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 lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: we have talked about haunted houses before check yes and
Speaker 1: haunted houses. Of course they manipulate if they toy with
Speaker 1: our responses to sounds and sights and smells, just all
Speaker 1: just bombarking our senses with all this information. And yet
Speaker 1: there are people out there who are always thinking, what
Speaker 1: can we do differently, what can we do that will
Speaker 1: that will will change the haunted attraction offering? And U
Speaker 1: a Pennsylvania haunted house has discovered just the means of
Speaker 1: doing this. That's right. It's called sh october Fest Screen Park.
Speaker 1: And I like to think of it as splicing my
Speaker 1: nightmare about public nudity with a haunted house, because this
Speaker 1: is what they initially offered. The park owner, Patrick kind
Speaker 1: of Polski. He created this naked and scared challenge to
Speaker 1: give his guests just another level of heightened fear. It's
Speaker 1: an add on, it's an add on. In fact, they
Speaker 1: had I believe the options were nude or prude, and
Speaker 1: prude is like underwear prude is underwear? Do you get
Speaker 1: through your underwear? You can go through completely nude. And
Speaker 1: of course this caught many people's eyes. The story went national,
Speaker 1: and city officials really frowned upon it. You know, presumably
Speaker 1: there'd be a lot of liability here with your with
Speaker 1: your junk hanging out, don't you think, Well, potential, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's kind of what we're gonna talk about here, is
Speaker 1: like to what extent? I mean, are you actually more vulnerable,
Speaker 1: more prone to injury if you're running through hund a
Speaker 1: house naked? Maybe? But but is it really that different,
Speaker 1: say from like a summer aware that somebody's wearing, Like,
Speaker 1: are you really if you're just wearing like swim trunks
Speaker 1: and a tube top or something, then are you really
Speaker 1: that that that much more protected? Well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: when you are wearing a tubetop, how do you feel? Well,
Speaker 1: not not a tube I guess something of like a
Speaker 1: what do you call it, like a sleeveless kind of shirt. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know that is the question. So unfortunately, the owners
Speaker 1: of the screen park, we're not able to actually pull
Speaker 1: this off because again city officials were not liking this.
Speaker 1: So they do have the prude option. So so the
Speaker 1: prude option is still around. You can run through your underwear, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I do think there's still a nice level of
Speaker 1: venerability there and we'll definitely talk more about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it depends on the underwear though, because like boxers, I
Speaker 1: feel like boxers that's more protection, you know, because they
Speaker 1: boxers look a little more like shorts. And then if
Speaker 1: you throw in like an underwear shirt as well, I
Speaker 1: mean you're basically clothed at that point. If you count
Speaker 1: socks is underwear even more so. Yeah, but tidy Whitey's
Speaker 1: are keeping it closer to the boxy t whities I
Speaker 1: think would would need to be the rule, because tidy
Speaker 1: whities are both a little more skimpy and also ridiculous looking,
Speaker 1: so there would be no It's not like you're wearing
Speaker 1: like wrestling tights in there and you're ready to go.
Speaker 1: If you're wearing tidy Whitey's, you're wearing this ridiculous dingy
Speaker 1: white underwear with a penis flap in the front, which
Speaker 1: I've never understood that I think is for another episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: m but we should probably also discuss the television show
Speaker 1: which is called Naked and Afraid yes, and you were
Speaker 1: telling me about this and I thought you were making
Speaker 1: this up. I thought this was a Julie pitch for
Speaker 1: a for a reality show. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: someone beat you to it on this one. Yes, someone did,
Speaker 1: and actually our our mother company, Discovery Really Communications, actually
Speaker 1: produces this show. But it does seem like something that
Speaker 1: would be on thirty Rock. That's like, you know, Milk Island,
Speaker 1: but no naked and Fred takes to survivalists a man
Speaker 1: and a woman and they dropped them in the middle
Speaker 1: of an isolated area naked for twenty one days with
Speaker 1: no food or water, like rural Georgia or uh no,
Speaker 1: I think Costa Rica, Panama. Some were fabulous, some were
Speaker 1: fabulous and isolated and um. But you know, again, here's
Speaker 1: this fascination with this idea that we strip ourselves down
Speaker 1: to the essence, you know, bear as babies, and we
Speaker 1: go out into the world and try to fend off
Speaker 1: all the actual real threats as well as the imagined threats. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's the thing itself, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the the the the bare human without any of the
Speaker 1: clothing and armor that we've built up over the ages. Well,
Speaker 1: and that kind of takes us to this this other
Speaker 1: place where we have to say, as organisms, why in
Speaker 1: the world are we naked anyway? I mean, we are
Speaker 1: obviously doing pretty well as a species. Homo sapiens are
Speaker 1: killing it out there literally. Um, but you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have hard shells, we don't have claws to attack
Speaker 1: people with, because we do have these big, beautiful brains.
Speaker 1: That's right. We've you know, we we talked about beards,
Speaker 1: and we talked about to some degree, there are arguments
Speaker 1: that the beard gives a certain amount of protection against
Speaker 1: bites or scratches or strangulation or what have you. But yeah,
Speaker 1: for the most part, like the naked human is a
Speaker 1: pretty unremarkable creature. It doesn't have horns, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: any of these crazy additions except those that we've invented
Speaker 1: over the years with that tremendous brain. And I want
Speaker 1: to point out I think the beard, although it could
Speaker 1: blunt a blow to the jaw, I would think that
Speaker 1: someone can actually like drag you around with it be hindrance. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we got into that a little bit too,
Speaker 1: Like the the subject of beards in fighting sports, to
Speaker 1: what degree, you know, you can grab onto a beard,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the reasons that Alexander the
Speaker 1: Great supposedly told all of the soldiers they had to
Speaker 1: shave the beard because someone could grab it and then
Speaker 1: stab you in the eye a few times. Whereas they're
Speaker 1: also those in the M M A world who say, well,
Speaker 1: if you grew out just enough stubble, then you can
Speaker 1: rub that into people's face and you have an offensive weapon. Uh,
Speaker 1: just as a female. And the beards that are in
Speaker 1: that stage, yes, are quite awful, sort of like to
Speaker 1: archer devices. I can't help but that one. Um. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna look at a creature here, the octopus,
Speaker 1: and we're going to try to get down to this
Speaker 1: idea of a nudity and brain power. Yes, the octopus,
Speaker 1: of course is an amazing creature. Recently, we were talking
Speaker 1: about the way that the podcast has changed the way
Speaker 1: that we approach our lives, and I mentioned that I
Speaker 1: don't eat octopy anymore because I in our research, I've
Speaker 1: discovered how brilliant they are in their own way. And
Speaker 1: I say in their own way, because take, for instance,
Speaker 1: the mirror test for self awareness, one of the hallmarks
Speaker 1: of of of of of intelligence and uh, you can.
Speaker 1: There are a number of organisms that can pass this test,
Speaker 1: including including humans, including uh, some some primates, etcetera. Uh.
Speaker 1: An octopus will fail the test because the octopus does
Speaker 1: not have this mammalion brain. It has a very advanced brain,
Speaker 1: but it is it is evolved in the state from
Speaker 1: from a far distant starting point than any of these
Speaker 1: other examples that we have, these vertebrate examples. So they
Speaker 1: incredibly brilliant creatures, but in a very different sense, in
Speaker 1: a very alien sense. Yeah. And for for a long time,
Speaker 1: scientists have been saying, we don't understand how it could
Speaker 1: have such extreme intelligence and be so very different from
Speaker 1: our own nervous systems. And here's why. Octopuses have five
Speaker 1: hundred million neurons to our one hundred billion. So you'd
Speaker 1: think that they would come up short in the smarts department. Um,
Speaker 1: but about two thirds of its brains are distributed in
Speaker 1: its arms, and it's dedicated to the fine operation of
Speaker 1: these limbs and and doing really nuanced and complex things camouflage,
Speaker 1: changing its shape, changing its color, um and all of
Speaker 1: these problems solving powers that they notoriously have that anytime
Speaker 1: you read about them, you'll be hear aquarium owners or
Speaker 1: researchers talk about what great escape artists they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's because they've got hundreds of suckers, you know, lining
Speaker 1: these limbs, and all the neurons to go with it. Now,
Speaker 1: the rest of the neurons are split between a central
Speaker 1: brain that is surrounding the esophagus and large optic lobes
Speaker 1: behind the eyes. So you think about this, and then
Speaker 1: you think about different accounts of things that octopuses have done.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the researcher who had something like five
Speaker 1: different octopuses and separate tanks, and she had some old
Speaker 1: food and she knew that they wouldn't be crazy about it,
Speaker 1: like like rancid and not rancid, but like old frozen squid,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, not nothing fresh um. And she she fed
Speaker 1: all of them. And then as she was walking back up,
Speaker 1: she came up to the first tank and she saw
Speaker 1: the octopus was staring at her, and it seemed to
Speaker 1: her that the octopus actually waited until they made eye contact,
Speaker 1: and the octopus stuffed the food down the drain, as
Speaker 1: if to say, not only do I reject this, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to show you to what degree I rejected,
Speaker 1: and I want to make sure that you're paying attention here,
Speaker 1: not mere rejection, that rejection with spite. Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are so many different accounts of these sorts
Speaker 1: of great things, you know, stuffing themselves into empty coconut
Speaker 1: shells that have fallen on the ocean for in order
Speaker 1: to escape predators. Hot wiring cars, yeah, hot credit cards yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So from the article how the freaky octopus help us
Speaker 1: to helps us to understand the human brain and wired,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to read this quote says the octopus
Speaker 1: got smart because the octopus got soft, or vice versa.
Speaker 1: It has no bones, no shell, no scary spikes. So
Speaker 1: if the octopus wanted to go hunting in an ocean
Speaker 1: full of fish, they're also hunting. Sometimes for octopus, it
Speaker 1: had to become fiendishly clever, not unlike a certain shell less, clawless,
Speaker 1: fur less primate. We could mention. Yeah, because when we've
Speaker 1: discussed before, when it comes to evolution, like the ocean
Speaker 1: is an incredibly dangerous place, like far more so than
Speaker 1: than the surface world, just teeming with dangers. And so
Speaker 1: there's just the the the arms race there is just
Speaker 1: elevated to a degree you don't. You tend not to
Speaker 1: see on the surface world, you know, I guess in
Speaker 1: the jungle can say it's it's close. But but for
Speaker 1: the most part the ocean is just this deadly race.
Speaker 1: And so you look at the octopus and when it's
Speaker 1: when it's alive and moving, you you are seeing all
Speaker 1: the shifting of shapes and colors. It can make its
Speaker 1: texture look hard and rough and rugged. But if you
Speaker 1: have a dead octopus and it just you know, washes
Speaker 1: up on the beach, it just looks like a sack
Speaker 1: of flesh. There's nothing there's nothing hard, there's nothing rugged
Speaker 1: about it. In a sense, it's all bluff, it's all
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's it's neurons powering up and creating
Speaker 1: this display. And you can maybe easily make the argument
Speaker 1: that humans have done the same thing, though, instead of
Speaker 1: making our skin crawl with crazy textures and change colors
Speaker 1: and all, we have invested in clothing. We've invested in
Speaker 1: in garments and and in some cases actual armor that
Speaker 1: makes us physically tougher, but in other cases stuff that
Speaker 1: changes the the the the visual proposition of what we
Speaker 1: are as an individual in the species, well as landlovers
Speaker 1: to um. You know, we we got our neo cortex
Speaker 1: as mammalian have, and that really up the game too,
Speaker 1: because now we have theory of mind. I can try
Speaker 1: to figure out what you're thinking and trying to strategize
Speaker 1: around that. UM. So you're normally just taking in all
Speaker 1: that data, but you are analyzing it to such a degree.
Speaker 1: So it is interesting how you put it that way.
Speaker 1: You've got the ocean, which is an entirely different game,
Speaker 1: and so you would have organisms developing different intelligence systems
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, what we're doing here on
Speaker 1: the land. But of course the one thread that runs
Speaker 1: through all of this is this vulnerability, this nakedness. Now,
Speaker 1: one area where this this idea of heightened vulnerability want
Speaker 1: while nude, really comes into play, uh is in our
Speaker 1: promotion pictures because for the most part, most of us
Speaker 1: have not had the experience of running through a hounted
Speaker 1: house naked or fighting for our lives naked, but are
Speaker 1: our heroes and heroin's sometimes do encounter the situation. A
Speaker 1: few examples that instantly come to mind, of course, Eastern
Speaker 1: promises yes with Viga Morton sence that scene of him
Speaker 1: in the shower digging it out with a Russian mafia members,
Speaker 1: like a pack of clothed Russian mafia members with knives.
Speaker 1: That he's just naked and like like just very you know,
Speaker 1: covered in tattoos, very loupine looking, you know, I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: very animal like looking, and he's just fighting for his
Speaker 1: life and he's being stabbed and beaten. I can't think
Speaker 1: of a scene that made me WinCE more honestly than
Speaker 1: that scene. When I saw it, I was covering it
Speaker 1: like it was just a horror, you know, film, and
Speaker 1: that there was like blood. Of course there was no blood,
Speaker 1: but yes, very effective use of nakedness. So that's that's
Speaker 1: easily the one that came to mind mind the most.
Speaker 1: Some other films that have included some some similar scenes.
Speaker 1: I've forgotten about this, but Memento has a scene where
Speaker 1: Guy Pierce is assaulted one naked and he's like fighting
Speaker 1: him off, but it's nowhere near as as as intense
Speaker 1: as Eastern promises. There's a scene in American Psycho where
Speaker 1: Christian Bale's running around naked with a chainsaw, but that's
Speaker 1: different because he's the one with the chainsaw. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're carring a chainsaw. Then you're kind of not
Speaker 1: really naked. Uh. There's a scene in The Hangover where
Speaker 1: an individual is naked and attack somebody. There's a scene
Speaker 1: in Beowulf School Ties there's like a shower fight. Um Fargo,
Speaker 1: I've forgotten about this with the scene where is um
Speaker 1: is making love to a prostitute and uh and an
Speaker 1: individual comes in and starts roughing them up and just
Speaker 1: throwing them all over the place. There's of course a
Speaker 1: scene in Borat where uh where bora At wrestles an
Speaker 1: individual and they're both naked and uh and it's it's awful,
Speaker 1: it's awful. Um. There's a there's of course, the the
Speaker 1: old Kin Russell film Women in Love. It is kind
Speaker 1: of famous for a nude wrestling scene with Oliver read uh,
Speaker 1: you know, very you know, in a very manly sense.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh and then uh. When it comes to
Speaker 1: uh to literature, I'm instantly reminded of C. S. Lewis's Perlandra,
Speaker 1: which which has a lot of new like the they
Speaker 1: could probably never film it because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: nudity in it. The character Ransom lands on this uh,
Speaker 1: this fictional version of Planet Venus it's also kind of
Speaker 1: like Eten a biblical Eden. So he lands there and
Speaker 1: he's walking around naked. And then a scientist by the
Speaker 1: name of Professor Western lands as well in a little spaceship,
Speaker 1: Western is clothed. That Western is also possessed by uh,
Speaker 1: the devil, And it eventually gets to a situation where
Speaker 1: they have this this fight and it's like the devil
Speaker 1: is biting at him and all, and he's fighting him naked,
Speaker 1: and it's and I remember it as being very very
Speaker 1: nail biding ye yeah, um, which I think is interesting
Speaker 1: because it brings in that element when you talk about
Speaker 1: eating and talk about devil, uh, this element of shame.
Speaker 1: And because what happened to Adam and e if they
Speaker 1: they screwed up and so suddenly they can't walk around
Speaker 1: naked anymore. They have to wear those leaves, and that
Speaker 1: wrought all sorts of psychoanalysis for them. Yeah, especially when
Speaker 1: fall fashions hit, because they just crumble at the slightest
Speaker 1: movement and then they have to grab more leaves. It's
Speaker 1: a problem. Let's take a break and when we get
Speaker 1: back we will talk about this shame associated with nudgedness.
Speaker 1: All right, We're back and we are going to dive
Speaker 1: into nudity and shame. Yeah, And you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting to to think about nudity and shame because I
Speaker 1: often feel like in Eastern promises, it never crossed my mind. Oh,
Speaker 1: poor Vigo, it's so shameful that he's having to fight naked,
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't like chain doesn't really factor
Speaker 1: into my fear for him. But obviously shame is a
Speaker 1: huge part of nudity in our version of nudity, particularly
Speaker 1: in UH in Western culture. Well, what's interesting to you
Speaker 1: about a lot of the clips that we saw that
Speaker 1: we're sort of the top ten list of naked vibes
Speaker 1: is that not one woman showed up in those Oh
Speaker 1: excuse me, one did she was having with the nude
Speaker 1: guy who was shooting Oh yeah, Clive Owen and Monica
Speaker 1: well belus the one who is uh in the matrix, Okay,
Speaker 1: yes her. So what's interesting about that is that those
Speaker 1: nude scenes with women that you know, that's the violence.
Speaker 1: Normally in a nude scene with a woman is voisted
Speaker 1: upon them. It's not usually a fight scene in which
Speaker 1: you know, they're toting guns around our knives. Um, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting to see shame and nudity rendered
Speaker 1: in that way. But we have to we have to
Speaker 1: think about what is shame and also we have to
Speaker 1: differentiate shame from guilt. So how would you how would
Speaker 1: you describe guilt? Like, if you're guilty about something, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a rather different animal than shame. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: according to a collaboration between scientists at the University of
Speaker 1: Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions and George Mason University in Fairfax,
Speaker 1: shame is definitely not the same as guilt, and shame
Speaker 1: actually has implications regarding misuse of alcohol and drugs. So
Speaker 1: all that shame that we think about in terms of
Speaker 1: our body, it's more of a thought construct, right, It's
Speaker 1: not associated with an act. Usually, So if I have
Speaker 1: a dream about being naked in public, and this is
Speaker 1: more of a nightmare, it's more of an impending feeling
Speaker 1: that I have, um, you know, I have done something.
Speaker 1: It's little dread anxiety associated with a shame as opposed
Speaker 1: to like, you know, I did something sexual or bad.
Speaker 1: You know this one act. Yeah, guilt tends to imply
Speaker 1: to that you you really did something wrong, that you're
Speaker 1: responsible for you know that you're culpable in whereas shame
Speaker 1: not necessarily like, if you're ashamed of your body, you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be persecuted because your body doesn't match your
Speaker 1: own personal expectations of it and uh and and likewise,
Speaker 1: it's this study looked into uh when when they were
Speaker 1: dealing with shame, like individuals who had like the bodily
Speaker 1: uh signs of shame, like the sunken shoulders, and those
Speaker 1: were the ones that were more likely to relapse into
Speaker 1: their addictive behaviors. Yeah, we should mention that these studies
Speaker 1: were all surrounding addictions and behavior. And the first study
Speaker 1: that they had, it was three groups of participants with
Speaker 1: different levels of alcohol or drug problems. There were two
Speaker 1: groups that were primarily female college students about twenty years old.
Speaker 1: The third group was comprised of predominantly male inmates from
Speaker 1: a jail who were on average about thirty one years old.
Speaker 1: And what they found is that shame is the tendency
Speaker 1: to feel really bad about yourself following a specific event,
Speaker 1: and people who are prone to shame when dealing with
Speaker 1: a variety of life problems may also have a tendency
Speaker 1: to turn towards alcohol and other drugs to cope with
Speaker 1: this feeling. So that's what the deal is with guilt
Speaker 1: and shame. It turns out that guilt um which is
Speaker 1: again something that you're feeling bad about, which is a
Speaker 1: specific behavior action that is unrelated to substance use problems.
Speaker 1: And as you had mentioned, there was a follow up
Speaker 1: study that looked at the body language of people who
Speaker 1: felt shame about their addiction and could accurately predict whether
Speaker 1: or not that person would have a relapse. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, the more I think about, shame seems to
Speaker 1: really make more sense in terms of something that is
Speaker 1: an ongoing issue, you know, something that could be seen
Speaker 1: as a if not a character flaw, then a then
Speaker 1: a deep flaw in that person, either physically or spiritually mentally,
Speaker 1: what have you. Yeah, and I think that's with the
Speaker 1: interesting part of the body language what it's telling the
Speaker 1: observers here in this study. I said that was a
Speaker 1: follow up and it's actually not. It's University of British
Speaker 1: Columbia study. So there's forty six participants who were videotaped
Speaker 1: several sessions throughout the year that they found those greater
Speaker 1: levels of shame behaviors, and that first session showed that
Speaker 1: they were more likely to relapse by the second session.
Speaker 1: And by the way, any sort of written or verbal
Speaker 1: expressions of shame did not predict the likelihood of relapse.
Speaker 1: It was that again, the physical manifestation of what shame
Speaker 1: looks like, which leads into the research conducted by Burnet Brown,
Speaker 1: who's a professor of University of Houston Graduate College of
Speaker 1: Social Work, and she studies shame for six years and
Speaker 1: she found a lot of a lot of correlation between
Speaker 1: shame and not only addiction, which we've been discussing, but
Speaker 1: also depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, and eating disorders. So
Speaker 1: she makes the argument that that guilt is more useful, uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but but adaptive, you know. It's it's something that can
Speaker 1: actually be spun off into positive growth, where a shame
Speaker 1: is more And we get into, you know, discussing shame
Speaker 1: spirals and this idea that that that shame is not
Speaker 1: only feeling feeling responsible for what you did and realizing
Speaker 1: that what you did is wrong on some level, but
Speaker 1: but feeling this this low level of self worth about
Speaker 1: it that you almost don't have the the energy to
Speaker 1: to to fight the temptation or the or the need
Speaker 1: to do it again. You know what's interesting about that
Speaker 1: is when you talk about the human body, you talk
Speaker 1: about nudity, some people will have very strong reactions to
Speaker 1: their image and they might have, you know, eating disorders
Speaker 1: or other disorders that sort of warped their sense of
Speaker 1: um self esteem. And what Brown says is that perfectionism,
Speaker 1: which you often see with eating disorders, is a form
Speaker 1: of shame. And she said, where we struggle with perfectionism,
Speaker 1: we struggle with shame. Research shows that perfections perfectionism hampers achievement.
Speaker 1: Perfectionism is correlated with depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis
Speaker 1: or missed opportunities. The fear of failing, making mistakes, not
Speaker 1: meeting people's expectations, of being criticized, keeps us outside of
Speaker 1: the arena were healthy competition and striving unfolds. It reminds
Speaker 1: me of that episode of Community where where they're all
Speaker 1: taking this pottery class and uh and uh and Jeff
Speaker 1: Wingers failing miserably added and it's just really frustrated with
Speaker 1: his miserable pottery because he was hoping it would be
Speaker 1: an easy class and to pick up women. And then
Speaker 1: there's this there's this doctor in the class. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so he's already an overachiever in some respects and then
Speaker 1: he's also creating this beautiful pottery even though it's like
Speaker 1: a pottery one on one class and uh, and so
Speaker 1: the characters are arguing over whether this guy is you know,
Speaker 1: an expert who's come in to just pretend that he's
Speaker 1: just starting and he's a natural or you know, or
Speaker 1: or he just is a natural. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, you you get insight into this, uh,
Speaker 1: this doctor's uh like dark inner monologue where he's he's
Speaker 1: really striving after this perfectionism met out of this deep
Speaker 1: sense of shame. Isn't that funny? And that that that
Speaker 1: even the results will never be good enough. Right, so
Speaker 1: even if he produces this piece of pottery that's museum grade, yeah,
Speaker 1: because he's because he's coming in it from the sense
Speaker 1: of shame, the sense that you'll never achieve what is
Speaker 1: expected up. Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about some of burn A. Brown's insights into shame and vulnerability.
Speaker 1: But I did want to mention um that bowling in nudity,
Speaker 1: in in virtual reality is a thing. Um. The point
Speaker 1: of this two thousand and seventh study of the game
Speaker 1: Second Life was actually just tried to figure out how
Speaker 1: bowling would work with new residents of Second Life. I'm
Speaker 1: sure everybody is familiar with Second Life. Uh, this virtual
Speaker 1: representation of yourself and this virtual world that you can
Speaker 1: insert yourself into, and it's a highly social world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just creatures running around killing monsters or you know,
Speaker 1: or fighting each other. There's like, for instance, I attended
Speaker 1: a church service in one once. I'm not really a
Speaker 1: Second Life user, but I was attending a church service
Speaker 1: and one of the organizers they're put on uh like
Speaker 1: on the screen a church service that was going on
Speaker 1: in Second life, and so there were all these characters
Speaker 1: they were worshiping and as their avatars in this virtual environment.
Speaker 1: So if you're not familiar with Second Life, just be
Speaker 1: aware of at any and everything seems to go on there, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you basically can conduct a version of your
Speaker 1: life in Second Life your avatar. You can do things
Speaker 1: obviously that you never could do in your life. Right,
Speaker 1: And for many people creates, it's a tremendous social outlet
Speaker 1: that they might not have, especially if you know, if
Speaker 1: they're uh, you know, they're they're in an area or
Speaker 1: in a place in their life where they don't have
Speaker 1: you know, physical access to to you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of supporting community. Well. Researchers from Nottingham University Business School
Speaker 1: with the permission of Lindon Lamb, who who developed Second Life,
Speaker 1: they set up a cyber based focus group to discuss
Speaker 1: the problem of bullying directly with residents of Second Life.
Speaker 1: Um and the new residents they found were often the
Speaker 1: target of bullying, which included destroying a newbie's house, right, so,
Speaker 1: a newbie avatar's house, shooting him or her swearing at
Speaker 1: them and then displays a public nudity from the bully,
Speaker 1: or like making the other person naked from the bully. Now,
Speaker 1: in some ways, this is this is trying to shame
Speaker 1: the residents by showing them how how highly they have
Speaker 1: mastered their their abilities of their avatar, you know, to
Speaker 1: say like this is how you get naked. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna show you. I'm gonna get naked in front of
Speaker 1: you right now, because that's that's the level of my abilities.
Speaker 1: But um, and you knew you don't even know how
Speaker 1: to put your clothes on. But on on another level too,
Speaker 1: it's sort of an aggressive act in the sense that
Speaker 1: nudity itself is offensive or just sort of breaking social norms.
Speaker 1: I think it's breaking social norms, taking on the power
Speaker 1: of nudity to to expose oneself in this virtual realm.
Speaker 1: It's got a lot of layers to it. Actually, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah. Like, for instance, um, one of the
Speaker 1: stories you've told before is when you were in New
Speaker 1: York World Science Festival and like a new order the
Speaker 1: few topless stopless. I think right, she was topless. She
Speaker 1: just had like cut off geane shore shoes on, but
Speaker 1: no top and she was just walking down the street
Speaker 1: and she had crossed in front of a church. Now
Speaker 1: at the same time, there was a bride emerging from
Speaker 1: a car and about to to go up the steps.
Speaker 1: So at the same time this was happening, and I
Speaker 1: was absolutely amazed because I felt like I was the
Speaker 1: only person who noticed, you know, bare breasted woman coming
Speaker 1: at me, but everybody else was looking at the bride.
Speaker 1: M So to I wonder what extent she was weaponizing nudity,
Speaker 1: or you know, using it as a blunt instrument. I
Speaker 1: did not get the sense that she was just had
Speaker 1: forgotten to put her shirt on that day. I did
Speaker 1: get the sense that she was doing in a very
Speaker 1: intentional way, and I kept looking around for cameras and
Speaker 1: I did not see any. Well, we've spoken about performance
Speaker 1: artists before, and there are many, many examples of performance
Speaker 1: artists using nudity as a way to in some cases
Speaker 1: you knows, as an alluring method, but often it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a shock. Uh. Some for instance, and I
Speaker 1: forget the name of the artist here. It's referenced in
Speaker 1: our how hula hoops article works on how stuff works,
Speaker 1: but there was I want to say it was an
Speaker 1: Israeli or Palestinian artist who did this video series where
Speaker 1: it's like a woman naked hula hooping with a hula
Speaker 1: hoop made out of barbed wire. So it's not alluring
Speaker 1: at all. I mean some maybe, but um, but there's
Speaker 1: this you know, you're hit with the sense of she's naked,
Speaker 1: she's vulnerable, and then for some reason, the whula hoop
Speaker 1: is made out of barbed wire and you see it
Speaker 1: like cutting into her flesh, and uh, it's it's very disturbing.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of some of the work that we've
Speaker 1: talked about with Maria Abramovitch, who, um, she had one
Speaker 1: performance art installation in which she was naked and then
Speaker 1: she laid down next to a variety of objects. I
Speaker 1: think there was a gun, there, there was a rose,
Speaker 1: a couple of other objects, and people could interact with
Speaker 1: her using those objects, and she found that people got
Speaker 1: progressively uh more violent or just even threatening with her.
Speaker 1: So what we're seeing here is that nudity is both
Speaker 1: the seat of vulnerability but can also be the seat
Speaker 1: of courage. Because on one hand, we can think of
Speaker 1: of the Emperor's new Clothing, where here's this uh, here's
Speaker 1: this buffoon who thinks he's wearing clothing and everyone's mocking
Speaker 1: him because he's just walking around naked through the streets.
Speaker 1: Or you think of any example from uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in any kind of historical or biblical account where individuals
Speaker 1: are stripped naked and reduced, you know, any any kind
Speaker 1: of slavery or imprisonment situation. Uh, you know, examples of
Speaker 1: Babu Grabe come to mind as well, where individuals are
Speaker 1: are stripped of their clothing and and and in doing
Speaker 1: so the strip of their dignity, and it's and it's used,
Speaker 1: you know, as a as a weapon against them. But
Speaker 1: then there are other examples where the nudity is very
Speaker 1: much a symbol of cur I mean, think of all
Speaker 1: the Greek statues we have of of these nude individuals,
Speaker 1: you know, wrestling with each other, or a nude man
Speaker 1: wrestling a centaur um in any any example like this
Speaker 1: where the nudy is is their their seat of strength.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of those examples, not the
Speaker 1: Steve b. Simione, but some of those examples that we
Speaker 1: talked about in movies, that's what they're really going for
Speaker 1: there too. It's like the man himself is, you know,
Speaker 1: without clothing, is bravely fighting like like some Greek statue
Speaker 1: who are some classical painting. Yeah, I mean there is
Speaker 1: this idea that um in the flesh, completely stripped down,
Speaker 1: you are actually taking the shackles of whatever it is
Speaker 1: that we settle ourselves with and casting them away. And
Speaker 1: I think of our friends, the Germans, who did this
Speaker 1: really well. In fact, there's something called frank culture which
Speaker 1: I listened to fourvo about fifty times to try to
Speaker 1: say that. And I still will apologize to her German
Speaker 1: friends out there, but this translates to free body culture
Speaker 1: and naturism is really big for for Germans. This is so,
Speaker 1: this is nudism, this is uh, this is being free
Speaker 1: with your body, walking around nude in in a not
Speaker 1: necessarily sexual just saying I am a nature boy. But
Speaker 1: it's more than what we think of here in the
Speaker 1: United States when we think about nudity and public nudity
Speaker 1: and we think about these different areas where basically like
Speaker 1: recreation parks where you can go and be nude. I mean,
Speaker 1: this has its roots pretty strongly in Germany. In fact,
Speaker 1: that movement that nature is a movement got its foothold
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century during the Victorian area era.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty amazing, right, And the first nudist camp
Speaker 1: opened near Hamburg in nineteen o three. Now one in
Speaker 1: ten Germans take a naked vacation at least once a year.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome, But I know that's just according to
Speaker 1: Kirk Fisher, a president of German Association for Free Body Culture.
Speaker 1: By the way, so again there's this idea that there's
Speaker 1: more of an exceptence of one's body. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I get it. I definitely get a sense of that
Speaker 1: when I go to the Korean sauna that we have locally,
Speaker 1: and granted it's it's segregated by by gender, but in
Speaker 1: the the in the men's side, decide that I go
Speaker 1: to um you see all different body types. So they
Speaker 1: will be, you know, there'll be some like young dude
Speaker 1: who's like super cut, There'll be some just old wretched
Speaker 1: looking individually everything in between, and and what you know,
Speaker 1: your first exposure to it may be a little you know,
Speaker 1: like whoa, everyone's naked and I'm naked, what's going on here?
Speaker 1: But then I do feel like it quickly settles and
Speaker 1: you suddenly really don't care. My experience there was that,
Speaker 1: and I was on the female side, was that I
Speaker 1: could not believe the variety of body types because as
Speaker 1: a female, taking in all the various bits of media,
Speaker 1: you know, you tend to see the same bodies over
Speaker 1: and over again. And I don't go around seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of naked women around me. So to be in
Speaker 1: a room with women who were not representative of media
Speaker 1: but representative of the greater culture was amazing. And that
Speaker 1: was what my brain was trying to square as all
Speaker 1: this different shapes and then, as you say, it just
Speaker 1: sort of became like these are bodies. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: can see where that would be really liberating for people,
Speaker 1: and it can I think I can see where. It's
Speaker 1: also difficult to understand if you haven't you know, gone
Speaker 1: to a sauna environment like that, if you haven't skinny
Speaker 1: dip you know, it's some hippie get together or something
Speaker 1: where on the outside it seems like it might be
Speaker 1: something kind of sleazy, like people are going to be
Speaker 1: naked in the same area. There's something wrong going on here.
Speaker 1: But no, it's uh, I mean, has its roots with
Speaker 1: with ancient bath cultures that outside of you know, Scandinavia
Speaker 1: really dried up over the past several centuries. I will
Speaker 1: be honest though and say that I hoped um that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't see anybody that I knew. Uh. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: never encountered someone that I know. But my wife has
Speaker 1: like encountered people where they she either knew them or
Speaker 1: they knew somebody she knew, And I guess that could
Speaker 1: be a little weird. But on the men's side, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of like I understand that the lady
Speaker 1: said is more chit chat. But on the min's side,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of dudes sly sort of staring at
Speaker 1: the floor. Yeah, there's a lot going on the on
Speaker 1: the female side. I'm not even going to get into it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard um all right. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring up Burnet Brown again because she has a
Speaker 1: really nice ted talk on vulnerability, emotional nakedness what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, and um, she has said that as
Speaker 1: a culture, that we are doing harm to ourselves and
Speaker 1: not allowing ourselves to be vulnerable or show that, um,
Speaker 1: show our weaknesses and that trying to covering them up again,
Speaker 1: just like perfectionism closes us down and closes us down
Speaker 1: to opportunity. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of our
Speaker 1: recent episode on clothes Cognition about how clothing that we
Speaker 1: wear changes that the the idea of who we are,
Speaker 1: the feeling, the internal feeling of who we are, but
Speaker 1: also the version of ourselves that we're putting out there.
Speaker 1: And uh, and when you you strip it all down
Speaker 1: and you're just dealing with the creature itself, then I
Speaker 1: mean that the speed with which we actually understand another
Speaker 1: person increases. So have all these levels of clothing that
Speaker 1: change the proposition of who we are both to ourselves
Speaker 1: and to outsiders what happens in the mind, in the
Speaker 1: brain itself when we strip away all that clothing, when
Speaker 1: we consider each other, well, your brain actually gets a
Speaker 1: boost and power. It turns out, because if someone were
Speaker 1: to look at a bunch of images of nude people
Speaker 1: as opposed to clothe people, signists have seen that their brains,
Speaker 1: which of course our scan by m R I, are
Speaker 1: able to process those images much faster. So on one hand,
Speaker 1: you could say, no, that's because they don't have to
Speaker 1: deal with all of the detail that in clothes. Cognition,
Speaker 1: for instance, might put forth all those symbols inherent in
Speaker 1: the clothing, bird symbols and then clothing symbols, color theory,
Speaker 1: um reshaping of the body, and camouflaging of our he
Speaker 1: faults through clothing. Thanks thanks that that takes up a
Speaker 1: lot of time in cognition there does um. You could
Speaker 1: say though, that just seeing the naked human form, get
Speaker 1: that you get a boost in your brain because that's
Speaker 1: something that is so easily recognized to us, and it's
Speaker 1: something that I guess on a reproductive level, we would
Speaker 1: have a response to which someone could argue that that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we enjoy looking at nudity and art,
Speaker 1: not merely from a you know, a sort of you know,
Speaker 1: alluring subside, though obviously, uh, you know, figures of the
Speaker 1: naked female or male form are pleasing to the eye.
Speaker 1: But but then they also may just sort of refresh
Speaker 1: us in a way. It's kind of like, imagine a
Speaker 1: workplace where you just have it like an anatomical almost
Speaker 1: you know, voyager plaque esque image of the nude male
Speaker 1: and a nude female on the wall, and just so
Speaker 1: every now and then, like things start getting complicated and
Speaker 1: and and uh and and worrisome, you can look up
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, well, that's what we are right
Speaker 1: there that creates that creature, and that creature well, and
Speaker 1: there's something that's um that that's equalizing about that. Right.
Speaker 1: So everybody is naked, right, and they always say that
Speaker 1: when you go and you give a talk, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and it it makes more sense when you think
Speaker 1: of it that way. It's like, look at the they're
Speaker 1: just people just like you and me, and if you
Speaker 1: were to take their clothes off, they all look varying
Speaker 1: degrees of ridiculous. Now, that's what burn A Brown says.
Speaker 1: That is the courage of doing that emotionally and to
Speaker 1: show people that at the bottom of everything, we are
Speaker 1: all human. We all have, you know, the same emotions,
Speaker 1: the same sort of um hurts and and and the
Speaker 1: same sort of joys and rewards in life. So she
Speaker 1: says that we should be able to show that, to
Speaker 1: show our our emotional nudity to people. And she says
Speaker 1: that that actually is what makes something accessible, because otherwise
Speaker 1: it's very hard to relate to other people if they
Speaker 1: seem perfect, right, if they don't seem emotionally available vulnerable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I've also found that like like real nudity, Like
Speaker 1: there's emotional nudity where it's coming from a place of
Speaker 1: honesty and you're like, oh, well this is this is
Speaker 1: a real person. And then there's kind of aggressive emotional nudity.
Speaker 1: It's like narcissistic nudity. Yeah, like stop waving your emotions
Speaker 1: in my face kind of kind of thing. Well, I
Speaker 1: wanted to to read this bit that Berne Brown actually
Speaker 1: brought up in her book Daring Greatly, because she said
Speaker 1: she got this idea of shame and vulnerability from rereading
Speaker 1: a passage in Theodore Roosevelt speech Citizenship in a republic.
Speaker 1: The passage is it's not the critic who counts, not
Speaker 1: the man who points out how the strong man stumbles
Speaker 1: or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
Speaker 1: The credit belongs to the man who is actually in
Speaker 1: the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat
Speaker 1: and blood, who strives valiantly, who at best knows the
Speaker 1: triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails,
Speaker 1: at least fails well daring greatly. And he gave that
Speaker 1: speech naked. Most people don't realize that, and mar with
Speaker 1: dust and sweat and blood. He was referring to a
Speaker 1: naked fight in that passage. Yeah, so there you go
Speaker 1: a little insight into the links between nudity and shame,
Speaker 1: nudity and strength, nudity and pair. Uh. Certainly think about
Speaker 1: that as you watch some of the films we mentioned here,
Speaker 1: or any of the other films out there that have
Speaker 1: scenes that feature male and or female nudity and scenes
Speaker 1: of ror or suspense. What role is the nudity playing,
Speaker 1: How are they how are they tweaking the message of
Speaker 1: the film by using that nudity, or are they just
Speaker 1: using it gratuitously? Yeah, let us know. And I have
Speaker 1: to say, us doing the podcast nude, it's not as
Speaker 1: weird as I thought it was. Me No, what do
Speaker 1: you know? Yeah, our producer he's fine with it too.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well there, Yeah it worked out. Now would
Speaker 1: you do would you go through a haunted house naked? Though?
Speaker 1: I would not? Yeah? You. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot to get me into a haunted house,
Speaker 1: So to ask me to to drop trout that would
Speaker 1: be sort of problematic. Yeah, I guess I would. I
Speaker 1: would be up for it if it were if it
Speaker 1: were a good haunted house and not just like some
Speaker 1: sort of a gimmicky thing, because there were there have been.
Speaker 1: There have been some haunted houses that have come through
Speaker 1: or popped up in the Atlanta area that have featured
Speaker 1: nudity on the part of the performers. And it just
Speaker 1: sounds a little yeah, like I don't really want anything again.
Speaker 1: I just I'm so pragmatically towards the liability thing. You know,
Speaker 1: stuff hanging out, you know, you don't have much light
Speaker 1: going through, Something's going to happen to someone's parts. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel the same way when my son is running
Speaker 1: around naked, like my thought is he's going to fall
Speaker 1: and skin his winger on the concrete, and I and
Speaker 1: I just like, let's let's get some pants on him
Speaker 1: just so when he falls that he's not gonna hurt
Speaker 1: his wir You're good dad. Alright, guys, let us know,
Speaker 1: would you go through Haunted House naked? Yes? And scenes
Speaker 1: from films, comics, literature that have featured nude fights that
Speaker 1: were really that it actually worked and actually had had
Speaker 1: some sort of effect on you as a viewer a reader.
Speaker 1: Let us know about those as well. You can find
Speaker 1: us in all the normal places, of course. Our mothership
Speaker 1: is Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where
Speaker 1: everything floats to the surface. But you can also find
Speaker 1: us on Facebook and tumbler. We're stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind on both of those and on Twitter our handle
Speaker 1: is blow the Mind and you can always drop us
Speaker 1: a line at below the Mind at discovery dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because
Speaker 1: it how stuff works. Dot Com