. And by the way, if you're guilty, this
Speaker 1: is gonn You're gonna choke on it. And because and
Speaker 1: and again that's like here, take this is holy if
Speaker 1: you're if you're guilty, God's gonna make sure it gets
Speaker 1: lodged in there and chokes you up. Then there's the
Speaker 1: ordeal of the Cross, which also sounds like it's gonna
Speaker 1: be really brutal and grim. But it involves the accuser
Speaker 1: and the accused standing before a crucifix. First person to
Speaker 1: move is guilty. So so, but anyway that the then
Speaker 1: there's also to get to the point here the ordeal
Speaker 1: of fire, and the ordeal of fire was generally for
Speaker 1: persons of high rank. And some of these would involve
Speaker 1: carrying a red hot iron in your hand. Others would
Speaker 1: involve walking barefoot uh and or blindfolded over red hot
Speaker 1: plow shares. And if there are no wounds after three days,
Speaker 1: you're innocent, okay. And then uh. For for another more
Speaker 1: uplifting example of of Christian use of firewalking, you have
Speaker 1: to go to Greece. There is a Christian firewalking ritual
Speaker 1: performed in northern Greece. Now this is present day, this
Speaker 1: is present day, and this still goes on. If you're
Speaker 1: if you're of Greek descent, you may have you know,
Speaker 1: this may be part of your heritage. Uh and certainly
Speaker 1: if you're traveling to Greece you may be able to
Speaker 1: witness this. Uh. And it's a festival called Anniston Area
Speaker 1: and it's uh it has to do with St. Constantine
Speaker 1: and The idea here is this is that St. Constantine
Speaker 1: protects the firewalkers from him being burned because of their
Speaker 1: faith and devotion to him and to God. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's that's their faith that allows him to do what
Speaker 1: seems like the impossible, which seems like a miracle to
Speaker 1: walk across fire right. Um, and uh, Lauren dan Forth
Speaker 1: isn't an anthropologist at Bates College in Lewistown or Lewiston, Maine,
Speaker 1: and he actually has studied this quite a bit. Um.
Speaker 1: We should also talk about another doesn't day uh practice
Speaker 1: of this and this is by Tony Robbins. And some
Speaker 1: of you may even remember that this was in the
Speaker 1: news this summer. Uh, because Tony Robbins also uses fire
Speaker 1: walking as an experiential metaphor for creating breakthroughs and overcoming
Speaker 1: our fears. Now, keep in mind, though, that Tony Robbins
Speaker 1: isn't saying that this is a religious experience. Again, He's
Speaker 1: just using it as a metaphor for trying to figure
Speaker 1: out whatever it is in your life that you need
Speaker 1: to vanquish. And um, but he I mean, but it's
Speaker 1: it's worth known than he is capturing the same psychology
Speaker 1: and the same idea. He's still it's just not necessarily
Speaker 1: wrapped in religious wrapping paper, right, and he's been doing
Speaker 1: it for three decades, but it just kind of got
Speaker 1: a lot of notice again this summer because um there
Speaker 1: were six thousand participants in this this work. The lanes
Speaker 1: they had twelve twol lanes and UM lanes fifty six
Speaker 1: lanes covering Happy Earth twelve lane to actually have hot
Speaker 1: coals manasuring ten feet long by two and a half
Speaker 1: feet wide, and this rusted on grass and they don't
Speaker 1: know how many people actually went through, but about two
Speaker 1: dozen people actually sustained second and third degree injuries. They
Speaker 1: were burned. Now we'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the actual um uh fire itself, but it is thought
Speaker 1: that perhaps there were hot spots there and that some
Speaker 1: people were uh doing it wrong. Yeah, I'm just said
Speaker 1: that in air quotes, doing it wrong, And we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that, but I mean, it
Speaker 1: is worth worth pointing out though that it was just
Speaker 1: a couple of dozen out of thousands, which well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't we don't have to have an exact number
Speaker 1: of how many people actually participated in the firewalking, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but that it was thousands, and certainly if you get
Speaker 1: thousands of football players, not football players, thousands of football
Speaker 1: fans in one place at one time, several of them
Speaker 1: are going to catch on fire. I just had this
Speaker 1: vision of them training and instead of the tires that
Speaker 1: they go through, you know, maybe it's tires on on
Speaker 1: top of these these little lanes of fire. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of motivation and um in team sports and
Speaker 1: in any kind of sporting endeavor. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: could see I could see a football team going through
Speaker 1: some some firewalking and chanting. Right, And this is what
Speaker 1: we're talking about psychology here. That's right, because it's not
Speaker 1: just like, all right, hey you, we think you might
Speaker 1: be guilty. Um, so I'm gonna let God decide. March
Speaker 1: across these hot plowshares. It's not like, oh I wonder
Speaker 1: if I'm pure of spirit and heart, let me walk
Speaker 1: across these coals, or or or oh okay, Tony Robin
Speaker 1: might have a point. I'm gonna get my feet into
Speaker 1: some fire here. Now, you you've gotta there's a lot
Speaker 1: of psyching yourself out. There's preparing yourself mentally for this.
Speaker 1: Be that in the form of prayer, Be that in
Speaker 1: the form of listening to Tony Robbins or or what
Speaker 1: have you. But but there's definitely a period of preparation.
Speaker 1: This is kind of interesting. Um. This is from an
Speaker 1: article that anthropologist Jane Sansum wrote about about that since
Speaker 1: aia UM festival in northern Greece. Um she pointed out
Speaker 1: that back in the nineteen seventies there was a neurolog
Speaker 1: just by the name of Christos Xenakis and that he
Speaker 1: was from the Max Plant Institute in Germany. And he, uh,
Speaker 1: he studied what was going He was very interesting what
Speaker 1: was going on in the minds of the firewalkers, all right,
Speaker 1: so uh they you know, he ended up like bringing
Speaker 1: out the e c g s, you know, looking at
Speaker 1: what's going on with mental activity and and he found
Speaker 1: the found that it was interesting that they were that
Speaker 1: they would they would enter this this trance right before
Speaker 1: they would engage in it. And he found that they're
Speaker 1: e c g s were normal during were normal when
Speaker 1: they were walking, but during the preparation period they had
Speaker 1: low voltage. That was characteristic, he said, of a of
Speaker 1: a dreamlike state. Okay, so there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: electricity going on as opposed to a lot. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean his findings were that, again, neural activity was
Speaker 1: normal when they were actually walking across the holes, but
Speaker 1: in that period beforehand, that's where they were, they were
Speaker 1: entering this the steep state of concentration. Well, and again,
Speaker 1: most firewalking is done with a group, and if you've
Speaker 1: seen firewalking demonstrations before, there's a lot of chanting going on.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before in terms of group psychology,
Speaker 1: that it can be really affected this chanting because what
Speaker 1: happens is that if everybody's chanting the same thing over
Speaker 1: and over again, you've got this the same neurons firing
Speaker 1: at the same time when everybody's sinking up on a
Speaker 1: neural level. Yeah, everybody's sinking up. And this sometimes leads
Speaker 1: to those feelings of bephor you that you see in
Speaker 1: religious experiences or even a concert. You know, music, a concert.
Speaker 1: You got to go to a church and you see
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people singing together. You go to
Speaker 1: a temple and you see a bunch of people chanting together.
Speaker 1: It's it's the same thing. It's it's not as much
Speaker 1: about I mean, I guess on on one level, it's
Speaker 1: about like lifting your praise to a deity or what
Speaker 1: have you. But on another level, it's about a community
Speaker 1: that it shares something right more or less, sinking their
Speaker 1: minds together, just like one big vulcan mind. Now. Well,
Speaker 1: and everybody's priming themselves for the same thing, right, for
Speaker 1: the same end, which is to harness their personal power. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it is through a deity, or sometimes it's just
Speaker 1: through you know, tapping into this personal power. Tolly Berkin,
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring him up. He's he is the
Speaker 1: founder of the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education and
Speaker 1: Twain Heart, California. He's been doing this since the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties as a self improvement thing. UM. He uses fireworking
Speaker 1: in his seminars and UM. His idea is that if
Speaker 1: you vanquished your fears, you doing impossible, and then anything
Speaker 1: is possible. Right, you can ask for that race because
Speaker 1: you have walked through fire. So he claims that in
Speaker 1: order to firewalk successfully, you must first convince yourself so
Speaker 1: that your body, and he says this in a video
Speaker 1: for Skeptic Magazine becomes um. Well, actually it's in a
Speaker 1: different physiological state that protects you from being burned. And
Speaker 1: this is a quote he says, when you are in
Speaker 1: the right state of mind, the blood flows through the
Speaker 1: soles of your feet and takes the temperature away from
Speaker 1: your tissue, and that's why you're not burned. Okay, So
Speaker 1: that seems um and not necessarily rooted in science. It's
Speaker 1: an interesting explanation. Yeah, well, yeah, there are there are
Speaker 1: a number of less science two outright non science explanations
Speaker 1: for what's going on. I ran across one from actually
Speaker 1: from a Greek psychiatrist by the name of Vittoria Manganus
Speaker 1: who and who was apparently he looked into the whole
Speaker 1: Greek fire walking thing as well, but he was using
Speaker 1: stuff like like Carolan photography and and and making the
Speaker 1: argument that you know, the oh, well, the the auras
Speaker 1: of the person a person's are changes in this superiod
Speaker 1: prior to the fire walking, and that that energy are
Speaker 1: protects you. Which granted, that's that's that's that's all well
Speaker 1: and good, but it it it largely exists outside of
Speaker 1: a real scientific understanding of what's going on, but it
Speaker 1: would bolster you cyclically, right, uh, And certainly, I mean
Speaker 1: it comes down to the idea of doing something the impossible,
Speaker 1: whether or not that is impossible. I'm clearly it's possible.
Speaker 1: People do it, but you look at it like something
Speaker 1: in your mind sets that's those are hot coals. I
Speaker 1: should not walk on that bare foot, or it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a I mean, a simpler example would be
Speaker 1: the bed of nails. Like, like we know that a
Speaker 1: bed of nails. You can lay on a bed of nails.
Speaker 1: You can't lay on a bed of one nail, but
Speaker 1: if there's a whole bed of them, you can lay
Speaker 1: down and they won't pierce your skin. But still there's
Speaker 1: something about the nails that if you if you don't
Speaker 1: know what's up, you might think, oh, that's steadily to slay.
Speaker 1: That is impossible, while the the actual laying on a
Speaker 1: bed of nails is very possible and very doable, just
Speaker 1: as firewalking is. And before we talk about why that
Speaker 1: is and get into the mechanics of of what happens
Speaker 1: um with actual fire and your feet touching it, let's
Speaker 1: talk about preparing this bed of fire. Yes, um, usually
Speaker 1: it's wood or volcanic rock. There's a rain into these
Speaker 1: ten ft by two foot lanes. Yeah, Now it's worth
Speaker 1: that you do find firewalking rituals that involve hot stones.
Speaker 1: I can believe that in the Fiji Islands they do
Speaker 1: that variation of it, and certainly Christian ordeals involved hot
Speaker 1: plow shares, But Tony Robbins is probably not going to
Speaker 1: pull those out at a at a at an end event. No, no, no.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, yeah, it's it's burning wood
Speaker 1: and stuff down into coal yea, and the fires lit.
Speaker 1: And then when it does burn down into the embers,
Speaker 1: the ashes are scattered. And this is really important because
Speaker 1: now you have ash that's being scattered over these these coals,
Speaker 1: these hot coals, um. And you will actually see sometimes
Speaker 1: that when they spread the fire and um, they sort
Speaker 1: of arrange it accordingly that the flames will be at
Speaker 1: the perimeter. So if you're at a certain sight line,
Speaker 1: it looks like someone is literally walking through fire, when
Speaker 1: in fact it's just at the edges and there's the
Speaker 1: coals in the middle part flanked by fire, flanked by fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if you just happen to be a casual observer
Speaker 1: walking body might say, wow, they're actually walking through fire.
Speaker 1: But it does create that illusion, and the fire itself,
Speaker 1: the coals are not really ready until they reach the
Speaker 1: temperature or they cool down to between one thousand and
Speaker 1: two thousand degrees fahrenheit. So it's mostly what I've seen
Speaker 1: in the research is that it's more on the one
Speaker 1: thousand end rather than the two thousand end. And firewalking
Speaker 1: is done at night so that you see the glow
Speaker 1: of embers right now. And again, this doesn't apply to
Speaker 1: every instance of firewalking. Some rituals are done in the daylight.
Speaker 1: But for but for the most part, you're gonna find
Speaker 1: firewalking done at night when it looks the prettiest. I mean,
Speaker 1: because that's partly it's about looking at it and it's
Speaker 1: looking intimidating, and it's gonna look more intimidating at night,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna and it's gonna be the pure more
Speaker 1: magical at night. You know, you don't wanna have a
Speaker 1: camp fire in the middle of day, and nobody wants
Speaker 1: to sit around and poke sticks around in that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing cathartic about that, right. All right, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we get back, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about the actual mechanics of the fire itself. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back talking about firewalking and specifically what's going on
Speaker 1: in the fire itself. That's right, All right, let's talk
Speaker 1: about this fire. We have scattered the ashes, it's pretty
Speaker 1: much ready. Um. But the reason why we can walk
Speaker 1: through this bed of coals is a couple of different
Speaker 1: things going on here. One is heat transference, and there
Speaker 1: are three ways that heat can get transmitted conduction, convection,
Speaker 1: and radiation. And conduction is the transfer of heat from
Speaker 1: one substance to another via a direct contact. All right,
Speaker 1: So that's like I if I stick my tongue to
Speaker 1: the cigarette lighter in an automobile, that is direct contact.
Speaker 1: My sister did that, By the way, I didn't say
Speaker 1: that is a very odd example. But yes, my, my,
Speaker 1: my younger sister. She she she picked that up, stuck
Speaker 1: her tongue to it when she was very little. She
Speaker 1: thought it was candy apparently, and she had a round burn.
Speaker 1: My god, I don't know that I can recover from that.
Speaker 1: Does she still have the burn marks? No? No, I
Speaker 1: guess as a testament to her spiritual purity. Ah, there
Speaker 1: you go, that's all she was doing, okay. Um. In convection,
Speaker 1: heat is transferred through air or fluid circulation. If you've
Speaker 1: got a convection of an for instance, yes, yes, uh.
Speaker 1: And radiation is transmitted as if spreading out in straight
Speaker 1: lines from a central source. So think of the sun
Speaker 1: or a heat lamp, but or ultra violet. So I
Speaker 1: guess yeah, I was gonna say in some song, is
Speaker 1: too because you've got the heat spirst hole hanging out
Speaker 1: there in one corner. Um. But what we're talking about
Speaker 1: here when we're talking about coals is heat transference from conduction.
Speaker 1: And uh, the thing about these coals is that they
Speaker 1: have really poor heat conduction. And the reason for that
Speaker 1: is because it is a very lightweight structure of these
Speaker 1: coals is a carbon structure, and it takes a relatively
Speaker 1: long time for heat to transfer from the glowing coal
Speaker 1: to your skin. And plus they're covered in ash, which
Speaker 1: which is a very good insulator, right right, So the
Speaker 1: ash makes makes certain that it's you know, you've got
Speaker 1: some installation there and um, and then you've got on
Speaker 1: top of that a short time span that your feet
Speaker 1: are actually making contact, all right. A lot of people
Speaker 1: will bring up this oven example when talking about that
Speaker 1: the bread in the oven. Well, I was actually actually
Speaker 1: made up black being brownies last night, and I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this because it's a three and fifty degree
Speaker 1: oven and as soon as they came out, I supposed
Speaker 1: to look them cool for a half hour. Of course
Speaker 1: I dug in, and you're not. Actually, when I dug in,
Speaker 1: it's not like I had three fifty degrees of hotness
Speaker 1: in my mouth. I mean it was Okay, I burned
Speaker 1: my tongue, just it's mission, let's mention. But it didn't
Speaker 1: melt away. And so that's the whole point. If I
Speaker 1: were to touch the pan, which is metal and it
Speaker 1: conducts really well, then I would get burned, right um.
Speaker 1: But if you touch you know, the bread or the brownie,
Speaker 1: then you're not going to burn because it's not going
Speaker 1: to contain that heat. It's not going to conduct that
Speaker 1: amount of heat. And in the like I said that
Speaker 1: the page which you're walking in some cases, uh, anthropologists
Speaker 1: even describe it as advance. Certainly, uh, the resource I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, she she described the Greek firewalking is is
Speaker 1: really almost kind of advance. Where whereas some of the
Speaker 1: more of the some of the videos, certainly the secular
Speaker 1: stuff you see, but also even the Hindu events. I
Speaker 1: was looking at some some videos of that, and that
Speaker 1: appears to be more of just a risk walking. You
Speaker 1: don't stop halfway through and have a conversation with somebody. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't. You don't crawl, you don't do the worm.
Speaker 1: You just walk across at a brisk rate. So your feet,
Speaker 1: your feet are again are coming into contact very briefly
Speaker 1: with that that hot surface. Yeah. Again, we've got lousy conduction.
Speaker 1: We've got installation, and we have a very short time
Speaker 1: period in which the skin which is also allows of
Speaker 1: conductor and we'll talk about that. Um, will will help
Speaker 1: so that that heat isn't transferred. Um. There, I wanted
Speaker 1: to uh point out that David Wiley or Willie excuse me,
Speaker 1: as a physics instructor and he's an expert on the
Speaker 1: science of firewalking, and he partnered with Norwegian physicist Kitchen
Speaker 1: my apologies to any Norwegian listeners, of the University of
Speaker 1: Oslo to study the physics behind firewalking. And they developed
Speaker 1: a computer model of a foot while a person firewalked,
Speaker 1: and then compared it to infrared imagery taken while volunteers
Speaker 1: and Seattle firewalked, and those images showed that the foot
Speaker 1: does indeed remain cool when the stunt is done correctly.
Speaker 1: So we have confirmation of this in a couple of
Speaker 1: different ways, and it's important you mentioned when the stun
Speaker 1: is done correctly. So there are any number of things
Speaker 1: that could could be wrong with the fireside of the preparation,
Speaker 1: which is a reason no one listening to this podcast
Speaker 1: should become inspired and set up their own firewalking this weekend.
Speaker 1: If you if you choose to do do a little
Speaker 1: firewalking in your free time, more power to you. But
Speaker 1: find somebody who knows what they're doing. Do you do
Speaker 1: your research. It's kind of like we're talking about this yesterday.
Speaker 1: It's like zip lining. Um, I've only ziplined once. I
Speaker 1: made sure that when I did it, I went with
Speaker 1: the top guys uh in in in the place I
Speaker 1: was visiting in in Costa Rica. Don't go for the
Speaker 1: discount zip line. Don't go for the discount firewalking. No, Now,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that it's prepared because because
Speaker 1: they could what if they they're not spreading the coals properly?
Speaker 1: What you have? You know, what what if they are
Speaker 1: using again plowshares or or stones instead of coal. I
Speaker 1: mean there's a there's a certain amount of preparation that
Speaker 1: needs to go into it, and then there's amount a
Speaker 1: certain amount of instruction that needs to be given. You
Speaker 1: know that you need to get people in the right
Speaker 1: mind set. You've got to make sure that they're marching
Speaker 1: briskly across the coals. And if you're doing a line,
Speaker 1: you don't want that line to suddenly stop. To make
Speaker 1: sure there's like an appropriate spacing between the individuals totally.
Speaker 1: Burke in the self improvement grew who uses and he
Speaker 1: does talk about it with with the groups that he's
Speaker 1: doing his workshops. If he talks about how to go
Speaker 1: through so you know, obviously he talks about it as
Speaker 1: a testament of one's willpower and uh and all that,
Speaker 1: but he does kind of say, and by the way,
Speaker 1: this is how you should move through um. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about what's going on with the body too. We did.
Speaker 1: We spoke about the feet is poor conductors And this
Speaker 1: is from Slate magazine author LV Anderson. He says the
Speaker 1: reason for this is that when flesh comes into contact
Speaker 1: with the coal, the flesh cools down the outer surface
Speaker 1: of the coal faster than heat can move from below
Speaker 1: the surface of the coal. And see here the flesh.
Speaker 1: That's one reason is dispersing the heat. The second is
Speaker 1: the latent frost effect. And yeah, this is a pretty cool,
Speaker 1: uh little bit of science here. This involves the idea
Speaker 1: that your feet are actually protected from burning by sweat
Speaker 1: droplets that form and act as a barrier around your foot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's taking away the heat. So shock went up
Speaker 1: to sweat there and then just bottom line too. If
Speaker 1: you look at the bottom of your foot, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of tough down there. I mean these we've evolved
Speaker 1: to walk on these things, even though we were really
Speaker 1: big into encasing them in various shoes and socks. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: these are things were made to walk on, and they're
Speaker 1: made to walk on occasionally uncomfortable surfaces. Yeah, I'll have
Speaker 1: to say that my calluses and everything else on, but
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of I've worked very hard to build
Speaker 1: those up. Yeah. Like soon as you look down there,
Speaker 1: it's like six s thumb tacks in there. Like how
Speaker 1: they get in there? When did I do that? I
Speaker 1: don't know, right, And that's what you want for a
Speaker 1: good firewalking. Um, so if you're going to do this yourself. Uh,
Speaker 1: and again I say you, I'm looking at you, Robert,
Speaker 1: like I'm not working to you guys out there, Robert lamb.
Speaker 1: If you were going to do it, you would want
Speaker 1: to step lightly, and that seems like kind of a
Speaker 1: duugh thing. But the thing is that when people are crossing,
Speaker 1: they try to get across as quickly as possible. And
Speaker 1: that's not a good idea because if you start to run,
Speaker 1: obviously you're gonna put a lot more pressure on your
Speaker 1: foot and your flesh is going to come into more
Speaker 1: contact with that cold for a longer amount of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I was thinking about this in terms of walking
Speaker 1: across the hot beach uh the other day, because I
Speaker 1: because when you're walking across the loose sand it's really hot,
Speaker 1: there's a it's hard to make short contact with the
Speaker 1: with the sand in some cases because your feet are
Speaker 1: sliding and sinking and and all that. And I wonder
Speaker 1: if that's why that can often be this kind of
Speaker 1: painful ordeal to get to the actual wet sand. Well,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it to you in terms of
Speaker 1: like ballet physics, because if if you've ever watched your
Speaker 1: performance or know anything about ballet, you know that if
Speaker 1: you're going to pick someone up or be picked up,
Speaker 1: what you want to do is to tense every single
Speaker 1: muscle in your body because it makes you actually lighter
Speaker 1: as opposed to just slumping. So it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of the same sort of mind body connection that if
Speaker 1: you're going to cross those hot coals, you're going to
Speaker 1: step lightly and you're not going to want to run.
Speaker 1: You're going to try to compose yourself to the point
Speaker 1: where you kind of feel like as though you are
Speaker 1: gliding across um and you're not just kind of like
Speaker 1: flapping across, which would result in burns. Yeah, So on
Speaker 1: that end, there's definitely a number of things that can
Speaker 1: go wrong in your actual approach to walking across the
Speaker 1: hot coals. If you're not prepped properly, or if you
Speaker 1: have a elapse in judgment or just and I'll freak
Speaker 1: out halfway through, then things could get a little hot.
Speaker 1: You know what. I'm curious that there's no sort of
Speaker 1: like firewalking festival. Based on David Lynch's film, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Firewalk with Me. We we took the title for this
Speaker 1: episode though the movie is fire Walk with Me, right, like, hey,
Speaker 1: fire walk with Me. Well, I don't know that. I
Speaker 1: don't know that's actually has a comma in the title,
Speaker 1: but that is the intention, Like fire Hey, come and
Speaker 1: walk with me. Oh that's not quite that friendly. Where
Speaker 1: our title is Firewalk with Me. You could take it
Speaker 1: either way, either way, but their fire walking in that movie.
Speaker 1: There is no fire walking in that movie. That that's
Speaker 1: actually taken from the beginning of the film, in which
Speaker 1: they say, through the darkness a future past, the magician
Speaker 1: longs to see one chance. It's out between two worlds.
Speaker 1: Fire Walk with me. Well, that's pretty good. I like that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it ties in nicely with it with the various
Speaker 1: models of firewalking that we've discussed here, from the the
Speaker 1: barbaric uh and uh and brutal to the New age
Speaker 1: and enlightened. Yeah, so there you go. Um, I just
Speaker 1: want to mention that, I mean, any festival entrepreneurs out there,
Speaker 1: you could have a firewalking festival in the David Lynch tradition.
Speaker 1: All right, well, uh, fire walking aside. Let's call over
Speaker 1: the robot and let's listen to some listener mail. All right,
Speaker 1: here a couple of quick emails. Well, one's a Facebook
Speaker 1: uh and the other there's an email that we see
Speaker 1: from listeners, both related to our episode on horror and
Speaker 1: why we really like to be frightened by things which
Speaker 1: is which is an ever ever engaging topic, especially if
Speaker 1: we're moving into October here and uh in Halloween season
Speaker 1: for so Jed right right soon, Jed says. A fan
Speaker 1: wrote to say that you might like horror as entertainment
Speaker 1: because you might secretly be a psychopath and just not
Speaker 1: know it. It's an interesting topic to bring up. It
Speaker 1: brings up the idea of existential suggestibility. If I deconstruct,
Speaker 1: is that why I would like horror as entertainment? Maybe? Uh,
Speaker 1: but I disagree. I see horror as entertainment as being
Speaker 1: fear in a controlled and safe environment. I see it
Speaker 1: as being able to confront issues that are very difficult
Speaker 1: to think about and explore them in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't require actual danger. A roller coaster is very similar.
Speaker 1: We trick our bodies into thinking that we're in danger,
Speaker 1: but we really are not. We are brought up very
Speaker 1: high in the air and then thrown down to the ground,
Speaker 1: only we'd to be rescued at the last moment. Well,
Speaker 1: there you go. That's that's interesting and actually ties in
Speaker 1: with the firewalking the idea of I'm in danger but
Speaker 1: not really except maybe a little more really. In the
Speaker 1: case of the firewalking but still, like we said, you're
Speaker 1: here something that on one level you may think is impossible,
Speaker 1: but it is very possible. We've talked about that too,
Speaker 1: how you're brain is processing that because you've got a dronline,
Speaker 1: You've got the flight or fight going on in your brain,
Speaker 1: but then you have the seat of reason in your
Speaker 1: brain saying, ah, this is just a this isn't a
Speaker 1: real threat. And then the resulting um feeling is one
Speaker 1: of like, okay, this is I'm okay, and all of
Speaker 1: us the cocktail of hormones and chemicals in your body
Speaker 1: are surging, so you do get that kind of high.
Speaker 1: And we also heard from a listener bout their news
Speaker 1: and are writing it. On the same episode, she says, hey,
Speaker 1: brains written by which she means you and me. Um.
Speaker 1: She says, you guys did an episode on horror, but
Speaker 1: you've focused on people who enjoy horror. I was hoping
Speaker 1: you'd touch a little more on the flip side of
Speaker 1: the coin. I've always found it a little more interesting
Speaker 1: to think about why a large pot portion of the
Speaker 1: population is against all rational thought, totally entirely incapable of
Speaker 1: watching horror movies without real deep fear It's one thing
Speaker 1: to playfully frighten oneself, but what about those of us
Speaker 1: who whose fear cannot be managed and who are not
Speaker 1: able to watch horror movies? Thoughts a long time list
Speaker 1: or keep up the great work. My brain likes to
Speaker 1: follow your intellectual adventures and you are a gift to
Speaker 1: curiously minded English speakers everywhere. Thank you, well, thanks for
Speaker 1: the compliment. That's interesting, but it's sort of a hypersensitivity.
Speaker 1: And um, so you know, we've talked about this in
Speaker 1: terms uh, you know, different conditions, but that would be
Speaker 1: interesting to look a little bit more into. Well, you
Speaker 1: certainly have people out there who just taking all every
Speaker 1: type of horror, you know, just pure horror junkies who
Speaker 1: who love it all. I'm sure, but but I think
Speaker 1: that for a lot of a lot of people that
Speaker 1: didn't enjoy harror. I mean, there's there are certain films
Speaker 1: you're gonna dig in. There's certain types of films you're
Speaker 1: gonna dig Like, Like from my own part, I tend
Speaker 1: to like things with monsters or ghosts or something, uh,
Speaker 1: something a little out of the ordinary. Um, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: really not into films that feature things like like home
Speaker 1: invasion or or torture as their primary substance, you know,
Speaker 1: because those are too close to reality. I want something
Speaker 1: that's that is in an escape that has an engage
Speaker 1: my imagination. And I think that's that's maybe a huge
Speaker 1: part of it from me. It's it's it's engaging things
Speaker 1: that frighten me, but it's also engaging things that really
Speaker 1: inspire me. Um. But but then to go back to
Speaker 1: what Jed said about about taking fear and looking at
Speaker 1: any control environment. One thing I try and think up too,
Speaker 1: when like if I if I see like a trailer
Speaker 1: for a horror movie that I and I'm like, I
Speaker 1: really don't like that. I do try and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to see that. But but then I
Speaker 1: try and process, well, what about this idea or this
Speaker 1: story is disturbing me. I don't really have a firm
Speaker 1: answer other than you know, so obviously if you've, if you've,
Speaker 1: if you have real life experiences that line up with
Speaker 1: something in a horror movie, you're probably not going to
Speaker 1: be that into that horror movie. For starters. Well, I
Speaker 1: do like this idea that of hypersensitivity, and is there
Speaker 1: is you know, just like some people have a gene
Speaker 1: for um for exploration, right, right, we've seen this before.
Speaker 1: People um who the neophiles, right, they want new experiences.
Speaker 1: Are there some people who have know sort of maybe
Speaker 1: even genetic predisposition to be really affected by this or
Speaker 1: is it as a matter of even just taking in
Speaker 1: different stimuli, like is it a little bit more intense
Speaker 1: for some people? In other words, some of the ways
Speaker 1: that we filter things, There are ways the ways that
Speaker 1: our brain filters information, some people filtering it in a
Speaker 1: way that it's just coming in harder and faster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean because yeah, because because when lever,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have people they're just totally into the experience.
Speaker 1: They're like, show me something shocking, disgusting, what have you
Speaker 1: just push from which my buttons pushed my envelope and
Speaker 1: you know, I want to see it. And then other
Speaker 1: like for instance, my friend Dave, he he he'll watch
Speaker 1: hard films. He'll watch like stuff that's that's grotesque or
Speaker 1: disgusting or terrifying, but he doesn't like jumpy hard like
Speaker 1: if it's something with with something jumping out at you
Speaker 1: a lot of startles, Like he doesn't do that at
Speaker 1: all because it just he he doesn't react well to it,
Speaker 1: so you know, it just comes down to your wiring
Speaker 1: on that level. All right, Well, this this could possibly
Speaker 1: be fodder for another time, um or another episode. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally so thanks for the suggestion, Anna, thanks for the
Speaker 1: thoughts of Jed. If the rest of you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, particularly if you have
Speaker 1: any experience firewalking or or you have thoughts on fire one,
Speaker 1: that would be great because I know, just given all
Speaker 1: the firewalking out there, and given uh our number of listeners,
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of you guys and gallets have firewalks
Speaker 1: so and maybe even on a company retreat maybe even so.
Speaker 1: Um regardless, right in, let us know what was your
Speaker 1: mindset going into that experience, what was your mindset during it?
Speaker 1: What do you think you learned from it? Um? And
Speaker 1: and yeah, just tell us about your firewalking that would
Speaker 1: be great. We'd love to read some of those on
Speaker 1: the air. You can find us on Facebook and tumbler.
Speaker 1: We are stufforable your Mind on both of those, and
Speaker 1: you can also find us on Twitter, where our handle
Speaker 1: is below the Mind and you can also drop us
Speaker 1: a line via email at blow the Mind at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Visit how stuff works dot com.